microsoft word 2conde salomon layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 1-2 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2018 – this is an open access journal from the editors history of science and science education: a necessary dialogue mauro l. condé1 marlon salomon2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ throughout the twentieth century, not only were sciences and their impacts developed exponentially, but, in the same way, there was a vast increase in the possibilities of analyzing this scientific knowledge in its many social implications as well as in its epistemological and educational presuppositions. in other words, these analyzes were not restricted to asking how science is produced and how it affects society, but we also started to wonder about the best way of transmitting scientific knowledge. in the long run scientific culture is sustained not only by the extraordinary achievements of science and technology but also by its ability to perpetuate itself through the continuous training of new scientists and engineers. it is true that we have learned from francis bacon that “to know is power”, but we also come to understand that it would be vital to pass on this knowledge to perpetuate it. in short, we have learned that without a well-established science education, science has no future. especially since the twentieth century, science education has become central to scientific culture. this educational process will be all the better if it is more intertwined with the historical, social, and philosophical questions inherent in the production of scientific knowledge. in other words, there is an inseparability between the history of science, philosophy of science and science education. although these are specific fields of knowledge already well-established, we can only understand – and indeed intervene – in the teachinglearning process of sciences if, at least, we can situate a scientific knowledge in the historical time that produced it as well as in its specific epistemological perspectives. it is true that a merely “technical” scientific education can be sponsored without proper historical and philosophical analysis, but this ends up being a tremendously poor education, stuck to a positivist view of science as the producer of eternal truths, and will fatally end up fossilizing science itself. it is against this view that science education has been positioned, above all, from the second half of the twentieth century. there is a long historiography produced on scientific education both concerning the didactic and methodological aspects of teaching science and technology and its historical, social and 1 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 marlon salomon [orcid: 0000-0002-2446-2141] is a professor in the faculty of history at the universidade federal de goiás (federal university of goiás). address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: marlonsalomon@ufg.br 2 philosophical implications. based on this perception, we seek in this issue of the journal transversal to bring to the dialogue a reflection on this historiography of scientific education in its interfaces with the history of science and the philosophy of science. with this, we try to encourage our authors and readers to find in the pages of our journal – not only in this issue but in future editions – a place to welcome reflection on the historiographic path of scientific education. last but not least, we must express our great thanks to professor raffaele pisano (lille university) for proposing and organizing the dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education we are presenting. without the expertise, competence, and zeal of professor raffaele pisano, this dossier would not have existed. microsoft word 1 from the editors 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 01-02 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 – this is an open access journal from the editors for the diversity of the historiography of science mauro l. condé1 marlon salomon2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.01 ____________________________________________________________________________________ reconstituting the history of the historiography of science implies, from the outset, to recognize the plurality and diversity of its critical trajectories. since at least the 19th century, and still more forcefully from the 20th century, critical reflection on the sciences – understood as a phenomenon whose coherence could only be understood in the becoming – has expanded and pluralized in an extraordinary way. in this sense, the historiography of the sciences has accompanied at least two trends from the time of its birth: on the one hand, the pluralization of science itself in a growing diversity of increasingly specialized domains. on the other, the pluralization of interpretative perspectives that was proper for the emergence of the human sciences. in its work of understanding these tendencies, the historiography of the sciences presented methodologies of study, forms of approach and markedly different theoretical systematization efforts. from the time of its birth, there were many authors who formulated theoreticalmethodological proposals of how to write the history of science. in the same way, the plurality of objects implied a vast and diversified historiography. the aim of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science is to reflect this diversity and to think it in its constituent plurality. in promoting the critical study of the reconstitution of this diversity, the history of the historiography of science (considered in this broad aspect) seeks to reconstitute these different trajectories in their plurality, comprising of their crossreferences and transversals, their divergences, their points of support, their continuities and discontinuities, their innovations and impasses, their promoters, their institutions and their social inscriptions, their successes, but also their failures. in this sense, the historiography of the sciences cannot be seen as a purely dilettante discipline or as a mere epistemic curiosity. it occupies an important place in the contemporary cultural and intellectual scenario. in a way, it would not be an exaggeration to say that, since the end of the 19th century, it has replaced in our culture the role that philosophy sought to exert from the 18th to the 19th century in relation to science. this is because it is only through history (regardless of its matrix) that the sciences find their 1 mauro l. condé is a professor in the department of history at federal university of minas gerais. address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270 – 901, brazil. email: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 marlon salomon is a professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. email: marlonsalomon@ufg.br 2 coherence and their meaning. it is, therefore, the meaning of the scientific phenomenon within the western culture that is at stake in it. it is with the history of this historiography and its place within a culture that transversal: international journal for the historiography of science intends to occupy. thus, we cannot fail to point out that, insofar as the historiography of science contains this diversity, the use of the term “historiography of science” in the singular as spelled in the name of transversal does not reflect the idea of a “unification of science” but it simply fits into a tradition of the english language. this diversity of approaches and perspectives appears in this number 3, that is the first issue of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science not dedicated to a dossier. the target of our journal is to publish about twenty articles per year, with an average of ten articles per edition. however, due to the high quality of the articles referring to the pierre duhem dossier of the previous issue (june 2017) we decided to publish a larger number of articles than the one originally planned for that number. now, obeying this rule of staying in about twenty articles a year, that number (december 2017) was purposely slightly smaller. mauro l. condé marlon salomon editors-in-chief on behalf of the editorial board microsoft word 1conde salomon layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 1-2 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access journal from the editors the historiography of science as a specific field of research mauro l. condé1 marlon salomon2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.01 ____________________________________________________________________________________ it is with great pleasure that we arrived at our fourth edition. the task of editing transversal: international journal for the historiography of science has been extremely enjoyable not only because of the subject but also because of the great acceptance we have had from both authors and referees as well as from readers. in these four issues, this still very young journal has published authors from around 20 different countries and our page has been accessed in about 50 countries. of course, this welcome is a great encouragement to continue this dialogue with all those interested in the historiography of science around the world. in creating a specific journal to discuss the historiography of science, our purpose is not only to emphasize the relevance or importance that this subject has been gaining from the great development of the history of science in the last decades everywhere in the world, but also to emphasize the importance of the constitution of the historiography of science as a field of research that has its own specificity. as we know, concomitantly with the intense research activity in the history of science, a wide range of theoretical, methodological and epistemological questions about this historiographic production emerges. the critical analysis of the historiography of science that our journal seeks to accomplish not only responds to this demand, but it helps to delimit the contours of a specific field of investigation – both in its theoretical and epistemological viewpoints as well as methodological and historiographic aspects. in other words, even if the historiography of science is a sub-discipline of the history of science, by means of its theoretical and methodological analysis, it determines its own research object. naturally, the historiography of science is nourished by the contributions of many disciplines that deal transversely with sciences, such as history, philosophy, sociology, etc., as well as other scientific disciplines such as physics, medicine, biology, etc. thus, we can find in different fields of knowledge authors such as koyré (philosophy), kuhn (physics), fleck (medicine), merton (sociology), butterfield (history), for example, who took sciences as an object of study from the point of view of their fields – scientific, historical, philosophical, sociological, etc. – but brought original contributions to the historiography of science. 1 mauro l. condé is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais. address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. email: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 marlon salomon is a professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. email: marlonsalomon@ufg.br the historiography of science as a specific field of research mauro l. condé – marlon salomon 2 therefore, although the focus of these authors was not initially to produce historiographic models, starting from their fields to make an approach to sciences, they ended up teaching us “how” we could realize transversal approaches of the sciences. this means that they went far beyond their initial expectations by building historiographic models that applied theoretically and methodologically in building the history of many other scientific disciplines. in fact, rather than elucidating the history of a particular science, the most innovative contributions of these authors were theoretical and methodological, and they belong in some way much more to the historiography of science than to their fields of origin. affirming this line of approach, transversal: international journal for the historiography of science seeks to deepen the historiographic studies of science by circumscribing and legitimizing its field of action as a specific knowledge, albeit as a sub-discipline of the history of science. in fact, in receiving contributions from the various disciplines that adopted science as an object, historiography reworked these influences and contributions in a specific locus of theoretical and methodological reflection. reciprocally, this reflection made by the historiography of science is an important tool for all disciplines that approach science transversely. in this sense, seeking to maintain this space of critical reflection on the historiography of science is certain to participate in an improvement of the history of science and of the other disciplines that take science as an object of analysis, such as the sociology of science, philosophy of science, scientific education, anthropology of science, scientific journalism, etc. following this guidance, in this issue, we present the georges canguilhem dossier. focusing on medicine, biology, history, and philosophy, canguilhem’s work is a true example of what we have aforementioned, inasmuch as, rather than addressing the history of life sciences, canguilhem teaches us a peculiar way of approaching such disciplines by performing, thus, a theoretical and methodological work. in short, a historiographic work of great value. last but not least, we must express our great thanks to professor fábio ferreira de almeida for organizing the dossier we are presenting. without the expertise, competence and zeal of professor ferreira de almeida, this dossier would not have existed. 1 for the history of the historiography of sciences transversal: international journal for the historiography of science is pleased to announce its first issue. thanks to the efforts of a group of collaborators from many countries, a project conceived, discussed and matured over a long period of time, now becomes a reality with the publication of this first issue. so it is very important to remark that this project has had the support and participation of scholars from more than 15 different nationalities. specifically for this first issue more than 70 researchers, among authors, editors and referees, from different parts of the world were mobilized. we would like to express our deepest appreciation for the support received, but above all for their believing in this project. without such cooperation and support this project would not be possible. this journal intends not to be just another journal. transversal does not fit in and does not add up to the incredibly large set of new journals that have emerged in recent years as a result of the technical facilities and low costs offered by online versions of academic journals. instead of this, for a long time, we discussed the editorial difficulties encountered by the area and the lack of an academic journal dedicated specifically to this subject. before any technical facility, what moves us is the need to express this area of research. thus, the main aim of transversal is precisely to aggregate an international community around dialogue, analysis and criticism of the historiography of science. for, we believe, the expression “historiography of science” in the title of this journal relates to an evidence that we should address historically and critically, that is, the evidence that the writing of the history of science has in itself a history. one can see this historicity of the writing of the history of science from condorcet to current social studies of sciences; from auguste comte to thomas kuhn; from paul tannery to i. bernard cohen; from pierre duhem, georges sarton and aldo mieli to the historical french epistemology of gaston bachelard, georges canguilhem and alexandre koyré; from léon brunschvich and émile meyerson to the strong program of the school of edinburgh; from ludwik fleck to michel serres; from edgar zilsel and marshall clagett to paolo rossi and joseph agassi; from richard westfall to pietro redondi; from a. rupert hall to steven shapin; from hélène metzger-bruhl to alistair crombie; from marie boas hall to simon schaffer; from michel foucault to françois delaporte; and within all of these individual and collective trajectories and paths is the historicity of an area of reflection on science which is drawn and founded on the field of history. but it is not a question of valuing here exclusively “authors” and “works”. the “places” of production of knowledge is undoubtedly fundamental to reconstitute not only the supporting materials used to structure this field, but also for the formations (institutional, sociological, intellectual and theoretical) to which their actors were subjected. in the same way, the privileged vectors of its diffusion are fundamental, in particular the journals that help to structure, promote and create, little by little, the awareness and identity of a disciplinary field. also the associations, societies and meetings (national and international) responsible for organizing researchers from different backgrounds around common patterns and problems, thus building a sense of intellectual community. finally, it would be necessary not to isolate the writing of the history of the sciences from the work carried out in other historiographies: art, technics and technology, society, culture, economy, etc. we understand that it is in the limits of these issues that we could define a historiography of the sciences. now, this description necessarily leads us to define the historiography of the sciences as an essentially transdisciplinary field. although historiography of science is a sub-discipline of history, we construe this subject broadly to include analysis of the historiography of science produced by the history of science, philosophy of science and related disciplines. by focusing its analysis on the different historical, social and epistemological implications of science, historiography of science is a transversal knowledge with respect to the production of science, hence the name of this journal. in order to accomplish its purpose, transversal discusses historical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects of the 2 different themes, works and authors present in this tradition, quoted previously, as well as the new approaches in the recent historiography of science. last but not least, we chose to start this journey with a special issue dedicated to ludwik fleck’s work, an author that in different perspectives synthetizes the aims of this journal. to understand the whole of the scientific activities involving theories, experiments, laboratories as well as its social, historical and philosophical implications, fleck used the expression “science of the sciences” (fleck, 1986 [1946], 127). in a sense, the historiography of science as conceived here also has a similar target searching to reflect the science as a whole by means of the critical analysis of its historical, social and scientific aspects as well as its epistemological foundations. this special dossier ludwik fleck would not exist without the hard work of the organizers – as well as the support of their institutions – paweł jarnicki (project science foundation, poland) and sandra lang (ludwik fleck zentrum, switzerland). we would like to thank both of them. in special, paweł jarnicki for his leadership in this process. editors-in-chief on behalf of the editorial board, mauro l. condé – ufmg marlon salomon – ufg reference fleck, ludwik. “problems of the science of science”. [1946] in. cohen, robert; schnelle, thomas (eds.). cognition and fact: materials on ludwik fleck. dordrecht: reidel publish company, 1986. 125 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 125-127 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article book review technology, objects and ideology in the francoist spain camprubí, lino, engineers and the making of the francoist regime, the mit press, 2014. 312 pp., isbn: 9780262027175. reviewed by: íñigo ongay de felipe1 received: 24 august 2016. reviewed: 20 october 2016. accepted: 10 november 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ both as a (cutting edge) piece of scholarly work in the arena of the history of technology and as a (very refreshing) contribution to the much debated history of spain during the years of the francoist regime, lino camprubi´s engineers and the making of the francoist regime makes a not so usual read within either academic milieu. indeed: a relatively good wealth of research has been devoted lately to the development of science and technology within the context of the various undemocratic political regimes of the 20th century, thus challenging the over-simplistic idea that science (or even a well-orientated science as philip kitcher would have it) keeps a privileged relationship to democracy. that this needn’t always be the case is something that a good deal of research work has made evident over the last two decades. ranging from the pioneering narrative by mark walker on nuclear energy research in national-socialist germany during wwii to the many/multitude of contributions about the “fascistization of science and technology” put forth by tiago saraiva, an increasingly respectable amount of scholars have located the focus on the avenues through which real science (perhaps sadly: one no so well orientated as kitcher would hope for) interacts with the social and political contexts in which real scientists do, in fact, operate. however, while the cases of germany (mark walker, monika renneberg) and italy (michele benzi, jean-guy prévost) have been explored in good length, other scenarios had hitherto received less systematic attention for many reasons. still, some case-studies are presently being pursued in relation to a number of authoritarian or semi-fascists regimes. this includes, among a variety of others, the following milieus: the military regimes of argentina (diana maffia and miguel jacovkis), antónio de oliveira salazar´s portugal over the “estado novo” decades (r. cleminson, maria de fatima nunes, a simões among others) or even vichy france, hungary or romania between the decades of 1930s and 1940s. in that respect nonetheless, the role of science and technology in the political, economical and social fabric of the francoist spain remains a relatively unexplored territory so far. it is possibly not one of the minor merits of lino camprubi´s book the fact that the case studies its chapters encompass do cast light on a much neglected historiographical context. and it does so with very valuable erudition and solid historical detail. 1íñigo ongay de felipe is a professor at the facultad de filosofía de león. león guanajuato. méxico. e-mail: iongay@fgbueno.es íñigo ongay de felipe – book review 126 126 perhaps the best way to capture what is new to the manifold signification of the book would be to interpret camprubi´s analysis as lying in the intersection of two historiographical planes which, notwithstanding their multiple points of intersection, need to be kept conceptually separate with meticulosity. namely: the political and economical history on the one had and the history of devices which has been in the center of the attention of much recent research in the studies of science and technology on the other. if i am not mistaken, one of the most relevant conclusions of the book (and one, no doubt, that may prove striking for so many) is that even though both planes are distinct in nature, they are also to be thought together in any particular social and historical context. this is not to quarrel with the established divisions of the academic work or to jeopardize anybody´s pet compartmentalization in that respect, yet it is good to bear in mind that in very much the same way as there cannot possibly be a history without technologies, there cannot exist objects lacking a history either. to a large measure, it is to flesh out such twofold thesis statement that lino camprubí surveys in great detail the role of the engineers in the development of the francoist regime. in so doing, the book demonstrates aplenty not just that technicians acted as politically directed agents fueling the construction of a totalitarian state (a statement which, albeit trivial, is in any case true, also) but that both they and the objects they designed contributed to shape the very landscape of the territory of the regime in question in ways that far surpassed the purported totalitarian nature of its political fabric. this obviously does not diminish the political content of their work but on the contrary shows how engineers in conjunction with other groups of interest gave rise actively to that political content by means of the particular artifacts they were conducted to craft. the book consists of a number of independent case studies which can be read in isolation. the range of topics examined includes an ample array of issues from the establishment of the instituto eduardo torroja de ciencias de la construcción in the immediate postwar period (chapter 2) to the application of design standards to the production of prestressed steel and concrete in the 1950s which according to camprubi´s cogent argument went hand in hand with the political transformation of the francoist regime into what the author describes as a regulatory state, much along the same lines with many other european countries of the day (chapter 6). in addition, the book also explores how research in genetics and agronomy shaped rice production in the first years upon the end of the war (chapter 4) and the way in which large-scale projects for landscape design were actually made to interact with the national catholic views on such notions like “redemption” or “autarky” to redefine the geography of spain. finally, a worth reading introduction is added that in conjunction with the conclusion provides the background against which the aforementioned analysis of particular episodes and technologies are to be understood. there is more to the book than just this however. it is good to note that while each of the chapters makes perfect analytic sense individually for they all provide very valuable in depth reconstructions of various sides of the francoist regime in its relation to science production and technology design, there is also a big picture to be found here. the moral behind the story(ies) is one that helps connect every individual case study to indicate not just that artifacts have their own politics, to put it in the words of landgon winner, but how political notions are made concrete (in the dual sense of this term: both as a noun and as an adjective) by physical artifacts given rise by science and technology production. this much may sound as a drop of historical materialism in the most over-simplistic fashion conceivable (or even worse: a pinch of technological determinism) and there might surely be those wondering skeptically if to dismiss the role of political ideas in the analysis of political history treating them as epiphenomenal superstructures makes an adequate hermeneutical strategy. perhaps the best answer to such concerns would be to sustain that even though they are undoubtedly right in ascertaining the perils of a reductive approach to political and economical history, there is however no need to worry on this occasion. not that camprubí´s purview ignores reinhart koselleck´s approach to the history of concepts (geschichtliche grundbegriffe), yet what his account shows effectively is that while concepts need to be embodied by objects or other sorts of concrete categories if they are to shape the world around in an active manner, artifacts can only be appropriately understood in light of the ideas they are designed to convey. whatever the case, it is key to notice that, as much as camprubí demonstrates by examining the variety of historical scenarios his book addresses, abstract ideas (whether of political, theological or theological-political nature) far from acting as passive superstructures directed from outside, do make a sense of the very technologies they verge upon. íñigo ongay de felipe – book review 127 127 likewise, it would be too easy to assume that in such contexts as the postwar spain, engineers were bound to play a purely passive role as technicians dominated by the political power of the state. there is certainly a kernel of truth to this roughly foucaultian assessment at least so long as technology cannot be thought of as developing in a political vacuum. this said however, one would do well to remember that the devil is in the details: engineers and the making of the francoist regime provides solid grounds to conclude that the wealth of historical evidence at hand regarding how spanish engineers acted in their political milieu may be read backwards, too. this is obviously not to say that engineers were politically all-mighty agents (for it is clear that they were not) but in spite of all the limitations their actions had to meet over time, one of the most recurrent conclusion of camprubi´s lucid narrative entails that they did implement plans of their own, even if those plans were often carried out in conjunction with other competing groups from within the regime. there is yet another lesson to be learnt from the book which pertains to the history of spain during the francoist years. something that incidentally should also be taken into account when discussing totalitarianism in general: just because both some of the proponents of the regime inside and many of its enemies outside (and for that matter, inside, too) used the term “totalitarian” to describe francoist spain, that hardly makes such category an analytically accurate one when it comes to explore the historical reality of the state in question. granted that francoism scarcely qualifies as a pluralistic political society the way we understand that term nowadays, yet, undemocratic as the regime was (though not from inside its proponents’ mindset), the power was as plural as the number of the interest groups competing to direct the design of the nation. very much the same applies also to a plurality of ideological notions ranging from “autarky” to “traditionalism” or “corporatism”. they may well have defined the manner the regime framed itself in. what is more: the fact that they did so suggests that such self-representations are way too productive politically to be diminished as “superstructures”. but none of this should be reason to mistake what the agents acting in any social situation believe they are doing for the historical reality of what they actually do. lino camprubí´s book shows with a precision that should not go unnoticed why this is so. 163 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 163-165 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem — book review bordoni, stefano. when historiography met epistemology: sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in french-speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. – leiden; boston: brill, 2017. – x, 335 p. – (history of modern science; 2). €149,00 isbn: 9789004315228 reviewed by: jean-françois stoffel1 received: 10 april 2017. accepted: 03 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.16 ____________________________________________________________________________ dedicated to a book which has long been considered a classic, and which, from the traité de l’enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire (1861) by a.-a. cournot to l’évolution des théories physiques du xviie siècle jusqu’à nos jours (1896) by p. duhem, takes us on a tour of 35 years of intellectual history, this review offers three objectives. firstly, to present the author’s broader arguments. secondly, considering that, on the one hand, its contents are not immediately apparent (at least not from its table of contents) and that, on the other hand, the method used consists in providing (while remaining as faithful to the text as possible) a critical interpretation and commentary on the selected publications, to provide a brief introduction to the authors and the themes addressed. lastly, owing to its publication within a dossier specifically dedicated to p. duhem, to further explore the main arguments and ideas, which occupy nearly a third of the work, centered around this illustrious scholar. french historical epistemology can be defined as the conviction whereby a genuine and authentic historical perspective is seen as essential in order to establish a constructive dialogue between science and philosophy, and in order to construct an epistemology which better conforms to the reality of scientific approach. according to the traditional view adopted chiefly by a. brenner and c. chimisso, it originated, depending upon the chosen emphasis, either during the last decade of the 19th century with the works of h. poincaré, p. duhem and g. milhaud (a. brenner), or during the 1930s and 1940s with g. bachelard as the key figure in this case (c. chimisso). without disputing the importance of the discussions conducted at the end of the 19th century, the point of this book consists in correcting the chronology that we just mentioned: this historicization of the epistemology or, to put it differently, this onset of a mutual engagement, both profound and sophisticated, between historiography and epistemology occurred during the 1860s, thus in the second half of the 19th century and not, as is commonly stated, at the extreme end of the 19th century, and certainly not during the first half of the 20th century. consequently, it becomes instantly evident that h. poincaré and p. duhem, rather than constituting the starting point (a. brenner) or even representing part of its ancestry (c. chimisso), should be seen as a destination point (albeit provisional), which is particularly true for duhem in as much as 1 jean-françois stoffel is a professor at the haute école louvain-en-hainaut. address: département paramédical du campus de montignies, 136 rue trieu kaisin, 6061 montignies-sur-sambre, belgium. email: jfstoffel@skynet.be jean-françois stoffel – dossier pierre duhem – book review 164 he personifies the fulfillment and consolidation of a project which had hitherto been conducted by a.-a. cournot, cl. bernard and e. naville. however, this is not to suggest that the sole interest of this work is to postpone the starting point, by a couple of decades, of this intellectual movement, which, by promoting the belief that science is a complex historical and philosophical process instead of considering it as simply ruled by logic and/or experience, resulted in the progressive substitution of a more sophisticated history of science and a more critical epistemology of the scientific approach, for naïve historical reconstructions and simplistic, dogmatic epistemological concepts. indeed, beyond the mere question of chronology, it involves, on the one hand, recognizing the qualities of a tradition (inspired by pascal) designed to find the right balance between a naïve and dogmatic ‘scientism’ and an ineffective scepticism and, on the other hand, promoting the idea that — in opposition to the normative and simplistic epistemologies that we have grown used to — the revival of such an aspiration is not only desirable but still possible. let’s discuss each of these two assertions. regarding the first (reviving pascalian inspiration), in this work one might find the prominence of pascal’s personage surprising, especially in contrast to the influence that i. benrubi intended to attribute to kant. aside from the arguments traditionally put forward to account for this pascalian presence — the discovery of the original manuscripts of pensées and the effectiveness of his ideas in counteracting the prevailing scientism — the author introduces the idea that, during the last few decades of the 19th century, the debate about determinism and reductionism took place within a context (modern science being of sufficient maturity) which allowed for this illustrious 17th century thinker’s voice to be heard, but within in situation where such subversive ideas could only remain inaudible. as to the second (the resurgence of this inclination towards a refined and well-balanced stance), this is enabled by the author himself. his conviction that the history of scientific thinking is not only characterized by a progressive accumulation of knowledge and by the occurrence of scientific revolutions, but also by a third component: the “buried memories”, namely, the historical process by which isolated research projects, or even broad intellectual traditions, entirely disappear from prevailing considerations despite their heuristic fecundity, only to reappear at a future time in a slightly different form and within a new historical context. recognizing that this submersion is precisely what had happened to the sophisticated thinkers he studied, st. bordoni suggests that their intellectual trends had nonetheless been revived by such diverse figures as a. koyré, n. r. hanson and th. kuhn. through this philosophy of history, which we would readily describe as typically duhemian due to its mixture of optimism and unpredictability, the author suggests that studying intellectual life during the second half of the 19th century, is not only about providing a means to better understand that of half of the 20th century, but also about preserving a precious heritage that should not be definitively condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the annals of history. having covered the general theme, let us briefly consider the contents of the book. after a lengthy introduction, aimed at, on the one hand, outlining the broader context of this era marked by a profound transformation of life, being as much material as intellectual, and, on the other hand, presenting the historiographic theme which is to be developed upon throughout the work, the first six chapters are devoted to two fundamental questions which, between the beginning of the 1860s and the middle of the 1890s, animated many scientific discussions among french thinkers largely influenced by scientism. these initially dealt with determinism (considered from the perspective of reconciliation with human free will) and reductionism (conceived as, firstly, legitimately bringing the social sciences back to the model represented by the natural sciences and, secondly, reducing the natural sciences themselves to the archetype represented by classical mechanics). in this book, the reason for such detailed discussions on determinism and reductionism is that they clearly demonstrate the conflict between a naïve scientism and the emergence of newer and more sophisticated historical and philosophical reconstructions. the first three chapters, which are devoted to reductionism, include a substantial section on the refined (yet largely overlooked, since premature) ideas of a.-a. cournot — undoubtedly one of the author’s preferred scholars, along with e. naville and p. duhem — but also include those of cl. bernard, as well as é. boutroux’s radical yet minority antireductionism and, conversely, the reductionism of j. soury whose personal and intellectual evolution seems representative of that of his entire era. determinist discussions are the subject of three consecutive chapters chronicling, as central figures, j. boussinesq with his multidisciplinary, original research program, and the philosopher and theologian e. naville with his flexible and dynamic epistemology. since the emergent intellectual movement was characterized by a new awareness of the historical and philosophical complexity of the scientific process, it is to be expected that this realization would give rise, aside from those jean-françois stoffel – dossier pierre duhem – book review 165 originating in traditional historiography, to further research in the history of science conducted according to a new historiographic framework. chapter 7 is also devoted to the history of science, with three personalities corresponding to three different stages: m. berthelot typifying a radical and naïve historiography of comtean inspiration, which is however somewhat tempered by the collective nature of its endeavour; p. tannery typifying a history of science based on multiple skills and largely devoid of any hagiographic or ideological perspective; and lastly, g. milhaud typifying an attempt to summarize the erudite research of his predecessor, and to combine history and philosophy of science. since duhem personifies, through the original ideas he developed within the context of his firsthand experience in scientific research, the very essence of the sophisticated alliance between science, history and philosophy, this study naturally culminates in two chapters dedicated to him. finally, it is worth noting the existence of an “epilogue”, which, although of somewhat heterogeneous content, is nonetheless invaluable. we would like to conclude this review by focusing more specifically on the role attributed to p. duhem. having previously evoked the fact that duhemian physics issued from the scholars who preceded him (taming complexity: duhem’s third pathway to thermodynamics, 2012), st. bordoni — as foreseen — continues his enquiry by examining those elements of duhem’s scientific philosophy which are ascribable to his numerous philosophic and scientific forefathers. from the onset we notice the emergence of an intriguing and distinct behavioural difference: there is duhem-the-physicist who never hesitated to acknowledge the existence of the relevant scientific tradition from which he drew his inspiration, and then there is duhem-the-philosopher who never explicitly referred to the scholars and philosophers who, just prior, had entertained similar beliefs and ideas. this difference is all the more astonishing since the appearance of the scientific tradition, from which it is inspired, and that of the philosophical tradition, from which it could have been inspired, are contemporary. among the various causes which could account for this difference, st. bordoni points to the fact that duhem relied primarily on the dual influence of aristotle and pascal, far more than on that of his immediate predecessors. in order to summarize this dual influence — and most certainly worth a direct quotation here — the author formulates the following magnificent explanation: “duhem found in aristotle the awareness of the complexity of natural processes, and he found in pascal the awareness of the complexity of scientific practice” (p. 241). lastly we would like draw the readers’ attention to the ideas advanced with respect to natural classification (a particularly fragile concept), and to a certain duhemian deviation (jeopardizing his sophisticated philosophy of science by succumbing to the appeal of a more comfortable finalism). by positioning itself chiefly in relation to the historiographic theories advanced by i. benrubi, a. brenner et j. renn, by distrusting the legislators of scientific practice, and by urging us not to idealize the adjectives ‘naive’ and ‘sophisticated’, which it fortunately coined itself, this book constitutes, on the whole, a veritable and most welcome plea in favour of recognizing the complexity of the natural world, as well as the no less important historical and philosophical complexity of the scientific approach which is called to investigate it! 116 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 116-119 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2016 — this is an open access article interview: joseph agassi1 joseph agassi is an israeli scholar born in jerusalem on may 7, 1927. he has many books and articles published contributing to the fields of logic, scientific method, foundations of sciences, epistemology and, most importantly for this journal, in the historiography of science. he studied with karl popper, who was definitely his biggest influence. he taught around the world in different universities. he currently lives in herzliya, israel. for his important contribution to the historiography of science, we chose to open the first issue of this journal with this interview recognizing his importance for the field, as well as paying our homage to him.2 prof. joseph agassi at lille (france) in july 2015 interviewed by mauro l. condé3, raffaele pisano4 and michael segre5 in september 2016. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ mauro condé (m.c.), raffaele pisano (r.p.) e michael segre (m.s): transversal: international journal for the historiography of science promotes scholarly research in the historiography of science and chronicles its history and criticism. you were one of the first scholars to give a systematic attention for the historiography of science. many years after your classic towards an historiography of science of 1963: where is the current historiography of science heading towards? joseph agassi: there are healthy interests in the positive role of criticism in the history of mathematics (beginning with the studies of john oulton wisdom and of imre lakatos), and of science (beginning with koyré and cohen). there is also a healthy interest in external and internal histories and their interrelations, and also in the mutual influences of personal and intellectual traits of researchers (as in my faraday as a natural philosopher). there is an increasing interest in the 1 joseph agassi is a professor at tel-aviv university (and york university, toronto, canada). his address is 37, levi eshkol street, herzlia 46745, israel. his e-mail is agass@post.tau.ac.il 2for a general approach of agassi's ideas and interpretations on science, philosophy, and society, see: (agassi, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2017), (segre, 2004). http://www.tau.ac.il/~agass/pub.html 3 mauro l. condé is a professor at the federal university of minas gerais. av. antônio carlos, 6627, belo horizonte, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br 4 raffaele pisano is a professor at the lille 3 university, théodile-cirel centre ea 4354, building b, 3rd floor, office 221. france. e-mail: raffaele.pisano@univ-lille3.fr 5 michael segre is a professor at the gabriele d’annunzio university, 66100 chieti scalo (ch), italy. e-mail: segre@unich.it interview: joseph agassi 117 accord and discord of researchers’ views about science and their research activities. science is a part of the general culture and it should be presented this way. the canons of social and of political history should help writing better histories of science. finally, it is time to get freed of the exaggerated view of the impact of the manhattan project on science in general―as viewed by derek price and thomas kuhn. m.c., r.p., m.s.: you have a long and successful career, could you tell us a little bit about the most important moments in your trajectory? joseph agassi: my first meeting with popper was a great joy. (see my a philosopher’s apprentice: in karl popper’s workshop.) the early publication of my view of institutional individualism achieved great success. my works on it are till cited. the publication of my historiography of science put me in position that surprised me. almost all of my publications were well received even though not well sold. (the only exception are the successful sales of the japanese translation of my the continuing revolution: a history of physics from the greeks to einstein and the almost total oversight of my papers on economics, which i am proud of nonetheless: i am the first to have offered a comprehensive proof of the quantity equation of money or better quantity theory of money.) i am proud of my improvement of the wording of the theory of the social contract and thus of liberalism, as well as of my advocacy of liberal nationalism, which is a defence of the modern liberal nationstate (liberal nationalism for israel). my only paper in physics, on the kirchhoff-planck radiation law, has still been cited in the research literature after half-a-century! m.c., r.p., m.s.: you are one of the most important former students of karl popper. how important was popper's philosophy for your work? how important is the philosophy of karl popper for nowadays? joseph agassi: meeting with popper was the best thing that could have happened to me. my studies were all done under his shadow; my contributions were streamlining his philosophy. (this is what both berkeley and hume said about locke.) einstein, russell, popper and polanyi are the philosophers of the future. the next generation will be that of wisdom, gellner, jarvie, miller, and hacohen, all of whom advocated democracy popper-style. m.c., r.p., m.s.: can you summarize in a few words your contribution to philosophy? joseph agassi: i do not know if i have one. i criticized popper’s view that science is unanimous and asserted that there are schools of thought that propose that metaphysical ideas had scientific research programs that rest on them, as einstein saw it and as gerald holton suggested. classical epistemology required a choice between the a priori and the a posteriori options but not both, as they would lead to clashes; popper’s view welcomes such clashes as they may lead to crucial experiments. i added that corroborations popper-style are legally required, not scientifically required, even though the value of a theory is enhanced by corroboration as it becomes a greater unifier and makes the search for an alternative more difficult. m.c., r.p., m.s.: what are the main open philosophical questions today? joseph agassi: what exactly is the approximation to the truth that einstein, russell and popper postulated? are there competing series of approximations? m.c., r.p., m.s.: and what about science and technology? what are the main open philosophical questions concerning science and technology, today? joseph agassi: how does a new theory increase technological options? we have many examples but no theory for it. will such a theory improve technology? how? what are the best democratic controls of the side-effects of technology? interview: joseph agassi 118 m.c., r.p., m.s.: with respect to the past and the current century, did your key of investigation in history and philosophy of science change? joseph agassi: decidedly. the revolution in physics got most philosophers who study science on the problem of induction.6 their contribution is nil. the future will comprise critical examinations of popper’s solution to this problem. m.c., r.p., m.s.: generally speaking, the exact sciences (precisely physics and mathematics) have been organized and well known, have been located in strongly competing historico-philosophical research programs, for example those of mach, koyré, kuhn, popper-lakatos, and yours. these have all stressed the importance of the use of historical/epistemological/logical categories for inquiry about, and interpretation of, the history and philosophy of the exact sciences. a question arises: what does the history of these attempts, and the history and philosophy of the wider historiography of the sciences, suggest about overcoming the clash of these programs and the merely piecemeal accretion of individual studies of the exact sciences? joseph agassi: the most important contribution of historians of science was to purge the view that mistakes are to be ignored. inductivist historians cannot say that copernicus considered the sun the center of the world system; they ascribed to him the view that the sun is the center of the solar system, which system could not appear before bruno. they also cannot say that the center of newton’s solar system is not the center of the sun. taking seriously the idea of science as series of approximations to the truth, renders all this obvious. when i wrote my historiography, i deemed it trivial and was surprised by its success. it amuses me that historians of science who acknowledge the value of philosophy for their research call me “kuhn”. m.c., r.p., m.s.: since classical antiquity, the relationship between science and religion has been a subject of study, mainly addressed by philosophers, epistemologists, theologians and scientists. the understanding of this relationship has depended on different factors, such as cultures, historical epochs and geographical localities, and it is also motivated by different ideas (reason, empiricism, evidence, and revelation, faith, purity, etc.). do you think that history of science had been/could be (universally) of help in this debate, and without producing contrast among personal beliefs? therefore, is really philosophy an adequate language between sciences and religions, and reasons and faiths? joseph agassi: fallibilism renders conflicts between science and faith quite unnecessary. traditional judaism precludes such a conflict, and traditional―pre-trento or prebellarmine―catholicism held a similar position. this was the view of galileo, and it is now official. finally, historians of science should attend very critically to the marvellous but vague theory of the siblinghood of humanity and the humane but questionable claim that faith in it is the foundation of science. m.c., r.p., m.s.: thank you very much! references agassi, joseph “alexandre koyré: his secret charm”. in: pisano r, agassi j, drozdova d. (eds.). hypotheses and perspectives in the history and philosophy of science. homage to alexandre koyré 1964–2014. dordrecht: springer, in press, 2017. 6 inductive process of reasoning (within popper's epistemology and agassi's time) were a manner to proceed to investigate the science in the history of science (especially of physics). for example, where no ad absurdum proof was in a theory, then only deductive theorems (especially for axiomatic science) were considered. interview: joseph agassi 119 agassi, joseph, “the kirchhoff-planck radiation law”. in science, vol. 156, issue 3771. pp 30-37, april 1967. agassi, joseph, a philosopher's apprentice: in karl popper's workshop, series in the philosophy of karl r. popper and critical rationalism, amsterdam and atlanta ga: editions rodopi, 1993. second edition, 2008. agassi, joseph, faraday as a natural philosopher, chicago: chicago university press, 1971. agassi, joseph, liberal nationalism for israel: towards an israeli national identity, jerusalem and new york: gefen. translation from the hebrew book of 1984. agassi, joseph, science and its history. a reassessment of the historiography of science. dordrecht: springer, 2008. agassi, joseph, scienza, metodolgia e societá, edited by michael segre, roma: luiss edizioni, 2000. agassi, joseph, the continuing revolution: a history of physics from the greeks to einstein. new york: mcgraw hill, 1968. agassi, joseph, towards an historiography of science, history and theory, beiheft 2, 1963; facsimile reprint, middletown: wesleyan university press, 1967. agassi, joseph, la filosofia e l’individuo – come un filosofo della scienza vede la vita, roma: di renzo editore, 2005 segre, michael. accademia e società, conversazioni con joseph agassi, cosenza: rubbettino editore, 2004. 157 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 157-159 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article book review pierre duhem: between physics and metaphysics víctor manuel hernandez márquez (ed.) pierre duhem: entre física y metafísica. universidad autónoma de ciudad juárez and anthropos press, 2016. 208 p. 14 € isbn 978-84-16421-36-7 reviewed by: dámian islas mondragon1 received: 24 march 2017. accepted: 12 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.14 _____________________________________________________________________________ this book is structured by seven chapters written by six researchers from three different universities: fábio rodrigo leite y joão cortese from the universidade de são paulo, brazil; ambrosio velasco gómez from de universidad nacional autónoma de méxico and víctor manuel hernández márquez (coordinator), roberto estrada olguín and roberto sánchez benítez from the universidad autónoma de ciudad juárez, mexico. each of the authors develops their own analytical perspectives around the work of pierre duhem (1861-1916). ambrosio velasco seeks to show that the contemporary philosophy of science began from a fundamental criticism of the modern conception of scientific rationality proposed by descartes (in his rationalist version) and by newton (in his empiricist turn). velasco contends that duhem's contribution to this discussion is to have undermined several myths and dogmas, among them, the cartesian idea that the rationality of knowledge is based exclusively on strict adherence to certain methodological rules and the newtonian thought that observation, induction and experimentation are the fundamental procedures of the scientific method. although several authors discussed the relevance of the method of composition or synthesis developed by newton, as j. f. herschel and w. whewell did it at the beginning of the 19th century, velasco argues that the strong empiricist commitment of newtonian methodology was never questioned on its "foundational basis". indeed, in his classic work la théorie physique. son objet, sa structure (1906), duhem pointed out the inconsistencies of the methodology proposed by newton in relation to the inductive generation of scientific hypotheses and the limitations of empirical testing methods. at the end of his chapter, velasco analyzes the influence of duhem on some contemporary philosophers of science, including otto neurath, karl. r. popper, thomas s. kuhn, larry laudan and imre lakatos. 1 dámian islas mondragon is a professor at the universidad juárez del estado de durango, méxico. address: boulevard del guadiana no. 501, ciudad universitaria, c.p. 34120, durango, méxico. email damianislas@ujed.mx. orcid: 0000-0001-8538-6835 dámian islas mondragon – book review 158 according to velasco, popper's logic of scientific discovery (1935) is a response to the problem of the empirical sub-determination of theories formulated by duhem. popper response to this problem is twofold, (i) that scientific evidence is theoretically dependent and (ii) that scientific evidence is ambiguous. indeed, popper defended point (i) without recognizing duhem's influence on the matter; while point (ii) was not explicitly addressed by popper but only indirectly in recommending not to "save" the hypothesis in the face of a major refutations. however, popper's recommendation has to do with certain adjustments – drastic or not (quine, 1951, 43) – within the theoretical system in order to maintain some theoretical statements. it seems to me that duhem's argumentation on the matter is more modest by merely suggesting that when there is any conflict with experience, what is refuted is necessarily ambiguous. in relation to duhem's influence on thinkers such as kuhn, lakatos and laudan, velasco contends that the main idea that these philosophers inherited from duhem is that "philosophical interpretations of science must be based on the analysis of the history of science" (2016, 39). however, velasco ends by arguing that, with the exception of kuhn, lakatos and laudan resorted to the formulation of methodological meta-rules to ensure not only the rationality of isolated scientific theories; but also the rationality of the research traditions that constitute the very history of science. in other words, both authors ended up “sublimating” the rationality they criticized in order to submit history to its own methodological meta-rules. in his work, joão cortese seeks to show the common elements between blaise pascal and duhem. according to cortese, one of the resources that scientists resort to is the use of analogy, which is perceived through the "spirit of fineness". however, cortese argues that duhem goes too far in his distinction between the spirit of fineness – which duhem associates with the heart and the immediate intuition – and the spirit of geometry – tied it to reason and deduction. pascal, from whom duhem inherits these two concepts, certainly does not conceive this distinction in this way. in particular, the spirit of geometry is not specifically related to principles and deductions. as is well known, duhem's conceptual separation between physics and metaphysics (origin of the title of this book) is not a positivist distinction between what makes sense and what does not. in fact, it is a distinction between two legitimate types of scientific knowledge, that is, if physics deals with the description of experimental laws, the task of metaphysics is to show the reason for those laws, says cortese (2016, 48). and this is how the analogies allow us to understand that scientific development is a progressive transit towards the attainment of a natural classification. thanks to the spirit of fineness, scientists can "realize" the analogies and the tendency towards the natural classification that science follows; even though, cortese argues, scientists are not able to logically explain how this could happen (2016, 65). in his work, víctor hernandez delves into the role that the concept of 'analogy' has in duhem's work in relation to intuition and deductive reasoning. hernandez contends that duhem uses the analogy to solve the tension between physics and metaphysics, without drop up the idea that physical theory is autonomous of any metaphysical system. hernández argues that there are two basic meanings of the concept of 'analogy', the first as a heuristic resource in the construction of theories and as a bridge between theoretical physics and experimental physics. the second, as a cosmological (or metaphysical) tendency of science that seeks the final explanation of things. according to hernandez, physics is confined to a set of mathematical claims deduced from a small number of principles that seek simple, complete, and exact representations of experimental laws. however, when logic is insufficient to elaborate this mathematical representation, scientists draw analogies (2016, 81). in these heuristic stages of science, when there are no clear methodological rules, analogy constitutes, according to duhem, a "sure and fruitful method." finally, hernandez points out that the contingent use of analogy in duhem is different from that of ernst mach, for whom analogy occupies a "more prominent place in science" (2016, 84). the most provocative intervention is that of fábio rodrigo leite who argues that the logical analysis of scientific theories shows that it is not possible to obtain any kind of definitive or true knowledge due, among other reasons, to the fact that truth is not guaranteed a posteriori by the physical phenomena nor a priori by the claim of the universality of scientific statements. according to leite, the value of science for duhem is merely practical, that is, science has no relation to the "ultimate causes" that metaphysics studies. so, metaphysics functions as a regulatory idea that allows the "convergence" of science, avoiding relativism. leite proposes a duhemian taxonomy that distinguishes, on the one hand, between metaphysics and cosmology and, on the other hand, between experimental and theoretical physics. in his essay "physique et métaphysique" of 1893, duhem accepted the model based on the notion of efficient causality dámian islas mondragon – book review 159 which allows the transit between physics and metaphysics. however, later, in his 1905 essay "physique de croyant", duhem gave up the possibility of a causal transition from one to the other, replacing it with the notion of 'analogy'. besides, the religious theme that duhem left aside in 1893 is included, along with the theme of 'faith', in 1905. experimental physics studies three phases, namely, the fact finding, the discovery of its laws and the construction of theories. by other side, there are three degrees of our knowledge of the world, namely, the first degree refers to isolated and even confused facts collected by experience. the second degree is constituted by the knowledge of the purely experimental laws obtained by induction. according to leite, what we may call the "first" duhem certainly wavers about the certainty we can get from the general laws obtained by induction (2016, 92-93); while the "second" duhem confers an absolute degree of certainty to induction. the third degree is obtained through theoretical hypotheses whose terms lack any kind of reference. leite’s idea is that, although the theoretical laws depend on the laws of common sense, they are not determined by the latter, given that, in this epistemic stage, scientists "are free to choose – in the way that best suits them – their favorite representations" (2016, 96). it is worth noting that raw data from the first stage do not "depend" on theoretical knowledge; but “constitute” it. certainly, the interpretation developed by leite is close to the notion of 'hard core' of the scientific research programs developed by imre lakatos. in leite's words: "maintaining induction at the level of the laws of common sense allows duhem to establish an immovable basis upon which all empirical knowledge can be erected" (2016, 97). in order to gain access to the essential knowledge of inanimate matter, duhem argues that we must begin with the study of effects (of which physics is responsible) and its causes (of which metaphysics is responsible). so, the study of physics precedes the study of cosmology and thus, physics can dispense with metaphysics and be founded autonomously. note that this cause-effect thesis creates some tension with the duhemian notion that metaphysics functions as a regulatory idea that allows the "convergence" of science and avoids relativism. that is, as a regulatory idea, physics cannot "do without" metaphysics, especially thinking, as leite shows us, that physics and metaphysics have a common point in experimental data. for this tension to fade, we have to take into account the evolution of duhem's thought that transits from these thomist terms of cause’ and ‘effect’, towards a more constructive version that emphasizes the dialogue thesis. the last part of the book consists of three historical studies. roberto estrada makes a historical inquiry about the origin and nature of the notion of "saving the phenomena" in science. as is well known, the problem is that different hypotheses may be equally suitable to represent the same phenomenon. estrada argues that it is not at all clear when exactly this concept was formulated for the first time. the only certainty is that it began to be used at the beginning of the christian era. in his work, roberto sánchez also makes a historical inquiry around duhem’s studies on leonardo da vinci. in general, sanchez traces the sources from which leonardo developed his scientific ideas, as well as the way in which the thought of this genius influenced the development of certain aspects of the science of his time. finally, víctor hernandez outlines the possible relationships between the philosophical positions developed by louis couturat and duhem. hernandez holds that, since an analogy is a type of inductive argument, there are at least two reasons why duhem's demonstration by reductio ad absurdum of the principle of mathematical induction would not have been accepted by couturat. the first reason is that the proof developed by duhem ignores the achievements of the new mathematical logic of his time. the second is that such proof must show that the principle of induction is analytic in the sense that it accomplishes with purely logical concepts and axioms. indeed, duhem's emphasis on logic within physical theory brings him closer to english contemporary logicians, says hernandez (2016, 190), forcing us to reexamine the nature of his supposedly “conventionalist” stance based in the duhemian hypertrophy around the spirit of fineness to the detriment of the spirit of geometry. in general, the book offers a clear line of research that serves as the guiding thread along the seven chapters, expressed accurately in book’s title: pierre duhem: between physics and metaphysics. although each one of the texts approaches the subject from a different angle, it is possible to appreciate certain dialogue between the authors. the depth and conceptual clarity with which each author develops his arguments, shows us that each one of the texts is well documented. the book exhibits an expository cadence that is the result of the thematic coherence demanded in a text written for specialists in the subject. 108 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 108-111 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem was duhem justified in not distinguishing between physical and chemical atomism? paul needham1 abstract: chemists in the late nineteenth century were apt to distinguish the theory of chemical structure they advocated as chemical, as opposed to physical, atomism. the failure on duhem’s part to consider any such distinction in his critique of atomism might be taken to be a lacuna in his argument. far from being a weakness in his stance, however, i argue that he had good systematic reasons for not taking such a distinction seriously. keywords: pierre duhem; atomism; caloric; chemistry; thermodynamics received: 13 december 2016. accepted: 03 march 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.10 _____________________________________________________________________________ in this short note i want to take up an aspect of duhem’s critique of atomism relating to a nineteenth-century distinction between physical and chemical atomism. chemists such as williamson and kekulé who developed molecular theories of the underlying nature of chemical substances in the wake of dalton’s atomic explanation of the laws of constant and multiple proportions thought of their theories of matter as concerned with chemical atomism. this they distinguished from what they called physical atomism, one of the major applications of which was the kinetic theory of gases developed in the same period, possibly because they could see no systematic connection between the two. at all events, chemical atomism was specifically concerned with the problems chemists were interested in—the variety of chemical substances and their interactions. physicists concerned with analysing matter were not interested in distinctions of substance. duhem took no account of this distinction in his critique. is this an omission that weakens his argument? i think duhem had good systematic reasons for not acknowledging a nineteenth-century distinction between physical and chemical atomism that are part and parcel of his overall argument. duhem developed his detailed critique of atomism in chemistry at the turn of the twentieth century. in retrospect this seems to have been a misdirected effort. whether it was undermined by the current state of chemistry at the time is, i think, doubtful. but my interest in the matter is to understand what his arguments were and whether it was reasonable for a man in duhem’s position to propound them. having written extensively on this subject earlier (needham 1996, 2004a, 2004b, 2008), i don’t intend to rehearse all the 1 paul needham is a professor emeritus in the department of philosophy at the university of stockholm. address: se106 91 stockholm, sweden. email: paul.needham@philosophy.su.se paul needham – was duhem justified in not distinguishing between physical and chemical atomism? 109 details here but simply to emphasise a point of fact and pursue one aspect of his view. the point he recognised is that the laws of chemical combination (constant, multiple and reciprocal proportions) are just that—concerned with proportions. as such they don’t entail that matter is discrete; though consistent with atomism (or discrete matter at one or more levels), they are also consistent with a continuous view of matter. duhem’s response was that the reasonable position to adopt was one of neutrality between these two interpretations until decisive reasons favoured the one or eliminated the other. most of the effort in duhem (1892) and (1902) went into elaborating a neutral interpretation of the use of chemical formulas embodying the basic laws, which he established as perfectly possible even though some might think it easier to adopt an atomic interpretation. even if decisive reasons on which to base a choice were not available, it was quite legitimate to examine what was currently on offer and give voice to problems arising. here it is apposite to raise questions about the very coherence of the notion of an atom. doubts on this score have been a feature of the atomic debate since ancient times. they were a live issue in the latter part of the nineteenth century and constituted one line of thought in the general scepticism regarding atomism that was rife in the nineteenth century. a well-known example is the paradox of atomic collision. either direction is changed instantaneously, requiring what is impossible, namely an infinitely large force, or the “atoms” are elastic in virtue of a structure of subatomic parts and hence not atoms after all. another example is the discrepancy between the specific heat ratios of diatomic gases as observed on the basis of thermodynamic reasoning and as calculated on the basis of the kinetic theory. but aren’t these worries about the physical nature of atoms, which chemists could circumvent by focusing on chemical atoms? this strategy might be interpreted to the effect that chemists were thereby avoiding any claim to adopt an atomic theory of chemical substances. the term “chemical atomism” should in that case be understood as being used in what analytic philosophers like nelson goodman called a syncategorematic sense. it is not a certain kind of atomic theory, just as a broken glass is not a certain kind of glass—not something which is both a glass and broken. although the expression is built from two distinct words, they don’t each retain their separate senses in the combined expression. if this is so, and what is meant is simply a theory founded on the laws of proportion, then it is not substantially different from duhem’s account, which is not an atomic theory. i find it very difficult to see how a view or theory can be regarded as an atomic view or theory unless it says something about atoms—ascribes to them properties from which the macroscopic properties of chemical substances can be derived. this brings us to the related line of questioning concerning how the atomic hypothesis could provide any explanation of chemical combination or whatever it is they are postulated to explain. dalton was clear about this. he ventured to explain his law of partial pressures by endowing his atoms with a coating of caloric, so distributed about the atoms of a particular kind that they repulsed other atoms of the same kind but not atoms of different kinds. this raises a number of questions, of course: what distributions of caloric could function in this way? would the repulsive power of caloric allow atoms of the same and different kinds to combine chemically to form polyatomic molecules of elements and compounds, as distinct from a mechanical mixture? what is it that explains the combining power if the caloric explains the repelling power? above all, there is the question of whether trying to explain repulsion or combination by postulating a substance endowed with just these proclivities isn’t directly circular or leads to an infinite regress, as lavoisier realised when speaking of the tendency of air to expand and increase in pressure with temperature by virtue of the elastic property of caloric: it is by no means difficult to perceive that this elasticity depends upon that of caloric, which seems to be the most eminently elastic body in nature. nothing is more readily conceived, than that one body should become elastic by entering into combination with another body possessed of that quality. we must allow that this is only an explanation of elasticity, by an assumption of elasticity, and that we thus only remove the difficulty one step farther, and that the nature of elasticity, and the reason for caloric being elastic, remains still unexplained. (lavoisier 1789, 22) duhem thought that ascribing atoms combining powers in the form of atomicities (valencies) amounted to simply reading properties of elements in compounds apparent at the macroscopic level into atoms, providing, to paraphrase lavoisier, an explanation of the combining power of elements by an assumption of paul needham – was duhem justified in not distinguishing between physical and chemical atomism? 110 the combining power of elements. the atomic theory of the hydrogen molecule proposed by heitler and london is not at all like this, but provides a substantial theory of the quantum nature of hydrogen atoms from which the stability of the hydrogen molecule is derived. what was on offer at the time duhem was writing which went beyond empty ascriptions to atoms of the properties that were to be explained seems to have been restricted to ideas about the shape of microentities or the vortex theories. these may not have incited a great deal of interest on the part of chemists (although jones (1902, 38-9) is an example of a chemist who found some interest in vortex theories) and duhem’s dismissing them without difficulty may have been equally uninteresting to chemists. but it served to make the point that there was nothing on offer beyond tautology that looked like a promising start to an atomic theory of chemical combination. whatever the explanatory merit of a substantial atomic theory, how could it be anything but a physical theory of atoms? to say otherwise is surely to court the occult, bringing to mind the pre-enlightenment division of the universe into suband superlunary regions with modes of explanation peculiar to each. certainly duhem thought it was anathema to modern science to bifurcate phenomena into separate realms with laws appropriate to each. this was the philosophical basis of his opposition to berthelot’s defence of the principle of maximum work, which presupposed that a distinction could be made between physical and chemical processes and the principle restricted to the latter. let us recall duhem’s case. according to thomsen’s law of maximum work, chemical reactions proceed spontaneously only if they are exothermic. although the majority of reactions conform to this principle, evidence of exceptions bringing into question the universal validity of the law was mounting. berthelot proposed to interpret the apparent counter instances as constituted of two processes, a chemical change alone subject to the law of maximum work, and a physical change not restricted by the law. duhem (1886, ii-iii) maintained that the demarcation between chemical and physical phenomena was illegitimate, criticising the distinction on which berthelot’s defence of the law was based as ad hoc. sulphuric acid, for example, combines with ice and this combination produces cold. in order to bring this exception within the rule, the reaction must be divided into two phases: one part being the fusion of ice, a physical phenomenon which absorbs heat, and the other part, the combination of liquid water with sulphuric acid, a chemical phenomenon which releases heat. but it is by a purely mental conception, and not as a representation of reality, that it is possible to thus decompose a phenomenon into several others. moreover, accepting that chemical phenomena obey the law of maximum work while physical changes of state would be free is to suppose that there is between the mechanism of these two orders of phenomena a line of demarcation which the work of henri sainteclaire-deville has removed. (duhem 1886, ii-iii) berthelot’s interpretation supposes that a chemical reaction produces a reduction in internal energy of the reacting material, and thus that a stable state of chemical equilibrium corresponds to the lowest possible value of energy of the system, just as does the stable state of a mechanical system. the failure of berthelot’s rule shows that energy alone cannot serve as the basis of a general criterion of chemical equilibrium. if the analogy with mechanical systems is to be upheld, a generalisation of mechanics is required and something other than energy must be found to play the role analogous to that which the potential plays in mechanics. duhem goes on to show how work in thermodynamics by massieu, horstmann, helmholtz and gibbs had led to a better appreciation of the conditions governing chemical equilibrium. all cases could be accommodated in terms of the general notions of thermodynamic potentials, which take account not only of the energy change, as berthelot in effect did, but also of the entropy change. duhem continued to argue in this spirit for a unified view of science according to which all phenomena are subject to the same general principles rather than constituting different worlds, notably when rejecting the reduction of thermodynamics to mechanics in favour of a vision in which the old mechanics is incorporated into a broader theory (duhem 1892; 1892; 1894). unification, not by reduction to preconceived ideas but by expansion and integration into a general theory without internal contradictions is the way to achieve the goal of what he called a natural classification. to summarise, then, advocacy of a specifically chemical atomism might be seen as a device for avoiding commitment to a discrete view of matter at the microlevel. but the rejection of any substantive distinction between chemical and physical realms was a matter of principle for duhem. the absence of any paul needham – was duhem justified in not distinguishing between physical and chemical atomism? 111 recognition of a distinction between chemical and physical atomism that chemists of the time might have entertained is one of the strengths of his general argument. references duhem, pierre. 1886. le potentiel thermodynamique et ses applications à la mécanique chimique et à l’étude des phénomènes électriques. paris: a. hermann. duhem, pierre. 1892. notation atomique et hypothèses atomistiques. revue des questions scientifiques 31: 391-457. duhem, pierre. 1892. commentaire aux principes de la thermodynamique. première partie: le principe de la conservation de l’énergie. journal de mathématiques pures et appliquées 8: 269-330. duhem, pierre. 1893. commentaire aux principes de la thermodynamique. deuxième partie: le principe de sadi carnot et de r. clausius. journal de mathématiques pures et appliquées 9: 293-359. duhem, pierre. 1894. commentaire aux principes de la thermodynamique. troisième partie: les équations générales de la thermodynamique. journal de mathématiques pures et appliquées 10, 207-285. duhem, pierre. 1902. le mixte et la combinaison chimique: essai sur l’évolution d’une idée. paris: c. naud. jones, harry c. 1902. the elements of physical chemistry. new york: macmillan. lavoisier, antoine. (1965 [1789]). traité élémentaire de chimie. paris: translated by robert kerr (1790) as elements of chemistry. new york: dover reprint. needham, paul. 1996. substitution: duhem’s explication of a chemical paradigm. perspectives on science 4: 408-33. needham, paul. 2004a. has daltonian atomism provided chemistry with any explanations? philosophy of science 71: 1038-47. needham, paul. 2004b. when did atoms begin to do any explanatory work in chemistry? international studies in the philosophy of science 8: 199-219. needham, paul. 2008. resisting chemical atomism: duhem’s argument. philosophy of science 75: 921-31. 3 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 03-06 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem pierre duhem’s philosophy and history of science introduction fábio rodrigo leite1 jean-françois stoffel2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.02 _____________________________________________________________________________ we are pleased to present in this issue a tribute to the thought of pierre duhem, on the occasion of the centenary of his death that occurred in 2016. among articles and book reviews, the dossier contains 14 contributions of scholars from different places across the world, from europe (belgium, greece, italy, portugal and sweden) to the americas (brazil, canada, mexico and the united states). and this is something that attests to the increasing scope of influence exerted by the french physicist, philosopher and historian. it is quite true that since his passing, duhem has been remembered in the writings of many of those who knew him directly. however, with very few exceptions (manville et al. 1927), the comments devoted to him exhibited clear biographical and hagiographic characteristics of a generalist nature (see jordan 1917; picard 1921; mentré 1922a; 1922b; humbert 1932; pierre-duhem 1936; ocagne et al. 1937). from the 1950s onwards, when the studies on his philosophical work resumed, the thought of the professor from bordeaux acquired an irrevocable importance, so that references to la théorie physique: son objet et sa structure became a common place in the literature of the area. as we know, this recovery was a consequence of the prominence attributed, firstly, to the notorious duhem-quine thesis in the englishspeaking world, and secondly to the sparse and biased comments made by popper that generated an avalanche of revaluations of the popperian “instrumentalist interpretation”. the constant references duhem received from philipp frank, translator of l'évolution de la mécanique into german as early as 1912, certainly cannot be disregarded (see duhem 1912 [1903]). as it happened, the reception of duhem’s ideas conditioned the subsequent debate on the prevailing preferences in the english-speaking world, namely, the thesis of underdetermination of theories by data, the merely representative value of theories, the criticism of the inductive method, and, especially, the holism and criticism of the crucial experiment, culminating in the volume edited by sandra harding (1976). the case of duhem shows that the value of original reprints and translations cannot have their impact overlooked. la théorie physique was translated into english by philip p. wiener in 1954, and it was not until 1981 (and therefore exactly 67 years after the previous one) that it received, thanks to the efforts of paul brouzeng, its first reprint, made from the second edition in french (in the following year, brouzeng 1 fábio rodrigo leite is a professor of philosophy at the university of brasília (unb). address: department of philosophy, módulo 24, bloco d, icc-norte, campus universitário darcy ribeiro, asa norte, university of brasília – brasília (df), brazil. po box 70.910-900. email: efferrelle@yahoo.com.br 2 jean-françois stoffel is a professor at the haute école louvain-en-hainaut. address: département paramédical du campus de montignies, 136 rue trieu kaisin, 6061 montignies-sur-sambre, belgium. email: jfstoffel@skynet.be dossier pierre duhem — introduction 4 introduced the facsimile publication of the original edition of σῴζειν τὰ φαινὀµενα: essai sur la notion de théorie physique de platon à galilée). it is difficult to define whether this reprint was the cause or a simple epiphenomenon of a larger and steady growing of interest that would once and for all consolidate the studies on duhem, henceforth concentrated in large publications devoted entirely to him. this point of inflection resulted from researches of an easily identifiable group of interpreters. among the main publications are those by stanley l. jaki (1984, 1991), roberto maiocchi (1985), paul brouzeng (1987), alfredo marcos (1988), anastasios brenner (1990) and russell n. d. martin (1991), in which should be added some special issues of journals (ariew and barker 1990a; 1990b; brenner et al. 1992). the interpretations of duhem’s work have become thereafter more balanced, since the realistic aspects of duhemian philosophy have gained appreciation, in addition they have become more complete, as the religious and political motivations and consequences of his thought have begun to receive unprecedented attention. to this new context we must recognize two essential features of the work of the french author – its complexity and unity. if almost all the publications aforementioned persist as a reference source, in the present century a new generation (still diffuse) of scholars, equipped with a bibliography already advanced (stoffel 1996) and sources previously little explored, has imposed interpretive restrictions on the previous generation. inspired by martin’s style and indirectly by harry w. paul (1979), jean-françois stoffel (2002) has emphasized the apologetic aspects imbricated in the production of the french philosopher and, largely supported by duhemian correspondence, has outlined more clearly the personal relationships nourished by duhem in an academic environment that was admittedly unfavorable. paul needham, in an extensive series of articles (see, for example, 1996; 2002; 2008), and stefano bordoni (2012) have devoted mainly, but not exclusively, to the scientific works of duhem, concerning chemistry and thermodynamics respectively. needham is also responsible for translating duhem’s important scientific works into english (duhem 2002; 2011). it seems to us that two thorny issues have stood out among the experts in recent decades. one of them, more widespread, concerns the determination of the place due to duhem in the debate on scientific realism: in this case, it is the constant attempts to conciliate realistic and instrumentalist theses in his philosophy, and among those who incline for the realistic interpretation, of the exact definition of its alleged realism. the second, concerning the historical links of philosophy embraced by the french philosopher, refers to his distant methodological affiliation, identified almost always alternately, now in aristotle, sometimes in pascal. in addition, this preoccupation is associated with another, that is, of his theological option, which makes him to be inserted among the neo-thomists or among the modernists, or even excluded from both categories, given the peculiarity of his catholicism. the present issue of transversal contemplates and prolongs the questions posed by this new generation of scholars. the reader will soon note that some of the articles presented here instigate new reflections because they have a critical tone, such as the one written by marie gueguen and stathis psillos, which call into question the duhemian distinction between theoretical representation and explanation, essential for a second distinction, this time between physics and metaphysics, and for the establishment of his historical continuity. in the same vein, michael liston criticizes duhem’s attempt to use evolutionary standards derived from the history of physics as an expedient for the justification of methodological judgments, since, he argues, such patterns are always easy to find. other articles are in charge of doing justice to some aspects of duhemian thought. paul needham’s contribution seeks to demonstrate the reasonableness of our physicist’s position by criticizing the atomism of his time, on which a “general skepticism” would stand, and by not distinguishing physical atomism from chemist, deriving this indistinction from the non-methodological unificationism of duhem. víctor manuel hernández márquez makes a thorough analysis of the roles that the finesse and geometry minds play in the duhemian style, and insists at the same time that the scope of the second is greater than one thinks and, conversely, that the pascalian influence on the formation of the author’s thought is less than some interpreters suspect. in turn, eduardo barra and ricardo santos argue that duhem’s critical exam of the newtonian method, in spite of the replications and amendments received, still remains generally valid, and that, after all, newton and duhem tried to defend, with different terminologies, the autonomy of physics in the face of metaphysics. a similar spirit stirs up the article by amélia oliveira, when she tries to acknowledge contemporaneity, never sufficiently recognized – particularly by thomas kuhn –, of the historical methodology defended and practiced by duhem, that would approach the so called “new historiography of science.” more neutral analyzes are made by josé chiappin and cássio laranjeiras, who focus on the question of methodological constraints (such as the refusal of mechanicism, dossier pierre duhem — introduction 5 the demands of theoretical testability and continuity) demanded by duhem for theories to evolve according to an acceptable standard of rationality. for his part, roberto olguin, in a suggestive way, examines the historical and conceptual clusters between the very important duhemian notion of bon sens, which links the philosopher directly to pascal, and the aristotelian notion of noûs, supposedly situated at the root of the other, when apprehending the first principles. reading duhem with “duhemian eyes,” stefano bordoni seeks to link duhem to a tradition whose philosophical and historical sophistication, in which scientific practice would be taken seriously, would go back to cournot, naville, and paul tannery. following this same path of contextualization, joão príncipe elaborates an analysis of the crisscrossing genesis of poincaré and duhem philosophies, relying on the thesis of the existence of a consensus among philosophers of the late nineteenth century about the hypothetical nature of theories. roberto maiocchi compiles the references to duhem in the period before the first world war in the italian academic sphere, marked by idealism, and reveals to us the indifference or hostility with which his epistemology was received. finally, three book reviews close the number: damián islas mondragon presents pierre duhem: between physics and metaphysics, a collection of texts edited by víctor hernández márquez in spanish in 2016, with the participation of experts in duhemian thought from latin america. jean-françois stoffel analyzes the new electronic edition of la théorie physique edited by sophie roux. stoffel also signed the book review of stefano bordoni’s book when historiography met epistemology: sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in french-speaking countries. this book deepens many of bordoni’s ideas contained in his article mentioned above. references ariew, roger and peter barker, eds. 1990a. pierre duhem: historian and philosopher of science. part 1: duhem as historian of science. synthese 83 (2): 179-315. ariew, roger and peter barker, eds. 1990b. pierre duhem: historian and philosopher of science. part 2: duhem as philosopher of science. synthese 83 (3): 325-453. bordoni, stefano. 2012. taming complexity. duhem’s third pathway to thermodynamics. urbino: editrice montefeltro. bordoni, stefano. 2017. when historiography met epistemology: sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in french-speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. leiden; boston: brill. brenner, anastasios. 1990. duhem. science, réalité et apparence: la relation entre philosophie et histoire dans l’oeuvre de pierre duhem. paris: vrin. brenner, anastasios et al. 1992. revue internationale de philosophie 46 (182): 289-409. brouzeng, paul. 1987. duhem: science et providence. paris: belin. duhem, pierre. 1903. l’évolution de la mécanique. paris: maison d’éditions a. joanin et cie. duhem, pierre. 1912 [1903]. die wandlungen der mechanik und die mechanische naturerklärung, translated by philipp frank. leipzig: verlag von j. a. barth. duhem pierre. 1954 [1914]. the aim and structure of physical theory, translated by philip p. wiener. princeton: princeton university press. duhem, pierre. 1981 [1914]. la théorie physique: son objet, sa structure, edited by paul brouzeng. paris: librairie philosophique j. vrin. duhem, pierre. 1982 [1908]. σῴζειν τὰ φαινὀµενα: essai sur la notion de théorie physique de platon à galilée. paris: librairie scientifique a. hermann et fils. duhem, pierre. 2002 [1902]. mixture and chemical combination and related essays, edited and translated by paul needham. dordrecht; boston; london: kluwer academic publishers. duhem, pierre. 2011 [1892-1894]. commentary on the principles of thermodynamics, edited and translated by paul needham. dordrecht; heidelberg; london: springer. duhem, pierre. 2016 [1914]. la théorie physique: son objet, sa structure, edited by sophie roux. online edition. lyon: ens éditions. harding, sandra, ed. 1976. can theories be refuted? essays on the duhem-quine thesis. dordrecht; boston: d. reidel publishing. dossier pierre duhem — introduction 6 hernández márquez, víctor, ed. 2016. pierre duhem: entre física y metafísica. barcelona: anthropos editorial; ciudad juárez: universidad autónoma de ciudad juaréz. humbert, pierre. 1932. pierre duhem. paris: librairie bloud et gay. jaki, stanley l. 1984. uneasy genius: the life and work of pierre duhem. the hague; boston; lancaster; dordrecht: martinus nijhoff publishers. jaki, stanley l. 1991. scientist and catholic: an essay on pierre duhem. front royal: christendom press. jordan, édouard. 1917. pierre duhem. in mémoires de la société des sciences physiques et naturelles de bordeaux 7 (1): 9-39. maiocchi, roberto. 1985. chimica e filosofia: scienza, epistemologia, storia e religione nell’opera di pierre duhem. firenze: la nuova italia. manville, octave et al. 1927. l’oeuvre scientifique de pierre duhem, professeur de physique théorique à la faculté des sciences de l’université de bordeaux, membre de l’institut. 1927. bordeaux: feret et fils libraires. marcos martinez, alfredo. 1988. pierre duhem: la filosofía de la ciencia en sus orígenes. barcelona: promociones y publicaciones universitarias. martin, russell, n. d. 1991. pierre duhem: philosophy and history in the work of a believing physicist. la salle: open court. mentré, françois. 1922a. pierre duhem, le théoricien (1861-1916). revue de philosophie 29 (5): 449-473. mentré, françois. 1922b. pierre duhem, le théoricien (1861-1916). revue de philosophie 29 (6): 608-627. needham, paul. 1996. aristotelian chemistry: a prelude to duhemian metaphysics. studies in history and philosophy of science 27 (2): 251-269. needham, paul. 2002. duhem’s theory of mixture in the light of the stoic challenge to the aristotelian conception. studies in history and philosophy of science 33 (4): 685-708. needham, paul. 2008. “resisting chemical atomism: duhem’s argument”. philosophy of science 75 (5): 921-931. ocagne, maurice et al. 1937. archeion 19 (2-3): 121-151. paul, harry w. 1979. the edge of contingency: french catholic reaction to scientific change from darwin to duhem. gainesville: university presses of florida. picard, émile. 1921. la vie et l’oeuvre de pierre duhem, membre de l’académie. paris: gauthier-villars. pierre-duhem, hélène. 1936. un savant français: pierre duhem. paris: librairie plon. stoffel, jean-françois. 1996. pierre duhem et ses doctorands: bibliographie de la littérature primaire et secondaire. louvain-la-neuve: centre interfacultaire d’étude en histoire des sciences. stoffel, jean-françois. 2002. le phénoménalisme problématique de pierre duhem. bruxelles: académie royale de belgique. microsoft word 9 toledo layout 103 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 103-107 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 – this is an open access journal book review brains, discourses, gender and situated knowledge: lobotomy through rhetorical history johnson, jenell. american lobotomy: a rhetorical history. michigan: university of michigan press, 2013. 240 pp. isbn: 978-0-472-03665-3. $ 26.95 eliza teixeira de toledo1 received: 27 october 2017. reviewed: 20 november 2017. accepted: 29 november 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.09 _____________________________________________________________________________ many memories and images are brought to mind when talking about lobotomy. this term has, even today, the power to provoke uproar, astonishment, revolt, curiosity. to talk of its story is to be surrounded by attentive and curious eyes. the word lobotomy is nowadays often used indiscriminately in reference to variations of psychosurgery that have their origins with a technique called prefrontal leucotomy. elaborated by the portuguese neurologist egas moniz, published in his book tentatives opératoires dans le traitement de certaines psychoses in 1936, the procedure was imported that same year to the united states and applied by the doctors walter freeman and james watts. known in the country as the prefrontal lobotomy, this variation of the surgery consisted of damaging the fibers that connected the thalamus to the central lobes. another american variation, developed by these doctors in the 1940s, consisted of a “simplification” of the surgical process – since it did not require trepanation, that is, the perforation of the skull. the transorbital lobotomy accessed the patient’s brain, by means of an instrument similar to an ice picker, through the ocular cavity. these techniques, which were applied in anatomically normal brains, were developed for the treatment of mental illnesses (raz 2013), especially those with manifestations of uncontrollable behavior (braslow 1997, 2005). still, in jenell johnson’s words, “the operation was used to “bleach” or “blunt” strong emotions in people diagnosed with certain mental illnesses and, to a less extent, to ameliorate chronic pain” (johnson 2013, 2) and has been performed on tens of thousands of women, men, and children in the united states. giving the history of this therapeutic practice a new analytical bias in her book american lobotomy: a rhetorical history (2013), johnson awakens the curious gaze and the longing to understand how lobotomy memories were built beyond the walls of medical offices and hospitals. a researcher in the areas of science rhetoric and disability studies, she 1 eliza teixeira de toledo is a phd candidate at oswaldo cruz foundation, casa de oswaldo cruz coc. address: av. brasil, 4036. – manguinhos, rio de janeiro – rj , 21040-361, brazil – email: elizattoledo@gmail.com eliza teixeira de toledo book review 104 invites us to explore the history of popular representations of lobotomy in the united states, representations that are now loaded with political and social content, which associate the operation with authoritarian instruments of behavior control, sometimes of punitive character, that forced obedience and eliminated the individual personality of patients. if today, however, surgery has become an icon of “bad medicine”, johnson points out that in the 1940s lobotomy appeared in the pantheon of psychiatric practices, as illustrated by the awarding of the nobel prize to egas moniz in 1949. the author then writes a history of the lobotomy using artistic productions, the dissemination of the operation in the press, scientific debates on the therapeutic and the interaction between these discourses. through these sources, she investigates the process of valuing the lobobomy in its “golden” moment in the popular culture of the united states and analyzes the public debates that led to the inquiry into, and the fear of the practice, from the 1950s. based on a model of rhetorical history that seeks to analyze the link between language and culture and the power of spoken, written and translated narratives, johnson demonstrates that the iconicity of lobotomy also has a history. in retaking jack pressman's (1999) critique of the mythical, imaginative, unverifiable, and controversial accounts of lobotomy, she recognizes the limitations and dangers of such documentation for the compression of the surgery into medical practice, but points out that these “stories” make up part of the history of the meaning of lobotomy in american popular culture. from this perspective, the author does not minimize the importance of studying the medical culture in which the lobotomy was developed and used. in the work she bequeathed, for example, special attention to the medical rhetoric about “emotional impairment”, emphasizing the speeches of walter freeman. thus, what she proposes through her analytical exercise is to demonstrate how the lobotomy, the fruit of biomedicine of the twentieth century, has its meanings produced in dialogue with a non-scientific culture, which in turn also influences medical practice. for this purpose, the author examines and “experiences” different sources. in the first chapter of the book, johnson investigates the meaning of lobotomy in medical discourse in the procedure’s initial years of implementation nationally. in it, the author demonstrates how the therapeutic effect of diminished emotions in the lobotomized patients reverberated through the professional discourse that intended to regulate the surgery. as “arguments about lobotomy's value were not limited to the medical community”, in the second chapter of the book johnson broadens her analytical scope and examines the social value attributed to lobotomy in medical journalism discourse. by following the change in understanding of the therapeutic value of the operation she demonstrates positive views of lobotomy were associated with cases involving female patients and, in a negative view, with cases involving male patients. contextualizing this change, johnson “complicates” traditional explanations of the decline in lobotomies, focused mainly on the introduction of surgery with psychotropic drugs of similar therapeutic effect. to do so, in the next chapter, she explores a range of texts in which the personality change attributed to lobotomy came to be seen as a politically dangerous element in the context of the cold war. in the fourth chapter johnson analyzes the “lobotomy problem” in the resurgence of psychosurgery in the early 1970s, with special attention to the campaign against surgeries raised by psychiatrist peter breggin. she further advances and analyzes the mobilization of memory over lobotomy in recent debates around deep brain stimulation (dbs). the final chapter focuses on her experience at the transallegheny lunatic asylum, formerly weston hospital, virginia, transformed into an attraction that offers historical and paranormal visits. her intention is to demonstrate, through this experience, some of the meanings of lobotomy in the popular culture of the united states. jenell johnson thus goes through a broad analytical path to understand the social values attributed to the procedure and contemplates, along these lines, a study of gender notions in speech about lobotomy in the popular press. according to the author, most of the material that reported positive aspects of lobotomy in the 1940s related to cases of eliza teixeira de toledo book review 105 operations on women. while these discourses promoted the idea that surgery had restored appropriate behavior to patients, publications in the 1950s, critical of therapy, focused on examples of damage to male patients following surgeries, such as a decrease in their masculinity. insofar as one of the results of the lobotomy was “docility”, the study looks at how this effect of the surgery had a distinct meaning in relation to men and women in that society. while the childishness effect had a positive profile in the histories of treatment of women, in the cases of men this same postoperative implication was criticized, and argument was composed of negative discourses in the context of the “crisis” of the lobotomy. so for johnson, as newspaper rhetoric began to change, the use of gender in the interpretation of therapeutic processes also changed. according to the author, “press stories argued for lobotomy's therapeutic value supported by interpretations of its social value – specifically, its power to uphold or subvert traditional gender roles for men and women” (johnson 2013, 66). the relationship of published cases in the newspapers with the cure of “abnormal desires” and “aggressive sexuality” in the case of women outlines what johnson names “lobotomy's moralizing power”. she tries to highlight this aspect when she uses film productions such as one flew over the cuckoo's nest (1975) and frances (1982). the latter, inspired by the life of the american actress frances farmer, addresses the transformation of frances as a rebel and desirable character into a “domesticated” woman through the operation (although there is no confirmation that she has been lobotomized in real life). this image of the actress, as johnson rightly points out, was possible in a context of growing criticism of therapeutic interventions and thanks to feminist efforts to change the vision of what it meant to be a woman at the time. the expansion of the analysis on the contexts in which the gender senses are constructed, in what way they change and how debates and social demands would enrich the analysis of popular readings of the therapeutic. as johnson makes us think about the film frances, the “traditional” values of gender are also socially questioned and modified, albeit slowly and laboriously, though not necessarily in the interests of gender equality. these changes also influence the way in which medicine produces diagnoses and interprets healing / improvement processes in different contexts and allows us to better understand the interaction between medical and non-medical discourses, reinforcing the argument that society not only receives what it produces as a science, but it also shapes this construction of knowledge. this exercise could reinforce their view that men's and women's behaviors are interpreted as symptoms according to a normal / pathological sense that encompasses gender notions. in this way we also reinforce the care with the interpretation of scientific production according to a bias of denunciation of misogyny (although johnson does not incur this error), but as part of another social world that we see better through historical retreat (löwy 2000). another focus of johnson's analysis, perhaps even more “innovative” in relation to the history of lobotomy in the united states, is the study of the social meanings of lobotomy in the context of the cold war that would have contributed to the decline of therapy. although it is unquestionable that psychiatry turned to psychopharmacology in the mid-1950s and that this is one of the factors in the decreased use of this surgical practice, the author seeks to clarify that at the same moment the lobotomy was the subject of lively controversies. as surgical effects are associated with behavioral and personality changes, lobotomy has become a controversial and troubling therapy and a site of political tensions around individual autonomy and freedom in the united states. discourses on brain operations that had the power to turn “normal” people into “zombies” created around the operation the idea of a political, communist, authoritarian weapon whose negativization was also due to its association with a “fascist” technique (johnson 2013, 96). part of the popular imagery, this view is present in the association eliza teixeira de toledo book review 106 between walter freeman and josef mengele that johnson found in the trans-allegheny lunatic asylum. however, as she argues, the “condemnation” of actors and events that are later conceived as failures, mistakes, as “bad science” or even as non-science, are also part of medical rhetoric and reinforce a teleological notion of the progress of biomedicine. this view, according to johnson, permeates recent medical discourses that advocate the use of dbs by mobilizing the memory of lobotomy as a “mistake” of the past in the treatment of mental illness, as opposed to the more rigorous new neurosurgical methods. in this interpretation lies one of the strengths of the author's historical approach. from a perspective borrowed from thomas kuhn (1970), johnson argues that medical paradigms do not change simply because of better interpretations of nature. in this way, the author questions a view that considers that the decline of the lobotomy in the united states is simply a substitution of a less effective treatment for a more effective one. her study demonstrates how multiple and complex representations about the procedure in popular culture, defined according to the specific socio-political context, played an active role in the questioning and weakening of the therapy. more importantly, with the lobotomy as the object of analysis, the author emphasizes that a teleological view of medical-scientific production incurs what pressman characterizes as “a false sense of security and draws our attention even further away from dangers that are actually present” (apud johnson 2013, 135). in an overview, in turning her attention to the meanings of medicine in culture, johnson demonstrates that these meanings also have the power to legitimize and question medical-scientific practices. in this sense, i believe that the book is not only a contribution to the history of lobotomy and therapeutics (a field that requires ever more attention from historiography), but to the history of medicine in a broader way. in accessing popular representations of lobotomy, differently from the work on therapy based on clinical records and scientific discourses, johnson argues that such documents raise criticisms of science and medicine that deserve to be investigated. among these criticisms she refers to “the relationship between research and treatment, state and corporate investments in medicine and biomedical technology; the intersections of medicine, and particularly, with gender race, class, ability and sexuality; the scientific and social implications of cerebral sacralization and subjectivity – all issues well worth further discussion” (johnson 2013, 150). i must not fail to mention the proposal for the production of a situated knowledge and partial perspective pursued by the author. in addition to clarifying that the purpose of the book is to offer “a situated account of lobotomy as it intersects with american culture at different points in its history” (johnson 2013, 19), she draws attention to a limitation faced when writing a history of lobotomy: there will always be missing histories told by those who have undergone the therapy. johnson feeds this situated and partial perspective by informing the reader, in the epilogue of the work, of aspects of her life experience that have influenced her interaction with the sources and, consequently, the process of research and writing. this exercise starts from the critique of the production of scientific knowledge as a neutral and uncompromising activity and promotes what donna haraway defines as a responsible and critical perspective through the positioning of the practitioner. the intention of this practice, in haraway's words, is to produce “better explanations of the world”. through this work, jenell johnson gives us her contribution. references braslow, joel. 1997. mental ills and bodily cures: psychiatric treatment in the first half of the twentieth century. berkeley: university of california press. braslow, j. t.; starks, s. l. 2005. the making of contemporary american psychiatry, part 1: patients, treatments, and therapeutic rationales before and after world war ii. history of psychology, 8 (2): 176-93. eliza teixeira de toledo book review 107 braslow, j. t.; starks, s. l. 2005. the making of contemporary american psychiatry, part 2: therapeutics and gender before and after world war ii. history of psychology, 8 (3): 271-88. haraway, donna. 1988. situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. feminist studies 14 (3): 575-599. available in http://www.staff.amu.edu.pl/~ewa/haraway,%20situated%20knowledges.pdf johnson, jenell. 2013. american lobotomy: a rethorical history. michigan: university of michigan press. kuhn, thomas. 1962 [1970]. the structure of scienctific revolution. chicago: university of chicago press. löwy, ilana. 2000. introduction : pour en finir avec la nature. in: löwy, ilana ; gardey, delphine. l’invention du naturel: les sciences et la fabrication du féminin e du masculin. paris: éditions des archives contemporaines. moniz, egas. 1936. tentatives opératoires dans le traitement de certaines psychoses. paris: masson & cie éditeurs, libraires de l’académie de médicine. pressman, jack. 1999. last resort: psychosurgery and the limits of medidine. new york, cambrigde university press. raz, mical. 2013. the lobotomy letters: the making of american psychosurgery. university of rochester press. 238 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 238-241 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 – this is an open access article book review galileo as a critic of the arts panofsky, erwin. galilée critique d’art. transl. nathalie heinich. bruxelles: les impressions nouvelles, 2016. 112 pp. isbn: 978-2-87449-417-8, 15 €. reviewed by: hallhane machado1 received: 30 march 2017. accepted: 12 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.22 _____________________________________________________________________________ once again, erwin panofsky returns to the publishing scene. in 2016, galilee critique d'art was again published by les impressions nouvelles. but, in fact, it is not just panofsky's return. in the french-speaking world, his text was hardly ever published alone. it was almost always accompanied by either nathalie heinich’s foreword or alexandre koyré’s review, or by these two works whose considerations gained a weight almost equivalent to panofsky's own text. on the one hand, heinich elucidates, in the wake of pierre bourdieu, the fruitful method implied in the analyzes of the art historian. on the other, koyré affirms and unfolds the reach of panofsky's statements that surpass his place of comfort, those based on the field of the history of the sciences, in which koyré is considered an authority. and this is how the texts of heinich, panofsky and koyré configure what comes to us as the book galilee critique d'art. in this work, panofsky presents us with a series of statements that, in any way, could be included in the foreseeable assertions. it is in the midst of a disputatio over the superiority of painting or sculpture, a field where leonardo da vinci once engaged, which he places the mathematical physicist galileo galilei. in describing him, he does not speak of physical and astronomical theories, but of artistic tastes, he speaks of a character who knew by heart the latin classics, who loved ariosto and repudiated tasso, who was a designer and profound connoisseur of painting even more inclined to study it than mathematics who was a close friend of the painter ludovico cigoli, and for this very reason he was involved in the battle between the partisans of the painting and the sculpture, initiated in century xv. it is not, therefore, only the exposure of galilean knowledge in the fields of plastic arts, music and literature, but a live engagement, which showed a greater concern than victory over any quarrel. since leonardo da vinci, no one but galileo, panofsky points out, provided original contributions in the discussion he unleashed in 1430. such originality is shown above all in two conceptions issued by galileo. the first, with no equivalent in the criticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, developed from the change of the target of valorization in the artistic sphere. merit comes out of the nature of matter and goes into the effort of the artist. undermining the classic argument of the partisans of sculpture, galileo makes a remarkable reasoning: "farther from the things to be imitated will be the means by which we imitate, the more admirable will be the imitation" (panofsky, 2016, 32). the fact that sculpture shares the character of three-dimensionality with matter gives it no advantage over painting. "artificious to the highest point, on the other hand, will be the imitation which represents the relief by its opposite, which is the plane" (panofsky, 1hallhane machado is a phd candidate in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-90, brazil. email: hallhane@gmail.com hallhane machado – book review 239 2016, 31). larger art is to represent pain not by its natural expression, the crying, but rather by singing. and even greater merit would be to represent it not by the voice that comes from a living being, but by the sound of an inanimate instrument, galileo emphasizes. but it is in the wake of this refutation that we find the argument on which the art historian is most concerned. in fact, unlike the italians, the dutchman johan albert bannius, some frenchmen like mersenne and descartes, and his own father, vincenzo galilei, galileo did not think that music and poetry were inseparable. so if his reasoning culminates in the greatness of the musician who expresses the secrets of the soul through an instrument that does not possess it, it is also because, for him, instrumental music could and would be better if it were to be dissociated from the text. it is then that panofsky puts in correspondence the galileo that still had to present with the celebrated mathematical physicist already known. "galileo's insistence on demanding a clear separation of the values and processes which at the time were commonly held to be inseparable testifies to a critical purism in which one can see the true mark of his genius. just as he preferred pure music-without words-to singing, and disdained song mixed with sobs or laughter, so he demanded that the quantity of quality be separated, and the science of religion, magic, mysticism and art" (panofsky, 2016, 35). for this reason, he repudiated, in the field of literature, tasso's allegorical poetry in the field of painting, holbein's anamorphs and arcimboldo's "double images," and in astronomy the discussion of the existence, whether profane or sacred, of the four satellites around jupiter, a debate that unfolded after the revelation of his discovery. however, this position of galileo was not at all unusual. panofsky outlines a movement of ideas between the mannerism of the middle of the sixteenth century and the baroque and classicism of the seventeenth century. between 1590 and 1615 approximately, a movement appeared that was contrary to the mannerism that preceded it and partisan of the values of the renaissance. galileo shared with cigoli, carrache, dominiquin, and agucchi the same inclination to appreciate the clarity, the harmony, the smooth composition of the contours, the fusion of reality and idea, a taste that did not change throughout his life. but, for panofsky, this context of reaction contrary to mannerism does not explain galileo's inflexible stance. it is neither a “product of historical conditions,” nor a reflection of a thought derived from a strictly scientific rationality. what explains the galilean position, not only in the face of mannerism, but in the different fields of knowledge, are the constitutive principles of his thinking, the greatest of which is "critical purism." such is the core of panofsky's thesis. his main and decisive argument in his favor presents itself with a solution to a problem especially troubling to astronomical historians: galileo's silence in all his writings on kepler's laws. galileo's silence was a fact that should be explained because the mathematical physicist had many reasons not to do so. partisan and intrepid defender of the copernican system, close to kepler, galileo knew, at least since 1612, that his "comrade-in-arms" had corrected and amplified copernicus's astronomical theory. kepler's modifications, which replaced the circles with the ellipses in the description of the trajectories of the planets, explained in an undoubtedly better way the astronomical observations and later formed the basis of newton's solution. even with these theories that would greatly aid him in his defense of the copernican system, galileo ignored them, repeating the same weaknesses present in the way copernicus originally conceived them. panofsky's answer to the enigma of galileo's silence against kepler's laws was that "he seems to have dismissed these laws of his mind, by what might be called a process of automatic elimination" (panofsky, 2016, 63), elimination resulting from the incompatibility between what kepler presented and, above all, that dominant principle of his thought and imagination; "critical purism." galileo saw in kepler's ellipses the disturbance and confusion of holbein's anamorphosis and tasso's poetry. the ellipse was "a form in which 'perfect order' has been disturbed by the intrusion of rectilinearity " (panofsky, 2016, 64 and 65). it was also a form widely used in mannerism and expressly rejected by the renaissance. far from the vulgar and predictable assertions, panofsky attests in his book that "if one considers that the scientific attitude of galileo influenced his aesthetic judgment, one is entitled to consider as much as his aesthetic attitude has influenced his scientific convictions; and more precisely, one can say that, as a man of science as well as a critic of art, he obeys the same types of controls" (panofsky, 2016, 58). due to the demand for clarity and separation between genders, galileo could not accept the mixture between circularity and rectilinearity for him, the ellipse was the fruit nor the animism of kepler present in his astronomy which, together with his attitude of not rejecting the quantitative data, allowed this to get rid of the fascination for the circularity, manifested in galileo. hallhane machado – book review 240 here is panofsky, but not entirely galilee critque d'art. this begins with panofsky épistémologue it is followed by two translations: one from the letter of galileo to cigoli and one from "monsignore giovanni battista agucchi and his speech del mezzo" and ends with attitude esthétique et pensée scientifique. the book begins with the outline of a method, with heinich, and is finalized with the outline of the fruits of panofsky's analysis, with koyré. by paying attention to the commentators, however, the reader feels a nuisance caused by a mismatch between the authors whose suggested ratio seems to be full agreement. heinich claims that koyré ventured where panofsky did not allow himself. the art historian did not even say that galileo's aesthetic tastes were guided by scientific positions, or the other way around. to do this, one had to have "the openness and curiosity of mind of a koyré" (heinich, 2016, 9). however, this author does not, at any moment, point out traces of panofsky's hesitation in admitting relations of influence. quite the opposite. for him, his intrepidity led him to break with the traditional image of galileo scientist, and in fact his only mistake was not to employ it, as he does in his text, in his title. but this mismatch goes beyond the attestation of a lack of one or another author. it reflects two different readings of panofsky's text. for heinich, the turbid nature of panofsky's claims about the relations of influence between artistic and scientific positions is far from being a mistake. he expresses his adoption of another epistemological perspective, different from that which seeks to postulate relations of cause and effect. that is replaced by a perspective that shows "homologies, structural identities common to different fields" (heinich, 2016, 12), indicates "what could be a sociology or an anthropology of culture which, in true research logic, would finally cease to be exhausted in deriving 'art' from 'society', 'science' from 'social', 'individual' from 'collective' and the ‘tastes’ from ‘social interests’..." (heinich, 2016, 12). that explains panofsky's erudition, which is not "knowledge fetish." this author walks in the fields of music, literature, painting, physics, astronomy to highlight "the similarities, the affinities, the logical links to structural constants" (heinich, 2016, 12), or "structuring schemes." heinich follows the same reading presented by bourdieu in his afterword to the gothic architecture and scholasticism, where, if we admit fugier pascal's statement, he brings out, for the first time, his concept of habitus. bourdieu recognizes it in panofsky's "search for the locus of all forms of symbolic expression proper to a society and an age" (bourdieu, 2007, 337). he refuses to "safeguard the rights of creative individuality and the mysteries of singular creation." doing that is "to deprive oneself of discovering collectivity at the core of individuality in the form of culture. language of erwin panofsky, of the habitus that makes the creator participate in his collectivity, of his time and, without his conscience, guides and directs his seemingly more singular acts of creation" (bourdieu, 2007, 342). heinich presents, in his text published for the first time in 1987, the same structuralist reading carried out by boudieu in 1961. for her, panofsky had pursued his search for the structuring schemata outlined by bourdieu. for that reason, he could not clearly trace a causal relationship between galileo's aesthetic tastes and his scientific stance, which, in heinich's view, has the great advantage of resolving a blatant contradiction present in panofsky's text: according to the author, putting an aesthetic response to an epistemological question. for koyré, the so-called influence relationship is not questioned. what panofsky really means when he speaks of galileo's rejection of kepler's discoveries is that "he rejected the keplerian ellipses for the simple reason that they were ellipses ... and not, as it was, circles” (koyré, 2016, 101). according to koyré, panofsky's great merit was, certainly, that he did not commune with galileo's critical purism by approaching it in a way different from that of science, that is, of the spirit of new science, of opposition to natural places and geometrization of space. proof of this excommunication was his attitude of not interpreting, like historians, the passages where galileo clearly affirms "the obsession with circularity" in his spirit like that of the beginning of his “dialogue” taking them à la lettre. it was in consequence of this that panofsky was able to overcome another "obsession": that of the traditional image of galileo. koyré insists on the misery of purism. and soon one sees that his criticism is not restricted to the author of the dialogue or to the historians who have studied it, but it is something greater. in effect, koyré concludes his text by stating: "purism is a dangerous thing. and the example of galileo, which is by no means unique, shows clearly that nothing should be exaggerated. not even the requirement of clarity" (koyré, 2016, 109). since the 1930s, koyré had already rejected the epistemology of the vienna circle, which asserted the need for clarity and purification of the scientific domain, a revival two years before the publication of his review of panofsky at the time of his meeting with philipp frank, at a congress in boston in 1954. as has been known, since that time, he had already demonstrated in his galileo studies the impossibility of studying the evolution of scientific thought as an independent series isolated from religious, metaphysical, and philosophical – expressing it later clearly in his curriculum vitae, written in 1951. if koyré does not question panofsky's statement about the influence of galileo's aesthetic attitude on his scientific hallhane machado – book review 241 conceptions, it is because, for him, there was nothing contradictory in putting, repeating, to an epistemological question, an aesthetic answer. just as he did not believe it would be contradictory to present a scientific, religious, metaphysical, or philosophical answer to a scientific question. koyré saw in the art historian, a strong ally in affirming the importance of "trans-scientific" ideas in the course of scientific thought itself. corollary, koyré also saw in panofsky, a strong ally in affirming the indispensability of the historical reconstitution of the guiding elements of thought, since these are not situated in a previously established domain. hence koyré's exaltation of impure character is, open to possible cross-links, panofsky's position. hence feels at ease in merging the conclusion of the historian's text – which he reproduces with the conclusion of his review, stating, as in the same voice of panofsky, that "the ways of human thought are curious, unpredictable, illogical" (koyré, 2016, 109). therefore, if it bears here to say what the galilee critique d'art is, it may be said that it is a book similar to the mannerist anamorphos so rejected by galileo. if, looking from the front, it looks like a painting that only brings confusion, as we shift our glance, it lets us glimpse figures whose contours are proficient and clear. face to face, the book seems a forced and confused mixture, since it brings a text circumscribed by two readings that point in different directions, each of which can be adopted by the reader. the confusion seems to grow when one notices that it is also possible to accept neither. it may be said that if, on the one hand, koyré presented more of his own convictions than those on panofsky, on the other, it can be said that heinich made basic considerations originally directed to a text different from that in question, and that galilee critique d 'art has distinct characteristics of gothic architecture and scholasticism. but if we shift our point of view towards the perspective which, with bourdieu, heinich calls us, seeking to glimpse galilee critique d'art in the whole of panofsky's works, we perceive a solid interpretation of his apparently loose and performative methodology. it is interesting to notice, with thomas frangenberg, that a re-reading was carried out, both in the context of semiotics and in structuralism, of panofsky's texts, and this author was identified as one of the forerunners of these disciplines. and finally, in shifting our point of view in the direction that koyré points out less in the search for panofsky's methodological presuppositions and more in the search for the contributions of his specific analyzes on galileo we see above all the extension of the field of historicalphilosophical investigation, in the 1930s. in admitting the influence of galileo's aesthetic tastes on his scientific stance, koyré adds within the trans-scientific ideas, situated in the realms of philosophy, metaphysics, and religion, and crucial in study of the history of the sciences, those ideas coming from the field of the arts. but, contrary to galileo's taste, the incitement to the displacement of a point of view is a characteristic, rather, to be appreciated than the opposite. there is the wealth of galilée critique d'art. 46 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 46-51 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck ludwik fleck’s reception in brazil: from an anonymous visitor to a renowned thinker1 mauro l. condé2 abstract: the main purpose of this article is to provide a type of general framework of ludwik fleck’s reception in brazil. although this is not strictly a review of fleck’s work – what i did in some papers before – we can use some of fleck’s concepts to understand how his ideas have spread in brazil. in other words, how was the genesis and development of fleck’s thought-style in different thought collectives in brazil. keywords: ludwik fleck; fleck’s reception in brazil; historiography of science received: 20 august 2016. reviewed: 25 october 2016. accepted: 29 november 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction in the 1950s, fleck traveled to several countries (schnelle, schäffer, 2010, 9). in 1955, he visited brazil to participate in the “second international seminar of allergology” sponsored by the “brazilian society of allergology” and held in the city of petropolis, in the state of rio de janeiro, between the 6th and 13th november. in the following year, he co-authored with irena lille-szyszkowicz, a paper reporting the main issues that were discussed at the seminar (fleck, lille-szyszkowicz, 1956). as we know, although fleck had already written his main epistemological contributions, in that moment, he was still far from being acknowledged for this part of his work and he was just only one of many participating physicians. one that would become the celebrated epistemologist ludwik fleck went through this event absolutely anonymous. in this condition, as we can imagine, he did not have the prominence given to honored guests present at the event as the nobel prize in medicine (physiology), in 1936, henry dale (1875-1968), the american 1 this paper is based on a presentation delivered at the conference “ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives – translations and receptions” which took place in march 2016 in wrocław, poland. i am very grateful to the organizing committee, particularly to paweł jarnicki. i am also grateful to the project science foundation (fundacja projekt nauka), the ludwik fleck zentrum at the collegium helveticum in zurich, the federal institute of technology in zurich (ethz) and the max planck institute for the history of science in berlin for their financial support to enable my participation in the conference. 2 mauro l. condé is a professor in the department of history at the universidade federal de minas gerais. av. antônio carlos, 6627, belo horizonte – brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br mauro l. condé – ludwik fleck’s reception in brazil 47 immunologist and allergist robert cooke (1880-1960), and the also physician louis pasteur vallery-radot (1886-1970), biographer and editor of the complete works of his grandfather, the eminent french scientist louis pasteur. if, at that time, fleck was not a celebrated name as we know today, in a sense, not even brazil was brazil, as we understand it today. if fleck had not yet received his international notoriety, in that decade, brazil also just began its modernization process. for different reasons, it would be very difficult to exist, in that context, an interlocutor for fleck as an epistemologist. although there was an incipient philosophical community in brazil, we did not have yet a thought collective organized and dedicated to epistemological and historical issues of science. coincidentally, shortly after this visit of the author of genesis and development of a scientific fact, brazil had quickly undergone a major transformation. in 1955, juscelino kubitschek was elected the president of brazil, and with him came a push for industrial development and the brazilian modernism, the construction of brasilia, the new capitol, as a landmark of modern architecture of oscar niemeyer. by the end of 1950s, brazil would build some of the icons that marked its image abroad that, rightly or wrongly, still prevail today as the bossa nova, samba, carnival and football. indeed, although brazil had received this visit of the polish thinker, as well as much of the world, it had to wait not only the well-known quote of fleck’s book in the structure of scientific revolutions (1962) of thomas kuhn, but also the translations of fleck’s work into english in 1979, and especially by the proximity of the portuguese language, the spanish edition in 1986. the spreading of fleck’s book in brazil during 1980s created more and more readers interested in fleck’s thought. i have not found records of the existence of the first swiss edition, 1935, of fleck’s book on brazilian territory. much less i found, among the first papers by brazilian authors referencing to fleck’s book, which were not written from these editions in english or spanish. finally, the spreading of fleck’s book in brazil mainly occurred from the late 1980s, about thirty years after his visit. in the 1990s, the increasing of papers on fleck’s work written by brazilians (ilari; oliveira, 1991), (bombassaro, 1992, 1995) and foreigners researchers (löwy, 1994a, 1994b) and the already great interest among readers indicated the need to make a brazilian edition of his magnum opus. and although arouse interest from some publishers, we managed to accomplish the project only a decade later, with the publication in 2010 of the brazilian edition (fleck, 2010), which i had the honor and pleasure to write the foreword. two years later, we can edit in brazil the first book devoted exclusively to the work of fleck, with the collaboration of brazilian and foreign researchers (condé, 2012). fleck’s thought-style in brazil to understand how was the reception of fleck’s thought-style in brazil; we need to start from the very originality of his thought. as we know, the work of fleck is multifaceted. by analyzing the science, he knew it was impossible to ignore history, social and philosophical aspects, and even political, in the production of scientific knowledge. so, perhaps due to this perception, he used the expression: “science of the science” in his article of 1946, “problems of the science of science” (fleck, 1986 [1946]). according to fleck, “the science of sciences is a separate science based on observation and experiment, on historical and sociological investigations”. (fleck, 1986 [1946], 127) for him, we need to look at the science from these multiple perspectives to know what, actually, the knowledge is and how it works. this complexity of science, with its sociological, historical and epistemological nuances, pointed out convincingly by fleck, generated, among brazilian researchers, different interests and applications. thus, in brazil, emerged at least four distinct thought collectives interested in the work of fleck – nevertheless with close connections. these four thought collectives that spread fleck’s thought-style in brazil are as follows: 1) history of science – in particular, the history of medicine and history of biomedicine; 2) science education; 3) philosophy; 4) sociology. the first two thought collectives already have a good level of development and the last two are still incipient. although there are communications between them, each one of them has their own interests, their own academic programs, meetings, conferences and specific journals for their publications. however, this communication of fleck’s ideas among these different thought collectives, which our author called interkollektive denkverkehr, maintains the fleck’s thought-style in brazil. according to fleck, “the intercollective communication of ideas always results in a shift or a change in the currency of thought” (fleck, 1979, 109). indeed, we realize in these thought collectives the different uses of fleck’s epistemology that mauro l. condé – ludwik fleck’s reception in brazil 48 are adjusted to different objects and contexts. anyway, these different thought-styles feed the research, publications and the strong interest in the work of fleck in brazil. in what follow, i will report a brief synthesis of these different thought collectives. thought collective of the history of medicine and biomedicine as we know, the microbiologist ludwik fleck used the history of medicine to show us a new way to understand the workings of science. in a sense, it is natural that the community of historians of medicine can see immediately how this connection between the history of medicine and the new epistemological perspective offered by fleck works. partly, due to this type of direct connection, many historians of medicine in brazil have become very seduced by fleck’s ideas. history of medicine has been produced in brazil with the guidance of fleck’s epistemology. some title examples are: a construction of knowledge about the aids epidemic (santos, 1999); thought-style and practice in nursing (backes, 1999). in brazil, an important push for the use of fleck’s ideas in understanding of the history of medicine came from the pioneering work of ilana löwy. consequently, she also helped a lot to the understanding of fleck’s epistemological perspective among us. at least since the early 1990s, this international researcher, who also speaks portuguese, has strongly contributed to the increased interest of brazilian researchers in the work of fleck. not only her articles on fleck published in portuguese (löwy, 1994a, 1994b) or in english (löwy, 2004) are widely read in brazil, but her personal performance in courses and lectures at different brazilian universities were (and are) a key reference for the work of fleck in brazil. moreover, löwy’s guidance of brazilian phd students, in brazil or in france, has also been important because these researchers, after complete their phd, are strongly committed to the thought of fleck in their workings in brazilians universities. in addition, of course, these students learn with löwy the high academic standards in the practices of the history of medicine. and sure, this is not just my understanding, but something that has already spread among brazilian experts in the literature about fleck. as is affirmed, for example, by lorenzetti et al, the works of ilana löwy (1994a, 1994b, 2004) are widely used in brazil, and she is “the great promoter of fleck’s epistemological thought” among us (lorenzetti et al, 2013 193). thought collective of science education although focused on the thought collective of the history of medicine, in brazil, löwy’s influences had important ramifications in science education and also in the philosophy and historiography of science committed at reflect fleck’s ideas (löwy, 2012). in 1996, löwy delivery a course in the phd program of science education (delizoikov et al., 2002, 65) in the federal university of santa catarina that was very important to spread fleck’s ideas in the thought collective of science education. in this collective, we find another key name for the dissemination of fleck’s ideas in brazil: demetrius delizoikov. from intense work of research, publication and supervision of phds in the science education, delizoikov formed several researchers committed to the work of fleck, constituting thus a real network in this area. in a survey that seeks to show the influence of fleck in science education in brazil, “the reception of fleck’s epistemology for research in science education in brazil”, lorenzetti et al (2013) confirm that the very first science education studies guided by fleck’s ideas emerged in the 1990s. these studies concentrated on institutions in southern brazil, especially in the federal university of santa catarina and certainly around professor delizocoiv. also according to lorenzetti et al., these researches in science education have focused on the following main themes: “genesis of a scientific fact”, “teacher training” and “analysis of academic production”. understanding of these issues in science education was oriented mainly from the concepts of “thought-style”, “thought collective” “communication of thoughts both within a thought collective and among thought collectives” (lorenzetti et al, 2013). lorenzetti gave us several examples of the production of this thought collective of science education, among them, “socio-genesis of knowledge and research in education: contributions from fleck’s ideas” (delizoicov et al., 2002); academic research in biology education (slongo, 2004); thought-styles in environmental education (lorenzetti, 2008). mauro l. condé – ludwik fleck’s reception in brazil 49 thought collective of philosophy although fleck was first discovered by sociologists, who understood him primarily as a sociologist of science and, in a second moment, by historians, who, in their turn, made great use of his ideas, the polish thinker’s work does not seem to have yet been evaluated, in depth, in its epistemological dimension. his philosophical contribution does not seem to have been fully exploited. in other words, the epicenter of his epistemological ideas – even if based in history and social practices – has not received the attention that it deserves from a large number of philosophers, even that important philosophers like ian hacking has already made important reflections on fleck’s philosophy. after more than five decades of the return of fleck, the philosophical analysis of his work are still relatively low, considering its high importance. in brazil, this situation is no different. there is little interest by philosophers in fleck’s work. the main philosophical brazilian association, national association for philosophy – anpof –, in its biannual meeting brings together more than 3,000 researchers presenting a wide variety of philosophical topics. in this association there are more than 40 study groups with different topics in philosophy (descartes, kant, wittgenstein, etc. contemporary philosophy, modern, etc.). i presented two lectures about fleck in two of these meetings and fleck’s ideas were well received. nevertheless, interest in the work of the polish thinker among brazilian philosophers is still far from establishing a study group in this philosophical association. although however, the thought collective in philosophy is still small, it has increased and some dissertations, theses and articles have already been written by philosophers in some brazilian universities, for example, federal university of minas gerais, university of são paulo, federal university of santa catarina and the state university of londrina. thought collective of sociology in brazil, the interest of sociologists of science in fleck’s work is still very punctual. it is limited to some sociological studies of medicine. however, for the brazilian edition of fleck’s book in portuguese, the interest of sociologists was very important. sociologists as baldamus, merton (why not kuhn and schnelle?) were involved in the edition of fleck’s book in german and in the translation into english – and thus sponsored the return of fleck in the historiography of science – a similar process occurred in brazil. in other words, while fleck was read mostly by historians of science, it was a small group of sociologists of science who have made efforts to accomplish the project of the brazilian edition of fleck’s book. so after some attempts to edit fleck in portuguese, i was contacted by rodrigo ribeiro, a sociologist of science and technology that was a former harry collins’s phd student. ribeiro sought to expand the editorial repertoire in studies on science and technology in brazil. collins suggested to him to edit fleck’s book. so, in a sense, collins gave the impulse that was missing. the brazilian edition of fleck’s book and its reception in brazil genesis and development of a scientific fact was translated from the german edition of surhkamp, 1980, by georg otte and mariana oliveira. this first brazilian edition had 2,000 copies of which, to the present day, about 1,200 were sold. with this rate of sales, the intention of the publisher is making a second edition soon. this edition has been widely used by brazilian researchers. below i use the google scholar to compare the brazilian edition with some of the main editions of fleck’s book. this comparison (table 1) can give us a quantitative idea of fleck’s book reception in brazil. mauro l. condé – ludwik fleck’s reception in brazil 50 table 1 edition year google scholar genesis and development of a scientific fact 1979 / 37 years 3017 entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsachen 1980 / 36 years 2054 genèse et développement d'un fait scientifique 2005 / 11 years 162 génesis y desarrollo de un hecho científico 1986 / 30 years 582 gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico 2010 / 6 years 150 genesi e sviluppo di un fatto scientifico 1983 / 33 years 36 on february 18, 2016 in addition to google scholar that enables the comparison of the brazilian edition with these different international editions, that is, a comparison outside the country, there are other possible parameters to understand the spread of fleck’s thought inside brazil, for example, the platform lattes from cnpq3 and the capes platform of theses.4 the lattes platform is a platform of the national council for scientific and technological development – cnpq. it is the leading research agency in brazil.5 from the lattes platform, we can map all brazilian researchers (and also the several registered foreign researchers in this platform) who dedicated some type of research to fleck, such as thesis, dissertations, books, articles and book reviews. in a simple search by subject6, made on february, 18 2016, we realize that there are 219 occurrences of researchers who carried out some kind of work on fleck (adviser of thesis, papers, and chapters in books). in turn, 1098 occurrences show us the number of researchers in brazil who had some kind of work on the american thinker thomas kuhn. thus, in a comparison with kuhn, fleck represents about 20% of the interest of brazilian researchers. of course, we should consider the longer exposure of kuhn's work. in their survey, lorenzetti et al (2013, 2016) use capes platform to understand fleck’s impact in research on science education in brazil, that is, they mapped the number of dissertations and theses written in the epistemological perspective of fleck. using the exact words “ludwik fleck”, “fleck” and “thoughtstyle”, they find 40 works (phd and master degree) written in brazilian universities. conclusion something very interesting that we can see on the work produced by these different thought collectives concerned with fleck’s epistemology in brazil is not only the dynamic aspect of their research and publications, but a cross-reference in their citations. in other words, although they also are guided by the international literature on fleck’s work, there is a very strong interconnection in the literature produced by these different brazilian thought collectives. by means of this cross-reference, a collective complements to each other. indeed, we can speak thus in a real fleck’s network in brazil. and judging by the lively interest in the polish thinker’s ideas on brazilian territory, i believe that this network will continue to grow exponentially. as a last important point, beyond this cross-reference is the fact that, from the international scope of epistemology of the anonymous visitor of brazil, these brazilian thought collective seeks to think the local 3 website www.lattes.cnpq.br 4 website www.capes.gov.br/servicos/banco-de-teses 5 although google scholar does not seem to be a more reliable source, it can show this comparison for an international audience in different languages. platform lattes and the capes platform of theses are more reliable but not so accessible to international researchers. 6 collected on the website www.lattes.cnpq.br mauro l. condé – ludwik fleck’s reception in brazil 51 reality, analyzing scientific education in brazil or the history of brazilian medicine. most likely, in your trip, fleck has never imagined how, decades later, his ideas would help brazil to better understand itself. references backes, v. m. s. estilo de pensamento e práxis na enfermagem: a contribuição do estágio pré profissional. 1999. tese (phd dissertation – nursing) – universidade federal de santa catarina, florianópolis – sc, 1999 bombassaro, luiz carlos. as fronteiras da epistemologia: uma introdução ao problema da racionalidade e historicidade do conhecimento. petrópolis: vozes, 1992. bombassaro, luiz carlos. ciência e mudança conceitual. porto alegre: edipucrs, 1995. camargo jr, kenneth rochel de. “a biomedicina”. in: physis: rev. saúde coletiva, rio de janeiro, 15 (suplemento): 177-201, 2005. condé, mauro l. “ciência e linguagem: ludwik fleck e ludwig wittgenstein” (“science and language: ludwik fleck and ludwig wittgenstein”). in: condé, mauro l. (org.) ludwik fleck: estilos de pensamento na ciência. belo horizonte: fino traço, 2012. condé, mauro l. “de pé de página a novo clássico” [prefácio]. in: fleck, ludwik. gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico. belo horizonte: fabrefactum, 2010. condé, mauro l. “paradigma versus estilo de pensamento na história da ciência”. in: condé, mauro l.; figueiredo, betânia. (orgs.) ciência, história e teoria. belo horizonte: argvmentvm, 2005. delizoicov, d. et al. “sociogênese do conhecimento e pesquisa em ensino: contribuições a partir do referencial fleckiano”. caderno brasileiro do ensino de física. florianópolis, sc, v. 19, número especial, pp. 52-69, jun. 2002. fleck, ludwik. “problems of the science of science”. in: cohen, r.; schnelle, t. cognition and facts: materials on ludwik fleck, dochdrecht: d. reidel, pp. 113-128. 1986. fleck, ludwik. gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico. (trans. g. otte, m. oliveira). belo horizonte: fabrefactum, 2010. ilari, rodolfo; oliveira, roberta freire de. “considerações linguísticas sobre de a gênese e o desenvolvimento de um fato científico: uma leitura semântica de ludwik fleck. in: revista da abralin (associação brasileira de linguística), no. 12, 1991. pp. 95-107. löwy, ilana. “ludwik fleck e a presente história das ciências”. in: manguinhos – história, ciências, saúde. rio de janeiro: fiocruz, v. 1, n. 1, 1994a. löwy, ilana. “fleck e a historiografia recente da pesquisa biomédica”. in: portocarrero, v. (org.) filosofia, história e sociologia das ciências: abordagens contemporâneas. rio de janeiro: fiocruz, 1994b. löwy, ilana. “introduction: ludwik fleck’s epistemology of medicine and biomedical sciences”. stud. hist. phil. biol & biomed. sc., n. 35, p. 437-445, 2004. lorenzetti, leonir; muenchen, cristiane; slongo, iône. “a recepção da epistemologia de fleck pela pesquisa em educação em ciências no brasil”. revista ensaio. belo horizonte: v.15, n. 03, p. 181-197, set-dez, 2013. lorenzetti, leonir; muenchen, cristiane; slongo, iône. “the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil”. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. n. 01, p. 52-71, december, 2016. santos, a. l. g. dos. uma construção dos saberes sobre a epidemia de aids os formulários de notificação de casos em perspectiva (1982-98). 1999. dissertação (mestrado em saúde pública) fundação oswaldo cruz, rio de janeiro – rj, 1999. schnelle, thomas; schäffer, lothar. “introdução” in: fleck, ludwik, gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico. (trans. g. otte, m. oliveira). belo horizonte: fabrefactum, 2010. 6 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 6-11 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck translation collective, translation styles: on the experience of translating ludwik fleck into brazilian portuguese mariana camilo de oliveira1 abstract: in this contribution i intend to describe the experience of translating fleck’s entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache into brazilian portuguese, an endeavor carried out alongside prof. georg otte and with the technical revision and foreword by prof. mauro condé, published in brazil in 2010. as the first translation of this author into portuguese, we had the extraordinary responsibility of setting fleck’s concepts in the new language, a crucial goal in philosophical translations. beyond creating a glossary, it was necessary to preserve part of fleck’s style and what he produces in the source language. on a lexical level, this meant considering expressions frequently used, as well as neologisms, archaisms, mots rares, self-references or references to a tradition. after this translating experience, it does not seem unfounded to suggest that translations are not exempt from what fleck formulates concerning the development of science. furthermore, it may be possible to develop a translation theory based on fleckian grounds. keywords: ludwik fleck; translation studies; translation of theory; german-portuguese translation; thought style; thought collective received: 09 august 2016. reviewed: 14 october 2016. accepted: 29 october 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction a translation of a work does not merely consist on passing from one language to another.2 besides its narrow notion of language, such assumption becomes especially relevant in ludwik fleck’s case (1896-1961): a polish-jewish microbiologist and later a classic author in philosophy of science, epistemology and sociology 1 mariana camilo de oliveira is a phd candidate at the university of buenos aires. dr. eleodoro lobos, 619 3°b. c.p.1405. autonomous city of buenos aires, argentina. e-mail: marianacamilodeoliveira@gmail.com 2 generally speaking, this observation refers to translation studies based on communication theory. those tendencies claim that translating consists simply on communicating the same message in another language. and it also understands a language as a plain relationship between signs. as we shall see, some authors, including fleck, allows us to think otherwise. mariana camilo de oliveira – translation collective, translation styles 7 of knowledge, who remained unknown for decades (schäfer; schnelle, 1980). moreover, since fleck wrote his ideas in both polish and german, it is not possible to be certain whether he formulated his concepts in one of the two languages first or in both of them simultaneously (cf. jarnicki, 2016). either way, it is a challenging aspect for readers and translators of fleck’s legacy. translating and thus referencing fleck’s legacy can impact the reception and circulation of his ideas, as well as the history and theory of science itself. as experts point out, his later appearance in the context of thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions led to a retroactive consideration of fleck not only as kuhn’s forerunner, but also as a pioneer of a broad-spectrum social constructivist epistemology.3 in this paper i intend to describe the experience of translating fleck’s 1935 entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache [genesis and development of a scientific fact] into brazilian portuguese, an endeavor carried out in cooperation with translator professor georg otte, and with the technical revision and foreword by professor mauro l. condé. the translated version of the book was published in brazil in 2010. on philosophical and theoretical translation translating fleck was an opportunity to ponder carefully about the issues connected to the translation of theory. moreover, it was an opportunity to reflect upon the relationship between thought and translation. the argentinian author and translator mariana dimópulos once established, in a very accurate and clear way, one of the differences between theoretical and literary translations. literary translations allow a shortcut: fiction. this means they allow translators leeway and flexibility through fiction. in contrast, translating theory offers no such shortcut. the concept is mainly considered the crucial point of a philosophical translation. according to dimópulos, translation of theory highlights the fact that a concept is basically a word (or syntagma) that does not have synonyms4 and thus cannot be paraphrased. also, in a twentieth-centurydiction definition, philosophy is precisely the art of inventing concepts (deleuze; guatarri, 2005 [1991], 8). as the first translators of fleck’s work into portuguese, we were given the extraordinary responsibility of establishing words for his concepts in the target language. the implication is that the way in which concepts are established in the target language interacts with the theory in question. they will be amalgamated, in fleckian terms, into a “thought collective”. translators of theoretical texts always have a responsibility and, when they work on a text that is often translated, they must take into account all of the established uses of a term in the target language. that is to say, they cannot just choose a word or phrase carelessly.5 with fleck our responsibility was even greater, as we were the very first translators of his work into portuguese. in a way, we are the initiators of a tradition: the tradition of transposing fleck’s words into portuguese. future translators will have the opportunity to establish a dialogue with our translation (metaphorically, a translating palimpsest). they will certainly have to read earlier versions of the text in their own language, something that is not necessarily essential in literary translation. on the contrary, in the latter, a certain freshness and naïveté can in fact contribute to one’s craft. to some extent, someone who translates ideas into portuguese determines how one thinks in portuguese. the translator provides the basic tools for thought in the specific terminology related to an author and sometimes even the very terminology for a whole field of knowledge. this process differs from the exchange of ideas in the present scientific community, for example, an exchange that is increasingly filled with borrowings from english. nevertheless, some philosophers often advocate the idea of “untranslatability”, which prescribes the use of a given term in the language in which it was coined. the 3 an extensive discussion (whether fleck was discovered by kuhn or how this “rediscovery” implied a domestication of fleck to be in a line that arrives in kuhn, as some experts would say) or simply a comparison between kuhn’s and fleck’s thoughts exceed the scope of this paper. nevertheless, it is worth refering the reader to an article that goes beyond the common key to interpret fleck related to kuhn’s rediscovery, which emphasizes the sociological aspects of his work. (cf. egloff, 2014, 69-85) 4 dimópulos, mariana, interviewed by biblioteca nacional mariano moreno, museo del libro y de la lengua, buenos aires, 16 april 2015. 5 as dimópulos points out, philosophical translations need to take into account the whole path of a term in both the source and target language. (dimópulos, mariana, interviewed by biblioteca nacional mariano moreno, museo del libro y de la lengua, buenos aires, 16 april 2015) mariana camilo de oliveira – translation collective, translation styles 8 notion of “untranslatability” is a locus communis in the translation of poetry, in a different way. although that idea is somewhat attractive, as a translator i like to bet on the possibility of translation. as dimópulos says, alluding to some theoretical tendencies, translations do not seek identity but equivalence. and there are of course thorny concepts or difficult fragments, but it is precisely because of those that translators exist.6 if a translation aims for equivalence, everything that is said is thus translatable. the unspeakable and ineffable surely exists,7 but if something is in fact said, it can be translated. translating ludwik fleck’s entstehung… after laying down these considerations on theoretical and philosophical translation, i would like to describe the process and some of the challenges we faced when we translated fleck. the translation was made under privileged circumstances due to the fact that the team had native speakers of both the source and the target language. perhaps these were not ideal conditions, since we did not have a polish speaking translator, but they were surely privileged ones. we used to joke that fleck, as someone who wrote so much about the collective, would have certainly approved of our method. such privilege allowed us, for example, to make use of the sprachgefühl in both languages and seek equivalence in the terms we used. however, it also required considerable agreement among us, and the establishment of a work dynamic that revolved around the document’s needs. our terminology database, our “glossary”, was built collectively, which involved preliminary discussions before taking decisions with regards to the terms we used. in addition to the translation of concepts, as mentioned above, there was a concern with fleck’s writing style, which presented us with various degrees of difficulty depending on the excerpt. this refers us to an essay entitled on difficulty, by george steiner, in which he addressed the difficulties of understanding a poem or any of its fragments. the author identified four types of difficulty: contingent, modal, tactical and ontological (steiner, 1978, 27, 29, 33 and 41 respectively). it does not seem unreasonable to think that, mutatis mutandis, some of these difficulties were also present in our translation of fleck. the analogy between translating from a foreign tongue and understanding an opaque passage is alluded by steiner in this essay, which stems closely from after babel (1975). on a lexical level, some of the factors we had to consider involved not only expressions frequently used by the author, idioms, but also neologisms, archaisms, self-references or references to a certain tradition, which gave rise to a number of unforeseen difficulties and challenges. in addition, fleck uses complex technical vocabulary originated in microbiology, which in turn required a lot of further research. for example, the third chapter of genesis and development of a scientific fact contained technical terms like bakteriolysine or hämolysine, which were followed in the fourth chapter by several anatomical descriptions. moreover, fleck referred to latin sources that were not translated into modern german. dr. antonio martinez de rezende, professor of latin at federal university of minas gerais, later joined the team and subsequently translated each of those uses. fleck created many other neologisms besides denkkollektiv. in fact, he is responsible for the introduction of a whole terminological texture/textile containing the morpheme denkas a prefix (e.g. denkzwang, denkverkehr, denkexperiment, denkgebilde). the terms fleck created that had the prefix denkmake them particularly illustrative of one of primo levi’s ideas on translation, mentioned in the “postfazione” of his kafka’s der prozess translation. he remarked that translating is tracking the tissue of the book under the microscope, penetrate it (cf. levi, 1983). quite similar to the work of a microbiologist, one might add. it exposes the contrast between the minimalist nature of the translator’s craft – seeing the text’s entrails –, on the one hand, and the perception of the whole afterwards, on the other. of all the neologisms that introduce new concepts in fleck, the idea of a denkkollektiv, a thought collective, was the one that caused a productive discussion among our team and the publishers. translating 6 dimópulos, mariana, interviewed by biblioteca nacional mariano moreno, museo del libro y de la lengua, buenos aires, 16 april 2015. 7 a monumental work on this matter – that brings up inexpressibility topoi (unsagbarkeitstopoi) in european literature – is ernst robert curtius’ european literature and the latin middle ages. as curtius mentions: “the root of the topoi to which i have given the above name is ‘emphasis upon inability to cope with the subject.’ from the time of homer onwards, there are examples in all ages. in panegyric, the orator ‘finds no words’ which can fitly praise the person celebrated.” (curtius, 2013, 159) mariana camilo de oliveira – translation collective, translation styles 9 denkkollektiv as “thought collective” (in portuguese, coletivo de pensamento) may have made it sound a bit less natural than something along the lines of “collective thought” (pensamento coletivo), but we decided to propose it as the translation in order to keep the semantic originality we observe in fleck. this was also motivated by the fact that in german compounds, the main idea is contained in the last root morpheme of the word, thus -kollektiv.8 it is instances like these that remind us that translating always involves making a decision, be it diverging from the original text or maintaining a certain conformity to it. after the international conference ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives, entirely dedicated on fleck’s translation and reception, that took place in wrocław, poland, on march 10th and 11th 2016, some new considerations could also be made in the translation of the morpheme denkin this concept. david östlund’s insights on the swedish translation brought up the philosophical terms that denote thought as an object or state and as an act or flux, noēma and noēsis. the last one highlights human thought as an action. should the morpheme in question be translated into swedish as a verb (att tänke) or a noun (tanke)? in the final swedish title it was decided for the noun. however, östlund presents analytical evidence for the verb (tänkekollektiv) (cf. östlund, 2016; lang, 2016). it is surely a pertinent discussion also in the portuguese language: on the assumption that the action should be emphasized in fleck, the translation “coletivo de pensar” (verb) should be considered, even though “coletivo de pensamento” (noun) might sound more natural or produces a bit less noise to native speakers ears. some other terms that, for different reasons, demanded specific consideration were lustseuche, lehre, syphidologie, heißhunger, brustkorb and few others that are worth addressing individually. lustseuche, which we translated as “venereal epidemic” (i.e. epidemia venérea), was given in english the translation of “carnal scourge”. to some, our equivalent of “venereal epidemic” implied more of a morality connotation than the original german term because of the wide semantic range of the word lust. at last we came to the conclusion that issues of morality were indeed relevant in fleck, which corroborates our choice. prescientific and moral issues surrounding syphilis had an important impact in the direction of the researches, as schäfer and schnelle highlight in the “einleitung” (schäfer; schnelle, 1980, xxx). the translation of lehre as doutrina, “doctrine” (could also be “theory”, lit. “teaching”) also gave rise to a relevant discussion, for the vocable “doctrine” implies something of a more strict nature in english as well as in the portuguese equivalent, doutrina. another point highlighted by schäfer and schnelle was that to fleck, the introduction of young scientists to a domain of knowledge does come with a sense of indoctrination (schäfer; schnelle, 1980, xxxvi). as other examples of challenging aspects for the translator, it is worth mentioning an eloquent metalinguistic term: the emphasis at the composing elements sinn, “sense”, and bild, “image” of the term sinnbild (symbol), in conjunction with “ideo-gramme” spelled with a hyphen, highlighting as well its compounds. also, the author uses the interesting archaism begeistung, which once referred to alchemists, but has now fallen out of use, and demands special attention while translating. gestalt, stimmung and many others require time and careful reflection. these last words recall ricœur’s allusion to the so-called grundwörter, which not always can have a corresponding term in the target language, as they condense many contexts and extensive textuality: and the difficulty is at its height with the primary words, the grundwörter, which the translator sometimes wrongly makes it a rule to translate word for word, the same word receiving a fixed equivalent in the target language. but this legitimate constraint has its limits, insofar as these great primary words, vorstellung, aufhebung, dasein, ereignis, are themselves summaries of long textuality where whole contexts are mirrored, to say nothing of the phenomena of intertextuality concealed in the actual stamp [la frappe] of the word. intertextuality which is sometimes equivalent to revival, transformation, refutation of earlier uses by authors who fall within the same tradition of thought or opposing traditions. (ricœur, [2004] 2006, 6) 8 a discussion about the translation of “denkkollektiv”, as well as “lehre” and “lustseuche” – where some of these ideas were also mentioned – and other aspects of this translating experience can be found in portuguese language in an interview made by miriam junghans to the translators. cf. otte, georg; camilo de oliveira, mariana, interviewed by junghans, miriam. junghans, miriam. “traduzindo fleck: entrevista com georg otte e mariana camilo de oliveira”. hist. cienc. saude-manguinhos, 2011, vol.18, n.4, 1151-1158. issn 0104-5970. available in: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702011000400011 consulted december 5, 2015. mariana camilo de oliveira – translation collective, translation styles 10 in turn, george steiner believed that every act of reading necessarily implies some kind of translation. “understanding as translation” is an eminent subtitle inside after babel. aspects of language and translation (cf. steiner, [1975] 1998). indeed, a number of operations done while someone is reading could easily be called translations. for instance, whenever we read a text written hundreds of years ago, we translate. to that effect, isn’t reading itself an act of translation? it is a point of contention in translation theory. the famous theoretician of language and translator henri meschonnic would perhaps disagree with that assertion; he stated that translating is not understanding, it supposes understanding, but it is something different (meschonnic, 2009, 8). without getting into too much detail, the crucial point made by meschonnic is that translation is politics and it is ethics. what does he mean by that? translation is not a science, nor it is an automatic operation; it is imbued with issues of various kinds. what impact does a text generate in a tongue? and conversely a tongue in a text? with the choice of language, one also chooses one’s interlocutors. what are the effects of writing in german at that time? these aspects explicit translation as ethics and politics. discussion i have highlighted the issues regarding the establishing of concepts in theoretical and philosophical translations; it is undoubtedly a most central point. nevertheless, we must not forget the topic of writing style in our task as translators. a classic example in theory of translation could be schleiermacher’s translation of plato into german. it is a point of discussion whether he rendered platonism more or less hermetic in german. without getting too much into the discussion of possible convergence between 20th century philosophy and literature, such choices are extremely important. if an author writes in long sentences, if they create any friction for the reader, it is all related to the theory one wishes to transmit. one can ask whether writing style is a matter of philosophy. i am led to think of fleck’s response, who understood the importance of the style, and made his own denkstil, for some perhaps an oxymoron. can thoughts come with a style? what implications would this idea have for someone who translates texts about thoughts? these are some of the issues that remain with us after this experience. fleck mentions, referring to styles of thought: “if a thought style is so far removed from ours as this, no common understanding is any longer possible. words cannot be translated and concepts have nothing in common with ours” (fleck, [1935] 1979, 139). fleck uses the term übersetzen to refer to our inability to understand a style of thinking from a time much earlier than our own. even though the verb meaning “to translate” is used here descriptively rather than conceptually, it begs the question: if it is so that we can hardly understand a thought much different from our own style of thinking, if our own thoughts coerce our interpretation in such powerful ways, how can a translator thus do his job? how can he make readable a text in another language, space and time? it would not be an understatement to say that our job implies a certain rate of failure. but perhaps and also with fleck we could say that the translations are a part of history: some translations remain for very long. some translations were made when the author was still alive, even centuries ago. others have an expiration date; they require revisions or new translations altogether. however translating encompasses a certain degree of failure, ricœur claims that it demands remembrance and mourning. for him, it is bereavement for the perfect translation, the one that bridges all the gaps in interlinguistic communication: “to give up the ideal of the perfect translation” (ricœur, 2006, 8). at the same time ricœur says that our task is not just to mourn painfully. those who venture in this craft experience something of a distinctive moment of happiness in translating, le bonheur, the good times, a momentary joy which is historically circumscribed. ricœur proposed the phrase “linguistic hospitality”, which is defined as the place “where the pleasure of dwelling in the other’s language is balanced by the pleasure of receiving the foreign word at home, in one’s own welcoming house” (ricœur, 2006, 10). finally, i would like reassert that translating a text interferes with the target language. the classic and extreme example is luther’s translation of the bible, which, according to some, established and standardized the german language. without going that far, i reiterate that translating a document into a new language affects the way of thinking in that language; it interferes with thought collectives that work in the target language. translating fleck came with the good news that the author is increasingly talked about in other languages; fleck is progressively spoken about in portuguese (cf. condé, 2016). his audience and his mariana camilo de oliveira – translation collective, translation styles 11 interference with thought collectives are extended. one must add that it brings additional joy to know that the portuguese language is being enriched, for it also expresses fleck’s concepts. references condé, mauro l. “prefácio à edição brasileira. um livro e seus prefácios: de pé de página a novo clássico”. in: fleck, ludwik. gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico. transl. georg otte and mariana camilo de oliveira. belo horizonte: fabrefactum, [1935] 2010. condé, mauro l. “the reception of ludwik fleck in brazil: from an anonymous visitor to a renowned thinker”. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. 1, 2016, 46-51. curtius, ernst robert. european literature and the latin middle ages. transl. willard r. trask. princeton and oxford: princeton univesity press, [1953] 2013. deleuze, gilles; guatarri, félix. qu’est-ce que la philosophie? paris: les éditions de minuit, [1991] 2005. dimópulos, mariana, interviewed by biblioteca nacional mariano moreno, museo del libro y de la lengua, buenos aires, 16 april 2015. “entrevistas alrededor de la traducción”. http://trapalanda.bn.gov.ar/jspui/handle/123456789/11215 consulted february 5, 2016. egloff, rainer. “gedankenverkehr, kreuzung und verdichtung. fleck, simmel und die völkerpsychologie”. ntm zeitschrift für geschichte der wissenschaften, technik und medizin. vol. 22, issue 1, feb. 2014, 69-85. fleck, ludwik. entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp verlag, [1935] 1980. fleck, ludwik. genesis and development of a scientific fact. transl. fred bradley and thaddeus j. trenn. chicago: the university of chicago press, [1935] 1979. fleck, ludwik. gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico. transl. georg otte and mariana camilo de oliveira. belo horizonte: fabrefactum, [1935] 2010. jarnicki, paweł. “on the shoulders of ludwik fleck? on the bilingual philosophical legacy of ludwik fleck and its polish, german and english translations”. the translator, vol. 22, n°. 3, 2016, 271 286. lang, sandra. “conference report: ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives – translations and receptions”. http://somatosphere.net/2016/06/conference-report-ludwik-flecks theory-of-thought-styles-and-thought-collectives-translations-and-receptions.html consulted august 2, 2016. levi, primo. “postfazione”. in: kafka, franz. il processo. transl. primo levi. torino: einaudi, 1983. meschonnic, henri. ética y política del traducir. transl. hugo savino. buenos aires: leviatán, 2009. otte, georg; camilo de oliveira, mariana, interviewed by junghans, miriam. junghans, miriam. “traduzindo fleck: entrevista com georg otte e mariana camilo de oliveira”. hist. cienc. saude manguinhos, 2011, vol.18, n.4, 1151-1158. issn 0104-5970. available in: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702011000400011 consulted december 5, 2015. östlund, david. “ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae – or, does a pair of dots in swedish matter?” in: transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1, 2016, 12-20. ricœur, paul. on translation. transl. eileen brennan. new york: routledge, [2004] 2006. schäfer, lothar; schnelle, thomas. ludwik flecks begründung der soziologischen betrachtungsweise in der wissenschaftstheorie. in: fleck, ludwik. entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp verlag, [1935] 1980. steiner, george. after babel. aspects of language and translation. new york: oxford university press, [1975] 1998. steiner, george. on difficulty and other essays. oxford: oxford university press, 1978. microsoft word 16richmond first layout 182 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 182-189 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access journal book review is fallibilism mistaken? menachem fisch, creatively undecided: toward a history and philosophy of scientific agency. chicago and london: university of chicago press, 2017. 304 pp. isbn: 978022651451 – $ 37,50 reviewed by: sheldon richmond1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.16 ____________________________________________________________________________________ the history of science according to menachem fisch goes as follows: scientists work both within frameworks that are constitutive of the normative standards for the frameworks, and also with critical rationalism where those frameworks are revised through criticism. this creates a dilemma: since rational criticism depends on frameworks, rational criticism is inherently limited. hence, there will always be uncriticised areas. however, science as a fully rational endeavour cannot function without frameworks. how then can frameworks be fully rationally criticised and changed when rationally required? solution (according to fisch): the rational change of frameworks and their normative standards of rationality occurs through a psychological process of seeking out new frameworks and modifying one’s belief-systems by use of rational criticism from alternative frameworks or belief-systems; by creating new hybrid frameworks partially composed of the old framework, and an alternative framework – done for the reason of getting the best of both “worlds” (frameworks as constitutive of normative systems) and ridding both “worlds” (or normative systems) of their worst components. background: exposing fisch’s tacit interpretative schema for science this history of science according to fisch is itself a hybrid of fisch’s old framework, karl popper’s critical rationalism philosophy, and the new frameworks not only of kuhn’s paradigm-shift of scientific revolutions, but also of contemporary followers of wittgenstein’s forms of life formula; contemporary neo-kantians; and various sociologists of science in the inter-disciplinary approaches to science lately known under the umbrella term of science studies. all these frameworks for the story of science are weak in explaining how the transition from the old framework to a new framework in science can be rational. at the best, there is a very thin theory of rational transition such as the later kuhn’s instrumentalist rationality using poincaré’s conventionalist-aesthetic of simplicity or michael friedman’s neo 1 sheldon richmond phd is an independent researcher. e-mail: askthephilosopher@gmail.com sheldon richmond book review 183 kantian/neo-idealist coherentism-completeness and consistency. unfortunately, according to fisch, popper’s neat story that frameworks are a myth, and science is in a continual revolution through criticism is blind to normative change. contra popper, the normative element of science is itself subject to change, and is itself constituted by the metaphysical elements of science, also known as frameworks. fisch develops a three stage approach to getting across his history of science. in the first stage, fisch explains how he came himself to wander in the intellectual desert of freeing himself from the blinder of popper’s universal rationalism – his own intellectual crisis with his popperian belief-system, a type of phenomenology of personal framework implosion or a form of creative self-destruction. in the second stage, fisch searches the literature and hits upon the concept of trading zone (born in the mind of peter galison) -where scientists, technologists, engineers – all from different disciplines and outlooks – get together, hash out and exchange ideas, and techniques (also similar in concept to andrew pickering’s melange). this wandering ultimately leads fisch to develop a new hybrid philosophy. fisch uses the concept of trading zone to explain rational belief-system change or framework change. fisch’s own hybrid philosophy is a philosophy for advocating hybrid philosophies that involve creative-destruction: destroy the worst ideas from alternative frameworks, and synthesize the new framework through combining the best ideas from alternative frameworks while in the trading zone of exploring or rationally criticizing alternative frameworks, especially and including self-criticizing one’s own old framework. in fisch’s case, he argues for “destroying” popper’s worst idea that frameworks are myths, and kuhn’s worst idea of a-rational paradigm-shift; and fisch argues for transforming popper’s idea of critical rationality and kuhn’s idea of paradigm (-shift) by integrating those ideas into the newly created fischian framework of framework change through rational criticism of alternative frameworks. the third stage has fisch testing his new historiographical framework for science against how the framework for meta-mathematics or formalist mathematics developed in nineteenth century england (in the analytical society). fisch’s first stage very deeply and adequately outlines the problem-situation (whoops, this is a popperian term) for the book. fisch does this by way of a phenomenology of his own intellectual crisis, and how he came to swap out his own intellectual tools for new intellectual tools – or better and more accurately put: how fisch came to forge new intellectuals tools out of the material of current but inadequate tools in widespread use among historians and philosophers of science. i want to step back from fisch’s own account, though i will return to it, and set the stage for fisch’s book using a different and alien perspective and set of tools; a bricolage (or less technically put, mishmash) of tool sets. (my approach may sound strange but it actually is in accordance with and exemplifies fisch’s own thesis that hybrid approaches arise from rational considerations and result in rational framework-transitions. looking at the history and philosophy of science we can see two approaches: one i will call detached, and the other attached. to repeat: this is my terminology and not fisch’s, but a terminology and point of view that i think will help illuminate both the problem-situation that fisch confronts and the novelty of his own solution to that problem-situation. the approaches are independent and can cut across the various schools, whether inductivist, neo-positivist, wittgensteinian, popperian, polanyian, and so forth. the detached approach treats their theories and the theories of others as instruments, tools, techniques or heuristics that one uses according to the task at hand, and uses in a detached manner as fungible. for instance, one loses a hammer, and then goes to the hardware store and acquires an identical one, though without any nicks due to long usage, or sees a newer and better model, and purchases that one instead. the attached approach treats theories as belief-systems composed of beliefs of relative importance depending on the place of specific beliefs relative to the identity of the system as a whole. the beliefs that are part of the core of the identity of the belief-system of the individual person, of the individual’s psychology, as a whole become axiomatic. one sheldon richmond book review 184 might say that the unity of physics, as in einstein’s failed but persistent attempt until the end to develop a unified field theory for physics, became axiomatic for einstein’s belief-system. in this approach, the emphasis is on the psychology of the individuals in a social group who share a belief-system. changes in the core beliefs change the identity of the individual, the social group, and the belief-system. the detached and the attached approaches are extremes of the spectrum concerning the issue of how to treat one’s intellectual situation. does one treat one’s intellectual situation as a grab-bag of tools for solving puzzles? or, does one treat one’s intellectual situation as composed of beliefs that are formative of one’s self, of one’s personal identity, where challenges to one’s beliefs are not merely intellectual puzzles, but are challenges to one’s identity or with how one identifies one’s self as a unique individual though part of a social group with similar identities? in terms of philosophers, does one identify oneself with a hilary putnam who was constantly changing views before others could finish publishing their critiques; or, with a karl popper who seemed to be elaborating, exemplifying, and extending the views he held from his early days on the fringe of the vienna circle? how does menachem fisch’s book fit into this context? where does fisch enter this stage with two conflicting scenarios? does fisch’s argument in this book advocate for a putnam-type who actually adopts popper’s theory of rationality where views need to be carefully and thoroughly scrutinized through rational criticism, and then exchanged for new views that better meet the test of rational criticism and the logic of the problem-situation? or, does fisch’s argument advocate for a popper-type or einstein-type in practice, who holds onto views and tirelessly criticizes the opposing views, but not their own views, which they defend as if their views were a masada/fort alamo? the first way above (the putnam-type in practice) sees the detached approach – the bricolage or mishmash approach – as positive for intellectual growth. the second way above (the popper or einstein-type in practice) sees the attached approach, as required for the authentic and integral intellectual who holds fast to unpopular and critical views against intellectual fashions. do fisch’s theory and argument emphasize the detached or the attached approached for science? does fisch see scientists using a mishmash of theories, heuristic techniques, and technologies – as detached from the intellectual and technological tools as instruments for scientific discovery, explanation, and prediction? or, does fisch see scientists developing or contributing to belief-systems that the scientist attempts to promulgate among the community of scientists as adequate for discovery, explanation and prediction – as attached or integral to the identity of the scientist and scientific community. the background problem or logic of the situation for the historiography and philosophy of science that i am exploring is not the customary issues of instrumentalism and conventionalism on one side, versus realism on the other side; nor is it one of social constructionism on one side versus realism and representationalism on the other side; nor, is it one of the personal and subjective on one side versus the impersonal and objective on the other side. rather, the logic of the situation confronted by fisch for his own historiography and philosophy of science cuts across and through the above issues and rather focuses on what i have been calling the attitude of scientists (and all intellectuals in general): the attitude of detachment versus attachment to the products of their intellectual work. fisch, i propose, in this book, hovers between the two attitudes. according to fisch’s argument in this book, scientists are critical and as such require a detached attitude towards their intellectual productions; however, scientists are also attached to their intellectual productions as integral to their self-identity, and hence suspend criticism for commitment. fisch’s own approach to the historiography and philosophy of science is binocular – seeing the world of science through both poles of the detached-attached spectrum; or bi-cognitive – interpreting the world of science with the two dimensions of detached/attached axes for fisch’s intellectual coordinate system for the intellectual biographies of scientists in their specific scientific communities. sheldon richmond book review 185 in the following for my interpretation of fisch’s book, i will use the metaphor of bicognition where one interprets intellectual life as having an intellectual coordinate system with two orthogonal axes, one axis is for representing the dimension of detachment in intellectual life; and the other axis is for representing the dimension of attachment in intellectual life. i don’t see fisch as the neo-hegelian (see especially pp. 46, 101 and 129) that he sees himself who synthesizes two antithetical viewpoints into a new integral higher monocular viewpoint (where other antithetical viewpoints emerge to continue the dialectic until there is the ultimate absolutely monocular viewpoint). rather, i see fisch as a tacit pluralist who subliminally realizes that multi-dimensions are required for interpretation of intellectual life. in that respect, i am applying fisch’s own tacit framework as an intellectual coordinate system for interpreting his own intellectual life found in and between the words of this book. i emphasize: i am not imposing my own interpretative scheme; rather, i am using the tacit interpretative scheme for interpreting fisch’s book that fisch has subliminally developed in the very clearly articulated phenomenology of his own intellectual travel away from karl popper and towards his own fischian philosophy, and as well as that fisch has subliminally developed in his own novel interpretation of the nineteenth century short-lived but profoundly important analytical mathematics school in england (cambridge university). this ends the background section, and next, i will discuss fisch’s argument, self-application of his argument (or phenomenology), and some novel but unasked questions raised by the book. argument: how fisch tells us how to go beyond the popperian-kuhnian debate self-understanding is retrospective. retrospective sight is not equivalent to hindsight in the way that hindsight is used to wonder why we did not choose a better course of action that would have avoided errors that foresight misses. retrospective sight is the only sight we have available to us when attempting to achieve self-understanding (not self-evaluation nor self-criticism). using this principle, that retrospective sight is better for self-understanding, one could start reading fisch’s book with part two: we philosophers, chapter 2, “the philosophical framework” (pp.39ff.). it is this philosophical framework outlined in chapter 2, that informs the structure and approach of the entire book, including, part one: i (orientations) where fisch outlines how his disappointment with his early philosophical outlook. karl popper’s later or post-kuhnian philosophy and historiography of science guided fisch’s early approach to his studies of (and books about) nineteenth century mathematics and philosophy, as well as his book about rabbinics. [the irony is that many philosophers who came upon popper after kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions hit the scene in 1962, came upon a popper who was doubly out of the mainstream – rejected by the disciples of the vienna circle for not stepping in line with the programme for a universal physicalist language for the sciences; and rejected by the new disciples of the young kuhn for holding onto the positivist assumption that science was defined by its logic or methodology, rather than by its practice – sociology and psychology.] the second chapter departs from fisch’s own early popperian philosophy, in its outline of three “biases”. the first, is framework dependency – the social aspect of science. the second bias is rational self-criticism – the individual agent or psychological aspect of science. the third bias, fisch refers to as the “[...] ‘hegelian’ bias or set of commitments that underlies this study.” (p.46). the third bias is explained, according to fisch in his third chapter, “the problem for science”. fisch develops his self-styled hegelian bias through a very hegelian dialectical criticism of various philosophers who grapple with the two horns of the dilemma created by the first two biases of framework dependency and the importance of relentless sheldon richmond book review 186 popperian all-consuming self-criticism. the first horn of the dilemma is that since frameworks constitute even the norms of criticism and self-criticism, those norms of criticism themselves can only be reinforced by self-criticism. the second horn of the dilemma is that the norms of self-criticism require self-criticism, and so cannot be held free of criticism without a loss of self-consistency, self-integrity, and self-identity or agency as a critical rationalist. the solution to the horns of the dilemma arises through fisch’s critical reflections on those philosophers outside the popper school of thought who recognize the importance of the two biases: the principle of framework dependency and the principle of critical rationalism (as self-criticism). here is fisch’s solution very clearly and concisely articulated in the following: when we are left to our own devices, the self-critical fault lines of the reflective self are beyond control and remain rigid and unchangeable from within. but trusted criticism can change them for us. when the rich intrapersonal dialogue of the self is set within the context of an equally rich interpersonal critical dialogue with others, effective transformative normative self-criticism becomes a real option. (p.97) where does one go to find “trusted criticism”? moreover, who cares – how does one who has become transformed, or has changed their normative framework, get others in their intellectual community to adopt the new or modified normative framework? the discussion of those questions, about trust and care, is carried out in the fourth chapter, “toward a narratology of scientific framework transitions” (p. 100 ff.) first: intellectual trust is gained when working with others – intellectually trading with others as in “[peter] galison’s notion of a scientific trading zone proves extremely helpful in ways he himself failed to anticipate.” (p.106) by engaging in mutual discussion with others from alternative normative frameworks or even alternative disciplines, and with the development of intermediary modes of communication, one is exposed to different ways of thinking as well as exposed to criticisms from trustful “strangers”. second: one who has come up with novel changes in their normative framework, and is well placed in their intellectual community, is able to jar others into reconsidering their old normative framework and adopting the new normative framework of their exemplary colleague. (see p. 126.) what has fisch so far accomplished in his argument for resolving the dilemma of joining the principle of framework dependence (at least for normative standards regarding scientific rationality) and the principle of critical rationalism (where all criticism including self-criticism, self-applies)? fisch’s own self-interpretation of his resolution as quasi-hegelian as a synthesis of two dialectically opposed elements, i think is misleading. rather, i think fisch has created a two-dimensional axis system for historically and philosophically interpreting scientific revolutions, as follows. one axis is for the sociological issue of framework application and transition. the other axis is for the psychological issues of doubt, commitment, ambivalence due to applying the external criticism of trusted criticism to one’s own framework. these coordinate, orthogonal, axes provide a reference frame for describing the logic of the situation for science during a period of revolution or transition. the logic of the situation involves exemplary scientists who develop a modified version of the old framework; unsettle their colleagues to the degree that their colleagues recognize the value of the modified and improved framework for their own research; and so, launch a scientific revolution or at least a transition in scientific thinking and practice. how, then, does fisch’s argument with its bicognitive approach of two coordinate orthogonal axes – one for the social dimension of frameworks, and one for the psychological dimension of belief-system questioning and transformation – apply to fisch’s own development (phenomenology) of this new framework for the historiography and philosophy of science? sheldon richmond book review 187 phenomenology: how fisch uses a self-critical autobiography for illustrating his new framework a quasi-freudian approach where popper is the father and fisch is the son with a freudian oedipus-complex where the son in intellectual reality metaphorically kills the father, is whether true or false, beside the point. it would be especially irrelevant for a popper who saw psychoanalysis as a pseudo-science. popper also was unhappy with freud’s disciple, adler and adlerian individual psychology, where the younger sibling with an inferiority complex rivals the elder siblings (other philosophical metaphorical children of popper) through becoming an intellectual revolutionary. both types of failed attempts in psychology (at least in terms of meeting the standards of popper’s theory of science) are neither here nor their in application to the phenomenology of fisch’s self-described journey away from popper’s and popperian historiography and philosophy of science, as detailed in the first chapter (which is also the first part) of the book. how fisch sees his development is indeed philosophically speaking generic popper of the critical and problem-solving approach to intellectual history. fisch realized that his attempts at applying popper simpliciter to the history of nineteenth century mathematics failed. rather, than conjectures and refutations with respect to an unsolved problem, what seemed to be was something very different: stubbornness in rejecting a deeply problematic framework with doubts arising, and then an attempt to form a hybrid framework that resolved the criticism and doubts. this situation covers several problematic issues: first, there are frameworks, rather than isolated conjectures; and what is subject to criticism are not so much the conjectures or isolated theories, but the general over-arching frameworks. in fisch’s early studies of nineteenth century mathematics in england, (cambridge university) -in particular, george peacock, john herschel, william whewell, and william rowan hamilton – he was disappointed to find that karl popper’s model (with a dash of robin george collingwood) missed the mark. in fisch’s current vocabulary as developed in the second part of the book (that i discussed above), here is how fisch explains his disappointment: indeed, the popperian-collingwoodian vocabulary to which i was committed failed to do justice to these works [of peacock, hamilton, hershel, and whewell – and later discussed in the third part of the book, charles babbage, and augustus de morgan]. rational agents, it implied, were expected to face up to the problems they encountered, to boldly address and solve them. an inability to fully relinquish past commitments in favour of less problematic options, it firmly implied, is a form of weakness, a lapse of rationality. the ideal coupling of keen and impartial refutation with bold and creative conjecture leaves no room and has little patience for the apparent dithering these works displayed. (p.15) by the standards of generic popper, self-applied, it was time for fisch to look elsewhere among trusted critics with alternative frameworks – that is through hybridizing popper with fisch’s own later developed approach to the historiography and philosophy of science. after retrospectively applying fisch’s solution to the dilemma of framework dependence conjoined with critical rationality to the problem fisch faced when fisch found that the works of the nineteenth century mathematicians and philosophers that he studied with popperian philosophy, were a misfit with popperian philosophy, fisch looked prospectively towards those philosophers in various disciplines who took frameworks ultra-seriously though most either downplayed or ignored critical rationality. fisch eloquently states his crisis of belief in popperian philosophy: sheldon richmond book review 188 [...] what initially broke the hold of popper’s philosophy on my thinking, in favor of a position closer to kuhn’s, was the realization that the early victorian works i was studying focused almost exclusively on second-order, meta-scientific, and metamathematical questions that bore decisively on first-order research, but with regard to which, of themselves, popperian fallibilism seemed quite irrelevant. (p. 27). fisch was enough of a popperian fallibilist to recognize a failure in fallibilism, confront the problem, and search wherever fisch could find it, for a resolution of his problemsituation. on the sociological axis of fisch’s newfound framework, fisch saw an objective problem-situation where popperian fallibilism, faltered by its own standards. on the psychological axis of fisch’s newfound framework, fisch, in his own words in the first chapter of the book that constitutes the first part of the book, “dithered” and “ambivilated” between the ideas of framework dependency and critical rationality. the psychological break, according to fisch, with fisch’s commitment to popperian fallibilism came when fisch found a way through the impasse by seeing in his own situation that had internalized the criticisms of kuhn and others against the idea that anomalies amount to refutations. rather than minimize the criticisms of the theory of falsification of conjectures by way of refutation, fisch transformed the criticisms into challenges for developing a new framework. the new framework recognizes, according to fisch, that psychological self-criticism and doubt can be used to both look for alternatives and fuse alternatives with the old framework or way of doing things. fisch’s new framework is a fusion philosophy (my terminology, or “hybrid framework”, fisch’s terminology) that recognizes that frameworks can become a fusion of alternative if not competing frameworks. not quite “hegelian”, i think, in philosophy, but more multi-dimensional (or at least bi-dimensional and bi-cognitive) in philosophy. alternative frameworks are held in balance or at least can be treated as coordinate axes for understanding intellectual developments, according to my interpretation of the tacit dimension of fisch’s book. i leave the reader to explore the following question by reading the third part of fisch’s book: does fisch’s bi-cognitive approach or fusion philosophy (in my terminology) of framework dependency and critical rationality, resolve the problems fisch found when attempting to apply fallibilist philosophy to understanding victorian (nineteenth century) mathematics and science? for the sake of argument, let us assume that fisch’s fusion philosophy works out. in that case, there are very important unasked questions to consider, which i will raise in the concluding section. unasked questions the point that alternative frameworks can be fused (or “sublated” according to hegelian terminology) or, at least, used as multi-dimensional axes for interpreting alternative intellectual outlooks, creates another paradox or question that needs asking but was not asked in this book. fusing alternative frameworks where frameworks are constitutive of at least norms presumes that frameworks are neither comprehensive nor complete. in other words, fusing alternative frameworks presumes that frameworks are porous. if so, is not the concept of framework misleading? rather, could it be that people (as i have assumed in my background section) are required both psychologically and sociologically, to act stubbornly with regard to their belief-sets? if so, how stubborn can a person or community act, without becoming over rigid or frozen in their ways? furthermore, if we suppose the porosity of frameworks, then the question of how to escape, modify, criticise frameworks is an inadequate question – because frameworks as sheldon richmond book review 189 porous have inbuilt exit doors, in their incompleteness and inconsistencies. rather, a more powerful question would be, assuming the porosity of frameworks, when should a community of intellectuals treat their “identifying” theories (belief-sets) as mere conjectural intellectual tools open to replacement? that is, when do we decide to explore among alternative outlooks (metaphysical systems, if you will) or decide to hold firm and apply the monocular outlook? is the road to truth paved with a pluralist approach or a monocular approach, or both? if i have to ask one unasked question, it would be this question: is ambivalence among alternative frameworks really due to the psycho-sociological state of thinkers during a time of intellectual and social transition? in other words, and this is a sharper form of the question, is ambivalence (ambivilating, in fisch’s terminology) the psychological symptom of a person who is unwilling to live with open options, incompleteness, and incoherency – or simply put, a plurality – in an open universe where evolution is evolving? 226 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 226-232 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article article galileo and the medici: post-renaissance patronage or post-modern historiography?1 michael segre2 abstract: at the beginning of the eighties of the last century, the issue of “patronage” began to arouse scholarly interest and gained importance. galileo became a test case: his importance, and the importance of patronage – and that of the medici in particular – go beyond the historical junction of the scientific revolution and have corollaries in the more general attitude to science and knowledge. this case furnished a new line of research for the historical sociology of science. as far as galileo is concerned, my claim is that the new trend belongs to post-modern historiography, rather than to post-renaissance medici patronage. keywords: galileo; medici; patronage; post-modern historiography received: 13 february 2017. accepted: 03 april 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.17 _____________________________________________________________________________ at the beginning of the eighties of the last century, the issue of “patronage” began to arouse scholarly interest and gained importance. galileo became a test case: his importance, and the importance of patronage – and that of the medici in particular – go beyond the historical junction of the scientific revolution and have corollaries in the more general attitude to science and knowledge. this case furnished a new line of research for the historical sociology of science. as far as galileo is concerned, my claim is that the new trend belongs to post-modern historiography, rather than to post-renaissance medici patronage. in 1985 the late richard westfall published an interesting article in isis under the title “galileo and the telescope,” arguing that galileo’s main concern then was not so much astronomy as the telescope’s capacity to ensure his own future at the tuscan court (westfall 1985). westfall lamented that quite generally, the history of science had been excessively dominated by nineteenth-century concerns. he suggested drawing more on seventeenth-century ideas, whereby “the subtle alchemy of patronage transmuted an object of science into an objet d'art to amuse and flatter a prince” (westfall 1985, 15). he concluded that patronage could well have been the most pervasive institution of pre-industrial society, as well as an avenue leading us into the fruitful social history of the scientific revolution. he thereby offered a solution to a rarely mentioned historical problem: today scientists are academics or employees in industry, and both kinds of 1 this article is based on a lecture held at the bar-hillel colloquium for the history, philosophy and sociology of science, jerusalem, on march 9, 2005. 2 michael segre is a professor at the gabriele d’annunzio university. address: 66100 chieti scalo (ch), italy. email: segre@unich.it. michael segre – galileo and the medici: post-renaissance patronage or post-modern historiography? 227 scientists scarcely existed prior to the scientific revolution (segre 2015). what, then, was their economic base? answer: they were private pensioners of rich and powerful patrons. westfall’s claims are interesting – although doubtful – and they deserve serious consideration. his challenge was welcome. as one result, meticulous investigations of galileo’s ascent to the tuscan court were conducted, albeit not until twenty years after his article had appeared. to use the contemporary jargon, historians of science and of the sociology of science tried to reconstruct the "strategies" involved, such as "microphysics of patronage" and "self-fashioning of a client versus his patron,” flavoured by a variety of “practices” drawn from realms such as etiquette, rhetoric, art, mythology, and even emblems. 3 the conclusion was that science would not have evolved the way it has but for the kind of patronage that galileo had inaugurated. some historians went so far as to claim that in galileo’s case and in early modern europe in general, patronage and science were more or less coextensive. two difficulties throw doubt on these views. the first is historical: in the galilean case, patronage ultimately played a relatively restricted role, if any, in the advancement of science; his great contributions were quite independent of the patronage that he enjoyed. the second difficulty is philosophical: patronage – particularly when offered by a potentate to a courtier – came with the demand for a measure of conformity. how can this be reconciled with science’s demand for freedom of thought, which is essential for scientific innovation? indeed, even galileo suffered pressure to conform, and it took a strong character and a brilliant intellect to overcome it. and so it is tempting to suggest that scientists are under pressure to conform, and only those who overcome this pressure have any chance to innovate. this is a romantic, kuhnian view that scarcely squares with the complex and varied historical record (kuhn 1996 [1962]).4 without belittling the importance of patronage, let me call for caution; occasionally it may have been overemphasized following an attempt to conform to a certain historiographic trend. galileo and patronage at the beginning, galileo’s move to the tuscan court, his acceptance of a patronage, was advantageous to both sides, and to the medici even more than to him. in a period of utter decline, the presence of galileo at their court enhanced their prestige: they could present themselves as patrons of the new, emerging science and pursue the traditional cultural policy of their dynasty. but this was no more than a temporary aura and a luxury that they could dispense with. in the long run, his presence at court did not produce any particular advantage either to the medici or to tuscan culture. galileo’s benefit was mainly financial; the medici granted him enough leisure to concentrate on his scientific work with no teaching duties. his remuneration, incidentally, was paid not by the court but by the university of pisa – a fact that raises a question concerning the extent and nature of the medici patronage (galilei 1890-1909, 233-264). independently of the source of money, galileo got all he asked for and more: in addition to good financial support and no teaching duties, he was able to take advantage of all the services a court could offer. furthermore, he was totally free to proceed with his work – an exceptional situation as we shall soon see, especially in tuscan post-renaissance patronage. nevertheless, the outcome was disastrous. in 1616 the catholic church prohibited galileo from teaching heliocentrism, and in 1633 the roman inquisition sentenced him to life imprisonment. the grand duke of tuscany was only able to offer him his carriage to go to rome and to put at his disposal the services of his embassy. history cannot rest on subjunctive conditionals, but these have their role to play. so let us note that all this might not have happened had galileo remained a well-paid civil servant of the relatively strong and independent republic of venice. moreover, much of galileo’s contribution to science was made prior to his return to tuscany: his major work, the dialogue of 1632, is essentially a popular presentation of previous thoughts, admittedly on the highest literary level, but still scientifically not very innovative. even 3 a substantial contribution to this literature is made by mario biagioli, galileo courtier: the practice of science in the culture of absolutism (1993). he describes galileo’s science as part and parcel of his career and self-fashioning at the tuscan court. the book has been debated, battles have been fought, and the history of science has moved on. the inclination to conform, however, is always present. 4 kuhn allows scientific leaders to be sufficiently nonconformist to break the framework occasionally, but “normal” scientists conform both in following the paradigm and in switching allegiance to a new one when told to. see segre (2016). michael segre – galileo and the medici: post-renaissance patronage or post-modern historiography? 228 without galileo’s campaign, the new astronomy would have established itself thanks to the contributions of great thinkers such as kepler, huygens, and newton – and possibly in a less traumatic way. taking galileo as a test case, then, scales down the importance of patronage. why, then, give so much importance to patronage? to answer the question, one should consider a broader historical and historiographical context. as far as history is concerned, a look at the development of the medici patronage could be helpful, and this requires extending the discussion from history of science to history of art, and more specifically to history of art patronage. the basic question is: what was the purpose of the medici patronage? any question about patronage can be too ambiguous to receive a clear answer, as the very concept of patronage is both broad and ambiguous. collins english language dictionary, for example, defines it generally as “help and financial support given by someone to a person or group,” to enhance enterprises such as science, art, or culture (collins 1987). consider then, for instance, a later case – that of luigi galvani. after resigning his chair at the university of bologna to avoid taking an oath of loyalty to the napoleonic cisalpine republic, galvani was sheltered by his brother. can we call this patronage? and can one call the salary that the university of pisa grudgingly paid galileo “court patronage”? the issue gets even more complex if one considers that the medici patronage began in the fifteenth century, lasted three centuries, and involved the arts and letters at first and the sciences only later. although the literature describing patronage is enormous, interestingly it overlooks, to the best of my knowledge, the question of whether the stipend that the university of pisa paid galileo was a patronage proper. it seems this literature even overlooks the basic question of the purpose of this stipend or similar ones. even with no expertise in the history of the medici or the history of art, it is not hard to notice that the style of patronage varied in different times and under different rulers. it is likewise not hard to notice that the tradition of patronage began as a successful private enterprise and developed into a less successful state project. the first members of the medici family to rule florence were bankers whose motivation was protecting their finances. the complex structure of the florentine comune, which some historians call a “league of mafia families,” needed – inter alia – good terms with artists and their guilds (trexler 1980, 27). the first famous medici “godfather,” in the first half of the fifteenth century, was cosimo the elder, a high-style businessman and a shrewd politician who promoted the arts in an enlightened way. he gave his clients total freedom, at least occasionally, even if this meant the deliberate overriding of current morality. an example of this is donatello’s “david,” which he commissioned in 1434, and which was the first life-size nude to be cast in bronze since classical times, with a playful, sensuous, and androgynous body. cosimo instituted his patronage for diverse reasons. it seems he had religious motives in addition to his personal taste and his interest in local politics: as his earthly enterprises were not always spotless, he may have hoped to redress the balance with pious deeds. one of his major sponsorships was the restoration of the dominican cloister of san marco in florence. in its cells one can still admire beato angelico’s wonderful, meditative frescos, and cosimo’s own cell testifies to his spiritual concern. the heritage of cosimo the elder reappeared in his legendary grandson, lorenzo “the magnificent,” who supported artists and men of letters both in his own personal interest and in that of the state. on the personal level, lorenzo was a learned individual. he enriched the medici libraries with rare manuscripts, collected rarities, and sponsored crafts neglected by traditional patrons. on the political level, lorenzo was more ambitious than his grandfather and endeavored to win for florence and its scattered territories the cultural leadership of italy. he used art and artists for diplomatic and propaganda purposes, and strengthened ties with other princes and states by offering artistic advice and art objects and by recommending artists. yet just half a century ago the leading french historian andré chastel argued, under the provocative title “le mythe de la renaissance: age d’or et catastrophes” (“the renaissance myth: age of gold and catastrophes”), that lorenzo’s time had ran far less smoothly than his legend suggests. the quality of intellectual production at the time was lower than that of the earlier renaissance. also, lorenzo’s cultural enterprise seems to have been excessive at times and a burden on the family’s and state’s finances (chastel michael segre – galileo and the medici: post-renaissance patronage or post-modern historiography? 229 1959, 341-351).5 together with wars and plagues, it brought social unrest, which – after lorenzo’s death in 1492 – raised savonarola to power and forced the medici family into temporary exile. interestingly, savonarola came from the very san marco cloister that cosimo the elder had restored, and his dominican followers in san marco initiated a reactionary, anti-humanist, and later anti-copernican trend directly related to galileo’s trial.6 the first serious challenge to galileo and to copernicanism originated in san marco in 1614. and this is but one example of the unpredictability of the results of patronage. incidentally, the florentine decline at the end of the fifteenth century is depicted in a clear manner, with a nuance of sadness, in botticelli’s later works. this decline is the reason why leading high renaissance artists from tuscany, including michelangelo and leonardo, had to try their luck elsewhere. a century later, much the same happened to the young innovative mathematician and academic galileo, who went to padua. thus, it seems clear that at least part of the aura surrounding lorenzo’s patronage is an artificial production – his own or that of later historians. moreover, during the period in which italian rulers were competing with each other to raise their prestige and embellish their cities and palaces, european nations were taking shape. it was an epochal change that heralded the modern era. fine arts could contribute little to assist the italian principalities to keep up with these developments. niccolò machiavelli foresaw all this at the beginning of the sixteenth century and suggested political remedies.7 he offered the medici his advice, together with his good offices, when they returned from exile; they maltreated him and shoved him aside. that is the picture of tuscany at the beginning of the sixteenth century. during this century that is described as post-renaissance, the medici became the absolute rulers of most of the tuscan territory, received the titles “duke” and later “grand duke,” and hoped, at times pathetically, to obtain a royal crown. they deluded themselves that culture could be instrumental in achieving this ambition, and this opened an interesting new chapter in their patronage: post-renaissance patronage. the main aim of the first tuscan duke, cosimo i, was to emulate the great european powers, spain in particular (forster 1971; segre 1991a, 7-9, 144-145). cosimo i, unlike cosimo the elder and lorenzo the magnificent, was no intellectual. his goal was not so much to encourage culture as to use it in his effort to glorify tuscany and his own self. he introduced a complex art of patronage which was carried on by his heirs and lasted over a century. briefly, duke cosimo i raised culture to the status of a major official state project. this included financing tuscan cultural institutions (universities and academies in particular), and at the same time putting them under strict state control so that they could serve political purposes. cosimo i also used culture as a means for the prevention of possible opposition.8 among the projects that he invested in as methods for the glorification of his dynasty, which fitted well into the absolutist extravagance of his day, were botanical gardens that he opened and new university chairs that he established to attract leading scholars. he tried in vain to bring andreas vesalius, the leading anatomist and physician to charles v, to the university of pisa.9 most importantly, as far as historiography is concerned, cosimo i allowed an artistic genius, giorgio vasari, to supervise the state’s artistic interests. one of vasari’s undertakings at court was to glorify tuscan culture and art under the patronage of the medici. his celebrated lives of the artists, considered the beginning of modern history of art, was soon criticized for paying too much attention to tuscan art and neglecting art produced elsewhere on the peninsula.10 vasari used his literary ability to inflate and spread 5 cf. melissa m. bullard’s outstanding lorenzo the magnificent. image, anxiety, politics and finance (1994). 6 one of the main anti-copernican figures in this trend was giovanmaria tolosani (c. 1470-1549). see camporeale (1986). 7 in the prince (il principe, written in 1513 and published for the first time in 1532). chapter 24 is “an exhortation to liberate italy from the barbarians,” expressing the wish that italy become a great european nation. 8 for cosimo and the academies, see cochrane (1983). for cosimo’s reform of the university of pisa, see marrara (1965). 9 for a detailed biography of vesalius, see o’malley (1964, 203) on charles v and vesalius. see also galluzzi (1980) arguing that the medici’s patronage of science, just as in other domains, has been mystified: p. 194 on vesalius. 10 carlo cesare malvasia (1616-1693), a bolognese historian of art, for instance, in his le pitture di bologna (1686, 12), criticized vasari, among other things, for neglecting non-tuscan artists, particularly from bologna, see malvasia (reprinted 1969). michael segre – galileo and the medici: post-renaissance patronage or post-modern historiography? 230 the myth of the medici as enlightened patrons.11 incidentally, vasari played a posthumous part in the creation of the galileo myth (he died in 1574 when galileo was ten years old) as galileo’s influential follower and earliest biographer, vincenzo viviani, adopted his hagiographical style of writing in his vita of galileo in 1654 (in galilei 1890-1909). one sentence of his biography is an almost exact copy of one from vasari’s life of michelangelo (segre 1989; 1991a, chap. 7). the image of tuscan culture created by vasari and the medici post-renaissance patronage in general may have been impressive, but it utterly failed to achieve their political aims. the country was sinking into irreversible political, artistic, and cultural decadence. intellectuals and artists there were forced to work under strict control. this was naturally unpopular and harmful (forster 1995). this, then, was the state of affairs when galileo joined the tuscan court in 1610 – much tradition, some decadent splendor, and very little substance. understandably, grand duke cosimo ii was very happy to have galileo at court. as an exception to traditional, post-renaissance medici patronage, he imposed no restrictions on him. yet, to repeat, even this did not help. cosimo’s mid-seventeenth century heirs tried to return to the traditional post-renaissance policy of control, censoring the work of the galilean followers whom they supported (galluzzi 1980; segre 1991b). but this, too, did not bring the desired results, as one of the last prominent members of the dynasty, prince leopold de’ medici, frankly admitted.12 all this renders very questionable the claim that patronage and science were at that time more or less the same thing. it requires imagination, or perhaps faith in somewhat speculative theories in sociology and anthropology, in addition to taking for granted past historical descriptions that have been exposed as more legend than truth. how was this possible? from post-renaissance patronage to post-modern narrative in the nineteenth century, as william whewell’s monumental history of the inductive sciences (1837) was giving much prestige to modern history of science, galileo was still largely depicted as the mythical martyr and founder of experimental science. the only social aspect of his work considered was his trial, which suited the anticlerical feelings of the day (segre 1998, particularly 393-396). yet as the field developed, historians began wondering what criteria to adopt when choosing among historical facts. also in the same century, the founder of positivism, auguste comte, invented the term “sociology” and émile durkheim, one of the leading thinkers who established this field, asserted that “social facts” (to use his term) are the basis for all human action. among the countless historiographies suggested, the presentation of science as a social occurrence began gaining ground. thomas kuhn was perhaps most instrumental in establishing it in the second half of the twentieth century. kuhn drew attention to the relevance of the social aspects of science and particularly to its professionalization. 13 (it is nevertheless hard to view mathematicians such as copernicus, galileo, or even newton as scientific professionals.)14 historians of science became increasingly interested in the social developments related to science, and instead of chronological facts and discoveries, began speaking of “practices.” substituting practices for facts moved the discussion to the sociological domain, but the difficulties could not be surmounted. the hoary issue of experimenting, for instance, re-emerged, with the difference that instead of speaking of experiments, one spoke of “practice of experiments” and concentrated more on the experimenters than on the experiment itself. the myth of galileo as the founder of experimental science and martyr of science, like viviani’s hagiography of galileo, or vasari’s myth of the artistic patronage of the medici, all share one problem that post-modern terminology calls “conflict between science and narrative.” this is the starting-point for the 11 see forster (1971) and rubin (1995). rubin’s book is a detailed study of the composing of the two editions of vasari’s lives: on vasari’s glorification of the medici, see pp. 197-208. 12 prince leopold de’ medici promoted the work of the accademia del cimento between 1657 and 1667. for an english outline of the work of this academy, see middleton (1971). for the prince’s disappointment, see p. 316. 13 according to kuhn (1996 [1962]) a scientific revolution is a change in paradigm, whereas science administrators decide what the next paradigm is. 14 joseph agassi, in his recent, masterly, the very idea of modern science: francis bacon and robert boyle (2013), presents, inter alia, modern science as an amateur movement. michael segre – galileo and the medici: post-renaissance patronage or post-modern historiography? 231 french philosopher jean-françois lyotard, who, in 1979, published his influential book on the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge, in which he proposes a post-modern approach (lyotard 1979 and 2004). “post-modern” is a concept even vaguer than “patronage.” the term was invented in the nineteenth century in relation to art and was adopted in different fields with different meanings. it distances itself from what it considers the monolithic approach of modernity, no longer pertinent in a culturally diverse and fragmented world such as ours. it has produced interesting results such as learning from las vegas by robert venturi et al., where, in a study of las vegas’ architecture, the authors show how a mixture of styles can be attractive (venturi; brown; izenour 1977). lyotard and others express disillusion with the enlightenment’s rationality and reject absolute standards and truth: knowledge can only be relative (knowledge and rationality are indeed relative, but not the truth.) they favour and advocate narrative without any meta-narrative (i.e. narrative without a theory of rationality). they consider science as strictly human, and therefore suffering from human bias; this is indeed true – and so the truth is not easily accessible. westfall’s article was well accepted in the new trend despite, or perhaps thanks to, the ambiguity of his claims. assuming, for instance, that galileo thought first of his career, as westfall claims, this does not mean that patronage was as important or as pervasive as westfall claims. post-modern narrative can, however, digest, and even welcome, irrational and confused discourse. wesfall’s article received a prize from the history of science society and inspired many other works that emphasise the importance of the medici.15 incidentally, quite a few articles that were awarded prizes by the history of science society in the following years were clearly post-modern.16 conformism, then, is the common denominator between patronage and post-modern historiography, or so it seems, and that is why a post-modern historian would exalt post-renaissance patronage with a clear conscience. it still is difficult to agree, and it is still much more helpful to apply the more modest approach of formulating specific questions and attempting to answer them in their immediate context and discuss them as critically as we know how.17 had historians posed the question, for example, of what was the purpose of the medici patronage, or other related specific questions, they would be in a much better position to give a balanced judgement. and this would probably indicate that patronage had more incidental consequences than have been presented in the past thirty years. references agassi, joseph. 1967 [1963]. towards an historiography of science. the hague: mouton; middletown, conn.: wesleyan university press. agassi, joseph. 1975. three views on the renaissances of science. physis 27: 165-185. agassi, joseph. 2008. science and its history: a reassessment of the historiography of science. dordrecht: springer. agassi, joseph. 2013. the very idea of modern science: francis bacon and robert boyle. dordrecht: springer. biagioli, mario. 1993. galileo courtier: the practice of science in the culture of absolutism. chicago: the university of chicago press. bullard, melissa m., 1994. lorenzo the magnificent. image, anxiety, politics and finance. florence: olschki. 15 the article was awarded the 1997 zeitlin-verbrugge prize by the history of science society. 16 an example of a post-modern formulation is findlen (1993). the author suggests (p. 41) labeling francesco redi – a naturalist working at the medici court in the middle of the seventeenth century – rather than a leading contemporary biologist, “a courtier who deployed the natural and human resources that his environment offered to shape experimental narratives that met the expectations of a patrician and largely court-based audience” (sic). redi’s works and manuscripts still show him to be a leading biologist; yet findlen’s description is an example of trendy, post-modern jargon. 17 as suggested by karl popper, for an historiography following popper’s philosophy of science, see agassi (1963; 1975). agassi argues for the superiority of a popperian approach compared mainly over the inductivist and conventionalist ones. this is further emphasized in agassi’s collection of articles under the title science and its history: a reassessment of the historiography of science (2008). michael segre – galileo and the medici: post-renaissance patronage or post-modern historiography? 232 camporeale, salvatore i. 1986. giovanmaria dei tolosani o.p. 1530-1546, umanesimo, riforma e teologia controversista. memorie dominicane, nuova serie, 17: 145-252. chastel, andré. 1959. art et humanisme à florence au temps de laurent le magnifique, vol. 4. paris: presses universitaires de france. cochrane, eric. 1983. le accademie. in giancarlo garfagnini, firenze e la toscana dei medici nell’europa del ‘500. vol. i. florence: olschki, pp. 3-17. danilo marrara. 1965. l’università di pisa come università statale nel granducato mediceo. milan: giuffré. collins. 1987. cobuild english language dictionary. london: harpercollins publishers. reprint 1988, 1990, 1991. findlen paula. 1993. controlling the experiment: rhetoric, court patronage and experimental method of francesco redi. history of science 31: 35-64. forster, kurt w. 1971. metaphors of rule. political ideology and history in the portraits of cosimo i de’ medici. mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen institutes in florenz 15: 65-104. galilei, galileo. 1890-1909. le opere. edizione nazionale, edited by antonio favaro, vol. 19, florence: barbèra. reprint, 1929-1939, 1964-1965, 1968. galluzzi, paolo. 1980. l’accademia del cimento: ’gusti’ del principe, filosofia e ideologia dell’esperimento. quaderni storici 48 (3): 788-844. galluzzi, paolo. 1980. il mecenatismo mediceo e le scienze. in cesare vasoli. in idee, istituzioni, scienza ed arti nella firenze dei medici. florence: giunti martello, pp. 189-215. kuhn, thomas. 1996 [1962]. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: the university of chicago press. lyotard, jean-françois. 1979. la condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir. paris: minuit. lyotard, jean-françois. 2004. the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. translated from french by goeff bennington and brian massumi. manchester: manchester university press. machiavelli, niccolò. 1991. il principe, ed. piero melograni. milan: rizzoli. machiavelli, niccolò. the prince. translated by w. k. marriott. http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00 htm. accessed september 11, 2013. malvasia, carlo cesare. 1969 [1686]. le pitture di bologna. bologna: alfa. middleton, w. e. knowles. 1971. the experimenters: a study of the accademia del cimento. baltimore: the johns hopkins press. o’malley, c. d. 1964. andreas vesalius of brussels, 1514-1564. berkeley: univ. of california press. rubin, patricia l. 1995. giorgio vasari: art and history. new haven: yale university press. segre, michael. 1989. viviani's life of galileo. isis 80: 207-231. segre, michael. 1991a. in the wake of galileo. new brunswick: rutgers university press. segre, michael. 1991b. science at the tuscan court, 1642-1667. in physics, cosmology and astronomy, 1300-1700: tension and accommodation. edited by sabetai unguru. dordrecht: kluwer, pp. 295 308. segre, michael. 1998. the never-ending galilean story. in the cambridge companion to galileo, edited by peter machamer. cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 388-416. segre, michael. 2015. higher education and the growth of knowledge: a historical outline of aims and tensions. new york: routledge. segre, michael. 2016. kuhn, meritocracy, and excellence. in shifting paradigms: thomas s. kuhn and the history of science. edited by a. blum, k. gavrolu. c. joas. j. renn. berlin: edition open access, pp. 258-263. trexler, richard c. 1980. public life in renaissance florence. ithaca: cornell university press. venturi, robert; scott brown, denise; izenour, steven. 1977. learning from las vegas. revised edition. cambridge, mass.: mit press. viviani, vincenzio. racconto istorico della vita di galileo. in galilei 1890-1909, pp. 597-632. westfall, richard s. 1985. science and patronage: galileo and the telescope. isis 76: 11-30. 85 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 85-92 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence roberto maiocchi 1 abstract: the article illustrates the presence of duhem’s thought in italian philosophical culture until the great war. this presence was very scarce, so we must speak of an absence. one can identify the causes of this absence with the fact that all the great italian philosophical currents, in different ways, have had little interest or been manifestly opposed to the tensions that came from abroad after the great discussion about the crisis of mechanicism in which duhem was an important protagonist. keywords: pierre duhem; ernst mach; italian philosophy; history of science received: 13 april 2017. accepted: 16 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.08 ____________________________________________________________________________ in the years when duhem was reflecting on the philosophical value of science, the philosophy of science was not attracting much attention in italy. at the turn of the twentieth century, the idealist school of benedetto croce and giovanni gentile was taking centre stage on the italian philosophical scene. both croce and gentile were very critical of the importance of philosophy in science, albeit for different reasons. in his “logica come scienza del concetto puro” [logic as the science of pure concept] published in 1909, benedetto croce maintains that scientific knowledge only has an instrumental, practical value, and that it is composed of pseudo-concepts. this critique became famous, but it was not anything new in croce’s intellectual path. what he did in 1909 was simply reiterating and developing a belief he had already acquired years – about a decade – earlier, while he was reflecting on historical and literary themes, unaware of the contemporaneous debate on exact sciences. he learned about the thought of mach, avenarius and poincaré (but not duhem) only when his critique of science had turned into a deeply rooted conviction. “about the time” he began to study hegel, in 1905, croce also read “the new gnosiologists of science and the blundering pragmatists, obtaining a proof of his critiques of aesthetic doctrines” (croce 1945, 401). it is irrelevant whether croce read mach a few months before or after writing his logic, because the discourse on sciences presented in this text does not owe anything to mach or other epistemologists. it belongs solely to croce in structure, style and arguments. wherever traces of other thinkers may be found, they are always such generic and widespread theses that it is impossible to establish whether croce was referring to mach or papini. 1 roberto maiocchi is a professor in the department of philosophy at the catholic university del sacro cuore. address: largo a. gemelli, 1 20123 milan, italy. email: roberto.maiocchi@unicatt.it roberto maiocchi – duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence 86 nevertheless, some of those generic and widespread theses are the point of arrival of croce’s deprecating discourse on the cognitive power of science. it is true that croce draws those conclusions by following his personal path – a path that is theoretically flawed, as it overlooks the arguments of the more advanced epistemology and neglects the practice of science – but his conclusions are not personal at all. croce’s so often quoted opinions on science mirrored analogous judgements that were widespread among the numerous european and american varieties of bergsonism, conventionalism, more or less mystical pragmatism, fictionism, empirio-criticism, but also – by then – of italian positivism. around 1905 also italian positivism – despite the roughness and narrow-mindedness of many of its representatives – had become aware of the ongoing discussion about the crisis of the mechanical philosophy in europe, the “failure of science”, the rebirth of idealism, contingentism and so on. for instance, in “della conoscenza del fatto naturale e umano” [of the knowledge of the natural and human fact], already in 1896, the positivist giuseppe tarozzi presented an idea of science that was perfectly in line with the movement of the “destruction of reason” that was permeating european culture; a concept that was particularly akin to bergson’s ideas. another example is giovanni marchesini’s “la crisi del positivismo e il problema filosofico” (1899) [the crisis of positivism and the philosophical problem], a book whose main goal is to counter the thesis that attributes a symbolic value to scientific concepts, although admitting that it was positivism that contributed to the emergence of scepticism. this statement clearly contrasts with the ideas of fouillé, one of the main french representatives of the idealistic revolt against scientific naturalism. another text worth mentioning is “sopra la teoria della scienza” [on the theory of science] (1903), an early work by annibale pastore, another opponent of neoidealism. pastore presented a similar analogicalfictionist conception of modelism, perceived as the main scientific method, which mirrored, widened and specified the ideas of one of pastore’s masters, physicist antonio garbasso, a feisty adversary of croce. as a matter of fact, croce’s discourse on science relegated it to the realm of “usefulness” and simply reiterated an opinion that was widely shared or at least known by many italian scholars. quite opportunistically, croce came to the same conclusions on the troubles of nineteenth-century science as many other european scholars, but the details of such conclusions were foreign to his personality. particularly, the absence of duhem’s name in croce’s writings is a sign of his superficial relationship with epistemological works. gentile was even less interested in epistemology than croce. in his famous controversy with mathematician federigo enriques, gentile refrained from an epistemological discussion, shifting his focus from the “critique of science” to enriques’ “scientific philosophy”, identified as the “naturalism” that is typical of all science-based philosophies. even in his systematic works gentile traced the critique of sciences back to the critique of a vaguely outlined single type of philosophy, which, in his view, encompassed all the science-based philosophical varieties. unlike croce, gentile could not criticize sciences and separate them from philosophy by attributing them a mere practical value, as in his philosophy a clear distinction between theory and praxis is impossible: like philosophy, science has a cognitive value, too. the difference between science and philosophy lies in the lack of universality of the object in science. in fact, every science is particular and refers to a limited object. hence its need to presume the object of its investigation and to see reality as nature, made of elements that can be studied separately. so, dogmatism and naturalism are the two distinctive characters of every science, and gentile finds them after a very generic analysis that has no relation whatsoever with epistemological critique. on the contrary, the immediate conclusion that gentile draws from his investigation appears to be in contrast with what was emerging in epistemology at the time. as epistemological critique was often labelled as an allied of “idealistic reaction” at the beginning of the century, gentile established a strong and steady relation between science and materialism. he speaks of a “logically necessary tendency of science in all times towards the mechanical philosophy and materialism” (gentile 1924, 198) and maintains that “science as philosophy has always stood up against philosophy, which, overcoming the mechanical philosophy, empiricism and dogmatism, has tried to turn into a universal idea of the world in its metaphysical reality”. he also theorises the incompatibility between being a scientist and being an idealist: “scientists, because of the very spirit of science – which is not and does not want to be philosophy –, have always supported one philosophy: the most naïve and weak of its forms” (gentile 1924, 199). as a matter of fact, gentile’s thesis about the theoretical separation between science and idealism only made sense within his system and, as such, it was built around a logical pattern that was completely extraneous to scientific dynamicity, even though it mirrored exactly the image of science as outlined by roberto maiocchi – duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence 87 positivist scientism. during the nineteenth century, the bond between science and materialism had been very strong (but not exclusive), but gentile’s vision turns a historically framed idea of science – that of the age of positivism – into an absolute and unhistorical idea. by theorising a clear-cut contrast between science and idealism, gentile contributed much more than croce to the separation of italian philosophy from science at the beginning of the twentieth century. in croce’s view, science differed from philosophy, but for gentile it was an enemy to be defeated for the triumph of idealism – hence the crusade-like spirit of his works. gentile was certainly aware of the existence in europe of interpretative tendencies – very often within science itself –, which prefigured the divorce between science and materialism already in the nineteenth century. however, these tendencies could be perceived as philosophical critiques coming from the outside and not created by internal developments of the scientific thought, as these developments were invariably materialistic. epistemologist could be easily ignored: in the many pages of gentile’s works there is no mention of mach, poincaré and duhem. croce’s and gentile’s critiques only developed within the framework of superficial and instrumental relationships with the major epistemologists of the time, or even without any familiarity with their works, and one gets the same impression by reading the works of the main targets of the critique of idealism – the positivists. italian positivism had dealt with psychology, anthropology, sociology, law, but mathematized natural sciences had never been among its interests. in the books by tarozzi, marchesini and troilo one can find long discussions about the nature of science, but they only deal with the concept of science or experience, hypothesis, law, symbol, etc., in very generic terms, without any reference to physics, and the authors seem not to have a real knowledge of the epistemologists who were turning physics into one of the most import motifs of philosophical analysis. therefore these works appear backward and narrow-minded. in order to find references to the questions of physics or to authors such as mach or duhem, we must turn our attention to less elaborated works, such as articles or reviews. of course, this proves the weak impact of these themes on the overall development of positivism. mach is the name that is most often quoted, although very limitedly, on positivist journals. but it is a reduced, simplified and criticised version of mach. in 1900 enrico morselli, in his review of karl pearson’s “the grammar of science” on rivista di filosofia e pedagogia paints both pearson and mach as mediocre scientific popularisers: “pearson’s work is essentially an educational text, [which is echoed in europe by] the books of prof. mach, who excels in his most difficult and useful work of popularising knowledge” (morselli 1900, 83). in 1903 giovanni cesca published in the same journal one of the few italian articles dedicated to mach (and to his “follower” ostwald), in which mach is presented not as a scholar who has drawn certain philosophical conclusions through a precise reflection on his work as a scientist, but, on the contrary, as a scientist who – like all scientists – is invariably confined in the narrow realm of empiricism and materialism and, when he comes to suffer these limitations and starts philosophising, falls naively and hastily for “those doctrines opposing positivism and the mechanical philosophy” (cesca 1903, 248). cesca’s critique to mach proceeds along lines that are completely unrelated to mach’s arguments, ignoring the reasons of epistemology and articulating a totally non-analytical discourse: cesca only counters mach’s idea by postulating a series of philosophical necessities that make philosophy independent and superior to physics. in cesca’s view, mach has developed an “extreme idealism”, a “doctrine of absolute phenomenalism or idealism” (cesca 1903, 249). mach’s mistake is not having recognised that science does not only have a hypothetical and economic part, but also a positive part, which is based on the data coming from the experience of all mankind. one must admit an object in juxtaposition with a subject, something outside us that serves as the basis for our sensations. like science, philosophy does not settle for a “quantitative conception of physical phenomena”. it aspires to reaching the qualitative causal explanation (cesca 1903, 249). with this goal it relies on “empirical metaphysics explaining the causes, the laws of the becoming of facts, which reduce them to their ultimate constitutional elements and show the essential and peculiar qualities of each one of them” (cesca 1903, 265). it is clear that such an approach, interested as it is in the “causes” and “essential qualities” of phenomena, could only have a few points of contact with an anti-metaphysical author such as mach. the differences from duhem were just as radical, if only cesca had read his works. cesca’s concern with rejecting the possible sceptical and subjectivist results of the new critique to physical sciences in the name of a supposed positive philosophy – a philosophy that transcends physics by roberto maiocchi – duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence 88 providing steady fundaments whenever physics leans dangerously towards pyrrhonism or idealism – can also be found in other positivists who – more or less incidentally – deal with some of the great physicists of the mechanical philosophy. that is the case of adolfo levi, the author of a 1909 essay on mach’s phenomenalism, and adolfo faggi who, polemicizing with a book by igino petrone (1900) that criticises the mechanical philosophy on the basis of stallo’s and boutroux’s books, states that science must not fall prey to subjectivism: it may maintain the schemes of mechanistic determinism, so long as it recognises the superiority of philosophy over quantitative science. philosophy can answer questions that would not find any answer in science, and faggi (1900, 386) reiterates this idea with accents that recall gentile’s famous thesis of contrast between science (the world of dead things) and philosophy (the theory of live reality). italian positivism was therefore much busier defending itself from the new epistemological critique than understanding and using it. the comparison between these two problems was sporadic and basically unimportant for this current of thought. italian positivism was already sailing on troubled water and by failing to recognise the latest and most stimulating trends in the field of the philosophy of science it definitely separated its rhetorical and undetermined idea of science from real science. pragmatism – first a travel companion and then an enemy of idealism – was the loudest and most quarrelsome philosophy of the first decade of the twentieth century. its fiercest upholders – prezzolini and papini – were essentially political and literary philosophers, and no interest for science can be detected in pragmatist journals such as “la voce” and “leonardo”. there is indeed some hint at “positive” science in the discussion about psychiatry and lombroso’s school in particular. apart from that, science is discussed only as philosophy through the mediation of nietzsche and bergson (and their followers), whereas more serious critics of the nineteenth-century mechanical philosophy, such as boutroux and milhaud, are not mentioned at all. the only one in the pragmatist group to have some interest for modern epistemology was vailati. however, vailati’s reflection on physics, too, seems marginal and strongly influenced by his personal interest. vailati devoted painstaking and accurate analyses to problems concerning mathematics, logic, psychology, linguistics, history of ancient science, but he wrote almost nothing about modern physics. rare hints to themes touched by anti-mechanist critics can be found in vailati’s works, as he comments on authors such as mach and duhem, but his analysis of their thought is strongly limited by his personal interests, which make him lose sight of the epistemological value of such fundamental works. thus, his reviews of mach’s books focus mainly on the psychological side of his work and mach is considered, quite simplistically, as the author of a “psychology of scientific methods” (vailati 1911a, 43). in his comment on duhem’s la théorie physique, which vailati is the first to bring to the attention of the italian public already in 1905, at a time when it had only appeared as separate articles, he only quotes those “conclusions” that are “strictly related” to the “philosophical direction represented by leonardo in italy”, namely pragmatism (vailati 1911b, p. 593). although he smartly understands that duhem’s fundamental thesis is the holistic one, vailati only touches that subject in relation to the influence it could have on the pragmatic concept of meaning, and the remaining part of duhem’s work, relevant and complex as it is, is completely ignored. in the depressing italian philosophical landscape a pugnacious group of opponents of idealism and pragmatism emerged. since 1907 this group identified with the journal “cultura filosofica”, edited in florence and directed by francesco de sarlo. the journal´s fundamental idea was the firm conviction of the inseparability of scientific and philosophical knowledge. it can be said that, throughout the first years of its existence, the journal remained consistent, exploring the numerous links between philosophy and a vast array of scientific disciplines, including mathematics, biology, psychology, law and finally also physics. it was on the pages of “cultura filosofica” that the names of mach, duhem, poincaré, milhaud, etc. started to be mentioned more often, although it must be said that there are no traces of autonomous reflections by italian scholars on determined scientific problems, and physics appears only through the mediation of these foreign authors. the journal´s first article is dedicated to mach: “la conoscenza scientifica secondo e. mach” [scientific knowledge according to e. mach], by director de sarlo. the fundamental coordinates of the journal´s interpretation of coeval epistemological critique are already outlined in the article: on the one hand, a psychological interpretation of the main works of mach and his followers; on the other hand, a strong critique of these authors’ conventionalistic, nominalistic and pragmatistic statements. it should not be forgotten that de sarlo was then involved in an intense debate with prezzolini’s and papini’s pragmatistic roberto maiocchi – duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence 89 group, which had assimilated the most subjectivistic results of german empirio-criticism and french nouveau positivism. in de sarlo´s view, to criticise mach´s economic vision of science meant to fight the ideas of mach his italian rivals had re-elaborated. faithful to the idea that psychology was meant to have fundamentally important philosophical functions, and having presented his critique of mach´s science as funded on two cornerstones (history of science and “the psychology of the scientist”) (de sarlo 1907, 2), de sarlo turns his attention to what he thinks is the main question posed by mach, namely the objective value of scientific laws. although admitting that mach´s texts about history describe progress as inseparable from a realistic vision of science, de sarlo attacks the theoretical formulations of mach´s epistemology – as they are invalidated by an inacceptable subjectivism – by counterposing a rationalistic objectivism: “it is impossible to understand how irregular successions of phenomena can lead someone to look for causes in those changes, unless we admit that the need for reason is inherent to the human mind” (de sarlo 1907, 4). the journal later published other articles that intended to criticise mach in order to reaffirm a scientific objectivism that, far from going back to the typical ideas of positivistic empiricism, was rooted in an atmosphere of idealistic rationalism, which strived more and more towards an agreement between science and religion. along with mach, other critics of the mechanical philosophy were brought to the public attention – although limitedly – and attacked, e.g. milhaud, ostwald, boutroux and duhem. the latter was the one who was given the least relevance. however, they were told apart from the critics of science belonging to bergson´s school, who were considered just as literates, incapable of any actual analysis of the theories on the history of science. antonio aliotta, de sarlo´s student, stands out in particular. starting from 1908, he conducted a critical overview of the philosophy of his time, writing several essays which were later collected in the highly significant “la reazione idealistica contro la scienza” (the idealistic reaction against science), published in 1912. this text is certainly one of the most authoritative works written in italy in those years about the crisis of the mechanical philosophy and its philosophical consequences. aliotta has the merit of divulgating in italy philosophers of science who were previously almost unknown, but his work gives an image of the positivistic concept of science that is historically shaped in favour of the arguments it sets forth. that is not only clear in the very questionable measure of relevance given to the various authors – for example, aliotta dedicates only half a page to nietzsche and a whole chapter to annibale pastore –, but mostly in the historical path outlined by the book, according to which the crisis has been a predominantly philosophical event, whereas scientific developments have only played a minor role. there is almost no mention of the mechanical philosophy on a scientific level, or only a vague hint as aliotta quotes passages of history of science by an author who had some interest in history. therefore the chapter about duhem, who wrote profusely about history, is quite rich with historical observations, whereas other chapters do not even touch upon the subject of nineteenth-century science. while reading aliotta’s work, one gets the impression that the author saw the “anti-intellectual reaction” as an essentially philosophical phenomenon, a process that developed on an autonomous philosophical level with only occasional points of contact with science. it does not seem aliotta understood that in those years there had been important scientific novelties, which would eventually lead to new science-oriented philosophical developments. aliotta was convinced that the mechanical philosophy – which philosophers had shown to be no longer conceivable in dogmatic and realistic forms – still remained a valid scientific scheme, as only it could satisfy mankind’s need for intelligibility. according to aliotta, the mechanical philosophy must be taken as an ideal explanatory scheme that is rooted in the needs of reason and finds its motivation in it. the mechanical philosophy is irreplaceable, because we cannot think of the world but through mechanistic concepts. thus, the concrete developments of physics in those years could not be of any interest for this vision, which saw philosophy as unrelated and superior to science and could not imagine the downfall of the mechanistic scheme. this explains the absence – or at least the sporadic mentioning – of science in aliotta’s works. while writing his essay, aliotta moved the fundaments of his rationalism away from the needs of reason and towards religion. he originally criticised conventionalism, pragmatism, economicism by appealing to a principle of rational order as an indispensable postulate for knowledge. then, after 1910, in line with a similar trend in the journal “cultura filosofica”, his critique found an increasingly steady anchor in the idea of god as the guarantor of the world order: “those who do not believe cannot and must not believe roberto maiocchi – duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence 90 in the objective and universal value of science” (aliotta 1912, 219). duhem’s complex solution of the relationship between science and religion was therefore replaced by an anathema. the growing interest of aliotta and the whole of de sarlo’s group in spiritual problems in the years before the war was paired by the decreasing attention for the philosophy of science. the same can be said about another philosopher who stood quite close to de sarlo in his battle against croce: bernardino varisco. varisco had studied mathematics and had written about questions related to physics in a few chapters of his book “scienza e opinioni” [science and opinions]. arguing with mach (but without knowing the coeval epistemological debate beside mach) he upheld his characteristic thesis that the notion of force is not conventional, that it has an objective equivalent that manifests itself in the bodies’ action by contact. according to varisco, the fact that bodies interact by contact is undeniable. therefore also the validity of the principle of causality is to be considered a fact that no argument can deny. that blocked the way for any conventionalistic and subjectivistic vision. this appeal to common sense to put an end to “byzantine” philosophical discussions remains a distinctive aspect of varisco’s philosophy also when he devotes himself to the study of the major epistemologists, around 1906, and he uses it to give substance to his philosophical conception of science, which appears quite abstract and generic in his 1901 book. by studying naville, renouvier and duhem, varisco intended to continue his battle against mach, who in the meantime had become a weapon in the hands of the idealists and the pragmatists. this mainly polemic objective compromises varisco’s epistemological works. he is so intent in trying to find confirmations for his personal theses that he deforms the interpretation of the authors’ work. duhem is a good example of that. the holistic thesis, which duhem had conceived as a logical-epistemological thesis on the procedures of empiric control on the theories of mature science, is assimilated by varisco to his own notion of “general pressure of experience” (varisco 1906, 48), which is a psychological notion, valid for the entire human experience, including the one of the cave man. similar systematic distortions make duhem’s text compatible with the existence of an objectivism that is actually closer to the everyday man (whose common sense often inspires varisco) than to the refined french epistemologist. in his 1909 essay “i massimi problem” [the major problems], varisco abandoned this kind of studies and turned with increasing determination to metaphysical questions, setting off on a path that would lead him to reconcile with one of his main adversaries, giovanni gentile, after the war. whereas the “lay” supporters of religion, such as de sarlo and aliotta, intervened on scientific problems, discussing and criticising the wave of sceptical philosophical theories following the crisis of the mechanical philosophy in physics, the catholic cultural world chose to ignore this question. of course, the italian representatives of modernism used pragmatism and bergsonism to build their own theological theses, but they completely overlooked all the existing ties between those philosophical positions and science. the traditional catholic culture, instead, turned to scientific problems, but in such forms as to exclude – particularly in the case of physics – philosophical discussions. starting from 1900, the italian catholic society of scientific studies began publishing its own journal, rivista di fisica, matematica e scienze naturali [review of physics, mathematics and natural sciences] under the direction of the bishop of pavia, pietro maffi. scientists of high renown, such as angelo battelli, lavoro amaduzzi, giuseppe gianfranceschi, rinaldo ferrini and several clergymen wrote about physics in the magazine. these articles look very much like the ones in the pedantic and insignificant annals of the most peripheral academies at a time of positivist domination. marginal arguments discussed along the guidelines of the most rigid experimentalism, no methodological, theoretical or philosophical discussion whatsoever. whilst, on that same journal, agostino gemelli was starting to outline his vibrant critique against the mechanical philosophy in biology, physics was only seen within the framework of a “severe apologetic method” (minutes of the meeting of the society 1903, 315), opposed to that of “polemic apologetics”, a method based on the idea that no contraposition between faith and scientific truth was possible. it defined itself as a “positive” search for scientific truths, which would eventually – without any mediation through a philosophical and theological analysis – defeat those who wanted to turn science into an instrument against religion. the “arrogant wielders” of science were making the mistake of paying too much attention to shaky hypotheses that were destined to collapse when exposed to the test of facts. materialists and positivists based their ideas on “castles in the sky” (tuccimei 1903) that a really positive search would have caused to crumble. the catholics were called to the search for the truth revealed by experience. roberto maiocchi – duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence 91 convinced that “facts are divine and theories are human and therefore subject to mutations and also extinction” (alasia 1904, 511) (in support to this thesis, duhem’s early historical works were inaptly quoted), the editors of the journal avoided all discussion about theories and therefore about the philosophical conclusions that could be drawn from them. the “positive” realm of facts was only abandoned for obituaries of catholic scientists or the publication of some clergymen’s contributions to science and technology. this lack of interest for the great theoretical and methodological questions translated into very casual descriptions of key events in the history of the relationship between science and faith, such as the problems of the copernican revolution or galileo. in the name of the supreme value of facts, the journal offered studies that would never induce an unknowing reader to suspect that the church ever stood against science. there were only rare articles proposing religious beliefs, rather than facts, as the judge for scientific theories. the position of the journal’s director, monsignor maffi, seems to have had little influence: he postulated the faith in the wise doing of a perfect maker of the universe as the grounds to reject theories, basically in the name of an unclear idea of simplicity. maffi expressed himself vehemently against positivism, which, by separating science from faith and giving it autonomy, had turned it into an inert and lifeless scheme, unable to relate to men and mean something to them. such reprimands are unlikely to have seemed attractive to the majority of the journal’s collaborators. the positive apologia promoted by the journal was based on the idea that sooner or later a vision of nature that was fully coherent with the religious dogmas would emerge from the pursuit of factual truth. and the journal’s pages were full of that “cold”, “silent” and “lifeless” science monsignor maffi was so strongly against. needless to say, duhem’s refined epistemology-based apologetics found no space whatsoever either among the adorers of the “fact” (a notion duhem had destroyed), or in the ideas of maffi, who chose religion as the judge of scientific theories, whereas duhem had separated the two areas and established they were to be connected only with the help of history. this overview, short as it may be, should have demonstrated how the italian philosophical circles were inherently unfit for studying and appreciating duhem’s thought. for different reasons, idealism, positivism, pragmatism, the de sarlo group and the catholics were all travelling on rails that could never cross paths with duhem’s complex philosophy. however, not only philosophers were to blame. italian scientists must be held responsible as well, as they did nothing to highlight the debates that were taking place among their french colleagues. after all, why should philosophers have been aware of poincaré, duhem, etc., while scientists were not? the italian scientific circles neglected almost completely the scientific theories that served as the backdrop for the epistemological debate, namely maxwell’s electromagnetic theory – which introduced the question of mechanical models – and thermodynamics – which exposed the unsustainability of the mechanical philosophy. without this scientific background, the thoughts of poincaré or duhem lose all meaning and the philosophers’ lack of interest for them becomes understandable, if not excusable. however, the story of the italian scientific community in those years is another story. references alasia, cristoforo. 1904. l’evoluzione della meccanica di p. duhem. rivista di fisica, matematica e scienze naturali 54: 497-511. aliotta, antonio. 1912. le nuove teorie cosmogoniche. cultura filosofica 6: 198-219. cesca, giovanni. 1903. l’idealismo di mach e l’energetismo di ostwald. rivista di filosofia e pedagogia 5: 230-249. croce, benedetto. 1945 [1918]. contributo alla critica di me stesso. in croce, benedetto. etica e politica. bari: laterza, pp. 358-435. de sarlo, francesco. 1907. la conoscenza scientifica secondo e. mach. cultura filosofica 1: 1-13. faggi, adolfo. 1900. sui limiti del determinismo scientifico. rivista di filosofia e pedagogia 3: 372-390. gentile, giovanni. 1924. teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro. bari: laterza. levi, adolfo. 1909. il fenomenismo empiristico e la concezione fenomenista delle scienze. rivista di filosofia 4: 31-56. minutes of the meeting of the society, held in milan in october 1901. 1903. rivista di fisica, matematica e scienze naturali 39: 308-318. roberto maiocchi – duhem in pre-war italian philosophy: the reasons of an absence 92 morselli, enrico. 1900. review of k. pearson’s the grammar of science. rivista di filosofia e pedagogia 3: 79:93. petrone, igino. 1900. i limiti del determinismo scientifico. modena: vincenzi. tuccimei b. i. 1903. cattolici e le scienza naturali. in minutes of the meeting of the society, held in milan in october 1901. rivista di fisica, matematica e scienze naturali 39: 308-318. vailati, giovanni. 1911a. review on mechanics by mach. in vailati, giovanni. edited by mario calderoni, umberto ricci and giovanni vacca. scritti di g. vailati (1863-1909). leipzig/firenze: johann ambrosius barth/successori seeber, pp. 43-49. vailati, giovanni. 1911b. review on duhem’s théorie. in vailati, giovanni. edited by mario calderoni, umberto ricci and giovanni vacca. scritti di g. vailati (1863-1909). leipzig/firenze: johann ambrosius barth/successori seeber, pp. 593-595. varisco, bernardino. 1906. fisica e filosofia. rivista filosofica 8: 42-53. microsoft word 12almeida layout 140 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 140-148 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida1 abstract: this paper presents the role of althusser and two of his students in the 1960s, pierre macherey and dominique lecourt, in the diffusion of the work of georges canguilhem in brazil. we begin by a brief review of macherey’s and lecourt’s analysis on the work of canguilhem taken from two texts that served as postface and preface to the brazilian and the argentine translations of le normal et le pathologique. next, we present the works of brazilian authors sérgio arouca, cecilia donnangelo and ricardo bruno mendes-gonçalves to show some aspects of the reception of canguilhem’s ideas and concepts in the field of collective health. keywords: georges canguilhem; althusserism; collective health; sergio arouca; cecilia donnangelo received: 30 december 2017. reviewed: 26 february 2018. accepted: 8 may 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.12 ____________________________________________________________________________________ in january 1970, louis althusser sent a letter to ben brewster, the american translator of pour marx. brewster had added to his translation a glossary of technical terms relevant to the understanding of althusser’s work, such as “epistemological break”. according to the translator, “coupure epistémologique” is a concept introduced by gaston bachelard in the book la formation de l’esprit scientifique (1938), and used by georges canguilhem and michel foucault in their studies on history of ideas. brewster goes on explaining that the epistemological break describes “the leap from the prescientific world of ideas to the scientific world” and that this leap “involves a radical break with the whole pattern and frame of reference of the pre-scientific (ideological) notions, and the construction of a new pattern (problematic)”. finally, he informs that althusser uses this concept to describe “marx’s rejection of hegelian and feuerbachian ideology of his youth and the construction of the basic concepts of dialectic and historical materialism in his later works” (brewster 1970, 310). althusser believed that the glossary could actually make his work more accessible to the english-speaking readers, but he felt the necessity to add a “minor point”: 1 tiago santos almeida is a postdoctoral researcher (pnpd/capes) of the program in history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.69090, brazil. e-mail: tsalmeida@ufg.br looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 141 i should like to point out that canguilhem has lived and thought in close contact with the work of bachelard for many years, so it is not surprising if he refers somewhere to the term “epistemological break”, although this term is rarely to be found as such in bachelard’s texts (on the other hand, if the term is uncommon, the thing is there all the time from a certain point on in bachelard’s work). but canguilhem has not used this concept systematically, as i have tried to do. [...] canguilhem’s use of the concept “break” differs from mine, although his interpretation does tend in the same direction. in fact, this should be put the other way round: my debt to canguilhem is incalculable, and it is my interpretation that tends in the direction of his, as it is a continuation of his, going beyond the point where his has (for the time being) stopped. (althusser 1970, 324) on a personal level, the acquaintance between the two philosophers began when canguilhem left from strasbourg to paris in 1948, the same year that althusser became a professor at the école normale supérieure. it was the bureaucratic tasks that promoted the meeting, for canguilhem had assumed the position of general inspector of public instruction, while althusser became a member of the jury of agrégation. “he did not find me very reactionary, and he did not seem very obtuse to me. then, we came to understand each other well”, said canguilhem decades later (bing and braunstein 1998, 126-127). they remained close at least until the early 1970s, when canguilhem retired from the sorbonne. in 1980, a well-known dramatic episode: althusser, in a psychotic outbreak, strangles his wife. at canguilhem archive at the centre d’archives de philosophie, d’histoire et d’édition des sciences (caphés), we find a folder with several newspaper clippings on the event, as well as a letter from althusser, dated 6th of july 1986, sent from the psychiatric hospital l’eau vive, in soisysur-seine: “i am writing to say that i have an infinite debt to you. i read le normal et le pathologique and nothing more. that was enough to understand you and understand that you were my ‘master’.” the recognition and public praise that althusser always yielded to canguilhem guaranteed, at first, a greater audience for the latter, but also contributed to the diminishing of its relevance when the french intellectual scene changed. according to jean-françois braunstein, the main reason for the momentary eclipse of historical epistemology in france, during the last two decades of the past century, is the fact that canguilhem was somehow “phagocytosed” by althusser and the althusserians: “it was believed that canguilhem was only an althusserian among others, or a kind of marxist, which is evidently absurd, entirely contrary to canguilhem’s own ideas” (almeida and camolezi 2016, 161). in fact, many of the criticisms addressed against canguilhem’s take on the relations between science and non-science do not have their origin in his own works, not even in what althusser said of canguilhem, but in what althusser intended to do based on his reading of canguilhem. on the other hand, the interest of althusser and his disciples was the main impulse for the projection of canguilhem beyond france borders, and even for the reception of his ideas in brazil. among us, as we shall see, since the 1970s le normal et le pathologique is well known to researchers in the field of collective health, where it has gained a prestigious reputation thanks to the works of authors such as sérgio arouca, ricardo bruno mendes-gonçalves, cecília donnangelo, naomar de almeida filho, ricardo lafetá novaes, dina czeresnia, josé ricardo de carvalho mesquita ayres and many others.2 2 “as a field of knowledge, [collective health] contributes to the study of health-disease phenomena in populations as a social process, investigating the production and distribution of disease in society as an aspect of social reproduction, and analyzing health practices as a labor process integrated into the other social practices. as a universe of practices, collective health focuses on its models or action guidelines four objects of intervention: policies (forms of power distribution); practices (behavior looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 142 it came as no surprise when, in 1978, in his preface to the american translation of le normal et le pathologique, foucault said: “take away canguilhem and you will no longer understand much about althusser, althusserism and a whole series of discussions which have taken place among the french marxists” (foucault 1978, ix). in fact, it was two disciples of althusser, pierre macherey and dominique lecourt, who consolidated the image of canguilhem as a “historian of the sciences”. for some commentators, such as camille limoges and jean-pierre séris, more than highlighting a philosopher’s interest in a discipline that until recently was a strictly philosophical field of research, macherey and lecourt spread the idea that the history of sciences was, for canguilhem, “a vocation, a second or even a first nature” (séris 1993, 90). macherey’s “la philosophie de la science de georges canguilhem: épistémologie et histoire des sciences”, used since 1982 as a postface to the brazilian translation of le normal et le pathologique, was originally published in 1964, in la pensée, a multidisciplinary journal associated to the french communist party. canguilhem was not yet “the author of le normal et le pathologique”, published only two years later, but it did not prevent althusser from prophesying in his presentation to macherey’s article: “canguilhem’s name and work will soon know a much larger audience” (althusser 1998, 161). in “la historia epistemológica de georges canguilhem”, commissioned by the siglo xxi publishing house (as recommended to the editors by althusser) to preface the argentine translation of le normal et le pathologique, from 1971, lecourt stated that the purpose of his text was to clarify the “truly inestimable theoretical debt” of the “marxist-leninist philosophers grouped around louis althusser” with the works of canguilhem (lecourt 1975, 162). “the new epistemologists”, wrote althusser on that presentation, “are similar to ethnologists, who go ‘into the field’: they want to see science up-close, and refuse to speak about what they are ignorant of, or about what they know only at second or third hand (unhappily, this was the case with brunschvicg) or perceive from outside, that is, from afar” (althusser 1998, 163). fifty years ago, althusser identified a discontinuity in the history of philosophy which, according to him, had been provoked by the new possibilities open, in epistemology, by jean cavaillès, gaston bachelard and jules vuillemin, and, in history of sciences, by canguilhem and foucault. although althusser divides the competencies, the revolutionary element lied in the fact that, from those authors on, epistemology and history of sciences refers to one another in a profound unity. “it is precisely this unity which today constitutes a problem and difficulty”, he said (althusser 1998, 162). in the 1960s this unity between epistemology and history of science emerged as the answer to the philosophical problem of the historicization of sciences, of the attribution or rather the recognition of a constitutive historicity inherent to scientific thought that was not a mere manifestation of the history of reason. therefore, for althusser, in addition to the respect for the “reality of real science”, as opposed to the image of science projected by idealist philosophers, the second great novelty brought by the works of bachelard, cavaillès, vuillemin, canguilhem and foucault would be this “elementary requirement”: the recognition “that it is impossible by right to take a simple chronicle, or a philosophy of history (that is, an ideological conception of history, of the progress of history, of the progress of reason, etc.), for history”. the result of these two novelties, according to althusser, was the modification; culture; institutions; knowledge production; institutional, professional and relational practices); technologies (organization and regulation of productive resources and processes; bodies/environments), and instruments (means of production of interventions). […] although not being in itself a paradigm, collective health, as a movement committed to the social transformation of health, presents some possibilities of articulation with new scientific paradigms capable of approaching the health-disease-care object with due regard to its historicity and complexity” (paim and almeida filho 1998, 299). looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 143 overturning of “the old traditional, empiricist, positivist, idealist conceptions of epistemology and history” (althusser 1998, 163). “georges canguilhem’s epistemological and historical work”, said macherey, “is striking first of all because of its specialization” (macherey 1998, 165). lecourt, in his preface, tried to explain the encounter between the theoretical preoccupations of the french marxists with canguilhem’s “strictly specialized works in the history of the sciences.” since the opening of canguilhem’s personal and working archive and the publication of his complete works, which informed us about the various domains where the philosophical activity led him, hardly anyone would begin like that a comment about his work. but it made sense that, at the time, the first characteristic pointed out by macherey and lecourt was the specialization of canguilhem’s work. later, in the preface to de canguilhem à foucault, la force de las normes, macherey explained that in order to write his article, “the first task, particularly laborious, was to gather a corpus from which to study” (macherey 2009, 20). in 1964, macherey listed canguilhem’s texts used in his research: the books essai sur quelques problèmes concernant le normal et le pathologique, la formation du concept de réflexe au xviie et xviiie siècles, la connaissance de la vie, du développement à l’évolution au xixe siècle (collective work originally published in thales) and histoire générale des sciences (collective work organized by rené taton); and the articles “introduction au traité de physiologie de kayser”, “pathologie et physiologie de la thyroïde au xixe siècle”, “note sur la situation faite à la philosophie biologique en france”, “qu’est-ce que la psychologie?”, “une epistémologie concordataire”, “l’histoire des sciences dans l’oeuvre épistémologique de gaston bachelard”, “les fonctions de la thyroïde”, “la psychologie animale et la psychologie humaine d’après darwin”, “la diffusion scientifique”, “gaston bachelard et les philosophes” and “the role of analogies and models in biological discovery”. macherey tried to be as exhaustive as possible in the survey of the bibliography. the texts collected “at great cost”, he says, give the fullest idea of “how the work of canguilhem appeared in the early sixties to the eyes of those who had their curiosity aroused by it” (macherey 2009, 19). for twenty years the specialization of this work in a particular domain of the history of the sciences, the life sciences, did not conceal the diversity of objects – the normal and pathological states, vitalism, the concept of reflex movement, the monstrosity and the monsters, thyroid gland functions, fibrillar and cellular theories etc. – and the diversity of themes (or levels of analysis) – the theory of sciences, the history of sciences, the theory of the history of science. but, according to macherey, each of these levels of analysis is no pretext for the others. although we can distinguish them and read differently each text, we cannot dissociate them. in canguilhem’s work, the diversity of objects and themes indicates the unity of reflection. and, “through the diversity of subjects and points of view, the object or question is never given except within the discursivity of a succession, of an unfolding. it seems, from the beginning, that phenomena take on only the meaning that is reflected in their history” (macherey 1998, 166). lecourt’s text does not depart from the framework established by althusser and macherey. but much more than his colleagues, lecourt was decisive to the transformation of the bachelard-canguilhem affiliation into a historiographical dogma: “it seems completely justified to make him [canguilhem] bachelard’s heir. recognition of the historicity of the object of epistemology imposes a new conception of the history of the sciences”. and he adds: “gaston bachelard’s epistemology was historical; georges canguilhem’s history of the sciences is epistemological. two ways to state the revolutionary unity that both institute between epistemology and history of the sciences” (lecourt 1975, 166). it mattered little to lecourt that the new discipline created by bachelard in 1938, the psychoanalysis of the scientific spirit, was not entirely successful. this simple attempt, lecourt said, made the philosophy of sciences undergo a revolutionary displacement: “[bacherlard] pointed out for it a place which had never had an occupant: an empty site, but one recognized as such, at the looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 144 junction of each scientific practice and the ideologies that intervene in it under philosophical cover” (lecourt 1975, 165). more specifically, lecourt says, “the practice of the history of the sciences inaugurated by georges canguilhem thus sets to work, develops and rectifies bachelardian epistemological categories in its own proper field. it has the same specific relationship to its object, and, installing itself in the space uncovered by the bachelardian break-through in philosophy, it pursues and deepens the polemic against the philosophy of the philosophers” (lecourt 1975, 167). this is important because it allows lecourt to eliminate the apparent paradox of the approximation between the history of sciences and the theoretical concerns of the “marxist-leninist philosophers grouped around luis althusser”. according to lecourt, the unity between epistemology and history of the sciences, made possible by the work of canguilhem, had brought those two disciplines close to historical materialism, “the marxist science of history”. this unity, says lecourt, will be seen in practice in the history of biological sciences which, to be effective, must deal with two concerns: to show the specific character of its object, and to specify, based on the specific case of medicine, the relations between techniques and theoretic knowledge. “the first explains the insistence with which georges canguilhem returns to the so-called question of vitalism. the second makes comprehensible the status he accords the notion of norm”, said lecourt (1975, 178). the decision, in 1982, to include macherey’s text, with althusser’s presentation, as a postface to the second edition of the brazilian translation of le normal et le pathologique (the first edition is dated from 1978) must be understood in the context of the reception of althusser’s ideas in brazil, strongly marked by the name of carlos escobar, around whom it was organized a circle of intellectuals dedicated to the study and dissemination of the work of the marxist philosopher. among these intellectuals were manoel barros da motta and severino bezerra cabral filho, editors of canguilhem in brazil. however, even before forense publishing house translated le normal et le pathologique in 1978, the references to the argentine translation (1971) prefaced by lecourt was constant among the constructors of the field of collective health in brazil. sérgio arouca, in o dilema preventivista (1975), cecília donnangelo, in medicina e estrutura social (1976), and ricardo bruno mendes gonçalves, in medicina e história (1979), dexterity articulate the ideas of althusser, canguilhem, foucault and lecourt, in such a way that we can undoubtedly say they were the first to make of le normal et le pathologique a leitmotiv for an original reflection on philosophy of health, more specifically, a reflection on the historicity of medical practice and thinking and on the healthdisease process in populations. about this reception of canguilhem in brazilian medical and public health schools during the years of civilian-military dictatorship (1964-1985), naomar de almeida filho and maria thereza a. d. coelho wrote the following: an interesting hypothesis of history of science, to be duly considered, at least for some of these authors, is that this reference [to the works of canguilhem and foucault] would have worked, among other reasons, as a camouflage of the marxist theoretical base of the proposed analyzes, at a time of intense political repression and ideological censorship. an anecdote of the time suggested that the methodological chapter of sérgio arouca’s (1975) thesis on the “preventive dilemma” [...] had been written in a hermetic and purposely confuse style, precisely to discourage censors and other unwanted readers. in this way, both foucault and canguilhem inadvertently came to acquire, in the latin american sanitary literature, a respectful consideration as theoretical exponents of a leftist epistemological thought. (almeida filho and coelho 1999, 15) and they add: looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 145 on what concerns foucault, this aura was quickly revised, right after his nietzscheangenealogical turn, in the early eighties [...]. the same did not occur with canguilhem’s epistemology, which, protected from deeper critical analyzes, perhaps due to the lack of knowledge of the whole of his work [in this point, in a footnote, ricardo bruno mendes gonçalves and josé ricardo de carvalho mesquita ayres are indicated as exceptions], continued to be referred to as the conceptual basis for important theoretical developments grounded in marxism in the field of collective health. the most striking example of this effect is perhaps the theory of the ‘work and health process’, elaborated by laurell et al., which is extremely influential in the area of worker’s health. (almeida filho and coelho 1999, 15-16) in a recent article entitled “georges canguilhem e a construção do campo da saúde coletiva brasileira”, josé ricardo ayres argued that, despite its original political motivation, the recourse to historical epistemology, particularly the works of canguilhem, opened the possibility of a critical reflection on the potentialities and limitations of collective health as well as a reflection on the “strategies to improve it, both in its characteristic critical investments in health sciences and techniques, as well as in its practical commitments and instrumental tasks” (ayres 2016, 140). ayres acknowledges that in these four decades of official existence of collective health in brazil the importance of canguilhem among the researchers was somehow diluted. however, he maintains that canguilhem’s texts, especially le normal et le pathologique, “have accompanied the academic project of collective health since its beginnings” (140). this dialogue between collective health and historical epistemology, according to ayres, was established, first, in relation to the philosophical concepts of canguilhem, such as “the normative character of life and its knowledge, the qualitative discontinuity between normal and pathological phenomena and the definition of health guided by the notion of value”, but also in relation to his historical methodology, focused on the rational development of concepts as the nucleus of historicalepistemological research, the recognition of ‘external’ influences on scientific developments, such as social and technological conditions, and the positive role attributed to obstacles, failures and accidents in the progress of scientific disciplines. (ayres 2016, 140) we can say with certainty that there was an intellectual movement, tributary of historical epistemology, of search for the theoretical and practical means for the fulfillment, by collective health, of the demands imposed by the concrete problems of brazilian social reality. in the preface to the book saúde, sociedade e história, dedicated to the work of ricardo bruno mendes-gonçalves, naomar de almeida filho synthesized the question in the following terms: in order to rigorously and precisely structure a canguilhemian historical epistemology subsidiary epistemology [of health], ricardo bruno mendes-gonçalves formulates a central hypothesis: the historical development of an abstract body of scientific knowledge occurs in response to the need placed by a social practice which seeks to respond to concrete situations and problems. in its historical trajectory, the scientific practice systematizes the questions posed by the explanatory theories, always limited by the current rationalities, which makes possible the instrumentalization of new acting techniques, but does not allow ignoring the peculiar nature of the practice, looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 146 given by its working condition imbricated in a social structure and by the particularized nature of its object. (almeida filho 2017, 19-20) if, in the 1970s, canguilhem became one of the theoretical exponents of a left-wing epistemological thinking in collective health, it was also because his work, as presented to his readers outside france by althusser, macherey and lecourt, allowed considering the knowledge of health in “truly rational” bases, those of the historical materialism. an original question of those brazilian researchers who, in the context of transformations in social medicine experienced in latin america, took the form of a reflection on medical practice and thinking in capitalist societies from a historical and epistemological approach to the concepts of “life”, “normal”, “pathological”, “health” and “disease”. consider these words of ricardo lafetá novaes, in his master’s dissertation on “health and concepts” presented in 1976 to the department of preventive medicine of the university of são paulo (where he later became a professor): canguilhem appears to us as an author of the greatest importance because he takes the medical and biological categories as a subject, but from a historical perspective of the sciences (ideologies) that constituted life as an object of knowledge. a historical perspective that is also epistemological and indicates not only the prehistory of a science, but also how they get involved (or rather, they are involved) with the general conceptions of the world, making their categories and social values more expressive of the dominant interests than the truth of its object. (novaes 1976, v) in saúde e sociedade, donnangelo considers that “medical practice as a therapeutic act is not a scientific practice (…). it has particular dimension of knowledge and action over a particular object” (donnangelo 1976, 17). donnangelo reaffirms the precedence of the clinic over pathology to criticize the “tendency towards the analytical identification between science and scientifically founded medical practice”, which, she argues (always quoting that argentine translation of le normal et le pathologique), “often leads to ignoring the specificity of the medical work to reduce it to a set of technological resources and, more than that, of material technology”. when she criticizes this tendency, donnangelo takes a stand against what she called “anatomophysiological body-centered medicine”. for donnangelo, canguilhem, through his studies on norms and normalization, was responsible for showing that “the body, as an object of medical practice, is not exhausted in its anatomophysiological dimension” and that it is precisely the “extra-scientific dimension of the norms and the normal body that medicine faces in its concrete practice, whether or not it recognizes the theoretical formalizations that guide this interference” (donnangelo 1976, 23). for sergio arouca, the object of the history of sciences is the intellectual facts of the sciences, but, and this is important, he adds that the scientific ideas “find their specificity in the relation they have with the social structure that generated and allowed its appearance”. there is no contempt for the history of practices, but a qualification derived from the specificity of ideas, from their strategic position in the discursive and non-discursive fields. in canguilhem’s article “l’objet de l’histoire des sciences”, translated and published in brazil by the journal tempo brasileiro in 1972, and quoted by arouca in his doctoral dissertation from 1974, canguilhem explains that history of sciences as a discipline “constitutes the specific domain in which the theoretical questions posed by scientific practice in its development find its place” (canguilhem 1979, 19) and adds a note on the origin of this idea, the althusserian concept of theoretical practice, which was also quoted by arouca: “theoretical practice”, says althusser , “returns under the general definition of practice. it works on a first matter (representations, concepts, facts) given to it by other practices, whether they are ‘empirical’, ‘technical’, or ‘ideological’.” and, as for arouca, concepts and facts are the “first matter” on looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 147 which these theoretical practices work, “it is a matter of determining, in a given social context, to what type of rationality the concept belongs” (arouca 1975, 32). the strength and vitality of arouca’s book is due to his efforts to unveil the ideologies and ideological practices that are at the origin of the shortcomings of preventive medicine: “preventive medicine, rather than the production of new knowledge, rather than changes in the structure of medical services is an ideological movement”, he said in his introduction. for the brazilian historiography of medicine and public health, o dilema preventivista, one of the works most cited by the researchers in those areas, was fundamental for the construction of a social health theory in brazil, whose materialization would have occurred through the incorporation of the right to health in the constitution of 1988 and, in the following years, the institutionalization of the unified federal health system (the “sistema único de saúde, sus”). the paradigms of collective health in brazil were proposed by arouca in his foucauldian-canguilhemian-althusserian critique of preventive medicine, a book that, despite the fact it was censored by the dictatorship, soon became an object of debate in medical schools and served as a theoretical basis for the organization of the sanitary reform movement of the 1980s. different from what happened in france, where the interest in the canguilhemian theory of the history of medicine also made a career in the history of the medical specialties and their specific rationalities, in brazil, canguilhem’s work know its vitality by the researches on public health. the sanitary reform movement in brazil, which many authors treat as part of a revolutionary moment of social medicine in latin america, put the relationship between health and society at the center of the discussion. what followed was a prevalence of historical studies on public health and social medicine, social movements, the state, and capitalism. it explains why is so common to find, in the texts produced in the 1970’s and 1980’s, references to canguilhem and henry e. sigerist side by side. nevertheless, if the studies on “social health” remain in continuity with the political project of those first brazilian readers of canguilhem, with the years they moved away from the historiographical and epistemological model usually expected by french commentators. diffusion and reception are not passive notions: they presuppose valuation and appropriation. for françois azouvi, author of books such as de königsberg à paris: la réception de kant en france (1788-1804) and la gloire bergson: essai sur le magistère philosophique, the history of the diffusion and reception of texts and, of course, the history of the reception of ideas are as important as the history of systems, that is, the internal history of an author’s works: “i believe there is an immense field of research here, because in reality we could trace back the whole history of the thought and philosophy from the point of view of its reception, from the point of view of the use that was made of the works” (azouvi and camolezi 2016, 120). it is a problematic forged by intellectual history, which is not a history of philosophy ashamed of itself, but a history that, in the expression of françois azouvi, “agrees to look through the corners”. references almeida filho, naomar. 2017. por uma epistemologia bruniana: dilemas de um prefácio. in mendes-gonçalves, ricardo bruno. saúde, sociedade e história, edited by josé ricardo de carvalho mesquita ayres and liliana santos, pp. 15-38. são paulo/porto alegre: hucitec. almeida filho, naomar and coelho, maria thereza a. d. 1999. normal-patológico, saúde doença: revisitando canguilhem. physis 9 (1): 13-36. almeida, tiago santos and camolezi, marcos. 2016. entrevista com jean-françois braunstein. intelligere 2: 156-171. looking through the corners: althusserism and the reception of canguilhem in brazil tiago santos almeida 148 althusser, louis and balibar, étienne. 1970. reading capital, translated by ben brewster. new york: nlb. althusser, louis. 1998. presentation by louis althusser. in: macherey, pierre. in a materialist way. selected essays by pierre macherey (“george canguilhem’s philosophy of science: epistemology and history of science”), translated by ted stolze. london/new york: verso. arouca, sérgio. 1975. o dilema preventivista: contribuição para a compreensão e crítica da medicina preventiva. tese de doutorado, faculdade de ciências médicas da unicamp. ayres, josé ricardo de carvalho mesquita. 2016. georges canguilhem e a construção do campo da saúde coletiva brasileira. intelligere 2: 138-155. azouvi, françois and camolezi, marcos. 2015. bergson revisitado: entrevista com françois azouvi. intelligere 1: 116-125. bing, françois and braunstein, jean-françois. 1998. entretien avec georges canguilhem. in bing, françois; braunstein, jean-françois and roudinesco, élisabeth. (eds.). actualité de georges. canguilhem. le normal et le pathologique. paris: institut synthélabo. brewster, ben. 1970. glossary. in althusser, louis and balibar, étienne. 1970. reading capital, translated by ben brewster. new york: nlb. donnangelo, cecília. 1976. medicina e estrutura social. são paulo. tese de livre-docência, faculdade de medicina da usp. foucault, michel. 1978. introduction. in canguilhem, georges. on the normal and the pathological. translated by carolyn r. fawcett. boston: d. reidel. canguilhem, georges. 1979. l’objet de l’histoire des sciences. in canguilhem, georges. études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. paris: j. vrin. séris, jean-pierre. 1993. l’histoire et la vie. in georges canguilhem: philosophe, historien des sciences. actes du colloque (6-7-8 décembre 1990). paris: albin michel. lecourt, dominique. 1975. georges canguilhem’s epistemological history. in lecourt, dominique. marxism and epistemology: bachelard, canguilhem and foucault, translated by ben brewster. london: nlb. macherey, pierre. 2009. de canguilhem à foucault, la force des normes. paris: la fabrique. macherey, pierre. 1998. george canguilhem’s philosophy of science: epistemology and history of science. in macherey, pierre. in a materialist way. selected essays by pierre macherey, translated by ted stolze. london/new york. mendes-gonçalves, ricardo bruno. 1979. medicina e história: raízes sociais do trabalho médico. são paulo. dissertação de mestrado, faculdade de medicina da usp, 1979. novaes, ricardo lafetá. 1976. a saúde e os conceitos. dissertação de mestrado apresentada à faculdade de medicina da universidade de são paulo. paim, jairnilson s. and almeida filho, naomar de. 1998. collective health: a “new public health” or field open to new paradigms? rev. saúde pública 32 (4): 299-316. microsoft word 14dimauro esposito naddeo layout 163 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 163-173 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access article article when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro1 salvatore esposito2 adele naddeo3 abstract: we discuss a less known aspect of feynman’s multifaceted scientific work, centered about his interest in molecular biology, which came out around 1959 and lasted for several years. after a quick historical reconstruction about the birth of molecular biology, we focus on feynman’s work on genetics with robert s. edgar in the laboratory of max delbruck, which was later quoted by francis crick and others in relevant papers, as well as in feynman’s lectures given at the hughes aircraft company on biology, organic chemistry and microbiology, whose notes taken by the attendee john neer are available. an intriguing perspective comes out about one of the most interesting scientists of the xx century. keywords: richard feynman; phage group; molecular biology; feynman’s lectures received: 24 january 2017. reviewed 18 april 2018. accepted: 10 may 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.14 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction richard p. feynman has been – no doubt – one of the most intriguing characters of xx century physics (mehra 1994). as well known to any interested people, this applies not only to his work as a theoretical physicist – ranging from the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics to quantum electrodynamics (granting him the nobel prize in physics in 1965), and from helium superfluidity to the parton model in particle physics –, but also to his own life, a number of anecdotes being present in the literature (mehra 1994; gleick 1992; brown and rigden 1993; sykes 1994; gribbin and gribbin 1997; leighton 2000; mlodinov 2003; feynman 2005; henderson 2011; krauss 2011), including his own popular books (feynman 1985; 1988). if the pictorial representation of feynman diagrams in quantum field theory is probably his 1 marco di mauro – phd – is a postdoctoral researcher in the dipartimento di fisica “e. r. caianiello” at the university of salerno. address: via giovanni paolo ii, 132, 84084 fisciano, salermo – italy. e-mail: madimauro@unisa.it 2 salvatore esposito – phd – is a professor in the istituto nazionale di fisica nucleare – sezione di napoli complesso univeristario di monte s. angelo. address: via cinthia, 80125 naples – italy. e-mail: salvatore.esposito@na.infn.it 3 adele naddeo – phd – is an associate researcher in the istituto nazionale di fisica nucleare sezione di napoli complesso univeristario di monte s. angelo. address: via cinthia, 80125 naples – italy. e-mail: anaddeo@na.infn.it when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 164 most famous contribution to science (but, certainly, not the only important one), his peculiar life is likely not at all less known to the public due to his involvement in the manhattan project for the building of the atomic bomb as well as in the panel investigating the space shuttle challenger disaster; physics popularization as well as pedagogical work; political issues and – last but not least – his drum playing and similar extravagant things. feynman’s genuine interest in the study of nature often led him to particularly distant areas of research, whose borders were easily crossed by his own curiosity. for example, after the completion of his 1955 work on polaron physics (feynman 1962), feynman decided to spend his summer time at caltech, making excursions into different fields ranging from engineering to biology. robert hellwarth, a research fellow of feynman at caltech, moved to hughes aircraft company (1955-1965) and arranged for feynman to give there lectures for scientists, engineers and technicians on subjects of mutual interest. feynman continued lecturing regularly at hughes for many years on a variety of topics, ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to classical and quantum electrodynamics, relativity, scattering theory, as well as mathematical methods in physics and even molecular biology. feynman’s interest in biology began around 1959, and culminated in the publication of a relevant paper on genetics in 1962 (edgar et al. 1962). his peculiar guiding view was that “there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms according to the laws of physics” (feynman, leighton and sands 2005). the first occasion given to him to reason about such things was probably the talk he delivered at the annual meeting of the american physical society in december 1969 at caltech, curiously titled “there’s plenty of room at the bottom” (feynman 1960). though a popular talk, it is credited as introducing the concept of nanotechnology, since he highlighted the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale. particularly interesting is feynman’s reasoning about it: “i am inspired by the biological phenomena in which chemical forces are used in a repetitious fashion to produce all kinds of weird effects” (feynman 1960). feynman spent his entire sabbatical year 1959-1960 at caltech working on biology. with robert s. edgar, he worked in the laboratory of max delbruck on a project about the characterization of back-mutations, while with matt meselson he worked on ribosomes. given the relevant results he obtained, feynman was invited to give a seminar on his work at harvard, where he met james watson, francis crick and others. interesting enough, a key paper by crick et al. (1961) quoted feynman’s work with edgar, which was then published in 1962 (edgar et al. 1962). in the present paper, we dwell just on feynman’s incursions in the field of biology, by focusing on his work on genetics with edgar as well as on his lectures at hughes company about biology, organic chemistry and microbiology. this will be addressed in section iii, after a section devoted to a quick historical reconstruction about the birth of molecular biology, which was properly the field of interest of feynman. finally, in section iv, conclusions and outlook will be presented. the “phage group” and the birth of molecular biology molecular biology came into play as new research paradigm during the three decades ranging from 1930 to the late 1950s, characterized by a huge effort to understand the secrets of life, whose main result was the discovery of the self-replicating mechanisms of dna and the explanation of its working principle: the information coding. that triggered further developments which contributed to the development of genetic engineering. united states – and in particular two institutions – played a dominant role in this respect: the rockefeller foundation, who launched and supported an intensive biology program, and caltech, who when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 165 carried out rockefeller’s project and became the top international research and training center in molecular biology (see for instance (kay 1993; keller 2000; poon 2001; keller 2002; de chadarevian 2002; joaquim, freire and el-hani 2015) and references therein). building up a new science the term “molecular biology” was coined in 1938 by warren weaver, the director of the rockefeller foundation’s natural science division. it well captured in its meaning the content of the foundation’s program and, in general, the main features of the new science: 1) the focus on unifying life phenomena common to all living organisms; 2) the use of simple biological systems – such as bacteria and viruses – as phenomenological probes or conceptual models; 3) the search for ultimate physicochemical laws governing all living phenomena; 4) its interdisciplinary nature in borrowing concepts and methods from different fields such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, genetics, microbiology, immunology and physiology; 5) a domain of investigation ranging from 106 to 107 cm; and 6) the use of new and more sophisticated instrumentation and techniques. in the years from 1930 to the late 1950s, the significant role of rockefeller foundation in shaping life science and, in particular, molecular biology was the result of a variety of different factors, which run from huge investments to a smart scientific policy consisting in creating and supporting mechanisms of interdisciplinary cooperation through networks of grants and fellowships as well as promoting a strongly project-oriented research. rockefeller projects and university research programs became soon deeply interconnected, and the research in molecular biology grew up as a result of an overall strategy, based on an interdisciplinary cooperation and the so-called group projects. at the same time, the quest for new and sophisticated experimental equipment (and, as a consequence, for larger laboratories to house such equipment) triggered the development of new technologies, also demanding a close interplay between biology, physics and engineering. among the institutions which received a large amount of grants for carrying out projects in molecular biology we find the university of chicago and caltech, considered by the foundation as the most promising centers for developing the new cutting-edge research programs. but, at variance with chicago, caltech’s biology program had, as a unique feature, a sharp departure from the traditional point of view in biology: the aim was, indeed, to build up a new science, mainly based on a fruitful interplay with engineering and physics. this is testified by the definition of new curricula for undergraduate and graduate studies in biology, which featured a strong training in physical sciences. as a consequence, caltech soon became a primary research center in molecular biology. delbruck and the phage group the physicist max delbruck was one of the founding fathers of molecular biology, who worked at caltech and built up influential research groups. he was the first to establish successful links between physics, genetics and mathematics by creating the “phage group” in the late 1930s. the leitmotif of his research program was an emphasis on bacterial viruses (or bacteriophages), taken as model system for gene action, in this way introducing a new working approach in molecular biology. however, a key activity of the group, which enabled delbruck to keep close contact with the scientific community on genetics – and boosted his career – was the organization of summer symposia taking place every year in cold spring harbor. it was just in the 1941 symposium that delbruck, for the first time, presented a paper on protein chemistry: it focused on a possible analogy between self-replication and enzymatic autocatalytic reaction, and recognized an enzyme-like protein as the active hereditary component of chromosomes. at the same time, he started his life-long collaboration with salvador luria. when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 166 an electron microscope enabled delbruck in 1943 to observe a bacteriophage and to elucidate its structure: a tadpole-shaped or sperm-like organism with distinct head and tails. that suggested him the close analogy between phage penetration of bacteria and the interaction of sperm with the egg, which added new evidence to the possible relation between the specificity of proteins involved in genetic replication and the specificity involved in the formation of antibodies. in 1945 an annual phage course was organized in cold spring harbor, which would be held till late 1960s, while the number of researchers on such topic quickly grew up. the course primarily dealt with borderline problems in biology, chemistry and physics, and delbruck required a strong mathematical background to the participating students, along with a knowledge of basic laboratory techniques. the close contact with niels bohr, as well as the inspiration from the book what is life? by erwin schrödinger (1944), contributed a lot to delbruck successful career and promoted molecular biology as a line of research for physicists. a further byproduct was the broadening of the scientific interests of the phage school, as testified by delbruck and bailey (1946) and alfred d. hershey (1946) papers presented at 1946 cold spring harbor symposium. here a clear evidence for a complicated genetic behavior by bacterial viruses was provided for the first time, showing that they undergo mutations mainly during their intracellular existence. in other words, a microorganism was a complex reproductive system able to transmit specific genetic factors, which could be identified with nucleic acids. further work by hershey and delbruck showed that a genetic map of a phage could be constructed, in whole analogy with drosophila maps, paving the way for later reconstruction of a finestructure map of the phage genome. as a result, the classical concept of gene changed because of the separation between units of recombination, mutation and function, while new experiments were designed in order to assess the primacy of dna during replication and mutation in phage. delbruck’s research carried out between 1940 and 1946 led him to play a primary role in the fields of genetics and microbiology, and raised the interest of many research institutions. he made his choice in january 1947, joining caltech as a full professor, and there set up a permanent research and training center on phage, with a laboratory endowed with novel and advanced experimental technologies. in this respect, new tools such as the radioisotope tracer began to come into play in molecular biology and revealed themselves very powerful. indeed, starting in 1947, radioisotopes were used in phage studies, as reported in the contributions presented at the yearly cold spring harbor symposium. finding the replication mechanism caltech group attracted a lot of scientists in those years, contributing in this way to set up the basic pillars in molecular biology, which culminated with the discovery of dna double helix structure by james d. watson and francis h.c. crick in 1953. among the main contributions to the development of the new science, which took place since 1947 under the influence of delbruck’s group at caltech, we have to quote the multiplicity reactivation phenomenon by luria, which deals with the genetic exchange of undamaged parts between ultraviolet irradiated phage particles during the process of absorption to the same host bacterium. further investigations on x-rays damage on phages and their patterns of recombination were the subject of ph.d thesis by watson under the supervision of luria and delbruck, the perspective being the search for the general relationships between structure and function in viruses. subsequent experimental findings by doermann (1948) about the phage life cycle triggered further investigations by delbruck, hershey and luria about segregation and recombination of viral genetic material during the vegetative phase, while in 1950 lwoff added new pieces of information about the mechanisms of replication and mutation in when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 167 bacteria (lwoff 1966). the acquired knowledge of the phage life cycle in the bacterial cell was soon extended to different animal and human viruses by renato dulbecco, who joined delbruck’s laboratory in 1950. following a suggestion by delbruck, he succeeded in developing a method for the growth of animal cells able to produce viruses in culture dishes. as a result, a novel and reliable plaque assay for viruses was established in whole analogy with the phage case (dulbecco 1966), paving the way to the development of molecular virology. all these findings pointed clearly toward the key role played by nucleic acids in the replication and mutation in phage, but this idea remained unexplored till 1953, while protein research being fully pursued by george beadle and linus pauling. in this context, the success of pauling’s project on sickle cell anemia (pauling et al. 1949) confirmed the role of giant protein molecules in all physiological functions and pointed out how the etiology of disease could be found at the molecular level. in other words, pauling’s study on sickle cell anemia was a first example of a molecular disease, the manufacture of abnormal sickle cell hemoglobin being controlled by a particular gene, in this way validating the molecular vision of life. on the basis of these results, in january 1950 beadle and pauling requested funding from the rockefeller foundation to build up a laboratory of medical chemistry at caltech, whose mission would be to bring together in a stimulating scientific environment biologists, chemists, physicists and experts in medicine in order to understand the chemical processes underlying biological systems. but the skepticism of the foundation’s officers about their proposal led them to give up soon and redraw their attention and energies to protein structure. indeed, a relevant scientific achievement by pauling in those years was the construction of the physical model of alpha-keratin, a task pursued relying strongly on the building of molecular models, which was the hallmark of pauling’s research activity, well known as molecular architecture (bernal 1968; corey and pauling 1953). the alpha helix, with the pitch of the turn occurring every 3:7 amino acid residues, revealed a strong departure from known protein structures, being a helix of peptides with an irrational, aperiodic structure. but the issue of finding the auto-replication mechanism of such a structure remained still unknown. proteins didn’t solve the main problems in biology, a possible answer having to be found in nucleic acids. a scientific revolution was about to happen, in which life appeared to be ruled by a new giant molecule, the self-replicating dna spiral. its double-helix structure sustained by a complementary pairing of purines to pyrimidines, elucidated by watson and crick (1953), suggested a possible copying mechanism of the genetic material. delbruck’s reactions were enthusiastic, and watson was invited to give a talk at the 1953 cold spring harbor symposium on viruses. it is clear that the shift of the molecular vision of life, from the protein paradigm to the new dna based one, determined the beginning of a new era in molecular biology, centered essentially on genetics and cytology, whose main achievements were the discovery of dna replication mechanism together with the role of dna polymerase as a catalyst, and the development of the idea of a genetic code as a solution to the problem of heterocatalysis. delbruck’s phage group and the funding policy carried out by rockefeller foundation revealed to be a fundamental contribution to the birth of molecular biology, and caltech began a primary research center in this respect till the end of 1960s. feynman at work in biology being the world center of molecular biology research in 1950s-1960s, all the leaders in the field sooner or later would visit the biology department at caltech. feynman too, who often visited delbruck, often attended seminars given by these visitors (mehra 1994), and being a frequent visitor of the biology department, he was able to meet for example dulbecco and when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 168 seymour benzer, who later would give colorful accounts and anecdotes about their interaction with him (dulbecco 2010; weiner 1999). plus and minus classes: feynman at caltech at some time, feynman realized that he might like to do some work in biology, and then delbruck sent him robert s. edgar – delbruck’s postdoc at the time – who was carrying on bacteriophage research, which delbruck was losing interest into. as a task, he was given to work on back-mutations, i.e. mutations appearing to restore a mutant gene to its normal state. it is important to notice that back-mutations do not always bring back to exactly the starting point. his work follows previous studies by benzer, who first recognized the uniqueness of rii mutants, namely, their inability to form plaques on escherichia coli k12. according to him, this property could be useful to analyze the nature of genes, because it allows a small fraction of wild-type recombinants from crosses to be easily enumerated. in this way, it is possible to study the detailed genetic fine structure of the rii region (benzer 1955; 1961). benzer was able to genetically map a huge number of mutations in the rii gene, and that allowed him to understand two main features about genes: the sequence of a gene is linear and the smallest units of recombination is between two adjacent dna base pairs. feynman’s work consisted in mapping a reasonably large number of rii markers in a second phage strain, the t4d one (edgar et al. 1962). by analyzing back-mutants that were evidently not completely normal, he realized that such back-mutants had both the r43 mutation and a second mutation that somewhat enhanced its effects. such mutations – which we may call “suppressors” – had by themselves quite a strong effect, similar to that of r43. however, when combined with r43, they brought back the phage close to the starting, normal state. feynman also showed that different suppressors, when combined between them, do not produce mutual suppression, but rather they appear to suppress only the r43 mutation: the former were shown to be located near the latter. by studying back-mutations of suppressors, feynman found that they were due to new suppressors similar to the r43 mutation, which were referred to as plus and minus mutations. combination of a plus and a minus mutation brings the phage almost back to its normal state. such a picture was confirmed by crick et al. (1961) in the famous paper where the genetic code was unveiled, showing that each amino acid in the protein synthesis corresponds to three nucleotides. feynman went close to such a finding, but did not realize the importance of what he had uncovered. in benzer’s words: he had discovered something without realizing it. [...] it was related to the later discovery by crick and brenner, using the rii mutants. this had to do with the nature of the genetic code. [...] it was something under his nose, and its significance was just not apparent at that time. (benzer 2002) what feynman was missing – while known to crick et al. – was that the plus and minus mutations corresponded to additions and deletions of nucleotides, respectively. also, he did not understand that the number three was peculiar, and to be identified with the coding ratio; this was famously discovered by crick and coworkers in the mentioned paper (crick et al. 1961). a course on biology, organic chemistry and microbiology: feynman at hughes in the fall of 1955, robert hellwarth, who joined caltech physics department as a research fellow, together with frank vernon, an engineering research student working at aerospace corporation, drew feynman’s interests on more applied research topics. in 1956 hellwarth moved to hughes aircraft company and arranged for feynman to give there lectures for when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 169 scientists, engineers and technicians on subjects of mutual interest. feynman continued lecturing regularly at hughes for many years on a variety of topics, including in particular molecular biology. the lectures went on regularly until the end of the 1970s, reserved to the employees of the company, but unfortunately there was no audio or video recording systems, so that we can rely only on notes taken by the attendees. in particular, notes for the statistical mechanics lectures of 1961 were taken by r. kikuchi and h.a. feiveson; these notes were later published in the now famous book statistical mechanics: a set of lectures (feynman 1972). other sets of notes were taken by j.t. neer, who later made them freely available on the web (feynman 1970). the other lectures apparently went unrecorded. the notes taken by neer include lectures given by feynman from october 1966 to june 1971 about the following topics: 1. october 1966 june 1967: astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology; 2. october 1967 june 1968: electrostatics, electrodynamics, matter-waves interacting, relativity; 3. july 1968 june 1969: matter-wave interacting continued, introduction to quantum mechanics, scattering theory, perturbation theory, methods & problems in qed; 4. october 1969 may 1970: biology, organic chemistry and microbiology; 5. october 1970 june 1971: mathematical methods in engineering & physics. these sets of notes were only slightly edited, therefore are a good example of feynman in action. this is especially intriguing for the first and the fourth sets, which illustrate feynman dealing with fields outside his main research, using lectures as a mean to enter a subject he was interested in. now we will focus on the fourth set of lectures (feynman 1970), i.e. those lectures concerning molecular biology. as discussed above, feynman was not new to biology in 1969, having worked previously in a biology lab for one year, but, being an outsider, he found the material challenging and time consuming. as a result, this set of lectures is considerably shorter than the other sets and, moreover, the lectures ended earlier than expected, feynman being more and more involved in that period with the development of his parton theory (feynman 1969). the lectures highlight quite a standard course on organic chemistry, biomolecules, genetics, and microbiology; the topics covered are reported in table i. however, some considerations are present here and there that betray his being a physicist. in the introduction, feynman noted that, unlike physics and chemistry, biology lacks a basic foundation of fundamental laws, developed by theory and proven by experiments. lacking such a guiding principle, he organized the material according to scale, ranging from the molecular level to more and more complex systems, up to ecology, i.e. the study of many complex biological system interacting in a closed environment. feynman was thus naturally led to the molecular biology approach, according to which “the chemical constituents react according to known chemical and physical laws in a manner which can account for life" (feynman 1970). he was as well convinced that “he could derive all of the properties of living things from the quantum mechanics of the carbon atom" (bridges 2004). after the introduction, feynman began a brief survey of the essentials of organic chemistry: hydrocarbons, functional groups, alcohols, carbonyl compounds, esters, chiral molecules. after that he switched to biochemistry, i.e. biomolecules and metabolic when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 170 pathways, then he discussed sugars and cellular energy production (photosynthesis, krebs cycle). after that he continued with other biomolecules, i.e. fats, amino acids and proteins, discussing in detail the structure of the latter, going from the alpha-helix to globular proteins, highlighting the role of hemoglobin and myoglobin. the course then turned to molecular biology, namely the structure of nucleotides and of the nucleic acids, discussing dna reproduction, the genetic code, protein synthesis and mutations. in the last part of the course the focus shifted, as announced, to more complex systems such as the retina, antibodies, cell differentiations, nerve cell growth and social amoebas. as said above, however, the course was interrupted by feynman earlier than expected, so that no further discussion on microbiology is present, nor on the planned ecology section. concluding remarks in the late 1950s, feynman was deeply involved with a number of physics researches, where he actually gave important contributions. in addition to studies on quantum gravity (feynman 1963) and, especially, to his well-known results about the v-a (vector-axial) character of weak interactions, the two-component spinor formulation of the dirac equation (gell-mann and feynman 1958) and the density matrix approach to polaron theory in solid state physics (feynman et al. 1962) (just to mention some examples), his own character led him to devote himself also to calculations of the tracking of artificial satellite explorer ii at the jet propulsion laboratory (mehra 1994) or even to pedagogical work (as his most famous lectures on physics (feynamn, leighton and sands 2005), for example) and popularization (about nanotechnology (feynman 1960), just to mention one) issues. in any of these topics feynman excelled but, in our opinion, rather than being the manifestation of a genius at work, this is more appropriately the epiphany of his peculiar curiosity, which brought him to be interested also in possible algebraic manipulations performed by computers or other similar, apparently strange things for a well pictured theoretical physicist. however, it is probably feynman’s unexpected involvement in biological issues that better highlights what truly lies behind his curiosity. indeed, it is somewhat apparent from what was discussed above in the present paper that it was not properly the satisfaction for testing one’s own abilities in getting some important result in even different fields of research (even for social utility and not for egoistic purposes) that drove feynman’s curiosity, but rather what we may call the challenge to understand nature in all its different facets. this line of reasoning and doing was already well apparent to be in action in the framework of physics, the original field of feynman, but the deep roots of its foundations are much more appreciated in the framework of biology, a novel field of feynman’s interests. future studies in this direction will probably reveal other intriguing features of one of the most interesting minds of our times. references benzer, seymour. 1955. fine structure of a genetic region in bacteriophage. proceedings of the national academy of sciences 41: 344-354. benzer, seymour. 1961. on the topography of the genetic fine structure. proceedings of the national academy of sciences 47: 403-415. benzer, seymour. 2002. interview by heidi aspaturian. oral history project, california institute of technology archives. http://resolver.caltech.edu/caltechoh:oh_benzer_s bernal, john d. 1968. the patterns of linus pauling’s work in relation to molecular biology. in structural chemistry and molecular biology, edited by alexander rich and norman davidson, 370-379. san francisco: w. h. freeman. when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 171 bridges, william b. 2004. interview by shirley k. cohen. oral history project, california institute of technology archives. http://resolver.caltech.edu/caltechoh:oh_bridges_w brown, laurie m. and john s. rigden, eds. 1993. most of the good stuff: memories of richard feynman. new york: simon & schuster. corey, robert b. and linus c. pauling. 1953. molecular models of amino acids, peptides, and proteins. review of scientific instruments 24: 621-627. crick, francis h. c., leslie barnett, sidney brenner and richard j. watts-tobin. 1961. general nature of the genetic code for proteins. nature 192: 1227-1232. de chadarevian, soraya. 2002. designs for life: molecular biology after world war ii. new york, cambridge university press. delbruck, max and w. t. bailey jr. 1946. induced mutations in bacterial viruses. cold spring harbor symposia on quantitative biology xi: 33-37. doermann, august h. 1948. lysis and lysis inhibition with escherichia coli bacteriophage. journal of bacteriology 55: 257-276. dulbecco, renato. 1966. the plaque technique and the development of quantitative animal virology. in phage and the origins of molecular biology, edited by john cairns et al., 287. new york: cold spring harbor laboratory of quantitative biology. dulbecco, renato. 2010. interview by p. odifreddi (in italian). www.piergiorgioodifreddi.it/wp-content/ uploads/2010/10/dulbecco.pdf. edgar, robert s., richard p. feynman, stefan klein, i. lielausis and charley m. steinberg. 1962. mapping experiments with r mutants of bacteriophage t4d. genetics 47: 179-186. feynman, michelle, ed. 2005. perfectly reasonable deviations from the beaten track: the letters of richard p. feynman. new york: basic books. feynman, richard p. 1960. there’s plenty of room at the bottom. engineering and science 20: 17-18. feynman, richard p. 1963. quantum theory of gravitation. acta physica polonica 24: 697-722. feynman, richard p. 1969. very high-energy collisions of hadrons. physical review letters 23: 1415-1417. feynman, richard p. 1970. feynman hughes lectures, notes taken and transcribed by john t. neer. http://www.thehugheslectures.info/the-lectures/ feynman, richard p. 1972. statistical mechanics: a set of lectures. reading, ma: benjamin cummings. feynman, richard p. 1985. surely, you’re joking, mr. feynman! – adventures of a curious character. new york: w.w. norton & co. feynman, richard p. 1988. what do you care what other people think? – further adventures of a curious character. new york: w.w. norton & co. feynman, richard p., robert w. hellwarth, carl k. iddings and phillip m. platzman. 1962. mobility of slow electrons in a polar crystal. physical review 127: 1004-1017. feynman, richard p., ralph b. leighton, matthew sands. 2005. the feynman lectures on physics: the definitive and extended edition (2nd edition). new york: addison wesley. gell-mann, murray and richard p. feynman. 1958. theory of the fermi interaction. physical review 109: 193-198. gleick, james. 1992. genius: the life and science of richard feynman. new york: pantheon books. gribbin, john and mary gribbin. 1997. richard feynman: a life in science. new york: dutton. henderson, harry. 2011. richard feynman: quarks, bombs and bongos. new york: chelsea house. hershey, alfred d. 1946. spontaneous mutations in bacterial viruses. cold spring harbor symposia on quantitative biology xi: 67-77. joaquim, leyla, olival freire jr and charbel n. el-hani. 2015. quantum explorers: bohr, jordan and delbruck venturing into biology. physics in perspective 17: 236-250. when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 172 kay, lily e. 1993. the molecular vision of life: caltech, the rockefeller foundation and the rise of the new biology. oxford: oxford university press. keller, evelyn fox. 2000. the gene’s century. cambridge: harvard university press. keller, evelyn fox. 2002. making sense of life: explaining biological development with models, metaphors and machines. cambridge: harvard university press. krauss, lawrence m. 2011. quantum man: richard feynman’s life in science. new york: w.w. norton & co. leighton, ralph. 2000. tuva or bust! richard feynman’s last journey. new york: w.w. norton & co. lwoff, andrè. 1966. the prophage and i. in phage and the origins of molecular biology, dited by john cairns et al., 88-99. new york: cold spring harbor laboratory of quantitative biology. mehra, jagdish. 1994. the beat of a different drum: the life and science of richard feynman. oxford: clarendon press. mlodinow, leonard. 2003. feynman’s rainbow: a search for beauty in physics and in life. new york: warner books. pauling, linus c., harvey a. itano, seymour j. singer and ibert c. wells. 1949. sickle cell anemia, a molecular disease. science 110: 543-548. poon, wilson c. k. 2011. interdisciplinary reflections: the case of physics and biology. studies in history and philosophy of biology and biomedicine 42: 115-119. schrodinger, erwin. 1944. what is life? new york: macmillan. sykes, christopher. 1994. no ordinary genius: the illustrated richard feynman. new york: w.w. norton & co. watson, james d. and francis h.c. crick. 1953. molecular structure of nucleic acids; a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. nature 171: 737-738. weiner, jonathan. 1999. time, love, memory. new york: vintage books. when physics meets biology: a less known feynman marco di mauro – salvatore esposito – adele naddeo 173 appendix table i: topics of feynman’s course on biology, organic chemistry and microbiology, as deduced by neer notes of the corresponding hughes lectures. feynman hughes lectures on: biology, organic chemistry and microbiology notes taken by: john t. neer date: october 1969 may 1970 introduction to the course on biology organic chemistry introduction alkenes alcohols carbonyl compounds asymmetric carbon compounds sugars biochemistry introduction carbohydrate metabolism photosynthesis fixation of carbon substances of life fats proteins protein structure the pleated sheets and alpha-helix the alpha-helix alpha-keratin collagen globular proteins cytochrome c the structure of nucleic acid and polymers. dna and rna introduction dna dna reproduction genetic code protein synthesis mutation genetics meiosis sex determination control allostery production of various amino acids mrna control of recrealing of dna how did all begin antibody reaction fertilization. cell division cell differentiation animal metamorphism social amoeba 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 01-02 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 — this is an open access article from the editors historiography of science: the link between history and philosophy in understanding science mauro l. condé1 marlon salomon2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.01 _____________________________________________________________________________ it is with great pleasure that we launch this second number of the transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (june 2017 edition). for this edition we have been able to count on the collaboration of 23 authors from 10 different countries and therefore believe we are on the right path to having a periodical that is as frontier-less as it could possibly be. this strong adherence of authors from different places also shows us that our editorial proposal has been well received by this international community of academics interested in the historiography of science; we are certainly very glad about that. we are well aware that the path of consolidation is a long one, but the first two numbers have strongly motivated us to forge ahead. in seeking to foster research and academic exchanges in the historiography of science, narrating its history and critique, we have elected that our editorial focus should not only be on authors and themes but also on the different scientific disciplines and their specific historiographies. while the first two numbers have concentrated on authors who are important for the historiography of science, in the near future we will have dossiers on themes and disciplines that are equally worthy to be featured on the editorial agenda of the transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. similarly, the articles section is open to receive collaborations that address historiographic perspectives of different disciplines and the most varied themes and authors. although it is considered to be a sub-discipline of history, the historiography of science is in fact a point of confluence of science, history and philosophy. it can undertake the important task of establishing the analysis and registration of the different narratives of the history of science but also, in a philosophical perspective, of questioning the parameters, outreach and possibilities of different historiographic models constructed by those historical narratives of science. thus, the historiography of science is somewhat like a delta in which the waters of science, history and philosophy, and, albeit contemplated to a lesser extent in this tradition, those of the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, flow through together. in short, the historiography of science brings together bodies of knowledge that are quite distinct and that have equally distinct trajectories, but they interweave and imbricate to the point that their waters become almost indistinguishable from one another. in that sense, the editorial stance of this periodical holds that, among the different and common concerns and interests present in science, history and philosophy, the historiography of science constitutes 1 mauro l. condé is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais. address: av. antônio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg, 31.270-901, brazil. email: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 marlon salomon is a professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-90, brazil. email: marlonsalomon@ufg.br from the editors 2 a link that unites those fields of knowledge in an integrated manner. for some time now we have known of the need to imbricate history and philosophy to achieve an understanding of science. that has been imparted by authors like ludwik fleck, georges canguilhem and imre lakatos. to fleck, “any theory of knowledge without historical or comparative studies will remain a mere hollow play of words, an imaginary epistemology (epistemologia imaginabilis)” (fleck 1979 [1935]). in 1966, canguilhem stated that “without having recourse to epistemology, a theory of knowledge would be a meditation on emptiness and without any relation to the history of the sciences, an epistemology would be a perfectly superfluous double of the very science whose history it intended to discourse on” (canguilhem 1983 [1966]). in turn, years later, inspired by kant, imre lakatos asserted that “the philosophy of science without the history of science is empty; the history of science without the philosophy of science is blind” (lakatos 1998). we are convinced that the historiography of science can be precisely that terrain of integration. in other words, even if the history of science and the philosophy of science in their aspects as distinct disciplines that address the same object but each with its own methodology, governed by different intentions – as kuhn showed in his text on the history of science and the philosophy of science (kuhn 1977) – even if the final result of both bodies of knowledge, those of history as much as those of philosophy, are quite distinct from one another, it is still difficult to deny the vast terrain that they share in their historiographic preoccupations. indeed considering the historiography of science to be a sub-discipline of history seems to be more to meet the demands of our classificatory natures or academic policy that compartmentalizes everything into its departments. from the epistemological point of view, there is no reason not to associate the historiography of science as knowledge common to and shared by science, history and philosophy. this edition honors the figure of pierre duhem, who is not only a classic example in the affirmation of the connections among science, history and philosophy but also a highly important figure for the historiography of science, especially in the light of his fruitful historiographic conception and his important archival discoveries which, it is well to remember, brought mediaeval science to life. thus that erudite french intellectual cannot be left outside the scope of our editorial focus. we hereby pay homage to him and his rich legacy of thought. we must also underscore the important editorial work undertaken by fábio rodrigo leite and jeanfrançois stoffel in the production of the dossier on pierre duhem. were it not for the two organizers’ profound knowledge of duhem’s works – allied to their tremendous capability in articulating an editorial process that involved authors, evaluators and editors – this special number would never have existed. thus we register not only our acknowledgement of their labors but also our great debt of gratitude to them. particularly, fábio leite for his leadership in this process. mauro l. condé – ufmg marlon j. salomon – ufg references canguilhem, georges. 1983 [1966]. études d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences. paris: j. vrin. fleck, ludwik. 1979 [1935]. genesis and development of a scientific fact. chicago: the university of chicago press. kuhn, thomas. 1977. the relations between the history and the philosophy of science. in kuhn, thomas. the essential tension. chicago; london: the university of chicago press. lakatos, imre. 1970. history of science and its rational reconstruction. proceedings of the biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association, vol. 1970, pp. 91-136. microsoft word 10 ferraz alfonso-goldfarb waisse layout 108 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 108-117 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz1 ana m. alfonso-goldfarb2 silvia waisse3 abstract in the present article, we discuss the specificity of the object of the history of science as an autonomous and interdisciplinary field of studies by nature and origin, placed at the interface of history, epistemology and science, and focus on some key historiographical views. within this context, georges canguilhem stands out for contributions such as calling the attention to the relevance of epistemology in science history research and the discontinuity-continuity antithesis, among many others. an accurate understanding of canguilhem’s ideas demands an unbiased review of auguste comte’s work, particularly his views on science in general, the various sciences in particular and the methods to present them, to wit, the historical and the dogmatic. we finish with a short description of our theoretical-methodological work and its implications for studies in the history of science. keywords: history of science; historiography; auguste comte; georges canguilhem received: 19 february 2018. reviewed 12 march 2018. accepted: 27 april 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.10 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction why would one come back – again – to the views of auguste comte (1798-1857) and georges canguilhem (1904-1995)? as historians of science and supervisors of graduate students, our interest was a natural offshoot of the necessary analysis of the historiography of the history 1 márcia h. m. ferraz is a professor and chair of the graduate program in history of science at pontifical catholic university of são paulo (puc-sp). address: rua caio prado, 102, consolação – são paulo, brazil. cep 01303-000. e-mail: mhferraz@me.com 2 ana m. alfonso-goldfarb is a professor of the graduate program in history of science at pontifical catholic university of são paulo (puc-sp). address: rua caio prado, 102, consolação – são paulo, brazil. cep 01303-000. e-mail: aagold@dialdata.com.br 3 silvia waisse is a professor of the graduate program in history of science at pontifical catholic university of são paulo (puc-sp). address: rua caio prado, 102, consolação – são paulo, brazil. cep 01303-000. e-mail: dr.silvia.waisse@gmail.com science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 109 of science,4 i.e., the changing criteria that orient or impregnate research in the history of science over time. we should observe from the very beginning that we do not consider the history of science to be a subfield of general history, but rather as an autonomous and interdisciplinary field of studies with characteristics of its own, in which philosophical and epistemological aspects play a major and necessary role.5 it is thus not by chance that comte, canguilhem – and many other scholars that contributed to the development of our field – are discussed in many of our studies.6 in the particular case of comte, our interest was also awakened by the fact that his works seem to be much more imagined than actually read or analyzed, as also other scholars noticed (bensaude-vincent 2008, 199-249). a thorough analysis of comte’s work afforded us a more accurate understanding of several among the methods for studies in the history of science formulated at the time of the early institutionalization of this field at the beginning of the twentieth century. we naturally allude to george sarton (1884-1956) who did not only draw clear outlines for the discipline but also published countless studies, founded a specialized journal that survived to this day and set the grounds for the professional training of historians of science. in-depth study of comte’s ideas reveals the sources for sarton to advocate writing a progressivist history of science.7 in turn, canguilhem – whom we relate to gaston bachelard (1884-1962) and sometimes also to michel foucault (1926-1984) within this particular context – is one of the representatives of the view that posits breaks (but not only, as we discuss below) in the production of knowledge against the advocates of utter continuity. 8 interestingly, canguilhem paid much attention to comte’s work in general, and the life sciences in particular – certainly, not without a healthy measure of criticism.9 and the question soon arose: how much of comte’s ideas one would find in canguilhem’s work? moreover: was there some common factor that led both to look close into the life sciences? to begin our discussion we would like to quote from a study by mauro condé on ludwig fleck (1896-1961) and canguilhem, where he said that “each in his own way [reacted] to the older view on history of science, [one] legitimized by a positivistic epistemology” (condé 2016, 53). both realized there was a need for “a new epistemological model for the understanding of the history of science, this is to say, for the development of a historical epistemology” (condé 2016, 53-54),10 the basic reference for which was the “contribution of the biological matrix, or the life sciences” (condé 2016, 51). as a result, fleck and canguilhem became “included within a long tradition far away from the epistemological views in vigor until the beginning of the 1930s largely grounded on the physical sciences” (condé 2016, 53). it would seem that fleck and canguilhem’s familiarity with medicine and its inherent focus on complex phenomena facilitated a perception that such phenomena could not be 4 as a result, along more than 20 years since the creation of cesima and graduate program in history of science, puc-sp, we published several works partially or fully devoted to aspects of writing history of science; see e.g. alfonso-goldfarb and beltran (2004); alfonso-goldfarb and ferraz (2009). 5 see, e.g., gayon and bitbol (2015); dalaporte (1994); the various contributions in "georges canguilhem, a história e os historiadores", intelligere: revista de história intelectual v. 2, nº 1, 2016; and the proceedings of the meeting held in 2012 at max planck institüt für geschichte der wissenschaft on bachelard and canguilhem (schmidgen et al, eds. 2012). 6 see the references quoted in note no. 1. 7 references to comte and positivism are ubiquitous whenever sarton is mentioned, not less because sarton frequently quoted him in his publications, which are too numerous to be listed here. 8 for authors discussing this topic, see alfonso-goldfarb, ferraz and beltran (2004). 9 of interest for our purpose in the present article, see canguilhem’s (1989b, 44) criticism of comte’s dogmatic method, which is discussed below. 10 following yves gingras, condé observes that term ‘historical epistemology’ was not used by neither fleck nor canguilhem, but was introduced with its current meaning by dominique lecourt (1969); see also schmidgen et al. (2012, 8). science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 110 harnessed to the laws of causation, as in such case they would become axiomatized. as a result, both broke away from comte’s view on the development of science, as well as from positivism and its intrinsic association with the notion of progress. if this is true for fleck and canguilhem (and we believe it is) let us see if it also applies to comte. comte: between the sciences and their history as is known, comte was compelled to leave paris (and the polytechnic school) in 1816 to return to his birthplace, montpellier, where he attended some courses at the medical school (pickering 1993 v. 1, 26-33). it is safe to assume that these medical studies influenced comte’s thought about science, its methods and development. indeed, several scholars emphasized the relevance of physiology (or organic physics) – addressed in cours de philosophie positive and other writings – for comte’s larger project, to wit, the creation of social physics (gayon and bitbol 2015, 6-7). naturally, also the season spent at école polytechnique deeply shaped comte’s thought on science and its development. having this background in mind, we will move on now to some of comte’s ideas on the sciences, their organization (or classification) and purposes. in this discussion, we do not address the well-known ‘law of the three stages’ – theological, metaphysical and positive – which each and every field of knowledge undergoes, although it is latent all throughout our reflection. instead, we prefer to begin by reminding that according to comte (1830 v. 1, 15) all phenomena could be explained based on natural laws. thus, for instance, the law of gravitation could account for the general phenomena of the universe. comte (1830 v. 1, 14) strongly believed that the natural laws were invariable. his construction is evocative of francis bacon’s (1561-1626) representation of the cause-effect relationship. and, indeed, not only did comte quote lord verulam rather often, but when he did not mention his name explicitly, the latter’s ideas are easily recognizable. yet comte observed that the causes of the phenomena did “not belong to the domain of the positive sciences” (comte 1830 v. 1, 14-15). if here we omit the reference to the ‘positive sciences’, some previous thinkers immediately come to mind, isaac newton (1642-1727) to begin with, and his vehement injunction to dismiss the question on ‘why’ to focus only on ‘how’ phenomena do occur. the natural consequence of this shift was the priority given to observation. and to illustrate the difficulty, or full impossibility of determining the causes of phenomena, comte mentioned recent studies on heat which had resulted in exact laws with no mention whatsoever of the “intimate nature” of heat (comte 1830 v. 1, 16-17). another aspect deserving of attention is comte’s perception of the difficulty inherent to the attempts at thorough investigation of each of the contemporary sciences in itself. science had gradually specialized through continuous and gradual revolutions, giving rise to astronomy, physics, chemistry and physiology – while only a science of the social phenomena was still lacking (comte 1830 v. 1, 18-22) which as is known was one of his main concerns. in consequence, rather than approaching each individual science in itself, comte advocated approaching the general aspects of science (comte 1830 v. 1, 43). however, this did not mean that one single law ruled over all the phenomena – not even the law of gravitation, although comte (1830 v. 1, 91-92) admitted it applied also to the chemical phenomena. the unifying factor underlying all the science was, instead, their unity of method, i.e., the method, in essence, was one and the same for all the sciences, which only differed in their individual procedures (comte 1830, v. 1, 108). as one of comte’s main concerns was with the teaching of science, he devoted much attention to the content of the curricula. within this context, he divided knowledge into two categories, speculative (abstract) and applied (concrete), or alternatively, theoretical and practical (comte 1830, v. 1, 75-76). theoretical knowledge corresponded to the sciences proper, which he further subdivided into general and particular. as examples comte science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 111 mentioned chemistry and mineralogy, respectively, because the former provided the rational basis for the latter, given that chemistry considered all possible combinations of particles under any imaginable circumstances, and mineralogy only encompassed combinations related with the formation of earth, i.e., under specific circumstances (comte 1830, v. 1, 7172). still in regard to the classification of the sciences, comte introduced one further principle: phenomena – and thus the corresponding sciences – ought be always tackled from the most simple to the most complex: therefore, it is by the most general or most simple phenomena that we should begin, to then successively move on until the most particular or complex, if we want to conceive of natural philosophy in a truly methodical manner; because this order of generality or simplicity, necessarily determining the rational connection of the various fundamental sciences through the successive dependence of their phenomena, thus fixates their degree of facility. (comte 1830, v. 1, 87) all possible sciences were categorized as physics of the heaven and physics of the earth; in turn, the bodies studied by these sciences could be brute or organized (comte 1830, v. 1, 88-89). ‘rational’ combinations of these multiple divisions gave rise to his ‘encyclopedic classification’ or ‘hierarchy of the positive sciences’, as follows: iphysics of the heaven: investigated by one single science, astronomy, which studied brute bodies iiphysics of the earth: divided in two groups, a) one concerned with brute bodies, corresponding to two sciences, physics proper and chemistry b) one concerned with the study of organized bodies, including organic physics (physiology) and social physics (social science) (comte 1830, v. 1, 90-96, 115) as is immediately evident, mathematics is not included in this list. the reason is that comte believed it should be regarded “(...) less as a part of natural philosophy proper, than – ever since descartes and newton – as the true fundamental basis of all this philosophy […] thus constituting the most powerful instrument the human spirit might employ in the search for the laws of the natural phenomena” (comte 1830, v. 1, 112). as a result, it preceded all the other sciences in the encyclopedic classification. in turn, the five sciences composing natural philosophy ought to be classified in increasing order of the complexity of their objects, as follows: astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology and social physics. this sequence also reflected the mutual relationships among the sciences, the order in which they had attained (or would attain) the positive stage, and the order in which they should be taught. astronomy had attained the positive stage before physics, which depended on it and thus could only be learned after it; but physics exerted no influence on astronomy. in turn, chemistry depended on both physics and astronomy, and so forth (comte 1830, v. 1, 91-93). at this point it is worth observing that comte never was a reductionist. to substantiate this assertion it suffices to evoke: 1) his remarks on the possibility/difficulty to unify both phenomena and sciences (comte 1830, v. 1, 108-109), and 2) in regard to physiology, his science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 112 resistance to acknowledge the cell as the fundamental particle at the basis of life (canguilhem 1989b, 63-80, esp. 66). following canguilhem (1989b, 75) we call the attention to comte’s view on the relationship between chemistry and the life sciences, explicit in his assertion that until the eighteenth century chemistry had depended on medicine, while some of his contemporaries were attempting at attributing to it the status of explanation of the life phenomena (comte 1880, 569). we will not examine here the fine detail of comte’s position vis-à-vis the main authors on the life sciences (or medicine) in his time, since it has extensively discussed by canguilhem (1989b, 59-98) among others. we merely observe that comte’s knowledge of the contemporary medical ideas and controversies contributed to shape his ideas. comte was well within his zeitgeist when he chose, for instance, to follow paul j. barthez (1734-1806). once the order of the study of the sciences and a part of the method were established, the next point was how to present the sciences. according to comte, the paths were two: the historical and the dogmatic. according to the former, all human knowledge should be presented in the same order it had been attained, which meant approaching “in chronological order the various original works which contributed to the progress of science.” in turn, the dogmatic method could only be applied to highly developed sciences, since it consisted in presenting “the system of ideas such as it could be conceived of at the present time by one single spirit, which if in the right place and having the required knowledge, would engage itself in reconstituting the science [in question] as a whole” (comte 1830, v. 1, 77-78). this is to say, the dogmatic method was not intended to present details, which only increased and accumulated by the day. for this reason, the dogmatic was advantageous over the historical method, which was proving to be increasingly impracticable by comparison to older times, when the number of works to study was small (comte 1830, v. 1, 7-8). yet, comte (1830, v. 1, 80-82) observed “that it is easy to see that there is only an apparent relationship between studying a science according to the historical method and having true knowledge of the effective history of such science.” the progress of the sciences and the arts was mutually dependent, i.e., the sciences developed through their mutual relationships, and thus were linked to the overall development of the human society. as a result, accurate knowledge of the history of the various sciences had utmost importance, because one could only learn a science entirely by learning its history. given such relevance and the mutual connection among all the sciences, including the social sciences, in the second part of cours de philosophie comte gave more emphasis to the history of their progress. it is interesting to remind the influence of these ideas on the work of george sarton, more particularly his formulation of a progressivist history of science, i.e., a history of the positive sciences, which meant the history of the physical-mathematical sciences, without much room for the life sciences (debus 2004, 31-35). canguilhem: between continuities and discontinuities let us move on now to some of canguilhem’s views on the history of science, in which epistemology plays a crucial role. interestingly, canguilhem acknowledged it would be vain to reproach eighteenthand nineteenth-century historians “for not having considered any of the notions epistemologists currently strive to establish as writing or composition rules for all those who practice or produce the history of science” (canguilhem 1993, 12). the reason was that also the history of science has a history of its own indeed, canguilhem criticized the history of science “impersonally written within the doctrine of the indefinite perfectibility of the human spirit, legitimized by a rather continuous succession of revolutions […] only to anticipate the progress of science under the exclusive aspect of continuity” (canguilhem 1993, 12). in such case, “the history of a science [becomes science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 113 just] an abstract of the readings made at a specialized library” (canguilhem 1993, 14) built in the past by all those who devoted themselves to such science. rather an ordered description of a science resulting from reading all the works seemingly related to it in the past, canguilhem advocated a history of science based on epistemology. in other words, to replace the history of the sciences by the sciences according to their history. only in this way science could be distinguished from other cultural manifestations. within this context, canguilhem distinguished between the past of a science and how such science was in the past. to illustrate the notion of a history of science fully free from ‘any epistemological contamination’ he quoted an example from botany. a ‘pure’ history of botany would merely consist of what scholars established over time as the proper object of such science, as well as their perspectives of approach. the result would be the reduction of “a science at a given moment, for instance, plant physiology in the eighteenth century, to an exposition of the chronological and logical connections between different systems of propositions relative to certain classes of problems or solutions” (canguilhem 1993, 13). as such, the past of the present plant physiology would comprise all which botanists, physicians, chemists, horticulturalists, etc. ever wrote on the relationship between the structure and function of plants (canguilhem 1993, 14). differently, a history in which epistemology plays the key role allows selecting from the past the ideas that shaped the object of a science within an ‘ideal’ temporal frame. historians thus ‘choose’ amidst the past some ideas which history they will write pointing to (epistemological) discontinuities in their temporal development. thus they devise a definite past for a science, rather than a succession of ideas, and no longer ask theories formulated in the past the reasons for their lack of logical maturity (canguilhem 1993, 22). the type of history canguilhem had in mind upon attacking the notion of progress and by revealing discontinuities also eliminated the so-called precursors, so dear to progressivist history. to be sure, canguilhem’s history is a history of breaks, but not in the style of thomas s. kuhn (1922-1996) whose proposals did not derive from philosophical criticism, but from social psychology. as is known, canguilhem’s source was bachelard and his notion of epistemological breaks (canguilhem 1993, 20). more particularly, canguilhem stressed bachelard’s agreement with jean cavaillès (1903-1944) on the notion of progress: indeed, one of the essential problems of the doctrine of science is precisely that progress should not mean an increase in volume by juxtaposition, the older subsisting with the new, but perpetual reviewing of contents through in-depth [study] and erasures. that which comes later is more than what there was before, not because the former contains, or prolongs the latter, but because it necessarily comes from it and includes the always singular mark of its superiority in its comprehension. (as cited in canguilhem 1993, 23-24) thus canguilhem was able to assert “within a historical weft some threads might be fully new, while others are obtained from older textures” (canguilhem 1993, 25). to summarize: discontinuities, but also continuity in the development of knowledge. historians of science may not dismiss this injunction. we believe that this is one of the main aspects to bear in mind when writing the history of science, which necessarily demands the guidance of epistemology. revisiting the object of the history of science to conclude, we would like to briefly comment on our work and approach as researchers and supervisors of students at graduate program in history of science / center simão mathias in science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 114 history of science (cesima), pontifical catholic university of são paulo. the historiographical sketch we present next is a fruit of our work and thought along more than 20 years. 11 and as it will be immediately seen, canguilhem is mentioned quite often, because he was one of the main sources for our reflection. sarton’s ideas on the development of science, with their emphasis on scientific notions and the corresponding approach to science, were the target of much criticism especially from the 1930s onward. at the time when technology began to enter the scope of the studies in the history of science, science came to be seen as belonging with specific historical contexts, rather than as detached from spatial and temporal determinants. here we should call the attention to boris hessen (1893-1936), who surprised the audience at the second international congress of history of science, in london, in 1931, with a groundbreaking paper on the social determinants of newton’s scientific activity (hessen 2009, 41-101). this was the trigger for a view that came to be known as ‘externalism’, especially influent in britain at the time of the cold war (goldsmith and mackay 1975). in time, as any polar position, also externalism compromised with its antithesis (bernal 1975, 224), ‘internalism’, namely the purely epistemological focus on the history of science, and which traditionally had represented the main approach to writing the history of science. this process was natural in a way. according to canguilhem, “without a reference to epistemology, the theory of knowledge would be an empty meditation; without a relation to the history of the sciences, epistemology would amount to a completely superfluous doublet of the science it is supposed to discuss”12 (canguilhem 1989b, 11-12). along the same line imre lakatos (19221974) observed, “epistemology without history of science is empty, history of science without epistemology is blind” (lakatos 1970, 91).13 however, walter pagel (1898-1983) had already established a major milestone in the 1940s, with his “vindication of rubbish” (pagel 1945). in simple terms, pagel considered that the past of science should not be judged based on current standards, but should be understood in its own terms, which thus requires sound analysis of both the historical-social and the epistemological aspects together. not surprisingly, this view emerged from pagel’s field of expertise, viz., alchemy, which up to that time had been considered a proto-, preor pseudo-science predating modern chemistry (pagel 1982). this approach was further developed by pagel’s two main disciples, debus (1965; 1968; 1977; 1978; 1991a; 2001; 2004; 1991b, where he discussed his methodological assumptions) and piyo m. rattansi (1988; 1972; 1964; 1963; mcguire and rattansi 1966). in time, analysis came to show that the demarche of science does not only involve breaks, but also aspects of continuity. and it is precisely within this context that the work of canguilhem stands out. although he agreed with bachelard on that science does not advance in a linear and cumulative manner, he believed that the alleged breaks were not as radical as imagined. instead, the newer models of science include previous theories and practices, albeit modified and recontextualized. as we have discussed above, canguilhem’s point of the departure was the definition of the object of the history of science, which he emphatically asserted could not be confounded with the object of science. while the latter is constructed 11 see alfonso-goldfarb and ferraz (2009); alfonso-goldfarb, ferraz and beltran (2004) where projects and some of our work at puc-sp are described; for more recent work, see e.g. the thematic projects funded by the são paulo research foundation (fapesp) chaired by alfonso-goldfarb, which abstracts are available at http://www.bv.fapesp.br/pt/pesquisador/478/ana-maria-alfonso-goldfarb/. 12 “sans référence à l’épistémologie une théorie de la connaissance serait une méditation sur le vide et que sans relation à l’histoire des sciences une épistémologie serait un doublet parfaitement superflu de la science dont elle prétendrait discourir”. 13 seemingly, both are paraphrases of the classic kantian locus “gedanken ohne inhalt sind leer, anschauungen ohne begriffe sind blind” (“thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”). (kant 1799, 75). science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 115 through methodological reflection on the phenomena of nature – and thus are first-order epistemic objects – the former is the product of the historicity of scientific discourse, and consequently a second-order object (alfonso-goldfarb, waisse and ferraz 2013; rheinberger 2010). considering canguilhem’s, pagel’s and derived views, we believe we are in conditions to attempt a working definition of the object of history of science, which we place at the intersection of three spheres of analysis. the first sphere concerns the intrinsic features of scientific theories or practices through combined textual criticism (derived from the philological tradition) and internal theoretical-contextual analysis (i.e., epistemological analysis of the main notions and arguments). the second is a properly historiographical sphere, which targets the main approaches to the analysis of a given problem, document, etc., over time. the third sphere focuses on the general historical context, with emphasis on the circumstances under which the documents under analysis were produced. without pretending to settle the matter once and for all, we might say that historians of science operate on notions reconfigured differently by different actors over time (alfonso-goldfarb, waisse and ferraz 2013). to summarize, the simultaneous or concomitant operation of the three aforementioned spheres allows for a working definition of the object of the history of science, bearing in mind that these spheres of analysis are always modulated by documents. and by documents in and for the history of science we understand any kind of material vestige provided it is set into the framework proper to the object of history of science. as a result, such framework gives life not only to published works or manuscripts, but also to laboratory notebooks, letter, images and things, among many others types of documents (alfonso-goldfarb, waisse and ferraz 2013). acknowledgements the present article is a result of thematic project grant #2011/14040-9, são paulo research foundation (fapesp). about the authors márcia h.m. ferraz – chair, graduate program in history of science, pontifical catholic university of são paulo (puc-sp); deputy chair, center simão mathias of studies in history of science (cesima), puc-sp; honorary research fellow, department of science and technology studies, university college london; advisory board member, isis cb. fields of interest: history of chemistry, early modern science, history of science in france, brazil and portugal, organization of knowledge. ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – chair, cesima, puc-sp; professor, graduate program in history of science, puc-sp; honorary research fellow, department of science and technology studies, university college london; steering committee member: rcn: mapping authorities and ontologies in computational and digital hps, national science foundation (usa). fields of interest: early modern science, history of science in england, history of chemistry, hermeticism, organization of knowledge. silvia waisse – professor, graduate program in history of science, puc-sp; researcher, cesima-puc-sp; secretary, committee of bibliography and documentation, international union of history and philosophy of science; executive editor, circumscribere: international journal for history of science. fields of interest: history of medicine, organization of knowledge. science and history of science: between comte and canguilhem márcia h. m. ferraz – ana m. alfonso-goldfarb – silvia waisse 116 references alfonso-goldfarb, ana m., silvia waisse and márcia h.m. ferraz. 2013. from shelves to cyberspace: organization of knowledge and the complex identity of history of science. isis 104 (3): 551-560. alfonso-goldfarb, ana m. and márcia h.m. ferraz. 2009. enredos, nós e outras calosidades em história 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scientific revolution, ed. gideon freudenthal and peter mclaughlin, 41-101. dordrecht: springer. kant, immanuel. 1799 [1781]. critik der reinen vernunft. leipzig: johann friedrich hartknoch. lakatos, imre. 1970. history of science and its rational reconstructions. psa: proceedings of the biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association 1970: 91-136. lecourt, dominique. 1969. l’épistemologie historique de gaston bachelard. paris: j. vrin. mcguire, j.e. and piyo m. rattansi. 1966. newton and the “pipes of pan”. notes and records of the royal society of london 21 (2): 108-143. pagel, walter. 1982 [1958]. paracelsus: an introduction to philosophical medicine in the era of the renaissance. basel: karger. pagel, walter. 1945. the vindication of “rubbish”. middlesex hospital journal 45: 42-45. pickering, mary. 1993. auguste comte: an intellectual biography. cambridge: cambridge university press. rattansi, piyo m. 1988. newton and the wisdom of the ancients. in let newton be!, edited by j. fauvel, r. flood, m. shortland and r. wilson, 185-201. oxford: oxford university press. rattansi, piyo m. newton’s alchemical studies. 1972. in science, medicine and society in the renaissance: essays to honor walter pagel, 175-180. new york: science history publications/watson academic publications. rattansi, piyo m. 1964. the helmontian-galenist controversy in restoration england. ambix 13: 1-23. rattansi, piyo m. 1963. paracelsus and the puritan revolution. ambix 11: 23-32. schmidgen, henning, jean-françois braunstein and peter schöttler, eds. 2012. epistemology and history: from bachelard and canguilhem to today’s history of science. berlin: max planck institute for history of science. preprint # 434. 3 dossier ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives: translations and receptions introduction1 paweł jarnicki2 sandra lang3 ludwik fleck (1896–1961) developed his theory of thought styles and thought collectives4 eighty years ago. it describes the origins and condensation of knowledge (including scientific knowledge) in a framework of thought collectives and the “circulation of thoughts” [denkverkehr/krążenie myśli] within and among them. the combination of sociological, historical and psychological approaches to (scientific) knowledge was groundbreaking in those times and fleck is often considered to be one of the first proto-constructivist thinkers. by reconstructing the origins of a microbiological fact (the first reliable testing method for syphilis following the wassermann reaction) at the beginning of the 20th century, fleck showed that scientific knowledge does not simply derive from spontaneous discoveries or a single pure genius mind. according to fleck, scientific facts emerge in a constant process of circulating and interchanging thoughts between various collectives. collectives are carriers of thought styles, and one individual is always a member of several collectives; this makes the circulation of thoughts (i.e. a mutual interaction of different styles) possible even within one individual. fleck’s sociological and historical perspective is closely linked to his experiences, practices and socialization as microbiologist (sady, 2012). with his book entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache (fleck, 1935), ludwik fleck inspired many scholars to reflect epistemologically on the production of scientific knowledge in terms of social circumstances. the first responses to fleck’s book were published in the 1930s (schnelle, 1986, pp. 456f.), and the monograph also served as one of thomas kuhn's inspirations for his the structure of scientific revolutions (kuhn, 1962). today, bibliographies of the reception of fleck’s ideas in polish (jarnicki, 2015b), german (lang, 2016b) and english (jarnicki, 2015a)5 consist of hundreds of entries but the history of the receptions themselves has rarely been an object of consideration (ginev, 2015a, 2015b; rivadulla, 1990). fleck’s book was translated first into english (fleck, 1979), following which it was reissued in german (fleck, 1980), then later translated into italian (fleck, 1983b), polish (fleck, 1986b), spanish (fleck, 1986a), swedish (fleck, 1997), russian (флек, 1999), french (fleck, 2005) and brazilian portuguese (fleck, 2010). fleck's theoretical legacy, however, is not limited to his german-language book, since he also wrote several papers in polish, most of which were then translated into german (fleck, 1983a, 2011), english (löwy, 1990; schnelle & cohen, 1986) and italian (fleck, 2009). none of these editions, however, can be called “critical”, nor are there any critical editions even in the original german and polish languages. nevertheless, it is a peculiarity of fleck's legacy that one integral theory was formulated more or less simultaneously (1934-1936) in two languages, polish and german6. this was the inspiration behind the 1 this work was supported by the national science centre (poland) under grant number dec-2012/ 06/m/hs2/00313. 2 paweł jarnicki, phd – project science foundation (fundacja projekt nauka), ul. stalowowolska 3/5, 53-404 wrocław, poland, e-mail: jarnicki@gmail.com 3 sandra lang is a phd candidate at the eth zürich, collegium helveticum, schmelzbergstrasse 25, 8092 zürich – switzerland. e-mail: lang@collegium.ethz.ch 4 for biographical information see leszczyńska (2009) and a book written by the journalist allen (2014). 5 for updated versions of these bibliographies see: www.ludwikfleck.pl. 6 for list of his theoretical writings and bilingual character of this legacy see jarnicki (2016). paweł jarnicki, sandra lang – ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives 4 project titled a philological analysis of ludwik fleck’s philosophical writings and their translations in polish, german and english,7 which included the organization of a conference on ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives – translations and receptions (lang, 2016a). this issue is continuation of this work, since we are of the opinion that fleck remains an underexploited source of inspiration and authority for those who are interested in any kind of metascience, including, but not restricted to, philosophers, historians and sociologists of science. references allen, a. the fantastic laboratory of dr. weigl: how two brave scientists battled typhus and sabotaged the nazis (first edition): w. w. norton & company, 2014. fleck, l. entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache. einführung in die lehre vom denkstil und denkkollektiv. basel: benno schwabe & co, 1935. fleck, l. genesis and development of a scientific fact: [transl. f. bradley, t. j. trenn]. chicago: university of chicago press, 1979. fleck, l. entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache. einführung in die lehre vom denkstil und denkkollektiv. (schnelle, t., & schäfer, l., eds.). frankfurt am main, 1980. fleck, l. erfahrung und tatsache: gesammelte aufsätze. (schnelle, t., & schäfer, l., eds.). frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1983a. fleck, l. genesi e sviluppo di un fatto scientifico: per una teoria dello stile e del collettivo di pensiero. saggi / [il mulino]: vol. 253. bologna: il mulino, 1983b. fleck, l. la génesis y el desarrollo de un hecho científico: introducción a la teoría del estilo de pensamiento y del colectivo de pensamiento. alianza universidad: vol. 469. madrid: alianza editorial, 1986a fleck, l. powstanie i rozwój faktu naukowego.: wprowadzenie do nauki o stylu myślowym i kolektywie myślowym. [transl. m. tuszkiewicz] [tuszkiewicz, maria]. (cackowski, z., ed.). lublin, 1986b. fleck, l. uppkomsten och utvecklingen av ett vetenskapligt faktum: inledning till läran om tankestil och tankekollektiv. stockholm, stehag: östlings bokförl. symposion, 1997. fleck, l. genèse et développement d'un fait scientifique. médecine & sciences humaines. paris: belles lettres, 2005. fleck, l. la scienza come collettivo di pensiero: saggi sul fatto scientifico. [transl. c. catenacci]. meccanismi: vol. 7. milano: melquíades, 2009. fleck, l. gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico: introdução à doutrina do estilo de pensamento e do coletivo de pensamento: [transl. g. otte, m. camilo de oliveira]. belo horizonte, 2010. fleck, l. denkstile und tatsachen: gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. (werner, s., & zittel, c., eds.). berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. ginev, d. "introduction: contexts of reception of ludwik fleck's work". in d. ginev (ed.), critical science studies after ludwik fleck (pp. 11–33). sofia: university press st. kliment ohridski, 2015a. ginev, d. "ways and dynamics of reception of ludwik fleck’s work in the social sciences". social science information, 54(2), 2015b, 192–210. doi:10.1177/0539018414566422 jarnicki, p. "bibliografia recepcji teorii ludwika flecka w języku angielskim" ["bibliography of the reception of ludwik fleck's theory in english"]. in p. jarnicki, b. płonka-syroka, & b. balicki (eds.), ludwik fleck – tradycje – inspiracje – interpretacje [ludwik fleck traditions inspirations interpretations] (pp. 257–294). wrocław: wydawnictwo fundacji projekt nauka & uniwersytet medyczny im. piastów śląskich, 2015a. jarnicki, p. "bibliografia recepcji teorii ludwika flecka w języku polskim" ["bibliography of the reception of ludwik fleck's theory in polish"]. in p. jarnicki, b. płonka-syroka, & b. balicki (eds.), ludwik fleck – tradycje – inspiracje – interpretacje [ludwik fleck traditions inspirations interpretations] (pp. 239–255). wrocław: wydawnictwo fundacji projekt nauka & uniwersytet medyczny im. piastów śląskich, 2015b. jarnicki, p. "problems with translations of ludwik fleck: the example of the concept of 'legitimation'". divinatio: studia culturologica series, (autumn-winter), 2015c, 167–184. 7 the project is presented in jarnicki (2015c), see also www.ludwikfleck.pl paweł jarnicki, sandra lang – ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives 5 jarnicki, p. "on the shoulders of ludwik fleck? on the bilingual philosophical legacy of ludwik fleck and its polish, german and english translations". the translator, 22(3), 2016, 271–286. retrieved from doi: 10.1080/13556509.2015.1126881 kuhn, t. s. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: university of chicago press, 1962. lang, s. conference report: ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives – translations and receptions. somatosphere, (june 24, 2016). 2016a, retrieved from http://somatosphere.net/2016/06/conference-report-ludwik-flecks-theory-of-thought-styles-andthought-collectives-translations-and-receptions.html lang, s. "reception of ludwik flecks works and life in german language – bibliography (by year)", 2016b. retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/23826864/reception_of_ludwik_flecks_works_and_life_in _german_language_bibliography_by_year leszczyńska, k. "ludwik fleck: a forgotten philosopher". in j. fehr, n. jas, & i. löwy (eds.), penser avec fleck: investigating a life studying life sciences, 2009, pp. 23–39. zurich: collegium helveticum (at ethz). löwy, i. (ed.). philosophy and medicine: vol. 37. the polish school of philosophy of medicine. dordrecht, boston, london: kluwer academic publishers, 1990. rivadulla, a. "ludwik fleck's almost unnoticed foundation of sociological epistemology in the thirties". explorations in knowledge vii, 1990, 19–28. sady, w. "ludwik fleck". in e. n. zalta (ed.), the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (2012nd ed.), 2012. retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/fleck/ schnelle, t. "bibliography of ludwik fleck". in t. schnelle & r. s. cohen (eds.), boston studies in the philosophy of science: vol. 87. cognition and fact. materials on ludwik fleck (pp. 445–457). dordrecht, boston, lancaster, tokyo: d. reidel publishing company, 1986. retrieved from http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm%3a978-94-009-4498-5%2f1.pdf schnelle, t., & cohen, r. s. (eds.). boston studies in the philosophy of science: vol. 87. cognition and fact: materials on ludwik fleck. dordrecht, boston, lancaster, tokyo: d. reidel publishing company, 1986. флек, л. возникновение и развитие научного факта: введение в теорию стиля мышления и мыслительного коллектива. [transl. v. porus]. москва, 1999. ludwik fleck (1896-1961)1 1 archiv für zeitgeschichte, zürich 21 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 21-30 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989)1 paweł jarnicki2 abstract: the article discusses the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives in polish, from his first polemics with izydora dąmbska in 1936 to the first edition of the polish translation of entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache in 1986 and its reviews. keywords: ludwik fleck; thought style; thought collective; reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in poland received 02 september 2016. accepted 20 november 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ responding to a questionnaire sent by thomas schnelle, a friend of ludwik fleck’s, józef parnas, wrote: ludwik fleck said: ‘applied research leads to reform, fundamental research-ideas lead to revolution’. this was his book! ludwik fleck warned me: ‘do not organize science. poles will never thank you. work experimentally and think. 100 years will pass away – and your work will be quoted’. (schnelle 1978-1979) ludwik fleck was wrong. worldwide reception of his theory of thought styles and thought collectives began not 100 years but roughly 40 years after his most important texts were published (1934-1936). today there are english (1979), italian (1983), polish (1986), spanish (1987), swedish (1997), russian (1999), french (2005) and portuguese (2010) translations of his german-language book (fleck 1935a). fleck wrote also several theoretical papers in polish,3 so nearly half of his philosophical legacy was originally written in polish. however, the proper reception of his ideas in polish4 only began in the early 1980s, and not from these papers. in this article i would like to present the history of the beginnings of the reception of fleck’s ideas, 1 this work was supported by the national science centre (poland) under grant number dec-2012/06/m/hs2/00313. 2 paweł jarnicki, phd – project science foundation (fundacja projekt nauka), ul. stalowowolska 3/5, 53-404 wrocław, poland, e-mail: jarnicki@gmail.com 3 for more information see table 1 in (jarnicki 2016). 4 poland is the only country in the world where people speak polish; however, after the war (1945-1989) there was no independent republic of poland, instead there was the people’s republic of poland that was dependent on the soviet union, hence i speak of the reception in polish rather than poland. paweł jarnicki the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989) 22 covering the period before the polish translation of the book appeared as well as the reviews it received after its publication. pre-war period (1936-1939) even though fleck’s theory was largely forgotten after the second world war, it is worth noting that before the war fleck’s papers were published in the most important polish journals, including two articles in the prestigious “philosophical review” (“przegląd filozoficzny”) (fleck 1935b; fleck 1936).5 in the pre-war period, three reviews of ludwik fleck’s german book were also published (chwistek 1936; rotstadt 1936; dembowski 1939),6 the first in a social-literary weekly, the second in a medical weekly and the third in the annual “polish science” (“nauka polska”) devoted to – as stated in the journal’s subtitle – its “requirements, organization and development”.7 there were also two polemics – first in “przegląd filozoficzny” with izydora dąmbska, a philosopher and pupil of kazimierz twardowski, the founder of the lwów–warsaw school. in the end of her paper titled is the intersubjective similarity of sense-data the necessary assumption of the sciences?, dąmbska criticizes fleck’s claims (fleck 1936) that only people characterized by the same or similar thought style can understand each other, and argues that even the most inspired prophet, poet or a mystic, in some everyday life situations finds common ground [literally: a common language] with a sober scientist, and belongs to one style with the latter. in which situations? in those in which they do not sleep and have to have serious consideration for everyday life conditions. (dąmbska 1937, 293) fleck answered deftly that this is the case only if they live in the same everyday life milieu. in this case, however, a prophet, a poet, a mystic and a scientist do not think and act as a prophet, a poet etc., but as members of the same thought team: a defined collective of everyday life. but if they live in different milieus – one of them is, for instance […] a hindu from the caste of brahmins and the other is an average european intellectual – then even in such simple matters as washing up or eating they won’t find any common ground. despite the fact ‘they do not sleep and have to have serious consideration for everyday life conditions’, and possibly just because of this. (fleck 1938, 194) this short exchange is a good representation of the nature of this polemic. dąmbska, incidentally, did not publish a rejoinder to fleck’s argument.8 a second polemic, this time against tadeusz bilikiewicz, a psychiatrist, historian and philosopher of medicine, took place just on the eve of war, in a holiday issue (july-september 1939) of a social-literary monthly (fleck 1939a; bilikiewicz 1939b; fleck 1939b; bilikiewicz 1939a), so it was largely unnoticed until stefan symotiuk9 found it in 1983 (symotiuk 1983b). english readers can peruse this polemic since it was translated into english by ilana löwy (fleck 1990b; bilikiewicz 1990a; fleck 1990a; bilikiewicz 1990b). this is worthy of note because of a central term used by fleck in the title of the paper that initiated this discussion – nauka i środowisko, which is translated by löwy as science and social context. “środowisko”10 is better 5 the latter was the first paper in the issue! 6 leon chwistek was a philosopher, mathematician and painter; julian rotstadt was a neurologist; jan dembowski was a biologist. 7 this latter review is longer than the other two and also refers to the two papers mentioned above. 8 this polemic is discussed and translated into german in (graf and griesecke 2007). 9 stefan symotiuk is a philosopher. 10 in polish, this may refer both to physical and cultural surroundings. paweł jarnicki the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989) 23 translated as “milieu”, however.11 this is important since it is possible that the misunderstanding with dąmbska mentioned above inspired fleck to develop this thought. war and post-war period (1939-1978) in 1990, andrés rivadulla asked: “how could a philosopher that in the thirties advanced many of the ideas of such great epistemologists like kuhn and toulmin escape notice in his own country and outside it?” (rivadulla 1990, 23). as we have seen, fleck was noticed before the war, so he was “forgotten” just after it, and probably not only because of content-related reasons. polish history is quite complicated and difficult to understand for people from the outside. in 1939, poland essentially lost its independence on 17 september with the invasion of the soviet union and only started to regain it in 1989. during the war, there were obviously no conditions to pursue normal academic life. the invading german forces liquidated polish universities, and the soviets changed the rules of education (at every level) in a way that set the various nationalities that inhabited the republic of poland against poles. after the war the people’s republic of poland was established, a totalitarian state – especially before 1956 – that was entirely dependent on the soviet union.12 it is not the objective of this paper to discuss these “external” reasons in great detail, but it will suffice to say they surely played a role in fleck’s work being lost within academic circles. even if there are some minor signals that some people read fleck after the war – stanisław lem, for instance, mentioned fleck in his philosophy of chance (lem 1968, 200) and bogusław wolniewicz mentioned fleck in the foreword to a translation of richard avenarius’s the human concept of the world (der menschliche weltbegriff) (wolniewicz 1969, xliii) – there was no discussion of fleck’s theory.13 certainly the turning point – albeit the real, significant change would only take place ten years later – was the polish edition of thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions (kuhn 1968) in 1968. we have to bear in mind, however, that “fleck” is not a typical polish surname (it sounds more german or jewish) and the book kuhn quoted was written in german, so for anyone who didn’t already know who fleck was, it would have been hard to guess that he was a polish citizen before the war. nevertheless, the rumour spread that the famous thomas kuhn had been inspired by a polish microbiologist. before the polish translation of the book (1979-1985) in 1979 – around the same time as an american translation of fleck’s book (fleck 1979) was published – an annual publication of maria curie-skłodowska university (lublin) appeared; its philosophical section contained three texts about fleck. the first one was written by zdzisław cackowski. for a long time, cackowski was certainly the most important proponent of fleck in polish. cackowski was born in 1930 and studied philosophy in moscow (1950-1955) where he specialized in marxist philosophy and epistemology. in his first text about fleck (in the first paragraph, kuhn’s reference to fleck is of course mentioned) he reported fleck’s voices from the report on the activities of the philosophical and sociological society in lublin 1945-1947 and supplement 194814 (cackowski 1978-1979). in the same edition, ewa pirożnikow, then an employee at the institute of marxist philosophy, published her methodological problems in ludwik fleck’s works (pirożnikow 1978-1979) which, it has to be said, was not presented in a very systematic way. even though the first bibliography of fleck’s publications – consisting of 120 entries – enjoined to the third text and written by irena rubaszko (rubaszko 1978-1979), points to more philosophical texts, pirożnikow’s presentation is based on only two papers: the first mentioned above (fleck 1935b) and another that fleck published just after the war (fleck 1935b; fleck 1946). in the third text, irena rubaszko, who was a librarian 11 this is because the translations of subsequent texts should be consistent, and it would be strange if we had translated fleck’s earlier text (see above quote from polemics with dąmbska) “only if they live in the same everyday life social context”. moreover, in the third paragraph fleck quoted schrödinger’s ist naturwissenschaft milieubedingt? 12 ludwik fleck repeatedly tried to emigrate to israel from 1948, but only received permission to do so in 1957. 13 two obituaries were published after fleck’s death ([anonim] 1961; groër 1962). 14 fleck lived in lublin from 1945 to 1952, at which point he moved to warsaw. in 1957 emigrated to israel, where he died in 1961. paweł jarnicki the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989) 24 at the medical university in lublin, gave a sketch of fleck’s biography and discussed the subject matter of all fleck’s publications. two years after the american edition of fleck’s book was published, the only polish review of it appeared in the philosophical journal “philosophical movement” (“ruch filozoficzny”) written by waldemar voisé, a historian of science (voisé 1981). also in 1981, in the “history of science and technology quarterly” (“kwartalnik historii nauki i techniki”) the first longer article on fleck in polish was published, titled the sociology of ludwik fleck’s scientific knowledge [poznania] (gierasimiuk 1981). this piece is one of the most interesting and concise presentations of fleck’s ideas – the subtitles of its parts are: the idea of historical-comparative epistemology; the historical-cultural determinants of development of knowledge [wiedzy]; and the social context of cognitive processes. although jerzy gierasimiuk, a philosopher who worked with zdzisław cackowski but left the university after several years, mentioned the american edition, he quoted fleck’s book from the first german edition, so this text contained the first translations of selected passages.15 in 1982, the polish translation of robert merton’s social theory and social structure was published. five pages of the author’s foreword to the polish edition are devoted to fleck (merton 1982, 10–14). at that time there was no polish translation of fleck’s book, so when merton quoted fleck, the translators were translating from the english translation of the german original.16 merton briefly discusses the history of the first edition of fleck’s book as well as fleck’s ideas about “scientific communicating”, active and passive “factors” of knowledge and esoteric and exoteric circles. from today’s perspective, some of the quoted passages can seem amusing; there are references, for instance, to “newspaper science” and “dictionary and guide science” (not to “journal” and “textbook science” as we would say today). nevertheless, the most important advantage of merton’s foreword is certainly that it was read by polish sociologists. also in 1982, an issue of “philosophical studies” (“studia filozoficzne”)17 appeared containing three texts on fleck. two of them (markiewicz 1982; wolniewicz 1982) are presentations from the colloquium on ludwik fleck organized by lothar schäfer and thomas schnelle in 1981 in hamburg.18 it is important to mention that thomas schnelle, in writing his phd about fleck, was attempting to familiarize himself with fleck’s biography to the greatest extent possible, so to that end he sent questionnaires to scores of people who knew or might have known something about fleck. additionally, he made several trips to the people’s republic of poland for the same purpose.19 although it is not possible to measure the exact impact of this work, one can imagine that it probably played a significant role in stimulating interest in fleck among poles. moreover, in all likelihood the two texts mentioned above (markiewicz 1982; wolniewicz 1982) probably wouldn’t have been written if it were not for thomas schnelle’s project.20 the third text, the presentation of ludwik fleck’s epistemology by zdzisław cackowski (cackowski 1982), is based on the book and two polish papers – the same ones upon which pirożnikow’s presentation was based. cackowski quotes fleck’s book at length but again these passages are taken from a translation of the american translation.21 from cackowski’s text we learn that also in 1982 a polish translation of fleck’s book was being prepared by wydawnictwo lubelskie (lublin publishing house). cackowski also coined three slogans which he repeated in his subsequent articles on fleck: “epistemological historicism”, “epistemological collectivism” and “paradigmatic character of cognition”. cackowski also coined a fourth one 15 he also refers to fleck’s first german paper (fleck 1929). 16 the translators had evidently no idea who fleck was, and didn’t give any references to any polish texts of or about fleck. 17 “przegląd filozoficzny” was closed in 1949 by the communist government because of its independence. it was substituted by “myśl filozoficzna” (“philosophical thought”) (1951-1957) and then by “studia filozoficzne” (1957-1990) with leszek kołakowski as the editor-in-chief. after the people’s republic of poland collapsed “przegląd filozoficzny” was reactivated in 1990. 18 since they are published in english (schnelle and cohen 1986), these texts fall outside the topic of discussion here. 19 during which służba bezpieczeństwa (the security service) unsuccessfully tried to recruit him as a spy (ministry of internal affairs of peoples republic of poland [institute of national remembrance (instytut pamięci narodowej)] 19791985). 20 władysław markiewicz, for instance, was schnelle’s scientific consultant during the first research trip (daad scholarship) in march 1979. 21 although this translation of a translation is not very precise, it contains no mistakes such as those present in merton’s foreword. paweł jarnicki the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989) 25 – “incompetence and oververbalism [nadwerbalizm]”22 – that was formulated during his discussion of fleck’s paper in which fleck described the “scientific” work of a collective in buchenwald concentration camp. cackowski quoted fleck: “one can say that the lack of specialist education in the empirical field can best be recognized by the limitless accuracy of logical inference” (fleck 1986b, 124) and defined “oververbalism” as the “phenomenon of incommensurability of words to contents, the phenomenon of verbal constructions overgrowing the actual content” (cackowski 1982, 77) in opposition to “underverbalisation” – that what is not verbalized and in fact impossible to verbalize but obvious for members of the collective within a certain thought style. cackowski had, however, gone too far when he claimed that “logic is a field that is particularly prolific in oververbalism” and that the “field the most susceptible to oververbalism is undoubtedly philosophy. [...] it is enough to observe the stalinist period of the development of marxist philosophy to see clearly a content barrenness covered by oververbalism, sometimes reaching the level comparable to classical scholasticism” (cackowski 1982, 77). a little over a year later, in the same journal, jerzy perzanowski, a logician who was, incidentally, a student of roman ingarden and izydora dąmbska, crushingly criticized cackowski’s ideas. in a part titled oververbalism of logic and philosophy or philosopher’s imprudency?, he wrote: science should not be confused with its school (textbook) presentation, nor creativity with scholastic formulas, nor lively medieval philosophy with school philosophy. but regarding the stalinist philosophy i take professor cackowski’s word for it. is it, however, an example for the author’s main thesis? it is the case that marxist philosophy yielded to the pressure of brutal coarse force, and it generated its oververbalism by means of dialectical “logic”, which truly has little in common with logic – and yet professor cackowski writes on the latter. (perzanowski 1984, 194) in 1983, two reviews of thomas schnelle’s book (schnelle 1982) appeared. the first, a positive critique by jacek ganowicz, a sociologist, that was published in “kwartalnik historii nauki i techniki” (ganowicz 1983), was a thorough review which enabled polish readers to become acquainted with the content and basic thesis of schnelle’s dissertation. the second, by mirosław skwieciński, appeared in the quarterly “problems of the science of science” (“zagadnienia naukoznawstwa”) (skwieciński 1983) and is also positive, but a careful reading shows that its author didn’t know much about fleck – he writes, for instance, that fleck created a “theory of thought styles and thinking teams”, which is clearly translated from german; his reference to the first polish paper of fleck also betrays his german source, since it sounds different to that of the original. also in 1983, stanisław symotiuk described the earlier unknown polemic between ludwik fleck and tadeusz bilikiewicz (symotiuk 1983a).23 as this has subsequently been translated into english, there is no need to discuss it here (symotiuk 1983b). finally, in 1985, a biographical volume titled profiles of outstanding representatives of the science of infectious diseases, epidemiology and microbiology contained a brief biography of ludwik fleck (hencner 1985). the polish translation of the book (1986) there is a significant difference between the publishing market today and that which could be found in the 1980s behind the iron curtain. at that time there were only a few journals in each discipline, so, for instance, a philosopher could be fully up to date of all the latest developments in his or her discipline; also, far fewer books were published, therefore each new book was something of an event. this was the case with the publication of the first polish translation of fleck’s book (fleck 1986a).24 it was translated by maria tuszkiewicz, a microbiologist and former student of fleck. the volume contained the book itself, and was preceded by cackowski’s introduction to polish edition (cackowski 1986) and followed by an appendix to the introduction (at the end of the volume!), which included reprints of whole polemics between fleck and bilikiewicz and fleck’s post-war paper (fleck 1946), and finally there was an index of names. the 22 “oververbalism” is a neologism in polish, since “werbalizm” means “verbosity”. 23 it was not included in rubaszko’s bibliography mentioned above. 24 5,000 copies were printed. paweł jarnicki the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989) 26 introduction, half of which was, in fact, a résumé of cackowski’s earlier texts, contains a curious line: cackowski, speaking about this particular edition, opines that “by publishing the polish translation of fleck’s book in lublin, the academic community of lublin thereby performs its moral duty and, at the same time, takes advantage of the moral law”, which is based on the fact that fleck lived in lublin for seven years after the war. i decided to quote these pretentious words (which would have been excusable had cackowski not repeated them at least three more times) to show that the most important proponent of fleck in poland was, to put it mildly, an unusual character.25 after the polish translation (1987-1989) the polish edition of the book was reviewed six times between 1987 and 1989, three of which were published in the most important journals of their fields – the fields of philosophy (“studia filozoficzne”), the history of science (“kwartalnik historii nauki i techniki”) and the science of science (“zagadnienia naukoznawstwa”). the others were featured in “cosmos” (“kosmos”), a journal of the polish copernicus society of naturalists; “man and worldview” (“człowiek i światopogląd”), a journal of the association of atheists and freethinkers”;26 and “an overview of methodological literature” (“przegląd literatury metodologicznej”). although the lack of a sociological journal is eye-catching, two of the reviews are written by sociologists. the shortest review, which in fact summarizes not the book itself, but cackowski’s introduction, appeared in 1989 (kubicki 1989).27 zbigniew j. wójcik, a historian of science, wrote two reviews (wójcik 1987; wójcik 1988). andrzej szóstak, a sociologist, published a review under the title a treatise on thought style (szóstak 1987). its critique is generally positive, although not without criticism: “fleck’s ideas require determinations and explanations” (szóstak 1987, 110). the other two reviews are more interesting. symotiuk, whose review bears the meaningful title the missing link, indicates that “without much difficulty a few more papers of fleck could have been attached to the book […]; we would have had then […] his ‘complete works’ from the field of the science of science” (symotiuk 1988, 180). he claims that the main advantage of fleck over kuhn is that fleck’s theory is focused on change, while kuhn capitulates here since “shifts” between paradigms (like shifts between gestalts) are unobservable (symotiuk 1988, 182). the author of the most comprehensive review, the sociologist bogdan siewierski, is the only one who criticizes the translation, albeit only in a general remark: fleck’s speaking style, which at times is full of abstruseness, does not facilitate easy reading, and the polish translation, sometimes very awkward, unfortunately does not compensate for this defect” (siewierski 1987, 267). nevertheless, this review is very enthusiastic about fleck’s theory; the author quotes all the important definitions from fleck’s book, discusses almost all of the important concepts of the theory of thought styles and thought collectives, and claims that this book is certainly not only of historical importance, but that it also is certainly not a treatise: “fleck’s original work contains elements which still today can enrich the philosophical, methodological and sociological reflection on formation of systems of knowledge” (siewierski 1987, 274). at roughly the same time, two papers on fleck appeared – a sign that the proper reception of ludwik fleck’s theory had truly begun. the first one (the elements of ludwik fleck’s epistemology. review of the output and reception) by elżbieta pakszy, a philosopher, is not very comprehensive but is based not only on the book, but also on almost all of fleck’s most important polish papers, and it also refers to some papers of the contemporary reception (pakszys 1989). the second, written by artur dorobiński, another philosopher, is the result of a systematic study whose aim was to “reconstruct the most important categories of ludwik fleck’s theory and to evaluate this theory in respect of the place it takes in the dispute between the cultural and logical approaches to science” (dorobiński 1988, 99). 25 however, he was a prominent person at that time: in 1986-1989 he was a member of the consultative council to the president of the state council (of the people’s republic of poland) wojciech jaruzelski; in 1987-1990 he was a rector of maria curie-skłodowska university in lublin. 26 this was a marxist journal; the members of the association were mostly also members of the communist polish united workers' party. 27 roman kubicki is a philosopher. paweł jarnicki the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989) 27 conclusion fleck was certainly read before the war; however, those who reacted to his works then were mostly not philosophers. war put a comprehensive stop to the written exchange of thoughts, and after the war fleck’s theory was largely forgotten. the turning point was the polish edition of thomas kuhn’s the structure… (1968), where kuhn’s mention of fleck in the preface aroused people’s curiosity. the situation evolved still further in 1979, when three short texts about fleck’s works were published. although later publications from abroad were reported (schnelle’s book and the american edition of fleck’s book), before the polish translation of fleck’s book was published (1986) there were no systematic studies based on all of fleck’s philosophical writings at all. in part, this was because some of fleck’s texts were still being “discovered”. in this period only one paper based on the german original text of the book emerged. the polish edition of the book was edited by a philosopher and translated by a microbiologist. its publication was an event in itself. the volume also contained several, but not all, of fleck’s other papers so it cannot be regarded as a “complete works”. it received generally positive reviews, but they were not without criticism towards fleck. the translation is not of the best quality, but that is a topic for another paper. before 1989, most publications about fleck appeared in philosophical journals, some of which focussed on the history of science. however, none of the texts appeared in sociological journals. of the authors of these publications, sociologists make up nearly a quarter (5), philosophers are definitely the most numerous (9), and the list also includes historians of science (2) and a librarian. we can say that the proper reception of the theory of thought styles and thought collectives began three years after publication of the book. this is definitely the greatest merit of zdzisław cackowski; however, the unique character of this polish proponent of fleck probably influenced his subsequent reception. if i had to choose texts (from those mentioned above) to be translated into english, i would choose bogdan siewierski’s review of the book (siewierski, 1987), followed by the papers of gierasimiuk (gierasimiuk, 1981) and dorobiński (dorobiński, 1988). symotiuk’s discussion of the fleck-bilikiewicz polemics has already been translated (symotiuk, 1983) and is well worth reading. references [anonim]. “ludwik fleck (1896-1961) [obituary].” nauka polska 9 (3): 1961, 264. bilikiewicz, tadeusz. “odpowiedź na replikę ludwika flecka.” przegląd współczesny 18 (8-9): 1939a, 175– 76. bilikiewicz, tadeusz. “uwagi nad artykułem ludwika flecka "nauka a środowisko".” przegląd współczesny 18 (8-9): 1939b, 157–67. bilikiewicz, tadeusz. “comments on ludwik fleck's 'science and social context'.” in the polish school of philosophy of medicine, edited by ilana löwy, philosophy and medicine 37. dordrecht, boston, london: kluwer academic publishers, 1990a, 257–66. bilikiewicz, tadeusz. “reply to the rejoinder by ludwik fleck.” in löwy, the polish school of philosophy of medicine, 1990b, 274–75. cackowski, zdzisław. “ludwik fleck. filozoficzne ślady w lublinie.” in “[issue partially on fleck].” special issue, annales universitatis mariae curie-skłodowska sectio i (philosophia-sociologia). 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(3-4): 1983b, 569–82. http://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/kwartalnik_historii_nauki_i_techniki/kwartalnik_historii_nau ki_i_techniki-r1983-t28-n3_4/kwartalnik_historii_nauki_i_techniki-r1983-t28-n3_4-s569582/kwartalnik_historii_nauki_i_techniki-r1983-t28-n3_4-s569-582.pdf symotiuk, stefan.“brakujące ogniwo: [review: l. fleck, powstanie i rozwój faktu naukowego. wprowadzenie do nauki o stylu myślowym i kolektywie myślowym, lublin 1986].” studia filozoficzne (5): 1988, 178–83. szóstak, andrzej. “traktat o stylu myślenia: [review: l. fleck, powstanie i rozwój faktu naukowego. wprowadzenie do nauki o stylu myślowym i kolektywie myślowym, lublin 1986].” człowiek i światopogląd (11): 1987, 104–11. paweł jarnicki the beginnings of the reception of ludwik fleck’s ideas in polish (1936-1989) 30 voisé, waldemar. “[review: l. fleck, genesis and development of a scientific fact, chicago 1979].” ruch filozoficzny 39 (1): 1981, 22–26. wolniewicz, bogusław. “empirowerbalizm ryszarda avenariusa.” in ludzkie pojęcie świata. [transl. a. & a. wiegner], edited by bogusław wolniewicz, vii–xlv: pwn, 1969. wolniewicz, bogusław. “ludwik fleck i filozofia polska.” in “[issue partially on fleck].” special issue, studia filozoficzne. (5-6): 1982, 79–82. wójcik, zbigniew. “[review: l. fleck, powstanie i rozwój faktu naukowego. wprowadzenie do nauki o stylu myślowym i kolektywie myślowym, lublin 1986].” kwartalnik historii nauki i techniki 32 (3-4): 1987, 794–96. ———. “[review: l. fleck, powstanie i rozwój faktu naukowego. wprowadzenie do nauki o stylu myślowym i kolektywie myślowym, lublin 1986].” kosmos 37 (1): 1988, 115–16. 79 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 79-87 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 – this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works1 jadwiga komola2 abstract: ludwik fleck (1896-1961) was a bilingual academic conversant with the medical and philosophical vocabulary in both polish and german. this paper pays tribute to fleck’s academic bilingualism and focuses on his uses of images in the original versions of his epistemological works “some specific features of the medical way of thinking” (1927), “crisis of reality” (1929), “scientific observation and perception in general” (1935) and “to look, to see, to know” (1947). images are understood as actual artifacts as well as literary metaphors that structure fleck’s thinking on epistemology. by examining fleck’s rhetoric in the original polish and german versions of these texts this paper unfolds the multifaceted meanings and connotations of the various image metaphors and illuminates the rhetoric impact of gestalt psychology on fleck’s ideas on cognition. keywords: ludwik fleck; philosophy of science; history of science; art history; literary approaches in philosophy of science; the notion of the image in philosophy received: 03 september 2016. reviewed: 03 november 2016. accepted: 05 december 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ludwik fleck (1896-1961) was a bilingual academic conversant with the medical and philosophical vocabulary in both polish and german. 3 a physician by training, he conducted medical research and published the results in about forty papers, mostly in polish and german. 4 this paper pays tribute to fleck’s 1 this paper is based on a presentation delivered at the conference “ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives – translations and receptions” which took place in march 2016 in wrocław, poland. the conference was organized by the project science foundation (fundacja projekt nauka), the ludwik fleck centre at the collegium helveticum in zurich, the federal institute of technology in zurich (ethz) and the max planck institute for the history of science in berlin. 2 jadwiga kamola, phd is a research assistant at the staatliche museen zu berlin, stauffenbergstr. 41, 10785 berlin, germany. e-mail: j.kamola@smb.spk-berlin.de 3 bearing in mind fleck’s upbringing in lemberg (lviv), which was part of austro-hungary until 1918 and the fact that german was the academic language at that time one can conclude that german was fleck’s second academic language beside polish. on fleck’s biography see werner, sylwia; zittel, claus; schmaltz, florian (eds.) ludwik fleck: style myślowe i fakty: artykuły i świadectwa. warszawa: wydawnictwo ifis pan, 2007. on fleck’s academic environment see löwy, ilana (ed.) the polish school of philosophy of medicine: from tytus chalubinski (1820–1889) to ludwik fleck (1896–1961). boston: kluwer, 1990. 4 in 1927 fleck published in polish his first work in the philosophy of medicine “some specific features of the medical way of thinking” (“o niektórych swoistych cechach myślenia lekarskiego”). two years later he published in german jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 80 academic bilingualism and focuses on his uses of images in the original versions of his epistemological works “some specific features of the medical way of thinking” (1927), “crisis of reality” (1929), “scientific observation and perception in general” (1935) and “to look, to see, to know” (1947). images are understood as actual artifacts as well as literary metaphors that structure fleck’s thinking on epistemology. by examining fleck’s rhetoric in the original polish and german versions of these texts this paper unfolds the multifaceted meanings and connotations of the various image metaphors and illuminates the rhetoric impact of gestalt psychology on fleck’s ideas on cognition. fleck’s works are replete with images. in the polish and german editions fleck uses obraz/bild (“image”) and postać/gestalt for the abstract or mental image and designates rysunek/bild (“picture”) and ideogram/sinn-bild, which was translated as “ideogram” in english, as “graphic representations of certain ideas, of a certain sense” such as anatomical illustrations. especially postać/gestalt is closely entangled with fleck’s core question of how cognition is formed in general and of what determines a scientific fact such as the perception of pathological forms in medicine. this paper therefore embarks on the term “gestalt”, being central in gestalt psychology and predominant in fleck’s above listed works. this analysis is complicated by the fact that the english translations provided the terms “form” and “shape” where it should say “gestalt”; a term used by the polish and german texts and which is a fully valid word in the english language. thus, one of the aims of this paper is to highlight the originally employed terms of “gestalten” and, where necessary, to offer a more accurate translation. methodologically, this paper does not aim to coherently analyze fleck’s works in the intellectualhistoric context of the gestalt psychologists of his time, as has been proposed by the historian and literary scholar claus zittel (zittel, 2013, 23-24). it rather follows a literary-exegetic approach by simultaneously widening the scope from the study of the term “gestalt” to the broader and entangled notions of the image in the workings of fleck’s epistemology. in this sense, the title “lady with pooch” alludes to an illustration used by fleck in “to look, to see, to know” (1947) which points to the connections between gestalten. cognition – an “act of creation” fleck derives his ideas on cognition from his medical observations. in “some specific features of the medical way of thinking” (1927) he asks, “what is an illness?” and provides the following answer: these (abnormal) types, these ideal, fictitious pictures [obrazy], known as morbid units, around which both the individual and the variable morbid phenomena are grouped, without, however, ever corresponding completely to them – are produced by the medical way of thinking, on the one hand by specific, far-reaching abstraction [abstrahowanie], by rejection [odrzucanie] of some observed data, and on the other hand, the specific construction [budowanie] of hypotheses, i.e. by guessing of non-observed relations. (fleck, 1927, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 40) the cognition of pathological facts is vividly described as a creative process informed by abstracting, by rejecting some observed data and by constructing of hypotheses; it comes close to a “modeling”, to become a “scientific fiction” or fikcja naukowa that is formed historically and by means of intuition (fleck, 1927, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 44). in “crisis of reality” (1929) fleck gives a more precise account of cognition: for cognition is neither passive contemplation nor acquisition of the only possible insight into something given. it is an active, live interrelationship, a reshaping and being reshaped, in short, an “on the crisis of ‘reality’”(“zur krise der wirklichkeit”) in the journal die naturwissenschaften. “scientific observation and perception in general” (“o obserwacji naukowej i postrzeganiu w ogóle”) was publicized in polish in the philosophical review przegląd filozoficzny in 1935 and also accompanied the otherwise german main work entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache: einführung in die lehre vom denkstil und denkkolektiv (the genesis and development of a scientific fact: an introduction to the theory of thought style and thought collective). “to look, to see, to know” (“patrzeć, widzieć, wiedzieć”) fleck published in polish in the philosophical journal problemy (problems). robert s. cohen and thomas schnelle translated these texts into english and included them to cognition and fact: materials on ludwik fleck in 1986. for a detailed overview of fleck’s translations see http://ludwikfleck.pl/works/list-of-analysed-texts/ (consulted september, 24th 2016) jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 81 act of creation [schaffen]. neither the ‘subject’ nor the ‘object’ receive a reality of their own; all existence is based upon interaction and is relative.” (highlighted in the original; fleck, 1929, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 49) fleck describes cognition as an actively generated reciprocal process, a “live interrelationship” or lebendiges beziehungeingehen which becomes an “act of creation” or “schaffen”. this aspect of “interrelationship” harks back to the ideas of the gestalt psychologists. according to christian von ehrenfels (1859-1932), the act of seeing is neither passive nor active, it is based on the creation of relationships. ehrenfels speaks of a cognitive “fusion”, which has to be formed among gestalten of different senses; “the intimate fusion of touch, temperature and sometimes also taste and smell sensations” (ehrenfels 1890; smith, 1988, 97). learning to see and “readiness” crucial to fleck’s understanding of cognition is the idea that in order to “see”, that is, to overcome mere nondirected “looking” (patrzeć) the observer has to know what to perceive (spostrzegać). this knowledge is based on a trained and directed “seeing” (widzieć) which one acquires in practice, as fleck outlines in “scientific observation and perception in general” (1935): when i look at the microscopic preparation of, e.g. a diphtheria culture, then, to use common parlance, i see only a certain number of lines having a certain specific structure (or colour), a certain form [kształt] and a certain arrangement [układ]. however, it would be futile on my part to try to describe these three elements of the image [obraz] so as to render in words, univocally for the layman, the image [obraz] of the characteristic form [postać] which is seen by the trained observer, but which the layman is simply unable to see at the beginning. nevertheless, after a short period of time, almost all of the pupils acquire the ability to perceive [zdolność postrzegania] it, and reach results which are consistent (at least to a large extent). thus one first has to learn to look [“patrzeć”] in order to be able to see [spostrzegać] that which forms the basis of the given discipline. (fleck, 1935, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 59-60) fleck explicitly differentiates between “kształt” and “postać”, which were both translated as “form” in the 1986 volume. “kształt” refers to a visually conceivable material composition, which is almost synonymous with the following “arrangement” or “układ” where “postać” seems to comprise the notion of a sharply contoured concrete entity. this entity or gestalt is the object of the “trained observer” who through time acquires an “ability to perceive”, understood as a trained seeing dictated by the given discipline. at the outset of “crisis of reality” (1929) fleck further stresses the aspect of learning and the social factors involved in this process: in this manner three systems of factors come into account, that contribute to every process of cognition (erkennen), are interrelated and interacting: the burden of tradition, the weight of education, and the effect of the sequence of the acts of cognition. (fleck, 1929, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 47) fleck concludes that one never resembles “a tabula rasa as is the screen before a film is projected on it” (fleck, 1929, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 48). in “scientific observation and perception in general” (1935) fleck further argues that in order to perceive a certain gestalt one needs “a special readiness” (fleck, 1935, 62). in this context, the original polish text contains the notion of postać or gestalt and formulates this readiness as a pogotowie do dostrzegania pewnej odrębnej postaci – literally “the urgent readiness to see a distinct gestalt”.5 this readiness is coined by a “sequence” of the acts of cognition, a repeated and organized process involved in scientific observation. 5 in polish, “pogotowie” is primarily used in terms of “pogotowie ratunkowe”, i.e. “emergency service” or “ambulance”. see słownik języka polskiego (dictionary of the polish language): http://sjp.pwn.pl/szukaj/pogotowie.html (consulted september, 24th 2016) jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 82 one discovers a similar account of cognition in über gestaltpsychologie und gestalttheorie (1929). erich jeansch and lászló grünhut underline the aspect that the psychic organization “as a whole” “intends” something. the authors speak of a “gerichtetsein”, a directed perception towards objects and qualities: das verhalten des ganzen wird vielmehr dadurch bestimmt, dass die seelische organisation als ganzes etwas intendiert; sie zeigt mit allen ihren teilmomenten eine einheitliche richtung [“onesided direction“] auf gegenstände oder werte. (jaensch; grünhut, 1929, 22) once the observer has internalized a specific gestalt this readiness becomes a “mental habit”, which has been carried out consciously before (fleck, 1935, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 67). the evident difference between jaensch and grünhut and fleck’s ideas is fleck’s novel notion of “thought collective” that determines the way we perceive the world. this notion is naturally lacking in the work of the gestalt psychologists and will be explained later in this paper. how to see a new form (gestalt) the gestalt psychologists understood gestalt as a mental entity that is made up by different sensations. in über gestaltqualitäten (1890) ehrenfels suggests that as soon as one is committed to the idea that something other than the sum of the tones makes up the melody “one has in effect accept what we call the tonal gestalt” (ehrenfels 1890, in smith 1988: 91). by a gestalt quality ehrenfels precisely understands a positive content of presentation bound up in consciousness with the presence of complexes of mutually separable (i.e., independently presentable) elements. that complex of presentations which is necessary for the existence of a given gestalt quality we call the foundation of that quality. (ehrenfels, 1890, in smith, 1988, 93) in describing a gestalt as something more than a sum of its parts ehrenfels further refers to the physicist and philosopher ernst mach (1838-1916) who used the term gestalt to indicate the characteristics of a whole that depend on the specific configuration of its parts. fleck’s “to look, to see, to know” (1947) reverberates this psychological idea of gestalt in stressing the function of such “wholes”: it is precisely such entities [całości], which thrust themselves upon sensory perception [spostrzeganie zmysłowe], and which are to a large extent independent of their constituent elements, that psychology calls “forms” [postać], regardless of the sense which supplies them. thus we can have visual forms [postacie], e.g. cross, letter, figure; or auditory, e.g. a certain tune, a word; or olfactory ones, e.g. the smell of grocers’ shops, or of railway stations. (fleck, 1947, in cohen; schnelle 1986, 131) in the polish text, fleck explicitly uses the term całości or “wholes”, not “entities” as was proposed by cohen and schnelle and instead of “forms” fleck employs postacie or gestalten (fleck, 1947, 75). he argues that these gestalten “thrust” themselves upon our perception. this aspect seems to refer to ehrenfels who points out that “the gestalt quality sometimes forces itself into the foreground, that is, makes demands on our attention” (ehrenfels, 1890, in smith, 1988, 95). fleck exemplifies his theory on the letter a (fig. 1). a can have a “highly varied form, despite the change of many details it still remains the letter a. “we say that the form can be transposed”, what fleck boldly highlights in the polish article. the term “transposition”, also boldly highlighted, seems to be derived from jaensch’s and grünhut’s works but also those of wolfgang köhler’s (1887-1967). köhler greatly contributed to the development of gestalt psychology and worked closely with the renowned psychologists kurt koffka (1886-1941) and max wertheimer (1880-1943). according to köhler, due to “transposition” a jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 83 gestalt quality can be transferred to other objects – just as the notes of musical melodies do not change their relation to each other when the melodies are moved or transposed to different keys.6 it is noteworthy that fleck’s semantic exegesis follows a visual analysis of the formal characteristics of the thing represented in the illustration, that is, the analysis of the black and white form, an approach central to the early gestalt psychology. for instance, ernst mach points out that in examining two figures which are alike or “gleiche gestalten” but colored differently, the observer recognizes their sameness of form or “gleiche form” at the first glance, in spite of the difference of color-sensation (mach, 1886, 43). fleck never addresses this aspect – it is the contours of the gestalt and their arrangement that are decisive. in this sense, fleck concentrates on the contours of the letter a and describes it as consisting of two arms converging at the top and of one cross-piece. the arms can be of equal or unequal length, they can be inclined more or less but they must meet at the top. otherwise a turns into h, its so-called “competing form” or “postać konkurencyjna”, again highlighted in the polish article. if the converging tendency of the arms is marked by their mutual inclination, fleck further argues, a small gap does not spoil the gestalt: we complete it automatically because we know the context to which it belongs (fleck, 1947, 134). fleck concludes: we walk around without seeing any point, lines, angles, light or shadows from which we would have to arrange ‘what is this’ by synthesis or reasoning, but we see at once a house, a memorial in a square, a detachment of soldiers, a bookshop window, a group of children, a lady with a dog, all of them ready forms. (fleck, 1947, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 134) or as the polish version has it: widzimy same gotowe postacie – “we see ready gestalten”. in this context, fleck seems to refer to ehrenfels who stresses that some effort is required in grasping a shape by filling out and complementing the gestalt suggested by the foundations, for instance when “seeing” the third dimension suggested by the cues of a perspectival drawing (ehrenfels 1890, in smith 1988, 111). while one does not actually generate the gestalt in a separate act specifically meant to add to the foundation, one expends the energy in completing the required set of elements needed for the gestalt, which then arises spontaneously. in an almost self-referential manner, fleck employs a further illustration depicting the polish word postać, which lacks some arcs that the viewer adds while contemplating the image. fleck further draws our attention to sets of gestalten or postacie całościowe. in “to look, to see, to know” he designates the more distinct gestalten, for instance a house, a “detachment of soldiers” and the less distinct ones such as a “lady with a dog” (fig. 2). a relation can be seen in the leash or in the moving dog but it is less clear than a detachment of soldiers where one cannot distinguish its component elements. the observer discerns the set due to an implied action, such as the lady who walks the dog. 6 for a detailed description of “transposition” see köhler, wolfgang. “simple structural functions in the chimpanzee and in the chicken” in: ellis, w.d. (ed.) a source book of gestalt psychology. london: routledge & kegan paul, 1918/1938, 217-227. jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 84 thought style, thought collective and “aviso” the core of fleck’s epistemology culminates in the concept of “thought style” and “thought collective” which is closely entangled with the notions of gestalt and “readiness”: there exists a certain collective of men [kolektyw myślowy] possessing a common thought-style [styl myślowy]. this style develops, and is, at every stage, connected with its history. it creates a certain definite readiness, imparts it by sociological methods to the members of the collective, and dictates what and how these members do see. this picture [obraz] appears first as a result of a thoughtexperiment sui generis: from the stores of traditional pictures one fits on some pictures and their combinations; next some of them are rejected, others are stylized, then a battle [walka] takes place with the alternately intruding pictures – and finally, a new readiness is formed; i.e. the readiness to see a new specific form [postać]. (fleck, 1935, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 72) as has been the case with kształt and postać in this quotation the distinction between obraz or “image” and postać or gestalt is fundamental: obraz is a vague and random image, it appears in the realm of other obrazy that have not yet been identified as gestalten where a gestalt is always concrete, such as the gestalt of an organ in anatomical illustrations. what is called a scientific fact that what we call “real” fleck describes as an awizo oporu, or “aviso of resistance”, which pushes against the flickering chaos of (non-concrete) images until it emerges as a directly (re-)cognizable gestalt – not “form” as has been used in the english translation – an “object” that the members of the collective treat as a “fact existing outside and independent of them”.7 awizo oporu is used as a literary metaphor that becomes central for fleck’s epistemology. there are two levels of awizo oporu – one related to what the scientist individually perceives and the other one related to the logic of the thought collective. 7 since the english translation does not employ gestalt, which is central to the text’s understanding, i refer to the original polish version of “scientific observation and perception in general”: “odkrycie zjawia sie naprzód jako słabe awizo oporu [“aviso of resistance”] hamującego naprzemienne oscylacje myślowe w twórczym chaosie myśli. z tego awiza powstaje drogą socjalnego stylizującego krążenia myśli udowodnialna, tj. dająca sie umieścić w stylowym systemie myśl. dalszy rozwój zmienia ją w myśl – w ramach stylu – oczywistą, w postać swoistą [characteristic gestalt], bezpośrednio poznawalną, w „przedmiot” [object], do którego członkowie kolektywu muszą się odnieść jako do faktu zewnątrz istniejęcego, niezależnego od nich. taka jest ewolucja tego co nazywamy „rzeczywistym”.” in: fleck, 1935, in werner; zittel; schmaltz, 2007, 127. jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 85 the english text translates awizo oporu as a “feeble advice” but the meaning of “aviso” is much more multifaceted. coming from the spanish language, both in english and polish “aviso” can mean “a piece of advice”, a “report” or a “small fast gunboat”, in music it describes the upbeat movement of the director that determines the dynamics of the piece.8 if one thinks of “aviso” in the context of gestalt psychology, which often references music (the gestalt can be made up of different musical elements), awizo oporu can be understood as a multi-sensorial gestalt, which obstructs and at the same time creates new relationships between already existing parts. in this sense, fleck understands the discovery of a new fact as follows: hence the new observation, i.e. the discovery is carried out in such a way that, during the epoch of equilibrium, there arises a certain intellectual unrest [niepokój] and a tendency towards changes; a chaos of contradictory, alternate pictures [chaos sprzecznych naprzemiennych obrazów]. the picture [obraz], fixed up to now, disintegrated into blobs [kleksy], which arrange themselves into different, contradictory shapes [postacie]. from other fields, previously separated or neglected, some motives [motywy] are added; historic connections, almost accidental, various intellectual relics, often also the so-called errors, mistakes and misunderstandings for their part, add other motives. at this creative moment [moment twórczy] there becomes embodied in one or more investigators the mental past and present of the given thought-collective. all physical and mental fathers are with them, all friends and enemies. each of these factors pulls to its side, pushes or inhibits. hence the flickering chaos. it depends on the intensity of feeling of the investigator whether the fact, whether the new shape [postać] will appear to him within this chaos as a symbolic vivid vision [jaskrawa wizja], or else as a weak hint of a resistance [słabe awizo oporu] which inhibits the free, almost discretional choice between alternate pictures [obrazy]. in both cases it is necessary to defend the new shape [postać] against scattering [rozwianie się]: it must be separated from what, from that moment onwards, will be unimportant, accidental. it is necessary to create directional interests, and to destroy inimical interests. one has to create another mental readiness [pogotowie myślowe] and to educate people to live in it. if one manages to do this, all of the participants will see the form [postać] directly, with their own eyes as if it were the only one, everlasting truth, independent of the people. it is only a subsequent tuning [przestrojenie] that will permit us to see that it has its own style conditioning and that it was a resultant determined historically. (fleck, 1935, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 76-77) fleck describes the development of a scientific fact in martial terms, a conflict between already existing and new occurring images. during the equilibrium there arises an unrest (niepokój), a tendency towards changes; in the flickering chaos of contradictory alternate images, the accepted images will disintegrate into blobs (kleksy), rearrange into contradictory gestalten, where other motives, designated as “historic connections”, are added. in this “creative moment”, in which all “mental fathers”, “all friends and enemies”, are with them – each of these factors pull, push and inhibit. it is striking that it depends on the researcher’s individual “intensity of feeling” whether in the chaos of occurring images one cognizes the new gestalt as a “vivid vision” or as a “feeble aviso”. the english translation “vivid vision” does not evince the semantic density of jaskrawa wizja, which makes perfect sense in the german translation as grelle vision; it is a piercing, a glaring, intense in lighting (but not necessarily in color), reminiscent of the visions of the old testament. the aforementioned meaning of “gunboat” adds an extra semantic layer to this scenario. one can imagine that this gunboat aggressively inhibits the chaos. once the new gestalt has been established it is necessary to “defend” it from “scattering” where the polish rozwianie się literally translates as the “disintegration in the wind”. one has to create directional interests, fleck further argues, and destroy inimical interests, finally one has to “educate the people” to see the new gestalt as if it were the truth. in “to look, to see, to know” fleck describes cognition in similar imperious terms: 8 see the oxford english dictionary at http://www.oed.com.331745941.erf.sbb.spk-berlin.de/view/entry/13775?redirectedfrom=aviso#eid and słownik języka polskiego http://sjp.pwn.pl/szukaj/awizo.html (consulted september, 24th 2016). jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 86 if every observation, the ordinary everyday one, or the most accurate scientific one, is a modeling [modelowanie], the pattern [szablon] is supplied by the collective body. and there is no other possibility. (fleck, 1947, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 147) in this context, the notion of “modeling” lacks the creative connotation usually involved in this activity; the thought style, which imparts on the viewer in the process of seeing, thinking and perceiving, is described as a przymus, a constraint of thought. “seeing” or widzieć is a directed activity, which forces its “pattern” onto the onlooker: “to see means: to re-create a picture [obraz], at a suitable moment created by the collective to which one belongs” (fleck, 1947, 78). thinking is furthermore considered a collective activity. it is subjected to specific changes in time and displays a historic continuity of these changes. its product is a certain gestalt that is visible only to those who participate in this activity. what one thinks and how one sees, that is, our mental amalgam of images, depends on the thought-collective to which one belongs. as a result, in “to look, to see, to know” the role of gestalt becomes crucial as it stands at the outset of any complex thinking: “if our seeing had not been of the form-perceiving type [widzenie postaciowe], who knows whether abstract concepts would have arisen, or whether generalization and, in general, knowledge would have been possible”. (fleck, 1947, in cohen; schnelle, 1986, 140) fleck describes the directed “seeing” literally as a “widzenie postaciowe” or “gestalt-seeing” – the origin of all knowledge. conclusion in this paper i have argued that the various image metaphors help fleck describe the mental processes involved in cognition. fleck generally considers cognition an “act of creation”. yet the seeing of concrete gestalten – the scope of the thought collective and the result of the thought style – is described as an aggressive operation. the term gestalt, as derived from gestalt psychology, designates a concrete thing, the object of the researcher and participates in the notion of a trained seeing; it “thrusts” itself onto our perception. what medicine considers an illness or a scientific fact fleck understands as an image dictated by the given discipline. being “never an enduring state”, this image changes continually. my interpretation pointed to the fact that fleck followed a literary approach that influenced his thinking on reality. what we call “real” is the result of a creative act; a fictitious image produced not through a coherent and logical process but by (the researcher’s) affect. with this creative conception of reality, fleck’s ideas undermine the notion of a mechanical “objectivity”, an epistemic ideal produced by the putatively objective photographic apparatus in the mid-nineteenth-century. objectivity was famously addressed by the historian of science thomas kuhn in the notion of “paradigm” and summarized in the eponymous historical compendium by lorraine daston and peter galison. this aspect, however, could not be discussed in this paper. the originality of fleck’s epistemology seems to lie in fleck’s eclectic approach. fleck does not coherently refer to a specific writer or a specific period in gestalt psychology. his epistemic key terms oscillate between the ideas of christian von ehrenfels, erich jaensch, lászló grünhut and wolfgang köhler. at the same time, he constructs his methodology around the ideas of gestalt psychology. it is striking that in the works that are accompanied by illustrations his semantic exegesis follows a visual analysis of the formal characteristics of the thing represented in the image, that is, the analysis of the black and white form. as such, fleck was not an exceptional thinker. his works can be linked to those of his contemporary, the famous art historian ernst gombrich (1909-2001). in a similar eclectic manner gombrich references gestalt psychology, most notably in art and illusion (1960) subtitled as “a study in the psychology in pictorial representation”. lastly, one should bear in mind that fleck’s most important contribution to epistemology – which on no account does he understand as a gestalt psychology, but as a “social epistemology” – are the concepts of thought style and thought collective as well as the notion of readiness that add a social layer to his visually conceptualized epistemology, and which are naturally absent in the work of the gestalt psychologists. jadwiga komola “pani z pieskiem” (“lady with pooch”): ludwik fleck’s uses of images in his epistemological works 87 references daston, lorraine; galison, peter. objectivity. cambridge: zone books, 2007. ehrenfels, christian von. “über ‘gestaltqualitäten’“ (1890) in: vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche philosophie, 14: 249–292 (“on ‘gestalt qualities’“ in: smith, barry (ed.) foundations of gestalt theory. vienna and munich: philosophia verlag, 1988, 82–117) fleck, ludwik. “o niektórych swoistych cechach myślenia lekarskiego”, archiwum historii i filozofii medycyny oraz historii nauk przyrodniczych, 6, 1927, 55–64. (“some specific features of the medical way of thinking” in: cohen, robert s.; schnelle, thomas (eds.) cognition and fact. materials on ludwik fleck. dordrecht: d. reidel, 1986, 39–46). fleck, ludwik. “zur krise der ‘wirklichkeit’”, die naturwissenschaften, 17, 1929: 425–430. (“on the crisis of ‘reality’” in: cohen; schnelle, 47–58). fleck, ludwik. “o obserwacji naukowej i postrzeganiu w ogóle”, przegląd filozoficzny, 38, 1935: 57–76. (“scientific observation and perception in general” in: cohen; schnelle: 59–78). fleck, ludwik. “patrzeć, widzieć, wiedzieć”, problemy, no. 2, 1947: 74–84 (“to look, to see, to know” in: cohen; schnelle, 129–152). bradley, frederick; trenn, thaddeus j. (eds.) genesis and development of a scientific fact. chicago: chicago university press, 1979. cackowski, zdzisław; symotiuk, stefan (eds.) psychosocjologia poznania naukowego. powstanie i rozwój faktu naukowego oraz inne pisma z filozofii poznania. lublin: wydawnictwo uniwersytetu marii curie-skłodowskiej, 2006. cohen, robert s.; schnelle, thomas (eds.) cognition and fact: materials on ludwik fleck. dordrecht: d. reidel, 1986. schäfer, lothar; schnelle, thomas (eds.) erfahrung und tatsache: gesammelte aufsätze. berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. werner, sylwia; zittel, claus (eds.) denkstile und tatsachen: gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. werner, sylwia; zittel, claus; schmaltz, florian (eds.) style myślowe i fakty. artykuły i świadectwa. warszawa: wydawnictwo ifis pan, 2007. gombrich, ernst. art and illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation. princeton and oxford: priceton university press, 1960. jaensch, erich; grünhut, lászló. über gestaltpsychologie und gestalttheorie. langensalza: beyer, 1929. köhler, wolfgang. “simple structural functions in the chimpanzee and in the chicken” in: a source book of gestalt psychology, ellis; w.d. (eds). london: routledge & kegan paul, 1918/1938, 217-227. kuhn, thomas s. “objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice” in: the essential tension: selected studies in scientific tradition and change. chicago: chicago university press, 1977, 320-339. löwy, ilana (eds.) the polish school of philosophy of medicine: from tytus chalubinski (1820–1889) to ludwik fleck (1896–1961). dordrecht, boston: kluwer, 1990. mach, ernst. beiträge zur analyse der empfindungen. jena: gustav fischer, 1886. zittel, claus. “ludwik fleck’s gestaltbegriff und sein blick auf die gestaltpsychologie seiner zeit” in: zeitschrift für geschichte der wissenschaften, technik und medizin, 2014 feb, 22, issue 1, 9-29. online sources http://ludwikfleck.pl/works/list-of-analysed-texts/ (consulted september, 24th 2016). http://www.oed.com (consulted september, 24th 2016). http://sjp.pwn.pl (consulted september, 24th 2016). microsoft word 10 referees 108 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 108-110 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 – this is an open access journal acknowledgments to referees we would like to thank all those who have participated as anonymous referees in the editorial process of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science in 2016 and 2017. without the expertise of the referees it would be impossible to reach the editorial quality we pursue. this important knowledge of the referees helped the editors accept the papers – or eventually reject some of them – as well as helped the authors improve their works. thus, referees accompanied and certificated all the editing process. we owe a huge debt of gratitude to them. the following is a list of scholars who have read in average two papers in the last 18 months. referees (2016-2017) argentina mariana camilo de oliveira university of buenos aires, buenos aires, argentina belgium jean-françois stoffel haute école louvain-en-hainaut, montignies-sur-sambre, belgium brazil alex calazans federal university of technology – paraná, curitiba, brazil amélia j. oliveira faculty joão paulo ii, marília – sp, brazil ana carolina vimieiro gomes federal university of minas gerais, belo horizonte, brazil bernardo jefferson de oliveira federal university of minas gerais, belo horizonte, brazil carlos alvarez maia state university of rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro, brazil fábio rodrigo leite university of brasília, brasília, brazil acknowledgments to referees 109 georg otte federal university of minas gerais, belo horizonte, brazil gustavo rodrigues rocha state university of feira de santana, feira de santana, brazil ivã gurgel university of são paulo, são paulo, brazil joão alex costa carneiro university of são paulo, são paulo, brazil joão cortese university of são paulo, são paulo, brazil leonir lorenzetti federal university of paraná, curitiba, brazil letícia alves vieira federal university of minas gerais, belo horizonte, brazil luiz henrique lacerda abrahão federal center for technological education of minas gerais, belo horizonte, brazil rita de cássia marques federal university of minas gerais, brazil tiago de almeida university of são paulo, brazil túlio roberto xavier de aguiar federal university of minas gerais, belo horizonte, brazil wagner lannes federal university dos vales do jequitinhonha e do mucuri, diamantina, brazil osvaldo pessoa jr. university of são paulo, são paulo, brazil germany ohad parnes max planck institute for the history of science, berlin, germany italy stefano bordoni university of bologna, rimini, italy acknowledgments to referees 110 mexico damián islas mondragón university juárez del estado de durango, durango, méxico poland paweł jarnick national science center of poland, wrocław, poland portugal joão príncipe university of évora, évora, portugal serbia monika milosavljević university of belgrade, belgrade, servia sweden david östlund södertörn university, stockholm, sweden switzerland rainer egloff eth zürich, zürich, switzerland sandra lang eth zürich, zürich, switzerland microsoft word 3 doria layout 26 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 26-36 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 – this is an open access article article the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria1 abstract: this article reflects on the history of medicine as an academic discipline. it analyzes in particular the debates that took place in france between the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. the first part recalls the main features of the discussions about the history of medicine since it was identified as an autonomous discipline up to the epistemological turn that, in the middle of the 19th century, opposed partisans of a “philological and scientific” to partisans of a “heroic” history of medicine. the second part deals with the debates that began in france in the 1960s-1970s over the legitimacy of a history of medicine written by physicians, and the foundation of a history of medicine written by professional historians. the third part proposes a reflection on the future of research and teaching in this field in france, and highlights the need for cooperation between physicians and specialists in the human and social sciences. keywords: historiography of medicine; history of medicine; history of medicine in france; epistemology received: 24 august 2016. reviewed: 06 august 2017. accepted: 10 october 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.03 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction the history of medicine is a growing academic field. traditionally investigated by physicians interested in their profession’s past, about 50 years ago it started to be enquired by the humanities and social sciences. hence a profound renewal occurred, both in methodology and subject matters, involving a significant expansion of scholarly work. debates on the boundaries of this discipline, its methods, its objectives began to spread among academics. this process was accompanied by increasing mediatization of health-related themes, and easier public accessibility to medical information. in france the debate on the history of medicine is currently carried out by two categories of professionals: physicians on one side, historians on the other. the term 1 corinne doria is a ph.d. in modern history at paris 1 panthéon sorbonne university (france) and at the university of milan (italy). in 2016/17 she was visiting professor at the university suor orsola benincasa in naples (italy) and at the medical school of strasbourg (france). address: centre d’histoire du xixe siècle, paris 1 panthéon-sorbonne university 17, rue victor cousin, 75005, paris, france. email: corinne.doria@gmail.com the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 27 “debate” may not be entirely appropriate because, in general, historians and physicians mainly tend to avoid dialogue, and publicize their arguments without engaging in real discussion with their colleagues. one question seems to divide them: who can legitimately write the history of medicine? this article proposes a reflection on debates on the history of medicine in france between the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, and on the stakes related to these discussions. at first, i will recall the main features of the debates since the history of medicine was identified as an autonomous discipline. i will then summarize the characteristics of the discussions that have taken place in france since the 1960s, and i will end with some remarks on the future of research and teaching of the history of medicine in this country. the stakes of the history of medicine the debates on the history of medicine began at the very moment it was identified as a discipline in its own right. in the old days, the medicine of past centuries was a major element of the education of physicians. their training was largely based on the study of ancient medical texts (hippocrates, galen, avicenna). a physician was also supposed to have a broad humanistic culture, inclusive of history, philosophy and classic literature. this was an essential part of his identity as a doctor – that is to say, of a master of the ars longa (cosmacini 1997) – and allowed him to distinguish himself from subordinate practitioners, such as surgeons. at the beginning of the 19th century, the history of medicine began to be an independent discipline. critical thinking about its objects, methods, and purposes began to proliferate. in europe this reflection was mainly formulated in the germanic area, in particular by kurt sprengel (1766-1833) and emil isensee (1807-1845), two prussian physicians considered to be the founders of the modern history of medicine. they argued the importance of formal teaching of the history of medicine in medical school. according to them, topics should include the history of medical ideas and techniques, and the lives of the greatest physicians. a rigorous methodology needed to be observed, involving archival research and close philological analysis of sources. in the minds of these “founding fathers”, the aim of the history of medicine was not only to teach medical students the history of their future profession, but also to train their spirit. the knowledge of past medical ideas and practices would provide a better understanding of the true meaning of their profession, thereby making them responsible professionals (huisman warner 2004, 1-30). in north america, these views were shared by john shaw billing (1838-1913) and william osler (1859-1919). at the end of the 19th century, these two physicians inaugurated the first course in the history of medicine at the johns hopkins hospital in baltimore. their purpose was to counteract two tendencies that were developing within the medical profession at the time: excessive specialization on the one hand, and increasing commodification on the other. learning about the medicine of past centuries would be a way of preserving the “global vision” skills of the physicians as well as their humanistic sensibility. towards the 1850s, medicine experienced some major changes. definitively imbued with the experimental method, it ceased to be considered as an art and became an empirical science. the history of medicine was directly affected by this process. quickly identified as a potential device to legitimize this “new science”, it turned into a militant history. works written at the time mainly focused upon great discoveries in medicine, and on the lives of the most prominent physicians. this literature presented medicine as the discipline that contributed the most to civilization, and its heroes as benefactors of mankind.2 this approach was quickly contested. debates was particularly vigorous in germanspeaking countries, where a violent controversy pitted the psychiatrist carl wunderlich (1815 2 called “great-doctors-discovering-narrative”. the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 28 1877) – one of the main supporters of the new militant historiography – and his colleague heinrich haeser (1811-1885), professor at the university of jena, the latter advocating that the history of medicine should not be devoted to the celebration of medical glories but should remain an independent discipline. haeser’s position was shared by theodor puschmann (1844-1899), holder of the chair in the history of medicine at the university of vienna. he underpinned the need to adhere to a rigorous philological method, claiming that the purpose of the history of medicine was to train perceptive and responsible practitioners. haeser’s and puschmann’s arguments failed to find an audience. a positivist and triumphalist history became widely accepted, resulting an abundant textual production. a much more radical critique was formulated in the 1960s-1970s, when specialists in what would become known as the “human and social sciences” engaged with the history of medicine. the entry of the humanities into the arena led first to a proliferation of the subject matters of the discussion, which gradually expanded from physicians to medics in the broad sense (midwives, apothecaries, nurses, but also charlatans), institutions (hospitals, but also academies and universities), and diseases. new methodological approaches were also adopted, providing a considering epistemological renewal. this process went hand-in-hand with the rejection of the former medical historiography, which was criticized on multiple levels. first, for the narrow scope of its topics, selected from an internalist perspective that did not take into account the social, political, cultural, and economic dimension of medicine. then, for its methodology, which was judged insufficiently rigorous. finally, and most importantly, for its instrumental purpose, which aimed at establishing and enforcing the primacy of medicine. in conclusion, the history of medicine (or rather the history of health, as professionals in the humanities started calling it) should no longer be the business of doctors, who lacked the necessary competences and objectivity, and should belong to historians. in france this debate took on the characteristics of an ideological battle. during the 1960s, several directions of research were opened up in this field. a group of scholars in medical ideas and philosophy formed around mirko grmek (philosopher) and danielle gourevitch (historian) at that time. whilst composed of non-physicians, it shared the same perspective as the former (positivist) medical historiography. another direction was inaugurated by philosophers such as georges canguilhem (1904-1995) and michel foucault (1926-1984), which aimed at apprehending the history of medicine from an epistemological perspective. a third path was forged by social history. raising in the wake of the school of the annales and pioneered by jacques léonard (1935-1988), it aimed to apprehend the history of medicine as a part of the global history. this approach was reinforced by the work of historians such as olivier faure, and philosophers such as georges vigarello, and chiefly shaped the thinking of scholars in the humanities and social sciences.3 the starting point of this current was the complete rejection of the physicianhistorians’ historiography. its proponents adopted an over-critical posture, aimed at withdrawing all scientific value from this literature, which was depicted as the work of amateurs. thus, caricaturing the previous historiography was a mean by which professional historians could justify their appropriation of this field, which belonged to physicians by right of birth. in making such a break with the past, historians asserted at the same time that scientific skills were not essential to understanding medical topics from a historical viewpoint. this irrevocable rejection of a triumphalist and hagiographic historiography also went hand-in-hand with the heroic celebration of jacques léonard, the founding father of the “true” history of medicine. until this day, historians haven’t done anything but scratch the surface of the medical constellation in the social, economic, cultural, and even political space that the brilliant 3 it is currently [carried] by historians such as anne rasmussen, patrice bourdelais, anne carol, rafael mandressi. the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 29 and fruitful advances of the discipline in france were traversing. [...] this object, hitherto elided or bypassed, jacques léonard took to the body, for a dive in deep water which allowed him, by the effect of his “obstinate” will, [...] to define approximately all aspects of the history of medicine of the last century. he did so with a seemingly quiet daring, which the context, however, could not fail to poison by disquietudes. (peter 1992, 12)4 léonard therefore, unveiled the history of medicine to itself. in spite of been surrounded by enemies and detractors, he was able to deliver the history of medicine from its captivity, paving the way for the work of future historians. challenging a positivist historiography depicting the history of medicine as an uninterrupted series of accomplishments by great men, this literature produced the celebration of a great man who, alone and against all, put medical history on the path of progress. the point here is not to question the value of léonard’s work or his influence, but to highlight the need for legitimation and the defensive attitude of the new historians of medicine. this kind of narrative is very frequent in – even recent – works on medical historiography.5 historians seem to feel the urgency to constantly repeat the same statement: “the history of medicine is a hobby, the product of some amateur-practitioner or some retired hospital hero. it is done within the traditional spirit of a repetitive celebration of the great scientific progress of medicine, of a hagiography of the great figures” (peter 1992, 12).6 the historian’s entrance on stage, as it were, has not prevented doctors from continuing to write. on the contrary, their production of books and articles has never been more abundant. physician-historians are also actively engaged in promoting the history of medicine in medical schools. they recognize the contributions of the humanities to the history of medicine, and they are hospitable to the work of historians. they do not seem affected – or even interested – in the criticisms which have been raised by the field of the humanities and social sciences. this is easily understood. they do not perceive as a menace a work whose results will – eventually – expand knowledge of the medicine of the past. the question that seems to concern physicians above all is how to structurally introduce the history of medicine in academic curricula. physicians aim establishing a wellstructured teaching of the discipline, preferably organizing it in several cycles, and leading to a final diploma. aware that the history of medicine is not very popular among students – who seem not seeing its usefulness for their careers – physician-historians try to prove the contrary. for example, they emphasize that this discipline is held in the highest consideration 4 “aucun historien jusqu’à nos jours n’avait fait autre chose qu’effleurer la réalité de la constellation médicale dans l’espace social, économique et culturel, voire politique, que parcouraient alors en france les avancées brillantes et fécondes de la discipline. […] ce objet, jusqu’alors élidé ou contourné, jacques léonard le prit à bras le corps, pour une plongée en eau profonde qui lui permit, par effet d’une volonté “obstinée”, […] de cerner à peu près tous les aspects de l’histoire médicale du siècle dernier. il le fit avec une audace apparemment tranquille, que le contexte cependant ne pouvait pas ne pas empoisonner d’inquiétudes. depuis toujours en effet, l’histoire de la médecine était un territoire plus ou moins explicitement réservé aux médecins eux-mêmes”. 5 “jacques léonard finally triumphed over the obstacles he suffered so much more than he was aware of. refusing to proclaim himself the exclusive owner of the territory he had discovered, exercising no position of power, indifferent to the vain hierarchies, he knew, by the sheer force of his works and the multitude of his councils, how to encourage without constraining, to stimulate without controlling and finally give his work and himself a much richer posterity than that of many school heads” (“jacques léonard a finalement triomphé des obstacles dont il a tant souffert plus qu’il n’en a eu conscience. refusant de se proclamer propriétaire exclusif du territoire qu’il avait découvert, n’exerçant aucune position de pouvoir, indifférent aux vaines hiérarchies, il a su, par la seule force de ses travaux et la multitude de ses conseils encourager sans contraindre, stimuler sans contrôler et finalement donner à ses travaux et à lui-même une postérité bien plus riche que celle de nombreux chefs d’école”) (faure 1994, 59). 6 “l’histoire médicale est, à titre d’hobby, le fait de quelque praticien amateur ou de certaines gloires hospitalières à la retraite. cela dans l’esprit traditionnel d’une célébration répétitive des grands projets scientifiques de la médecine, d’une hagiographie des grandes figures”. the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 30 in the most advanced countries in scientific research, such as germany and the united states (coury 1971, 100-106). presented for the first time in france in the 1970s by professor charles coury, chief doctor at the hôtel-dieu hospital and holder of the chair in the history of medicine at paris v university, this project is currently a central concern among several physicianshistorians in france. the french exception to provide a better understanding of the debates on the history of medicine in france, i believe it is necessary to draw attention to some characteristics, which are specific to the french case. first, the lack of institutionalization of this discipline. the university chairs in the history of medicine that existed in the past have gradually disappeared. the oldest, created in 1870 at the university of paris, disappeared in 1997 and it has never been re-established. if courses in the history of medicine exist in medical schools across the country, such as in lille, lyon or tours, they struggle to survive, lacking of sufficient enrolments for these classes.7 in 2010 the history of medicine became a mandatory discipline for all students enrolling in the paces (première année commune aux études de santé), but medical schools struggle to organize the programs and find qualified instructors. in the faculties of human and social sciences, a proper training in the history of medicine does not exist. there are some courses in adjacent disciplines, such as the history and philosophy of science or the history of technology, but normally they are only accessible to advanced students. a few masters or doctoral seminars are also organized by some grandes écoles, such as the ehess (ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales) or the ephe (ecole pratique des hautes etudes), but there are no chairs or departments specifically devoted to this discipline. the research centers carrying out a work in the history of medicine, such as the centre alexandre koyré in paris or the larha (laboratoire de recherche historiques du rhône-alpes) in lyon, cultivate much broader interests. moreover, as we will see, the institutionalization of the history of medicine within universities does not appear to be a priority of scholars, even among those working on this subject matter. the second french peculiarity is the absence of real dialogue between historians of medicine and physician-historians. the former are barred from the critical posture described above, and do not recognize physicians as legitimate interlocutors. the presence of a physician within a ph.d. or hdr jury is therefore extremely rare, and for a physician-historian to be invited to participate in a seminar or symposium hosted by a faculty of humanities is exceptional. by contrast, the opposite is not true. historians, philosophers, and sociologists are welcome to events organized by physicians. however, if doctors show a sincere interest in the methodological and epistemological approaches of social scientists, they have no intention of “passing the baton”. to them, as it were, the history of medicine must remain in the hands of the physicians (thillaud 2013, 53-59). i can provide two examples in this regard. the first comes from the university degree in history of medicine set out by paris v university. created in the early 2000s by dr. patrick berche (dean of the faculty of medicine) and dr. jean-noel fabiani (chef-surgeon at the georges pompidou hospital),8 it provides nine 7 an even smaller teaching load is currently undertaken by the universities of amiens, rennes, montpellier, and marseille. in the universities of reims, clermont-ferrand and toulouse exist general courses in the history of medical disciplines and the history of science. see (bouchet and charlier, 2008 42, 2, 145-148). 8 “the aim of this degree is to restore the history of medicine, those teaching have practically disappeared from medical schools” (“ce diplôme a pour objectif de restaurer un enseignement d'histoire de la médecine qui a pratiquement disparu des facultés de medicine”), presentation form of the university degree in history of medicine. http://www.scfc.parisdescartes.fr/index.php/descartes/formations/medecine/divers/du-histoire-de-la-medecine the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 31 months of training through weekly topical lectures. the approach is interdisciplinary, and open to contributions from a great variety of fields.9 about a quarter of the lectures are delivered by non-physicians (historians, philosophers, jurists). on the other hand, the organization and the management of this course remain solidly in the hands of physicians. they set the program of the lectures, choose the teachers, decide related activities, such as visits to parisian scientific and medical museums. another example is provided by the french society for the history of medicine. created in 1902, this venerable institution has shown over years a more and more marked opening towards the humanities. professional historians are habitually invited to its monthly meetings. 10 in recent decades, the annual prizes for the best ph.d. dissertation were equitably shared between graduate students in medicine and in humanities.11 however, 80% of the society’s bureau is composed of physicians, who are therefore in charge despite its current president, professor jacqueline vons, is emeritus professor-dame of literature at the university of toulouse.12 another characteristic of the history of medicine in france – which i have already anticipated – concerns the general questions that doctors and historians respectively ask. the latter appear mainly to be interested in methodological issues. faced with the new perspectives opened up by humanities, they enquire after the future directions of research, and about the most appropriate methodologies to adopt. this is borne out by several recent scientific symposia and publications focusing upon the need to take stock of the history of medicine from a methodological viewpoint.13 physicians-historians, on the other hand, are more interested in the practical aims of the history of medicine, and to promote its diffusion within medical schools. following the same argument as the founding fathers of the discipline, they insist on the benefits that it might bring to the spirit of the future doctors. in taking up the maxim of auguste comte, who in his cours de philosophie positive stated that “we do not know entirely a science until we know its history”, and of dr. maxime laignel-lavastine 14 who, some decades later, defined history as a “spiritual embryology”, they consider learning around the history of medicine as fundamental to new generations of practitioners. to them, the history of medicine is, first and foremost, a device for preserving the autonomy and professional identity of physicians in view of the dramatic changes that medicine has undergone in recent decades. if technology has led to impressive advances in medicine, doctors nowadays enforce a knowledge that has not been produced within the medical profession (imbaulthuart 1994, 71-84). technology has made medicine a hetero-direct profession, and doctors [accessed august 14, 2016]. 9 “the course will present the main themes of the history of medicine through a transversal and multidisciplinary approach, within the viewpoint of doctors, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, jurists, economists, philosophers” (“l’enseignement présentera les principaux thèmes de l’histoire de la médecine par une approche transversale et multidisciplinaire, avec le regard des médecins, historiens, des anthropologues, des sociologues, des juristes, des économistes, des philosophes”). http://www.scfc.parisdescartes.fr/index.php/descartes/formations/medecine/divers/du-histoire-de-lamedecine [accessed august 14, 2016]. 10as the symposium organized in may 2016 on medicine and literature http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/pdf/meaux_2021052016.pdf [accessed august 14, 2016]. 10 for the complete list of awards given since 1995, recent years http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/prix.htm [accessed august 14, 2016]. 11 for the complete list of participants at the monthly meetings of the society since 1995, see http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/prix.htm [accessed august 14, 2016]. 12 she was elected president in spring 2016, succeeding to dr. françois trépardou, microbiologist. 13 among others, alexander klein and severine parayre (2015) and the workshop “writing the history of medicine and health from antiquity to today” organized by the house of human sciences and the university paris-13 in 2013. 14 maxime laignel-lavastine, (1875-1953), french psychiatrist, professor of the history of medicine in paris from 1931 to 1939. the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 32 are increasingly reduced to the status of technician or health worker. if a part of the medical profession is happy with this because the returns in terms of professional and social recognition, another part feels increasing discomfort, and see technicization being as a step towards dehumanization of the medical profession. a second point concerns the role taken by political and economic players. since health has become a state-guaranteed right, medicine has been gradually supervised and monitored by politicians, who manage a health system that needs simultaneously to be accessible, efficient, and compatible with the state budget. players other than physicians, having mostly economic concerns, therefore control the national health system. in this context, physicians are involved from time to time as mere consultants. but if technology, politics, and economics have taken medicine out of the hands of the doctors, looking back at the origins and the history of medicine could be a way of preserving the identity and significance of the medical profession. it could also put in perspective the current dynamics, hence providing a better understanding of them.15 knowing the history of medicine could also teach physicians to be humble. the possibilities opened up by medical science can easily lead to a sort of intoxication of power. the history of medicine demonstrates that human knowledge is relative, that theories are fragile. therefore, such expertise can make physicians aware of the limits of medical power. doctors also interact with patients who are today more and more informed and demanding. in our society, being in good health is paramount. unlike the past, disease and pain are no longer accepted, but are considered as obstacles that medicine must overcome. the mediatization of the, sometimes spectacular, results obtained by modern medicine has spread belief in the omnipotence of medicine. patients have easy access to medical information, and they often feel entitled to question the diagnosis and the therapeutic approaches envisaged by doctors. learning about doctor/patient relationships in the past could be therefore a valuable tool for the practitioner, as it might facilitate communication with an audience that is sometimes not very docile. a final point to emphasize is the varying attitudes of historians and physicians to scientific dissemination. whilst both are aware of the increasing interest among the general public in medicine, historians seem not very keen with writing popular books. on the contrary, doctors show an authentic desire to address the general public,16 as they consider scientific dissemination a means to enable the society to develop better relationships with physicians (thillaud 2013). the french opportunity once a well-defined discipline exclusive to physicians, the history of medicine is now an eclectic field, open to a plurality of voices and influences. but the aspiration among many historians since léonard for the history of medicine to become a “global history of health”17 has only partly been achieved. this unifying ambition has been diverted into a craze for the most diverse approaches. a growing number of disciplines have been called upon to 15 this risk has been felt by pierre thillaud (2013). 16 i mention just a few of the works published in the last 15 years: (chastel 2004), (fabiani 2011), (askenasi 2011), (halioua 2015). 17 this unifying ambition was formulated, among others, by olivier faure who, in his histoire sociale de la médecine, wishes “to link as many approaches as possible to understand the relationships our society has with the body, health, disease and medicine” (faure 1994, 6) ( “lier le plus grand nombre possible d’approches qui permettent de comprendre les relations que notre société entretient avec le corps, la santé, la maladie et la medicine” and by jean-pierre peter, who claims “a global history of health that would be both the social history of medicine, the intellectual history of medical sciences, the bio-history of physical and social states of health and history of representations of the body in pain, joy and work” ( “une histoire globale de la santé qui serait à la fois histoire sociale de la médecine, histoire intellectuelle des sciences médicales, bio-histoire physique et sociale des états de santé et histoire des représentations du corps en peine, en joie et au travail”) (peter 1992, 15). the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 33 contribute, as health issues are likely to be understood from a historical perspective as well as sociological, anthropological, philosophical and so on. many other disciplines (demography, geography, literature, art history) are considered eligible to contribute to the understanding of medical issues. there is a risk that this “global history” will become a “disillusioned” history of health (bénichou 1993, 40, 4, 115-117). research in the history of medicine now belongs to the humanities and social sciences, which ensure the most innovative and competitive scholarly production. but it remains almost invisible, dispersed within other more institutionalized disciplinary fields, and inquired after by researchers who probably would not define themselves as historians of medicine. in a study published in 1994 jacques poirier pointed out the absence of health issues in major history textbooks (poirier 1994, 89-95). prominent historians such as robert mandrou, jeanmarie mayeur, and maurice agulhon have been unable to find a place for medicine within french history (mandrou 1989), (mayeur 1973), (agulhon 1990). if medicalizing the history seems to be so hard, is it due to the disciplinary vagueness that characterizes the history of medicine? the fact is that, apart from some privileged institutions, such as the centre national de la recherche scientifique – cnrs, it is difficult in france for scholars to dedicate themselves exclusively to the study of medical topics from a historical perspective. if a graduate student, with ph.d. on a topic related to the history of medicine wishes to pursue an academic career, they need to find their place within a more institutionalized field, such as social history, sociology, anthropology etc. 18 this situation makes france less competitive than other countries where the history of medicine has a solid institutional framework, and research projects which are capable of attracting considerable funding could be set up. most importantly, in the not too distant future, the history of medicine could disappear or be absorbed by more established disciplines. the history of medicine in france remains a discipline that is still seeking an identity, and is still uncertain about its future. the multiplication of official denominations (history of medicine, history of medical sciences, history of health, history of the knowledge of the body, etc.) is, i believe, a rather obvious sign of this. the fact that fundamental questions, such a periodization, the sources to be used and the best way to exploit them, are currently at the center of scholarly debates is not trivial either. the academy is expressing the need to lay the groundwork, to mark out this field. but if in france the history of medicine is struggling to find its place, it is not only because of the lack of an institutional framework. it is also because its guidelines have never been mapped out. all the time and energy historians have devoted to criticizing the positivist historiography has been devoid of constructive theoretical thinking about the principles, directions, and organization of the history of medicine as a scientific discipline. the pars destruens has long been completed. the pars construens is still to be done. i believe that the need to institutionalize the history of medicine in france, to create departments, research centers, and university chairs within the faculties of the humanities and social sciences, to set up teaching programs, as they exist in other european countries and in the united states, is urgent. far from representing, as some fear, an obstacle to research or a limit to the potential of this discipline, an institutional framework would provide the means to ensure its development. at the moment institutionalization represent a great opportunity for france. almost everything is still to play for. this offers the chance to integrate all the developments that the history of medicine has experienced in recent decades. i think about the paths opened up by the medical humanities and disability studies, which have set in motion departments of the history of medicine abroad. the latter are experiencing difficulty integrating the perspectives opened up by the new directions of research, and proposals for “deinstitutionalization” have been advanced (huisman and 18 see the relevant remarks of (peter 1994, 85-88). the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 34 warner 2004). these inputs could instead be easily integrated into an architecture that is created ex-novo. the low level of institutionalization of the history of medicine in france affords, therefore, an opportunity. free from the burdens of the past, france could take advantage of its exceptional situation. this brings to the second point, that is the importance of involving the physicians in this process, and of establishing ongoing dialogue and collaboration between medical historians and doctors. the history of medicine represents an ideal ground for bringing together professionals of the human and social sciences. the characteristics of this disciplinary field make it the perfect meeting place between historians of different fields (of sciences, techniques, economics, education, mentalities), as well as philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, ethnologists, and demographers. interdisciplinarity, constantly invoked as the conditio sine qua non for quality scientific production, would simply not be a label in this case. but would there be a place for physicians in this process? the question must be carefully considered. given the hostility showed by the humanities to the medical community, the risk is that, if the institutionalization of the history of medicine were directed only by historians, doctors would be left out. but is it possible to chart a history of medicine without doctors? would being completely devoid of any medical skill and knowledge be a handicap for a historian of medicine? there needs to be serious reflection on this point, not merely because medicine is, as i emphasize above, a discipline increasingly based on scientific and technical skills (bayet 1994, 49-55). the failure of the only current attempt to set up cooperation between doctors and professionals in the humanities and social sciences is a heavy precedent. i am thinking here of the working group created in the 1980s at the collège de france under the impetus of dr. jacques ruffié (haematologist) and professor jean-charles sournia (surgeon) to give an institutional existence to the history of medicine in france. this group, gathering together physicians as well as prominent historians (jacques léonard, jean-paul aron, jacques roger, marie-josé imbault-huart, jean-pierre peter) failed to propose a satisfactory project (peter 1992, 13-14). the creation in 2015 of an institute of history of medicine, surgery and health at paris-descartes university does not appear, for the moment, to meet the ambitions of its predecessor, despite the statements of its promoters.19 doubts also arise if we look at the activities carried out by cermes3 (centre de recherche en médecine, science, santé, santé mentale, société) 20 and the ifris (institut francilien recherche, innovation, société).21 affiliated to the cnrs and working on medicine and health in a multidisciplinary perspective, they gather specialists in humanities (historians, sociologists, anthropologists, demographers, specialists in political science or economics) whose research focuses upon the current reconfiguration of the relationships between medicine and society. the question at the center of these institutions’ project (the progressive technocratization and politicization of medicine, the impact of globalization on health policy) should imply the presence of physicians. whilst they are not completely absent, they are so few that it is difficult to imagine that they could have a decisive influence.22 establishing a permanent collaboration between specialists in the humanities and physicians is nevertheless crucial. pretending to penetrate medical issues without doctors is a paradox or a pointless presumption. they have to be included not just because of their scientific skills but, more generally, for the contributions they bring as professionals who know medicine from the inside and live it on a daily basis. 19 http://ihmcs.fr [accessed august 14, 2016]. 20 http://www.cermes3.cnrs.fr/fr/ [accessed march 11, 2017]. 21 http://ifris.org [accessed march 11, 2017]. 22 the cermes3 team includes a pediatrician and an epidemiologist; within ifris there is no doctor. the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 35 but how to achieve such a goal? the preliminary condition is to abandon any ideological posture, especially by scholars in humanities. then to find a “consensual” topic as a common starting point. for example, the question of the contributions that the history of medicine could make to 21st century society. we have seen that this question has been partly addressed by physicians. it would be desirable that the social sciences undertake a similar reflection too. this would lead scholars in the humanities to open up to a public broader than the strictly academic one, and to engage in reflection upon the stakes of the scientific disclosure of the history of medicine. physicians and historians could discuss these topics with minimal risk of hurting their respective professional sensibilities. if all these conditions are fulfilled, the institutionalization of the history of medicine will go hand-in-hand with the creation of a space that would not be a citadel for scholars, but a place where the sciences (both human and medical) could be permeable to the real world. let us go back to the question i have chosen as the title of this article: the right to write history. outside france, the question of the legitimacy of the writing of the history of medicine does not seem to arise anymore: “disputes about who has the right credentials to pursue the history of medicine seem, at the moment, a thing of the past” (huisman and warner 2004). i hope that the same thing will soon occur in france and that, to quote the physician and historian jacques poirier, we will come to recognize that: “if it concerns everyone, the history of medicine belongs to no one; doctors, philosophers, ethnologists, anthropologists, demographers, sociologists, literary, historians (whether they are of science, technology, religion, mentality, culture or other) must consider themselves at home”.23 references agulhon, maurice. 1990. la république de 1880 à nos jours. paris: hachette. askenasi, robert. 2011. petite histoire de la médecine moderne. fernelmont: eme éditions. bayet, claire salomon. 1994. “histoire des sciences et histoire de la médecine”. in michel lagrée and françois lebrun (dir.) 1994. pour une histoire de la médecine. rennes: presses universitaires de rennes, pp. 49-55. bénichou, claude. 1993. “jacques léonard: pour une histoire globale mais désabusée de la santé”. revue d’histoire du vingtième siècle, 40 (4): 115-117. bouchet, alain and charlier, philippe. 2008. “l’enseignement de l’histoire de la médecine dans les institutions universitaires françaises”. histoire des sciences médicales, 42 (2): 145-148. chastel, claude. 2004. une petite histoire de la médecine. paris: ellipses. cosmacini, giorgio. 1997. l'arte lunga. storia della medicina dall'antichità a oggi. rome-bari: laterza. coury, charles. 1971. “un projet pour l’enseignement de l’histoire de la médecine en france”. histoire des sciences médicales, 4 (2): 100-106. fabiani, jean-noël. 2011. ces petites histoire qui ont fait la médecine. paris: plon. faure, olivier. 1994. “des médecins aux malades: tendances récentes en histoire sociale de la santé”. in lagrée, michel and lebrun, françois (dir.) 1994. pour une histoire de la médecine. rennes: presses universitaires de rennes. faure, olivier. 1994. histoire sociale de la médecine. paris: anthropos. halioua, bruni. 2015. histoire de la médecine pour les nuls. paris: first edition. 23 “l’histoire de la médecine, si elle concerne chacun, n’appartient à personne; médecins, philosophes, ethnologues, anthropologues, démographes, sociologies, littéraires, historiens (qu’ils le soient des sciences, des techniques, des religions, des mentalités, des cultures ou autre) doivent s’y considérer chez eux”) (poirier 1994, 95). the right to write the history: disputes over the history of medicine in france – 20th-21st centuries corinne doria 36 huisman, frank and warner, john h. 2004. “medical histories”. in frank huisman et john h. warner (dir.) locating medical history: baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. imbault-huart, marie-josé . “où va l'histoire de la médecine”. in michel lagrée and françois lebrun (dir.) 1994. pour une histoire de la médecine. rennes: presses universitaires de rennes. klein, alexandre; parayre, séverine (dir.). 2015. histoires de la santé (xviiie-xxe siècles). nouvelles recherches francofones. laval: presses universitaires de laval. lagrée, michel and lebrun, françois (dir.) 1994. pour une histoire de la médecine. rennes: presses universitaires de rennes. léonard. 1992. médecins, malades et société dans la france du xixe siècle. paris: ed. “sciences en situation”. mandrou, robert. 1989. introduction à la france moderne. paris: albin michel. mayeur, jean-marie.1973. le débuts de la iiie république. paris: seuil. peter, jean-pierre. 1992. “jacques léonard, un historien face à l’opacité”. in léonard. 1992. médecins, malades et société dans la france du xixe siècle. paris: ed. “sciences en situation”. poirier, jacques.1994. “au cœur de l’histoire: la santé”. in michel lagrée and françois lebrun (dir.) 1994. pour une histoire de la médecine. rennes: presses universitaires de rennes. thillaud, pierre. 2013. “l’histoire de la médecine; sa modernité, ses exigences”. histoire des sciences médicales 47 (1): 53-59. 160 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 160-162 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem — book review duhem, pierre. la théorie physique : son objet, sa structure. – new edition [online] / presentation and editing by sophie roux. – lyon : ens éditions, 2016. – 297 p. – (bibliothèque idéale des sciences sociales). €4,99 e-isbh: 9782847888348. reviewed by: jean-françois stoffel1 received: 10 april 2017. accepted: 05 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.15 _____________________________________________________________________________ it was in 1981– thus during the same year as his dissertation defense, one year prior to doing the same for σῴζειν τὰ φαινóµενα (1982), and six years before his book duhem: science et providence (1987) – that paul brouzeng (1938-2012) finally furnished francophone readers, after a wait of more than sixty years, with the first complete reprint (and, incidentally, the first anastatic one) of the second edition of la théorie physique (1914). it was enriched by an introduction of eleven pages, a very succinct bibliography and an onomastic index, which must have misled many readers since it, in fact, only covered the text of la théorie physique itself and not that of the two articles added by duhem in his second edition. considering the fact that this reprint of la théorie physique is still and ever available at vrin bookshop (both in hardcover and paperback formats), it is worth assessing any additional value which may be afforded it by sophie roux’s new online edition, other than the fact that, as is the case with all electronic publications, it offers readers the considerable advantage of being able to search the entire text, thereby addressing the aforementioned shortcoming with respect to brouzeng’s edition. this contemporary edition distinguishes itself by furnishing (in decreasing order of importance): 1) a comprehensive introductory essay, which is both concise and synthetic, entitled lire « la théorie physique » aujourd’hui (23 pages); 2) a summary of around 15 lines at the beginning of almost every chapter (chap. 3 of part 1 being an odd exception), thus deftly bringing the progression of the duhemian arguments (p. 1) to the fore; 3) over fifty notes – often biographical, sometimes particularly enlightening (p. 112, n. 2) and erudite (p. 248, n. 85) – added by this editor and serving to comment upon the 230 pages of text (it is, however, regrettable that the notes of both duhem and the editor were carried over to the end of each chapter instead of being, more conveniently, placed at the bottom of the relevant page; 4) the typographical emphasis of certain quotations, the modernization of units of measurement, and the (unreported) correction of some errata; and 5) a more comprehensive bibliography than that of brouzeng. in her introductory essay, sophie roux astutely proposes to retrace the reception of la théorie physique in the 20th century, and thus to explain to the reader why this renowned work was so little-read and largely misunderstood for so long, and therefore why the time has come to read it in its entirety and its authenticity. in order to achieve this, she identifies three stages within this reception. the first takes us from 1 jean-françois stoffel is a professor at the haute école louvain-en-hainaut. address: département paramédical du campus de montignies, 136 rue trieu kaisin, 6061 montignies-sur-sambre, belgium. email: jfstoffel@skynet.be jean-françois stoffel – dossier pierre duhem – book review 161 the genesis of this work to its first reception in france (1892-1940), emphasizing the part that was due to its complex stance (against the positivists and equally against the neo-thomists), to its religious convictions and its scientific choices (against atomism and against relativity) in light of duhem’s lack of influence during this period. the second, which is undoubtedly more original, analyses the reception, still in france, of this historic duhemian work by comparing it to that of alexandre koyré (1940-1970). even if such a comparison may seem appropriate, the proposed ideas themselves are certainly not: it will surely retain the interest of the specialists, without necessarily obtaining their full approval. finally, the third stage (1950-1985) leads us initially to the german-speaking countries (with the vienna circle), then on to the anglophone countries (with post-positivism), and deals with the social, political and religious “decontextualization” of the work, all of which afford a better global understanding from a contemporary perspective. aside from the overall accuracy of the ideas expressed, the entire text is compelling due to its conciseness, clarity and the quality of expression. even if, as we have just observed, the reading of this introductory essay undoubtedly reflects the editor’s ability to successfully meet the challenge of composing an introduction to a book – especially one as eager to flee its misleading labelling as duhem’s most renowned work – unfortunately, this examination also reveals that it may hold little interest for those seeking attention to detail. indeed, duhem died in 1916, and not in 1917 (p. 12 et p. 14); brouzeng’s forename was ‘paul’ and not “pierre” (p. 6); la théorie physique first appeared as various installments in the revue de philosophie and not in the revue des questions scientifiques (p. 7); duhem was not elected “corresponding member in the physics section of academy” in 1913 (p. 12), but rather ‘corresponding member’ in the mechanics section in 1900, and ‘non-resident member’ in 1913; even if “marcellin” is indeed a forename (p. 12), in berthelot’s case, his is the variation ‘marcelin’; the name of the great french mathematician is spelt ‘hermite’ and not hermitte (p. 12); read ‘octave manville’ rather than “octave mandeville” (p. 12); p. humbert’s book came out in 1932 and not 1933 (p. 12); it was not to p. humbert that duhem was replying, upon the occasion of the appointment of a chair for the general history of science at the collège de france, regardless of his possible return to paris as a theoretical physicist (p. 12), but to e. jordan; humbert’s text is, in this context, merely a quote from jordan’s (cf. e. jordan, pierre duhem, in mémoires de la société des sciences physiques et naturelles de bordeaux, 1917, p. 16); duhem’s book of 1902 was called les théories électriques de j. clerk maxwell: étude historique et critique and not théorie historique et critique [sic] de j. clark [sic] maxwell : étude historique et critique (p. 25); the review dedicated to la théorie physique by g. lechalas has a title, namely m. duhem et la théorie physique, and was published in 1909 in l’année philosophique rather than in 1910 in a journal entitled l’année de philosophie (p. 26). consulting our duhemian bibliography (unmentioned) would undoubtedly have avoided many of these errors. similar inaccuracies are also, naturally, to be found in her duhemian text annotations: the revue des questions scientifiques never went on to be called “revue scientifique” (p. 75, n. 12) for the simple reason that there was already a review of that title in existence, as is evidenced by f. mentré’s article which is clearly mentioned (p. 248, n. 79); the fundamental letter which duhem penned to his friend j. récamier cannot be categorically assigned to the year 1906 (p. 116, n. 68) – we mentioned it previously as having been written “undoubtedly after 1906” (j.-fr. stoffel, le phénoménalisme problématique de pierre duhem, p. 79), and, at present, we can safely date it to around 1915, which makes it coeval to duhem’s frame of mind at the time of la science allemande; lastly, his 1911 book, which apparently marks the apotheosis of his scientific work according to our fellow scholar, is entitled traité d’énergétique ou [and not « et »] de thermodynamique générale (p. 249, n. 94). displeasing in the context of an introductory essay, this lack of attention to detail becomes a great deal more problematic when one’s primary objective is editing a text. even if the body of the text seems to have been accurately reproduced within this current edition of la théorie physique, one certainly has grounds to mistrust the transcription of duhem’s own footnotes. indeed, beyond the rather inexplicit statement that “some additions [were] made [by the editor] to the bibliographical references” (p. 5), it should be understood that these notes were instead extensively revised (and not just complemented) in order to render them both more precise and more in line with current bibliographic standards. unfortunately in the present case, this objective, although commendable in itself, proves rather difficult to achieve for three main reasons: 1) duhem’s text is often severely altered to the point where the valuable information it contained is lost (for example, the reference number given to a letter in an edition of his correspondence, or the title of a chapter or section referred to specifically), mistakes appear where there were none (at the risk of raising jean-françois stoffel – dossier pierre duhem – book review 162 suspicions that duhem, since he had made errors in his references, may not have hesitated to refer books he had never consulted), and this without even systematically rectifying the erroneous references present in the duhemian text; 2) the reader is kept in the dark as to the changes effected and as to their extent, since these are neither explicitly stated nor typographically documented; 3) lastly, these alterations, incoherent as they are, do not seem to adhere to any form of systematic implementation resulting from clearly predefined principles. in deference to those who pay attention to the footnotes – and especially to those for whom it is their primary focus of study – the text of the duhemian footnotes should have been faithfully transcribed, as well as the bibliographical references systematically checked, before distinctly claiming to offer a more complete version. instead, in her eagerness to improve and modernize the duhemian bibliographical references, the editor provides the french translation of city names, gallicizes authors’ names, reduces forenames to their initials, and transforms publications years, which were furnished in roman numerals, into arabic numerals. by effecting all these modifications, one naturally runs the risk of introducing errors. here are a few examples (bearing in mind that we indeed checked each one to be quite sure that they were neither necessary nor appropriate): “mdxcvi” becomes “1615” (p. 75, n. 14); “mdcxxvi” becomes “1636” (p. 245, n. 14); “mdcli” becomes “1606” (p. 246, n. 20); and “mdlvii” becomes “1556” (p. 247, n. 51). these errors, resulting from the author’s commendable desire to amend the duhemian notes, are evidently compounded by those due to inaccurate transcription. to further illustrate this point: “essai sur la théorie physique” instead of “essai sur la notion de théorie physique” (p. 75, n. 11); “t. i” instead of “t. iv” (p. 75, n. 13); “lectures on molecular” instead of “notes of lectures on molecular” (p. 114, n. 23); “syperum” instead of “sygerum” (p. 245, n. 9); “1558” instead of “1588” (p. 245, n. 6); “1646” instead of “1640” (p. 247, n. 57); and “xxvii” instead of “xxxvii” (p. 247, n. 65). finally, we would like to specify that this review was based on the version directly transmitted to us, i.e. the version dated 2 september 2016 – it is therefore possible, and even desirable, that some or even all of these detected errors have since been corrected. in conclusion, while we invite all those interested in pierre duhem, both the historical figure and his philosophy, to read sophie roux’s introductory essay, we do urge those for whom the accuracy of the text is primordial, to consider whether it may be worth adhering to paul brouzeng’s classic edition, especially considering the fact that no link between these two editions is provided in this editor’s contemporary version. microsoft word 2ferreira almeida layout 3 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 3-7 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access journal dossier georges canguilhem introduction fábio ferreira de almeida1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.02 ____________________________________________________________________________________ georges canguilhem was born under the sign of gemini on july 4, 1904 in castelnaudary in southwest france. a student at the lycée henri iv where he became a fervent disciple of alain, he later enrolled at the école normale superieure in 1924 and in 1927 obtained an ‘aggregation’-type degree in philosophy. in the early 1930s, his enthusiasm for alainism began to wane and became profoundly imbued with a spirit of pacifism that proved to be increasingly incompatible with the inter-world wars context. appointed to the post of professor of philosophy, first in béziers and later in toulouse, he began to study medicine. the rupture with the figure that had been the great philosophical inspiration of his youth became definitive and with france under occupation by the german troops he enrolled in the faculty of medicine while at the same time taking an active part in the french resistance movement which he joined alongside jean cavaillès. from his new academic qualification in medicine resulted a thesis entitled essay on some problems concerning the normal and the pathological published in 1943. the introduction of that work became famous for a passage in which he declared that what philosophy expected from medicine was “an introduction to the concrete human problems”. he became a national inspector of education in 1948 and, in 1955, a professor at the sorbonne where he was the successor of gaston bachelard as director of the history of science institute, a post he held up until 1971. georges canguilhem’s vast and powerful work unfolded in a markedly discreet way and yet even so, as michel foucault insists, one will understand little or nothing of the french intellectual environment up to the 1970’s if one ignores it and it could even be said that it has still not stopped diffusing its influence. one concept taken from the work of gaston bachelard under whose supervision he who had developed the thesis on the formation of the reflex concept in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, also defines canguilhem’s philosophy. it was the concept of engagement whereby the spirit seeks whatever is typically human in experience; that which drives and affects the reflex. that, and no other, is the reason why philosophy must fundamentally interest itself in that which is strange to it (see canguilhem 2009, 7). that engagement envisages an integrality which, returning from the concrete gets back to the idea; one which in the end re-establishes whatever there is of the spiritual in every action, in every practice. that 1 fábio ferreira de almeida is a professor of the graduate program in philosophy at federal university of goiás. address: avenida esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia / go cep: 74690-900. e-mail: fabioferreiradealmeida@gmail.com dossier georges canguilhem – introduction fábio ferreira de almeida 4 was the standpoint which the philosopher never tired of praising and emphasizing in his life and in the works of individuals like jean cavaillés. canguilhem died in september 1995. * it is really a very sad fact that we will never have the treatise on marxist philosophy that politzer might have written, its absence is felt almost like a form of torture, nor will we have that on mathematical dialectics whose delineation the works of albert lutmann give us a glimpse of, just a glimpse, nor cavaillès’ treatise on logic which would have given us a new theory of concept, a theory that the final phrases of his admirable philosophical testament work, the study on logic and the theory of sciences announces, but only announces: ‘it is not a philosophy of conscience but a philosophy of concept that can provide a doctrine of science. the driving need is not for an activity but for a dialectics’. (koyré 2010, 63) indeed, as koyré himself put it in that same article of 1947, nothing can be so false as that “stupid saying, that slogan of mediocrity: ‘nobody is irreplaceable’. the loss of a great spirit is undeniably irremediable” (koyré 2010, 63). however, we still have the works which other great spirits were able to bring to our knowledge, works that good fortune has preserved and imposed remorse on every worthy survivor. without a doubt the normal and the pathological is one such work and it offers us a renewed understanding of the reciprocal determinations between the living beings and their environment; a radical revision of the logic of the determination of the organisms by the requirements that other lives impose on them; relationships whose mechanics are open because they are constantly confronted with new and unexpected possibilities. in that way canguilhem formulated his biological philosophy and proved to be capable of achievements such as the rehabilitation of a philosopher like auguste comte, previously held to be passée, and he even managed to bring about the renovation of vitalism which he was to defend to the end, in defiance of a considerable number of critics. thus canguilhem transposed to philosophy what could perhaps be considered the most elementary principal of claude bernard’s experimental medicine; “first, go to the hospital”. what, however, is the meaning of that transposition? in 1963 canguilhem, in his condition as a professor at the paris faculty of humanities and human sciences, took up once more the theme of what he had taught twenty years earlier at the university of strasbourg’s faculty of medicine. it was his opportunity to introduce “new reflections” to that earlier essay on medical philosophy. while it is true that with claude bernard, medicine stopped being anatomopathological and became experimental, the question was: how would philosophy, in turn, be able to achieve its encounter with experience? in the early decades of the 20th century, phenomenology sought the foundations for an answer to that question by delving beneath immediate, direct experience, that is, the materiality of the world and of knowledge itself. doing so however, widened the gap separating the interior and exterior and perpetuated the schism between the spirit and all that which would always be strange to it in one way or another and, accordingly, philosophy, albeit by the most tenuous of threads, has remained connected to a classical perspective: the sense of phenomenology, in fact, continues to be the vision. the phenomenological concept of the world, of the experienced world, seems to be the negation of the epistemological notion of the medium or mi-lieu; an uncertain place, neither internal nor external. at the same time another philosopher, henri bergson, an admirer of claude bernard, opened the way for the advent of the concept, and insofar as he recuperated the problem of time as being the central theme of all philosophy and all metaphysics, he also opened the way for the idea that knowledge can only be thought about dossier georges canguilhem – introduction fábio ferreira de almeida 5 historically. canguilhem, who in his youth had rejected the concrete in the way politzer says bergson had conceived it, that is “as the concrete aspect of a philosophy that merely endeavored to animate classical abstraction” (canguilhem 2012, 223),2 after his medical studies during the german occupation of france, his experience in the resistance and his experience of war, came to bergsonism with other eyes and realized that bergson was precisely the one who had best perceived “the organic nature of moral norms, given that they are social norms” (canguilhem 2009, 185). that was the unity of experience that was to permeate all of georges canguilhem’s philosophy: life cannot be thought about apart from the creation of values, because its activity, together with the material that affects it and from which it serves itself to conserve itself and together with the relations that it is obliged to establish and constantly renovate, constitute an organic whole. however, canguilhem’s analyses of the confrontation between social norms and the vital norms are basically directed at determining the signification of the latter and he wrote that: “it is with the organism in view that i allow myself certain incursions into society” (canguilhem 2009, 173). that is not unreasonable because, after all it is a question of epistemology and, right to the end, canguilhem remained faithful to bachelard’s teachings. it means that, as we can see from the studies put together in 1968 in the book studies of the history and philosophy of the sciences and in those that make up ideology and rationality in the history of the sciences and of life (1972), all his reflection seeks to examine the truth in that field or region in which the natural is inserted in a dynamics, or to use bergson’s term a “mouvance”, which is radically its own and which requires that the thinking, to remain within the bounds of truth, should state, should formulate that position according to the means at its disposal. so, just as there is no such thing as sickness, so there is also no truth. however, at the same time, there is knowledge just as there is medicine. like death, which is nothing more than the failure of the force that defines the life of a living being to preserve its activity, the mistake is that which opens to thought, to theory, the always provisional space of that which it is still possible to refer to as truth. so, to take up the catch phrase of the famous conference that canguilhem gave in 1966,3 just as the history of the sciences must constantly ask itself what it is the history of, so epistemology must ask itself what it is the philosophy of. furthermore, it is the extent to which it is capable of seeking a way to formulate an answer to that question that epistemology will become historical. it would seem that it is precisely for that reason that, in the introduction to the book the knowledge of life, in which canguilhem takes up all the more central elements of his thinking, beginning with his analysis of the “aspects of vitalism” we find this: “we think that a reasonable rationalism must know how to acknowledge its limitations and integrate the conditions for exercising it. intelligence can only be applied to life by acknowledging the originality of life. the theory of life has to have its idea of the living from the living” (canguilhem 2009, 16). being aware that there can only be theory involved in the perspective of an idea, that is, no concept and no knowledge can constitute themselves without metaphysics, canguilhem himself never forgot that what every and any metaphysics, every and any theory seeks, in the final analysis, is experience and the concrete. that is why philosophy must take an interest in science and why a philosopher must seek for the true lessons as for example in the medical experience, in hospitals, in the painful effort that sickness demands of life and which, reciprocally, life imposes on itself to resist and to impose the values it creates in order to carry on. thus we can consider philosophy to be “the specific secretion of philosophers”. in reality, science has no need of philosophy (see canguilhem 2015, 1108). in short it is only through science and techniques that the philosopher can expect to be encompassed in truth; only 2 this was in a review that canguilhem published in alain’s journal praising georges politzer’s antibergsonian pamphlet. 3 i refer here to the conference “l’objet de l’histoire des sciences” which appears as the introduction in the book etudes d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences (canguilhem 1972, 9-23). dossier georges canguilhem – introduction fábio ferreira de almeida 6 science places philosophy in the encompass of that truth which for a long time it intended to define without realizing that there is no such thing as “the truth of the truth” (see canguilhem 2015, 1126). as jean hypolite explains very well, for the philosopher, entering into truth means “entering in contact with his times, not through the work of epigones but instead through a profound contact with that which his day stammers out to him” (see canguilhem 2015, 1136). that is the work that canguilhem endeavors to carry out in the course of his works and which makes them fundamentally important. it is precisely for the stuttered utterances of our times that canguilhem’s reflections can arouse not only the spirit but also the muscles. behold the work of philosophy, the very work to which he dedicated himself, facing up to all the risks not only with his word but with his example. * * ever since the publication of the complete works began in 2012, the importance of georges canguilhem’s philosophy has been increasingly perceived around the world. in the hands of camille limoges the project has gathered together some of the most competent scholars of his work around a series of canguilhem’s unpublished works, sparse documents, writings and sayings. facets of his work have been discovered or rediscovered some of which were previously entirely unknown or had been forgotten. as a result, the number of manifestations of the most varied types has been multiplying: meetings, colloquia, publications, studies, theses. could it be that the 21st century will be the century of canguilhem? the present dossier, albeit with no intention of answering that question, is part of the movement referred to and its publication should roughly coincide with the publication of volume v of the complete works. after the volume which brought together almost all of his “political and philosophical writings” in the period 1926 to 1939 (volume i) and the volume dedicated to presenting his texts and other manifestations during the period 1940 to 1960 which mainly address the “the history, biological philosophy and resistance of the sciences” (volume iv), this third publication (of the planned five volumes) will be dedicated to the “history of sciences, epistemology and commemorations” referring to the period 1966 to 1995. a considerable part of the texts being published here stemmed from the conferences presented at the 5th colloquium of history and philosophy of sciences which took place at the federal university of goiás in 2017 as a result of a joint initiative of that university’s faculties of history and philosophy. the event brought together researchers and university lecturers from brazil and other countries around themes present in canguilhem’s works. furthermore, the dossier also has contributions made by other scholars willing to make a commitment to ensuring that the event and this publication would materialize (which, after all, is a lesson one learns when one reads canguilhem’s work not just correctly but also sincerely). what we hope for and expect from the publication is that it will contribute in some way to the diffusion of his thinking and of the lessons that emanate from him and which have shown themselves to be so necessary in our own day and age. almost everywhere one hears people saying that our times are ailing. perhaps, however, the deafening cries of our actuality are not calling so much for answers, cures or medicines, but much more for ears capable of perceiving their whispers. that is the kind of attention that the author of the normal and the pathological and of the knowledge of life, he who was “at the same time near to nietzsche and far from him” (foucault 2008, 1594) learned from the war and from medicine: it is a lesson that still deserves to be studied in the philosophical sense of that word. dossier georges canguilhem – introduction fábio ferreira de almeida 7 references canguilhem, g. 2012. oeuvres completes, tome i. écrits philosophiques et politiques 1926 1939. paris: vrin. canguilhem, g. 2012. oeuvres completes, tome iv. résistence, philosophie biologique et hist oire des sciences. paris: vrin. canguilhem, g. 2009 [1943]. le normal et le pathologique. paris: puf. canguilhem, g. 1972. “l’objet de l’histoire des sciences”. in canguilhem, g. études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. paris: vrin, pp. 9-24. canguilhem, g. la connaissance de la vie. 2009 [1952]. paris: vrin. foucault, m. “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. in foucault, m. 2008. dits et écrits ii. 1976 1988. paris: gallimard/quarto, pp. 1582-1595. koyré, a. “a filosofia – jean cavaillès”. in salomon, m. 2010. alexandre koyré, historiador do pensamento. goiânia: almeida and clément, pp. 63-72. microsoft word 8ternes layout 78 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 78-89 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes1 abstract: this paper develops a brief analysis of the book du développement à l’évolution au xixe siècle, by georges canguilhem and his research workgroup during the years 1958-1960. what is at stake is the history of two core concepts of biology in the 19th century whose unfolding continues to persist at the beginning of the 21st century. concerning the positive history of modern science, influential works and authors in this history, particularly spencer and darwin, are addressed here, in addition to auguste comte and lamarck, when taking into consideration their legendary aspect. each of these concepts has a birthplace of its own. it is also possible to identify a remarkable historical démarche but also moments of rapprochement and even of inversion of their meanings; a history of errors, as well as a fundamental history of their histories and of their many retrospective illusions. keywords: canguilhem; history of biology; theory of evolution; development; spencer and darwin received: 9 february 2018. reviewed 23 march 2018. accepted: 5 may 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.08 ____________________________________________________________________________________ i purport to present herein my interpretation of a book that was described by georges canguilhem as “un travail d’équipe” (canguilhem 2003, 9). this is a study carried out during the 1958-1959 academic year and in the first quarter of 1960. its content is an account, or a report (to use a term more familiar to our academy), of the main results, or conclusions reached by the research workgroup. the authors mention in the book’s presentation that it was first published in 1962, in the thalès journal, but, paradoxically, without much repercussion. fortune was probably reversed with this new publication. thus, etienne balibar e dominique lecourt wrote in the book’s presentation: “in fact, for the majority it will be a discovery because, considered as an indispensable working tool by the historians of science specialized in the history of biology, (perhaps, because of ignorance or omission) it is not found in the great intellectual public’s libraries, unlike other works of their authors” (balibar & lecourt 2003, 5). 1 josé ternes is a professor of the graduate program in philosophy at federal university of goiás. address: avenida esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia / go cep: 74690-900. e-mail: joseternes@hotmail.com canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 79 a fortunate discovery, one could say, and the signatories of this “presentation” endorse it: when writing the intellectual and institutional history of french philosophy from the years 1950 to 1970, one cannot forget that the importance of the research seminars conducted by george canguilhem at the institute for the history of science, at four street, (from which he had assumed the direction succeeding gaston bachelard) will certainly be considered decisive. it is a place of reflection and privileged education for those who have had the opportunity to enjoy a more or less lengthy attendance. it is also a place of controversies, often live, historical and philosophical, worthy of the term political in its broadest and most demanding sense. above all, it is a place of work, which, in its own right, allows us to name it the “biais épistémologique” of contemporary french philosophy. rather than a fashion trend (structuralist or otherwise), it represents a meeting of knowledge, an incentive to critical rationality. (balibar and lecourt 2003, 6-7) forty-one years ago, canguilhem himself had already expressed his evaluation in his brief avant-propos: “a historical study of the formulation of the concepts of development and evolution seemed worthy of being attempted, unlike the futility of erudition or scholarly exercise” (canguilhem 2003, 9). the object of the studies is thus defined: the history of the concepts of development and evolution in the 19th century. although heterogeneous, comprised of researchers from different specialities, this group does not realize the ideal of a certain scientific city. it has no pretences towards scientificity, in the strict sense of the word science. the presence of the noun "history" in the above quotation must be underlined here: it is not about the history tout court of the historians of society, nor a history of scientists who are dependent on a regional language. it is about an epistemological history. the group gets together to make philosophy of sciences. from the outset, it may be appropriate to make the following remark: from the turn of the 19th century, the scientific truths emerge within a regional rationalism. its history demands the abnegation of classical universality. for this reason, teamwork does not authorize unrestrained interdisciplinarity. as bachelard points out, the scientists gather to exchange information and to study. “only philosophers think before studying” (bachelard 1978, 7). paradoxically, historical epistemology demands a conversion: to learn with science. contrary to what is often expected, it is science that effectively “creates philosophy” (bachelard 1978, 7). in other words, it offers the philosopher that which is to be thought, a specific thinking, and, thus, not just any or every manner of thinking. for the philosopher, there is only this, so well expressed by canguilhem in a subtle wave to hegel: “the patience of the concept”. at the beginning of the report, the digression acquires a special weight: without doubt the concepts in question played at the time, as they still do, a great role in the thinking of philosophers, historians, sociologists, and psychologists. but we consider that it is first of all from the biologist’s viewpoint that it is necessary, in order to carry out a research study, to put forward the instructive meaning of a concept reformation [réformation], regardless of the whole amplitude outside the domain of origin. (canguilhem et al. 2003, 13) to favour the biologist’s viewpoint does not necessarily mean engaging in biology. incidentally, this remark is valid for the investigation of thought events in other fields. this attitude is needed for the sake of method. the orientation of what must be done is always dependent on the object. more than once researchers have reiterated this need to operate through immanence; to reveal a démarche, never linear, of concept formation. furthermore, canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 80 to reveal the misapprehensions of this history, constructed from another viewpoint, either by the metaphysicians, avid for transcendence, or by theologians, who are prisoners to a supposed first word, if not to an absolute ignorance of what is at stake. regarding the concepts of development and evolution, although aware of the extraor parabiological developments – the members of the workgroup insist on that immanence: they remark that these concepts “belong to the class of terms which contain, in relation to an image evoked by its etymology and under the aspect of a mere description of facts, a thesis concerning the essence of its production. here, the implicit thesis concerns the essence of generation” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 13-14). beginning in the 17th century, but more particularly in the 19th century, this concept, along with others, like reproduction, organism, fertilization, and means, sets the ground for discussions on the living. as stated by f. jacob, previously, from antiquity to the renaissance, knowledge of the living world has not much changed. when cardan, fernel or aldrovandi speak of beings, they practically repeat what aristotle, hippocrates or galen said. in the 16th century, each body of this world, each plant, each animal was habitually described as a specific combination of matter and form. matter is always composed of the same four elements. therefore, only the form characterises a body. (jacob 1983, 26) it was necessary to abandon this long tradition, particularly the concept of creation, so that a revolution in the knowledge of the living became possible. just as in physics, with galileo, here as well, in the knowledge of the living, we had a classical age. and the chronology is more or less the same. even though it acknowledges the long past with its continuities but also with its moments of novelty, and grants lineu (and his contemporaries) an inaugural epistemological statute, canguilhem’s workgroup virtually dismisses one century of history and settles very restricted temporal limits to its research: 1759, the year of the publication of theoria generationis, by caspar friedrich wolff; 1859, the year of publication of on the origin of species, by charles darwin. one century separates the publication of the two books. and the creation of the research workgroup at the institute for the history of science, at the turn of 1958/1959, is inspired by the conjunction of two anniversaries: 200 years of wolff’s work and the centenary of darwin’s work – which, for those who know the spirit of the research participants, obviously is not the fundamental factor. dates, authors, works, as well as celebrations, flourish in other spaces (just consult the calendars of the most varied institutions) where, as previously mentioned in the words of canguilhem himself, the futility of erudition or scholarly exercise is fulfilled. there, as stressed earlier, what really matters is the work of thought. this is quite explicit at the beginning of the text: the present study concerns itself with the main phases of concept formulation, by the means of controversies, crises, rectifications, convergences, thanks to which, over the course of the years 1759 to 1859, the very same terms of development and evolution come to mean for embryologists and zoologists of the second half of the 19th century, almost the opposite of what they meant to 18th century naturalists. (canguilhem et al. 2003, 13) it is a difficult task, since it requires coping with the original texts, not always immediately available. furthermore, they are written in unfamiliar and often archaic languages. moreover, the concept path would become incomprehensible in the case of the studies being restricted to a confrontation of two phenomena, wolff and darwin, or perhaps, of only two works. in fact, a concept does not seem to have a precise paternity, not even a canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 81 previously traced destiny. even though two names arise as if in a polarity, the emergence of many other thinkers can be observed, whether from the sciences or from philosophy. but it does not matter. beyond the authors, there is thought and concept, above all, in their adventures. i will briefly trace those moments pointed out by the researchers themselves as epistemologically important. they seem to have learned from bachelard that a concept takes on its most acute sense when its meaning is changed. i mentioned above the chronological limits established by wolff’s and darwin’s works. i have also accepted the thesis that chronology does not count for much in the studies of historical epistemology. what does matter is the logical time, or perhaps the time thought. ultimately, the time judged, in the sense in which bachelard speaks of the history judged. it seems legitimate to recognize a first judgment: the strategic place of those two signs, borrowing a concept of foucault’s archaeology. looking into the epistemological status of each one. in relation to the former, the crowning privilege of an age and, to the latter, the inaugural (decisive) gesture of a radical novelty, the theory of evolution and, to each one, its metaphysics as well. for the first one, the being is, while for the second, the improbable becoming. the watershed seems to be very clear: on the one hand, the preformationists,2 on the other, the evolutionists. for the former, from the beginning there has been an identity or a substance – despite developments – whose fundamental structure would not be altered. for the latter, the present forms would not necessarily be prefigured at some original starting point. one could not always recognize a common thread that tied the present and the past, as well as the future. however, the report shows that beyond this overall framework, the thinking travels along much more winding and much less explicit paths. throughout the entire 19th century, shadows contended with the lights for the right to truth. in the end, it shows that there is no pure philosophy. the report shows that, throughout the period studied, no pure preformationist can be found, not even wolff, and that the perfect evolutionist is a chimera. and darwin himself at times seems to flirt with the tradition he had fought tooth and nail. the most interesting facet of this research report seems to be the exploration of these indecisions, of these epistemological oscillations, witnessed by a series of authors and / or works. it is impossible to depict, with any precision and competence, the content of the nine chapters, some of which contain more than one reference. notwithstanding, it seems to be possible to highlight what, according to the researchers, is decisive in each study for the birth 2 the report’s appendix “b” brings two brief excerpts. one, of a letter from bonnet addressed to m. malesherbes (10/30/1762), the other, by taine, accusing royer-collard of “fair la police en philosophie”. both, though with different objectives, translate accurately what preformationism means. bonnet: “my only goal has been to show everywhere that organized bodies are subject to the law of development and that what we call generation is only the evolution of a preformed germ [...] so here i have that simple naturalist; i have always brought back my reader to the being of beings, and i have shown the imprint of his hand in all those admirable productions, the formation of which has been attributed to purely mechanical causes, as if an animal had the same origin that a cheese”. (“mon but unique a été de démontrer partout que les corps organisés sont soumis à la loi du développementet et que ce que nous nommons génération n’est que l’évolution d’un germe préformé [...] je n’ai donc ici que simple naturaliste; j’ai toujour ramené mon lecteur à l’être des êtres, et j’ai montré l’empreinte de sa main dans toutes ces productions admirables dont on avait attribué la formation à des causes purement mécaniques , comme si un animal avait la même origine qu’un fromage”.) (canguilhem et al. 2003, 114 ). taine: “brizez, sir, these detestable jars, these immoral fetuses, these eggs, these specimens of embryogeny. renounce epigenesis. return to the theory of preexisting germs. nothing is more dangerous than to show a drop of blood transforming itself, and by itself only, into an animal that lives and thinks”. (“brizez, monsieur, ces détestables bocaux, ces foetus immoraux, ces oeufs, ces spécimens d’embryogénie. renoncez à l’épigenèse. revenez à la théorie des germes préexistants. rien de plus dangereux que de montrer une goutte de sang se transformant ele-même, et, par ele seule, en un animal qui vit et qui pense”.) (canguilhem et al. 2003, 114). canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 82 of a science of evolution and, on the other hand, what could be understood as an epistemological obstacle in this singular history of biology. perhaps, even this is not feasible. in the end, the choices of our own reading remain; a point of view that is exterior to the researchers’ work. a passage from chapter ix, entitled “les incertitudes de l’épigenèse: th. huxley et ch. robin”, seems to define the epistemological vectors which alternate in the succession of the characters analyzed in the seminars coordinated by canguilhem, and that resulted in this book entitled du développement à l’évolution au xixe siècle: what huxley reproaches for ontogenetic epigenesis, according to harvey, i.e. its origin in the unorganized, robin reproaches for phylogenetic epigenesis. huxley is forced to admit a minimum of potential preformation at the beginning of embryonic epigenesis. robin places a generation by epigenesis at the beginning of all development in the old sense. while in accordance in their common resistance to admitting that epigenesis has omnigenesis power, the two biologists are quite different in their refusals. huxley’s reservations move in the progressive sense, i.e. the reconciliation of cell theory and darwinism. robin’s reservations go in the regressive sense, to resurrect geoffroy sainthilaire, and perhaps lamarck, to contest darwin. (canguilhem et al. 2003, 107) here we have two different, even opposed, receptions of evolutionism. with a positivist education, the french robin wrote in 1873 two articles for le dictionnaire de medicine, organized by himself and émille lettré: one with the title évolution and the other entitled développement. paradoxically, in the former, there was “no reference to spencer’s and darwin’s theories, no mention of the semantic mutation in the term that continues to designate for the two positivist authors (robin and comte) the preexistence of the organism to the act of generation from which it proceeds”. in the latter, “insist solely on a distinction between nutrition and development, conceived as a vital property of anatomic elements” (2003, 104). this conception was maintained in the new 1883 article, bearing the same title, développement, this time for the dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales. “development is given as one of the results of the evolutility [évolutilité3] of organized matter” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 105). though, at first glance, huxley, who is close to the preformationist tradition, seems to be much more open to the emerging darwinian spirit. he writes, in 1878, at the same time of the robin articles, the paper evolution in biology, explaining what has been understood by evolution since harvey, haller and bonnet, where one could not think without making reference to preformation. “nowadays, huxley remarks, no one, when using the concepts of evolution and development, gives them the same meaning attributed by bonnet or haller. these terms mean, for the current biologist, a historical process, history of phases in the succession from which all living beings acquire the morphological and physiological characters that distinguish them” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 101). we are very distant from robin, where there is no acquired novelty but solely, since the beginning, the already given development. the chapter iv, histoire et embryologie: le progrès en tant que développement, selon auguste comte, seems to be exemplary in another sense. here, i do not see a controversy between comtian and non-comtian thinkers, nor positivists. it is the surprising revelation of another face of the creator of positivism, and which this school at all levels seems to ignore. he is a character not at all modern because he is contemporary and in tune with the biology of the first half of the 19th century. his references are, fundamentally, baer, meckel, geoffroy saint-hilaire and é. r. a. serres – who are all preformists, although they often use terms very close to evolutionism. this classic comte of biology can be recognized when we shift to 3 cf. this note of the research workgroup: “certains auraient pu penser que l’evolutilité ressemble assez bien à une entité de l’âge métaphysique” ( canguilhem et al. 2003, 105, note 3 ). canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 83 politics and morality. frequently seen in the theory of the three states is the fulfillment of a doctrine of progress. it is possible to trace an undisputed teleology that starts from a primitive state rooted in belief and imagination, the theological state, passing through the philosophical, to the most perfect, developed, rational, and scientific state. the workgroup disputes this interpretation that had borne fruit, particularly in human sciences. on the contrary, no progress could be traced between the three states. it would, rather, be the realization, or the unfolding of an already preformed human nature. therefore, there is no novelty in the third comtian state. regarding moral progress in the positivist state, note this laudable reference to renouvier and his school: “thus, one should acknowledge as a great insight the judgment that la critique philosophique, by renouvier and his school, makes twice of the comtian theory of progress and history, in its relation to morality” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 53). an insight that consists in the perception that any morality is possible, as well as any progress and even any historicity in a thought carved into the heart of preformationism and, i believe, still tributary of the classical age, essentially mechanistic and deterministic.4 the novelty and the unpredictable had to wait for the second half of the 19th century, with spencer and darwin. the report devotes a chapter to each of them. undoubtedly, it is only an external aspect. as i have pointed out, the brochure is divided into nine parts, shared by many other authors. furthermore, there are those, such as lamarck, who were not even given an exclusive place in this lineup. and yet, as noted by the researchers themselves, it is a major absence in this history. in addition to the formal distinction, spencer and darwin (the latter in particular) appear, in the discourse order, in a strategic position. they are on the limit or at the dawn of a new epistemological epoch of biology (perhaps of all modern science). this seems to be the fundamental point that separates the workgroup’s studies from other histories. at the outset, it is indispensable to take into account that spencer and darwin do not necessarily complement each other. quite the opposite, they are more apart than united. and the most visible distance concerns their different occupation: on one side, there is the philosopher5, on the other, the scientist (the biologist). this difference seems already to appear in the titles of each chapter: 1) l’épigenèse comme modele d’une théorie générale de l’évolution: spencer; 2) subordination du concept d’épigenèse au concept d’évolution des espéces: darwin (1859). in the mid-19th century, the knowledge of living things used to be acquired still through promoting the individual, i.e., it was a question of explaining what happens between the foetus and the adult. whether new forms would still allow the initial unformed being to be recognized. the epigenesis increasingly assumed the status of fundamental science. in that regard, darwin and spencer seem to be in accordance: it is no longer possible to ignore that beings transform themselves; that, in short, there is formation. or, if you like, there is evolution. with this certainty, howev 4 “what can the moral law mean in the hypothesis of a necessary movement, that is, of a single possible step in history? in such a given situation, it will be in accordance with or contrary to historical law, that is to say, it will command the necessary or the impossible. command the necessary, useless thing; to command the impossible, something useless again and, moreover, contradictory. in history become a dynamic or an embryology, this ideal command can only be an illusion”. (“que peut signifier la loi morale dans l’hypothèse d’un mouvement nécessaire, c’est-à-dire d’une seule marche possible de l’histoire? en telle situation donnée, ele sera conforme ou contraire à la loi historique, c’est-à-dire qu’elle commandera le nécessaire ou l’impossible. commander le nécessaire, chose inutile; comander l’impossible, chose inutile encore et, de plus, contradictoire. dans l’histoire devenue une dynamique ou une embryologie, ce commandement idéal ne paut être qu’une illusion”.) (la critique philosophique, 1874, i, 322; ii, 164. in: canguilhem et al. 2003, 53). 5 the emphasis is meant to alert the reader to the strangeness of the qualification because he is not a philosopher tout court, but a scientist (a biologist) who philosophizes. canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 84 er, there are many uncertainties. conceptual problems: there is no consensus as to the meaning of the word. other terms enter into the competition: progress, development, growing, etc. spatial problems, of object: what evolves? and the divergences abound. in a world of scientists, spencer is virtually a scandal: “spencer wanted to situate his contribution in the philosophical arena. by stressing the importance of evolution, he purported to set limits on philosophy [donner à la philosophie son cadre]. by decreasing the specificity of life, which for him is merely a later event, and without great originality, in this evolution, he established a monism of force” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 60). without abusing approximations, it seems that the spencerian concept of force brings us closer to a certain nietzsche6, who, incidentally, spared no criticism of darwin and spencer. it is about giving evolution (and epigenesis) a generality that goes beyond the restricted biological phenomena. it is the whole universe that evolves. this is corroborated by the following quotation transcribed by the text’s authors from the article “le progrès” (1898): this law of organic progress is the law of all progress. whether it is about the development of the earth, the development of life on its surface, the development of society, government, industry, commerce, language, literature, science, art, it is always this same evolution that goes from the simple to the complex, through successive differentiations. (canguilhem et al. 2003, 56) to explain the universal evolution, on which life itself is dependent, spencer resorted to the notion of force: it is necessary to begin from the force; in this world whose essence evades us and identifies itself with the unknowable. we can only affirm that the reality, as it appears, is force, for under all its forms it manifests itself in experiences of forces. the force is invariable in the universe: our thought would not grasp that a quantity of force comes to disappear or can be generated from what is not already a force. the forces can only transform themselves into equivalent forces. permanence and transformability of force: this is the supreme principle of philosophy. (canguilhem et al. 2003, 57-58) here is the biologist philosopher. it is difficult to show, in a few lines, his importance in the history of the science that is the object of studies carried out by the workgroup. one of the aspects highlighted relates to the spencerian comprehension that, in the development of living beings, moments of novelty may occur, and not only of actualisation. “a new structure is neither encompassed by an older one nor its necessary consequence” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 61). however, the most fundamental factor seems to refer to the liberation of evolution of the individual’s restricted circle, of the embryo, if you like. although he did not formulate a theory of evolution, he philosophically contributed to its possibility. we could perhaps resort to an image provided by koyré referring to the role of g. bruno in the history of classical mechanics: how can a shoddy mathematician contribute to the birth of the new science that was essentially a mathematical event? the answer is clear: his contribution is decisive to the extent in which, with the notion of infinite, it has shattered the foundations of aristotelian synthesis and, thus, galileo became possible. perhaps spencer himself, with his philosophy, has contributed to the birth of darwin. here too, there is a sort of negative history. even so, let me explain this debt. chapter vi, devoted to darwin, allows the understanding, through its initial statement, of the inversion effected by the theory of evolution: subordination of the concept of epigenesis to the concept of evolution of species. we have seen before, in spencer, the species subordinated to the epigenesist. therefore, the 6 we recognize that the idea of a cosmological nietzsche is more than controversial. canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 85 species was only one, and not the most decisive, among many analyzed elements of a more general phenomenon. the darwinian correction effectively constitutes, maybe for the first time, a species as an object of biology. the last lines of the first paragraph of the chapter in question show clearly the novelty introduced by spencer, as well as the fundamental reference to the darwinian debt mentioned above: "... the embryologists’ epigenesis, in the early decades of the 19th century, as much as it corroborates the analogies that could already be detected, or that reveals unforeseen passages among the forms, does not eliminates this principle according to which evolution is a possibility specially kept for the individual” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 63). in fact, on the one hand, we have with spencer a transgression of an epistemological tradition centered on the individual as an object and, at the same time, the constitution of a universal object where all beings could be placed somehow. without a doubt, the first motion was essential for darwin: transcending the individual, extricating a new (transcendental?) field of investigation. however, spencer seems to have gone too far with his philosophical pretensions. the intervention of the scientist, of the biologist, was necessary. for him, life taken as an object brings forth its own demands. nonetheless, it goes without saying: such demands mean nothing without a new metaphysics. without the understanding that there is another open space, now, i would add, space in the order of possibility. after spencer, it became possible to think something akin to the species. not in the sense of the old fixism, but rather as a being or, maybe, a structure that can be formed and, also, deformed. incidentally, this lesson has already been uncovered by the researchers in spencer’s primiers príncipes, in chapter xxiii: “evolution leads to dissolution” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 58). as noted by the researcher, darwin initiated a radically new perspective in the world of living beings. the considerations of geoffroy saint-hilaire, de serres, de von baer in respect of the kinship of forms always refer to anatomical, teratological or embryological facts: they do not leave the domain of morphology. in darwin, what is most persistent and distinctive are the geographical configurations: geology, species geography, geographical changes, and their possible action on living beings. does his intellectual vocation not begin in a journey that allows him, in short, to make an investigation of the species in this field very analogous to that which lamarck had done only in the museum? for darwin, a living being is, first of all, a being whose total reality exceeds the structure and cannot be entirely reflected there: “a species is also defined by vegetative or relation functions, connected to a certain way of life, implicating a particular environment and expressing itself in the animal, habits and instincts" (canguilhem et al. 2003, 64-65). in les mots et les choses (foucault, 1966), lamarck, along with jussieu e viqc d’azyr, appears in the interesting place of a limiting thought. they attest a situation of epistemological ambiguity shared by the classic and the modern. this concession seems not to have been made to the lamarck portrayed in the report. in bachelard’s style, one could not progress from lamarck to darwin without falling into a type of retrospective illusion. the well-worn interpretation that the former would be the forerunner of evolutionism does not withstand conceptual history. in fact, the outcome is reversed. epistemologically, there is an obvious gap between them. furthermore, there is a discontinuity between a tradition (already old) and a novelty in structuring. the reference to lamark as a museum tourist and to darwin as a traveller in other lands is, undoubtedly, merely the exteriority (and the irony) of this discussion. there is something else at stake: the possibility of another way of thinking. the botanical gardens and museums were undoubtedly the privileged locales for knowledge of the living for at least two centuries. there, the truth emerged from the attentive gaze, from a certain way of seeing, always dependent on a method. the gaze of the naturalist, who could never be blind. one cannot dismiss that throughout the classical age, and even during the 19th and 20th centuries, the canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 86 figure of the herbalist traveller used to be quite common7. both here and in the visits to museums, what is possible to know is first of all the individual in his visible characteristics. it is always about contributing to the augment and completeness (impossible, as we know today) of the natural environment. darwin himself is not an herbalist. although a traveller, he is as far from auguste de saint-hilaire (see note 11, below) as from lamarck. and vice-versa; the possibility of convergence is more likely between the latter pair than the former. even though separated by the atlantic ocean, they share the same epistemological ground, swim in the same translucent waters of magna natura, whether those of the artificial order of the museum’s dead pieces or those of the sublime nature of the southern fields. neither there, nor here, would it be possible to recognize anything that deserves the name of environment. the order of the museums occurs by juxtaposition. there is no relation between the pieces, except the geometric one. and the naturalist traveller’s collections ultimately also have the same destiny: the universal scale of beings. the workgroup researchers assert that “the reference to the environment equally reveals the inconsistency of every universal scale of perfection or of consummation in biology (canguilhem et al. 2003, 66). the transformism of the first half of the 19th century, particularly according to the lamarckian formulation, always refers to changes to a prior nature. despite appearances, certain preformism persists. furthermore, it must be taken into account that “lamarck was led to his transformist view of the living world [monde vivant] through the problems posed by classification, and first of all in botany, out of all embryologic preoccupation (canguilhem et al. 2003, 109-110). therefore, even when considering that he is one of the founders of transformism, “it is necessary to admit that the concept of evolution owes little to him, although his understanding permits the making of a reference to the concept of development (canguilhem et al. 2003, 109). in the realm of natural history, strictly speaking, living beings do not evolve. they develop an already prepared trajectory. and the notion of perfection only refers to a graduation where the reference is evidently the human being (ultimately, god’s shadow), deduced from its degree of resemblance to man” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 66). with darwin, the world acquires historicity. this, however, does not mean that now we can speak of perfection. in reality, evolution and perfection, or progress, do not imply each other: “life has no plans or preferences; it tends to nothing, not even to its own conservation” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 69-70). embryology still gives us lessons of a predictable time. between the embryo and the adult, a regular unfolding is expected. however, a different history of biology needs to be written when, with darwin, the limits of the individual are overcome, and the species is taken as an object, but also, when the epistemological status is conferred on the environment as a decisive and creative factor in the species emergence and / or transformation. a true spatial history, in the foucaultian sense of the expression, but with its distinction: first of all, it is not about the spaces of thought. as i have underlined above, it is geography, in its diverse disciplinary forms – geology, species geography, and ecology – which is evoked for the adventure of thinking. these disciplines, one may protest, had already existed well before 1859, even before 1759. this is true, but they did not have the same functions attributed to them afterwards. their 7 auguste de saint-hilaire was one of these interesting figures. in 1816, he arrived in brazil. after travelling to several south-eastern and mid-western regions, he went to the south, landing in torres on june 5, 1820. after a few months (february 1, 1821), on the banks of the river arroio guarapuitã, he makes the following remarks: “since i was not able to write this diary yesterday afternoon, i shall do it now that we have been detained for the oxen to rest. in the morning, i went out on horseback with matias and josé mariano to herborize (our emphasis). for a long time, we rode along the banks of the arroio santana and, when crossing it, we came across pastures similar to the ones we had just seen; the grass is very green, no doubt owing to the most recent rains; it is little grown but of excellent quality; there was no flower, and the terrain is perfectly uniform” (saint-hilaire 2002, 239). canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 87 objects were secondary to physical space – smaller pieces of the classical age model science, mechanics. this notion of environment also had its mechanistic moment – canguilhem examines it well in his text “le vivant et son milieu”, chapter iii of la connaissance de la vie. in fact, he was born in a mechanistic cradle. with newton, this sense was sketched in trying to explain the action at a distance between physical bodies. thus, the word éter appears as a “unique archetype” (canguilhem 2009, 166). since the encyclopédie, milieu article, by d’alembert e diderot, it has been possible to trace the presence of this concept, markedly in the scientific literature. the trajectory is similar to that of other concepts, studied by the most important french epistemologists.8 it ranges from mechanics – with newton, comte, lamarck, geoffroy saint-hilaire, and taine – to biology (and other fields of knowledge). lamarck is often credited with the migration of the concept of environment to biology. however, our historians were educated to suspect the mere presence of the word. it is necessary to examine the concept and often the transformation of its meaning. we have just seen what happened to newton. in lamarck, the environment would still be a mechanistic figure, not essentially different from the newtonian ether. it would be with darwin that a radical conceptual transformation came about. darwinian spaces not only transcend anatomy, but are dynamized, so to speak. in the origin of species (cf. especially chapter 34), the essential is almost never the physical environment, not even the food environment. it is also and above all the neighbouring of the competitors and aggressors. adaptation is expressed less in the satisfaction of desires than in a demographic fact--in short: having descendants always more and more numerous or, at least, a non-decreasing population (canguilhem et al. 2003, 66). i believe that this is the space, certainly poorly addressed here, where the workgroup discussions are concentrated. darwin stands out as the inaugural gesture of a new era. although the word does not even appear in the report, i allow myself to call it modernity. several authors were summoned as witnesses to an exhausted, somehow, “perished” [perimée] history.9 since caspar friedrich wolff – at the same time, crowning in a classic way the dealing with living beings and, perhaps, without knowing the place or promise of a new beginning,10 through meckel, geoffroy saint-hilaire, serres, baer, comte, and lamarck11 – in spite of the marked differences, the limits of natural history are not decidedly overcome. with spencer but particularly with darwin, as mentioned above, a new dawn comes about. the whole discussion is directed towards the clarification of this event: the modernity of on the origin of species. although i have listed a series of indicators of this attitude of modernity,12 it is worth insisting further on this passage: in this case, it seems that the appearance of change cannot be the same for the individual in formation and for his species. the duration of an embryonic becoming has a sort of fullness and internal need, that its constancy for a given form is the index. now, the history of the species is not that of an isolated system in evolution. it 8 the studies concerning the history of the concept of reflex and regulation have become classics, both by canguilhem. 9 it seems that canguilhem deals well with these bachelardian concepts. 10 “ainsi, à partir de wolff, et sans qu’il l’ait entièrement voulu, tout tableau du monde vivant fondé sur l’anatomie des êtres adultes va être secrètement mis en question”( canguilhem et al. 2003, 25-26). 11 “il est bien probable qu’on s’étonnera de n’y trouver mention de lamarck que par allusion aux divergences de doctrine enre darwin et lui. mais notre omission est réfléchie” (canguilhem et al. 2003, 109). this “reflected omission” is worthy of our attention. it seems to define, first of all, an attitude towards the many histories which render lamarck the founder of evolutionism. 12 i borrowed from foucault this denomination. he says that there is not a mere chronology at stake, but an attitude, an ethos of the intellectual life. in the same epoch we can encounter attitude of modernity and, on the contrary, attitude of nonor anti-modernity. canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 88 apparently subscribes to a more truly creative time than that of embryology, because it is a random adventure, where the path followed by a species is created by its own progression. but on the other hand, in this divided universe [morcelé], for these systems open to other systems, where all the changes do not occur or come about by chance, time has no worth of its own; it is neither the source nor the measure of change. the notion of an internal rhythm of evolution is generally bound up in authentic darwinism. (canguilhem et al. 2003, 71) this is the whole occidental metaphysical tradition in ruins. from the 17th century we inherited the presupposition of a unique, ordered, and deterministic nature. a rigid causality runs through from end-to-end. natural history gave us the knowledge of a fraction of this order that concerns living beings, whether it be animals or plants. epigenesis, at the turn of the 19th century, and particularly embryology, caused the first fractures in that laplacian dream. the embryo offers lessons other than those from mechanics. astronomical time is not repeated here. however, even so, it is not possible to imagine temporal absence. there is always an expected trajectory of formation. monsters only teach the circumstantiality of an interruption, or deviation, of a predictable evolutionary path. time, there, does not create, it repeats. according to the researchers, the novelty introduced by history is rather radical. there is no longer a chronology that can be followed pari passu. when it concerns species formation, the figure of the traditional gynecologist or veterinarian is inconceivable, however much they understand their profession. when it concerns species formation (or transformation), the child is never expected. in a post-darwin world, in short, traditional epistemological values yield their place to chance, to unpredictability, to dispersion, and to singularities. as previously seen, belief in an internal rhythm and the meaning of life makes no sense. there is no teleology either. the myth of perfection surrenders to the realism (tragic, no doubt) of finitude. i refer to a series of witnesses who may be called pre-darwinian, in the sense in which we speak of pre-kantian philosophers. likewise, can it be possible to speak of witnesses of something like a post-darwinism? the chapters vii, viii, and ix seem to allow such a suggestion. these are, nonetheless, very imprecise conclusions. the authors are also very few: haeckel, fiske, preyer, baldwin, huxley, and robin. the title of chapter ix expresses well the atmosphere at the end of the report: “les incertitudes de l’épigenèse”. in fact, it could also be this other one: what happened or what was done to the theory of evolution of species in this first century of its existence? there is not a more incisive response. the entire interest of the workgroup seems to be this one: to approach the object of this brief history of sciences.13 more than an author or a doctrine, it is about a concept. it is this that has a history and, for this reason, must be elucidated. however, perhaps the post-darwinian era has not been entirely forgotten. a certain irony goes hand in hand with the discussions – a veiled criticism of the misunderstandings of the authentic darwin. first and foremost, the fate of darwinism that goes beyond the frontiers of biology. acknowledgment this article was translated by caius brandão and revised by robert neil wall. 13 it does not seem superfluous to recall the conference of october 28, 1966, delivered in montreal, “l’objet de l’histoire des sciences”. the text seems to express well what is at stake when one purports to carry out a work of philosophy of science. the experience of the “travail d’équipe”, at the turn of the 60s, seems to be there, between the lines of the memorable text. canguilhem and his workgroup josé ternes 89 references bachelard, gaston. 1975 [ 1961]. la flamme d’une chandelle. paris: puf. bachelard, gaston. 1978 [1934]. le nouvel esprit scientifique. paris: puf. balibar, e. and d. lecourt. 2003. présentation, pp. 1-8 in canguilhem, georges, georges lapassade, jacques piquemal and jacques ulmann. 2003 [1962]. du développement à l’ évolution au xixe siècle. paris: puf. canguilhem, georges. 2009 [1952]. la connaissance de la vie. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges, georges lapassade, jacques piquemal and jacques ulmann. 2003 [1962]. du développement à l’évolution au xixe siècle. paris: puf. canguilhem, g. 2003 [1962]. avant-propos, p. 9 in canguilhem, georges, georges lapassade, jacques piquemal and jacques ulmann. 2003 [1962]. du développement à l’évolution au xixe siècle. paris: puf. canguilhem, georges. 1975 [1968]. études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. paris: vrin. foucault, michel. 1966. les mots et les choses. paris: gallimard. jacob, françois. 1983 [1970]. a lógica da vida. translated by ângela loureiro de souza. rio de janeiro: graal. saint-hilaire, auguste. 2002 a. viagem ao rio grande do sul. translated by adroaldo mesquita da costa. porto alegre: martins livreiro editor. spencer, h. 1898 [1857] le progrès. loi et cause du progrès, t. 1, pp. 5-6 in essais de morale, de science et d’esthétique. paris: alcan. first published in westminster review, april 1857. 120 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 120-124 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2016 — this is an open access article book review ghins, michel. introdução a uma metafísica da natureza: representação, realismo e leis científicas (an introduction to a metaphysics of nature: representation, realism and scientific laws). transl. eduardo barra e ronei clécio mocellin. editora ufpr, 2013. 96 pp. r$ 35,00 – isbn9788565888356. reviewed by: ricardo batista dos santos1 daniel laskowski tozzini2 received: 28 june 2016. reviewed: 04 october 2016. accepted: 16 november 2016 ____________________________________________________________________________________ michel ghins is a well-known belgian philosopher of science who works for several years in brazil, in the eighties. he also works in the university of pittsburgh, in the catholic university of america and in the catholic university of louvain (belgium), in which recently he became emeritus professor. over the years he published a variety of subjects in philosophy of science, many of them related to the defence of scientific realism. the book now under review is the result of a series of lectures prepared for the first edition of the paranaense school of history and philosophy of science (escola paranaense de história e filosofia da ciência), accomplished in 2011 in the federal university of paraná (ufpr), brazil, in which the author delivered the main course. the original notes in french were translated into portuguese by the professors eduardo barra and ronei clécio mocellin, both from ufpr, allowing the publication of the lectures. in the book, professor ghins discusses concisely many of the main themes and problems that have been debated in contemporary philosophy of science: the nature of representations, theories and scientific laws; the truth of scientific theories; scientificity criteria; the nature of causal explanations; the existence of laws of nature, among other subjects. for this reason, the book is an excellent resource for undergraduate students, and also graduate students who intend to get acquainted with the current issues of philosophy of science. but not only for them. the book is also interesting for specialists, since it presents an overview of the ghins’s academic career, bringing one of the most matures versions of scientific realism that he defended over the past few years, in debate with several recognized contemporary philosophers of science, as bas van fraassen. one of the topics that stands out in ghins's book is the subject of scientific laws. this is a wellestablished theme in philosophy of science. it is notorious that scientific theories of several fields make 1 ricardo batista dos santos is a phd candidate in the department of philosophy. federal university of paraná (ufpr) – brazil. e-mail: ricardobat2000@gmail.com 2 daniel laskowski tozzini is a phd candidate in the department of philosophy. federal university of paraná (ufpr) – brazil. centre françois viète d'épistémologie et d'histoire des sciences et des techniques (nantes/france). e-mail: danieltozzini@yahoo.com.br ricardo santos, daniel tozzini — book review 121 use of propositions that have a nomological form, or, in other words, take the form of laws. this is often the sense when we speak about laws of economics, biology, chemistry or physics. they are called scientific laws. but what characterize these laws? what is its distinctive features? it is not hard to see that a scientific law generally takes the form of a universal proposition: "all metals dilate when heated." sometimes it takes the form of some necessity: "this or that always happens in certain conditions." put simply, one could say that a scientific law is a universal proposition supposedly true. there would be no problem with this characterization if we could clarify unequivocally the criterion of truth of these laws. what would justify the supposed truth of this universal statement? how could someone reach the conclusion about the truth of this universality? undoubtedly, this is an old question in philosophy of science and lead us back to the famous problem of induction. the universal statements would be inferred from observed regularities of particular instances. if we watch the sun rise for many times, from these observations we conclude the sun always rises or the sun will rise tomorrow. if we observe metals, of varied types, dilating in the presence of heat, from these observations we conclude all metals expand in the presence of heat. the universal propositions would be founded on inductive inferences. however, david hume showed that these inferences are unjustified from a logical point of view. specifically, he showed that what we call cause cannot be empirically perceptible. from this perspective, it follows that the criterion of truth of these universal propositions is seriously compromised. in fact, scientific laws are universal propositions, but the criterion of truth of this universality cannot be justified by induction. the recognized problem of induction led contemporary philosophers of science to seek a more satisfactory characterization of scientific laws. initially, it was considered to abandon the search for a criterion of truth of the nomological statements. scientific laws would be only universal propositions based on observed regularities in nature. end point. in order to characterize these laws, it would not be necessary to establish the truth of those propositions. the problem with this conception is there are universal propositions based on observed regularities that do not have the status of scientific laws. for example, "all crows are black." it is a universal proposition based on a regularity of nature that does not figure as law in any scientific theory. in conterfactuals (1973), david lewis sought to solve this problem defending an additional nomological criterion: a universal proposition is a scientific law only if, besides having a universal logical form, it also belongs to an axiomatic system. however, there are only few theories axiomatized in the way lewis suggests, and there are others not even axiomatizable. bas van fraassen called this difficulty in characterizing the scientific laws as "the identification problem": the difficulty in identifying, among the universal statements, which of them are scientific laws and which are not. on the other hand, in what is a law of nature (1983), david armstrong held that it is possible to establish the necessity of scientific laws without resorting to induction or axiomatization, approaching the formulation of these laws to the way we construct the general terms of language. but van fraassen, again, showed that the relation of necessity between universals does not trivially imply a relation of necessity between individuals and, therefore, that approach creates another problem: “the inference problem", as he called. faced with these problems, van fraassen proposed a radical solution: abandoning the notion of scientific laws, replacing it by an approach that focuses mainly on "scientific models". michel ghins did not agree with van fraassen’s suggestion. although he has consented with several of his criticisms about the characterizations of scientific laws, he could not agree with the elimination of this notion. and mainly due his commitment with "scientific practice". if we take into account the actual practice of science, we could never consider abandoning the notion of laws, which is so rooted in this practice. but what is the alternative proposed by ghins? for the belgian philosopher, a scientific law can be properly identified if it is considered as a proposition of universal logical form, true (at least approximately), integrated in an explanatory and empirically successful scientific theory. throughout his book, ghins explains, in detail, each aspect of this conception of scientific laws. he defines precisely what is a "scientific theory", what is an "explanation", what is an "empirically successful" theory and, finally, he presents his characterization of laws. however, unlike van fraassen's approach (who is an instrumentalist), all ghins's delineation of science and scientific laws is based on the foundation of realism, or rather, on the possibility of defending the truth of scientific theories. the greatest challenge of the book is to support this foundation. ricardo santos, daniel tozzini — book review 122 it is possible to present ghins’s book from two main the theses. the first thesis holds that our best scientific theories can be considered true (at least approximately) – a realist thesis called "fallibilist realism", by the author. it is a kind of moderate realism, since the truth of these theories can be admited as partial and our beliefs as revisable, conceding that not everything in the theories is true, and that not every theory is true (only the "best"). despite these caveats, we would have reasons to believe in the truth, at least approximately, of these "best theories". the second thesis argues that we have good reasons to believe that scientific laws contained in our best theories can be regarded as genuine laws of nature. and this is the moment when ghins exceeds the borders of the empiricist philosophy that dominates the most part of this research field, and enters in the territory of metaphysics, building a neoaristotelic ontology of dispositional properties to support his thesis. although, as it was said, these arguments are not new in ghins’s work, they are offered now inserted in a broader framework of the scientific enterprise and, in addition, they bring an original and unpublished argument about the truth of scientific theories, which as the author tells us is not based on the acknowledged "miracle argument". scientific realism was often defended as the most natural opinion about the truth of scientific theories, and the closer to common sense. when we observe fire and heat always in conjunction, we theorize the former as the cause of the latter, and we believe in the truth of this theorization. similarly, we tend to believe in the truth of scientific theories. but scientific realism is surrounded by several problems, as shown by ghins, which drives the emergence of his anti-realist opponents. from ghins’s presentation it is possible to surmise three significant problems faced by realists: (1) the problem of "underdetermination of theory by empirical data": it may occur that there are several competing theories, all with high degrees of empirical adequacy, which prevent us from evaluating which of them would be true, or even if any of them would be true; (2) the problem of "loss of reality": a scientific theory is a theoretical model expressed by an abstract mathematical system, and, thereby, could not be considered a legitimate representation of reality; and (3) the problem of "unobservables": many theoretical models postulate the existence of entities that are not empirically perceivable (such as "molecules", "electrons", "viruses" etc.) and, however, there must be a good reason to believe this entities should be regarded as existing. any realist who intend to defend its position needs to offer an account of these problems and this is exactly what ghins tries to do. three pillars support the arguments used by ghins to defend his realist theses and to provide an answer to the problems listed above. the first pillar is a particular conception of scientific theories, which links the so-called "syntactic" and "semantic" conception of theories. we can understand the syntactic or logician conception of scientific theories as a system of propositions axiomatically organized. on the other hand, we can understand the semantic conception as a set of models of phenomena. the belgium philosopher, in turn, develops the "synthetic" conception, which interpret the scientific theories as a set of models and propositions satisfied (i.e., made true) by these models. it may be considered that the benefit of this synthetic conception is the contribution in solving the problem of underdetermination, since the acceptance of a theory is no longer an exclusive matter of "empirical adequacy", incorporating an additional criterion of "explanatory power", which is provided by causal explanation models – a legacy of the semantic tradition. the adoption of this semantic element in his own conception, however, forces ghins to deal with two problems underlying that theory conception: the problem of "loss of reality" and the problem of "unobservables", both mentioned earlier. comes into play here, the second pillar supporting the ghins’s theses: the admission of a particular conception of truth as correspondence between language and the world. ghins argues that it is possible to accept a conception of truth as correspondence without committing with any theory of correspondence, in which the exact nature of correspondence would be explicit (as wittgenstein tried to do in the tractatus). the acceptance of this conception of truth, in association with his synthetic conception of scientific theories, allows him to give an answer to the problem of "loss of reality". the contact point between reality and scientific theories is not held by abstract mathematical models (which cannot be representations of phenomena), but through propositions of language. that is why ghins needs also the legacy of syntactic model: if scientific theories are, likewise, a set of propositions, these very propositions guarantee the contact between the theories and the world. "the reality is found again," says the philosopher, "for the simple reason that it had never been lost" (p.39). the third pillar of support for ghins's theses is also the most original argument of this work, according to the philosopher. this argument defends the truth (at least approximately) of scientific theories ricardo santos, daniel tozzini — book review 123 from an analogy, or a parallel with the ordinary experience. this argument will be call here "argument of converging results" (which must not be confounded with "convergent realism"). in this argument, ghins holds that we can believe in the reality of unobservable entities postulated by theories, as well in the approximate truth of the theories themselves, for similar reasons by which we believe in the existence of the observable objects. we use many independent resources to defend our belief in the existence of sense entities: not only observation and its reiteration, but also intersensoriality and intersubjectivity. this is the case, for example, when we see the presence of a bee in a room both by sight and hearing, and by reiterated testimony of others. the variety of these independent resources and the convergence of their results do not guarantee the absolute certainty of conclusions, but greatly increase our belief in the reality of these entities. similarly, scientific research frequently does not have only one method for measuring a property such as mass or charge of a particle, but several. these methods, supported by various theories, stemming often from distinct fields, can provide results that converges to the same conclusion. this is observed, ghins advocates, with entities we call "molecules", "electrons" and "virus", among others. according to the philosopher, the merit of this argument is it does not rely on the well known and much criticized "miracle argument" to defend scientific realism, and it provides adequate basis for the defence of truth of scientific theories. from these three pillars of support, ghins offers his conception of scientific laws. first, he shows that the conceptions of scientific laws that he called "regularist view" (lewis) and "necessitary view" (armstrong) fail to provide an appropriate criterion of identification of laws. then, he defends a conception of scientific laws in which they would be universal propositions satisfied (made true) by regularities in nature and being part of explanatory and successful scientific theories. although it doesn't seem very clear in the book, one can assume, however, that these scientific laws are considered true by being part of a scientific theory whose truth can be judged (by the method of "converging results", which was presented above). thus, it becomes feasible to maintain scientific laws can be identified, since they would be true universal propositions embedded in explanatory scientific theories that are also true (or at least approximately true). the belgian philosopher could be satisfied at this point. he already offered an answer to the main problems of realism and grounded the thesis of the truth of scientific theories and identification of scientific laws. however, it is not the case. his conception of laws does not deal with one of the central problems in the analysis of scientific practice. the problem of "counterfactuals" in science. all metals expand when they are heated. if there is no expansion, then the metal was not heated. the problem with this kind of logical inference, largely used in scientific practice, is that it cannot be justified unless you could defend the "necessity" of scientific laws. however, the first of ghins's thesis (the truth of scientific theories) is not able to guarantee this necessity. when we admit that scientific laws can be true propositions, the true here is only in the descriptive level and not at the modal one. that is to say, there is no guarantee that observed regularities in nature, on which nomological propositions are based, are really regularities of nature. there is no guarantee that nature is, in fact, regular. in other words, there is no guarantee that may actually exist "laws of nature", whereby the counterfactual inferences could be justified. thus, it is here that michel ghins introduces his second thesis (scientific laws can be regarded as laws of nature), making use of a metaphysical argument: there is "dispositional properties" or "causal powers" in nature. in the last section of the book he argues that, although we have no definitive empirical evidence, we have "good reasons" (actually four reasons) to believe in the existence of "causal powers" in nature (p.86-90). but the reader must evaluate this reasons for himself in the book. in this review, it is only convenient to said that if scientific laws can be identified and considered true, and, if there are indeed laws of nature, it follows that "the scientific laws [of our best theories] deserves fully be called 'laws of nature'" (p.90). like every bold proposal, the book presents some gaps and questionable points, but also many merits. one of them, for example, is the author’s persistent assumption of faithfulness to scientific practice. most of the ideas proposed by ghins, besides contribute for resolution of various problems, are consistent with effective scientific practice. the philosopher does not ignore what scientists actually do when he makes his analysis of the scientific enterprise. another issue worth mentioning is the original argument about the truth of scientific theories, which undoubtedly will join the other realist arguments already known. an interesting aspect for future research is to investigate the soundness of this argument here called ghins's "argument of converging results". ricardo santos, daniel tozzini — book review 124 regarding possible gaps and questions in the work, we cannot fail to notice, though superficially, at least two points. the first is the ambiguous idea of "approximate truth", which rarely gets a better delineation from moderate realists, and ghins is not an exception to the rule. clearly, the realist thesis of the professor depends on this idea, and the absence of a more precise clarification makes unlikely to draw a distinction between the fine line that supposedly separates an "approximate truth" from a "falsity". the second point, however, seems to us more intriguing. even though ghins has already defended this neoaristotelic metaphysics of nature in other works, it persists a certain strangeness by a somewhat paradoxical combination of a metaphysic proposal of nature coined to respond problems mostly raised by empiricist philosophers. in fact, the existence of regularities of nature is a problem for an empiricist, not for a metaphysician. several philosophers and scientists of modern age, for example, never had a great trouble believing in the existence of necessities in nature, since they had their own metaphysics to support it. only with the emergence of a more strictly empiricist philosophy, the justification for this belief has become problematic. therefore, the question is: what value has ghins metaphysical answer to the problem of truth-makers of the counterfactuals, since this problem arises especially among the more radical empiricist philosophers who reject these metaphysical explanations? on the other hand, what value has ghins’s proposal for metaphysicians, since numerous other metaphysical conceptions could likewise offer an answer to the problem? the main question would not be, thus, if we are facing a "good or bad metaphysics", as ghins inquired in the last section of his book. it’s seems that the main question would be if "it is admissible or not a metaphysics" in search of an answer to the problem of counterfactuals and regularities of nature. acknowledgements and final considerations after completing this review professor michel ghins clarified, in personal correspondence to ricardo santos, that a metaphysics is good when we have "reasons derived from experience to believe in it". it is in this sense – it is possible to realize now – that he tries to respond problems that arise especially for empiricist philosophers. not because he believes that all legitimate cognitive content should come from experience, as the most radical empiricists believe, but because he seeks to formulate a metaphysics that does not ignore empirical evidence, that is, which is as close as possible to the empirical evidence available to us. furthermore, it is important to thank professors eduardo barra and michel ghins by revisions and contributions to this review. 127 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 127-139 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings amélia j. oliveira1 abstract: what is the contribution of duhem’s work to the modern historiography? his interpreters have been discussing this question and ordinarily have recognized that the main aspect in his extensive work is connected with his research of medieval science. it has become customary to speak of the “discovery of medieval science” as his foremost historiographic achievement. this paper aims to discuss some aspects of duhem’s historiography more for its promotion of a new historical perspective than for its results. duhem’s legacy for modern historiography can be investigated from the characteristics that mark this new perspective, as regarded by thomas kuhn. keywords: pierre duhem; thomas kuhn; historiographic revolution; new historiography of science received: 30 march 2017. reviewed: 10 may 2017. accepted: 30 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.12 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction pierre duhem is commonly regarded as a pioneer in the study of medieval contributions to the development of modern science.2 for many of his interpreters, his extensive historical work has generated a true revision of scientific development, to the point of speaking of a historiographic revolution. however, in the structure of scientific revolutions (ssr), precisely when announcing an ongoing revolution in the historiography of science and citing the names of some influential historians, kuhn does not mention duhem. it is only in an article published a few years later – "the history of science" 3 –, in which he globally examines the development of this field of study, that duhem is remembered for his contribution to the modern historiography of science. in this work, i try to show that although kuhn does not include duhem's name among the 'new' historians nor does he refer to any of his works in ssr, duhem's work is strongly present through its influence on some of the historians that kuhn cites. initially, i begin by identifying the citations kuhn makes of duhem’s name in his published work and by briefly mentioning some considerations of interpreters who have tried to establish relationship between kuhn and duhem. next, i will try to indicate, according to kuhn, the fundamental distinctive features between 1 amélia j. oliveira is a professor in the department of philosophy at the faculdade joão paulo ii. address: rua bartolomeu de gusmão, 531 – são miguel, marília – sp, brazil. e-mail: amelijeso@gmail.com 2 for example, see koyré (1973 [1966], 61) and butterfield (1966 [1949], 27). 3 published in 1969. reprinted in his the essential tension (1977). amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 128 an older historical tradition and the emerging new historiography of science. i expect to demonstrate how these features were already present in duhem’s work and how his influence can be felt in his followers’ works. finally, considering that the rise of a new historiography of science is undeniably due to duhem's legacy, and that the central features of this new historiography mark his historical production, i will try to understand why his name was entirely neglected by kuhn in his study of scientific revolutions. duhem in kuhn’s work in a work published to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of ssr, brad wray (2015, 168) says that although an author may be influenced by more sources than he cites, “citations are a good place to start looking, in order to understand the influences” on him. curiously, he affirms that “kuhn does not cite some of the sources that clearly influenced him”.4 if kuhn does not mention duhem in ssr, he does so in some of his other works. in his first article5 – “robert boyle and structural chemistry in the seventeenth century” – kuhn cites duhem in two notes. in the first, he (1952, 12) considers that duhem, among other historians, explores a simplification “which treats all atomisms as mere particulate theories” and although he bears in mind that this simplification had illuminated portions of the history of chemistry, it had also been misleading. in the second, kuhn (1952, 13) says that “duhem sees boyle’s application of the corpuscular theory of matter as the first source of ‘the notion of a simple substance such as that provided by lavoisier and his contemporaries’”.6 it is interesting to note that kuhn, in this article, contests almost all of the history of boyle’s role in chemistry in the seventeenth century, maybe with the exception of marie boas’s studies. and he cites a number of historians in his 90 notes, many of which are cited in ssr.7 it is also in notes that duhem’s name appears in the copernican revolution, kuhn’s book published in 1957. in the introductory part of his bibliographical notes, kuhn asserts that duhem’s le système du monde could have been used very often in the composition of the copernican revolution, but that it was only consulted “for special topics” (1970b [1957], 284). 8 when kuhn (1970b [1957], 286) indicates bibliographies for the chapters, he refers to duhem’s le système for research on arabic and medieval european astronomy. in the same manner as in the article on boyle, the bibliographical notes in the copernican revolution are very extensive and anticipate the mentions of many scholars cited in ssr.9 it is also important to note that both the article on boyle and the book on the copernican revolution are works on the history of science and, although kuhn traces some historiographic considerations in those works, he did not do so in relation to duhem. in fact, kuhn presents a historiographic analysis in his (autobiographical) preface to ssr. there he writes about his immersion in the study of the history of science and about a group of historians that “has shown what it was like to think scientifically in a period when the canons of scientific thought were very different from those current today” (kuhn 1996 [1962], viii). he mentions the names of alexandre koyré, émile meyerson, hélène metzger and anneliese maier and their works that were “particularly influential” to a new historical perspective. by describing the functions of the history of science, as bequeathed by tradition, 4 although the focus of brad wray's discussion is different from the one here intended, his analysis of citations made by kuhn in ssr is informative: “kuhn cites 127 different sources in the first edition of structure, with a total of 206 citations. an analysis of these sources suggests that, even though structure profoundly influenced scholarship in history, philosophy, and sociology of science, kuhn drew mostly on work in the history of science” (wray 2015, 168). 5 see kuhn (2000, 291). 6 this view provided by duhem in le mixte et la combinaison chimique (1902), according to kuhn, was dominant among the historians of science. so far as he knew, only marie boas would have explicitly indicated (until then) that boyle did not believe in the existence of elements – a thesis defended by kuhn in his article. 7 among others, e. meyerson, e. burtt, m. boas, h. kopp, j. r. partington, d. mckie, h. butterfield, h. metzger, a. koyré and r. hooykaas are cited in ssr. 8 kuhn cites six out of ten volumes of le système du monde. the seventh volume was published only in 1956, shortly before kuhn published his book. 9 a. koyré, h. butterfield, e. j. dijksterhuis, a. c. crombie, e. burtt, m. clagett, a. maier and m. boas are examples. in ssr, kuhn’s own copernican revolution is cited half a dozen times. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 129 he announced a change that represents the beginning of a “historiographic revolution”, of which representative historians have begun to ask new sorts of questions and to trace different, and often less than cumulative, developmental lines for the sciences. rather than seeking the permanent contributions of an older science to our present vantage, they attempt to display the historical integrity of that science in its own time. they ask, for example, not about the relation of galileo’s views to those of modern science, but rather about the relationship between his views and those of his group, i.e., his teachers, contemporaries, and immediate successors in the sciences. furthermore, they insist upon studying the opinions of that group and other similar ones from the viewpoint – usually very different from that of modern science – that gives those opinions the maximum internal coherence and the closest possible fit to nature (kuhn 1996 [1962], 3). compared with the writings of historians of the older historiographic tradition “these historical studies suggest the possibility of a new image of science” (kuhn 1996 [1962], 3). kuhn presents the ssr as an essay about this image emergent from the “new historiography”. some years later, in an article published in 1968 – “the history of science” – kuhn speaks again of a “new historiography” or, in a correlative way, of a “modern historiography of science” (kuhn 1977). in this work, duhem’s name is mentioned twice. firstly duhem is positioned in a historiographic tradition that was more philosophical in its objectives. his writings are remembered alongside whewell’s and mach’s as those in which the “philosophical concerns became a primary motive for creative activity in the history of science” (kuhn 1977, 106). kuhn’s second mention of duhem is more expressive, because it occurs when he is writing about factors that have contributed to the historiographic change and mentions “another decisive event on the rise of the contemporary profession” (kuhn 1977, 108): almost a century after the middle ages had become important to the general historian, pierre duhem's search for the sources of modern science disclosed a tradition of medieval physical thought which, in contrast to aristotle's physics, could not be denied an essential role in the transformation of physical theory that occurred in the seventeenth century. too many of the elements of galileo's physics and method were to be found there. but it was not possible, either, to assimilate it quite to galileo's physics or to newton's, leaving the structure of the so-called scientific revolution unchanged but extending it greatly in time. the essential novelties of seventeenth-century science would be understood only if medieval science had been explored first on its own terms and then as the base from which the "new science" sprang. more than any other, that challenge has shaped the modern historiography of science (kuhn 1977, 108). in this article, kuhn cites duhem’s études sur léonard de vinci10 in the bibliography, among about 60 other works that support his argument. here, duhem’s work seems very significant in the formation of a modern historiography of science. 11 so, the question that may be raised is: if kuhn considers the rehabilitation of middle ages science to be significant to the emergence of a new historiography of science, why does he not cite duhem among so many other scholars in his main book? this question invokes the attempts of some interpreters to establish a relationship between duhem and kuhn. agassi (2002, 409), for example, in his review of the posthumous collection of essays by kuhn, published in 2000 as the road since structure (rss), asserts that “kuhn ignored his debt to duhem while respecting his leading followers (286-287)”. he indicates pages 286 and 287, where kuhn mentions the names of philosophers and historians of science, such as koyré, meyerson, metzger and maier. agassi 10 études sur léonard de vinci (1906-1913). the first and second volumes have as subtitle ceux qu’il a lus et ceux qui l’ont lu, the third, les précurseurs parisiens de galilée. hereafter cited as études. 11 kuhn cites, among others, a. koyré, m. boas, h. butterfield, m. daumas, h. guerlac and h. metzger. all these historians appear in ssr related to some aspects of the emergent new historiography of science. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 130 (2002, 409) ironizes the fact that kuhn remembers duhem in rss only because of the fact that he invented a term.12 stanley jaki (1987) and john worrall (1995) also discuss the rapprochement between duhem and kuhn's views. the former, one of the greatest scholars of duhemian work, by suggesting that duhem made many contributions to the philosophy of science, claims it to be surprising to a judicious reader of duhem that there is not a single reference to him in ssr (jaki 1987, 370).13 john worrall does not limit himself to presenting similar aspects between the two philosophers and historians of science, going so far as to say that there is nothing of real relevance to this particular issue in the structure of scientific revolutions that was not raised already in duhem's the aim and structure of physical theory. indeed many of the kuhnian theses that have created such a stir in philosophy of science seem at root to be (often rather less clear) restatements of duhemian positions (worrall 1995, 77). those considerations can even be suggestive, but they are very fast and general. moreover, they are presented with a focus on the philosophy of science and not on the historiography of science, which is the scope that interests me. in this sequence, i try to provide some material to help bring duhem closer to the new historiography of science, from the characterization of historiographic change, as expounded by kuhn. from the older to the new historiography of science: duhem’s spot when kuhn recognizes an ongoing historiographic revolution in ssr¸ he exhibits the state of change in the historical perspective. traditionally, the history of science was conceived as the discipline that recorded the successive increments of scientific technique and knowledge while at the same time registering the obstacles that have inhibited their accumulation. under this conception, according to kuhn (1996 [1962], 2), the historian had two main tasks: to “determine by what man and at what point in time each contemporary scientific fact, law, and theory was discovered or invented” and to “describe and explain the congeries of error, myth, and superstition that have inhibited the more rapid accumulation of the constituents of the modern science text”. this perspective is particularly found in science textbooks, in which discarded theories are considered unscientific14 and what is relevant is the identification of the individual contributions, the place and the date they occurred.15 in the ongoing historiographic revolution – “still in its early stages” (kuhn 1996 [1962], 3) – a group of historians have begun to put together other kinds of questions. “rather than seeking the permanent contributions of an older science to our present vantage, they attempt to display the historical integrity of that science in its own time” (kuhn 1996 [1962], 3). kuhn’s example is about the study of galileo’s contributions. some historians no longer sought galilean contributions in relation to modern science, but sought to understand it in their own context, that is, in “the relationship between his views and those of his group, i.e., his teachers, contemporaries, and immediate successors in the sciences”. and, as says kuhn, they also insisted upon studying the conceptions of these thinkers from a viewpoint that is very different from that of modern science, that gave those conceptions “the maximum internal coherence and the closest possible fit to nature” (kuhn 1996 [1962], 3).16 in doing so, they presented works that provided a completely divergent image of science from the one supplied by writers in the older historiographic tradition. 12 in rss, kuhn (2000, 235) says: “when i entered history of science, it was customary, largely due to the influence of pierre duhem, to speak of ‘medieval science’ and i often used that highly questionable phrase myself”. 13 jaki (1987, 370) cites works by cardwell and beauregard, who explore the comparison of similarities between duhem and kuhn, noting that the matter is dealt with politeness and fear by the former, and discretion by the latter. his considerations are limited to a note. 14 kuhn (1996 [1962], 99) explores the example of the “much-maligned phlogiston theory”. 15 “when oxygen was discovered?” is kuhn’s example (1996 [1962], 2), by which he refers again to the history of the development of chemistry. 16 alexandre koyré’s writings are considered here as, “perhaps”, the best example of this new way to investigate the past of science. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 131 from these brief considerations, it is possible to extract some important features that distinguish the work of some historians from those that represent the older historiography. those who were promoting the revolution showed that the history of science (1) could and should be more than a repository for anecdotes or chronologies, (2) can no longer be conducted by the debates about priorities and (3) was based on an attempt to understand the past in its own terms. these features are interrelated and have implications in other aspects that, as we shall see, would constitute the modern history of science. now i will try to show that those features are fundamental in duhem’s work. duhem: a source for the new history of science duhem’s work in no way resembles the old manuals of the history of science, which are a repository for more of the anecdotes or chronologies. it is a repository of ideas, discussion and reflections. if we compare it with, for example, sarton’s, the differences are enormous, although sarton had also been a historian devoted to the study of medieval science. 17 crombie (1959, 164), by the way, helps us think in this comparison in his review of two of sarton’s works, by saying that “sarton was a man of facts rather than ideas”, that “his most substantial contribution was to the bibliography of early science” and that “he did not work with the philosophical and analytical approach to the history of science such as is now, in the hands of younger scholars, throwing so much light on the development and character of scientific thinking” .18 we have here the suggestion of a change in the history of science and we can suggest that the “younger scholars” were, like crombie, the historians that, according to kuhn, are making the revolution. in duhem’s work, biography or bibliographical considerations are justified by the insertion of new, previously unknown characters in the history of science. such is the case, for example, for his études sur léonard de vinci. before speaking of albert of saxony’s influence on leonardo da vinci, duhem dedicates a section to explain who albert of saxony, a name hardly pronounced in the history of science, is. in the beginning of his études, duhem (1984 [1906], v.1, 1) states that the history of science is misrepresented by two prejudices, so similar to each other that they could be taken as one: that scientific progress occurs through sudden and unforeseen discoveries and that the works of genius men have no precursors at all. he insists that the great discoveries are almost always the result of a slow and complicated preparation, chased in the course of the centuries. the doctrines professed by the most influential thinkers come from a multitude of efforts, accumulated by a series of obscure workers. those who we are accustomed to call creators, galileo, descartes, newton, did not formulate any doctrine that was not bound by the innumerable lines to the teachings of those who preceded them (duhem 1984 [1906], v.1, 1-2). this passage is only one example among many other of duhem’s manifestations against the “eurekamoment”19 notion of a scientific discovery. he invariably criticizes the history of science that celebrates only the great discoveries and suggests the innovative character of his work that includes unknown contributions. the preface to maire’s work (1912) is a good example of duhem’s discussion about the difficulties involved in trying to determine priorities in the history of science: there is a fine line between a scientific discovery and the personality who made it. in many circumstances, time quickly dissolves it. sometimes, over the centuries, treatises and manuals continue to link the inventor's name to a mathematical proposition; to the law of physics, the name 17 in the introductory chapter of his most famous work, sarton (1927) recognizes the need to consider the medieval science, but from an evaluative perspective very different from duhem’s. kuhn (2000, 282) suggests the mention of his name as an example of an author of "history of manuals". see also preston (2008, 80-10) and pinto de oliveira and oliveira (forthcoming). 18 it is worth noting that, in spite of his criticism, crombie points out the importance of sarton's work, “a devoted pioneer”. similarly clagett (1957, 321) considers that sarton’s writings do not present a discussion of ideas and scientific activities and that his approach to the history of science is basically bibliographical and classificatory. 19 this expression is used by mcevoy (2010, 32) to refer to the vision of scientific discovery as a “single event of individual labor”. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 132 of the one who first enunciated it. one names: the theorems of apollonius, the principle of huygens. but, except some curious scholars, who then wants to carry out some research into the one who bears that name? when and where did he live? who was he? by what sequences of meditations and essays did he come to know that truth for which he had not been entirely forgotten? these are questions that we never imagine to ask, that we do not suffer at all by seeing them unanswered (duhem 1912, i). duhem places himself in a distinct position from that which prevailed in the traditional history of science. he insists on presenting a different view, according to which the historical analysis of a discovery or scientific creation is fairly complex because there is no way to establish an exact moment of its occurrence, to indicate a single name as being responsible for it, without incurring injustice and inaccuracy. “no scientific discovery is a creation ex nihilo”, says duhem (1912, iii), and if that is truth, then we have to explore a singularly extended domain whenever we wish to retrace the history of a discovery. it will not be enough (it’s quite the opposite, actually) to meditate on the writings of the one to whom that discovery is commonly attributed. we have to search, read, compare the books of all those who, more or less directly, have been the auxiliaries of that person: the precursors who had prepared the new idea; the collaborators who assisted the inventor; the opponents who forced him to define, clarify and consolidate his thoughts; the successors who highlighted the latent fertility of this thought. we will have to review those of whom our author has spoken, those with whom he spoke and those who spoke of him (duhem 1912, viii). today, duhem’s insistence upon this question may seem exaggerated, but it is important to note the context in which he puts his argumentation. as indicated by kuhn (1977, 106), the oldest traditions of history of science had produced “little significant historical research” before the nineteenth century. in other words, in his text of 1912 (as well as in his previous works) duhem was writing against a point of view that was still dominant in his day, when heroic biographies were in vogue. duhem was aware of the innovative character of his work in relation to the traditional history of science. this can be observed, for example, in the preface to les origines de la statique (1905), where he draws the reader's attention to the novelty of the content of his work, which would be singular in relation to other historical texts on the subject. the perspective presented there changed the history of static, which would entail a new ordering and characterization. on the one hand, duhem stresses this innovation with enthusiasm, and on the other hand critically regrets classical history, which ignored the middle ages contributions to mankind (in science and art). duhem’s comprehensive and investigative attitude in relation to texts of the past, however, is not only evident in relation to works and manuscripts, previously ignored by other historians that had studied medieval science.20 this attitude is already present in a 1894 article, "quelques réflexions au sujet de la physique expérimentale", in which duhem discusses his need to understand theories of the past in his own terms. duhem writes: if the theories admitted by this physicist [who is investigated] are those we accept, if we agree to follow the same rules in interpreting the same phenomena, then, we speak the same language and can understand each other. but it is not always so; it is not so when we discuss the experiences of a physicist who does not belong to the same school as we do; it is not so, above all, when we discuss the experiences of a physicist fifty years, a century, two centuries apart. it is necessary, then, to establish a correspondence between the theoretical ideas of the author and ours, and, through 20 according to interpreters, duhem disclosed the medieval science during the writing of the first tome of les origines de la statique. see, for example, brenner (1990, 144) and martin (1991, 147). leite (2015, 28) writes about this discovery as “the ‘historiographical turn’ [which] occurred in a very specific way: it was the (re)discovery of medieval manuscripts, forgotten by tradition, in which the historian glimpsed contributions that announced the modern static, which made him produce a genuinely historical work”. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 133 symbols that we accept, reinterpret what he interpreted through symbols he accepted. if we succeed in doing this, the discussion of his experience will be possible (duhem 1987 [1894], 176).21 the discussions on conceptual change are recurrent in duhem's work. while presenting the history of theories, duhem provides elements for the interpretation of these theories in their contexts and one of the aspects that he is attentive to is the elucidation of the meaning of scientific concepts in specific contexts. the following passages, extracted from his discussion about aristotelian physics, are examples: the meaning of the word movement takes, in aristotle's language, an extreme extension; it does not absolutely have the narrowness it has in modern physics in which it designates only the movement by which a body is transported from one place to another, the local movement.22 […] what aristotle calls movement in a straight line is what modern geometers name translation movement; all points of the moved body describe, at the same time, equal and parallel lines. the circle movement considered by the stagirian is what we call the rotation movement around an axis (duhem 1988 [1913], 160-171).23 the attempt to understand a scientific theory of the past in its own terms led duhem to give a distinct view from the one provided by other historians. i mentioned above (note 14) kuhn’s reference to the phlogiston theory as an example of a theory considered unscientific by the older history of science. it is worth noting that duhem, though he had briefly discussed this theory, sought to review the dominant history about it in his day. in doing so, he postulated the need to read stahl’s, his master becher’s, some of his predecessors’, his contemporaries’, his successors’ writings. now it is not at all distracting to search the yellowed and dusty pages of the old treatises of "chemistry", in which the kabbalistic form of language confounds no less than the strange antiquity of thoughts, the germ of an idea which had to grow one day and produce our science. [...] we wish to become attentive inquisitors of the old scientific texts (duhem 1916, 7). for duhem (1916, 6-7), "the victory of the oxygen theory over the phlogiston theory had in no way had the characteristics attributed to it": the inventor of phlogiston did not deserve the epithet of "mystic alchemist" and lavoisier’s victory was not "a victory of positivism over mysticism, of materialism over spiritualism". he announces one of his conclusions about the history of chemistry in the foreword: stahl's chemistry, in fact, contributed to lavoisier's chemistry. duhem's attempt, manifested in many portions of his work, to provide a review of the past of science is closely related to some of the main features of the new historiography of science. in the following sequence, i discuss the influence of duhem's historical analysis on some of the scholars chosen by kuhn as his main inspirers. duhem and his followers agassi (2002, 409) rightly notes that kuhn acknowledged his debt to the main followers of duhem in the road since structure. koyré, meyerson, metzger and maier are names presented there as those who brought forward, says kuhn (2000, 187), "a sort of history, and an approach to history" that he admired and which he "encountered fairly early". kuhn invariably mentions koyré’s études galiléennes, published in 1939, as an example of promising historical writing. in the introduction to this book, koyré (1966 [1939], 11) writes: “fortunately, it is no longer 21 the same passage appears in duhem (1989a, 241). 22 kuhn (2000, 17) also discusses the meaning of “motion”: “when the term ‘motion’ occurs in aristotelian physics, it refers to change in general, not just to the change of position of physical body. change of position, the exclusive subject of mechanics for galileo and newton, is one of number of subcategory of motion to aristotle”. 23 other passages about "movement" can be found in duhem (1988 [1913], 161, 171, 208; 1992 [1903], 10; 1989b, 466). amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 134 necessary to insist on the interest of the historical study of science. it is no longer even necessary, after the masterly work of a duhem, of an émile meyerson; after those of m. cassirer and m. brunschvicg, to insist on the philosophical interest and fecundity of this study”. the importance of duhem's work to koyré is not only manifest in a general way, but runs throughout the book. besides praising duhem’s “masterly” work, koyré (1966 [1939], 16) recognized that the history of scientific thought of the middle ages and the renaissance became better known “thanks to the admirable works of duhem”. in fact, duhem's work is mentioned dozens of times in études galilléennes, especially études sur léonard de vinci, a source for discussion and argumentation. although koyré disagrees with some duhemian interpretations, his recognition for his work is clear. in his “rapport final” to the international colloquium held in paris in 1952, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of leonardo da vinci's birth, koyré writes: a curious impression: that of the presence of a person, of a thought, of a work which was scarcely mentioned, which, even by those who have done so, has not been discussed, but which, as suggests by g. santillana by the title of his communication – “leonardo da vinci and those he did not read” – seems to dominate us, or at least direct our work. it is in fact due to the admirable, but highly contestable work of pierre duhem and his études sur léonard de vinci ceux qu'il a lus et ceux qui l'ont lu, that the problem of interpretation of leonardo’s personality and scientific work is set. (koyré 1953, 237)24 in another text about leonardo, koyré (1973, 100) echoes again the duhemian historical perspective when he writes that, in order to suitably position leonardo in the history of science, it is necessary to "confront him with his predecessors, his contemporaries and his successors." koyré’s études galileénnes was certainly one of the works that influenced kuhn and it is worth remembering his example in ssr of studies about galileo that focused on the relationship between that scientist’s views and “those of his group, i.e., his teachers, contemporaries, and immediate successors in the sciences” (1966, 3). by the way, anneliese maier’s researches into the precursors of galileo have in duhem’s work an important secondary source.25 it is common knowledge that historians of medieval science have contested several of duhem’s interpretations. contemporary interpreters agree with their criticisms which, in most cases, relate to the discussions about the origin of modern science.26 maier, for example, writes: pierre duhem, who must be credited with having opened up this new field of medieval studies, viewed fourteenth-century “physics” predominantly through the eyes of a natural scientist. he looked for the first glimmerings in the past of later discoveries without paying much attention to the intellectual milieu in which this “physics” belonged and without which it cannot be really understood. since then much has changed, and scholars have for some time been treating this chapter of intellectual history and the history of science like all others, that is, as the history of ideas […]. but despite these changes, the old controversy still arises about whether and to what extend the physics of the fourteenth century anticipated the theories of later classical mechanics […] (maier 1982 [1960], 146). as we can see, maier accuses duhem of not paying attention to the context investigated, that is, of not following his own recommendations. now, it is interesting to note that the discussion he makes, according to her, remained controversial. this corroborates the view that duhem, instead of worrying about dates and chronologies, posed other types of problems for historians of science. maier (1982 [1960], 77) discusses, for example, the approach of the theory of impetus as an “anticipation of the system of mechanics based on the law of inertia”. discussed by duhem, “who first drew attention to the scholastic theory […] the problem has been discussed repeatedly”. 24 i discuss the differences between duhem and leonardo’s other interpreters in another work. see oliveira (2016). 25 the title of his work – die vorläufer galileis – already establishes the bond with the duhemian études. 26 david lindberg (2007, 358-359) considers that duhem's followers, such as anneliese maier, marshall clagett, and lynn thorndike, drew a more careful history of science. see also brenner (1990; 1997). amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 135 herbert butterfield (1966 [1949], 27), who also writes about the importance of the theory of impetus, asserts: “the work of duhem in the field that we have been considering has been an important factor in the great change which has taken place in the attitude of historians of science to the middle ages”. 27 another example of a “follower” of duhem is hélène metzger. in spite of her work being focused on the history of chemistry, a field in which duhem wrote very little, her writings suggest interesting parallels between them. by considering that her work distances itself from others dedicated to the history of chemistry, metzger (1969 [1923]), provides a series of distinctive features between her work and other historians’, explaining to the reader her motivations. inclusion of scientists and works previously disregarded, as well as the non-insertion of biographies, are some of them.28 she wrote: “most of our predecessors, in fact, have reduced their work to establish who have been the craftsmen of the discoveries of which science can boast” (metzger 1969 [1923], 11). in a note, she considers duhem as an “exception”, pointing out that he “unfortunately only accidentally touched the history of chemistry”. it is worth noting that she refers to the discussion of priorities in history as “irritant”29 and adopts the duhemian view that the “hypotheses are not the product of a sudden creation, but the result of progressive evolution”.30 her work does not contemplate "the succession of abrupt revolutions" that altered chemical theory, but "the slow evolution" that it underwent by the work of many minds (metzger 1969 [1923], 9).31 a further aspect of metzger's work, reminiscent of duhem’s attitude, concerns her considerations about the need of the modern historian to look at the changes that have occurred since that period of time and refer to antecedents, material conditions and conceptual change.32 she insisted on the need to pay attention to the differences between the context of her day and that of the investigated one, signaling her effort to describe past theories, "as they should appear to the studious disciples of their masters" (metzger 1969 [1923], 342). for example, with respect to the history of phlogiston theory, she states that her aim “was to reconstitute the whole of the stahlian doctrine as it appeared at the time of its elaboration, without worrying about the oversimplifications or modifications which might have altered its aspect with regard to posterity” (metzger 1930, 5).33 metzger, as well as koyré, maier and others34 recognized the importance of duhem's work to the development of their own. in a different way, they had his writings as a source for discussing problems that were gradually changing the historical research of science. they were duhem’s followers in the face of the "older" – or, as said duhem, of the "classic (classique)" or "senseless (insensée)" history of science (duhem 1906, 278). and as much as his followers had disagreed with his analysis and conclusions, the role he played in promoting new and unsuspected researches is undeniable. duhem’s followers were, like duhem himself, changing the history of science with their revisions. it is worth noting bernard cohen's (1987, 56-57) account of his "painful experience of showing" koyré "that he had made a factual error in one of his publications." koyré would have been "chagrined and sad, terribly annoyed with himself". but, after a moment's pause, would have replied: “if duhem had never made any mistakes, we would have had no great jobs to do. we have lived on his mistakes”. such a statement 27 it is important to remind that butterfield’s the origins of modern science was considered “admirable and influential” and a “pioneering synthesis” by kuhn (1977, 35 and 109). 28 metzger (1930, 11) states that she avoided "especially any anecdotal or picturesque details" concerning the work of chemists in her historical investigation. she demonstrates disagreement with sarton about the importance of providing biographies. 29 see metzger (1935, 9). daumas (1951, 1) also finds “irritant” the problem stemming from historical discussions about the priority of scientific discoveries. kuhn indicates his work (1996 [1962], 53) as an “indispensable recent review [about oxygen’s discovery], including an account of the priority controversy”. 30 metzger (1969 [1923], 155) cites section ii, chapter vii of la théorie physique. besides it and duhem’s works about chemistry, she cites his le système du monde. 31 kuhn, in 1952, had already mentioned metzger's (1930 and 1923) and meyerson's (1951) analysis as "more acute”, which showed the "chemical revolution as proceeding not from a sudden break [...] but through an almost continuous extension and elaboration of the peripatetic and iatrochemical concepts” (kuhn 1952, 14-15). 32 see metzger (1969 [1923], 81, 342-343; 1935, 22), and specifically on conceptual change, see metzger (1969 [1923], 61, 205; 1935, 13 and 19). 33 kuhn (1996 [1962], 100, note 3) considered in ssr that “[t]he fullest and most sympathetic account of the phlogiston theory’s achievements” is provided by metzger in his newton, stahl, boerhaave et la doctrine chimique (1930). 34 marshall clagett and alistair crombie are certainly other examples. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 136 highlights the duhemian legacy for the promotion of historiographic change, a change that took place in different degrees among the makers of the revolution that kuhn identified in its early stages in the early 1960s. final considerations it is important to remember that when kuhn (1996 [1962], viii) wrote about the historians that were important in shaping his “conception of what the history of scientific ideas can be”, he noted that he was “increasingly” questioning “a few of their particular historical interpretations”. it is thus his article on boyle that led kuhn (1952) not only to analyze different historical views, but also to try to provide a completely new view about the subject. this is clear when, some decades later, kuhn (2000, 291) wrote about his first article: “it is, i think, a very good article – it’s totally unreadable because i thought i had to persuade a very learned group of historians of chemistry out there. and what i gradually discovered was that nobody knew nearly as much this problem [the notion of element in boyle’s work] as i did”. if it is true that duhem’s followers disputed many of their historical interpretations, it is also true that kuhn made reservations to their works. koyré’s work is a good example. in a text published in 1970,35 kuhn writes again about the historiographic revolution, now discussing its stages, and for him, in that context, as notes pinto de oliveira (2012, 119), koyré was not “fully a new historian of science” yet. thus, if on the one hand, koyré criticized duhem for committing exaggerations in his studies on medieval science, on the other hand kuhn questioned “how koyré could have failed to discuss the role played by the observation of pendulums in galileo’s argument, commenting ‘that is no trivial slip, and it illustrates something else about koyré. he did exaggerate the universality of his insights, and he did make mistakes, very occasionally egregious ones’” (pinto de oliveira 2012, 118)36. for many historians, duhem’s work is mentioned because of his researches on medieval science and this is not different with kuhn’s work. in an interview in 1995, when asked which authors would have played a role in shaping his thinking, in addition to mentioning the customary names of alexandre koyré, arthur lovejoy, émile meyerson, hélène metzger, kuhn (1995, 13) states: "in relation to duhem, i have maintained principally his idea that, to understand the transition from ancient physics to modern physics, one cannot economize the medieval physics”. we know that the discovery of scientific medieval contributions has significantly altered the historical narrative of scientific development. history, as wrote harcourt brown, “is the product of historians; its categories remain fluid as new outlooks and emphases produce new evaluations. […] as the work of, for instance, pierre duhem has progressed and been absorbed, the perspective has changed, and much of sixteenth-century science has lost its glamor” (brown 1960, 42). brown's analysis, which is focused on the change of vision in relation to the renaissance, can, by extension, be applied to the scientific revolution. if it is true that the duhemian view runs counter to the renaissance conception as a period of sparse productivity, after the darkness of the middle ages, for many historians, it also diminished the merit of seventeenth-century scientists and, therefore, diminished the grandeur of scientific revolution. this conception is clear in koyré’s thought, according to which duhem denied the occurrence of revolutions in science37. as far as i can see in his work, kuhn most likely conceived the duhemian work in a distinct way from his maître.38 incidentally, the content of one of the bibliographical notes on a text by koyré, "le vide et l'espace infini au xive siècle", is noteworthy here: an attack on duhem’s absurd statement that modern science begins with edicts of bishop of paris in 1277 against impossibility of void, etc. documented by detailed study of some 14th century writings about the void showing clearly that they don’t take a modern position, etc. useful, but considerably 35 review of metaphysics and measurement – essays in the scientific revolution, published by koyré in 1968. 36 kuhn (1977, 35, note 3) presents some caveats to butterfield's the origins of modern science. 37 see koyré (1973, 172; 1966, 15-16). i discuss this subject in another work. see oliveira (2012). 38 kuhn (1977, 21) referred to koyré in these words: “the man who, more than any other historian, has been my maitre”. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 137 vitiated by straw-man it attacks. really fails to see whether there is an effect of the edicts […] (kuhn apud oliveira 2012, 239). it could be suggested that kuhn did not cite duhem in his book about scientific revolutions because of duhem’s thesis of continuity. under this assumption, it would make no sense that kuhn quoted an author who would supposedly deny the occurrence of revolutions in science at a time when revolutions studies were the order of the day. prima facie, this could be a good reason. but, when analyzing the context, i do not think this is a satisfactory reason, because of the opposition between continuity and discontinuity views, and that the notions of revolution and evolution have no place in the ssr, not even being mentioned by kuhn in the terms proposed by some of his interpreters. also, the transition from older to new historiography involves many nuances, and the causes by which historians would represent more or less the new or the old historical tradition depend on what would be considered relevant to the discussion. i have tried to identify some features of new historiography according to kuhn’s writings and, based on them, show that duhem was a real contributor to historiographic change. but, the question that can be asked is: when did the change to which kuhn refers in ssr begin? kuhn's review of koyré's work allows us to temporarily locate what he called the "historiographical revolution": a movement that began with koyré himself. kuhn (1970a, 67) writes: "more than any other single scholar, koyré was responsible for the first stage of the historiographical revolution". but, as we know, a revolution is not the work of a single man. kuhn indentified in ssr a group of historians. it was a group of younger scholars that was presenting a “philosophical and analytical approach to the history of science” (crombie 1959, 164). mary hesse’s review of ssr corroborates kuhn's identification with a group: "my own impression is that kuhn's thesis is amply illustrated by recent historiography of science and will find easier accessibility among historians than among philosophers" (hesse 1963, 286). in fact, when we observe the works kuhn cites in ssr, we can see that most of them were published in the 50's. his more cited masters had works published since 1930. we may also recall that in 1957, kuhn was among more than seventy participating historians of the university of wisconsin congress, critically discussing problems in the history of science. among them, there were some of those cited in ssr, such as mashall clagett, rupert hall, giorgio de santillana, a. c. crombie, derek j. s. price, henry guerlac, charles c. gillispie and marie boas.39 in different degrees, among other historians, they were making the historiographic revolution. and kuhn saw himself as a participant of it. retreating to duhem to seek the sources of modern historiography could leave the structure of the so-called historiographic revolution (as writes kuhn about the scientific revolution) "unchanged but extending it greatly in time". so, it is likely that kuhn did not cite duhem in ssr simply because kuhn was announcing an ongoing change at a time when there was a group sharing a new perspective, which echoes "the heroic times of pierre duhem”, a man of “astonishing energy and knowledge" (koyré 1973 [1966], 61), but which was promoting a new sort of history in a pioneering attitude. so much so that kuhn, when analyzing later on the development of the history of science, granted a substantial role in the formation of the new historiography to duhem. perhaps, in this moment he was in better conditions to analyze the change in the field, since the writings evoked by duhem's work, such as those of dijksterhuis,40 maier, and especially alexandre koyré, became models which many contemporaries of kuhn aimed “to emulate”.41 in any case, what matters is that since kuhn did not link duhem to the historiographical revolution in his most famous book, we can try to do so, both through his favorite historians’ writings and through his reflections on history and philosophy of science. my attempt as a reader (perhaps less concerned with analyzing the monumental work of duhem and more with investigating the relationship between his and kuhn’s works) has been to better understand such a stimulating part of the development of the history of science. 39 see clagett (1969 [1959]). 40 dijksterhuis, a historian not cited in ssr, has his mechanization of the world picture (1961) considered “magistral” by kuhn (1977, 132). as we can see, kuhn was updating his references in 1968. 41 p. omodeo (2016, 74-75), by mentioning kuhn's recognition in relation to duhem's work, writes: “the reference to the alleged success of duhem’s school is prescriptive. kuhn counted himself as one of the ‘contemporary emulators’ of the medievalist”. amélia j. oliveira – duhem’s legacy for the change in the historiography of science: an analysis based on kuhn’s writings 138 acknowledgements ι would like to thank josé carlos pinto de oliveira and fábio 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(forthcoming). kuhn, sarton, and the history of science. in hypotheses and perspectives within history and philosophy of science. hommage to alexandre koyré, 1964-2014. edited by raffaele pisano, joseph agassi and daria drozdova. dordrecht: springer. pinto de oliveira, j. c. 2012. kuhn and the genesis of the ‘new historiography of science’. studies in history and philosophy of science 43:115-121. preston, john. 2008. kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions: a reader’s guide. london: continuum london. sarton, george. 1927. introduction to the history of science. vol. 1 baltimore: williams and wilkins. worrall, john. 1995. ‘revolution in permanence’: popper on theory-change in science. in karl popper: philosophy and problems. edited by antony o’hear, cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 75-102. wray, brad. 2015. kuhn’s social epistemology and the sociology of science. in kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions – 50 years on. edited by willian devlin and alisa bokulich. dordrecht: springer, pp. 167– 83. microsoft word 4castelli gattinara layout 14 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 14-26 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara1 abstract: the article shows the strategic analogies, but also the differences between bachelard and canguilhem on the use of the history of science for epistemology. it emphasizes the importance of the ideology for canguilhem, and the conceptual essence he recognizes in the history of science, which is read in its internal specific differences and in its complex articulations with life and reality. no concept in fact comes from nothing. the link between history and epistemology is not however of subjection, but of mutual influence. canguilhem radicalizes the thought of bachelard, and recognizes the historicity of every aspect of scientific knowledge, even of its less valued features and above all of errors. all aspects of science are historical. the object of the history of science is not the object of the sciences, because it is always a discourse. this is why the history of science is inevitably linked to other forms of history. this opens up a pluralist conception of history and of time, thinking of the sciences in their real body and no longer ideal or legal. thus canguilhem opens the way to the researches of foucault and serres. keywords: canguilhem; bachelard; history of science; epistemology; philosophy; truth; ideology; foucault; serres; life; error; norms received: 30 january 2018. reviewed 27 april 2018. accepted: 8 may 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.04 ____________________________________________________________________________________ when we speak of “historical epistemology” we immediately think of georges canguilhem,2 and consequently of gaston bachelard, because it would have been the latter to start the particular union between the history of the sciences and epistemology that bears that name. the revolutionary character of bachelard’s epistemology consisted precisely in the integration of the history of the sciences in the very heart of the epistemological argumentation in order to show not only its intrinsic dynamic and variable character, and 1 enrico castelli gattinara has been a professor in the faculty of philosophy at university of rome 1 – la sapienza. e-mail: enrico.castelligattinara@uniroma1.it 2 canguilhem was not the founder of what has been called historical epistemology, as several scholars write instead (he was at most one of the representatives, but together with others who came before and after him), see for ex. (debru 2004), who emphasizes how much canguilhem has been able to connect epistemology to history much more than bachelard. the common academic reference is l’épistémologie historique de gaston bachelard (lecourt 1969). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 15 therefore the essential opening to innovation and research, which constituted history was there to prove it – the main feature of scientific knowledge. however, it is good to clarify right away that between the two scholars there are not a few notable differences both on the philosophical and on the historical-epistemological level, even if canguilhem has repeatedly openly written his intellectual debt towards bachelard3 since the 50s of the twentieth century. what i will briefly try to do in these pages is to adhere to some guiding principles of canguilhem and bachelard to reveal a conceptual (ideological) context related to the socalled “historical epistemology” (canguilhem 1977, 22), and more precisely to the strategic (ideological) use of history of the sciences for epistemology and for the philosophy of science. i would also like to show what issues remained in common, while pointing to what has changed in their epistemological-historical approach, without going into the analysis of the specific development of canguilhem’s thought, nor of its profound evolution.4 i will therefore take for granted the knowledge of his thought and his writings, to which i will make numerous implicit references, which i hope everyone will be able to grasp. finally, a clarification must be made immediately, because the term “historical epistemology” has taken on a meaning that is somehow different between scholars in the anglo-saxon field than in the french (or italian) world. it is a derivative meaning, of second instance so to speak, that comes from the elaboration of the research of michel foucault and from the works of lorraine daston, and involves the analysis of the relationship between new forms of experience, emergence of new structures of knowledge and differentiation of reasoning styles.5 i. hacking points out, however, that this “historical epistemology” does not really have much to do with bachelard’s ideas, because daston (considered the founder of this epistemology) does not deal with theories of knowledge at all, she doesn’t elaborate them nor promote any of them, limiting herself to discussing (epistemological) concepts as if they were only historical objects – she studies how “whole fields of phenomena [...] [for example dreams, atoms, the self, etc.] have come to existence and have vanished as objects of scientific research” (daston 2000, 1; hacking 2002, 19-21). there is undoubtedly a strategic use of the history of science that canguilhem inherits directly and explicitly from bachelard, placing himself (since the end of the 1950s6) in a community of intent that makes its historical-epistemological practice perfectly coherent and consequential to that of bachelard – even if in some respects it will be much more elaborate and articulate, decidedly more critical, open and conscious of its limits (that will open the way to foucault’s research). this seems to me confirmed by two considerations: 1) when he mentions bachelard, canguilhem almost never expresses a criticism against him7 both on the epistemology level, and on the role of this in the history of science; 2) when he speaks of koyré, he tends to emphasize more the epistemological affinity with bachelard than their 3 it should be noted that between canguilhem and bachelard there was no relationship of direct filiation (of the master-pupil type), and that the formation of canguilhem took place in a rather distant, and sometimes opposite, philosophical and academic context, with respect to the philosophy of bachelard. 4 for example, without taking into account that “before” (in the writings of the 1930s and 1940s) canguilhem does not mention almost bachelard, nor epistemology in general, while since the end of the 1950s it does so constantly. 5 see (daston 1994; daston 2000; poovey 1998; davidson 2001; hacking 2002). for a quite exhaustive examination of the development of this syntagm of “historical epistemology” see (gingras 2010). 6 as also mentioned by c. limoges in the introduction to oeuvres complètes (canguilhem 2015). it must be said that the strategy is not only epistemological, but also academic, given the succession of canguilhem to bachelard in the direction of the institute of the history of sciences and techniques and the chair of history and philosophy of sciences at the sorbonne. 7 the only criticisms, rather moderate, are found in an essay in etudes d’histoire et philosophie des sciences (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 200 and 205). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 16 differences, with respect to their reciprocal approach to the history of sciences, which had led to the creation of two rather different research centers, different in their modalities and theoretical foundation, more or less explicitly in competition with each other.8 we recall how much canguilhem has written and repeated constantly, in his long career as a scholar: the concept prevails strategically on the object, just as the theory prevails (axiologically) on the facts. this in the sense that the reality with which the sciences have to do is always and inevitably determined by concepts. and since every conceptual system, or rather any conceptual “order” (since the concept for canguilhem is a form of the living) belongs to a horizon of historically situated meaning, then we cannot be exempt from considering its ideological affiliation (in the sense that a concept appears within an ideology, and in the sense that a concept helps to found one, as in the case of spencer’s evolutionism9). and for ideology (also scientific ideology) canguilhem meant the set of forms, concepts, metaphors and value choices in which you have to understand things, and which influences what to consider scientific and truthful in a given science and in a given period. ideology was in short for canguilhem, paraphrasing what the german philosopher r. koselleck defined in the historical context the horizon of expectation, what we can call “horizon of meaning” (close, but not identical, to what foucault called “episteme” and l. althusser “implicit philosophy”10). a horizon of meaning in which one expects to insert everything and which one wants to apply to everything, even if this expectation is sometimes disregarded. at the same time – and here canguilhem is truly the son of his time, and especially of the tradition of french and italian experimental rationalism11 – ideology does not conclusively determine every aspect of life and culture, because its power clashes with the counter-power of the critique of which the sciences12 and philosophy13 are carriers, each with its methods, and of which life itself is interwoven in its inexhaustible transformative and evolutionary variability. or rather: there is never a single ideology, nor only one episteme (this is what 8 b. bensaude-vincent explains how there has been some sort of competition, or latent conflict, between the two institutions of reference, the ihst in the rue du four, directed by bachelard and then by canguilhem, connected to the sorbonne, and the hotel de nevers, with his centre a. koyré from the ehess (bensaudevincent 2010). on the difference between bachelard and koyré, see (gattinara 1998, 244-269). 9 every discourse and every study is always and inevitably ideologically oriented, therefore also what we can say today about canguilhem: it is he himself who has taught it to us, on the condition that we understand what we mean by “ideology” (i. e. practices, ideas, concepts and preconceptions, language, society, the culture of belonging, the choices made, the accepted compromises, the implicit and explicit philosophies [...] in short, an extended notion of what p. bourdieu called “habitus” and canguilhem “context”). too often we rush to the texts and ignore the contexts; but how difficult it is to orient oneself in texts (which are also made of styles, rhetorical levels, chosen metaphors, subterfuges and tricks as well as well ordered contents and propositions), so it is very complex to account for contexts (whose stratification and whose extension is almost inexhaustible, depending on the point of view from which it is dealt with). on spencer and evolutionism, see (canguilhem et al. 2003). 10 two terms whose references are however different in the two authors (foucault 1969; althusser 1974). 11 experimental rationalism had demonstrated the inevitable dialectic between theory and experience, so that theory never dominates the whole field, nor does it experience, but they influence each other in a spiral movement that conditions them and forces them to vary continuously – see (gattinara 1998). which means that not everything is ideological, or at least that there is never a single ideology, but there is one dominant, and others that are opposed, or that coexist even if they are minority. 12 science can find something that the ideology had not given to look for, or intended otherwise, as in the case of atomistic physics, where the atom that finds science is not the simple element that sought the scientific ideology of physics, but an extreme complexity. see (canguilhem 1977, 40): “scientific ideology is superseded in relation to the site that will come to occupy a science, but it is not only superseded, it is also depleted.” when a science goes to occupy a place that ideology seemed to indicate, it is never in the place where it was expected. when the chemistry and physics of the nineteenth century constituted the scientific knowledge of the atom, the atom did not appear in the place assigned to it by atomistic ideology, i.e., instead of invisible. what science finds is not what ideology offered to seek [...], so that what the ideology announced as the simple finds its scientific reality in a coherence of complications”. 13 for the critical value of philosophy, cf. mostly (canguilhem 1980, 81-98). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 17 canguilhem criticized above all in the book of foucault words and things), but different, and always in conflict with each other (with one that is naturally dominant). the concepts are formed within ideological horizons, but they can also escape, break them, they can be misrepresented, reused or expelled: they have a historical “density” and “viscosity” that never allows them to be completely clear and distinct. the history of scientific concepts, therefore, does not necessarily identify with the history of scientific ideologies just as the object of the history of science does not identify with the object of the sciences, according to the famous statement by canguilhem (in reality he had learned from the history works of the sciences carried out with philosophical intelligence by hélène metzger). the object of the history of science has nothing in common with the object of science. the scientific object, constituted thanks to the methodical discourse, is second, although not derived, with respect to the initial natural object, and which we would gladly call pre-text, playing on the meaning. the history of sciences is exercised on these second objects, not natural, cultural [...]. the object of historical discourse is in fact the historicity of scientific discourse, insofar as the latter represents the carrying out of an internally normalized project, but traversed by accidents, delayed or diverted by obstacles, interrupted by crisis, that is to say from moments of judgment and truth. (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 17). as well as one cannot confuse a concept with an ideology or a theory (it is up to the intelligence and rigor of the historian to try to reconstruct specific differences), so one cannot isolate a concept from its ideological context (and it is always the historian who can recognize its genealogy and its transformations). history is made of different stratifications that fit together, where ideology and society, economics and sociology, psychology and culture, politics and individuality, philosophy, emotions, beliefs, religions and fantasies participate in different measures to make real what happens. no concept arises from nothing or lives in a pure abstract and rational dimension, yet the power of concepts responds to the all-vital capacity of not completely reducing the context in which it is formed (i.e. retains in itself a transformative value rich in potential, which only the actual historical evolution of a discipline can enhance or not14). for this reason, according to canguilhem, the same concept can be articulated in different ideologies and epochs: the life of concepts can be reconstructed from a history that is attentive to their transformative particularity, without reducing them to ideas, beliefs or words. the fact that canguilhem has always remained (and has claimed for himself the quality of) a “philosopher”, despite having also studied medicine and having done many works of “history of the sciences”15, is due to this whole epistemological and philosophical approach on value and the role of concepts. the history of science, for him (at least since the late 1950s), is in fact a function of epistemology, or rather it is always and inevitably epistemologically and ideologically conditioned (whether he wants it or not). however, as for bachelard, history of sciences is not “servant” or “handmaid” of epistemology (for which canguilhem preferred to speak of “epistemological history” rather than of “historical epistemology”16). if for him the history of science is always an epistemological history of the sciences, then another history is not possible, or rather (since some play it) is naive, because it claims to be what it is not and claims to deal with what does not deal – i.e., the scientific object, or the result of scientific discoveries (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 2). 14 about the context (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 235 and 277). 15 and having become director of the institut d’histoire des sciences et des techniques. 16 as y. gingras explains in his article (gringas 2010, 4). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 18 but what does he mean exactly by this way? and above all from where does he say it? the reference is above all bachelard, but not only. studies of epistemology and history of science in france were developed according to coherent perspectives, but not reducible to one another, even by leading scholars such as alexandre koyré, hélène metzger, jean cavaillès. the context (also ideological) of reference in which canguilhem moves and works is that of experimental rationalism, which in france (and partially in italy) has had an important development since the beginning of the 20th century, and which bachelard has then catalyzed in his epistemological work. canguilhem therefore does not arise alternatively, but in a line of coherence with this tradition (so much so that it takes over from the bachelard chair at the sorbonne, and then to the direction of the institut d’histoire des sciences et des techniques that before bachelard were state of abel rey, also quite consistent with the tendency (we might dare to say ideology) of experimental rationalism, and particularly attentive to the history of science). and of course he brings his personality as a scholar, his originality and his particular point of view, contributing to his transformation (for example the value of concepts and ideology, in some ways absent [idelology] or not so clear [concepts] in bachelard, and above all the attention to the life sciences, according to a philosophy of life as creation and tension between norms, perfectly coherent with some basic instances of epistemology and experimental rationalism). already in his thesis on the normal and the pathological canguilhem had made history a key element of his interpretation, and he had shown the inevitable conceptual variance of this history. the norms that define the living in its social and individual organization are subject to variation, and of this variation only the historical investigation can account (if one agrees that history is science, or if you want the discipline that studies change over time woven into his human relationships). the concept of physiological normality, and its relative correspondent of “pathology” (relative in the noble sense of the word, because who knows canguilhem knows that his work has allowed us to avoid understanding the two terms as linked by an opposing binary relationship), are not resolved in their biologization, but change precisely over time (and in their distribution in the geographical, political, social, ethnic and philosophical space). now, this change is not due to the degree of “scientific” precision achieved by the medical or biological science that deals with it, but rather by a complex of relationships that imply not only the organism-environment relationship (itself in continuous transformation) but also an open set of ideological, anthropological and historical factors. to make history of the norms, even compared to certain characters that seems more constant and less subject to variance – such as respiration rate or glycemic (but also skin color) – is meant to show how their definition itself was variable, so the actual variance that is due to the organism-environment interaction, that is always in permanent mutation (also, but not only, for the human intervention itself17), is added to the epistemological variance, in the sense that if the conceptual framework changes of reference, then what we mean by “glycemic rate” can become insensitive or insignificant, as it was for “phlogiston” or for ether – bachelard said that the term, the concept or the whole theoretical apparatus, summed up in the word, was “eliminated forever” (bachelard 1983 [1937]). it should be noted, however, that in no case it is ever possible to argue with apodictic certainty that what is condemned to oblivion in a certain period (the prescribed history, i.e. in bachelardian terms “histoire perimée”) – within a certain episteme and a certain ideology – cannot to re-emerge in another horizon of meaning, conceptual, ideological and epistemic, that is, in another epoch (as in the case of the atom from democritus to rutherford and beyond). 17 see the differences in hypoglycemia between africans and europeans, where that rate for the former is normal, for europeans it would be a pathology (canguilhem 1972 [1966], 111). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 19 this is why we must keep critical vigilance high and avoid talking about forerunners, as koyré has taught us, because they would confuse different epochs, epistemes and ideologies. a forerunner would be a thinker of several times, of his and that or of those assigned to him as continuators, as executors of his unfinished business. the forerunner is therefore a thinker who the historian believes he can extract from his cultural frame to include it in another, which means considering concepts, speeches and speculative or experimental gestures as susceptible to being moved and relocated in an intellectual space where the reversibility of relationships has been obtained thanks to the oblivion of the historical aspect to the object in question. (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 21) it is precisely because a concept, and the word that designates it, are part of a set of relationships that give it meaning and contextualize it, that cannot be isolated with impunity by neglecting its horizon of meaning and reality to which it belongs. what canguilhem calls “history” has to do with this complex of possible and always ongoing variances. he philosophically reports all this to what he himself calls an objective “a priori” of life,18 that is, the “meaning” of life (canguilhem 1976 [1952], 32). a meaning that is to be intended in its double valence of 1) overall conceptual significance and 2) of direction (and it is always in this sense that canguilhem intends to speak of evolution and development as transformations that follow a direction, without ever being seduced by the eschatological temptation to indicate an absolute, as teleological reference value towards the best).19 in short, for canguilhem, history is the immanent movement of life, and therefore also of knowledge, insofar as the knowledge of life is part of life itself. if life is immanently normative and at the same time transformative (i.e. constructive / destructive), then so it must also be its knowledge in all its forms. we call this transformative process “historical” 18 “to define life as a meaning inscribed in matter means to admit the existence of an objective a priori, of a properly material and not merely formal a priori” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 362). 19 also in this regard, we could make a long reflection on the use of the term “progress” in canguilhem: it loses, it seems to me, the progressive conception of a tendency towards better understood as constant improvement, even if discontinuous, for which history would ultimately witness (above all the history of science and knowledge) an undoubted increase and accumulation of truthful contents. precisely his work on errors, and his reflections on truth and falsehood – in his talk on hyppolite (canguilhem 1971), but also see (sertoli 1983, 90-91 and 156-157) – show that progress is a value that certainly exists, but which is circumstantially limited to be the judgment that a present brings to its past, and not to the past in general, but to the specific past of that specific present. but since the course of historical development is discontinuous, then the judgments about the past are as different as the present ones that emit them, and since a present is never stable, but reformulates and reconfigures always, then every time the judgments change and reformulate history (and in fact it is so, and this also affects the history in general, so every age, every society, each phase rewrites its history, never in continuity with the history written by the predecessors, which at most come used as tools for analysis and research, never as a reference authority). this is what it means that the “sense” is directional: the direction is progressive, like the development of a strange curve, but we do not necessarily know where it will go, because from time to time it can change direction. progress must therefore be understood as a “going forward”, or better as a proceeding, a not remaining firm, regardless of the directions taken, which are all equal. moreover, the value judgment on the “best” is always circumstantial, or contextual: it concerns the horizon of expectation that a society has set itself and to which it has arrived, so it can be said that the result achieved is better or worse than the expected one, but the complexity of the horizon of expectation and the space of experience is so high that this is possible only for limited spaces and relatively short times, or for circumscribed values and relatively isolated from their context (i can say that today’s health care it’s better than it was two centuries ago, even if the quality of the food and the air you breathe is definitely worse). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 20 insofar we can judge and compare it, that is, we can relate it to itself by identifying the differentiations, and trying to understand its specific ways, motives and articulations. from this point of view, the history of science will not be completely separate from other forms of history nor will it have a status of its own, but while maintaining its own identity due to its specific object, it will have to be integrated with the history of techniques, ideas, social history, political, economic (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 18; 1977, 105), etc. in its opacity and in its indeterminacy (it is in this sphere that canguilhem’s reflection on ideology falls, and which digs one of the most profound differences with bachelard, who in the last two pages of his 1938 book, la formation de l’esprit scientifique, he hoped for a history of the sciences normalized, purified by every obstacle and by every hesitation (bachelard 1983 [1937], 251).20 bachelard had taught, however, that there is a plurality of epistemologies, and that this plurality is necessary for philosophical understanding of scientific knowledge, immediately undermining any theory of unified knowledge, and canguilhem, fully assuming this lesson, radicalized it by showing how the epistemological multiplicity were also immediately a historical plurality, a plurality of historical times – of which bachelard too had spoken, and as a consequence of which he had proposed his rhythmanalysis (bachelard 1936, viii-x and 129-150) – that could go in all directions (and not only, as in bachelard, only from the value of truth enshrined in the present to the past, as recurring history).21 why then does a question arise in the title of these pages? because in the french philosophical tradition it was precisely the history of science that was used strategically to undermine the old theories of knowledge and to dynamize reason. in this respect, bachelard was truly a great innovator, since no one like him has been able to use the history of science not to validate a philosophy or attest to an already consolidated (and normative) epistemology, but to break the chains that bind philosophy and epistemology to a given structure of knowledge (intellect or reason, according to whether we were more or less kantian), fixed and immobile in its internal organization. this is why bachelard used the term “dialectic” from his first work of 1927, the essai sur la connaissance approchée (as canguilhem points out): precisely to indicate not only the internal dynamics of reason itself (as in fichte, in hegel, etc.), but also the way of its opening and, provocatively, its articulated disarticulation. the provocation was in fact essential not only to a style of thought that was outside the box (outside all scheme), but also because to think scientifically (and probably think tout court) was always and inevitably “to think against”: it is known to anyone who reads bachelard how violent he used in a strategically rhetorical way the terms of rupture, infraction, opposition, struggle, denial, inexactitude, etc. without ever renouncing the rational value of scientific knowledge. 20 the position is reiterated by him, but also clarified, in a conference of 1951, then printed in l’engagement rationaliste (bachelard 1972, 137-152), where he declares that “the history of the sciences cannot be completely a history like the others” precisely because of the fact that science evolves in the sense of a manifest progress, of an increase of truth, from which all forms of regression of uncertainty are eliminated. see also the way canguilhem speaks of this purified history of cumulative and recurring truth in (canguilhem 1977, 20-23 and 26-27). for the difference between bachelard and canguilhem, see (canguilhem 1977 [1955], 157-158), where he wrote that error has the same historical rights as truth (which it had actually learned from bachelard himself) and which he takes up again in “sur la science et la contre-science”. 21 sertoli rightly points out that this is one of the characteristics that distinguish bachelard from canguilhem (sertoli 1983), and points out the difference in these terms: “while bachelard was moved by a sort of historical impatience that pushed him to wish that the moments of time were transparent from each other, so that their opacity was ascribed to error and stigmatized as an obstacle on the path of truth, canguilhem is driven by the need to restore precisely this opacity of history, this ‘thickness of time’” (sertoli 1983, 156), and refers to the temporal plurality and the irreducible richness of the contexts, see also how canguilhem speaks about it in études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences (1983 [1968], 277 and 19). i will resume this theme at the end of these pages. the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 21 this means that talking about “history of science” is not at all something neutral, something given and consolidated, but it means referring to a history that is made and is configured according to intentions and modalities that are also very different from each other.22 and this canguilhem understood it perfectly, and has shared it completely, bringing it to its extreme consequences (which have gone beyond the thought of bachelard himself), that is to say, historicizing the relationship between concepts and reality to such an extent that human reason itself has found itself dispersed in its own real articulations, in its technical manifestations, in its materializations and its ideological inflections, in its institutional configurations and in real conflicts. this kind of relationship has been possible not so much thanks to history as such – the history of science as it was then, very erudite, very anecdotal, apparently neutral – but rather to historicization, that is to say to the dynamizing action of the reason itself in its developments. history therefore was not the picklock, the tool to undermine the fixity of reason, but a force recognized within reason itself, which obviously implied a redefinition of the history. or at least of “this” history, which loses every sensible origin like any eschatological direction: science becomes a specifically intellectual operation that has a history but no origin. it is the genesis of the real, but its own genesis could not be told. it can be described as re-initiation, but never caught in its first stammering. it is not the fructification of a preknowledge. an archeology of science is a sensible operation, a prehistory of science is an absurdity. (canguilhem 2015 [1957], 731) the epistemology of bachelard, and even more so that of canguilhem, have not “used" the history in an instrumental way, but have reconfigured history itself to the extent that they have transformed the epistemology: we could speak in this regard of a kind of “double articulation” between history and epistemology, where one is reflected in the other and thanks to this double articulation it is significantly re-articulated. epistemology knows through history that concepts, categories, errors and truths are values and change constantly, history knows thanks to epistemology that the values of change are impermanent, but that are reflected in its own reconstructions. we know that this has led foucault, for example, to elaborate that new form of historicization, which he called “archeology” and of which we have just seen the mention made by canguilhem in a 1957 writing, thus much earlier than the foucaultian practice. this, although said so briefly, has the consequence that a history (in particular the history of science) is always strategically valued, and that history as an independent science, with its own epistemological status and its own method, does not exist. “the object of the history of science – canguilhem writes – cannot be delimited by a decision that assigns its interest and importance to it. and on the other hand, it is always like that, even when this decision only obeys a tradition that is uncritically observed” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 18). the term bachelard has given to this situation is “recurring history” (récourant), in the sense of history that reflects (recurs) the values of the present through which it considers the past.23 however, while bachelard held this recurrence within the strictly scientific realm – even though his work on the imaginary shows that this was a bit tight (canguilhem 2015 [1957], 22 one can also think simply of the polemics between internalist history and external history in the 1960s and 1970s, on which canguilhem himself takes a position in the first, introductive chapter of etudes d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. 23 it should be noted the affinity, with regard to the term “decision”, with what the historian m. de certeau would have sustained a few years later about history in general, in l’ecriture de l’histoire (1975, 96). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 22 736)24 – he inserted it into a sort of scientific truth research program, valiantly determined and autonomous,25 canguilhem has been able to extend it to a more extensive and contextual historicization of human life and action: the values are therefore no longer only those internal to the scientific discourse itself, but also the external ones (although the old distinction internalism / externalism has been questioned by him in his article “l’objet de l’histoire des sciences”). this is what canguilhem intends when he writes that the history of science is always “a fully meaningful history” (in the sense of attribution of meaning to the decision that “cuts out” the objects).26 above all because many terms are overdetermined, i.e., they are used significantly in multiple contexts – for example the term “regulator” has “a history composed of theology, astronomy, technology, medicine and even sociology of knowledge”, so their intellectual existence occurs simultaneously in different times – (canguilhem 1977, 83). the history of truth is neither linear nor monotonous. a revolution in cosmology does not necessarily imply a similar revolution in biology. the history of science should make us more attentive to the fact that scientific discoveries, in a certain order of phenomena, for their possible degradation into ideologies, can assume an obstacle to the theoretical work underway in another order. but it also happens that this theoretical work, at its beginnings, and especially in areas where experimental evidence still needs a lot of time to be established, acquires itself the form of an ideology. (canguilhem 1977, 102-103) here then epistemology can “guide” the work of historians, in the sense that it allows them to discriminate between the different overdeterminations and to operate precisely a choice, a decision thanks to certain scientific values (obviously also historically determined, but this time aware of it). and it does so strategically to validate a value system in which it believes, that is to say a de-cision, a cropping of the reality plan that conforms to the organization of discourse and the conceptual structure of which it is representative, and which helps to constitute. “the object of the history of science cannot be delimited by a decision that assigns its interest and its importance” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 18). in these last two elements is the “dialectical” play (as bachelard called it) – but it would be better to say “vital” (as canguilhem calls it) – of scientific knowledge and of its historiography: every knowledge, like every concept and every theory, represents a state of affairs, not only because it is formed within it, but also because it defends it and valorizes it (even the language we speak of is historically already given, before we speak it); but at the same time (to the extent that it is valorized), it is expanded, modified, articulated, contributing to its formation both by consolidating and deepening aspects, and by inventing and creating new theories or knowledge. in this movement the starting situation is transformed, grows, changes and can even be overwhelmed (this is its vital character):27 when one wants to make history of it, then it must be “history of formation, deformation and rectification of scientific concepts” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 235) and not a simple, more or less cumulative serial chain. 24 canguilhem knows very well the connection between the open rationalism and the imagination in bachelard. 25 as bachelard says explicitly in the last pages of his la formation de l’esprit scientifique (1983 [1937]), but also in his l’activité rationaliste de la physique contemporaine (1951). 26 on the meaning of “meaningful history” see (jones 2007, 57-75). 27 in the entry “life” written by canguilhem for the encyclopédie universelle, he characterizes life as a work of preferences and exclusions, i. e., decisions, affirmations of norms and therefore of values: “to live is to enhance the circumstances and the objects of one’s own experience, it is preferring or excluding means, solutions, movements. life is the opposite of a relationship of indifference with the environment” (canguilhem 1989, 547). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 23 in short, there is a difference between the history of theories and the history of concepts, because there are differences between various types of history in all areas of human life. p. macheray, commenting on this aspect of canguilhem’s work, explains it: “canguilhem’s aim is to give value to the idea of a history of science, trying to identify, behind the science that hides its own history, the real history that governs and constitutes science. it is therefore a matter of researching history outside of science itself, thus affirming that this history consists in the passage from a “we do not know” to a “we know”. it is also the effort to think of science in its real body, the concept, rather than in its ideal legality, constituted by the theory in its complete form” (macherey 2011, 47). that is why in the famous intervention of 1966 (which later became the introductory essay of etudes d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences), canguilhem defines well what the object of history (of science) consists of. citing bachelard, koyré and metzger (and therefore holding firmly in the field of epistemological history and referring to scholars strongly engaged in philosophy), he claims that the history of science is “composed of discourses on discourses held on nature” of certain objects (such as crystals, in the case of metzger). discourses that initially were not “good speeches”, but that precisely after their development certain objects (for example crystals) became scientific objects. making history means making history of objects that are “themselves a history and have a history, while science is the science of an object that is not history and has no history”. this is why the object of the history of science cannot be identified with the object of the sciences (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 16). “crystals are a given object”, explains canguilhem, also with respect to the science that takes them as the object of a knowledge to be obtained, and for this reason these objects are independent, so much so that they are called “natural objects”. but a natural object is not a scientific object, says canguilhem, citing implicitly (perhaps without knowing or remembering it) a very important epistemological clarification that federigo enriques had already done in 1906 (enriques 1906, 58-59). nature, in itself, outside of any discourse held about its objects, has nothing scientific about it. crystal is nothing but a particular object with a certain form and in a certain space, and that it is not said to be exactly as it will be when it will be scientifically identified. natural objects are in fact indeterminate (that is, things that are not yet delimited, or whose delimitation belongs to a use of some kind). “it is science that constitutes its own objects”, from the moment in which it defines or invents a method to construct a theory that defines the limits within which the concept of the object is valid or not: for example which laws must obey a certain object to be declared a crystal or not: “the crystallography has been constituted starting from the moment in which the crystalline species has been defined by the constancy of the angle of the faces, by the symmetry systems, by the regularity of the truncations at the vertices as a function of the symmetry system” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 16-17) – which, for example, implies the problem of those objects called “quasicrystals”. it should be noted here that foucault would have taken flight starting from these assumptions, coming to question the language itself, within a discipline, because he too disciplined in his vocabulary and in his concepts (which are adapted and made operational for the discipline itself, revealing their intrinsic relationship of power). this means, to use a sartrian language, that history is always inevitably “in situation”, that is, it never has a beginning in the sense of “arché”, of origin. it was mentioned earlier: history does not have a beginning, although it has a history, because it is always a “start-up”, a starting point from something already given, already situated. archeology can be done, not prehistory. in reality it is a deeply bachelardian principle (it is not by chance that it appears in an intervention dedicated to bachelard) and is linked to one of bachelard’s axioms (he calls them precisely), which canguilhem agrees completely and on which he builds his entire philosophy of normal and pathological. the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 24 its epistemological foundation consists in recognizing the primary and inalienable role of errors, their “theoretical primacy”. it is thanks to the fundamentally “critical” function of science, to its strongly “polemical” character against the first intuitions of experience, that science – and therefore its development – comes “after”, that rationalism is a becoming, that abstraction is a goal. this is why the scientific object, normalized according to a precise theoretical-conceptual structure, “is second, though not derived, with respect to the natural object” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 17). the natural object is also the object of first intuition, which in bachelardian language is the first error. here is indeed what bachelard said: “truth acquires its meaning only at the end of a controversy. there can be no truth before. there are only first errors” (bachelard 1970 [1935], 87). so rationalism “is a philosophy that continues, it is never really a philosophy that begins” (bachelard 1962, 54), and therefore “for the scientific spirit to clearly outline a frontier is already to overcome it” (bachelard 1970, 80). but while for bachelard the error is an obstacle and represents the pre-science, something to overcome and eliminate (or preserve only for the erudite curiosity of a completely useless historiography), for canguilhem the error is a truth, a different truth, which belonged to a different context, and it is of this difference that history must know how to account. but this difference also testifies to the inexhaustible openness of our scientific knowledge understood as a form of life. the error is conceived as another truth, that is, as an historical experience of circumstantial truth to be recovered and respected (in its historical validity, because nothing is ever completely exceeded, and things, concepts, or at least some terms, can come back ... thanks to their metaphorical-analogical value, to their open evocative power, which is then a poetic and poietic power). the “monsters” in biology testify to it darwinian. “what are still today many living and well-living forms, if not normalized monsters [...]? consequently, if life makes sense, it must be admitted that there may be loss of meaning, risk of aberration or illness. [...]”. but then, if life is meaning and concept, how to conceive knowledge? it was mentioned above: for canguilhem, knowledge is life, it is a form of life. but since knowledge “is the history of errors and the history of victories over error”, then perhaps “must we admit that man has become such by mutation, by a hereditary error? would life come by mistake to this living being capable of error? in fact, human error is probably one with the errance” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 364). the “errance” is the restless human variation that does not find its niche where to live permanently, in the constant search for information that it needs to live. man moves in search of information thanks to his techniques, thanks to his mistakes and his ability to recognize and overcome them. the philosophy of life presented to us in this way is an erratic philosophy of openness and variance. “consequently, if the a priori is in things, if the concept is in life, being subjects of knowledge only means being dissatisfied with the sense found. subjectivity is then only dissatisfaction. but perhaps life itself is there” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 364). in the book la connaissance de la vie adds: “a living genus [...] will seem vital to us only to the extent that it will prove fruitful, that is, capable of producing novelties, even if at first sight they are imperceptible” (canguilhem 1976, 205). in this respect, canguilhem seems to me to be particularly careful to defend the bachelardian approach of an open and plural epistemology by the very fact of its irreducible and very vital discursive historicity (therefore technical, not ontological). not surprisingly, in the last pages of his speech on the subject of the history of science, he explains that it was bachelard who taught that for this irreducibility “the history of science can only be precarious, called to its own rectification” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 20). like life, in short. so the history not only comes “after”, but also comes “while”, that is, in the decision itself that traces its becoming: its temporality will be dense, opaque, viscous and liquid (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 19 and 277), multiple and differential, whit his inconstant and intertwined rhythms who are internal to the concepts. “a well made history, whatever the history is, is the one that manages to make the opacity of time sensitive, and in some sense its thickness” (canguilhem 1983 [1968], 277). nothing more to do with the clear and limpid development of the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 25 an idea or a discovery, nor with that bachelardian history placed under the heel of epistemology and that “discovers in the past the progressive formations of truth”, rationalized, normalized and abstract, which would determine “the absolute positivity of scientific progress” for “an ever-increasing truth” (bachelard 1951, 38; 1972, 86; gattinara 1998, 213-217). if its object is a construction, and it is also history of a history, that is, a history of a discourse that is based on the articulation of words, propositions, concepts, ideas, contexts, relationships, etc., then its field of forces extends beyond the specifically scientific sphere: indeed, speaking in terms of science, already presupposes a historically and ideologically determined position, which canguilhem takes very much to underline and defend,28 but which today we have learned to critically consider. we must be careful – canguilhem explains to us anyway – not to let ourselves be taken in haste, or by the ease of a logical reconstruction that pushes us to make the moments of the time transparent and linear. we have to consider the thickness of time itself and its multiplicity, its coexisting and dense rhythms of innovation and survivors, its hesitations, its discards and its jumps. a well-made history of science “heals us” from this very ideological impatience (canguilhem 1977). but then, when foucault, or michel serres, began to escape from the history of science, mixing it with concepts, ideas, practices of exclusion or inclusion, policies and poetics, the forms of knowledge-powers and policies and practices of the truths have done nothing but draw the consequences from this approach of the discourse on the history of the sciences and on history in general, contributing to a revision of the “making history” itself. canguilhem, as we know, has not always appreciated it (especially towards serres29): but this was the implication of an open epistemology, with which we still know and must deal with today. both foucault and serres, each in his own way, have in fact questioned what canguilhem never wanted to discuss: science itself as a discursive formation, as a separate discourse from other knowledge, as plural sciences that recognize a status that unites them in a specific form of knowledge called “scientific”. and only for this epistemology as a study of the constituents of a claim to scientific claim, and history as a study of the formation and affirmation – or of the domination and imposition – of these constituents, could help the scholar. in short, it is a task that is still open to us.30 references althusser, louis. 1974. philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants. paris: maspéro. bachelard, gaston. 1970 [1935]. idéalisme discursif. in études. paris: vrin. bachelard, gaston. 1962. le rationalisme appliqué. paris: puf. bachelard, gaston. 1951. l’activité rationaliste de la physique contemporaine. paris: puf. bachelard, gaston. 1936. la dialectique de la durée. paris: boivin. bachelard, gaston. 1972. l’engagement rationaliste. paris: puf. bachelard, gaston. 1983 [1937]. la formation de l’esprit scientifique. paris: vrin. bensaude-vincent, bernadette. 2010. serres, historien des sciences. cahiers de l’herne 94: 37 46. canguilhem, georges. 1977. idéologie et rationalité dans l’histoire des sciences de la vie, paris: vrin. 28 he also defends bachelard, of which he underlines the “double” history of the sciences: the epistemologically valued one, sancionnée, and the passed one, périmée, in (canguilhem 1977, 32-33 and 55). 29 see his strong criticism of the positions of serres, judged arrogant and unable to fully understand bachelard, in (canguilhem 1977, 28-29). 30 an old task, in fact, since p. macherey asked for it in 1964, see (macherey 2011, 69). the relationship between history and epistemology in georges canguilhem and gaston bachelard enrico castelli gattinara 26 canguilhem, georges. 1983 [1968]. études d’histoire et philosophie des sciences. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1972 [1966]. le normal et le pathologique. paris: puf. canguilhem, georges, georges lapassade, jacques piquemal, jacques ulmann. 2003 [1962]. du développement à l’évolution. paris: puf. canguilhem, georges. 2015 [1957]. sur une épistémologie concordataire. in oeuvres complètes tome iv. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1980. le cerveau et la pensée. prospective et santé 14: 81-98. canguilhem, georges. 1975. la connaissance de la vie. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1976. la conoscenza della vita. translated by franco bassani. bologna: il mulino. canguilhem, georges. 1971. sur la science et la contre-science. in hommage à jean hyppolite. paris: puf. canguilhem, georges. 1977 [1955]. la formation du concept de réflexe. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1989. vie. in encyclopædia universalis, xxiii: 546-553. castelli gattinara, enrico. 1998. les inquiétudes de la raison. paris: vrin, ehess. certeau, michel de. 1975. l’écriture de l’histoire. paris: gallimard. cutro, antonella. 2010. il valore dei concetti. sesto san giovanni: mimesis. daston, lorraine. 1994. historical epistemology. in questions of evidence. proof, practice and persuasion across the disciplines, edited by j. chandler, a. i. davidson, h. d. harootunian. chicago: university of chicago press. daston, lorraine, ed. 2000. biographies of scientific objects. chicago: university of chicago press. davidson, arnold i. 2001. the emergence of sexuality: historical epistemology and the formation of concepts. cambridge ma: harvard university press. debru, claude. 2004. georges canguilhem, science et non-science. paris: rue d’ulm. enriques, federigo. 1906. problemi della scienza. bologna: zanichelli. foucault, michel. 1969. les mots et les choses. paris: gallimard. gingras, yves. 2010. naming without necessity: on the genealogy and uses of the label ‘historical epistemology’. cirst, note de recherche (01): 1-17. http://www.chss.uqam.ca/portals/0/docs/articles/2010-01.pdf. hacking, ian. 2002. historical ontology. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. jones, mary m. on meaning and existence: canguilhem’s approach to the history of science. in the normal and its orders. reading g. canguilhem, edited by g. iwele, l. kerr, v. y. mudimbe. ottawa, canada: les editions malaïka. lecourt, dominique. 1969. l’épistémologie historique de gaston bachelard. paris: vrin. macherey, pierre. 2009. de canguilhem à foucault. paris: la fabrique éditions. macherey, pierre. 2011. da canguilhem a foucault. translated by paolo godani. pisa: ets. poovey, mary. 1998. a history of the modern fact: problems of knowledge in the sciences of the wealth and society. chicago: university of chicago press. sertoli, gieuseppe. 1983. epistemologia e storia delle scienze in georges canguilhem. nuova corrente, 90-91: 101-171. microsoft word 3pisano vincent layout 3 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 3-9 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2018 – this is an open access article idtc dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education guest editor (raffaele pisano, lille university, france | idtc president) introduction raffaele pisano1 philippe vincent2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ____________________________________________________________________________________ in order to inquire into the foundations of the history and philosophy of science & its connection to education, more specifically, teaching science-nos, the inter-divisional teaching commission (idtc)3 reached high-level researchers to share their most recent works and findings in methods and cognitive modelling as the idtc special issue on hps-&education. by combining approaches of natural sciences & humanities in the investigation of the topics and promoting the cooperation between teaching educators, historians of science, historians and philosophers of science and specialist, the following articles offer an interesting influence on the actual debate from scientific, educationally and culturally standpoints. in the context of nowadays constraints and technological progress regarding the teaching of physical and mathematical sciences, the investigation of the relevant scientificeducational questions is becoming more and more emergent. as such, and since science is synonymous with modernity and progress, research has to be evolving with its time as well as nature of science, scientific mediation, popularization of science and technique, and teaching methods and contents. moreover, physics (pisano 2009; pisano and capecchi 2015), 1 raffaele pisano [orcid: 0000-ooo2-8040-5088] is a full professor at the lille university. address: building b, 3rd floor, office 221. france. he is also associated to archive poincaré, lorraine university, france and affiliated to hps school, sydney university, australia and centre for philosophy of natural and social science, london school of economics and political science, united kingdom. email: raffaele.pisano@univ-lille.fr 2 philippe vincent [orcid: 0000-0002-8632-2566] is a ph.d. student at the lille university. address: building b, 3rd floor, office 221. france. e-mail: philippe.vincent06@gmail.com 3 the inter-divisional teaching commission (idtc) is an inter-commission of the division of logic, methodology, and philosophy of science and technology (dlmpst) and the division of history of science and technology (dhst); as parts of the international union of history and philosophy of science and technology (iuhpst). the general assembly of the dlmps at its nancy congress (july 2011) agreed to an earlier dhst (iuhpst/dlmpst/dhst) resolution to establish an inter-divisional teaching commission (idtc) and its officers. the inter-divisional teaching commission wants to offer a website-platform to promote its activities, opening discussions, grants and news and publications relevant to the history and philosophy of science & education. more detail here: https://www.idtciuhps.com introduction – methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education raffaele pisano philippe vincent 4 mathematics (dhombres 1992) and science education (pisano and bussotti 2015a, 2015c) are also a complex social phenomenon (pisano 2016) since they are influenced by the labour market and the elementary knowledge of sciences required by anyone in the social-economic daily life. the newly found advances related to reflections on methods and modelling in teaching sciences, theoretical and practices as well as the historical, historiographical and philosophical analyses done and peer-reviewed will be explored in the following pages. combining different disciplines, more general and broader questions about nature of science and teaching/science education will also be discussed in their relationship through the scope of historical epistemology of science, psychology, history of science and even computing science. the importance of the history of science methods and related cognitive processes for teaching (really scientifically) the sciences is an invaluable pedagogical tool – which could be reasonably better implemented both in the curricula and lectures. of course, even if managing to completely merge science–with–its–history or much better, into–the–history, a foundational scientific learning–teaching programme might naturally arise: i.e., a) reading primary sources, b) understating/justify conflicts among theories, modelling and results,4 c) understanding the role played by technics, technologies and related types of machinery within a scientific apparatus, etc. on the contrary, a consequence is a sort of positivist and notionistic teaching sciences, worst if full of repetitive exercises. on the other hand, also by rehabilitating – critically – previous works and results, i.e., by the likes of ernst mach (1838– 1916), alexandre koyré5 (1892–1964), jean william fritz piaget (1896–1980), karl raimund popper (1902–1994) and thomas s. kuhn (1922–1996) it is possible to create cognitive processes in order to contextualize fundamental questions such as, i.e., how to acquire a scientific critical knowledge taking into account the historical and epistemological foundations of sciences (pisano and bussotti 2014, 2015d; 2017a; 2017b; pisano, fichant, bussotti and oliveira 2017; ). however, if time is undoubtedly one of the primary and most common constraints – as above cited – we should also mention the actual trend of transmitting knowledge by producing convictions, and not criticism-opinions, is, for sure, a challenge on its own. as we live in a dynamic world in constant evolution, so it is the case for not only methods and models of science education/teaching science, but also for how students, and courses, which also vary in sociocultural, background and levels, represent to themselves how science and its foundations work; and what is the relationship science technicstechnology. for instance, students often consider science as a work of collection of positive (only) discoveries or achievements, one to another, mainly by male and by geniuses (liouville 1836). all that, by a unique method and cognitive positivist processes, the scientific method, which wrongly interpreted in the centuries, leading citizens and young students, closer and closer to the idea of a universal truth: each formula, each law, each principle, axiom and theorem are right, a priori because the science. on the contrary, no truth exists in the (history of) science, which is research of how the science work, and not what science is. in fact, science and history of science, unlike religion, do not answer why, but how. on the other side of the coin, a more tangible down to earth critical question is the question of representations in educational experiments and representational practices in science education. in our era, teaching is more and more centred on new technologies and the web, but no matter what the actual representational vehicles are, their use is to help with the acquisition of a better understanding, to obtain some new knowledge (reuleaux 1876). the representations (diagrams, icons, images, applets, etc.) are used everywhere, from scientific research to science education, and they are a natural means that allow us to link 4 cf. (bussotti and pisano 2014, 2017; bussotti and pisano 2017). 5 see: (pisano, agassi and drozdova 2017). introduction – methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education raffaele pisano philippe vincent 5 several disciplines. as a (universal) tool, they are the perfect apparatus to explore interdisciplinary teaching and interdisciplinarity in general. depending on the chosen framework, they provide us with a very fertile environment to work with and on which to raise essential questions. what about using these scientific representative apparatus and cognitive modelling into the history of science? for instance, within a framework of history and historical epistemology of science, one could use the representation of the atom given by the rutherford model (1911) to make a link to the arabic juridical tradition that classified three orders of argumentation by parallelism: exemplification, symmetry and analogy; to teach epistemology, logics, history of physics and physics (pisano 2017; pisano and bussotti 2016). in this particular conceptual window, another link to the history of physics can easily be made using sadi carnot’s book réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propres à développer cette puissance (carnot s 1824; pisano and gillispie 2014) to illustrate what a symmetry is in the context; since carnot put in parallel a difference in height to produce work and a difference of heat to produce work: from the ideas that have been established so far, we are sufficiently justified in comparing the motive power of heat with that of a fall of water. the motive power in both cases has a maximum value which cannot be exceeded […]. the motive power of a fall of water depends on its heights and on the amount of liquid. the motive power of heat likewise depends on the amount of caloric that is used […]. (carnot s 1824, 28)6 from a methodological standpoint, and within history and epistemology of science, the argumentation by parallelism plays a fundamental role in solving problems (rahman and iqbal 2018). as a core process for scientific reasoning, since the human mind works by association and when confronted to the unknown, we tend to drag back to something better known, it is at the base of science, epistemology and didactics. this main key idea of trying to seek and find scientific-logical similarities in order to draw a parallel between what is meant to be explained and what is already known – which combines heuristic procedures (with which the parallelism is established) and deductive procedures – , thus also providing didactics with an excellent tool for exploring the ins and out of a subject as well as its limits, and finally also providing an invaluable critical mind training. for specific scientific disciplines, it seems necessary to study the role played by images, metaphors, comparisons and analogies in their historical and scientific context as they are an essential part of the scientific framework they are used in. thus, by introducing this type of analysis, the intrinsic limits of understanding an object within its framework can be overcome by reaching/thinking out of the box. in particular, as the end goal is to widen the field of view to reach a better grasp on a concept, object or idea, and because of the argumentation by parallelism’s nature, it can easily lead to rich interdisciplinary exchanges which in turn could be a source of complementary discussions. therefore, the teachers who should be able to navigate 6 “[…] on peut comparer avec assez de justesse la puissance motrice de la chaleur à celle d’une chute d’eau : toutes deux ont un maximum que l’on ne peut pas dépasser […]. la puissance motrice d’une chute d’eau dépend de sa hauteur et de la quantité du liquide; la puissance motrice de la chaleur [calorique] dépend aussi de la quantité de calorique employé […].” (carnot s 1824, 28). translation by robert fox in carnot s 1986, 72; carnot s 1978, 86; gillispie and pisano 2014. see also: (clapeyron 1834); (clausius 1850, 1867, 1868-1869); (joule 1847, 1965); (fox 1969, 1971); (lavoisier 1784, 1789 [1937], 1862– 1893); (laplace 1822); (poisson 1823); (lamé 1836); (reech 1853); (reinhard 1950–1952); (planck [1897] 1903); (thomson 1848–1849, 1851ab, 1882–1911); (mach 1986; smith and wise 1989); (ngô ch 2009); (pisano 2007, 2010); (pisano and capecchi 2009, 2013); (pisano and bussotti 2015b); (taton 1976); (pisano, anakkar, pellegrino and nagels 2018). introduction – methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education raffaele pisano philippe vincent 6 between different disciplines (interdisciplinary by cognitive and operative mixed aims) and to explain as many times as necessary in many different ways and for different kinds of audiences with different cultural backgrounds are necessarily using such tools and need to be aware of them and how to use them properly as they are forming the next generations of scientists. on the papers thanks to cutting-edge researches done by prominent specialists this collection of contributions represents an outstanding amount of work and thorough analyses of the interdisciplinary environment in constant evolution that is science education, and this, always with great respect towards historical context and nature of science in mind. andrea amato in “knowledge within anxiety” explores how the humanity acquires knowledge even though the human being is not able to explicit the reasons behind their “gnosis success”. first employing popper and the transcendental statement concerning the possibility or impossibility of knowing as “trying to guess”, then the author argues “whether the reason is the most suitable faculty to ensure the positive development of knowledge”. in the paper, the author assumes that the “comparison between theories in terms of their complexities” could indicate us some progress. within arabic-islamic tradition, “‘farai sicome tòe amaestrato’ (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about mediaeval didactics of algebra” by nadia ambrosetti provides a rich analysis and studies of the medieval tradition of the 9th century al-khwarizmi’s handbook on algebra; to solve equations compared with its latin translation, later translated in italian vernacular, focusses on the mathematical contents and on the different historical backgrounds and on the teaching style used for them. brandon boesch in “representing in the student laboratory” examines the role in science education of the philosophical discussion about the representational practice in science through four case studies. he calls them “educational laboratory experiments”. the author also faces three special items: the analysis of how students of science are taught to represent the role of the historical development of these experiments are especially important for the research concerning science education and how to engage students within their disciplines. in order to get a more comprehensive view of the core subject of this special issue, francesco crapanzano in “strange trajectories: naive physics, epistemology and history of science” presents a renewal in questions related to learning science and mechanics during 1970s and 1980s for those physicists interested in teaching and experimental psychologists before exploring mccloskey studies and “layman physics”, by paolo bozzi. these compiled pieces of information represent a significant contribution to the history and epistemology of science for investigating naïve physics. antonino drago in “a suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise” discusses the changes in science education that happened along the past fifty years through four paradigms in a brief, coherent and straightforward manner before exploring the discovery of two dichotomies suggested by the historical foundations of science: a need urge for a renewal in science education. the author shares his suggestions for some innovations to remedy the problems encountered by physics teachers willing to teach “a truly scientific knowledge” to their students in a very detailed and precise manner. andrea reichenberger in “how to teach history of philosophy and science: a digital based case study” presents the cases of émilie du châtelet referring to classical mechanics and relativity theory within the frameworks of history and philosophy of physics. the author considers the integration of women’s contributions into the historiography of sciences might function as a critical instrument beyond pure narratives, which is necessary to re-evaluate the introduction – methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education raffaele pisano philippe vincent 7 historical debate on space and time as presented in classical textbooks by doing a praiseworthy analysis of the complex pattern of change from classical mechanics to the theory of relativity. michel roland in “what synergy between mathematics and physics is feasible or imaginable at the different level of education?” explores the apparent growing chiasm between mathematics and physics between degree courses and argues that for interdisciplinarity to take place in secondary schools; its value has to be demonstrated during the future teacher’s university education. the author emphasizes on a dual approach, to help students to have a better understanding of the concepts of derivatives and differentials with deductive and inductive inferences (and epistemological obstacles) and sets the stage for a panoramic view of the matter. in order to elaborate on the technological progress regarding the teaching of science and the newly found advances related to reflections on methods and modelling in teaching sciences, logan l. watts and peter barker deliver a profound example of gamification in “meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates”. when empirical research mostly focused on the impact of gamification on the motivation of students, in this paper, the authors analyze the related improvement of taught knowledge as a teaching strategy. the papers of this idtc special issue have been independently blind peer-refereed and followed transversal’s review policy. the authors’ contributions are in alphabetical order. the editors have respected individual authors’ different ideas and historical, philosophical, epistemological an educational/teaching accounts. therefore, the editor is not responsible for the contents. each of the eminent authors is responsible for his/her/their own opinions, which should be regarded as personal scientific and experienced background. the authors are also univocally responsible for images, reprints, quotations, acknowledgments, and all related permissions/approvals displayed/not displayed in their papers. references bussotti, p., pisano, r. 2017. historical and philosophical details on leibniz’s planetary movements as physical-structural model. in: pisano, fichant, oliveira and bussotti 2017, pp. 49-92. bussotti, p., pisano, r. 2014. newton’s philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica “jesuit” edition: the tenor of a huge work. atti accademia nazionale lincei rendiconti lincei matematica e applicazioni 25:413–444 carnot, s. 1978 réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu sur les machinés propre à développer cette puissance, édition critique par fox robert. paris: j. vrin. carnot, s. 1986. reflexions on the motive power of fire: a critical edition with the surviving scientific manuscripts. translated and edited by robert fox. manchester: the manchester university press. clapeyron. 1834. mémoire sur la puissance motrice de la chaleur. journal de l‘école royale polytechnique xiv: 153–190 clausius, r. j. e. 1850. über die bewegende kraft der wärme und die gesetze, welche sich daraus für die wärmelehre selbst ableiten lassen. annalen der physik und chemie 79:368–397, 500 [english trans: id., on the motive power of heat and on the laws which can be deduced from it for the theory of heat itself. in: mendoza 1960, pp 73–74, 109–152] clausius r. j. e. 1867. the mechanical theory of heat: with its application to the steam engine and to the physical properties of bodies. translated by t. a. hirst. london: j. van voorst. clausius, r. j. e. 1868-1869. théorie mécanique de la chaleur, ii vols, french edition, translated by folie. paris: lacroix éditeur. dhombres j. 1992. 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(ed). a bridge between conceptual frameworks, science, society and technology studies. dordrecht: springer, pp 399-436. pisano, r., bussotti, p. 2015c. galileo in padua: architecture, fortifications, mathematics and “practical” science, lettera matematica pristem international: 209–221 pisano, r., bussotti, p. 2015d. historical and philosophical reflections on the culture of machines around the renaissance: machines, machineries and perpetual motion. acta baltica historiae et philosophiae scientiarum 3/1:69–87 introduction – methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education raffaele pisano philippe vincent 9 pisano, r., bussotti, p. 2014. historical and philosophical reflections on the culture of machines around the renaissance. how science and technique work? acta baltica historiae et philosophiae scientiarum 2/2:20–42 pisano, r., bussotti, p. 2016. a newtonian tale details on notes and proofs in geneva edition of newton’s principia. bulletin–journal of the british society for the history of mathematics 31/3:160-178 pisano, r., bussotti, p. 2017. the fiction of the infinitesimals in newton’s works: a note on the metaphoric use of infinitesimals in new. special issue isonomia 9:141-160 pisano, r., capecchi, d. 2009. la théorie analytique de la chaleur. notes on fourier and lamé. bulletin de la sabix 44:83–90 pisano, r., capecchi, d. 2013. conceptual and mathematical structures of mechanical science in the western civilization around the 18th century. almagest 4/2:86–121 pisano, r., capecchi, d. 2015. tartaglia’s science weights and mechanics in xvi century. selection from quesiti et invention diverse: books vii–viii. dordrecht: springer. planck, m. [1897] 1903. vorlesungen über thermodynamik. berlin: walter de gruyter. reprinted in english translation as treatise on thermodynamics. new york: dover. poisson, s. d. 1823. sur la vitesse du son. annales de chimie et de physique, xxiii: 5–16 reech, f. 1853. théorie générale des effets dynamiques de la chaleur. journal de mathématiques pures et appliquées xviii:357–378 reinhard, m. 1950–1952. le grand carnot. de l’ingénieur au conventionnel, 1753–1792. 2 vols. paris: hachette. reuleaux, f. 1876. kinematics of machinery. outlines of theory of machines. london: mcmillan & co. rahman, s., iqbal, m. 2018. unfolding parallel reasoning in islamic jurisprudence. epistemic and dialectical meaning within abū isḥāq al-shīrāzī’s system of co-relational inferences of the occasioning factor. arabic sciences and philosophy. cambridge university press, pp. 67-132. smith, c., wise, m. n. 1989. energy and empire: a biographical study of lord kelvin. cambridge. the cambridge university press. taton, a. (ed). 1976. sadi carnot et l’essor de la thermodynamique, table ronde du centre national de la recherche scientifique. école polytechnique, 11–13 juin 1974. éditions du centre national de la recherche scientifique, paris thomson, w. 1848–1849. on an absolute thermometric scale founded on carnot’s theory of the motive power of heat, and calculated from regnault’s observations. proceedings of the cambridge philosophical society 1/5:66–71 thomson, w. 1851a. on an absolute thermometric scale founded on carnot’s theory of the motive power of heat, and calculated from regnault’s observations. mathematical and physical papers, vol i. cambridge: the cambridge university press, pp. 100–106 thomson, w. 1851b. on the dynamical theory of heat, with numerical results deduced from mr joule’s equivalent of a thermal unit, and m. regnault’s observations on steam. mathematical and physical papers, vol i. cambridge: the cambridge university press, pp. 175–183 thomson, w. 1882–1911. an account of carnot’s theory of the motive power of heat with numerical results deduced from regnault’s experiments on steam. mathematical and physical papers by sir william thomson, vol i. cambridge: the cambridge university press, pp. 113-155. microsoft word 17barra layout 190 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 190-193 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article book review science and its historicity 1 condé, mauro l. “um papel para a história”: o problema da historicidade da ciência. [“a role for the history”: the problem of the historicity of science]. curitiba: editora universidade federal do paraná – ufpr, 2017. 171 p. r$ 30,00 isbn: 978-85-8480-116-9 reviewed by: eduardo salles de o. barra2 received: 10 march 2018. accepted: 15 april 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.17 ____________________________________________________________________________________ this is a book on the historicity of science. to say that science has a history may at first glance seem like a great triviality. for the simple fact of being a human construct, science was not born yesterday and has always undergone several changes in its most varied aspects; what we understand today as “science” has resulted from a long and repeated process involving continuities and ruptures with what preceded it – we all know about that, and this is enough to admit that science has a history. but it is by no means trivial that science has, besides an ordinary history, a certain historicity. it might well happen that to have a history was only a matter of fact about science, so that the ties with its past would be nothing more than mere contingencies. or again, it would not be unthinkable that the reach of historical circumstances to which science is subject did not exceed the more superficial or visible level of that activity – usually the one to which the layman has access and which constitutes the public image of the scientist’s work, such as laboratory practices, technological applications, etc. – in such a way that science, let us say, in itself would be minimally unaffected by these historical vicissitudes. in that case, it would no longer be imposing to admit that science has a history. the approach proposed by condé in “a role for the history”: the problem of the historicity of science, however, does not recommend this interpretation at all. for our author, the historicity of science is definitely not a mere contingency. on the contrary, it must be admitted as a matter of law over science, that is, a sine qua non condition for science to be what it is, from any point of view. 1a first version of this book review was published in portuguese as the foreword of the book “um papel para a história”: o problema da historicidade da ciência [“a role for the history”: the problem of the historicity of science]. i would like to thank the editora universidade federal do paraná [editora ufpr] for its kind permission to print it again in this english version. 2 eduardo salles o. barra is a professor in the department of philosophy at the federal university of paraná ufpr. address: rua dr. faivre, 405 – 6º andar – ed. d. pedro ii – curitiba – pr, brazil – cep 80060-140. email: eduardosobarra@gmail.com eduardo salles o. barra – book review 191 in general terms, the purpose of this book is to sustain “the perspective that the history of knowledge affects [that is, conditions] its final result”. to admit that history is a condition for the outcome of scientific investigations, means to assert that if history were otherwise, it is probable that certain results might not exist. as the reader will soon realize in the first few paragraphs to follow, our author is inclined to favor the stronger interpretation of this statement: without history, without science. the great source of inspiration for condé’s ideas on the historicity of science were the analyzes of one, until a short time ago, unknown polish scientist and intellectual named ludwik fleck (1896-1961). for fleck, in condé’s words, “there is no knowledge outside of its history”. but fleck’s thesis claimed by condé has another condition prior to historicity: “there is no knowledge outside the social”. in other words, knowledge does not occur as a relationship of a solitary subject to an isolated object, both disconnected from all social ties, such as family, economic, cultural, ethnic, religious, aesthetic, and other identities. on the contrary, these various social factors are necessary conditions for knowledge, in general, and for science in particular. the defense of a close nexus between science, history and society has nevertheless been the fortune and misery of philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science in the last decades. in this book the reader will have the opportunity to accompany with unusual richness of detail, the major episodes in the recent history of this field of science research – which fleck has suggestively called the “science of science” and which, more recently, the contemporary historiography has renamed as science studies. one of the main protagonists of this process was the american physicist and philosopher thomas kuhn (1922-1996). kuhn, in addition to being responsible for the rediscovery of fleck’s texts, was also the main forerunner of the “new image of science” built from the idea of historicity. however, kuhn was perhaps the strongest critic of those philosophers, sociologists, and historians who radicalized this view to the point of reducing science to a “negotiation” among their agents (scientists, engineers, public managers, capitalists, etc.). the relevance of kuhn’s ideas to the historiographic and analytic project developed by condé is therefore based on avoiding the misunderstandings of the underestimation of the historicity of science as well as its overestimation. let us see an example that illustrates how the underestimation of its historicity gives rise to a distorted image of science. this example has been taken from a recent publication with wide repercussions in brazil. this is a segment from the presidency of the brazilian society for the advancement of science (sbpc) addressed to the federal chamber, criticizing a bill that allowed the teaching of creationist doctrines in science classes at the elementary school level. the line of contention adopted by the sbpc initially allows us to assume that the historicity of science would occupy a prominent place in its argument by maintaining that “the discovery and understanding of the evolution process represents one of the greatest achievements in the history of science”. this is a mistake. a few more paragraphs follow and then we can read: creationism is not a scientific theory, it does not satisfy the essential condition of being tested, refuted, confronted with reality by means of observations and experiences, in such a way that one can verify whether its statements are in accordance with the facts. according to popper, “the criterion of scientificity of a theory lies in the possibility of invalidating it, refuting it, or even testing it”. systems that cannot be refuted are not science, they are dogmas.3 3of. sbpc-122/dir. november 28, 2014, são paulo. available in: http://www.sbpcnet.com.br/site/arquivos/arquivo_402.pdf. consulted january 12, 2015. eduardo salles o. barra – book review 192 however, the reader does not think that evolutionism and its possible virtues will be the subject of discussion in this book. neither here, nor further on, what matters is not evolutionism itself nor any of its possible rival systems. this recent episode of the famous debate was exclusively invoked here to serve the purpose of illustrating, with an example, the unfortunate frequency with which scientists, even the most dedicated and zealous ones, state impoverished opinions about their own work. it is curious that they do not suspect that some of the “greatest achievements in the history of science” could not be sustained if they were effectively subjected to the rigor of the popperian falsification test; not by negligence of its proponents, but by mere practical impracticability. and yet this fact would have little or no effect on scientificity – or, if one prefers, rationality – on any of those “greatest achievements” in the history of science. this book, by providing a complete historical picture of philosophical, historiographical, and sociological debates that have provided far more sensible alternatives to explain that certain achievements of science are larger and more impactful than others, provides an excellent guide for all those who are dissatisfied with such an impoverished image of science, as that above and of its subsidiaries. “a role for the history”: the problem of the historicity of science will also show that the misunderstanding in these matters is not, however, an exclusivity for those who underestimate the relevance of the historicity of science. it also occurs among those who overvalue it. to counteract the overvaluation of the historicity of science – which, for the most part, corresponds to the conceptions gathered under the label of “relativists” – kuhn once performed an exercise which, in general, few critics bother to do. he set out not only to point out the weaknesses of his opponents’ arguments, but also to understand why they thought the way they thought and, most importantly, why they came to such unreasonable conclusions – “mad deconstruction” in kuhn’s own words. to identify the source of the risks involved in overestimating the historicity of science, kuhn argued that relativists thought the way they thought because, early in their analysis, they adopted a very impoverished image of science. facing science from this impoverished image, it was predictable that they could find no correspondence between this image and the results gathered through their historical and sociological research of science. the next step would be to denounce the misleading nature of the adopted image, which would, in general, nullify any possibility of science being viewed as an enterprise governed by rational parameters. it was left to them, after all, to proclaim social factors as the only ones capable of explaining and sustaining scientific practices. on the basis of this reconstruction of the strategy of argumentation employed by certain philosophers, historians, and sociologists, so-called “relativists”, kuhn wanted to show that, in order to deal with this way of thinking, it is not enough to refute their arguments; it is also necessary to articulate a new point of departure on the nature and dynamics of scientific practices that justify both its historicity and its rationality. i believe that mauro condé’s reflections in this book should provide readers with something of similar relevance. in a direct way, condé fights relativism with the thesis he collected in fleck’s texts: the historicity of science. for the polish author, this is not a simple methodological thesis. it is a genuine epistemological thesis, which means that it is something deeply rooted in the very concept of knowledge. adopting this or that method may be a mere matter of opportunity or convenience, and several different methods can lead to the same result. but this does not occur with the concept of knowledge. if we consider knowledge to be essentially a social practice, we will have to analyze science from the social relations in which it is embedded. but if, on the contrary, we consider that knowledge is a private relation between an individual and any object, we must, with all the losses involved, be able to imagine a conception of knowledge adjusted to authentic robinsons crusoe living solitarily in his cognitive insulations. eduardo salles o. barra – book review 193 considering the thesis of the historicity of science as an epistemological thesis, condé believes that it can play the role of imposing a better resistance to the historical and sociological relativism already combated by kuhn. perhaps this is the most original and insightful aspect of the analysis presented to the reader. in order to articulate his answer to kuhn’s challenge to the need for a “new image of science”, condé draws inspiration from the latest works of the celebrated austrian philosopher ludwig wittgenstein (1889-1951), according to which, to occupy a central position in the structuring of human relations and productions, language should be investigated not from a logical point of view, but from the point of view of the ordinary language, from its use and the meanings it incorporates. wittgenstein recommended, among other things, that language and its grammar (taken here in a broader sense than the simple record of the rules of grammar from a particular language) be adopted as the starting point and arrival of any philosophical analysis. in keeping with this perspective, condé trusts that an authentic “new image of science” must emerge precisely from a type of “grammar of science”, designed to allow us to think that science “constitutes its own rules of operation and thus it is autonomous, although not independent of the society that created it”. one sees, then, that the originality of the investigative trajectory of condé lies, in particular, in the way in which he proposes to radicalize the criticism of relativism. in this regard, condé considers that even kuhn’s criticisms of relativism did not reach the radicality sought after because the american philosopher remained faithful to the kantian approach, which means not abandoning the transcendental treatment of knowledge in favor of the grammatical treatment recommended by wittgenstein. the obvious advantage of this way of proceeding would be to recover the possibility of facing the adversary in his own field, since, as condé never fails to point out and contests, certain versions of sociological relativism also claim wittgenstein’s ideas as one of his main sources of inspiration. for all this, the book “a role for the history”: the problem of the historicity of science brings together all the elements to multiply the perspectives and divide the opinions on the recent studies on the sciences. by provoking divergent non-linear views from analyzes constructed from a single point of view, this book will favor the recognition that both relativists and their traditional critics, risk wrecking the indispensable historicity of science into complete irrelevance – even if they do so for reasons diametrically opposed; in one case for overestimating it, and in the other, for underestimating it. the reader will have the opportunity to recognize why this debate is not resolved as a simple “coin toss”, that is, as if our alternatives were summarized on only two sides, symmetrical and, in a way, complementary. but for this, it will be important to be prepared to honestly suspect that science is nothing like any of its many images of broad mediatic appeal, and that therefore it is always urgent to renew the critical exercise of confronting your convictions and your doubts with solid alternatives. a reader eager to embark on this critical adventure will find in these reflections of condé a counterpoint of special interest and utility. 242 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 242-246 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article book review a contribution to the newtonian scholarship: the “jesuit edition” of isaac newton’s principia, a research in progress by paolo bussotti and raffaele pisano reviewed by: gustavo rodrigues rocha1 received: 13 march 2017. accepted: 12 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.21 _____________________________________________________________________________ the mathematical principles of natural philosophy (philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica in latin), hereafter principia, a three-volume tour de force written by isaac newton, and published in 1687, is the seminal work in the history of modern physics. american theoretical physicist and nobel laureate, steven weinberg, remarked in his 1972 work on cosmology and gravitation that “all that has happened since 1687 is a gloss on the principia” (apud pask, 2013, 14). the second edition of the principia was published in 1713, and reprinted and corrected in 1714, incorporating a more comprehensive theory of the moon, the motions of comets, and the precession of the equinoxes, and, at the end of the whole book, the famous general scholium. the third edition of the principia was published in 1726. newton made some additions to the third edition, including new explanations for the resistance of fluids in “book 2” (which resumes “book 1”, de motu corporum, “on the motions of bodies”), as well as a more detailed explanation for the moon’s orbit and the role of gravitation, and, in “book 3” (de mundi systemate, “on the system of the world”), new observations of jupiter and the comets. the first translation into english was published in 1729, by andrew motte, based on the 1726 third edition of the principia. the so-called “jesuit edition,” which is the focus of bussotti’s and pisano’s project, was also based on the third edition of newton’s principia, published between 1739 and 1742, in four volumes, by the minim frias thomas le seur (1703-1770), françois jacquier (1711-1788), both of whom were french priests, and jean-louis calandrini (1703-1758), a swiss mathematician. this edition includes several commentaries, explanations and addendums to the principia that did not originate with newton. newton’s masterpiece has ever since been the focus of studies and exegesis, translations and commentaries, interpretations and reformulations. the geometrical procedures of newton were gradually replaced by analytical procedures. the editors of the “jesuit edition”, for instance, made use of the formalism 1gustavo rodrigues rocha is a professor at the state university of feira de santana – uefs (brazil) and a visiting scholar at the university of california, berkeley (usa). address: universidade estadual de feira de santana – uefs, av. transnordestina, s/n, campus universitário (módulo 5), departamento de física (dfis), novo horizonte, feira de santana/ba, brazil, 44.036-900. emails: grrocha@uefs.br and grrocha@berkeley.edu. gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 243 developed by leonhard euler (1707-1783), outlined in his work mechanica (1736), to rewrite principia’s propositions into differential equations. the works by pierre varignon (1645-1722), david gregory (16591708), guillaume françois antoine marquis de l’hôpital (1661-1704), johann bernoulli (1667-1748), abraham de moivre (1667-1754), john keil (1671-1748), jacob hermann (1678-1733) and willem jacob’s gravesande (1688-1742) are among the first contributions to physics derived from the exegesis and expansion of the outcomes of the principia. in addition to the preceding historical editions, there are several modern editions of the principia. the analytic historical exegeses of newton's third edition by scholars such as bernard cohen (1914-2003), known for his works introduction to newton’s principia (1971) and the newtonian revolution (1980), and alexandre koyré (1892-1964), known for his work newtonian studies (1965), are among the most outstanding examples in the twentieth century. peter and ruth wallis collected the immense quantities of new material relating to newton up to the time of cohen and koyré in newton and newtoniana 1672-1975, a bibliography. the works by brackenridge (1995), de gandt (1995), densmore (1995) and dobbs (1976, 1991, 1995) stand out in the contemporary newtonian historiography in the previous decades. in 2000 physicists and historians of physics, michael nauenberg, an expert in hooke, newton and huygens, and richard dalitz, well known in the field of particle physics, edited the book the foundations of newtonian scholarships. this book was the outcome of a symposium held at the royal society in london in 1997 which brought together many of the today’s newtonian scholars. newton’s biography by richard westfall, never at rest (1980), “based on an extensive study of newton’s manuscripts, does not merely chronicle the events in newton’s life but illuminates almost every aspect of newton’s life and thought, providing a rich and valuable commentary on newton’s scientific achievement” (buchwald and cohen, 2001, xiv). in the field of translations and commentaries, the 1999 prominent translation of the principia by bernard cohen and anne whitman should be highlighted and the study by the indian physicist s. chandrasekhar, newton’s principia for the common reader (1995), attracts attention as one of the most recent reassessments of newton’s principia. there has been also a long-lasting tradition of popularization of the principia. francesco algarotti’s newtonianism for ladies (1737) was a landmark in the popularization of newtonian philosophy, as well as voltaire’s éléments de la philosophie de newton, first published in 1738 and then again in 1745 in a new edition that included a new section devoted to newton’s metaphysics. magnificent principia: exploring isaac newton’s masterpiece (2013) by the british mathematician colin pask is another contemporary example, and reading the principia (1999) by the historian of mathematics niccolò guicciardi has also became a reference in the field of principia’s popularization. the study of the history of science and technology also has among its classic seminal texts exegeses of the principia, such as the social and economic roots of newton’s principia (1931) by the historian and philosopher of science boris hessen. it is in the context of this tradition, and these efforts of exegesis of the principia, that one could place the works and the project by paolo bussotti, researcher and professor at the university of udine, and raffaele pisano, researcher and professor at the university of lille 3. thomas le seur and françois jacquier were catholic priests of the order of friars minor – founded in the fifteenth century in italy – but were mistaken for being jesuits. the so-called “jesuit edition” (je) is an extensively commented version of the third edition of the principia, though not studied enough in this tradition of the principia’s exegeses. the historians bussotti and pisano have tasked themselves with filling this missing element in the newtonian scholarship. the je, after being written between 1739 and 1742, had several editions, such as the 1760 edition in cologne, the 1780-85 prague edition (which is a partial reedition of the je), and a third edition (published first in 1822 and again in 1833) in glasgow. based on the glasgow edition, mathematician john martin frederick wright corrected several mistakes found in the previous editions of the principia’s “jesuit edition,” and published the corrections in 1833 as “commentary on newton's principia”. bussotti and pisano have as their starting point for their work this third corrected version of the principia’s “jesuit edition” which has not yet been translated into english from its latin original version. their project includes an english translation of the four volumes of this 1822 corrected je and an additional introductory fifth volume. this project is to be concluded by 2020. the authors, clarifying the relevance of the je, remind their readers that, historically, the commentators of the principia have tried to “1) explain newton’s propositions in a clearer manner than newton did; 2) translate the properties given by newton geometrically in more analytical terms; 3) gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 244 sometimes explain the development of physics, based on newton’s discoveries, after newton” (bussotti and pisano, 2014a, 35-36). le seur, jacquier and calandrini accomplished these tasks magnificently. firstly, the authors of the je added clarifying remarks for every single proposition by newton in the principia. bussotti and pisano remind their readers that there is no more meticulously commented edition of the principia than the je. secondly, from the first half of the eighteenth century onwards, the work by euler, mechanica (1736), and the je became the classic references to the readers of the principia because newton’s formalism as expressed in his magnum opus became gradually outmoded and eventually obsolete. pierre varignon (1654-1722), jakob bernoulli (1654-1705), david gregory (1659-1708), johann bernoulli (1667-1748), john keil (1671-1721), jacob hermann (1678-1744), and daniel bernoulli (1700-1982) are among the first authors who translated newton’s results into completely analytical terms. finally, the editors of the je offered an encyclopedic summary of the developments obtained throughout the first four decades of the eighteenth century derived from the applications of newton’s calculations in the principia. it is worth noting that, up to the present time, the je remains very rarely commented by the secondary literature. therefore, a reassessment of the principia’s je is of enormous relevance to newtonian scholarship. according to bussotti and pisano the je provides three fundamental pieces of information useful to “1) understand newton’s mathematical techniques and physical results, 2) get a clear idea of the development of physics and mathematical analysis in the 20-25 years after the publication of the third edition of the principia, 3) fully realize the profound difference between newton’s physical-mathematical approach and the approaches of his successors” (bussotti and pisano, 2014a, 37). the work of bussotti and pisano advances four areas of research. first, an investigation of the three personalities involved in the production of the je. why did the authors of the je organize the many notes the way they did? second, they explore the politics of science in the elaboration of the je. who conceived and initiated this gigantic project? what are the reasons and motives behind it? bussotti and pisano intend to rebuild the social environment inside which the je was conceived, formulated, and developed, as well as to clarify the nature, purpose, and structure of those notes added by these commentators on newton’s principia. third, bussotti and pisano want to trace the changes and development in mathematics and the physical sciences during the first four decades of the eighteenth century, which led to a growing number of commentators who made newton’s approach and stylistic writing intelligible. bussotti and pisano want to verify whether there is a relationship or not between changes in mathematics and the content itself of the physical theories of the period. finally, they devote part of their research to examine who was the target audience of the je. “who might have been the readers of the je?”, ask the historians of science bussotti and pisano, who promise to prepare in the coming years a series of papers presenting their results (bussotti and pisano, 2014b, 439-440). the present paper, “philosophiae principia mathematica ‘jesuit’ edition: the tenor of a huge work,” is divided into two parts. in the first part the authors outline the general structure of the je, the personalities of the three commentators, and the role played by the je in comparison with the three editions of the principia between 1687 and 1833. in the second part they layout the ongoing editorial project of the translated and commented edition of the glasgow version of the je. the first volume of the je was published in 1739 and included the “book 1” of the principia. the second volume was published in 1740 and included the “book 2” of the principia. the third and fourth volumes were published in 1742. the third volume includes the first 24 propositions of the “book 3” of the principia and the fourth volume includes the remaining propositions and the general scholium, a closing essay that newton inserted into the second edition of the principia. there are four kinds of interventions, from a typographical point of view, found in the je: 1) those notes which are directly referred to passages by newton are specified by a letter within parenthesis, as in (a), 2) those notes which are not interpreted by the commentators as direct explanations of newton’s writing, but which represent either a clarification or an annexation by the commentators are signed by a number, as in 1), 2), 3), and so on, 3) treatises inserted by the commentators to introduce general problems found by readers of newton’s principia, and 4) treatises by different authors about theories first found in newton’s principia and then perfected and developed by them, e.g. works by daniel bernoulli and leonhard euler. as it can be seen in the picture below, only the names of the french catholic priests, thomas le seur and françois jacquier, can be found in the title page. however, le seur and jacquier acknowledged calandrini’s contribution in the end of the first book. the mistaken view that the authors were jesuits, when in fact le seur and jacquier were catholic priests of the order of friars minor, was first introduced by the typographer of the glasgow edition. while they are mostly known for the je of the principia, they also wrote several other essays. jean-louis calandrini for instance had been a newtonian since his youth and then gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 245 focused on the physics on the colors for his thesis at the academy of geneva in 1722. he also studied and wrote about spherical trigonometry and infinite series, as well as maintaining an interest in botany, meteorology, and the problem of the aurora borealis. bussotti and pisano illustrate the potential of the research that they have been doing by presenting in their paper an example that they consider to be paradigmatic in the commentaries introduced by the editors of the je. the chosen example is found in “book 1”, “section vii”, “proposition xli”, where newton presents his solution to the inverse problem of central forces. bussotti and pisano argue that the example is a paradigmatic representation of the peculiarity of newton’s geometric line of thinking and the standard manner by which commentators translate it into its analytical modern expression. bussotti and pisano emphasize how this example is important for the history of mathematics as it represents a transition from different thought traditions between that of newton and his immediate successors. bussotti and pisano leave their readers looking forward to both their next results as well as their final editorial project. the coming developments of this important contribution to the newtonian scholarship are to be eagerly anticipated. references brackenridge, j. bruce. 1995. the key to newton’s dynamics: the kepler problem and the principia. berkeley: university of california press. buchwald, jed z.; cohen, i. bernard (org.). 2001. isaac newton’s natural philosophy. cambridge: the mit press. title page of the 1822 glasgow “jesuit edition”. in: bussotti; pisano, 2014, 36. gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 246 bussotti, paolo; pisano, raffaele. 2014a. newton’s philosophiae principia mathematica “jesuit” edition: the tenor of a huge work. rendiconti lincei matematica e applicazioni 25 (4): 413-444. bussotti, paolo; pisano, raffaele. 2014b. on the jesuit edition of newton’s principia. science and advanced researches in the western civilization. advances in historical studies 3 (1): 33-55. chandrasekhar, s. 1995. newton’s principia for the common reader. oxford: oxford university press. cohen, i. bernard. 1971. introduction to newton’s principia. cambridge: harvard university press. cohen, i. bernard. 1980. the newtonian revolution – with illustrations of the transformation of scientific ideas. cambridge: cambridge university press. cohen, i. bernard; whitman, anne (org). 1999. mathematical principles of natural philosophy by isaac newton: a new translation. berkeley: university of california press. dalitz, richard; nauenberg, michael (org). 2000. the foundations of newtonian scholarship. singapura: world scientific publishing co. pte. ltd. de gandt, françois. 1995. force and geometry in newton’s “principia”. new jersey: princeton university press. densmore, dana. 1995. newton’s principia, the central argument: translation, notes, expanded proofs. santa fe: green lion press. dobbs, betty jo teeter. 1976. the foundations of newton’s alchemy. cambridge: cambridge university press. dobbs, betty jo teeter. 1991. the janus faces of genius: the role of alchemy in newton’s thought. cambridge: cambridge university press. dobbs, betty jo teeter; jacob, margaret c. 1995. newton and the culture of newtonianism. new york: prometheus books. guicciardini, niccolò. 1999. reading the principia: the debate on newton’s mathematical methods for natural philosophy from 1687 to 1736. cambridge: cambridge university press. koyré, alexandre. 1965. newtonian studies. chicago: university chicago press. pask, colin. 2013. magnificent principia: exploring isaac newton’s masterpiece. amherst: prometheus books. pisano, raffaele; bussotti, paolo. 2016. a newtonian tale details on notes and proofs in geneva edition of newton's principia. bshm bulletin–journal of the british society for the history of mathematics 31 (3): 160-178. pisano, raffaele; bussotti, paolo. 2016. the fiction of the infinitesimals in newton’s works: a note on the metaphoric use of infinitesimals in newton. special issue isonomia, in press. wallis, peter; wallis, ruth. 1977. newton and newtoniana 1675-1975, a bibliography. folkestone: dawson. westfall, richard s. 1980. never at rest: a biography of isaac newton. cambridge: cambridge university press. microsoft word 6etxeberria, wolfe layout 47 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 47-63 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria1 charles t. wolfe2 abstract: in this paper we examine aspects of canguilhem’s philosophy of biology, concerning the knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. his concept of life stems from the idea of a living individual, endowed with creative subjectivity and norms, a kantian view which “disconcerts logic”. in contrast, two different approaches ground naturalistic perspectives to explore the logic of life (jacob) and the logic of the living individual (maturana and varela) in the 1970s. although canguilhem is closer to the second, there are divergences; for example, unlike them, he does not dismiss vitalism, often referring to it in his work and even at times describing himself as a vitalist. the reason may lie in their different views of science. keywords: canguilhem; vitalism; biology; logic of life; autopoietic/heteropoietic; analysis/synthesis; living individual received: 10 november 2017. reviewed 30 january 2018. accepted: 28 february 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.06 ____________________________________________________________________________ la vie déconcerte la logique (canguilhem 1977, 1) to do biology, even with the aid of intelligence, we sometimes need to feel like beasts ourselves (canguilhem 2008a, xx) introduction in canguilhem’s philosophy, life disconcerts logic by its intrinsically self-produced or “autopoietic” nature in contrast with mechanical devices. this is logic in the sense of the method of scientific discovery, even that which claude bernard theorized for experimenting 1arantza etxeberria is an associate professor at the university of the basque country upv/ehu – ias research centre for life, mind and society – department of logic and philosophy of science. address: avenida de tolosa 70, 20018 donostia – san sebastián – spain. e-mail: arantza.etxeberria@ehu.eus 2 charles t. wolfe is a research fellow (flemish research council) in the department of philosophy and moral sciences and sarton centre for history of science, ghent university / institute for advanced study at the central european university, budapest. address: blandijnberg 2, 9000 gent – belgium. email: ctwolfe1@gmail.com canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 48 with organisms in vivo (bernard 1865, coleman 1985), but also logic understood as a model or scheme of the internal organization or functional integration that underlies the living state. therefore, the knowledge of life, the method, is challenging for biology. experimental biology tends to consider living beings as machines, and the knowledge operation required for that leaves part of life aside; it cannot grasp life in full. in fact, although canguilhem as a historian and philosopher of science has a high regard for biology,3 he nevertheless thinks that there is something missing in scientific knowledge trying to understand life via analysis, although this is the only way knowledge can probably proceed. the analysis/synthesis dichotomy is important for canguilhem’s view on life and especially for his understanding of medicine, and the pathological more generally. life is not analyzable, he contends, i.e., life defies scientific methods because of its inherent plasticity and variability, and also in its interactive or relational capacity, especially because of his conceptualization of the milieu as an intermediary between two entities. canguilhem’s philosophy develops from a given understanding of life. it has to do with its capabilities to establish its multiple own norms according to its environment or milieu, and change them to establish a new physiological order when required.4 this is the main distinctive feature of canguilhem’s vitalism. not that he posits the matter of life as an ontological or metaphysical entity different from that of physicochemical systems. canguilhem denies that vitalism is a metaphysics, and then adds immediately afterwards that it is “the recognition of the originality of the fact of life [le fait vital]” (canguilhem 1965, 156). but what is this originality, then? it is not an ontological specificity (like a drieschian entelechy), yet is a feature which resists any ‘logic of life’. although he warns that there are intellectual dangers inherent in positing that living beings are like an empire within an empire – imperium in imperio – (canguilhem 1965, 95), he asserts that life itself determines livings beings to act in interpretive, purposive, normative, vital ways. life “disconcerts logic” (canguilhem 1977, 1). he does not reject biology’s kind of knowledge as science either. it is mainly the idea that life is something that is beyond the knowledge capabilities of a logic or method as these are devised for inert systems, those that can be manipulated from the outside. the something beyond is related to the fact that one has to be alive to be able to grasp it. and being alive is the same as being synthetic, as opposed to analytic, and synthetic, like autopoietic, means that it is a system in continuous creativity. here we examine canguilhem’s ideas concerning the knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. first, his concept of life, which stems from the idea of the living individual, as endowed with creative subjectivity and norms; we will consider it as a kantian view which shares kant’s challenge to a science for living beings (as we discuss in the next section). second, why life disconcerts logic. in order to explicate this, we examine two different perspectives, the evolutionary genetically based logic of life of works such as jacob’s, and the organizational dynamic logic of the individual of the autopoietic school. although canguilhem is closer to the second, both in its conclusions and in the kind of materials used to depict the image, there are divergences. for example, unlike them, he does 3 the relation of canguilhem with science and its knowledge has been questioned (for example gabel 2015 mentions jacob’s comment in the web stories video, that canguilhem told him that he would not have written much of what he did, had he read jacob earlier. although jacob seems to have understood canguilhem’s remark at face value, we could always think he was just being polite and appreciative of the work of the scientist). in any case we will argue that canguilhem’s thesis is not empirical and therefore not vulnerable in principle to such criticisms. 4 “man is only truly healthy when he is capable of multiple norms, when he is more than normal. the measure of health is a certain capacity to overcome organic crises in order to establish a new physiological order, different from the initial order. in all seriousness, health is the ability [le luxe] to fall ill and then get over it. on the contrary, illness is the reduction of the power to overcome other illnesses” (canguilhem 1965, 167). see also (canguilhem 1972, 77, 155). (all translations are ours unless otherwise indicated). canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 49 not dismiss vitalism. third, we explore his claim for vitalism connected with views about the role of analysis in the scientific knowledge of life and his characterization of life as synthesis (in the second and third sections, respectively). canguilhem and the life of an individual since the second half of the 19th century there have been two distinctive styles in the study of biology. physiology is centered in the living individual, in the organism, and its main topic is the organization of parts or organs to produce the organized whole. the other style is that of evolutionary biology, concerned by the changes in lineages of individual forms through – mainly – genealogical processes. the philosophical topic of physiology is biological individuality, its delimitation and its cohesion. physiology’s problem is how a living individual maintains its integrity and organization through the causal interactions of its parts and the regulation of those interactions (bernard 1878-1879; pradeu 2016). this was the approach pursued experimentally by claude bernard’s physiology, as it aimed to reach scientific status; some considered him as the newton of medicine (see note 5 below). physiology thus understood parted ways with the more observational approach of natural history. canguilhem’s philosophy of life is embedded in this kind of thinking and operates within this framework. the antagonism between mechanist and vitalist views about the special status of living beings and in what sense they constitute a challenge for the scientific knowledge of life are ingrained here. this subject matter is reminiscent of kant’s view of organized beings and scientific knowledge. kant promoted the view of living beings as purposeful and self-organized, in his 1790 critique of judgment (§ 65, aa 5, 374). there he established the grounds for understanding organized beings whose components are mutually dependent on each other and on the whole they generate. being teleological and self-organized they are very different from a watch, organised according to a designer’s plan. but this understanding set a limit for science. difficulties appear in the project of reconciling it with the conceptual framework kant developed for natural sciences in his critique of pure reason (1781), founded in natural laws without purposiveness, in external causes, and in mechanical principles (nuño de la rosa and etxeberria 2010). kant did not think there can be a naturalist scientific explanation for living beings, such as there is one for physical systems. his declaration that there will not be a “newton of the blade of grass”5 is well known: “indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently assert that it is absurd for human beings even to entertain any thought of so doing or to hope that maybe another newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass from natural laws that no design has ordered.” (kant, critique of judgment, § 75, aa 5, 400).6 kant’s view of the organism as a self-organized system constitutes a challenge for science. there have been attempts to reconcile teleology and mechanism, such as lenoir 5 since then, there was a long controversy about who could be the scientific figure that would contradict kant. according to cassirer, for biologists like haeckel, darwin was the “newton of the blade of grass,” yet roux rejected this (cassirer 1950, 163). others have mentioned claude bernard (prochiantz 1990), and still others thoroughly agree with kant (nuño de la rosa and etxeberria 2010). we return to this topic in the final section. 6 this statement of kant’s is often quoted approvingly, a rare exception being zammito (2006), who notes that kant is neatly placing himself in the rearguard of scientific thought of his time concerning living entities. our point here is simply to note the existence of this influential position according to which ‘life’ is not reducible to a certain set of empirical (measurable, quantifiable) features. in that sense canguilhem can be said to be a kantian. see brilman (2017) for an interesting development of this connection. canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 50 (1982)’s who understood the kantian tradition as a way to integrate self-organization and teleology within scientific biology. but naturalizing efforts or scientific explanations of material self-organizing appear to be reductionistic7 (moss and newman 2016). in sum, the kantian challenge is basically the problem of whether our knowledge of life or of living systems can be naturalized. canguilhem’s approach to this, asks how we can know about living beings with the kind of knowledge developed to investigate inanimate realms such the production of technical devices. canguilhem’s view of living systems as actively self-produced or autopoietic establishes the difference with technological objects. he referred to living beings as “autopoétique” or “autopo(i)etic”8 in “l’expérimentation en biologie animale”, an essay on the experimental tradition started by claude bernard, originally delivered as a talk in 1951 and included in la connaissance de la vie. there he distinguishes the “heteropoietic” character of human technical activity in the interaction with the environment: “man first experiences and experiments with biological activity in his relations of technical adaptation to the milieu. such technique is heteropoetic, adjusted to the outside, and it takes from the outside its means, or the means to its means” (canguilhem 2008a, 9). however, he contends that when in interaction with other living beings, experimenters become aware of the “autopoetic character of organic activity”. the realization of this has been an achievement: “only after a long series of obstacles surmounted and errors acknowledged did man come to suspect and recognize the autopoetic character of organic activity and to rectify progressively, in contact with biological phenomena, the guiding concepts of experimentation.” human action producing technology “presupposes a minima logic – for the representation of the exterior real, which human technique modifies, determines the discursive, reasoned facet of the artisan’s activity, and all the more so the engineer’s.” this does not work in the case of living entities because humans cannot produce them externally, therefore: “we must abandon this logic of human action if we are to understand living functions” (canguilhem 2008a, 9). canguilhem’s attention is focused on the kind of knowledge of or attitude towards living entities, in epistemological terms. the “autopoetic” character of living beings, in contrast with artefacts, refers to the kind of object of knowledge. later maturana and varela (1973, 1980) will use a similar term (autopoiesis) to characterise the constitutive organization of living beings. the work of rheinberger (2015) further pursues this reflection on the nature of the different knowledge objects produced by science to explain life. this topic appears also in the analysis/synthesis opposition: canguilhem insists that knowledge of living systems proceeds by analysis, to know living individuals science or biology has to analyze them, while they are ontologically synthetic, as they dynamically make themselves in an active and creative way. as he remarks in “le tout et la partie dans la pensée biologique”: the physiology of regulation (or homeostasis, as it has been called since walter bradford cannon), together with cytologic morphology, enabled bernard to treat the organism as a whole and to develop an analytic science of organic functions without 7 to be precise, there is a ‘material difficulty’ of the sort just outlined, and a ‘conceptual difficulty’ in the sense that such programs strongly invoke the kantian pedigree, while somehow overlooking the fact that a core element of the kantian concept of the living (of organism) is that it cannot be the object of a causal-naturalist science. 8 canguilhem wrote “autopoétique” and “heteropoétique” without the “i”, translated into english as “autopoetic” and “heteropoetic” in canguilhem (2008a). as the term has stabilized in usage as “autopoiesis” (reflecting the greek ποίησις), we use the term in this way throughout the paper. when we quote canguilhem we write in the same way he wrote it, i.e., without the “i”; “autopoetic” (“autopoétique”) and “heteropoetic” (“heteropoétique”). canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 51 brushing aside the fact that a living thing is, in the true sense of the word, a synthesis. (canguilhem 1994, 298). to argue that living bodies are special, canguilhem takes over kurt goldstein’s chief holistic or organismic idea presented in his influential work the organism (1934/1939) – it is the organism as a totality, not a cluster of functions or organs, which acts and reacts as a unified approach to its environment and its challenges (canguilhem 1972, 49) – and strips it of some of its more overtly metaphysical trappings. yet the holistic dimension, the emphasis on the ‘whole person’, reappears now and then with surprisingly existentialist and humanist overtones, when canguilhem opposes life to technology and the various forms of the “mechanization of life.” in sum, in canguilhem’s unique way of engaging with ‘organisms’ and the question of their uniqueness we find one of the curious features of goldstein’s account: the way in which he wavers or moves back and forth between a cautious, epistemological position (reminiscent of the kantian regulative ideal in the third critique) in which organisms are real and special because of the way we cognitively constitute them, and a bold, ontological position in which organisms are real because of basic, intrinsic features which are just there. however, this convenient distinction between the epistemological (projective, constitutive) vision of biological entities and the ontological vision (strong vitalist, ‘rational metaphysics’ as kant might have said) is somewhat muddied when canguilhem introduces a further vitalist twist, in “aspects du vitalisme”: that it might be an objective (‘ontological’) feature of living beings that they are interpretive beings, and especially that they need to consider other entities as themselves organismic, purposive, vital. we interpret canguilhem as alluding to this need of being interactively immersed with other organisms to know what they are, when he writes in la connaissance de la vie that “we suspect that, to do mathematics, it would suffice that we be angels. but to do biology, even with the aid of intelligence, we sometimes need to feel like beasts ourselves” (canguilhem 2008a, xx). there may also be an existentialist parfum in canguilhem’s reflections, as when he describes this interpretive stance as essentially a kind of fundamental existential attitude. in any case what is distinctive of his position, especially when we consider the core arguments of the normal and the pathological, is the presupposition that normativity is a power or capacity proper to living beings: we, on the other hand, think that the fact that a living man reacts to a lesion, infection, functional anarchy by means of a disease, expresses the fundamental fact that life is not indifferent to the conditions in which it is possible, that life is polarity and thereby even an unconscious position of value; in short, life is in fact a normative activity. normative, in philosophy, means every judgment which evaluates or qualifies a fact in relation to a norm, but this mode of judgment is essentially subordinate to that which establishes norms. normative, in the fullest sense of the word, is that which establishes norms. and it is in this sense that we plan to talk about biological normativity. (canguilhem 1972, 126-127) we find here an insistence that there is something unique about living entities that makes them creators of a certain world which they inhabit. upon closer examination, this idea seems to contain some nietzschean overtones (foucault also pointed to this aspect in his mentor’s work: foucault 1991, 21), namely, the idea that values, norms and other higherlevel constructs are in fact products of our vital instincts, so that life integrates rationality to itself through its normative activity. in a lecture in the problem of regulations in the organism and society, canguilhem also insists that an organism is an entirely exceptional mode of being, because there is no real difference, properly speaking, between its existence and the rule or norm of its existence. from the time an organism exists, is alive, that organism is ‘possible’, i.e., it canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 52 fulfils the ideal of an organism; the norm or rule of its being [existence] is given by its existence itself. (canguilhem 2002, 106-107) yet he does not appeal to a disembodied, foundational subjectivity, like more antinaturalistic trends in phenomenology; there is no pure ego contemplating the reality of the flesh like a sailor in a ship, for him. as regards the relevance of experience, it would seem that – despite their shared affinity for goldstein – it is more than unlikely that canguilhem would go as far as merleau-ponty, as we see when he reflects on the limitations of a conceptualization of the living body as “inaccessible to others, accessible only to its titular holder” (canguilhem 2008b, 476). canguilhem’s position on organic uniqueness and what he somewhat cryptically calls ‘experience’ is subtly yet significantly different: the classical vitalist grants that living beings belong to a physical environment, yet asserts that they are an exception to physical laws. this is the inexcusable philosophical mistake, in my view. there can be no kingdom within a kingdom [empire dans un empire], or else there is no kingdom at all. there can only be one philosophy of empire, that which rejects division and imperialism. [...] one cannot defend the originality of biological phenomena and by extension, of biology, by delimiting a zone of indeterminacy, dissidence or heresy within an overall physicochemical environment of motion and inertia. if we are to affirm the originality of the biological, it must be as a reign over the totality of experience, not over little islands of experience. ultimately, classical vitalism is (paradoxically) too modest, in its reluctance to universalize its conception of experience. (canguilhem 1965, 95; emphasis added) ‘classical’ vitalism as described here is what one of us has termed substantival vitalism elsewhere (wolfe 2011, 2015a). and canguilhem’s diagnosis of an “inexcusable philosophical mistake” is clear enough. but what should we make then of his defense of the “originality of the biology,” i.e. the autonomy of biology, as a “reign over the totality of experience”? what looks at first glance like metaphysical holism might instead be an ‘attitudinal’ conception, that is, a point of view on experience. canguilhem was aware and acceptant of the biology of his times,9 and paid attention both to the physiological perspective and to the evolutionary/molecular biology perspective. yet he does not appear to be keen to develop what we could call a logic of life or the living, why? taking into account canguilhem’s views, we examine some aspects of the nature of life and organisms as discussed in the biology of the 1970s, such as f. jacob’s and maturana and varela’s, each proposing a particular proposal for a logic in biology. canguilhem’s ideas contrast with those of biologists of the time: we will specifically take into account françois jacob’s evolutionary perspective in la logique du vivant and humberto maturana and francisco varela’s organizational one in autopoiesis and cognition. both books were originally written in the early 1970s (in languages different from english) and elaborate very different research programs to explore living organization. 9 yet some authors appear dismissive of the understanding of genetics and evolutionary biology of authors of the french philosophical tradition. for example, gabel writes: “in france, institutional biology largely rejected both darwinian natural selection and mendelian genetics. biologists do not believe that evolution could be explained by natural selection” (gabel 2016, 71). this is an often repeated cliché but unlikely. in the case of canguilhem’s work, we should consider it more a case of philosophical disagreement than of bad scientific perception. similarly, if bernard ignored evolutionary biology it was because it was hardly relevant for the experimental approach he pursued (see note 10). canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 53 the logic of life at large in the philosophy of biology of the 19th and 20th centuries two different intuitions about life, related either to the evolution of life at large, or to the organization of particular living individuals, have run parallel courses.10 the former was mainly concerned with the fact that all life is connected, and requires that connection, so that the study of isolated individuals, as it is usual in physiology, is very limited and insufficient. the latter aimed to explain the physiological organization of living entities as organisms or agents, both constitutively and interactively. in the early 1970s, related to the above-mentioned distinction of two styles of biology, different and opposed views were held on the primacy of organization and reproduction / evolution for biology. the former would imply a principle grounding the mechanisms of living individuality; the latter, a connection among somewhat ephemeral living forms. these differences implied separate research programs for biology. françois jacob’s logic of life represents the mainstream view that the most important feature of life is reproduction and evolution (although very aware of the historical concerns for organization, jacob considered them to be overcome with the new findings in molecular biology). jacob’s la logique du vivant was a very important book in the 1970s in which the author, already a nobel prize winner and a widely recognized molecular biologist, made a remarkable attempt at reconstructing the history and philosophy of biology around the notion of biological organization and the “logic of life”. jacob attempted to reconcile classical views in european continental thought on biology with views stemming from contemporary ideas on genetics and evolution. it is full of enthusiasm towards the notion of biological information and the logic of genetics of the 1960s and 1970s, which he understands to be the corollary of biological struggles to understand biological organization. (this he shares with canguilhem to a certain point, as is visible in the latter’s 1966 additions to le normal et le pathologique, displaying a real openness to genetics as a “nouvelle connaissance de la vie”.) this book was very important and had a deep influence on biologists of the time and defends a model of life sympathetic to informational formalisms for genetic regulation. for jacob, the special features of life appear in the evolutionary genetic image, linked not to the properties of living beings studied by classical philosophy (e.g. thomism) but by the new image made possible by the evolutionary science of the time. some of its features are that it enhances the view of life as a genealogically connected succession, rather than mechanistically explainable in the living being: an organism is merely a transition, a stage between what was and what will be (jacob 1973, 2). everything in a living being is centred on reproduction (4). let us imagine an uninhabited world. we can conceive the establishment of systems possessing certain properties of life, such as the ability to react to certain stimuli, to assimilate, to breathe, or even to grow but not to reproduce. can they be called living systems? each represents the fruit of long and laborious elaboration. each birth is a unique event, without a morrow. each occasion is an eternal recommencement. always at the mercy of some local cataclysm, such organizations can have only an ephemeral existence. moreover, their structure is rigidly fixed at the outset, incapable 10 as several authors have noted, claude bernard’s physiological tradition had little interest in evolutionary or developmental biology, which it did not view as proper sciences. see (normandin 2007). canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 54 of change. if, on the contrary, there emerges a system capable of reproduction, even if only badly, slowly, and at great cost, that is a living system without any doubt. (4-5) jacob distinguishes explicitly the two views of biology. according to his preferred perspective, evolutionary accounts consider the genealogical connection among living beings so that from this perspective it is very evident that living beings are not systems that arise and disappear due to their physicochemical properties, or at least not only because of them, as many of their capacities have been inherited from their ancestors. these systems, or part of them, have been informed by others: much of the controversy and misunderstanding, particularly with regard to the finality of living beings, is caused by a confusion between these two attitudes. each tries to establish a system of order in the living world. for one, it is the order which links beings to one another, sets up relationships and defines speciations. for the other, it is the order between the structures by which functions are determined, activities coordinated and the organism integrated. one considers living beings as the elements of a vast system embracing the whole earth. the other considers the system formed by each living being. one seeks to establish order between organisms; the other within each organism. the two kinds of order meet at the level of heredity, which constitutes the order of biological order, so to speak. (jacob 1973, 7-8) darwinian evolution implies two main ideas: one is that of the genealogical connection among all forms of life, which is often represented as the tree of life, the second is that of natural selection as a main cause of evolution, implying that any trait or important feature of living beings has evolved by natural selection. the received view of the modern synthesis answered the two questions, proposing genes as the main ontology. however, critics of this view affirm, as expected, that evolution does not contribute to our knowledge of living organization. very soon, and especially after the 2000s, new approaches in systemic and synthetic biology made clear the need to take into account more organismic approaches both for molecular and evolutionary biology. jacob made a great effort to integrate the new biology based on genetics and molecular biology with the organizational tradition. but he appears to consider that the new understanding overcomes philosophical efforts to understand living organization. in fact, jacob identifies the genetic program, and the determinism it embodies, as the fundamental element of its theory of the living. however he also admits the importance of different levels of integration in the domain of life, called integrons, each of them being characterized by some independence with respect to lower ones. current systemic approaches consider the need of the two perspectives. on the one hand, the study of evolution needs to include the mechanical causal processes taking place in development – in addition to population dynamics at various levels and contingent events and processes responsible for organizations and entities that emerge in interactions such as symbionts, ecosystems, etc. the extended evolutionary synthesis (pigliucci and müller, eds., 2010) has vindicated a perspective that would be encompassing and inclusive. on the other hand, the search of living organization cannot rely on the analysis of logical and mathematical aspects only; organizations need to be studied in the material domain, which includes evolutionary processes. jacob underlines biology as an exploration of a logic of life that is beyond any logic of the living individual. this knowledge is not concerned with individuality, finality or causal mechanisms because it is a science of living forms that appear and are transmitted in a contingent way. in his review of françois jacob’s evolutionary perspective, canguilhem (1971) addresses the view of life taking place at the level of cells and the logic of reproduction, as canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 55 disclosed by the genetics of the time. he now maintains that “in order to understand what we are as living beings, we must look to the chromosome, the gene, the dna molecule. the biochemical study of the bacteria is the beginning of self-knowledge of oneself as a living being” (canguilhem 1971, 23). this obliges one to reject finalism, and the centrality of individuality. in addition, he seems to accept the new playground of biological science, namely the informational perspective. gabel quotes jacob saying that only in the fifties canguilhem began reading contemporary biological research, and contends that after that he gave up his vitalism. “though he did not renounce his old positions – in fact he seems to have felt his philosophy to be consistent with the discoveries of genetics and molecular biology – he in fact moved away from both humanism and vitalism” (gabel 2015, 82). we disagree, as in that paper canguilhem remains sceptical about informational logic of life. also philosophical positions may be modulated, but are not dictated by scientific facts, and this is evident in canguilhem’s case, who writes: “the execution of a program that is identified with its realization is a blunt fact, without cause or responsibility. the logic of life does not refer to any logician” (canguilhem 1971, 23). in that sense, blind evolution is change without history, as “evolution through natural selection is only history in its incidents, errors and rare events” (24). and at the end of the review, canguilhem reflects on jacob’s much-quoted pronouncement that biological research no longer “inquires into life” (“on n’interroge plus la vie aujourd’hui dans les laboratoires”), i.e., that the concept of life (and by extension any ontologically foundational clauses attached to work in the life sciences) no longer serves any purpose in such work (jacob 1970, 320).11 with a curious kind of pathos that is however not ‘romantically anti-scientific’, he observes that living beings “think they live” a life “outside of laboratories”, not realizing (canguilhem literally writes “not knowing”) that in laboratories, “life has lost its life with its secret” (canguilhem 1971, 25).12 the logic of the living very soon after the 1970s, and especially at the turn of the century, both in the philosophy of biology and in most biological disciplines there was a big movement in search of systemic and organizational principles, as is made evident by advances in systems biology, synthetic biology and the extended evolutionary synthesis. historically there are (at least) two organizational traditions: the physiological one starting in claude bernard, to which autopoiesis (and most of the work on biological autonomy) belongs, and the developmental one which has led to structuralism and evo-devo (etxeberria and bich 2017; etxeberria 2004). both are connected to kant’s critique of judgment, although they have kept quite apart during the twentieth century. to jacob’s plea for a logic of life, varela and maturana respond with a new vindication of the centrality of the living individual as a foundation of biology, this time looking for a “logic” of the living. maturana and varela’s notion of autopoiesis can be considered as an answer to jacob’s picture reject the informational perspective in biology, a view shared by the developmental systems theory in philosophy of biology, especially after susan oyama (1985). their narrative on the logic of the living, clearly influenced by jacob’s book, deliberately disputes many of his positions about the logic of life and the centrality of 11 at the conceptual level, this corresponds to edouard machery’s deliberately deflationary suggestion (machery 2012) that we should give up seeking to provide definitions of life, as these are either folk concepts, or unresolvable with other competing definitions: namely, evolutionists, theoretical biologists, self-organization theorists, molecular biochemists and artificial life researchers cannot agree on a definition. 12he adds that “it is outside laboratories that love, birth and death continue to present living beings – the children of order and chance – the immemorial figures of these questions that life science no longer asks of life”. canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 56 reproduction and evolution. in contrast, for the positive part, it often draws canguilhem’s views to contrast jacob’s informational stance. but their main claim goes far beyond canguilhem’s position and points to developments in biology that canguilhem did not foresee, probably because he was not aware of work in cybernetics and complex artificial systems that was aiming to explore living phenomena through synthetic and systemic models and simulations. the autopoietic approach to the living belongs to the above-mentioned physiological systemic tradition focused on the problem of the relational unity of the living, associated to kant’s understanding of organisms in the critique of judgment, claude bernard’s concept of milieu intérieur, and the organicist tradition that considers life as organization – a tradition including hans jonas and jean piaget among others.13 other clear associations are with the cybernetic movement, especially with second-order cybernetics (etxeberria and bich 2017). the notion of autopoiesis was proposed by maturana and varela14 (varela 1979; maturana and varela 1973, 1980) to refer to the biological self-organization of individual living beings, in contrast with other properties of life that the biology of their time considered as primary (genes as dna or informational properties). the basic idea of autopoiesis is selfproduction, as a relational dynamic of components that generates or brings forth a membrane or boundary. this constitutes the individual living being’s identity as separated from the surroundings (varela 1981). the autopoietic approach to life is different from that of evolutionary and molecular biology in that the theory focuses on autonomy and identity to naturalize them as marks of life, and not in reproduction or evolution. they claim that living organization has primacy with respect to those other phenomena associated to life (etxeberria 2004). in contrast with jacob’s view, it is not life at large, but individual organisms and their autopoietic organization, what is central for biology. all system components have the same status to explain the selfreferent dynamics by which they produce a unity; that is to say, living phenomenology is not explained in terms of some components being information carriers, but in terms of relations. autopoietic systems, also initially called autopoietic machines, explore the general relational scheme common to all living systems as the configuration of transformative processes whose result is the configuration itself, so that identity and activity, producer and product coincide (bich and etxeberria 2013). the individual identity constituted by the system itself and not by anything external (heteropoietic) is a central idea of this approach. as said, some of the distinctions they stress, for example the one between autopoiesis and heteropoiesis, already appear in canguilhem’s la connaissance de la vie, as we have noted before. the relations of the autopoietic unity and its surroundings cannot be understood in terms of input/output fixed interactions. instead, non-specific perturbations are coupled with plastic behaviors of the system within the range of internal coherence. in their initial writings the authors embrace mechanism and criticize vitalism. this is important because, according to them, vitalism focuses on entities bearing properties, in contrast with the relational approach they vindicate in which properties appear in the relations among components (see bich and arnellos 2012, 79). maturana writes that in a vitalistic explanation, the observer explicitly or implicitly assumes that the properties of the system, or the characteristics of the phenomenon to be explained, are to be found among the properties or among the characteristics of at least one of 13 canguilhem sits somewhat unsteadily here, given that he is less of a ‘naïve (ontological) organicist’ than the rest. 14 both francisco varela and humberto maturana have separately claimed to have coined the term, referring to different sources for the invention. in this paper we maintain that they probably conceived the notion from those passages of canguilhem’s la connaissance de la vie in which he says that living systems are autopoetic. canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 57 the components or processes that constitute the system or phenomenon. in a mechanistic explanation the relations between components are necessary; in a vitalistic explanation they are superfluous. (maturana 1978, 30) for interactionist or ecological perspectives living beings cannot be fully accounted for in terms of intrinsic properties, but need to take into account relational properties arising from interactions between living constituents. there is a tension in naturalism, regarding whether the organization of living beings is spontaneous or pre-existent. in fact, to the question: can life be understood in terms of pure/actual/synchronic organization?, both creationists and evolutionists answer no! for creationists the organization of life is pre-existent as life was created by a designer (god), for evolutionists it is obtained from ancestors that transmit it in various ways. the notions of tree of life and common ancestor suggest that the living state must come from another living being, that living organization cannot be produced spontaneously. this would entail that a naturalistic evolutionary theory with commitments to understand the organization of life – and living beings – needs to give up the intention to explain the evolutionary process in an algorithmic way (dennett, genetic algorithms, ultra-darwinist arguments…) and attend to other factors that can give clues about how the elements of living organization come to be. one difference between canguilhem’s usage of the term ‘autopoetic’ and maturana and varela’s account of autopoiesis may be that the latter intend to explore ways in which the autopoiesis of living systems can be explored in artificial models. this is not exactly like canguilhem, who thinks that the autopoetic character of living beings is equivalent to their not being susceptible to be grasped by knowledge. canguilhem starts his book la connaissance de la vie with the sentence: “connaître c’est analyser” (“to know is to analyse”) only to remind us quickly of the difficulties of grasping a true knowledge of what it means to be alive through knowledge, through analysis. today not everyone would accept that biology as a science proceeds merely by analysis. on the contrary, many fields including synthetic biology and, earlier, artificial life, have attempted to build synthetic models, systems or simulations by integrating knowledge from many biological fields and exploring their emergent and creative properties. to try and understand canguilhem in relation to recent theoretical biology (including the ‘organizational’ theories, see moreno and mossio 2015, bechtel 2007) results in a curious situation. the concept of scientific knowledge associated with many of current fields is far from the idea that the aim of models is to represent reality. in fact many systems can be in some ways creative or autopoietic as well. then to ask ‘are organisms unique in the physical world? if so, why?’ as an orienting question does not only affect issues of an ontological kind (what is life?), or an epistemological kind (how can we know life?), but also brings about issues that start having a new relational or interactive character. if canguilhem’s problem was how the knower relates to a known that is autopoietic, similar situations appear with respect to some scientific and technological products. canguilhem’s claim for vitalism a main feature of vitalism in scientific research is to consider that living beings are in some sense different from inorganic or inert beings;15 this does not always have further ontological 15 “the difference between what is life and what is not has changed with the advance of science. for a long time, especially in antiquity, when life had total primacy, the opposite of the living was ‘dead’. later, it changed to simply ‘inorganic’, reflecting the fact that during the twentieth century the question of what is life mostly concerned physicists, who sought to understand the peculiarities of living matter, as opposed to the inorganic. today, the opposite of life is generally ‘inert’, which is a category that includes organic materials. the difference between the inorganic and the inert reflects canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 58 and methodological implications. canguilhem´s work appears to be among those believing the first. canguilhem appears more cautious than jacob or other prominent figures who try to dissolve the problem of what life is into an evolutionary logic. this deflationary view underlies usual attempts to substitute the definition of life by a list of living properties, such as those appearing in many biology textbooks. in contrast canguilhem is suspicious of the rejection of vitalism in this way because many of the features that are associated with life, in contrast with those of inanimate systems do surreptitiously appear in normative concepts such as evolutionary advantage (1971, 24). canguilhem often refers to vitalism in his work, going as far as describing himself – playfully – as a vitalist.16 he acknowledges that vitalism is a position that is difficult to maintain. as dominique lecourt comments, “canguilhem, a hero of the resistance, clearly expresses the difficulty of presenting himself as a ‘vitalist’ in 1946-1947” (lecourt 2011, 8), and he thus quotes this passage from “aspects of vitalism”: today, above all, the usage of vitalist biology by nazi ideology, the mystification that consisted in using theories of ganzheit to advocate against individualist, atomist, and mechanist liberalism and in favor of totalitarian forces and social forms, and the rather easy conversion of vitalist biologists to nazism have served to confirm the accusation formulated by positivist philosophers like philipp frank, as well as by marxists (marcel prenant) that it is a “reactionary biology”. (canguilhem 1965, 97; canguilhem 2008a, 72) in the same essay, canguilhem asserts from the outset that when the philosopher inquires into biological life, she has little to expect or gain from “a biology fascinated by the prestige of the physicochemical sciences, reduced to the role of a satellite of these sciences” (canguilhem 1965, 83; canguilhem 2008a, 59). what this entails for vitalism is that it has a specifically philosophical place, whether it is scientifically ‘validated’ or ‘refuted’, and apart from its status as a scientific ‘construction’. in this sense, as canguilhem suggests in “aspects du vitalisme”, vitalism is not like geocentrism or phlogiston: it is not refutable in quite the same way.17 to summarize these two dimensions of canguilhem’s thought, one could say that on the one hand his vitalism is heuristic, a claim that living phenomena need to be approached in a certain way in order to be understood; but on the other hand, it possesses a more ontological, aristotelian dimension. consider the example canguilhem had given in “aspects du vitalisme”: vitalism is not like (the theory of) phlogiston or geocentrism. now, faced with this ‘fact’ that vitalism is not like phlogiston, there are two possible responses: it’s not like phlogiston because it’s true and thus one’s ontology needs to include it or it’s not like phlogiston because it has this heuristic value, or explanatory power. for canguilhem vitalism is a way to understand life in a certain way in order not to miss its essential spontaneity; historically, thinkers known as vitalists have had what he calls “this an increasing awareness that life is so complex that the scientific study of transients cannot attempt to start from raw inorganic materials, but rather needs to begin with organic compounds and processes to study how these, or similar alternatives, are produced in living systems and the laboratory” (etxeberria and ruiz-mirazo 2009, s33-4). 16 for example, in the foreword to his book on the development of the notion of reflex: “il nous importe peu d’être ou tenu pour vitaliste…” (it does not matter to us to be or to be considered a vitalist ...) and he presents the book itself as a “defense of vitalist biology” (canguilhem 1955, 1). but some years earlier, he had devoted one article exclusively to the topic, “aspects du vitalisme” (originally a series of lectures given at the collège philosophique in paris in 1946-1947), in canguilhem 1965. 17 (canguilhem 1965, 84; canguilhem 2008a, 60). the medawars note that it is hard to devise an experiment to ‘refute’ vitalism. (medawar and medawar 1983) canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 59 vitalist confidence in the spontaneity of life” (canguilhem 1965, 89). in other words, the philosopher in this position is almost inexorably led to a vitalist positionnement. the type of questions she will have for biological science entails that the latter not be conceived of in reductionist terms, although canguilhem doesn’t explicitly say if a purely physicochemical perspective on biological entities is flawed ontologically, or just methodologically. nevertheless, this is a loaded, rather a prioristic conception of biological science, actually quite reminiscent of the holism of goldstein, who canguilhem openly credits as a major influence.18 but what sort of claim is the insistence on the originality of vital facts? just because it is not naïve ontological vitalism does not mean it is vitalism without any ontology. as this is not an analysis of vitalism in general but of certain issues in the thought of canguilhem, it may be worth rapidly clarifying this terminology. it seems that, in addition to a kind of ‘de facto’ vitalism of some life scientists who insist on the specificity of the systems they study, including in relation to the objects of other sciences such as chemistry and physics, there is a non-ontological vitalism, articulated in thinkers like claude bernard and at times in xavier bichat, distinct from an ontological vitalism in that the latter will consider the difference between living and non-living beings, organisms and mechanisms, ‘whole-person’ analyses in medicine and molecular analyses, etc., as having ontological significance and/or as being ontologically grounded. this sense of privacy, of inaccessible interiority, is a crucial feature of many defences of what organisms are and how they are different from machines. this raises the issue of the relation between canguilhem and phenomenology.19 that is, while mainstream biologists thought the problem with vitalism was its appeal to immaterial vital forces, or ‘entelechies’ that could not themselves be located anywhere in the spatiotemporal world, there may be a different, more philosophical problem with vitalism, in that it can become an appeal to a kind of foundationalist subjectivity, a self, a centre. interestingly – and idiosyncratically – canguilhem’s way of renewing vitalism is neither that of the “classical” vitalist, in his terms (which matches the standard critical portrayal of the vitalist), nor that of the subjectivist. kurt goldstein and canguilhem were, we suggest, onto something when they insisted that rather than say what is unique about the biological, we look to the observer: to be an organism is to have a point of view on organisms; one which produces intelligibility, which reveals organisms as meaning-producing beings. goldstein stressed a kind of ‘standpoint’ dimension in ‘the organism’ (in fact, typically the human patient), namely, the idea that we necessarily have ‘points of view’ on our environment and that such points of view enter into the basic definition of what it is to be such an organism. canguilhem gave further inflection to this idea by speaking of how vitalism is not a mere scientific theory (true or false, refutable, experimental, etc.) but, crucially, something existential, what he calls an exigence: vitalism expresses a permanent requirement or demand [exigence] of life in living beings, the self-identity of life which is immanent in living beings. this explains why mechanistic biologists and rationalist philosophers criticize vitalism for being nebulous 18 on canguilhem and goldstein, gayon (1998, 309-310) and métraux (2005) make some useful observations (métraux also reproduces a letter from canguilhem to goldstein); see also wolfe (2015b). gayon notes several further references to goldstein in (canguilhem 1965, 11–13, 24, 146); (canguilhem 2002, 347); (canguilhem 1977, 138). canguilhem (along with merleau-ponty) played a key role in the introduction of goldstein into france, through the translation of the organism book, which canguilhem initiated (the co-translator, jean kuntz was his student) and also by translating goldstein’s article on the “problème épistémologique de la biologie” together with his wife simone. 19 for a nice discussion which makes canguilhem a phenomenologist, see (gérard 2010); for an equally convincing reading which seeks to draw canguilhem away from phenomenology, see (sholl 2012). canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 60 and vague. it is normal, if vitalism is primarily a ‘demand’, that it is difficult to formulate it in a series of determinations. (canguilhem 1965, 86). other prominent recent figures like varela also underline the uniqueness of the biological by rejecting that life can be characterized by providing some empirical criteria and vindicate the need for a concept of life that takes into account the self-producing activities of living systems. yet he explicitly rejects vitalism and embraces naturalism. in this respect weber and varela differ from kant, who believed that living organization cannot be explained scientifically: “our immodest conclusion is that kant, although foreseeing the impossibility of a purely mechanical, newtonian account of life, nonetheless was wrong in denying the possibility of a coherent explanation of the organism. but this ‘newton of the grassblade’ was surely not darwin.” instead, they maintain that it is the “convergence of philosophical and biological thinking” which offered “an objective account of biological individuality that joins in circle with the constitution of a subject” (weber and varela 2002, 120-121). thus, they think that the times are ripe for a naturalistic understanding of the living individual. however both authors would probably agree with canguilhem that there is a difference between knowing life and interacting with it. summary/conclusions does life have a logic that can be scientifically studied? kant answered no; later biologists have tried to find affirmative answers based either in evolution by natural selection or in selforganization. in this paper we have tried to show the main problems canguilhem faced in challenging the existence of a logic of life, namely embodiment, relations of the living with other living organisms, and sympathy to some phenomenological ideas about the nature of life and living bodies, notably their ‘existential’ and ‘attitudinal’ dimensions (even though this definitely does not make him a phenomenologist), although he does not go all the way into literal appeals to the “truth of my body” (canguilhem 2008b, 475); his residual existentialism (with occasional overtones of anthropocentrism) may hold some lessons for present-day thinking about life. perhaps the difference between vitalism and organicism, given the kantian difficulties for a science of the living, lies in the difference between a complete scepticism (towards some vitalist positions, although most of them are caricatures) and the hope that science can advance, however partially or perspectivally, in understanding at least some aspects of biological organization. although it is clear that most vitalists were in agreement with this position, criticisms (like for example those of logical empiricists like frank, although closer reading reveals important nuances20) have built a straw-man of vitalism as a position that wholly rejects scientific understanding of life and embraces mysticism instead. canguilhem is not a vitalist according to this excessively partial picture, yet he also does not believe that life has a logic that can be grasped in fixed norms or regulations. and this not only because the norms are internal or internally produced and managed (like in autopoiesis), but also and more importantly because they are variable and their very organization may be contingent in some respects. the recognition that some scientific models may have properties of the kind canguilhem attributes to living beings – that is to say, they are also emergent, creative, and synthetic, and oblige scientists to interact with their products instead of just analyse or represent them – may be a landmark separating different views of science. organicism tends to value these models as scientific whereas vitalism as understood by and in canguilhem, takes a step back from scientific models. 20 on such nuances see (chen, ms. a and b) canguilhem and the logic of life arantza etxeberria – charles t. wolfe 61 acknowledgments the authors wish to thank sebastjan vörös for his helpful reading of an earlier draft of this paper. ae acknowledges funding 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darian meacham, 197-212. dordrecht: springer. zammito, john. 2006. teleology then and now: the question of kant’s relevance for contemporary controversies over function in biology. studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences 37: 748-770. microsoft word 5 pumar layout 51 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 51-67 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 – this is an open access article article the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar1 abstract: epistemological considerations of philosophers and scientists from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century guided brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) in formulating his researches and participating in national and international scientific debates. with his siblings, álvaro ozório de almeida and branca de almeida fialho, he participated in debates on brazilian educational and scientific system’s reform and in international organizations. the family’s residence in rio de janeiro housed a laboratory that became a reference in experimental physiology researches in brazil. this article aims to present miguel ozório de almeida’s conception of science, constructed mainly within the private laboratory’s sociability, providing new aspects of scientific work production in brazil in the early twentieth century. i argue that ozório de almeida’s stand as an internationalist physiologist in national and international contexts was related to his reading of texts by ernest mach, pierre duhem, henri poincaré and william james. keywords: miguel ozório de almeida; experimental physiology; history of science in brazil; historiography of science in brazil; epistemology; internationalism received: 10 april 2017. reviewed 30 october 2017. accepted: 25 november 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.05 ____________________________________________________________________________________ a scientist and his bets scientists have doubts about their scientific practice; they also have certainties, or it would be better to say: bets. notes, drafts, articles and books written by brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) contain fundamental questions of a scientist who reflects on his practice: what is science? how is scientific knowledge produced? why? by whom? these are epistemological and moral questions that followed the physiologist throughout his life. and they reverberate up to the present. 1 letícia pumar is a postdoctoral researcher at federal rural university of rio de janeiro – ufrrj. address: program in history – federal rural university of rio de janeiro – institute of human and social sciences – ppg (prédio anexo) br 465 – km 7 campus seropédica – rj brazil – cep 23.897-000. email: leticiapumar@gmail.com the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 52 along with these questions of a general character there are specific ones: how to make use of the reflections on physics and mathematics for the understanding of the biological world? how can one explain physiological phenomena such as breath, muscular movement, or nervous influx? what relation may be established between a differential equation and a complex physiological phenomenon such as the excitation of the nervous system? faced with these questions, miguel ozório de almeida rejected and reaffirmed positions and practices. he receded and reacted in disputes and controversies. he made bets. born in 1890, miguel ozório de almeida graduated in medical studies in the early 20th century but worked as an experimental physiologist during his entire life. he taught physiology of domestic animals at escola superior de agricultura e medicina veterinária (school of higher education in agriculture and veterinary medicine); he was a member and president of academia brasileira de ciências (brazilian academy of sciences); member of academia brasileira de letras (brazilian academy of letters); and researcher (from 1927 to 1953) at instituto oswaldo cruz (oswaldo cruz institute). together with his siblings álvaro ozório de almeida (who was a professor at the faculty of medicine of rio de janeiro) and branca de almeida fialho, he actively participated in the debates on the reform of the country’s scientific and educational system conducted by academia brasileira de educação (brazilian academy of education) and the brazilian academy of sciences. they kept a private laboratory, set up with the support of a maecenas, at their parents’ home in rio de janeiro. the residence was a place of production of knowledge, training and meeting of the city’s intelligentsia (sanglard 2008). in the national context, they were engaged in the debate on the enhancement of the country’s scientific research. they also sought to establish direct contact with scientists in other countries (especially france) and ensure the recognition by their peers abroad of the scientific knowledge produced in brazilian laboratories. in their private laboratory, the almeidas received french researchers eugène gley, henri piéron and louis lapicque for short stays, which resulted in scientific articles, some in co-authorship, and in extensive scientific debates between the brazilians and the french (pumar 2018, in print). in this laboratory, álvaro ozório de almeida conducted his study on basal metabolism, which is cited by georges canguilhem in le normal et le pathologique (on the normal and the pathological) as “one of the best examples” of the understanding of “basal metabolism in its relation to climate and race” (canguilhem 2011, 111). miguel ozório de almeida was very active at instituto franco-brasileiro de alta cultura (french-brazilian institute of high culture) (created in 1923), and was indicated to give lectures under its auspices at the sorbonne. he participated in several intellectual and scientific societies in brazil and abroad; in 1933 he was granted the einstein prize by the brazilian academy of sciences, and in 1936 he received the sicard prize from the faculté de medicine de paris (faculty of medicine of paris) for his work on the theory of excitation. he took part in the league of nations’ international project of intellectual cooperation in the interwar period (pumar 2015); he participated in the creation of unesco in 1946 and was one of the brazilian candidates for the position of the natural sciences section’s officer and director-general of the organization. he published three books of essays: homens e coisas de sciencia,2 1925 (men and issues of science), a vulgarização do saber, 1931 (the vulgarization of knowledge), and ensaios, críticas e perfis, 1938 (essays, critics and profiles); one novel named almas sem abrigo, 1933 (souls without shelter); the book of memories ambiente de guerra na europa, 1943 (war environment in europe); and a physiology treaty (1937), besides several articles published in scientific and cultural journals, both national and international. the scientist was a great mathematician and a voracious philosophy reader, particularly of 2 translator’s note: free translation of all titles of publications and excerpts from the writings of miguel ozório de almeida, which use the brazilian-portuguese syntax and spelling of the early twentieth century. the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 53 epistemology issues. these characteristics marked the way he took part in the national and international scientific debates. experimental researches in phisiology in the nineteenth century were marked by the use of measuring instruments and data register. the so-called graphical method consisted of a technique of lines and curves production using sophisticated mechanical instruments that provided visual representation of phenomena in nature (chadarevian 1993). the technique was considered a way to generate knowledge that was impersonal, not subjective and therefore more exact, mathematical, neutral. apparatuses as the galvanometer (used to measure electrical current intensity) and the kymograph (used to measure muscle contraction time) became essential instruments in physiology studies, especially electrophysiology. these instruments enabled the visual representation of the phenomenon and the comparison with data collected by scientists elsewhere. furthermore, experimental physiology in the first half of the nineteenth century sought to establish stable laws of life phenomena. the incorporation of the biological world to physics as a discipline was on the base of the considerations that the functioning of biological systems was determined by physicochemical processes. therefore, the laws of physics (like thermodynamics, the law of gases etc.) could be on the base of the understanding of biological phenomena, providing suggestions for the definition of laws on biology. considering this context of appropriation of physics and mathematics by physiology, it is possible to frame ozório de almeida’s approach within what lorraine daston and peter galison named “structural objectivity” (daston; galison 2007). ozório de almeida used mathematical models to think his researches on physiology, especially on the nervous system functioning. experimental physiology became closer to physics and mathematics; at that moment, these disciplines were also undergoing changes that made them more attractive to physiology. therefore, the new epistemological questions related to the production of mathematics and physics knowledge could and should also be thought to produce biological/physiological knowledge. this was one of physiologist ozório de almeida’s bets (pumar 2018, in print). epistemological formulations were part of his bets as a scientist, especially as a brazilian scientist. i believe that ozório de almeida’s readings of texts by ernest mach, pierre duhem, henri poincaré, and william james was related to his stand as an internationalist physiologist in the national and international context. thus, i draw on the perspective that one can enhance the reflections of historiography of sciences in brazil by thinking about what images of science are handled by the scientists under study and what are the impacts of these images on their scientific studies and institutional stands. an experimental physiologist and his epistemological concerns for a competition for the chair of medical physics at the faculty of medicine of rio de janeiro, in 1916, ozório de almeida prepared a presentation of his scientific works and the thesis a lei de conservação de energia e a teoria energética do trabalho muscular (the law of energy conservation and the energetic theory of muscle work) for the examining board’s evaluation. the material presented a physiology research agenda that enhanced researches on “pure sciences” and sought to take the advances on physics and mathematics to biology by approaching authors like mathematician henri poincaré and physicists pierre duhem and ernst mach. according to ozório de almeida, the aim of the presentation of his works was to show the contribution that since 1910 he had brought to the domain of science “either in the form of new facts or as original ideas” (“quer sob a forma de factos novos, quer sob a forma de ideias originaes”) (almeida 1916, 5). curiously, the first section was “on the role of theory in biology” (sobre o papel da teoria em biologia). the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 54 ozório de almeida reported having been led to think about the role of theory in biology and physiology when presenting the nervous system basic functioning theories in a lecture at sociedade brasileira de neurologia (brazilian society of neurology), in 1914 (almeida 1914). the uncertainties about this phenomenon and the various existing theories to explain it encouraged the reflection about what would a theory be and its role in scientific research. the physiologist was critical about the existing notion in biological sciences that the objective of a theory was to provide an “explanation” showing what would be the intimate and real cause of the phenomena under study, i.e., evidencing reality. drawing on studies by physicist pierre duhem and mathematician henri poincaré, ozório de almeida presented the idea of theory as a “representation”. considering the differences between biology, physics and mathematics, the physiologist affirmed that the fundamental core of this idea and its consequences could also be transported to biological sciences (almeida 1916). according to ozório de almeida, when theory was understood as an explanation of reality, it would be tied to metaphysics, i.e., to the individuals’ phylosophical idea of reality and the exact conditions that would constitute the determinism of phenomena. he exemplified with walther nernst’s theory of excitation, in which an equation (mathematical model) was formulated drawing on the idea that the phenomenon of excitation consisted essentially of changes in the concentration of certain ions in contact with membranes. if this theory (and this equation) would be taken as an explanation, i.e., that it presented what happened in reality, we would attest that our ideas about the vital phenomena were nothing but pure and simple physicochemical phenomena. however, a vitalist or a follower of bergson’s philosophy might accept nernst’s formula as merely representative of the laws of excitation but would not admit that excitation was solely the result of an ionic concentration, and would seek another explanation to represent reality according to his/her way of thinking (almeida 1914). with this example ozório de almeida demonstrated the flexibility of attempts to explain natural phenomena and stressed that most theories of biological sciences, in particular, had short life. according to him, the concept of theory in physiology no longer had the immobility of a pure explanation because unconsciously physiologists did not give theories the absolute value of certainty, but rather a relative character, one of probabilities. since claude bernard, physiologists saw theories as relative truths destined to be modified over time and with the progress of science. skeptical persons who proclaimed the failure of science were, therefore, based on the idea of theory as explanation (almeida 1914). citing henri poincaré and pierre duhem, ozório de almeida stated that theoretical physics had been opposing this idea of theory as “explanation” to the idea of theory as “representation”. theory would be a system of mathematical propositions deduced from a small number of principles with the aim to merely “represent” a set of experimental laws. therefore, theory would have the aspect of a classification: “physical theory classifies experimental laws, i.e., it gathers the relations that exist between phenomena, revealed by experiments, in a set of propositions that condense them, ordering them in a harmoniously and natural manner” (“a theoria physica classifica as leis experimentais, isto é, reúne as relações existentes entre os fenômenos e reveladas pela experiência, em um conjunto de proposições que as condensam, ordenando-as de modo harmonico e natural”) (almeida 1914, 148). by assuming a “more modest role” to classify and represent a given set of experimental laws, without aspiring to attain reality, theory acquired freedom and autonomy, thus becoming independent from philosophy and metaphysics. ozório de almeida thought that although physiologists realized the representative character of theory, they would not have deduced (as theoretical physicists had done) one of the most significant and useful consequences to the development of scientific research: the right to adopt more than one theory at the same time for the same set of phenomena, as far as those theories did not contradict the experiment. according to him: the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 55 theory is a simple image we make of a given group of phenomena; thus, nothing prevents us from, according to our spirit, our tendencies or even our commodity, addopting either that theoretical image or, according to the needs of the moment, using one or another theory, that are apparently incompatible. (almeida 1914, 152)3 theory would be a research method, a working instrument applicable to the discovery of new experimental laws, i.e., it would be an instrument of inspiration for new ideas: what is the utility of a theory when we deny its explanation value to consider it only as a representation? this utility consists of, on one hand, bringing the greatest possible economy of thought to the study, and on the other hand enabling to deduce new ideas susceptible of experimental verification. the economic role of theory was signaled and very well studied by ernst mach. in fact, theory enables coordinated exposure and methodical classification of a large number of facts and experimental laws, which if not related to one another by a logical link would greatly exceed the limits of intelligence and memory. the economic utility of theory is realized at its most when it establishes, as it often occurs, the proximity of facts and phenomena that would otherwise remain eternally apart, subjecting them to an identical representation. (almeida 1914, 14)4 by becoming affiliated to the studies of french epistemology in the early twentieth century and to the studies of austrian ernst mach, miguel ozório de almeida deduced from their principles new practices for his work as a physiologist. it is noteworthy that he was a brazilian physiologist, hence a scientist placed at a marginal position regarding the international physiology debate and a researcher who strived to gain space for his discipline within the national context. this perspective is made evident in the scientific works produced by miguel ozório de almeida. soon after his presentation of theory’s role in biology, ozório de almeida delivered his article on the theories of the nervous system basic functioning, which had set out his advocacy of poincaré’s and duhem’s conventionalist ideas application to general biology and especially to physiology. the aim of his article was to examine those theories and verify if they were legitimate (if there was no well-established experimental fact that would contradict them) and sufficient (if they represented all facts known then) (almeida 1914). the way the scientist presented french physiologist louis lapicque’s theory of the nervous system functioning and its potential to stimulate new researches demonstrates his early interest in the subject, which later became a project to formulate a theory of excitation that was carried out until the end of his life. the relation between theory and experiment and the role of theory in knowledge production based ozório de almeida’s way of conducting this project, in a period when lapicque’s theory started to be criticized, because of a 3 “a theoria é uma simples imagem que nós nos fazemos de um determinado grupo de fenômenos; nada nos impede, pois, que segundo nossa forma de espirito, nossas tendências ou mesmo nossa comodidade, adoptemos ou aquella imagem theorica, ou ainda que segundo as necessidades de momento lancemos mão de uma ou de outra theoria, na sua apparência incompatíveis” (almeida 1914, 152). 4 “qual é a utilidade da theoria desde que lhe negamos o valor de uma explicação para consideral-a apenas como uma representação? essa utilidade consiste de um lado em trazer para o estudo a maior economia possível de pensamento, de outro em permitir a dedução de ideias novas suceptiveis de verificação experimental. o papel econômico da theoria foi assignalado e muito bem estudado por ernst mach. com efeito, a theoria permite a exposição coordenada e a classificação methodica de grande numero de factos e leis experimentais, que se não fossem ligados uns aos outros por um laço logico, de muito excederiam os limites da inteligência e da memoria. a utilidade econômica da theoria se faz sentir ao máximo, quando, como frequentes vezes se dá, ella estabelece a aproximação de factos e fenômenos, que de outro modo ficariam eternamente afastados, sujeitando-os a uma representação idêntica” (almeida 1914, 14). the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 56 movement of changes in the understanding of the nervous system by studies on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses and of the constant specialization of biology. another aspect highlighted in the material handed by ozório de almeida for the competition was the value of mathematics to biology studies. his thesis “the law of energy conservation and the energetic theory of muscle work” constituted an attempt to apply the principles of thermodynamics in physiology. his aim was to establish a theory of muscle work with the definition of equations that sought to represent the phenomenon and that could “agitate and indicate new problems that will require new researches” (“agitar e indicar novos problemas que exigirão novas pesquisas”) (almeida 1916b, 96). this behavior towards a research theme demonstrates the practical implications of incorporating the epistemological principles that he assumed. miguel ozório de almeida used mathematical models as a research instrument, with the purpose of finding new facts and relations between phenomena that had not yet been thought about. he also presented equations as models that could be used in different hypothesis to explain a complex phenomenon, such as the functioning of muscle work, which did not have, yet, a precise and well-defined theory to explain it. the material presented by ozório de almeida to the examining board was dense and its character could lead us to consider it as the scientist’s “research agenda” for his work as researcher/professor at that institution. however, his research agenda – perhaps, precisely for being formulated the way it was – did not enable him to win the competition. the chosen one was francisco lafayette pereira, who had presented the memory fenômenos de ressonância (resonance phenomena). contrary to ozório de almeida, in his presentation lafayette stressed that he had sought to describe those phenomena with the least possible use of mathematics, since “with some development, it has little use in a work of medical physics” (“ella, com certo desenvolvimento, pouca cabida tem em um trabalho de physica medica”) (pereira 1916,1). and he completed: “in general, we always follow the explanations of the masters on the subject, giving our humble personal opinion in one or another case” (“em geral, seguimos sempre as explicações dos mestres no assumpto, dando para um ou outro caso a nossa humilde opinião pessoal”) (pereira 1916,2). the two candidates had quite different stands and this probably weighed in the final decision of the selection. most likely, being rejected was a great personal failure, but his “agenda for biology” was aligned with the ideals of scientists who demanded new spaces for science in brazil and that, in that same year, created the sociedade brasileira de ciências (brazilian society of sciences), later named academia brasileira de ciências (brazilian academy of sciences), and participated in the associação brasileira de educação (brazilian association of education). having been classified in second place in the competition, in that year of 1916 miguel ozório de almeida became associate professor in biological physics. one year later he became a member of the brazilian society of sciences and was invited to be a professor of domestic animals’ physiology at escola superior de agricultura e medicina veterinária (school of higher education in agriculture and veterinary medicine). in 1927, he assumed on a regular basis (after a short period in the institution in the early 1920s) the laboratory of physiology at instituto oswaldo cruz (oswaldo cruz institute − ioc); he worked in this institution until the end of his life. since the nineteenth century, both in europe and in brazil, confidence in science and its “civilizing mission” increased. in this context, the creation of scientific institutions in brazil was marked by the defense of science as knowledge useful to the nation’s material and moral progress. the positivist ethos propagated the belief in science’s capability to present effective solutions to brazilian problems, thus engendering the material and cultural progress of the country (ferreira 2008). several studies demonstrate how scientists appropriated themselves of the role of intellectuals and started to think of solutions for the nation (lima; hochman 1996 and 2004, kropf 2009). in the turn of the nineteenth to the the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 57 twentieth century, scientists also advocated the differentiation of their activities in relation to literary and encyclopedic practice, which had prevailed in the country’s intellectual activities up to that time. this generation strengthened the idea that the country had no original science up to then because of the bookish character averse to science that was typical of the prevailing portuguese heritage (sá 2006). scientific activities, especially biomedical, in the first decades of the twentieth century achieved recognition due to the capability to resolve brazilian society’s specific problems. this “pragmatic” sense of science was one of the pillars of the institution in which miguel ozório de almeida developed his career as a researcher: oswaldo cruz institute, created in 1900 to produce serum and vaccine against a bubonic plague epidemic. according to nancy stepan, however, the efforts to create the conditions to develop science associating its “applied” objectives to the perspective of actively contributing to the advancement of knowledge, in alignment with the international scientific agenda, were crucial for the survival of the institute and its significance as a landmark in the institutionalization process of brazilian science (stepan 1976; kropf; hochman 2011). it is with the creation of the brazilian academy of sciences (1916) and the brazilian academy of education (1924) that occurs the strengthening of arguments in favor of a “disinterested” scientific production and the cultivation of “high culture” and “pure science” in the country. in general, historiography has demonstrated that brazilian scientists have not passively appropriated methods, theories and techniques from international science, but rather produced new knowledge on local issues, such as the so-called national or tropical diseases, or the use of local flora. the originality of the production achieved in the country was highlighted by contemporary scientists as a strategy for the legitimization and enhancement, in the national and international contexts, of the scientific knowledge they produced. when producing knowledge on local themes that had public utility, scientists received support and acknowledgment within the national context. on the other hand, when publishing in international journals their knowledge of local issues, that very singularity reached the international sphere. besides works that sought solutions to local problems, many researches were significant for the international agenda because they provided advances to a given field of knowledge. in the case of tropical medicine, scientists like adolpho lutz and carlos chagas are examples of researchers who succeeded in enhancing national and international dimensions in their scientific work produced in the country (benchimol 2007, kropf 2009). miguel ozório de almeida’s trajectory presents another formulation about the ways of thinking local production internationalization: the production of new knowledge in the country not only provided the possibility of progress in a field of knowledge internationally established, but also led to the re-signification of certain laws and experimental hypotheses of international science that could generate new hypotheses and new theories. drawing on the conception of theory as representation (and not explanation) and the use of mathematical models, ozório de almeida made a point of questioning the canons of the field of knowledge he was studying. in his own words, he sought to produce “original ideas” in the field of experimental physiology, rather than only new facts. this stand, marked by his epistemology readings, had great significance at a moment of debates about the country’s scientific production. it was an attempt to internationalize knowledge produced in the country not for its singularity (“new facts”), but for its universalizability (“original ideas”). an image of science in the scientific diffusion texts published by ozório de almeida throughout his life, he currently used e. mach’s “economy of thought” concept. he identified science’s objective as the creation of an economic representation of what was factual and not as the explanation of the mechanisms of a given reality per se. the use of mathematical models by ozório de the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 58 almeida in his physiology practice was related to his idea that these would be useful instruments for the concise formulation of observations and could save energy during scientific activity. as mentioned before, ozório de almeida was also a follower of french poincaré’s and duhem’s epistemology. it is noteworthy that these authors rejected the classical idea of science, condemned the inductive method and the idea of “crucial experiment” that would explain a phenomenon. they criticized auguste comte’s positivism, but instead of totally rejecting it, they sought to “renew” it. and they defended the need to formulate theoretical definitions and to provide a good use to hypotheses, seen as a mix of empirical and rational elements (brenner 2003). highlighting the role of decision (or “convention”, to use poincaré’s term), these french authors pointed to a reflection about scientists’ freedom and responsibilities during experimental researches. the fact that scientific laws were seen as conventions did not mean that they were arbitrary. they questioned the raw fact of empiricism drawing on an approach according to which empirical facts existed due to research hypotheses with a conventional character, i.e., resulting from a collective decision mediated by a common language, thus arising from given rational and empirical elements. every experiment would promote a generalization that would enable prediction and the establishment of laws. generalization was made through a common, conventional language whose criterion was to be the most “comfortable”. thus, only the relation, expressed in a conventional language, between empirical facts counted. truth and objectivity criteria were questioned and seen in a more dynamic way because there would no longer be a comparison between theories and so-called “exterior” facts, nor was there a belief that truth was occult in the facts. therefore, there was a non-definitive conception of laws and experiments in relation to reality (gattinara 1998). from positivism they kept the criticism of the search for ontological (metaphysical) questions and the explanatory character of science. they defended the idea that science was the knowledge only of laws and not of causes of phenomena. science would thus analyze phenomena to discover effective laws, constant relations and not to know their intimate nature. instead of explaining the phenomenon, the scientist should make a description and a deduction of a law that would represent it. science would be a system of relations that did not intend to know the true nature of things, but rather their relations. and it would be only in these relations that scientific objectivity (and a certain invariability) should be sought (poincaré 1995, 165). in the preface of his first book, published in 1925, ozório de almeida warned his readers: apart from some repetition, it would not be difficult to find in these pages, with some patience, more than one contradiction. i did not go through the work of eliminating them, cleansing the book of something that alarms many people. [...] but the contradictions to be found are more apparent than real. they are not from the realm of basic contradictions that at short intervals assert antagonist and incompatible things. they merely denote a thought in movement, in evolution, and arises from the need to fix it at a certain moment in an unstable and transitory position. (almeida 1925, 7)5 5“alem de algumas repetições, não seria difficil, com um pouco de paciencia, encontrar nestas paginas mais de uma pequena contradicção. não quis dar-me ao trabalho de eliminal-as, expurgando o livro de uma coisa que assusta muita gente. [...] mas as contradições a serem levantadas são mais aparentes que reaes. ellas não são da ordem das contradições básicas, consistindo em asseverar a pequeno intervalo coisas antagônicas e incompatíveis. ellas denotam tão somente um pensamento em movimento, em evolução, e provêm da necessidade de fixal-o em um dado momento em uma posição instavel e transitória” (almeida 1925,7). the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 59 the author’s warning demonstrates the difficulty in trying to define his position regarding significant epistemological questions. however, it is possible to highlight some themes and tendencies that constantly appear in his texts and that mark the author’s concerns, studies and writings about the functioning of science and the scientist’s activities. in an article later edited as one of the 1925 book’s chapters, ozório de almeida stated something that became one of his greatest concerns as a man of science: the true man of science often becomes more interested in the way to achieve knowledge than in knowledge itself. william james has already shown this point: for him, the professional of a science is the one who cultivates its methods; the amateur is the one who cares for results only. (almeida 1925, 92)6 therefore, the definition of what would science be, how do men of science act and what is their role are frequent questions in his articles. the idea of a genius in science appeared in several of ozório de almeida’s writings as, for example, an article about louis pasteur. according to the author, pasteur based his discussions on facts and his adversaries sustained ideas imposed by tradition. hence pasteur incarnated the ideal of a genius with his moral qualities: his belief in the value of science, of which he never doubted, his assured intuition of the experimental method, his courage and self-confidence in facing problems that would arise, and the unshakeable will, the energy in fulfilling his duty, the submission to self-imposed discipline never abandoned him. (almeida 1925,32)7 the qualities that ozório de almeida explained in detail in his text became associated to the very ideal of scientist, of a good scientist. this issue appeared in many other articles, for example, o sábio (the scholar). according to the scientist, scholars had qualities and imperfections; however, they had a characteristic of “great respect for truth and absolute honesty” (“grande respeito pela verdade e uma honestidade absoluta”) (almeida 1925,68). honesty was crucial in the day to day of research at the laboratory: errors may arise from technique failure, to be sooner or later discovered; they may appear and unfortunately they do appear very often in interpretations, but they are never the expression of a conscient and intentional will to alter the truth. oh! this inexorable truth! what sacrifices it imposes to vanity, to self-confidence! what humiliation it makes one suffer! (almeida 1925, 68)8 another scientist whom the physiologist called a genius was claude bernard. based on his thoughts, ozório de almeida criticized the attempt to build any kind of system that would comprehend the scientific practice. for bernard, experimental medicine was not a new 6 “o verdadeiro homem de sciencia acaba quase sempre mais interessado pelo modo de chegar ao conhecimento do que pelo conhecimento propriamente dito. william james já mostrou esse ponto; para ele o profissional de uma sciencia é o que cultiva os seus methodos; o amador é o que só quer saber dos resultados” (almeida 1925, 92). 7 “a sua crença no valor da sciencia, da qual nunca duvidou, a sua intuição segura do methodo experimental, a coragem e a confiança em si para enfrentar os problemas que se lhe deparassem, e a vontade inabalável, a energia no cumprimento do dever, a submissão à disciplina por ele mesmo estabelecida nunca o abandonaram” (almeida 1925, 32). 8 “os erros podem provir de defeitos de technica, cedo ou tarde descobertos; podem aparecer e infelizmente aparecem com grande frequência nas interpretações, mas nunca são a expressão de uma consciente e intencional vontade de alterar a verdade. ah! essa inexorável verdade! que sacrifícios ella impõe á vaidade, ao amor próprio! que humilhações ella faz sofrer!” (almeida 1925, 68) the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 60 system of medicine, but, on the contrary, the negation of all systems. drawing on this citation, ozório de almeida criticized positivism for repealing the philosophical systems, but, ultimately, creating another system. according to ozório de almeida: he (c. bernard) could thus establish not a system, not a rigid set of principles, but rather an example of extreme purity of reciprocal reactions of these two sorts of things: human intelligence on the one hand, and nature on the other. his effort was to distance as much as possible all obstacles that separate these two worlds and facilitate reciprocal and increasingly intimate penetration. and this might be the fundamental character of c. bernard’s work, which renders it the gift of perenniality. undoubtedly, science’s path has taken research to unsuspected fields in c. bernard’s time. these fields are very complex and the principles established half a century ago need retouching in many points or even a vast broadening. these changes, though, do not alter the fundamental character of c. bernard’s work. (almeida 1925, 147-148)9 in several articles the physiologist attempts to define science as what would seek to study the phenomena, “establishing, as thoroughly as possible, the conditions in which they happen and determining the relations between them” (“estabelecendo tão rigorosamente quanto possível, as condições em que eles se passam e determinando as suas relações entre si”) (almeida 1925, 115). science would not seek to research the reality behind the phenomena. scientific theory, thus, would not be destined to give a real explanation of the phenomena, but would only intend to create an image that would represent them more clearly: it is a simple construction, which corresponds to the needs of our spirit, but does not intend to present itself as an expression of reality. thus understood, scientific theory did not lose its value at all. the loss for having been an object of belief was largely compensated by the gain achieved as a working instrument. (almeida 1925, 115)10 according to ozório de almeida, criticism to science came from those who did not know it and sought in it the solution to all problems, expecting revelations that would satisfy different aspirations; and by not finding what they sought, they accused it from being narrow, uncertain, or of being in a crisis. however, he stressed that: “science cannot do all and does not reach everything. it cannot comprise everything within its limits. and if many people think these are narrow, it is a matter of personal viewpoint, it is related solely to the each one’s spirit” (“a ciência não pode tudo e não se estende a tudo. nem tudo cabe nos seus limites. e se muitos acham que estes são acanhados, isto é questão de ponto de vista pessoal, tem que vêr unicamente com a forma de espirito de cada um”) (almeida 1925, 116). furthermore, ozório de almeida often wrote about the limits of exacerbated nationalisms in science. in the article “a sciencia e a língua portugueza” (science and the 9 “elle (c. bernard) poude estabelecer assim não um systema, não um conjunto rígido de princípios, mas um exemplo de extrema pureza das reações reciprocas dessas duas ordens de coisas: a intelligencia humana de um lado, a natureza de outro. o seu esforço foi o de afastar o mais possível todos os empecilhos que separam esses dois mundos e facilitar a sua penetração reciproca e cada vez mais intima. e talvez seja esse o caracter fundamental da obra de cl. bernard, o que lhe empresta o dom de pereninade. sem duvida, a marcha da sciencia tem levado a pesquiza para campos não suspeitados no tempo de cl. bernard. esses campos são muito complexos, e os principios estabelecidos há meio seculo atraz necessitam em muitos pontos de retoque ou mesmo de ampliação vasta. essas modificações não alteram , porém, o caracter fundamental da obra de cl. bernard” (almeida 1925, 147-148). 10 “ella é uma simples construção, que corresponde a necessidades de nosso espírito, mas não pretende se apresentar como expressão da própria realidade. assim compreendida, a teoria scientífica em nada perdeu de seu valor. o prejuízo por ella tido como objeto de crença foi largamente compensado pelo lucro alcançado como instrumento de trabalho” (almeida 1925, 115). the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 61 portuguese language) the scientist highlights the fact that one of the consequences of war would have been the spread of nationality feelings: science is universal, according to a largely repeated sentence. knowledge of natural phenomena interests not only a given group of individuals living in this or that country; in principle, it should be of interest to all. in practice, however, things happen in a very different way. each country endeavors to have its own science, clearly characterized and separated from the science of neighbor countries. [...] science is made by scholars and if it knows no country, they do have it, as pasteur said. as it is the result of human work, science cannot, fortunately or unfortunately, keep away from human passions’ reach. (almeida 1925, 174-175)11 despite this statement, he affirmed that “the loss for the general development of science, the delay in knowledge diffusion, are clear enough to have to insist on this issue” (“o prejuízo para o desenvolvimento geral da sciencia, o atrazo na diffusão dos conhecimentos, é bastante claro para que seja necessario insistir sobre isso”) (almeida 1925, 174-177). for a better understanding of the dynamics of scientific activity, ozório de almeida stressed the value of the historical method. according to him, the history of science would offer a great moral lesson: the understanding of scientific transformation through time and the acceptance of a certain modest posture of the scientist regarding the value of the truths he/she produces. he wrote: “it [the history of sciences] teaches us to be modest, convincing us that our truths are merely approximate, will have a shorter or longer life, and will be substituted by more precise and lasting truths; the result of our work is thus ephemerous, at least partially” (“ella [a historia das ciências] nos ensina a ser modestos, convencendo-nos que as nossas verdades são simplesmente approximadas, terão uma vida mais ou menos curta e serão substituídas por outras mais exactas e duradouras, o resultado de nosso trabalho, sendo assim efêmero, pelo menos em parte”(almeida 1931, 191). furthermore, he affirmed that another significant verification of the history of sciences is the collective character of science, i.e., “the freely recognized or tacitly occult collaboration of all workers, even the most isolated from one another” (“a colaboração livremente reconhecida ou tacitamente oculta de todos os trabalhadores, mesmo os mais isolados, uns dos outros”) (almeida 1931, 191). ozório de almeida constantly referred to the importance of scientists, especially biologists and physiologists, to think about their own research practices. for this purpose, he advocated greater proximity to philosophy because, ultimately, it had started the development of modern science. he affirmed, though, that regarding the “contemporary movement of ideas” (“movimento de idéas contemporâneo”), philosophy of science would hardly be well conducted by a pure philosopher; it would be necessary, first, to make science, and then, by a “very difficult and arduous analysis, see how it is made” (“analyse muito difícil e muito árdua, vêr como é que se faz”) (almeida 1925, 122). to give examples of thinkers who undertook this task, ozório de almeida mentioned pierre duhem, henri poincaré, ernest mach, wilhelm ostwald, and abel rey; they examined the relation between physics and mathematics, discussing especially basic epistemology 11 “a sciencia é, segundo uma phrase muito repetida, universal. o conhecimento dos phenomenos naturaes não interessa sómente a um certo grupo de individuos habitando este ou aquelle paiz; em principio deve interessar a todos. na pratica, entretanto, as coisas se passam de modo muito differente. cada paiz esforça-se por possuir a sua sciencia própria, nitidamente caracterisada e bem separada da sciencia dos paizes visinhos. [...] a sciencia é feita pelos sabios e, se ella não tem patria, estes a têm, como disse pasteur. sendo obra humana, a sciencia não pode, infelizmente ou felizmente, ficar de todo fora do alcance das paixões humanas” (almeida 1925, 174-175). the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 62 issues. however, he stated that other disciplines were also useful for this philosophical analysis about the act of knowledge production. in his 1925 book, ozório de almeida commented french chemist georges urbain’s book, les disciplines d’une science (the disciplines of a science): the determinism that lies on the base of all experimental sciences may not, according to urbain, be seen in an absolute way. […] the greater or lesser perfect knowledge of the phenomena’s conditions give us the right to predict with greater or lesser probability of being correct. for urbain, prediction is the ultimate purpose of science. adaptation to environmental circumstances may only be achieved through the previous knowledge of future phenomena. the role of science may be considered accomplished when we reach this point. it does not seek to ‘explain’. explanations are mostly limited to establishing simple analogies between something that is still little known and that we seek to understand, and something that has already been studied, which we are familiar with. scientific theory, on the other hand, cannot be taken as an explanation essay. it merely classifies and organizes experimental laws, establishing between them a logical link, hence forming a system that is easy to preserve, thus saving our efforts. at this point, urbain meets e. mach. science always seeks to attain the ideal of maximal economy of thoughts in the understanding of facts. (almeida 1925, 124-125)12 ozório de almeida, now through urbain’s book, resumed the idea of theory as representation and economy of thought. this conception, according to the physiologist, would provide great elasticity and, therefore, great fecundity to scientific theories; it was at the base of modern science and distanced itself from old ideas that saw reality in theory. for defenders of the latter conception, “science is chaos, a monstrous heap of contradictions” (“a sciencia é um chaos, é um monstruoso amontoado de contradicções”) (almeida 1925, 125). but adepts of a modern view of science realized that they could use it as a guideline and, hence, they would not get lost: recognizing that a theory is false is no delusion; at the most, this can cause the pain one feels when losing a good working instrument. the criterion of falsity or legitimacy of a theory is the experimental criterion. in fact, as pointed by urbain, theories are neither true nor false. (almeida 1925, 126)13 12 “o determinismo que se encontra na base de todas as sciencias experimentais, não póde, segundo urbain, ser encarado de um modo absoluto [...] o conhecimento mais ou menos perfeito das condições dos phenomenos nos dá o direito de prever com mais ou menos probabilidade de acertar. a previsão é, para urbain, o fim real da sciencia. a adaptação ás circumstancias ambientes só póde ser realizada pelo conhecimento prévio dos phenomenos vindouros. o papel da sciencia póde ser considerado como terminado quando chegarmos a esse ponto. ella não procura nunca “explicar”. as explicações limitam-se o mais das vezes a estabelecer simples analogias entre aquillo que ainda é pouco conhecido e que procuramos comprehender e alguma coisa já estudada, com a qual já estejamos familiarizados. a theoria scientifica, por seu lado, não póde ser tomada como um ensaio de explicação. ella apenas classifica e ordena as leis experimentaes, estabelecendo entre ellas uma ligação logica e formando assim um systema facil de conservar, que poupa os nossos esforços. urbain se encontra neste ponto com e. mach. a sciencia procura sempre attingir ao ideal da máxima economia de pensamento na comprehensão dos fatos” (almeida 1925, 124-125). 13 “reconhecer que uma theoria é falsa não é uma desillusão; quando muito isso póde causar a pena que se tem ao perder um bom instrumento de trabalho. o critério de falsidade ou de legitimidade de uma theoria é o critério experimental. em rigor, como o nota urbain, as theorias não são nem verdadeiras nem falsas” (almeida 1925, 126). the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 63 these considerations about science and scientists are greatly valuable for the understanding of his practice as a physiologist. drawing on the conception of theory as representation (and not explanation) and economy of thought, ozório de almeida saw theories as working instruments. thus, he believed that it was possible to adopt more than one theory for the same set of phenomena, as long as they were legitimate, i.e., would not be in contradiction with the experiments. as an example of this attitude, one can mention his project to write a general theory of nerves and muscles excitation. ozório de almeida conducted researches on several themes in physiology, but the theory of excitation represented one of the greatest research projects of the scientist’s career. one can say that this theory became an obsession for the scientist, who until the end of his life worked on perfectionating the mathematic equation he formulated (pumar 2018, in print). time was a crucial measure for researches that sought to understand phenomena that were little known and hard to treat experimentally, as were the cases of nervous transmission, mental process, or sensations (daston; galison 2007). the measuring of time enabled to collect data in laboratory researches and to relate abstract numbers to objective phenomena. chronaxie, established by french physiologist louis lapicque, was one of those measures that had large application in studies on the nervous system. a ‘hot’ theme in the early twentieth century, researches on the nervous system with chronaxie soon interested ozório de almeida. but it was in the 1920s – when his connections with the french academic community became stronger – that the scientist sought to develop a theory of excitation, in which the measuring of time and intensity of electric currents necessary to excite nervous and muscle fibers based the formulation of an equation that could represent the phenomenon. since the nineteenth century, the demonstration of muscle excitation of frog paws from electrical current became the classical experimental model in neurophysiology. an electrical current was used as a tissue excitation agent and, depending on the intensity and time span of the current, nerve and muscle excitation would occur. many researchers studied these factors seeking to understand the minimum values of intensity and time of current for the excitation to occur. in the beginning of the century, the first mathematic curves representing the intensity of the electric current time span were made. with the establishment of chronaxie, louis lapicque became the central figure in debates on neurophysiology in the first half of the twentieth century (harvey 1994). chronaxie became the base for a great nervous system theory that guided researches in france and europe for several years. in the mid-1930, the influence of lapicque and his nervous system theory decreased in anglo-american circles due to consecutive attacks from english physiologists such as a. v. hill, henry h. dale, and especially from dale’s pupil w. rushton (harvey 1994; barbara 2010). criticism to lapicque arose, mainly, due to theoretical interpretations that the french physiologist sought to generalize drawing on the use of chronaxie, especially with his definition of the law of isochronism. this physiologist drew on the conception that the nervous influx transmission during nerves and muscle excitation was essentially an electric phenomenon and that chemical transmission played a small role in this phenomenon. according to lapicque’s law of isochronism, the direction of the nervous influx in the tissues was related to their chronaxie, because only tissues with the same chronaxie could excite one another. however, lapicque’s explanation was formulated at the same time as physiologists at cambridge university developed researches on the chemical transmission of nervous influxes and defined the concept of chemical receptor. therefore, one can notice the existence, at that moment, of different hypotheses on the same phenomenon. this was a polemic debate in the early twentieth century. considering that mathematical models fitted into different hypotheses and in view of uncertainties regarding the phenomenon of nerves the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 64 and muscles excitation, ozório de almeida sought to formulate a mathematical model, before the definition of a physicochemical theory of this phenomenon, from the assimilation of research data originating from local scientists and various theoretical guidelines. for the physiologist, scientific cooperation and the transformation of empirical data into more general theories by means of mathematics was a natural path of sciences, but a path full of obstacles and changes (pumar 2018, in print). therefore, the brazilian physiologist ozório de almeida’s posture in this debate was strongly related to his epistemological studies. at the end of his life, during a debate at the centre international de synthèse (international center of synthesis), directed by henri berr, following a lecture by julien benda, ozório de almeida advocated that there existed no synthesis in science, but rather syntheses. he stated that he was skeptical about the attempt to make a great synthesis, i.e., to try to reduce the world and its infinities of phenomena (of which we have very little knowledge) to a general formula. it was necessary to maintain the idea of partial syntheses, instead of seeking to make one great definitive synthesis. according to him, mathematicians and physicists expressed different phenomena through identical formulas: “how many phenomena are expressed by an equation or a simple function! but this does not oblige us to make one synthesis of analogy of the nature of these phenomena, which are different” (“quantos fenômenos são expressos por uma equação ou uma simples função! mas isso não nos obriga a fazer uma síntese de analogia da natureza desses fenômenos, que são diferentes”) (benda 1950, 209). according to ozório de almeida, the evolution of science was made of small syntheses. when one achieved to express facts of experiments that had something in common in a law, with words, or, in a more precise way, by mathematical relations, it was a synthesis. and when one made a theory, it was no more than an effort of synthesis that gathered a certain number of laws; there could be, however, different theories for the same phenomenon. the scientist opposed, thus, large generalizations or one large synthesis. according to him: “only the pure could be an object of generalizations” (“apenas o puro poderia ser objeto de generalizações”) (benda 1950, 210). furthermore, in a debate at the same center, soon after the lecture given by a. koyré (koyré, 1950), ozório de almeida criticized the divisions in the history of scientific thought. for him, different scientific mentalities overlapped at that time. he stated that he was not pessimistic regarding science’s future or its current state; but he stressed that it was interesting to observe that, perhaps because of the extreme sub-division of researches, there was still a quite restrictive mentality (nearer to the renaissance mentality described by koyré) that was not in accordance with the principles established by what was called current science, under the spirit of the idea of synthesis (koyré 1950). to use his terms, for him the mentality of analysis (production of new facts) was not sufficient, it was also necessary to seek that of synthesis. however, his idea that modern science was formed by syntheses and not by the synthesis, in a certain way was opposed to the idea of one sole and structuring science. according to ozório de almeida: “in face of the great and numerous discoveries of science, it is necessary to maintain the idea of partial syntheses, but not seek to make the definitive synthesis” (“diante das grandes e numerosas descobertas da ciência, é necessário manter a ideia de sínteses parciais, mas não tentar fazer a síntese definitiva”) (benda 1950, 210). concluding remarks when analyzing ozório de almeida’s life and work it is possible to notice that in a period marked, on one hand, by karl popper’s principle of falsifiability and the “scientific conception of the world” of logical positivism and, on the other hand, by bergson’s valorization of intuition, ozório de almeida tended to a stand that sought to be in balance between a the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 65 unitarian and dogmatic vision of science, seen by him as simplistic and responsible for the distrust directed to science, and a more critical position towards scientific activity. one can observe in ozório de almeida’s texts that he sought to be distant from what he called an “average man of science” (“homem médio de sciencia”). in every research theme, he sought to produce new facts, but his ultimate purpose was to present original ideas, i.e., to debate the canons of physiology themes and propose new theories and hypotheses. one can also verify his interest in issues related to scientific practice and his concern with more fundamental philosophical questions. his engagement in national and international debates was guided by the understanding of science and its dynamics engendered by his readings in epistemology. as seen earlier, authors like poincaré, duhem and mach refused a total rule for science. they suspected of all objective fundament of reality and strived to make a sort of “psychology” of scientific behavior, stressing the convention system that supported scientific activity, a response to the need to adapt the variety of phenomenal experiment to the unitarian request of human spirit (canguilhem; planet 2011 [1939]). on the other hand, the north-american pragmatism had also a different point of view of the traditional image of science and knowledge, especially with william james, an author highly admired by ozório de almeida. the criticism of henri bergson to science went relatively in the same direction. as a reader of bergson, dewey, james, duhem and poincaré, ozório de almeida seemed to have a distinct understanding of the scientific activity, distant from a more traditional viewpoint influenced by comte’s positivism that animated other contemporary brazilian scientists. the idea preconized by ozório de almeida – that modern science had demonstrated the mutable and flexible character of scientific theories – provided a moral aspect to the scientist’s work, who should not be tied to traditions and to seeking immutable truths about the natural world or even about the social world (political/moral). the use of theory (especially mathematic formulations) as a research instrument that may (and should) be discarded, when necessary, demonstrated the scientist’s freedom and autonomy toward any kind of authority: intellectual or political, national or international. this understanding of the scientific activity from a perspective that enhances the individual’s moral freedom had consequences in the way miguel ozório de almeida dealt with brazilian society’s changes, especially concerning the educational and scientific system and international scientific relations. note this paper is based on formulations contained in the first part of my ph.d. thesis defended at casa de oswaldo cruz/fiocruz on december 2015. see: souza, letícia pumar alves de. a ciência e seus fins: internacionalismo, universalismo e autonomia na trajetória do fisiologista miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953). tese (doutorado em história das ciências e da saúde). casa de oswaldo cruz/fiocruz, rio de janeiro, 2015. 310 p. references almeida, miguel ozório de. 1914. theorias sobre o funcionamento elementar do systema nervoso. archivos brasileiros de psychiatria, neurologia e medicina legal, rio de janeiro, n. 3 e 4, pp.143-189. almeida, miguel ozório de. 1916. exposição dos trabalhos scientificos do dr. miguel ozório de almeida. rio de janeiro: pimenta de mello. the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 66 almeida, miguel ozório de. 1916b. a lei de conservação de 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2008. “o ethos positivista e a institucionalização das ciências no brasil”. in lima, nísia trindade; sá, dominichi (org.). antropologia brasiliana: ciência e educação na obra de edgard roquette-pinto. belo horizonte: ed. ufmg, pp.87-98. gattinara, enrico castelli. 1998. épistémologie, histoire et histoire des sciences dans les années 1930. revue de synthèse 4 (1): 9-36. harvey, joy. 1994. “l’autre côté du miroir (the other side of the mirror): french neurophysiology and english interpretations”. in debru, claude; gayon, jean; picard, jean-françois (éd.). les sciences biologiques et medicales en france, 1920-1950. actes du colloque de dijon, 25-27 juin 1992. paris: cnrs. koyré, a. 1950. l’apport scientifique de la renaissance. revue de synthèse 67 (1): 29-50. kropf, simone petraglia. 2009. doença de chagas, doença do brasil: ciência, saúde e nação. rio de janeiro: ed. fiocruz. kropf, simone petraglia; hochman, gilberto. 2011. from the beginnings: debates on the history of science in brazil. the hispanic american historical review 91 (3): 391-408. pereira, francisco lafayette rodrigues. 1916. phenomenos de ressonância. dissertação (concurso para vaga de substituto da cadeira de physica medica na faculdade de medicina do rio de janeiro). são joão d’el rey: typ. são josé, p.1. poincaré, henri. 1995. o valor da ciência. rio de janeiro: contraponto. pumar, letícia. 2015. between national and international science and education: miguel ozório de almeida and the league of nations’ intellectual cooperation project. in: beyond geopolitics: new histories of latin america at the league of nations. new mexico: new mexico press, pp. 169-184. the idea of science of brazilian physiologist miguel ozório de almeida (1890-1953) letícia pumar 67 pumar, letícia. 2018. modelos matemáticos e a fisiologia do sistema nervoso do início do século xx: a teoria da excitação do fisiologista brasileiro miguel ozório de almeida. revista scientiae studia. 16 (1): in press. sá, dominichi miranda de. 2006. a ciência como profissão: médicos, bacharéis e cientistas no brasil (1895-1935). rio de janeiro: ed. da fiocruz. sanglard, gisele. 2008. entre os salões e o laboratório: guilherme guinle, a saúde e a ciência no rio de janeiro, 1920-1940. rio de janeiro: ed. fiocruz. stepan, nancy. 1976. gênese e evolução da ciência brasileira: oswaldo cruz e a política de investigação científica e médica. rio de janeiro, artenova. 233 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 233-237 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2016 – this is an open access article interview: helge kragh1 born in copenhagen in 1944, helge kragh has been emeritus professor at the niels bohr institute (denmark) since 2015. he is a former professor of history of science at aarhus university, university of oslo and cornell university. kragh holds doctorates in science and philosophy. his publication list includes more than 600 items, written for specialists as well as the public. most of his research is in the history of 20th century physics, chemistry, astronomy and cosmology, that is, in the history of the physical sciences since about 1800, but he has also contributed to the history of technology, science-religion studies, and for the special interest of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, historiography of science. kragh has been active in the organization of international history of science and is a co-founder of the european society for the history of science. in 2008-2010 he served as president of this organization. prof. helge kragh at lille (france) in july 2015 interviewed by gustavo rodrigues rocha2 in april 2017. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.20 gustavo rodrigues rocha (grr): you published a book titled an introduction to the historiography of science in 1987 which is still to date a work unique in its kind. how did you come to write it? helge kragh: at the time i was a high-school teacher of physics and chemistry, without any kind of training in history, historical method or history of science. but i felt a need to understand the history of science in its broader contexts and especially its historiography and relation to general history. i think the book was basically an attempt of self-education and to understand what is special about history of science and its methods. i read a great many books without finding one that satisfied my needs and so i decided to write one myself. grr: many years after your book on historiography of science: what is the place of historiography of science in the history of science? where is the current historiography of science heading towards? 1 helge kragh is a professor emeritus at the niels bohr institute (denmark). address: blegdamsvej 17, 2100 copenhagen, denmark. email: helge.kragh@nbi.ku.dk 2 gustavo rodrigues rocha is a professor at the state university of feira de santana – uefs (brazil) and a visiting scholar at the university of california, berkeley (usa). address: universidade estadual de feira de santana – uefs, av. transnordestina, s/n, campus universitário (módulo 5), departamento de física (dfis), novo horizonte, feira de santana/ba, brazil, 44036-900. emails: grrocha@uefs.br and grrocha@berkeley.edu interview: helge kragh 234 helge kragh: these are complex questions. for the last several decades there has been much interest in integrating history of science and general history, or coordinating the two, and today many historians of science are trained in history. i consider this a healthy development. there have been various trends, from social and cultural history over constructivist history to so-called contextualist history. there is probably no general trend or tendency in current historiography of science except that some kind of contextualism is characteristic for much history of science published in monographs and the more prestigious academic journals such as isis. grr: you have been interested in the science-religion dialogue, being a board member of the sciencetheology dialogue forum, and having written fascinating books on these topics such as matter and spirit in the universe (2004) and entropy creation (2008), and published compelling papers on subjects such as pierre duhem and catholic faith, and natural philosophy, theology, and cosmology. religion can play an important role in how people think about the world, is it okay if i ask you about the religious environment that you grew up in? what religion (if any) were you brought up in? did your religious views change over time? helge kragh: i was not brought up in a religious milieu but was (like most danes) born into the lutheran-protestant church. religion did not play much of a role and when i was in my early twenties i left the church; not because i became an atheist but just because of lack of interest and a certain dislike of organized religion as practiced in my country. my interest in religion is of relatively new date and mostly a result of my studies in history of science which showed how important christian religion has been for the development of science (and at some stage also islam). especially after i turned toward history of cosmology i began thinking about religion in connection with, for example, the perennial question of the origin of the universe. although i do not believe in traditional religious dogmas i have sympathy and respect for religious thought whereas i have no sympathy for hard-core atheism and materialism. somehow, it seems to me, there must be something above and beyond the physical universe, a mystical spirit or divine principle. if this principle is called god, i believe in god. but this god has no interest at all in human beings. in a sense, my kind of religiosity is somewhat the same as the one einstein expressed on various occasions. grr: you have also cosmology as one of your primary interests and have published an entire book on grand theories in physics, namely, higher speculations (2011). it is not uncommon for people to search in cosmology some insights on big questions or some sort of big picture. it's an inclination not far from theology for instance. how do you think the science-religion dialogue interest and your passion for cosmology (and maybe grand theories in physics) are all related in your works? would you say you have a common motivation driving all these interests and somehow bringing them together? if yes, how so? helge kragh: as mentioned, my interest in religion is indeed related to my interest in cosmology but mostly through the scientists and philosophers who have thought about the universe. to understand these thoughts and their relations to theological questions as they have developed since early christianity, one needs to know about theology. i am not so naïve to believe that i can say something original about the origin of the universe, for example. but of course i have thought and written about it. i am rather sure that the ultimate origin of the universe cannot be explained in scientific terms. that is impossible. from this one cannot infer a creative divine being, however. and even if such a being existed (which is an appealing possibility) the god-hypothesis rests on faith and cannot possibly be justified scientifically. i share the belief of most experts that one cannot use science in the service of religion, nor religion in the service of science. by and large i am a supporter of what is called the “independence thesis” in the science-religion discussion. grr: you wrote a biography of dirac published in 1990. you also wrote about 25 year later, after your first comprehensive and detailed account of dirac's life and contributions to science, a second book about dirac's legacy in cosmology and geophysics, namely, varying gravity (2016). how did you get interested in dirac's scientific biography? what about paul dirac fascinated you so much? interview: helge kragh 235 helge kragh: i actually also wrote a third book on dirac, a small and popular one called simply dirac and published in 2016. for a long time ago i became interested in the early attempts to formulate quantum mechanics in agreement with relativity, which led me to the schrödinger equation and the klein-gordon equation; from there it was natural to examine the origin of the dirac equation and the physicist who found it. at the time when i started my work on the biography, dirac was still alive but i failed getting in contact with him. he was a remarkable scientist and a person whose life, science and mentality fascinated me. apart from being a genius, he also had a peculiar personality. and of course, by following dirac’s career one also follows important parts of the development of modern physics. i found his cosmological hypothesis to be particularly interesting even if we know today that it is wrong. another aspect of his work which attracted my interest was his idea of so-called beautiful mathematics in physics. but contrary to dirac, i do not think there is much substance in the idea. grr: you were appointed professor of history of science and technology at aarhus university, denmark, in 1997, where you remained until very recently moving to the niels bohr institute in 2015 (being there an emeritus professor ever since). was this position at aarhus university eagerly anticipated? did they have a chair in the history of science and technology at aarhus university before you arrive? helge kragh: i had no connections to the history of science institute in aarhus before i was employed in 1997, except that i served for one year as curator of an associated museum of history of science and medicine. but i had previously been associate professor at cornell university, usa, and full professor of history of science at the university of oslo, norway. at cornell i had an office next to the one of hans bethe, the famous physicist. most of the time since my graduation, i had worked as a high school teacher. aarhus university had since about 1965 had a chair in history of science, occupied by olaf pedersen who was a specialist in medieval and ancient exact sciences. it was his chair i took over in 1997, when i terminated my position in aarhus. the chair has now been replaced by a professorship in science studies. grr: you published in 1999 what i consider to be the finest one single volume on the history of physics in the 20th century, namely, quantum generations (1999). was this a long-term project? when did you start writing this volume? what were your motivations behind quantum generations (1999)? how was the reception of the book? helge kragh: it was not my idea to write the book, but princeton university press wanted a book in connection with the turn of the century and they asked me to write it. so i wrote the book pretty quickly, it took me about a year’s hard work i think. i rather liked it because i had myself missed a broad and comprehensive account of the development of modern physics. the book was quite successful and has been translated to five or six other languages, including japanese and chinese. it has also been used for courses in history of science. some reviewers thought there was too much social history in it, while other reviewers found it to be too technical and internalistic; others again found that there was too much about quantum physics and too little about materials physics. but i could not please everyone. it is probably the most sold of my books, but the best one, in my own estimation, is cosmology and controversy from 1996. grr: you have also helped to found the european society for the history of science around the early 2000's (having been its president during the term 2008-2010). how was that? what main roles did you play in its foundation? helge kragh: i had earlier served as assistant secretary for the international union of history and philosophy of science (iuhps, division of history of science), so i had some experience with organizational work. the idea of creating the european society for the history of science (eshs) was due to the french historian claude debru, and not to me. but i supported the idea from the beginning and was active in the process that made eshs a reality. for several years i had worked interview: helge kragh 236 as editor for the journal centaurus which later became the official journal of eshs. i was vicepresident and then president for the organization which is today a rather strong and successful one with biannual conferences that attract many students and scholars. i attended the last one that took place in prague in 2016. grr: you have recently published three more books on cosmology, namely, the weight of the vacuum (2014), masters of the universe (2015), and varying gravity (2016). what is your perspective on the present (and maybe future) state of the standard model of cosmology? helge kragh: as a historian and not a scientist i don’t need to have an opinion about current theories in physics and cosmology. but i can judge the theories from a historical point of view. the hot big bang standard theory is undoubtedly very impressive and probably true as far as it goes. the big bang is no longer a matter of debate, but one needs to keep in mind that the big bang is not the same as the creation or absolute beginning of the universe. while the standard model is reliable i am much less convinced by its extensions to the time regimes even closer to the magical moment t = 0. inflation is not yet proved and pre-inflation scenarios seem very speculative. the same is the case with various theories of a universe before the big bang, although such theories cannot be ruled out. it is too early to say with certainty that the age of the universe is finite. grr: you have also been interested in historical and alternative models in cosmology, such as your study on the scientific controversy between big-bang theory and steady-state theory, as presented in cosmology and controversy (1999), and your recent reevaluation of dirac's hypothesis of a varying gravity, as presented in varying gravity: dirac’s legacy in cosmology and geophysics (2016). don't you think that there is very little room today for proposing, investigating and researching alternative models in cosmology in the mainstream institutions? if yes, why do you think this is the case? helge kragh: yes, you are right, there is little room for alternatives of the standard model, but there is plenty of room for alternatives at or below the planck timescale. more importantly, from a historical and sociological point of view it doesn’t matter so much whether or not the alternatives are reasonable or not. the very fact that there are such proposals makes them of interest. i have a certain weakness for alternative ideas, not because i think they are valid but because they tell us something about science and the psychological state of scientists. the modern idea of the multiverse is controversial and it is precisely for this reason i am interested in it. grr: what have you been working on or involved in nowadays (books or papers you have been writing)? what may be your next projects or research interests? helge kragh: i recently published a paper (in journal for astronomical history and heritage) on zwicky’s and others’ ideas of “tired-light” hypotheses designed to keep the universe static. and shortly there will appear a detailed investigation (in annals of science) of bohr’s hypothesis of energy non-conservation ca. 1930, including his somewhat desperate attempt to explain stellar energy production. for half a year ago i published a biography of a leading nineteenth-century danish chemist entitled julius thomsen: a life in chemistry and beyond. my main work at present is however the preparation of a collaborative volume of the history of modern cosmology to be published by oxford university press in 2018. i am co-editor together with malcolm longair, a british astrophysicist, and write some of the chapters. i am also working on the status of astrophysics and cosmology within the nobel system until 1966, relying on new material from the nobel archive in stockholm. this work is still in progress. grr: what are the areas worth investigating in the history of the physical sciences that you think is yet not well (or less) researched? helge kragh: one area, which i have thought of for a long time, is a sociologically oriented analysis of the origin and development of modern cosmology. how did cosmology become a scientific discipline? when and why did people begin to identify themselves as “cosmologists”? when and interview: helge kragh 237 why did textbooks and specialized journals appear? can one speak, even today, of a community of cosmologists? there exists this kind of social history for particle and solid-state physics, for example, but not for cosmology or even for astrophysics. i would not myself be able to write such a history, but in collaboration with a sociologist or social historian i probably would. i also think that there are interesting areas of a cross-disciplinary nature, especially modern geophysics, medical physics and astrophysics that deserve to be more and better cultivated. and within the chemical sciences there is not, to my knowledge, any good historical work on so-called computational chemistry. finally, it would be of value to have a comprehensive study of the relationship between philosophy and the physical sciences in the period after about 1970. my guess is that the impact of professional philosophers upon physics in this period has been minimal, but i am not sure. grr: what would be your best advice for a historian of science (and especially a historian of physical sciences) in his or her early career today? helge kragh: i find it difficult to come up with a good advice. in some sense he (or she) should work in established areas of history of science, on the other he should also try to come up with something original. from my own experience i would say that it is important to learn the craft of history as well as the content of one or preferably more sciences. one should not be too specialized but have the broader perspectives in mind. grr: thank you so much! references kragh, helge. 1987. an introduction to the historiography of science. cambridge: cambridge university press. kragh, helge. 1990. dirac: a scientific biography. cambridge: cambridge university press. kragh, helge. 1999. cosmology and controversy: the historical development of two theories of the universe, princeton: princeton university press. kragh, helge. 1999. quantum generations: history of physics in the twentieth century. princeton: princeton university press. kragh, helge. 2004. matter and spirit in the universe: scientific and religious preludes to modern cosmology. london: imperial college press. kragh, helge. 2008. entropic creation: religious contexts of thermodynamics and cosmology. new york: routledge. kragh, helge. 2011. higher speculations: grand theories and failed revolutions in physics and cosmology. oxford: oxford university press. kragh, helge; overduin, james. 2014. the weight of the vacuum: a scientific history of dark energy. springer international publisher. kragh, helge. 2015. masters of the universe: conversation with cosmologists of the past. oxford: oxford university press, 2015. kragh, helge. 2016. varying gravity: dirac's legacy in cosmology and geophysics. springer international publisher. kragh, helge. 2016. simple dirac (great lives series). new york: simply charly. kragh, helge; thomsen, julius. 2018. a life in chemistry and beyond. copenhagen: royal danish academy of science. 20 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 20-35 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology stefano bordoni 1 abstract: pierre duhem can be looked upon as one of the heirs of a tradition of historical and philosophical researches that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. this tradition opposed the naïve historiography and epistemology of the positivist school. beside the positivists of different leanings such as littré, laffitte, wyrouboff, and berthelot, we find cournot, naville, and tannery, who developed sophisticated histories and philosophies of science focusing on the real scientific practice and its history. they unfolded elements of continuity and discontinuity in the history of science, and enlightened the complex relationship among experimental, mathematical, logical and philosophical components in scientific practice. in pierre duhem we find a systematic and vivid interpretation of these meta-theoretical issues, and a meaningful development of a cultural tradition that re-emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. keywords: pierre duhem; historiography; epistemology; experimental practice; theoretical practice; continuism discontinuism received: 27 march 2017. reviewed: 26 may 2017. accepted: 31 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.04 _____________________________________________________________________________ the originality of duhem’s meta-theoretical researches consisted in the interconnection between historical inquiry and philosophical analysis. the complexity of the natural world and the complexity of scientific practice urged him to go beyond the naïve historiography and epistemology of the positivist tradition. in reality, another tradition had already emerged alongside positivism in the second half of the nineteenth century. some mathematicians had inquired into the actual scientific practice and its history, and had discovered a plurality of theoretical streams, and stagnations or regressions over time. in their philosophy of science, the positivistic rhetoric of relentless progress, and the cult of a simplified and idealised scientific practice gave way to a mature awareness of inescapable shortcomings and dramatic detours in scientific method and its history. i would like to focus on the positivist and the critical traditions, and then on some historiographical 1 stefano bordoni is a lecturer/adjunct professor in mathematics at the university of bologna. address: rimini campus, via dei mille 39, 47921 rimini, italy. emails: stefano.bordoni@gmail.com; stefano.bordoni2@unibo.it stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 21 and epistemological issues duhem developed in the early stages of his research. he can be looked upon as the direct heir of the second tradition, which had already put forward a critical historiography and epistemology. although duhem has been considered as one of the founding fathers of the modern philosophy of science, i would like to interpret him as the most outstanding follower of an already existing tradition. in some specific issues he discussed between 1892 and 1896, we can find some traces of the previous critical tradition. nevertheless, in the papers he published in this time span we do not find explicit references to scientists and philosophers who had previously put forward a critical analysis of scientific practice.2 this seems really surprising when we notice that duhem always mentioned the scientists who had contributed to the establishment of the mathematical thermodynamics he developed in the same years. the fact is that his interests in history and philosophy of science had emerged from his researches in theoretical physics rather than from an autonomous philosophical research on the track of a specific philosophical tradition. duhem was objectively in debt to some previous scientists and philosophers, but this debt did not correspond to a direct influence. the content of his scientific researches on thermodynamics led him to the rediscovery and reinterpretation of the aristotelian tradition, whereas his actual scientific practice led him to the rediscovery and reinterpretation of a subtle epistemological tradition that can be traced back to pascal (bordoni 2017, 240-241).3 i find that the historiographical thesis that places the emergence of a mature philosophy of science in france in the last years of the nineteenth century should be updated (brenner 2003, 1, 2, 4-5, and 7-8; chimisso 2008, 1-2, and 5-6; knight 2008, vii; rheinberger 2010, 1 and 3-4; mpiwg 2012, 7; braunstein 2012, 33; brenner (ed.) 2015, 5-6). a sophisticated philosophy of science emerged quite earlier. poincaré, duhem, and milhaud were the heirs of a tradition that did not manage to produce any institutional effect in the last decades of the nineteenth century but left long-lasting traces in french intellectual environment. we do not find a direct filiation or an explicitly acknowledged line of descent but a conceptual stream that flowed through an adverse cultural context. the context the last decades of the nineteenth century saw an “industrial and social revolution,” and the spread of new technologies (barraclough 1964, 17, 36-8, and 40). a process of professionalization of scientific practice, and a process of specialization, took place in those decades.4 both an optimistic and a pessimistic scientism emerged: science represented the suitable solution for solving technological problems, fostering social progress, and “slowing down the deterioration of the human species” (bowler and morus 2005, 147-148 and 150; olson 2008, 253, 274, 277, and 293). the intellectual trend that can be qualified as scientism rested upon two pillars: the unavoidability of human progress, and the close link between scientific and social progress. in the french context, the most radical scientism can be traced back to the six volumes of the cours de philosophie positive that auguste comte published between 1830 and 1842.5 he coined the expression “philosophie positive” in order to qualify his intellectual commitment. his philosophical system was a “philosophy of sciences” that encompassed “every kind of phenomena”, social ones included, because all sciences had to be submitted “to a single method”. at least three strong metaphysical commitments supported his ambitious design: first, the rejection of any question that did not deal with a scientific approach to reality, second, the methodological unification among the different sciences, and third, the faith in human progress (comte 1830, vii-viii). 2 however, it should be specified that the most complex and questionable of duhem’s concepts, namely the idea that scientific practice aimed at a natural classification of material phenomena stemmed from both traditions. 3 on the relationship between duhem’s thermodynamics and aristotle’s natural philosophy, see bordoni 2012b and the tenth chapter of bordoni 2012c. bas van fraassen pointed out the importance of pascal’s “underground epistemology” in the history of science (van fraassen 1989, 151). the deep influence of pascal on duhem has been stressed by jean-françois stoffel (stoffel 2007, 299 and 301). 4 the establishment of definite boundaries between science and philosophy was one of the achievements of scientific practice in the late nineteenth century (ross 1962, 66, and morus 2005, 3, 6-7, 20, and 53). 5 for the polysemy of the word scientism, and its connection with the equally plural meaning of the word positivism, see paul 1968, 299, footnote 2. for the origin of the word in the french context, see schöttler 2012, 253-254. stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 22 comte looked upon his philosophical system as the last stage in the history of civilisation. the first stage corresponded to the dawn of human civilisation, when mankind relied on magic and religion: it was “the theological stage”. the second one, “the metaphysical stage”, corresponded to the emergence and development of philosophy, logic, mathematics, and rational practices in general. the last stage was the positive one, and corresponded to a widespread scientific development. comte ventured to qualify his historiographical framework as a law: “direct observation” proved “the exactness of this law”, and rational considerations suggested the necessity of that law or “positive theory” (comte 1830, 3-8). he offered a simplified and idealised account of scientific practice based on the possibility of a sharp separation between science and metaphysics, and on the structural difference between the third stage of science and the previous stages of religion and metaphysics. he underestimated the fact that the founding fathers of modern science pursued metaphysical agendas, and modern science was based on explicit and implicit meta-theoretical beliefs. however positivism was both a specific philosophy, which can be traced back to comte’s cours de philosophie positive, and a broader cultural mood. moreover, comte’s philosophy went through different stages, as the historian of philosophy isaac benrubi pointed out many decades ago. comte crossed in reverse order the three stages that would describe the development of humanity: although he had started from what he considered as the positive stage of mankind, he then “advanced or retrograded to the metaphysical and religious stages” that corresponded to the religion of humanity (benrubi 1926, 1617; bordoni 2017, 11).6 comte’s cours de philosophie positive had an enduring influence in french-speaking countries and abroad. even when his positivistic philosophy was judged too radical and dogmatic, the enthusiasm for scientific methods could rely on a wide consensus. we find a milder scientism in the book the british philosopher william whewell published in 1840, the philosophy of inductive sciences founded upon their history. he insisted on scientific progress and the paradigmatic role of physical sciences but paid more attention to history and metaphysics. he found that comte’s reduction of science “to the mere expression of the laws of phenomena, expressed in formulae of space, time, and number” was “historically false”. to exclude any inquiry into the nature of scientific phenomena would have led us “to secure ourselves from the poison of errour by abstaining from the banquet of truth”.7 going beyond comte’s naïve scientism, whewell explored the essential tension between the structures of thought and sensorial experiences (whewell 1847a, v-x, 1, 7, and 14; whewell 1847b, 321-322, 324, 326, and 329). in the french context, the expression philosophy of science had already been used by the mathematician and natural philosopher andré marie ampère, and the corresponding meaning was not so different from comte’s. in the essai sur la philosophie des sciences he published in 1834, ampère specified that his work dealt with “the analytical exposition of a natural classification of all human knowledge”. the adjective natural involved the connection among “the objects of our knowledge”, the essential features of the human mind, and the history of cultural development (ampère 1834, v-vi, xiii-xiv, xix-xx, xxxi, xxxvi, and xl-xlix). ampère was not satisfied with the classification of the encyclopaedists, and followed comte’s hierarchy that started from mathematics and led to “philosophical, moral, and social sciences” through sciences dealing with inorganic matter and life sciences. at the same time, we find a new, dynamic conception of classification: the progress of science involved a continuous rearrangement of old classifications (ampère 1834, 2-3, 9-10, 13-15, and 18). the second volume of the essai was published after ampère’s death. the most eminent of comte’s followers, the physician, lexicographer, and philosopher émile littré, added a celebratory scientific biography, but reminded readers that ampère himself had regretted not having managed to achieve a more ambitious target, namely a detailed account of foundations and methods of sciences, and a critical analysis of competing theories (ampère 1843, ix, xiii, lxxxi-vii, and xcii). in 1848, the english philosopher and logician john stuart mill published a long and demanding book, 6 in 1930, the historian of science hélène metzger remarked that positivism was something more than a mere philosophical school: it was rather one of the essential components of “an atmosphere” or a broader intellectual attitude that branched out in different directions in the nineteenth century (metzger 1987 [1930], 113). 7 whewell acknowledged that sometimes the borderline between facts and interpretations was vague, and scientists were committed to “interpreting the phenomena” rather than merely reporting them (whewell 1847a, 37, 39-41, 44, 48, and 50). stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 23 a system of logic, ratiocinative and inductive, where he put forward a philosophy of science that might be looked upon as an intermediate philosophical approach between comte and whewell. in comte’s “admirable speculations” he found the explicit awareness that the causes of natural phenomena were beyond the understanding of scientists and philosophers: only empirical and mathematical laws were attainable. nevertheless, he did not agree with comte on the uselessness of “those scientific hypotheses … which are unsusceptible of being ultimately brought to the test of actual induction” such as the two hypotheses on the nature of light. (mill 1848, 172, 209-210, 336, 339, and 433). mill’s confidence in the empirical foundation of knowledge put him in contact with comte and distanced him from whewell. where whewell saw “a conception of the mind, which did not exist in the facts themselves”, or “a principle of connexion”, mill found that our conceptions were always “conceptions of something which really is in the facts” (mill 1848, 178-179, 390, 561, 576, and 586). two different traditions in 1851, the first outline of a more sophisticated philosophy of science appeared in paris. the author had gained a reputation as a mathematician who had put forward a daring mathematisation of economics.8 in 1838, he had published a short book, recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses, which dealt with “applications of mathematical analysis to the theory of wealth” (cournot 1838, v, vii-viii). in 1843, he had published a longer book on statistics and probability, wherein he paid attention to philosophical and scientific foundations (cournot 1843, iii-v, 84, 181-184, and 205-206).9 after eight years, in the book essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances et sur les caractères de la critique philosophique, he attempted to go beyond comte and ampère’s horizon, and undertook a new and sophisticated analysis of scientific practice. statistics and probability appeared as the most meaningful link between the formal structures of mathematics and the complexity of phenomena: they could encompass both natural and human sciences (cournot 1851, tome 1, 18-19, 48, 62-65, 82, and 418-419; faure 1905, 409-410).10 cournot also paid attention to tacit meta-theoretical issues that guided scientific research: the confidence in the permanence of scientific laws over time, the confidence in analogy and induction, and the confidence in the simplicity, unity, symmetry, and beauty of scientific laws. probability was also at stake in this context, because these issues could not share the certainty of logical deductions and empirical experiences, but could only rely on a certain degree of probability. it was “a philosophical probability” that allowed scientists to synthetically grasp “the order and reason of things” (cournot 1851, tome 1, 92-100, 294 and 308; tome 2, 247-248). he frequently stressed the difference between science and philosophy, and, at the same time the necessity of a fruitful alliance. he found that science was a progressive practice whereas philosophy inquired into a set of problems that persisted over time.11 according to cournot, a specific philosophical practice stood beside logical, computational and empirical practices in science. the philosophical component spanned both the interpretation of experiments and debates on scientific methods: in some way, it involved both theoretical and meta-theoretical issues. a purely positive science, in the sense of a merely empirical practice, could hardly exist (cournot 1851, tome 2, 216-217, 228, 234-237, 244, 252-253, 255). the following year, comte published what he considered the achievement of his human experience 8 on poisson’s recommendation, cournot was appointed to a chair of mathematical analysis in lyon in 1834, and in grenoble the following year. after becoming dean in grenoble, in 1838 he replaced ampère as general inspector of public education (moore 1905, 528-535; martin 2017, 3). 9 he had also published traité élémentaire de la théorie des fonctions et du calcul infinitésimal in 1841, and de l'origine et des limites de la correspondance entre l'algèbre et la géométrie in 1847. for cournot’s biography, see moore 1905, 521-543. 10 in 1905, fernand faure, politician, professor of law, and then professor of statistics in paris, remarked that cournot’s researches on statistics passed almost unnoticed because they were “too philosophical for statisticians and too statistical for philosophers” (faure 1905, 396). 11 cournot warned against “the overconfidence in the possibility of solving typical philosophical problems inside the scientific context” (cournot 1851, tome 2, 404). stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 24 and intellectual enterprise, the catéchisme positiviste; the same pathway that had led him from a sound scientific practice to “a sane philosophy” was leading him from the latter to “the universal religion”. both philosophical and political issues were at stake: he opposed his “proven religion” to “an anarchic democracy and a retrograde aristocracy”. political commitment merged with religious inspiration: the new mankind would have marched towards “the conciliation of order and progress” (comte 1891 [1852], 1, 4-6, 11, 1517, 21, 26 and 29).12 in the same year, émile littré, the most sophisticated philosopher of comte’s entourage, pointed out the necessity of a social order that could assure wealth, justice, order, and stability. the new positivist dogma or “spiritual order” required a new regime or a new social order.13 only “the positive philosophy” could help discover the scientific deterministic laws of human societies in order to inspire, encourage, and accompany social progress (littré 1852, vi-ix, xxx-xxxii, 15-6, 35-36, 48, 311-312, and 327). nevertheless, after comte’s death (1857), littré progressively distanced himself from comte’s religion of humanity. in a long book he published in 1863, littré undertook the extremely demanding task of making use of “comte’s method to judge comte himself”, and rejected comte’s religious commitment (littré 1863, iii-iv, vi, ix, 667-8, 674, and 677-8). mill put forward the same criticism in 1865, and regretted that comte had transformed into “the high priest of the religion of humanity”. he agreed with littré on the necessity of separating the sound foundations of positivism from the subsequent mystic drift (mill 1865, 5, 9, and 125-128).14 another english philosopher, herbert spencer, opposed comte’s dogmatism, and focused on scientific knowledge in a more pragmatic way than mill and whewell: he was interested in human beliefs from the sociological rather than the logical point of view. a sophisticated criticism and relativism led him to inquire into “tacit assumptions” that many different beliefs had in common. unlike comte, spencer saw “a fundamental harmony” between science and religion: both of them were “constituents of the same mind” that corresponded to “different aspects of the same universe”. both science and religion tacitly acknowledged that the comprehension of the world required the continuous effort of going beyond common experiences and appearances (spencer 1862, 10, 17, 21, and 24). in spencer’s text, the key words and the key concepts were change and “the relativity of all knowledge”: the mind was moulded by the world, and the comprehension of the world was continuously transformed by the mind. cycles of evolutions and dissolutions led to a “universal” and “omnipresent” metamorphosis (spencer 1862, 66-8, 96-97, 122-123, 440, and 489-491). naïve versus sophisticated philosophies of science in the meantime, cournot had published a book on methods and practices in mathematics, physical sciences, natural sciences, and human sciences, traité de l’enchainement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire. he put forward a detailed analysis of the conceptual structure of positive science, in order to make its hidden philosophical foundations emerge. he was also interested in understanding how the emergence of modern science had changed our patterns of explanation. modern science had emerged when time and history had come into play, when copernicus and tycho’s purely geometrical models were transformed into physical models. recent developments had highlighted the differences among “contents, principles, and methods” of the various sciences, and the pivotal role of life sciences (cournot 1861, ii-vii and 118-122). general principles were interpretations of present and future experiences rather than necessary consequences of experiences. scientific concepts involved both science and metaphysics, or rather, “a 12 comte frequently insisted on the essential contribution of women and proletarians to social progress, and on them as privileged recipients of his catechism. in the conclusion of the foreword, the references to the most important women of his life are intertwined with the evocation of the supreme being (comte 1891 [1852]), 11, 16, 21, 24, 26, 28, and 30). 13 see littré 1852, xxxii: “voilà un dogme, voilà un régime, voilà un culte qu’il s’agit de développer, de propager, de prouver, d’éclaircir !” 14 mill qualified littré as “the only thinker of established reputation” in french positivist environment (mill 1865, 126) stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 25 shared land” where scientific principles had their natural seat.15 philosophy of science was the name of the borderland between philosophy and science (cournot 1861, 179 and 181-183). this third component of scientific practice stood besides mathematics and experiments, and was not submitted to “an experimental proof or mathematical demonstration” (cournot 1861, 189-190). chemistry could not be reduced to physics, and life sciences could not be reduced to physics and chemistry. chemistry was a science of transformations, and chemical transformations could be violent or marked by a sharp discontinuity (cournot 1861, 191-2, 208, 210-212, and 214).16 in a living structure, the action of one part on another was affected by the systematic link with “the structure and the functions of the system” as a whole. moreover, living species had appeared and then disappeared over time: nature was not compelled “to act always in the same way in the same situations”, and “time was involved in an intrinsic way in the laws ruling nature” (cournot 1861, 223, 272-273, 277, and 284). in 1867, littré and the mineralogist gregoire wyrouboff17 published a booklet on the philosophical relationship between comte and mill. littré insisted on the validity of comte’s intellectual enterprise, and separated comte’s philosophical core from his later intellectual decay, which was inconsistent with “his principles and his methods”. definitely less refined than littré from the philosophical point of view, wyrouboff defended “the new dogma” of positivism, and defended comte against mill’s criticism: he found that mill was too pragmatic and not prone to ideological scientism and sharp reductionism (littré 1867, 5; wyrouboff 1867, 59-62, 68, and 84).18 the following year, littré insisted on the concept of “positive science”, wherein every a priori was excluded. this naïve epistemology led to a likewise naïve historiography and sociology: the disappearance of metaphysics was looked upon as tightly linked to the disappearance of war and the emergence of industry in the history of mankind (littré 1868, 11, 31, 39-40, 49-50, and 74). nevertheless, it seems that littré was not enough radical as a positivist. the most radical among them, who had followed comte even in the late mystic drift, sharply criticised littré. jean françois robinet, comte’s former physician and one of his literary executors, charged littré with having belittled and betrayed comte. a political controversy was also involved: littré was blamed for having endorsed “parliamentarism and plutocracy” (robinet 1871, 3-4 and 10-14). cournot’s anti-reductionist attitude was restated in 1872, in the book considérations sur la marche des idées et des événements dans les temps modernes. it is worth remarking that, in the same year, the renowned german physiologist emile du bois-reymond claimed that scientific knowledge consisted in “reducing all transformations taking place in the material world to atomic motions”. a strict reductionism led him to a strict determinism: the universe was ruled by mechanical necessity (du bois-reymond 1872, 441444 and 446). cournot’s concept of chance, and adjectives such as accidental and contingent were at the core of his philosophy of history. he stressed that chance did not mean ignorance or unreliability: chance had its laws, and those laws were no less reliable than the laws of physics and astronomy.19 his probabilistic turn 15 in 1858, in the book la métaphysique et la science ou principes de métaphysique positive, the french philosopher étienne vacherot had attempted to revive metaphysics as a free practice of “analysis and critics”, which allowed philosophers to protect themselves against “unreasonable dogmatism and regrettable scepticism”. metaphysics needed to be updated, and he ventured to “reconcile metaphysics with science” (vacherot 1858, v-vi, xv, xxxv, 52, and 94). 16 different kinds of discontinuity emerged from chemistry: discontinuity in the sense of abrupt and energetic transformations, discontinuity in the sense of qualitative transformations, and discontinuity in the sense of rearrangements of chemical substances in accordance with integer ratios between their weights (cournot 1861, 215). 17 wyrouboff, a scholar of russian origin, got in touch with littré when attending comte’s lectures, and in 1867 they founded the journal la philosophie positive, which was published until 1883. 18 wyrouboff’s philosophical naivety was also displayed in a booklet he published in 1865. he stated that “every philosophical debate can be reduced to a matter of fact”, and scientific laws were nothing else but a collection of facts that continuously occurred “in the same way under the same conditions” (wyrouboff 1865, 1). 19 in 1812 the mathematician pierre simon de laplace had published théorie analytique des probabilités, and two years later a less demanding essai philosophique sur les probabilités. in the latter he had claimed that “the most important problems of life” dealt with probability: in his words, “l’induction et l’analogie se fondent sur les probabilités” (laplace 1825, 1-2). comte considered the theory of probability as “false sciences”: in general, he did not rely on the application of mathematics to social sciences. stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 26 encompassed both necessity and contingence. history could be overturned by sudden revolutions: his historiographical framework rested upon the continuity of ordinary processes and the discontinuity of extraordinary processes or revolutions. during revolutions, apparently meaningless contingencies could lead to long-term effects (cournot 1872, 1-6). in reality, cournot’s historiographical framework involved two different traditions. on the one hand he saw systematic sciences, which had been systematic since the age of greek civilisation, and had experienced “a revolutionary crisis” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. on the other hand, he saw scattered bodies of knowledge, such as “theories of heat, magnetism, and electricity”, that had preserved their “childish condition” of semi-empirical sciences throughout the seventeenth century and even afterwards (cournot 1872, 292-294). this historiographical and epistemological perspective was not in tune with positivist historiography and epistemology.20 on the positivist shore, littré criticised spencer for having dared to replace the comtian hierarchical order of sciences with a more pragmatic interconnection, and remarked that ancient civilisations were aware and proud of their past but less interested in their future, whereas “modern civilisations” focused mainly on their future. actually, it was just littré and other positivists that celebrated the cult of progress, and underestimated the complex dynamics of historical transformations (littré 1873a, 13; littré 1873b, iv-vii). although the adjectives naïve and sophisticated cannot be formally defined, it seems to me that they can help us understand what really happened at the dawn of modern philosophy of science in the second half of the nineteenth century. naïve approaches can be associated with a simplified account of scientific practice, the celebration of a simplified scientific method, and the uncritical mythology of scientific progress. sophisticated approaches managed to grasp the complexity of scientific practice, the complex interaction among rational, empirical, and intuitive components in scientific research, the plurality and pliability of scientific methods, and the existence of different scientific traditions which had developed throughout history. however, i must warn against any dogmatic application of my tentative, dichotomic classification: naïve and sophisticated are only provisional labels that help us interpret the emergence, the history, and further developments of modern history and philosophy of science (bordoni 2017, 189). further debates in 1874, the young philosopher émile boutroux published his doctoral dissertation, de la contingence des lois de la nature, wherein he focused on the relationship between scientific theories and experiences. the emergence and development of natural philosophy had involved the transition from “a purely descriptive science” to “an explicative knowledge”. according to boutroux, this development had widened the gap between the disorder of experiences and the order of laws that should explain those experiences (boutroux 1874, 2-4). in boutroux’ radical anti-reductionism, variability and instability replaced invariance and stability of mathematical laws. boutroux’ philosophy was not antiscientific but was based on the assumption that sharp reductionism and determinism were not necessary foundations for a natural science. he did not despise science, and kept abreast of recent scientific achievements but he firmly opposed the positivistic trend.21 boutroux’ theses were put forward in a context where positivism was hegemonic; nevertheless, the following year, cournot published another book where his anti-reductionist attitude was further developed. nevertheless, his philosophy of science was more cautious and pliable than boutroux’s. the development of life sciences required a new epistemology: statistics and probability allowed scientists to replace certainty with probability. cournot pursued a new alliance between determinism and contingency, between the stability of laws and the contingency of facts. in the late 1870s we find that some physiologists and physicians rejected reductionism (egger 1877, 193-196, 197-198, 200-201, 209-211) but the majority was less cautious than cournot, and put forward a radical reduction of psychology, anthropology, and sociology 20 it is worth remarking that, in the twentieth century, thomas kuhn inquired extensively into the two traditions (kuhn 1976, 4-22). 21 benrubi stressed that boutroux’ contingency should not be confused with chance: it was close to the idea of natural freedom, in the sense of free and unpredictable unfolding of natural laws. in other words, contingency occupied the intermediate place between chance and necessity (benrubi 1926, 154-157). stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 27 to brain physiology (luys 1876, viii-xi; boëns 1878, 345-347, 349-354, and 359-360; boëns 1879, 5-9, and 14-15). cournot pointed out the impossibility of getting rid of meta-theoretical practices that “positivist philosophers” had discarded together with metaphysics (cournot 1875, 371 and 373-5). his words echoed what whewell had written some decades before: he stressed that “a body of purely empirical knowledge is not a real science” (cournot 1875, 371-376). on the other hand, pierre laffitte, one of comte’s most passionate followers, and the head of the community that accepted the whole of comte’s doctrine, insisted on empiricism in scientific practice, determinism in history, and the “universal religion” as the necessary achievement of “western evolution” (laffitte 1876, 1, 13-14, 18, and 30) in the late 1870s, the debates on reductionism were accompanied by debates on determinism, and in both cases the problematic link among mechanics, life sciences, and philosophy was at stake. the mathematician cournot put forward a sophisticated approach to reductionism, and another mathematician put forward a sophisticated approach to determinism. in 1878, joseph boussinesq published the booklet conciliation du véritable déterminisme mécanique avec l’existence de la vie et de la liberté morale. his commitment was mathematical, physical, and philosophical: some differential equations led to “branch points (points de bifurcation)”, and a material system could evolve towards unpredictable directions (janet 1878, 3 and 12-13). boussinesq reminded readers that mathematicians and engineers had inquired into concepts such as guiding principle in life sciences. in 1861, the mathematician cournot had spoken of “a principle of harmonic unity, global direction, and homogeneity”, whereas in 1877 the mathematician and engineer adhémar barré de saint-venant had introduced a vanishing “trigger action (travail décrochant)”, which was not so different from the small amount of force required to pull a gun trigger. boussinesq specified that a guiding principle was not in need of a corresponding mechanical force, however negligible it might be. those “bifurcations in the integrals of the equations of motion” offered a structural analogy and a mathematical model for physical instabilities and complex systems such as living structures (cournot 1861, 364, 370, and 374; saint-venant 1877, 421-422; boussinesq 1878, 31-33; bordoni 2015, 28-29).22 it seems that the first mathematician who raised the question of determinism in connection with singular solutions of differential equations was really boussinesq himself, in a brief note he published in the comptes rendus of the académie des sciences in 1877. in reality, in 1872 cournot had briefly discussed the instability stemming from a cone in equilibrium upon its top (cournot 1872, 276). in 1875 cournot envisaged a more general kind of determinism where both deterministic and non-deterministic processes were submitted to the normative role of mathematics (cournot 1875, 113-120 and 128). this is exactly the pathway that boussinesq followed two years later. cournot first reflections on foundations and methods of scientific practice were put forward in the 1860s, in an adverse intellectual environment.23 still in 1881, after cournot’s death, in a summary of comte and laffitte’s doctrines, robinet insisted on a naïve philosophy of science which was based on a strict empiricism, and on a naïve historiographical framework wherein positivism was looked upon as the crowning achievement of “a mental revolution triggered off by thales and pythagoras” (robinet 1881, 6-7 and 10). however, in the same decade, cournot’s theses reappeared and found new implementations. in 1883, the philosopher and theologian ernest naville put forward a sophisticated conception of science as a dynamic body of knowledge rather than a naïve accumulation of empirical procedures and rational truths. on the track of cournot, whom naville mentioned only occasionally, we find an epistemology marked by fallibility 22 during the nineteenth century, singular integrals had sometimes attracted the attention of mathematicians. boussinesq mentioned siméon denis poisson, jean-marie constant duhamel and cournot’s, and briefly commented on their texts (boussinesq 1878, 121-130). in 1841, in the second volume of his traité élémentaire de la théorie des fonctions et du calcul infinitésimal, cournot had devoted a whole chapter to the subject (cournot 1841, ii vol., 271292). 23 according to the historian of philosophy isaac benrubi, cournot’s philosophy eluded any attempt to describe it by means of “a definite summary and a sharp classification” (cournot 1851, 1 vol., 171-172; benrubi 1926, 89-90). according to the philosopher françois mentré, cournot’s discreetness was both a personal leaning and an epistemological commitment (mentré 1905, 483; mentré 1908, 644 and 646). see martin 2017, 18: “le style de sa pensée, la prudence et la rigueur avec lesquelles il construit ses analyses n’ont pas la puissance séductrice des grands systèmes de pensée de la tradition occidentale”. stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 28 and probability, and intertwined with a dynamic historiographical framework (naville 1883, 28, 32-35, 41-47, and 50-55). according to naville, theories represented the pivotal stage in scientific practice: they occupied the “intermediate region” between experimental laws and general principles: that intermediate position was consistent with their nature of “changeable and provisional” entities. physical laws corresponded to an empirical necessity, and guiding principles corresponded to a rational necessity, whereas theories could only rely on a problematic correspondence between the empirical and rational domains. the dynamic process of emergence, development, and replacement of physical theories was the essential feature of scientific progress: it was just the caducity of theories that protected science from involution and decadence (naville 1883, 54-55). a completely different meta-theoretical attitude can be found in the book the authoritative chemist and influential politician marcelin berthelot published in 1886. he focused on “positive science”, which started from facts, and connected them by means of “immediate relations”. science had led mankind to “the explanation of a huge number of phenomena” merely on the basis of “the coarsest facts”. we find here both confidence in a continuous scientific progress and in a simplified empiricism. not only could “physics and chemistry be reduced to mechanics”, but also the process of reduction was an empirical necessity rather than a rational option. (berthelot 1886, v, vii, 4-5, and 9-11).24 the previous year he had published a history of the ancient alchemy. he saw a continuous line of descent that led from antiquity to the late renaissance. broad and simplified analogies also emerged: heraclitus’ world-view was associated with modern “transformation of forces and the mechanical theory of heat” (berthelot 1885, 78-9, 248, 250, 252, 262-265, 267, 271, and 275). after two years the engineer and mathematician paul tannery published a very different history of ancient science, pour l’histoire de la science hellène: he could rely on mathematical competence, philosophical sensitivity, and the study of ancient languages (duhem 1905, 216). the accuracy of his historical reconstructions, the careful and detached analysis of original texts, and the presence of a cautious but definite historiographical perspective, makes his history of science a milestone in the intellectual landscape of the late nineteenth century. he did not manage to gain an academic position in france even though he was acknowledged as one of the most competent european scholars in the history of ancient science.25 he contributed to the establishment of a modern history of science, where the adjective modern means a history of science that is not pursued from the point of view of present-day scientific theories and beliefs, and does not confine itself to a list of cumulative successes (brenner 2003, 184-185). he stressed the necessity of separating “philosophical history” from “scientific history”. historians of philosophy had naturally leant towards an abstract classification of theories in accordance with modern linguistic and conceptual standards: they had tacitly assumed a sort of ideal continuity between different contexts in order to safeguard the unitary structure of philosophy. on the contrary, a history of science required the analysis of both historical filiations and discontinuities. another question involved the sources: many original texts had been lost, and the history of subsequent loans and influences had to be analysed. in reality tannery’s history was both a history of original ideas and a history of historical reconstructions and misunderstandings (tannery 1887a, 10-11, 14, and 18-19).26 24 i find that a short passage deserves to be quoted: “une généralisation progressive, déduite des faits antérieurs et vérifiée sans cesse par de nouvelles observations, conduit ainsi notre connaissance depuis les phénomènes vulgaires et particuliers jusqu’aux lois naturelles les plus abstraites et les plus étendues.” (berthelot 1886, 10). 25 for a reconstruction of the events that prevented him from being appointed to a chair of “histoire générale des sciences” at the collège de france, see milhaud 1906, 14, sarton 1948, 30, gusdorf 1966, 43-4, 62, 98-101, and 1046, canguilhem 1979, 63, stoffel 1996, 416, brenner 2003, 5 and 101, and chimisso 2008, 85, fn 1. that chair was looked upon as “a fiefdom of the positivist school (or church)” (sarton 1938, 690). it is worth remarking that berthelot had supported tannery’s nomination. 26 on the influence of german history of philosophy on tannery, and more specifically on the philosophical background of the conception “of history of science as complementary to history of philosophy”, see catana 2011, 517-523. in the same year tannery also published a book on greek geometry wherein he stressed that a reliable history of mathematics had to account for “the events and the causes” that had led to stages of “past decadence” (tannery 1887b, v-vi, 4, and 8-9). stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 29 mature historiographies and epistemologies the cult of progress, historiographical and epistemological simplifications, and even positivist religion did not fade away. as late as 1891, the editor of a new reprint of comte’s positive catechism paid tribute to “the saint father” of the new cult, and insisted on the necessity of putting “the cult before the dogma”, namely the religious commitment before the philosophical one. he regretted that some former followers disdained the cult, and confined themselves to a purely philosophical commitment. not only did he address his criticism to littré but also to laffitte, who was charged with having relinquished comte’s religious and political preaching (lagarrigue 1891, v and vii-xi) however, tannery’s style of research left a meaningful heritage, and inspired the mathematician gaston milhaud. 27 the book he published in 1893, leçons sur les origines de la science grecque, consciously pursued the setting up of a tradition of research that could rely on tannery’s innovative and authoritative researches (milhaud 1893, 3-5 and 8-9).28 he stressed the creative power of the human mind: scientific progress consisted of “a linguistic evolution”, or in other terms, “a new explanation of the same phenomena”. this epistemological and historiographical perspective was in conflict with comte’s positivistic faith in the mighty pressure of facts (milhaud 1893, 11-3, 16-8, and 21-28). in the late 1880s and early 1890s, we find three different histories of science. at first we find berthelot’s positivistic history wherein both the march of scientific progress and the naivety of ancient science were emphasised. tannery’s histories offered a different intellectual landscape: the historiographical reference frame included regressive stages and centuries of stagnation besides progressive trends. milhaud’s histories were embedded in more explicit historiographical and epistemological frameworks. in contrast with the empiricism of the comtian tradition, he insisted on scientific practice as an act of mathematisation and linguistic reinterpretation. he attempted to merge history of science and philosophy of science into each other in order to establish a new sophisticated discipline. berthelot, tannery, and milhaud had been trained in science, engineering or mathematics: their historical and philosophical interests stemmed from a scientific background. this is also true for the younger physicist pierre duhem. since the late 1880s he envisaged a unified mathematical framework for mechanics, thermodynamics, and chemistry, which was based on analytical mechanics, and founded this unified theory on the two principles of thermodynamics. his energetics was different from georg helm and wilhelm ostwald’s energetics: the latter mainly focused on the universality of the principle of the conservation of energy, whereas duhem also developed a sophisticated mathematical theory.29 struggling against the old physics of qualities, modern science had set aside the complexity of the physical world, and put forward a simplified geometrical world. duhem found that, at the end of the nineteenth century, that complexity, and more specifically dissipative effects, could scientifically be addressed. in terms of the ancient aristotelian natural philosophy, duhem’s unified theory could go beyond local motion in order to describe all kinds of transformations.30 in the meantime, in the early 1890s, he published the first paper explicitly devoted to meta-theoretical issues.31 on the track of cournot and naville, he stressed that theoretical physics was something more than the mere alliance between “experience and mathematical analysis”, and allowed scientists to go beyond “the confused and inextricable accumulation” of laws derived by experience (duhem 1892 (1987), 175). he 27 milhaud set up “a programme of study in philosophy of science” at montpellier university in the 1890s. a chair of history of philosophy in its relation to science was then created for him at the sorbonne in 1909. he was one of the first scholars of jewish origin to be appointed to a chair in paris (chimisso 2008, 25-26; brenner and gayon 2009b, 5). 28 in 1906, after tannery’s death, milhaud underscored the deep influence exerted by tannery (milhaud 1906, 4). 29 on duhem’s design of a rational thermodynamics, see bordoni 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, and 2013. the warm relationship between duhem and ostwald cannot be interpreted as an agreement on the meaning of energetics. on their friendship, see brouzeng 1981, vol. 2, 226-228. 30 duhem’s theoretical and meta-theoretical design was explicitly unfolded in a book he published in 1903, l’évolution de la mécanique (duhem 1992 [1903]), 199 and 218-219). 31 at that time, duhem was “maitre de conférences” at lille university: for further biographical details, see brouzeng 1987, 54. stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 30 pursued a critical overview of scientific practice that was not so different from poincaré’s: i find that the “important differences” between them that some historians and philosophers of science have pointed out should not be overestimated (brenner 1996, 389-390).32 they criticised the mechanistic view, and were aware of the intrinsic historicity of scientific achievements. in 1893, duhem devised a four-level scientific practice that, starting from phenomena, led to mathematical laws, theories, and then a plurality of metaphysical foundations. the four levels were mutually independent: a plurality of theories could stem from a definite set of laws, and a plurality of metaphysical assumptions could stem from a theory or set of theories (duhem 1893a, 65-66 and 68-71). once more, we find here a meta-theoretical analysis of scientific theories that had much in common with what cournot and naville had previously put forward. in the same year, he published another paper wherein he introduced the concept of “natural classification of laws” that had already appeared in the tradition of french philosophy of science. he qualified the concept as a “perfect and ideal theory” or a “complete and appropriate metaphysical explanation of the nature of material things”. actual physical theories had to “strive for perfection”, even though perfection could not be attained. this commitment dealt with practices that eluded any definite definition, but duhem insisted on further, fruitless philosophical specifications (duhem 1893b (1987), 136-137).33 unlike comte, duhem’s concept of natural classification made reference to the essential features of a scientific theory. comte’s natural classification was a relationship among different bodies of knowledge that was in tune with logical and historical genealogies (comte 1830, 60-61, 76-8, and 86). cournot’s concept was not so different form comte’s: a natural classification could grasp some essential features of reality even though he specified that every classification was provisional and incomplete (cournot 1861, 423 and 425-426). boutroux rejected the concept itself: every classification was intrinsically artificial (boutroux 1874, 46). the following year duhem focused on experimental practice. every experiment involved a wider body of knowledge that dealt with general assumptions and concepts, and specific laws: when a science progressed, the role played by theory increased progressively. he put forward the fundamental thesis that “a physical experiment can never condemn an isolated hypothesis, but only a theoretical system”. when an expected prediction did not take place, a definite source of the mismatch could not be found. the complex relationship between theory and experiment required a specific sensitivity or some kind of flair that involved “the esprit de finesse rather than the esprit de géométrie”. (duhem 1894a, 153-155, 157, 179 and 188).34 in a following paper, duhem stressed the extra-logical concept of the fruitfulness of a physical theory. philosophers and scientists have traditionally focused on the concepts of truth or falsity, but truth was the outcome of a historical process, and therefore it was a provisional value. on the contrary, the fruitfulness of a theory was a permanent value (duhem 1894b, 124-5). on the track of cournot and navile, duhem outlined a complex historiography where both linear progress and cyclical processes were at stake.35 theories emerged, were successfully upheld, suffered a dogmatic drift, then they were overwhelmed by their flaws, and were eventually replaced by new theories. this process left behind a permanent and valuable heritage: the long-term progress of key concepts, mathematical structures, and empirical laws (duhem 1894b, 122 and 125).36 a striking metaphor followed: 32 according to milena ivanova, both duhem and poincaré “expressed a form of structuralism”, namely structural realism, but they adopted different epistemological views with regard to “how knowledge of the structure of the world is reached” (ivanova 2015, 88). i stress the sterility of philosophical labels when complex research programmes are involved, and when they are applied to historical contexts quite different from the context that has generated those labels. can we find essential differences between what might be labelled as structural realism or pragmatism in the late nineteenth century? 33 going beyond the debates on duhem as an instrumentalist or a realist, i agree with sindhuja bhakthavatsalam that duhem’s concept of natural classification deals with “the pragmatic rationality of a physicist” (bhakthavatsalam 2015, 11 and 21). 34 this fundamental thesis is known as duhem’s holistic thesis: it has been widely discussed and criticised under the misleading label “duhem-quine thesis”. i have discussed it in bordoni 2017, 292-300. 35 obviously, this is only a brief outline of the emergence of duhem’s historiographical and epistemological frameworks. a more detailed analysis can be found in my recent book (bordoni 2017, chapters 8 and 9). 36 the original passage deserves to be quoted: “ainsi, sous les théories qui ne s’élèvent que pour être abattues; sous stefano bordoni – the french roots of duhem’s early historiography and epistemology 31 when waves go towards the beach, a water layer ripples and swarms into the dry sand before retreating from the beach giving up its conquest. waves fade away and let the sand dry up before new waves come one after the other. this superposition of waves that rise and then collapse seems a shallow effort of the sea, an idle combination of foam and noise. nevertheless, two hours later, the beach that had been trodden by our footsteps is now sleeping under deep water: during the relentless oscillations of water back and forth, the ocean tide has really gone up (duhem 1894b, 125).37 concluding remarks duhem has been looked upon as one of the founding fathers or ancestors of twentieth-century history and philosophy of science in france. my thesis is that duhem accomplished an intellectual stream that had emerged considerably earlier. the awareness of the complexity of scientific practice and scientific tradition can be found in some historical and philosophical studies from cournot to duhem through naville and tannery. they had analysed the superposition of cyclic and linear processes, and the persistence of structural continuities throughout scientific transformations. cournot, boussinesq, and duhem put forward bold mathematisations of new research fields such as economic processes, physical and chemical instabilities, and thermodynamics of irreversible processes. cournot, tannery, and duhem attempted to cast light on the plurality of scientific methods and their histories. suspicious of every rigid philosophical system, they were in search of a third way between scepticism and dogmatism. the dissemination of cournot, naville, tannery, and then duhem and milhaud’s researches in the history and philosophy of science contributed to the professionalisation of the field in the french context, and the establishment of a research tradition that is known as historical epistemology.38 duhem always mentioned the scientists who had contributed to the development of his research field, and put forward a historical reconstruction of those researches. on the contrary, in his historical and philosophical papers we do not find explicit references to previous researches. the fact is that his interests in history and philosophy of science stemmed from his practice in theoretical physics rather than from the study of previous literature. duhem was objectively in debt to cournot and other scholars, but a direct influence is questionable. his scientific researches led him to the rediscovery and reinterpretation of aristotle, and another influence was exerted by pascal’s epistemology.39 duhem found in aristotle the awareness of the complexity of natural processes, and in pascal the awareness of the complexity of scientific practice. les hypothèses qu’un siècle contemple comme le mécanisme secret et le ressort caché de l’univers, et que le siècle suivant brise comme des jouets d’enfant, se poursuit le progrès lent, mais incessant, de la physique mathématique” (duhem 1894b, 125). 37 stoffel pointed out the striking analogy between duhem’s passage and one of pascal’s pensées on cyclic, historical processes (pascal 1951, 417; stoffel 2007, 292-293). i point out the analogy with naville’s passage on the slow, scientific progress underlying the appearance and disappearance of theories: “les théories passent, la science demeure: … à un système détruit en succède un autre dont les conceptions sont plus solides et plus vastes” (naville 1883, 55). 38 the emergence of this tradition has frequently been associated with gaston bachelard and georges canguilhem. i find in them some scientist nuances that cournot, tannery, milhaud, and duhem would not have endorsed. canguilhem agreed with bachelard on the existence of “two kinds of history of science”, namely the history of the outof-date scientific knowledge, and the history of legitimate science that satisfied contemporary standards (canguilhem 1979, 13 and 20-21). at the same time, i must acknowledge that canguilhem suitably criticised cournot and duhem’s unhistorical concept of precursor, which had already been criticized by hélène metzger in 1939 (metzger 1987 [1939]), 79 and 83). 39 as already pointed out in fn. 2, van fraassen stressed the role played by pascal’s epistemology (van fraassen 1989, 151). other scholars have stressed the deep influence of pascal on duhem [picard1922, cxxx and cxxxv-cxxxvii; 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research in brazil leonir lorenzetti1 cristiane muenchen2 iône inês pinsson slongo3 abstract: this study centers on the reception of ludwik fleck’s epistemology by science education research in brazil. eighty-nine dissertations and theses from 1995 to 2015 have been analyzed, thirty-seven of which discuss science education. the data point to fleck’s epistemology as the preferred theoretical reference for the most diverse fields of knowledge. the first studies came about in the 1990’s and there is a concentration of works on science education at the federal university of santa catarina. a more specific investigation has been carried out on thirty-four works which discuss science education. these papers have been analyzed from six angles and the greater volume focuses on “the training of teachers” and “scientific fact emergence”. the significant contribution of the epistemological categories “thought style”, “thought collective”, “intracollective and intercollective circulation of ideas” are highlighted in the process of producing knowledge in the area of focus. keywords: fleck’s epistemology; state of knowledge; science education; theses and dissertations received: 30 august 2016. reviewed: 11 november 2016. accepted: 29 november 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction and contextualization the present article reports a study which is part of a broader interinstitutional project and aims to accomplish permanent statements on academic production in science education in brazil, in different thematic and temporal divisions. studies of this nature, which perform critical reviews of scientific production are greatly relevant to the area, given their contribution to the systematization of what has been produced previously, 1 leonir lorenzetti is a professor in the department of chemistry at the universidade federal do paraná. av. cel. francisco h. dos santos, 210. curitiba. cep 81531-970. brazil. e-mail: leonirlorenzetti22@gmail.com 2 cristiane muenchen is a professor in the department of physics at the universidade federal de santa maria. av. roraima, 1000. santa maria. cep: 97105-900. brazil. e-mail: crismuenchen@yahoo.com.br 3 iône inês pinsson slongo is a professor in the department of education at the universidade federal da fronteira sul. av. fernando machado, 108 e – chapecó cep 89.802-112. brazil. e-mail: ione.slongo@uffs.edu.br lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 53 as well as the identification of gaps and new demands, contributing to guiding the development of research in the area. soares and maciel recommend that such studies are uninterrupted, given their contribution: [...] identification, characterization, and analysis of the ‘state of knowledge’ regarding certain subject is essential for the continuous movement of science throughout time. thus, the same way science keeps constructing itself along time, sometimes focusing on one or another particular aspect, methodology and theoretical referential, also the analysis in the ‘state of knowledge’ produced along time must be simultaneously constructed, indentifying and enlightening the ways of science, so that the process of building knowledge over a specific subject is revealed, in order to attempt the integration of results and also identify duplications, contradictions and, above all, lacks, which are yet unstudied or scarcely studied aspects and roughly explored research methodologies. (soares; maciel, 2000, 6) another important contribution from bibliographical studies of an inventorial nature refers to the amplification of the data produced (soares; maciel, 2000; ferreira, 2002; romanowski; ens, 2006; gamboa, 2008). every time an area of knowledge registers expressive development, which includes a quantitative growth rate of studies, ordering production is necessary as a means of creating “integrative syntheses” (andré, 2002) of the several studies and thus offering greater support to future research. in brazil, socialization of produced knowledge in the form of theses and dissertations is still incipient, especially given the on-going expansion of postgraduate stricto sensu observed in the past few decades. this factor has been contributing to the quantitative growth of studies as well as the diversity of focuses taken by research in science education. dissemination mechanisms follow patterns inaugurated decades ago. the initial draft of the reported research resulted in a first article (lorenzetti; muenchen; slongo, 2013) which analyzed the presence of fleck’s epistemological matrix (1979; 1986; 2010)4 in science education research developed in brazil, from 1995 to 2010. five years later, a second draft of that study is presented, incorporating new data to the previously analyzed period, enhancing the time frame up to 2015. therefore, when it comes to analizing production in this more recent period the goal is to establish some sort of continuum with the previous stage in a cohesive way. consequently, results announced in this article refer to the period between 1995 and 2015, covering two decades of academic production on theses and dissertations in science education, supported by ludwik fleck’s theory of science (1979) and developed in national postgraduate programs. an attempt is made to explicate how the major area science education has been dialoguing with that epistemological reference. it is, however, important to state that the present study did not have fleck’s epistemology as an object, as it did not have the goal of making a comparative analysis between different epistemological approaches which have been influencing research on science education in brazil. the undertaking was to explicate the importance and the impact that fleckian epistemology has generated on academic production (theses and dissertations) in science education in brazil. because of the current stage of the study, more generic data of the academic production analyzed are presented. the goal is also to amplify the dissemination of these studies through their identification and ordering, according to the chosen criteria. in this sense, the complete references of theses and dissertations are presented containing the following data: year of defence, author, work title, academic affiliation, adviser, higher education institution and postgraduate program. we introduce initially an overview of research which utilize fleck’s epistemological contribution, particularly production in science education, aiming to explicate at what moment it was established as a reference for research in the area, the objects, programs and researchers who have sought this epistemological dialogue, the justification given for using this epistemology and the contributions which the approach has brought to the area, according to the authors of these studies. 4 until the brazilian edition of fleck's book (2010) the american edition (1979) and mainly the spanish edition (1986) – due the similarity of spanish and portuguese – were largely read and quoted in brazil. lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 54 methodological procedures and initial panorama the reported study is configured as bibliographical research, from the “state of knowledge” (ferreira, 2002) type, and aims to analyze the presence and reception of ludwik fleck’s epistemology (1979) in science education research in brazil. for that reason, theses and dissertations developed in national postgraduate programs from 1995 to 2015 and have had fleck’s epistemology as a basis for analysis and interpretation have been analyzed. the time frame presents a historical justification, once the defense of the first dissertation identified in the databases utilized in this study is dated 1995. the data were collected in the first semesters of 2011 and 2016. theses and dissertations available in the coordenação de aperfeiçoamento de pessoal de nível superior (capes) theses bank5 and in the biblioteca digital brasileira de teses e dissertações6, using the following search expressions: “ludwik fleck”, “fleck” and “thought style”. thus, the sample comprises eighty-nine works that utilize fleck’s epistemology as a theoretical reference. furthermore, abstracts in every dissertation and thesis were carefully read, in order to verify the relevance of each work for the present study. first, the studies listed generated tables which identified the volume of works developed in the period and the concentration of works by knowledge areas, higher education institutions, postgraduate programs where they were created and respective advisers. through the mapping, it was possible to identify that fleck’s epistemology guided the first studies in the mid 1990’s, having, up to 2015, supported the development of eighty-nine studies, of which forty-nine were dissertations developed in academic masters (ma) degrees, two were dissertations in professional masters (mf) degree7 and thirty-seven were theses (t) produced in doctoral programs; a predominance of dissertations in comparison with theses. considering the goal of this work, which is to analyze academic production that utilizes fleck as theoretical reference, works focused on science education were analyzed. the data are presented in table 1: table 1 – number of works mapped period diverse areas science education ma1 mf2 d3 total ma mf d total 1st: 1995 a 2000 4 2 6 2 2 2nd: 2001 a 2005 8 10 18 4 4 3rd: 2006 a 2010 17 7 24 3 4 7 4th: 2011 a 2015 20 2 19 41 9 1 14 24 total 49 2 38 89 14 1 22 37 1. academic masters program; 2. professional masters program; 3. doctoral program. source: the authors (2016). the presence of fleckian studies through the period is observed to be regular, with a tendency to growth. probably due the brazilian edition of fleck’s book, the last five years show a higher volume, overtaking production in the first fifteen years. through the reading of the abstracts, it was possible to identify the area of knowledge encompassing these works, demonstrating that the human science area contributed thirty-two works, followed by health science with twenty-five and the engineering area with one. 5 collected on the website http://www.capes.gov.br/servicos/banco-de-teses 6 through the address http://bdtd.ibict.br/vufind/ 7 in brazil there are two categories of master degree: the academic (ma) and the professional (mf). the ma prepares the researcher as well as the teacher to continue the career with the phd. differently, the mf emphasizes studies and techniques directly aimed at the development of a high level of professional qualification. this emphasis is the only difference in its relation with the ma. therefore, it attributes the same degree and prerogatives, including for the exercise of teaching, and, it has the same national validity of the ma. (brasil, 2002) lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 55 the area of human science involves postgraduate programs in education, philosophy, history, psychology, and political sociology. in the multidisciplinary area are courses focused on the teaching, featuring programs on scientific and technological education, teaching of science and mathematics, science education, teaching of science, teaching of science and technology, among others. in the health science area are the programs of health, collective health, public health, nursing, physical education, among others. the environmental engineering program comprises the area of engineering. table 2 identifies the programs in which the eighty-nine works were developed. table 2 – number of works by program and higher education institution program higher education institution number education ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina), ufpr (universidade federal do paraná), unb (universidade de brasília), unijui (universidade regional do noroeste do estado do rio grande do sul), ufscar (universidade federal de são carlos), uniplac (universidade do planalto catarinense), unesc (universidade do extremo sul catarinense) 20 scientific and technological education ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina) 16 collective health uerj (universidade do estado do rio de janeiro), ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina), ufrj (universidade federal do rio de janeiro), unicamp (universidade estadual de campinas), fiocruz (fundação oswaldo cruz) 13 history ufrn (universidade federal do rio grande do norte), ufmg (universidade federal de minas gerais) 5 philosophy uerj (universidade do estado do rio de janeiro), ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina), usp (universidade de são paulo), uel (universidade estadual de londrina) 4 health univali (universidade do vale do itajaí) 4 education in science and mathematics ufpa (universidade federal do pará) 3 physical education ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina) 2 nursing ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina) 2 public health ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina), fiocruz (fundação oswaldo cruz) 2 education in science unijui (universidade regional do noroeste do estado do rio grande do sul) 2 science and health history fiocruz (fundação oswaldo cruz) 2 others ufsm-furg-ufrgs, (universidade federal de santa maria, fundação universidade do rio grande, universidade federal do rio grande do sul), ufmg (universidade de minas gerais), unifesp (universidade federal de são paulo), ufrgs (universidade federal do rio grande do sul), unesp (universidade estadual paulista "julio de mesquita filho"), ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina), usp (universidade de são paulo), uel (universidade estadual de londrina), utfpr (universidade federal tecnológica do paraná), ufba (universidade federal da bahia), fiocruz (fundação oswaldo cruz), ufsc (universidade federal de santa catarina, univali (universidade do vale do itajaí), unipli (centro universitário plínio leite). 14 total 89 source: the authors (2016). lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 56 in a survey conducted from 1995 to 2010 lorenzetti, muenchen e slongo (2013) observed the predominance of research focused on the health area, whereas in the time frame from 2011 to 2015, a significant amplification of works in human science and multidisciplinary areas was identified, with a majority of studies in the science education area. however, when the specificity of the priority themes was analyzed, it was possible to observe forty-three works involving education and teaching, forty works in the health area and six in philosophy. this may be explained by the fact that works in the health area were developed in other programs. such data exemplify quite well the intercollective circulation of ideas in the process of knowledge production, as fleck argued (1979; 2010). this important dynamic is exemplified by da ros’s (2000), cutolo’s (2001) and pfuetzenreiter’s (2003) theses, which even though focusing on specific objects from the area of health, were generated in the postgraduate program of federal university of santa catarina (ufsc). a survey conducted by lorenzetti (2008) indicates the presence of study centers in brazil using fleck as a reference, showing that the citation of his work in national surveys presents a trajectory and an application in different contexts. these centers are located in ufsc, involving the education programs, nursing, public health, philosophy, political sociology and scientific and technological education. in rio de janeiro state, the production involving fleck's epistemology is concentrated in the collective health program of oswaldo cruz foundation (fiocruz) and in the public health and philosophy programs of the university of the state of rio de janeiro (uerj). in the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg), fleck's epistemology was utilized in the history program. in this study, it is quite clear that fleck's epistemology is being used in twenty-five different higher education institutions: ufsc (n = 40), uerj (n = 7), ufmg (n = 5), univali), fiocruz (n = 4), ufpa (n = 3) and uel, ufpr, ufrn, unb, uniplac, usp, with two works each and thirteen institutions contribute one work each, which demonstrates the dissemination of fleck's epistemology in the academic community, according to table 2. with regard to the supervisors of theses and dissertations, the data indicate the leadership of demétrio delizoicov (ufsc), who guided eleven studies; kenneth rochel de camargo jr. (fiocruz), seven studies; marco aurélio da ros (ufsc) with six; carlos alberto marques (ufsc), edel ern (ufsc) and luiz roberto agea cutolo (univali), with four studies each; maria helena da silva carneiro (unb), mauro lúcio leitão condé (ufmg) with three each; arden zylbersztajn (ufsc), araci asinelli da luz (ufpr), josé andre peres angotti (ufsc), lucia ceccatto de lima (uniplac), maria cristina panserade-araujo (unijuí), maria de fátima vilhena da silva (ufpa) nadir ferrari (ufsc) and walter antonio bazzo (ufsc), two studies each. with just one orientation, we locate more than eighteen different advisors. this data, while suggesting a certain dispersion, may also reflect an important development phase of a national community of researchers, who have been seeking in fleck's epistemology an approach of analysis and interpretation of the scientific facts that they study. an element that seems to justify such inference is the fact that phd students who utilized fleck in their theses continue use fleck's epistemological matrix as they pass on to guide researches in postgraduate programs. for example, marcos aurélio da ros, luiz roberto agea cutolo, lucia ceccato de lima and cristiane muenchen, strongly used the fleckian categories in their theses and now use them with their students, in the studies analyzed here. queirós and nardi (2008) present an academic production overview which uses fleck’s epistemology as a theoretical approach and which was published in national periodicals of education in sciences area and in the minutes of the national meeting of research in education in sciences, carried out from 2002 to 2007. with this focus, the authors located thirteen articles and highlighted the predominance of objects linked to the area of health and biological sciences. furthermore, they have classified these studies into four main categories: 1) history of scientific facts; 2) conception of teachers about the nature of science; 3) health teaching; 4) analysis of research in science teaching in brazil. from another point of view, lorenzetti’s (2008) work located 20 studies, involving dissertations and theses developed in postgraduate programs, from 1995 to 2006. this academic production, which is based on fleck's epistemological ideas, was categorized by the author in five axes: 1) teacher formation; 2) studies on the curriculum; 3) analysis of the emergence of a fact; 4) fleck's relationship with other authors; 5) analysis of academic production. after this survey and initial analysis of the eighty-nine theses and dissertations which used the epistemological contribution of fleck, a specific study was performed involving thirty-four of the eighty-nine lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 57 works, whose investigated problems belong to the area of science education.8 using the discursive textual analysis methodology (moraes; galiazzi, 2013), focusing mainly on the abstract, introduction, methodology, final considerations and references of the texts in the theses and dissertations, the following elements were computed: postgraduate program, higher education institute (hei), content area, axes, research problem / objectives, justifications given by the author for using fleck's epistemology, fleckian categories used, references to fleck's works and the studies that used fleck and contributions of the epistemological frame for research in science education, pointed out by the study. these data and their analysis are listed below. fleck’s epistemology and research in science education from thirty-seven studies analyzed, twenty-two are theses, fourteen are dissertations developed in academic masters programs and one dissertation was produced in a professional masters program. the data are shown in table 3. table 3 volume of works by hei/program hei program dissertation s theses total ufsc education 2 4 6 scientific and technological education 3 11 14 environmental engineering 1 1 unijuí education in science 2 2 ufpr education 1 1 2 ufpa education in science and mathematics 2 2 uel philosophy 1 1 ufrgs education in science, life chemistry and health 1 ufmg history 1 1 ufba teaching, philosophy and history of science 1 1 ufrn education 1 1 ufscar education 1 1 ufsm/fur g/ufrgs education in science, life chemistry and health 1 1 unesp education for science 1 1 utfpr teaching of science and technology* 1 1 usp science teaching 1 1 total 16 21 37 * professional masters program source: the authors (2016). 8 it must be mentioned that three documents were not analyzed because they were not available at the time the survey was performed. lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 58 the data show significant production of dissertations and theses within the education and scientific and technological education program of the federal university of santa catarina, with fifty-four percent of the works. the predominance of doctoral theses is also observed, equivalent to seventy-one percent of the works concentrated in this institution. considering the content area of the thirty-seven analyzed studies, it was observed that twelve works involve biology, eight refer to teaching of sciences, five to chemistry, four to physics, two to professional education. the science and biology, environmental education, and health education disciplines each involve one work. it was also identified that one study analyzes research on textbooks and in another all of high school disciplines are analyzed. the works were compounded around six axes, five of which were defined by lorenzetti (2008), namely: teacher training, curriculum, emergence of a scientific fact, analysis of academic production and fleck's relation with other authors. in the research development, we have identified an emerging axis called didactic material analysis. a characterization of each axis is presented below: teacher training: the studies analyzing the teaching work from an investigation of the discourses, knowledge and effective practices, involving both initial and continued training, focusing on the identification of collective thought, thought styles and circulation of ideas among thought collectives. curriculum: the works analyzing the curricula of basic education and higher education, focusing on its components, professional practices and theory and practice articulation. they analyze the epistemological, educational and curricular conceptions present in the curricular proposals, mapping styles and thought collectives. analysis on the emergence of a scientific fact: works that review and present discussions about the emergence of certain scientific facts, the process of knowledge production, the context and conditions of production, the historical and social dimension, the ways of interpreting and understanding a phenomenon, involving the use of the establishment categories, extension and transformation of thought styles and the role of intracollective and intercollective circulation of ideas. fleck's relation with other authors: works that use fleck as reference, establishing relations with other authors, discussing the science conception, culture, method of science, social motivations, among others. analysis of academic production: works analyzing the scientific production in a certain area of knowledge from dissertations and theses in postgraduate programs, studies presented at events or published in journals. studies which explain the constitution of the area under study, the thought collective and the thought styles that developed the area of knowledge. analysis of didactic materials: works analyzing the structure and content of didactic material, identifying elements that characterize thought styles, thought collectives, knowledge circulation and practices. according to these categories, the thirty seven studies that covered the science education knowledge area were analyzed, fourteen of which discuss teacher training, ten studies incorporate the emergence of a scientific fact axis, seven involve analyses on academic production, five perform studies on the curriculum and an analysis of didactic materials work. fleck's relation with other authors was not evidenced in the analyzed period. more specific data on these categorizations are given below. in the teacher training axis, thirteen studies of the following authors were compounded: delizoicov (1995), lambach (2007), muenchen (2010), oda (2012), queirós (2012), niezwida (2012), souza (2013), brandao (2013), gonçalves (2014), leonel (2015), souza (2015) and macedo (2015). delizoicov's (1995) study identifies thinking styles of elementary science teachers in analyzing their interaction with textbooks. lambach (2007) identifies thought styles of chemistry teachers who work in youth and adult education programs in public schools in paraná. the muenchen study (2010) seeks to characterize the investigative processes which culminated in the proposition of a didactic-pedagogical structure to the teaching of science called "three pedagogical moments" (delizoicov; angotti; pernambuco, 2002). the dissemination process of this dynamic by a group of professors from the federal university of santa maria who work in the training of science teachers was also investigated. the study lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 59 makes significant use of the categories intracollective and intercollective circulation of ideas. oda (2012) researched the constitution and pedagogical practice of university professors for the teaching activity in microbiology and parasitology, investigating how this activity could contribute to reducing health damage caused by parasitic organisms. queirós's thesis (2012) performs the reading of james prescott joule’s work, showing possible contributions of this reading in the articulation process of scientific and humanistic cultures, focusing on the university professors training from a transformative perspective. the didactic strategy construction points to the effectiveness of intercollective and intracollective circulation, which is associated with the "awareness" of the complications present in the scientific knowledge construction of joule by a group of teachers. niezwida (2012) investigates how the teacher training processes in the area of technological education can provide the transformation in this education. for the author, the convergence of the transformative assumptions of freire and fleck allow indication of the necessity and the possibility of transforming the dominant thinking style into technological education, through processes of continuous training of the teachers, as well as of the agents that educate new teachers. souza (2013), in his master's dissertation, identified and problematized understanding about environmental sustainability of a group of chemistry teachers of the public teaching network of the city of florianópolis sc, evidencing the way of organizing the teaching, aiming for the approach of environmental issues in this discipline. lambach (2013), in his thesis, highlights the implications that ongoing training, based on the freirean dialogicalproblematizing principles, bring to the teaching practice of chemistry teachers in the education of young and adults (eja) and discusses the contributions of the epistemology of science in the proposition of a dialogical-problematizing methodology based on the freirean pedagogy in order to overcome the recurring difficulties in the natural sciences area. brandão’s study (2013), based on the teacher's discourse, identifies possible pedagogical models and characterizes thinking styles present in the degree course in physics of the ifrn. gonçalves (2014) analyzes how the circulation of ideas about biodiversity occurs in the pedagogical practices of science and biology teachers based on the science, technology, society and environmental patrimony approaches. leonel's thesis (2015) reflects on what contributions a methodological proposal, in the context of continuing education for physics teachers can offer in order to meet the demands of teacher training and practice in the context of state public schools of santa catarina. from the categories of thought style, thought collective, intracollective and intercollective circulation, and complications, physics teachers are seen as a collective that can be formed by distinct groups and which relates to other collectives. souza (2015) discusses the possibilities that fleck’s epistemology can bring to addressing the gaps present in the initial training of science teachers, situated socio-historically in a context with fragmentation of knowledge and that does not contribute to the development of critical thinking in students. finally macedo’s thesis (2015) sought to answer how the conceptions about the nature of science, the learning and teaching that professors licensed in physics by the ufba have and transmit, influence the application of the foundations of science teaching by research to the their teaching activities. these research projects seek, each in its own way, to identify thought styles from the analysis of educational conceptions and pedagogical practices. in the analysis on the emergence of a scientific fact axis, ten studies were classified: leite (2004), delizoicov, (2002), scheid (2006), lima (2007), bertoni (2007), tomio (2012), tréz 2012), chaves (2015) and luiz (2015). leite’s thesis (2004) identified and analyzed the scientific view and the historical dimension present in the genetic books used in the biological sciences course at ufsc. an epistemological analysis of a historical episode (mendel's case) was performed to counter and overcome the predominant empiricist view in books and in scientific education in general. delizoicov’s study (2002) analyzed the knowledge about the movement of blood in the human body, considering the contexts of its production and its dissemination. scheid (2006) investigated epistemological aspects present in the history of a scientific fact and the contributions provided by the discussion of these aspects in the teaching and learning process of biology, particularly genetics, in the initial training of biological science teachers. lima (2007) analyzed the planning and implementation process of the municipal nature park of lages sc, with emphasis on the conservation of water resources and the perception of the community. bertoni (2007) identified and grounded biological thought styles which historically predominated in the way of interpreting and understanding the life phenomenon, an object of biology study. tomio (2012) investigated which scientists production of writing conditions can be constitutive of the development of scientific knowledge and how its determinants can guide the functioning and/or analysis of students’ writing in science classes in school. tréz (2012) identified and characterized in his thesis the thought styles regarding the use of animals as a model by the biomedical lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 60 sciences, the potentially innovative or traditional profile of teachers and students working in the biological sciences and health areas, in relation to the use of animals in teaching and research, the thought styles which operate among teachers linked to ifes, working in the physiological and pharmaceutical sciences areas and also characterized possible relations between the thought style found among teachers, with potentially innovative or traditional profiles of postgraduate students and science biological and health sciences students. bertoni (2012) investigated which thought styles have historically prevailed and contributed to the emergence of historical conceptions of life. chaves (2015) had as a question responding to how new health definitions impact the health education field, highlighting the interference and insertion of collectives in health education. finally, luiz’s dissertation (2015) analyzed a history of science episode, the double helix. these studies, in their distinctive fields, give a review and a historical-epistemological analysis of the production process of certain knowledge. in doing so, these authors explain thought styles and collectives, especially the leite and scheid (2006) study, which add to this focus the challenge of identifying, in the knowledge production trajectory, elements that enable for teachers in training a more adequate understanding of the nature of science. in the analysis of academic production axis, six studies were incorporated; slongo (2004), lorenzetti (2008), mezalira (2008), emmel (2011), hoffmann (2012) and milaré (2013). slongo’s thesis (2004) analyzed the brazilian academic production in biology teaching developed from 1972 to 2000, seeking to locate groups and research trends which marked that period, as well as the circumstances under which these tendencies predominated, were developed and transformed, taking the area to the current state of knowledge. lorenzetti’s study (2008), using the fleckian categories as an instrument of academic production analysis of in environmental education developed in the postgraduate programs in brazil, characterized the thought styles of the members of the esoteric and exoteric circles of environmental education. mezalira’s research (2008) focused on investigating and characterizing thought researchers collectives on science, technology and society referenced in brazil. emmel (2011) analyzed theoretical axes which are reflected in the research on the didactic book and which styles and collective of thought constitute these works. hoffmann's dissertation (2012) sought to characterize brazilian works which deal with analogies and metaphors in biology teaching, identifying collectives of researchers who dedicate their research to the study of the subject. milaré (2013) sought to highlight the characteristics of the research in chemistry teaching produced between the years 2006 and 2009 in the postgraduate programs of usp in the education, chemistry and science teaching areas. such works are characterized as historical-epistemological studies which, when analyzing the academic production in respective knowledge areas and specific time frames, identify thought styles and collectives. this is especially true in the slongo (2004) and lorenzetti (2008) studies, which, in explaining the thought styles and collectives, describe their establishment, extension, and transformation process. in addition, the categories of intracollective and intercollective circulation of ideas were widely used in all studies of this axis. in the studies on the curriculum axis four works were classified: leal (2013), alves (2014), nonenmacher (2014) and giacomini (2014). leal’s thesis (2013) discusses the limits and possibilities of knowledge and practices disseminated by chemistry teachers, in the training processes of the technicians, regarding the professional education, environment, sanitation and teaching of chemistry, with a view to adopting a critical-transforming training perspective. nonenmacher (2014), analyzing a chemistry course, within an integrated curriculum proposal, seeks to understand that "teacher knowledge" some curricular components (integrated professional practices) provides its graduates. reflecting on thought styles of the graduates, it identifies nuances of these, in the constitution of the research and collaborative teacher perspective. giacomini (2014), emphasizing the relevance that new curricular configurations, based on the critical perspective and the social context, have to trigger a process of profound transformations, disrupting the current linear curricular thinking style, analyzes the advances achieved by teachers in curricular implementations of regular high school and eja, from the thematic approach perspective. these studies seek to discuss curricular projects and training practices which contribute to professional training in a critical curriculum perspective. in the analysis of didactic materials axis, a single study was classified, by yamazaki (2015). the author investigates the didactic structure of basic physics textbooks of higher education or manuals of basic physics, through a detailed analysis of significant examples, with the objective of identifying and discussing a teaching tradition of this discipline. the habitus notions, scientific spirit and style of thought, by bourdieu, lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 61 bachelard and fleck, respectively, were used by the author for the thoughts understanding and actions which are legitimized in certain collectives of individuals. fleck proposes that the knowledge production process is concretized in this interaction of the subject with the object, mediated by what he calls thought style and within a thought collective. according to fleck, knowledge production is characterized as a process involving the instituting, extension and transformation of styles of thought. the instituting process of a thought style arises from the confrontation of a problem by more than one researcher, that is, by a collective. it is important to emphasize that the identification of a particular thought style, as well as its possible transformations is made with the contribution of historical reviews, as fleck (1979, 2010) argues. the fleckian perspective has also grounded contemporary production analyzes. seventy percent of the analyzed works (delizoicov, 1995; slongo, 2004; lambach 2007; mezalira, 2008; lorenzetti, 2008; muenchen, 2010; emmel, 2011; niezwida, 2012; tréz, 2012; in this study, we present a review of the literature results on 2015, and the results of the study, 2015) encompasses relatively contemporary aspects analyzes compared to the knowledge production which was the object of historical-epistemological analysis of episodes which are already part of the science history, such as the studies on the harvey model of blood circulation (delizoicov 2002), on mendel's laws (leite, 2004), on dna (scheid, 2006), on the double helix (luiz, 2015) or historical rescues, such as the research concerning the writing production of scientists müller and darwin (tomio, 2012), the scientist james prescott joule study of the work (queirós, 2012) and the concept of life emergence (bertoni, 2012). the other studies analyzed, based in fleck’s epistemology, although characterized thought styles and implementation dynamics and change regarding the foci they investigated, did not have as their objective, properly, to carry out an analysis on the production of knowledge. with regard to the justifications which led the researchers to opt for fleck‘s epistemological contribution, the studies emphasize which this perspective allowed: a) identifying the socio-historical-cultural character of the knowledge production (leite, 2004, delizoicov, 2002, scheid, 2006 and lorenzetti, 2008, yudi, 2012, millaré, 2013, alves, 2014, souza, 2015, macêdo, 2015); b) identifying and characterizing ways of conceiving and acting in research and teaching, according to a historical perspective which includes the present time. in general, the thirty-four studies analyzed attribute this potential to fleck's epistemology; c) identifying the need for the epistemological debate in the initial and continuous training of teachers (lambach, 2013, souza, 2015, yamazaki, 2015); d) understanding the interaction of the collectives of scientists and, in this process, the role of the circulation of knowledge and practices in the knowledge production (delizoicov, 2002, slongo, 2004, leite 2004, scheid 2006, lorenzetti, 2008 and muenchen, 2010; emmel, 2011; tomio, 2012; hoffmann, 2012; millaré, 2013; brandão, 2015); e) understanding the interaction of the collectives of educators and learners, and in this process, the circulation of knowledge and practices and their role in the transformations occurring/necessary in the training and teachers practice in the area and/or in pedagogical practices and curricular structures which favor the dissemination of the scientific culture (lambach, 2007 e muenchen, 2010; emmel, 2011; niezwida, 2012; queirós, 2012; souza, 2013; gonçalves, 2014; giacomini, 2014; nonenmacher, 2014; brandão, 2015); f) identifying/knowing and characterizing thoughts/conceptions (educational and epistemological) and pedagogical practices present in the teachers training and action, as well as, in didactic materials for the natural sciences teaching (delizoicov, 1995; lambach, 2007; bertoni, 2007 e muenchen, 2010; yudi, 2012; leal, 2012; leonel, 2015; macêdo, 2015). it was observed that fleck's epistemological categories "thought style" and "thought collective" were used by the thirty-four studies analyzed, however, these categories appear in the research in different ways and lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 62 with different emphases. after a decade, in 2004, the first dialogues of these researches appeared with the categories: "esoteric and exoteric circles" and “intracollective and intercollective circulation of ideas”. the use of these categories intensifies in the developed productions, in the later period, and approximately fifty percent (eighteen studies) of the works seek to identify the different thought collectives involved in the particular scientific education areas investigated, as well as the communication dynamics between them. recently, in 2012, the first studies that use the category "complications" appear in their epistemological analyzes. approximately thirty percent of the analyzed studies (ten researches) investigate the complications faced by distinctive thought collectives in the dissemination of their knowledge and practices. these data show that research has advanced in the use of fleckian categories and their application in different contexts. the dissemination and use of these epistemological categories to investigate different objects in the area of science education reflects their potential. working on the assumption of a thought collective shares knowledge and practices, which characterize the current thinking style, we have investigated bibliographical references used by the research analyzed and that address the epistemology of fleck. this data is relevant insofar as explaining the sharing of theoretical and methodological elements by the research in science education. it was identified that fleck's book in spanish version (fleck, 1986) and in the portuguese one (fleck, 2010) was cited in twenty-three works each, being verified that from 2010 with a portuguese book publication there is a reduction in the quotations from the spanish version, followed by schaffer and schnelle's introduction to the author's work, which was also cited in twenty studies. it is observed in the latest works there is a reduction in the use of this reference. the texts by ilana löwy (1994a, 1994b, 2004), the great disseminator of fleck's epistemological thought, were cited by nineteen of the thirtyfour studies analyzed. in addition, with seven citations, we highlight the articles organized by cohen and schnelle (1986) in the cognition and fact work. in addition, three hundred and fifty-nine texts referring to fleck's epistemology (1986; 2010) were identified, of which one hundred and eighteen are theses, dissertations and articles published in periodicals and annals/events. da ros’s thesis (2000) was cited by sixteen texts, and those by cutolo (2001), leite (2004) in fourteen, delizoicov's dissertation (1995) in twelve, and delizoicov's thesis (2002) by ten. with eight citations, we find muenchen thesis (2010) and scheid (2006), with six leite thesis (2004) and slongo (2004) and parreira thesis (2006). with five theses pfuetzenreiter (2003) and lorenzetti (2008). in turn, the articles by delizoicov et al. (2002) was cited in twenty-three studies, in leite, ferrari and delizoicov (2001) in fourteen, gonçalves, marques and delizoicov (2007) in nine studies. another fact which draws attention is the number of citations present in the dissertations and theses that used fleck’s epistemology, made by the analyzed research authors. the studies of lorenzetti (2008) and muenchen (2010), milaré (2013) located the majority of dissertations and theses developed in the postgraduate programs. already lima’s (2007), mezalira’s (2008), ota’s (2012) and souza’s studies (2013) cited few works involving fleckian epistemology. analyzing shared references in academic production in environmental education, lorenzetti (2008, 349) identified the "incipient intra-collective circulation of ideas", especially in relation to the references of the distinctive dissertations and theses of environmental education developed in postgraduate programs studies in brazil. the author argues that "there is greater knowledge dissemination and practices that are being linked in these studies it is necessary to refer and discuss what has already occurred in the area, broadening the discussions [...]. an intensification in the most shared use of references would enhance the extension of the thought style" (lorenzetti, 2008: 349). likewise, as highlighted, it can be verified that some authors of the analyzed studies did not reference similar works, little contributing to the dissemination and expansion of fleck's epistemology. it is understood that studies which referred to the research already carried out can contribute to the strengthening of the new studies, based on the author's epistemological contributions. the methodological procedures emphasized in the analyzed studies highlight that the documental and bibliographical analysis, and the application of surveys and interviews have allowed historical reviews as well as analyses that characterized thought styles, thought collective, circulation of ideas, knowledge and practices among esoteric and exoteric circles that comprise the area of science education, materialized in the axis teacher education, curriculum, emergency of a scientific fact, academic production analysis, analysis of didactic materials and fleck’s relation with other authors. regarding fleck’s epistemology contributions to the studies analyzed, according to their authors, the following explanations prevailed: (1) fleck’s epistemology contributes to a better understanding of lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 63 production and evolution of knowledge; (2) for an adequate demonstration of characteristics of; (3) for the identification and critical reading of different thought styles and thought collectives present in the history of an area of knowledge or in different curricular and didactic materials, as well as, in different spaces and formative processes, (4) to identify the knowledge and practice circulations in different ambits (intracollective and intercollective), interchanging senses and ways of acting, in addition to explicating complications which need to be addressed for the sake of transformations beyond formative spaces. final considerations the study had the objective of identifying at which moment fleck consolidated as an important reference for research, particularly in the area of science education and what relation the research developed in the area has established with this reference. considering the subsidiary sources of this study, data have revealed that fleck’s work has expanded in brazil since the mid 1990’s, when the first studies underpinned by this epistemological matrix appeared. moreover, they have revealed that this expansion reverberates not only in quantitative, but qualitative data as well. from the quantitative point of view, in the last five years, the volume of studies carried out almost doubled compared to the volume identified in the first fifteen years. qualitatively, an incorporation of the fleckian theoretical referential by numerous areas of knowledge has been observed, in addition to the usage of several epistemological categories from the author. beyond the categories “thought styles and collectives”, others emerge: “intracollective and intercollective circulation of ideas”, “complications” and “esoteric and exoteric circles”. we have also observed that the greater volume of studies inspired by fleck focus on the axis “teacher education” and “emergency of a scientific fact”, followed by studies on the “analysis of academic production”, “curriculum” and “analysis of didactic material”. as for the locus of this production stricto sensu, we have identified that the studies in science education come from institutions in the south of brasil, noticeably in the federal university of santa catarina and in the science education area (the main advisors of these researches are: demétrio delizoicov, carlos alberto marques and edel ern). regarding fleck’s epistemology contributions noted by the authors of the studies carried out in the science education area, the following reasons have been highlighted: it allows for the comprehension of the constitution of an area of knowledge; explicates the sociological character of production as well as dissemination of knowledge; identifies the conditions for the introduction of thought style connected to science; comprehends the importance of intracollective and intercollective communication for the establishment and transformation of a thought style; analyses the weight of training for entering a thought style; better establishes the relation between theory and practice in the education of teachers; reflects on the teachers’ pedagogical practice; develops alternatives for the insertion of science history in graduation curricula. data show that a thought collective of science education investigators has been consolidating in brazil with fleck’s epistemology as an epistemological basis. finally, we stress that this study has not taken fleck’s epistemology as an object of analysis. it intended to dimension the reception and incorporation of fleckian work in research stricto sensu developed in brazil, particularlyin the science education area. thus, the perspective through which this analysis was carried out aimed, above all, to introduce a panorama that may contribute to future reflection. references andré, m. e. d. a. formação de professores no brasil (1990 – 1998). série estado do conhecimento. n. 6 brasília: mec/inep/comped, 2002. brasil. parecer cne/ces 79/02, 2002. http://www.franca.unesp.br/home/pos-graduacao/ planejamentoeanalisedepoliticaspublicas/parecer-cne---ces-79-2002.pdf consulted december 5, 2016. cutolo, l. r. a. estilo de pensamento em educação médica: um estudo do currículo do curso de graduação em medicina da ufsc. 2001. tese (doutorado) – centro de ciências da educação, universidade federal de santa catarina, florianópolis, 2001. lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 64 da ros, m. a. estilo de pensamento em educação médica: um estudo da produção da fsp-usp e ensp fiocruz entre 1948 e 1994, a partir de epistemologia de ludwik fleck. 2000. tese (doutorado em educação) – universidade federal de santa catarina, florianópolis – sc, 2000. delizoicov, d. et al. sociogênese do conhecimento e pesquisa em ensino: contribuições a partir do referencial fleckiano. caderno brasileiro do ensino de física. florianópolis, sc, v. 19, número especial, p. 52-69, jun. 2002. delizoicov, d.; 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in: fleck, l. la gênesis y el desarrollo de um hecho científico. madrid: alianza editorial, 1986 slongo, i. i. p. a produção acadêmica em ensino de biologia: um estudo a partir de teses e dissertações. 2004. 364 f. tese (doutorado em educação) – universidade federal de santa catarina, florianópolis – sc, 2004. soares, m.b.; maciel, f. alfabetização. série estado do conhecimento. n. 1 brasília: mec/inep/comped, 2000. lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 66 list of dissertations and analyzed thesis * d: dissertation; t: thesis year author advisor title *d /t hei program 1995 nadir castilho delizoicov arden zylbersztajn o professor de ciências naturais e o livro didático d ufsc educação 1996 lilian koifman jeni vaitsman a crítica do modelo biomédico na reformulação curricular do curso de medicina da universidade federal fluminense d fiocr uz saúde coletiva 1999 lucia ceccatto lima edel ern a formação dos professores de ciências: uma abordagem epistemológica d ufsc educação 1999 vania marli schubert backes edel ern estilo de pensamento e práxis na enfermagem: a contribuição do estágio pré-profissional t ufsc enfermagem 1999 ana luiza gonçalves dos santos elizabeth moreira dos santos uma construção dos saberes sobre epidemia de aids: os formulários de notificação de caos em perspectiva (1982 -98) d fiocr uz saúde pública 2000 marco aurélio da ros demétrio delizoicov estilo de pensamento em educação médica: um estudo da produção da fsp-usp e ensp-fiocruz entre 1948 e 1994, a partir de epistemologia de ludwik fleck t ufsc educação 2001 clarisvaldo jendiroba neder elena moraes garcia comunidade científica e natureza no pensamento de t. s. kuhn d uerj filosofia 2001 luiz roberto agea cutolo demétrio delizoicov estilo de pensamento em educação médica um estudo do currículo do curso de graduação em medicina da ufsc t ufsc educação 2002 rejane leal conceição da costa araújo nadir ferrari e marcos aurélio da ros doenças construção e realidade na formação dos médicos. objeto fronteira como instrumento de interação entre diferentes estilos de pensamento d ufsc educação 2002 samuel macêdo guimaraes elenor kunz educação física, vivência e experiência corporal d ufsc educação física 2002 doris gomes marco aurélio da ros; anselmo peres etiologia da cárie uma construção do estilo de pensamento d ufsc saúde coletiva 2002 nadir castilho delizoicov edel ern; maria helena da silva carneiro o movimento do sangue no corpo humano: história e ensino. t ufsc educação 2003 maria inês nogueira kenneth rochel de camargo júnior entre a conversão e o ecletismo: de como médicos brasileiros tornam-se "chineses” t uerj saúde coletiva 2003 armênio matias correa lima demétrio delizoicov estilo de pensar no ensino de medicina homeopática t ufsc educação 2003 marcelo maravieski marco aurélio da ros. homeopatia: uma desconhecida na região sul ii da associação brasileira de educação médica d ufsc saúde pública lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 67 2003 márcia regina pfuetzenreiter arden zylbersztajn; fernando dias de avila-pires o ensino da medicina veterinária preventiva e saúde pública nos cursos de medicina veterinária: estudo de caso realizado na universidade do estado de santa catarina t ufsc educação 2003 severina alice da costa uchôa kenneth rochel de camargo júnior os protocolos e a decisão médica: evidências e ou vivências? t ufrj saúde coletiva 2004 iône inês pinsson slongo demétrio delizoicov a produção acadêmica em ensino de biologia: um estudo a partir de teses e dissertações t ufsc educação 2004 raquel crosara maia leite demétrio delizoicov a produção coletiva do conhecimento científico: um exemplo no ensino de genética t ufsc educação 2004 charles dalcanale tesser madel therezinha luz epistemologia contemporânea e saúde: a luta pela verdade e as práticas terapêuticas t unica mp saúde coletiva 2004 adilson alciomar koslowski alberto oscar cupani nas origens da estrutura das revoluções científicas: a influência de fleck, polanyi e quine na filosofia da ciência de thomas samuel kuhn d ufsc filosofia 2004 mary ângela leivas amorim edel ern parâmetros curriculares nacionais para o ensino médio e professores de biologia: dificuldades de interlocução. t ufsc educação 2005 silvia jurema leone quaresma elizabeth farias da silva a percepção do médico clínico em relação aos pacientes hipocondríacos e poliqueixosos que são atendidos no ambulatório do hospital universitário professor polydoro ernani de são thiago d ufsc sociologia política 2005 marco antonio merechia santos luiz roberto agea cutolo as diretrizes curriculares e o currículo de graduação em medicina da univali: construindo a interdisciplinaridade através dos objetos fronteiriços e da epistemologia de fleck d univali saúde 2006 neusa maria john scheid nadir ferrari a contribuição da história da biologia na formação inicial de professores de ciências biológicas t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2006 marcos aurelio maeyama luiz roberto agea cutolo estilos de pensamento em odontologia social e preventiva – um estudo da disciplina de odontologia social e preventiva do curso de odontologia da univali d univali saúde 2006 loreci pereira durgante marco aurélio da ros expectativas dos indivíduos homeopatas de itajaí a respeito de sua participação no sus local d ufsc saúde coletiva 2006 márcia maria marins parreiras mauro lúcio leitão conde lukwik fleck e a historiografia da ciência: diagnóstico de um estilo de pensamento segundo as ciências da vida d ufmg história 2006 viviane gontijo augusto rosana ferreira sampaio um olhar sobre a ler/dort no contexto clínico do fisioterapeuta d ufmg ciências da reabilitação 2007 cesar augusto orazem favoreto kenneth rochel de camargo, júnior a narrativa na e sobre a clínica na atenção primária: uma reflexão sobre o modo de pensar e agir dirigido pelo diálogo, à integralidade e ao cuidado em saúde d uerj saúde coletiva lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 68 2007 carla ribeiro guedes kenneth rochel de camargo júnior a subjetividade como anomalia: estratégias médicas para lidar com os sintomas vagos e difusos em biomedicina t uerj saúde coletiva 2007 marcelo lambach carlos alberto marques atuação e formação dos professores de química na eja: características dos estilos de pensamento um olhar a partir de fleck d ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2007 antonio carlos de salles mauro lúcio leitão conde nem gênios, nem heróis: a história da ciência em ludwik fleck d ufmg história 2007 lúcia ceccato de lima sergio roberto martins processo de planejamento e implantação do parque natural municipal de lages – sc com ênfase na conservação de bacias hidrográficas e na percepção da comunidade do entorno t ufsc engenharia ambiental 2007 danislei bertoni araci asinelli da luz um estudo dos estilos de pensamento biológico sobre o fenômeno vida. d ufpr educação 2008 sandra mara mezalira maria cristina pansera-dearaújo enfoque cts no ensino de ciências naturais a partir de publicações em eventos científicos no brasil d unijui educação nas ciências 2008 lacita menezes skalinski charles dalcanale tesser epidemiologia e epidemiologia crítica: considerações sobre diferentes estilos de pensamento d ufsc saúde coletiva 2008 leonir lorenzetti demétrio delizoicov estilos de pensamento em educação ambiental: um estudo a partir das dissertações e teses t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2008 nabiha haddad simões machado maria helena da silva carneiro o ensinar e o aprender a fazer pesquisa: o real e o desejado d unb educação 2008 alexandre cavalca tavares maria helena da silva carneiro o ensino de patologia humana e suas relações históricas com o estilo de pensamento a partir da análise de livros-texto d unb educação 2009 wellington barros da silva demétrio delizoicov a emergência da atenção farmacêutica: um olhar epistemológico e contribuições para o seu ensino t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2009 natália lupinacci costa luiz roberto agea cutolo estilos de pensamento em acupuntura: uma análise epistemológica d univali saúde 2009 luise lüdke luiz roberto agea cutolo formação de docentes para o sus: um desafio sanitário e pedagógico d univali saúde 2009 henri fernando bischoff ilton benoni da silva o estilo de pensamento em medicina estética; reflexões sobre as bases epistemológicas da formação médica d unesc educação 2009 cheila cavalli edgard matiello júnior reflexões sobre a educação física no sus: uma análise a partir das dissertações e teses d ufsc educação física 2010 cristiane muenchen demétrio delizoicov disseminação dos três momentos pedagógicos: um estudo sobre práticas docentes na região de santa maria/rs t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2010 mariana cabral schveitzer vânia marli schubert backes estilos de pensamento em educação em enfermagem: uma análise da produção científica das regiões norte, nordeste e centro-oeste do brasil d ufsc enfermagem lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 69 2010 luciano marcos curi betânia goncalves figueiredo excluir, isolar e conviver: um estudo sobre a lepra e a hanseníase no brasil t ufmg história 2011 rubia emmel maria c. pansera-dearaújo estado da arte e coletivos de pensamento da pesquisa sobre o livro didático no brasil d unijui educação nas ciências 2011 wellington hermann rosana figueiredo salvi estudo sobre a prática científica de um grupo de pesquisa em educação matemática d uel ensino de ciências e educação matemática 2011 carmem maria kligman barguil ana teresa a. venâncio; flavio edler o lugar e o valor da fisioterapia na terapêutica médica: a medicina prática nos primeiros trinta anos do século xx t fiocr uz história das ciências e da saúde 2012 wellington pereria de queiros roberto nadir; demétrio delizoicov a articulação das culturas humanísticas e científicas por meio do estudo histórico sociocultural dos trabalhos de james prescott joule: contribuições para a formação de professores universitários em uma perspectiva transformadora t unesp bauru educação para a ciência 2012 welton yudi oda demétrio delizoicov a docência universitária em biologia e suas relações com a realidade das metrópoles amazônicas t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2012 joão alexandre costa carneiro caetano ernesto plastino a teoria comparativa do conhecimento de ludwik fleck: comunicabilidade e incomensurabilidade no desenvolvimento das ideias científicas d usp filosofia 2012 marilisa bialvo hoffmann nadir castilho delizoicov; sylvia regina pedrosa maestrelli analogias e metáforas no ensino de biologia: um panorama da produção acadêmica brasileira d ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2012 fernanda schiavo nogueira mauro lúcio leitão condé ciência e linguagem: fleck e o estilo de pensamento como rede de significados na ciência d ufrn história 2012 daniela tomio suzani cassiani circulando sentidos pela escrita nas aulas de ciências: com interlocuções entre fritz müller, charles darwin e um coletivo de estudantes t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2012 josete leal dias francisco hermes santos da silva compreensão de professores de matemática sobre números fracionários t ufpa educação em ciências e matemáticas 2012 nancy rosa alba niezwida walter antonio bazzo; demétrio delizoicov educação tecnológica com perspectiva transformadora: a formação docente na constituição de estilos de pensamento t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2012 danislei bertoni araci asinelli da luz gênese e desenvolvimento do conceito vida t ufpr educação 2012 thales de astrogildo e tréz vivian leyser da rosa o uso de animais no ensino e na pesquisa acadêmica: estilos de pensamento no fazer e ensinar ciência t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2012 inea giovana da silva arioli daniela ribeiro schneider; jadete rodrigues gonçalves práticas e estilos de pensamento em promoção d ufsc psicologia lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 70 2013 tathiane milaré daisy de brito rezende a pesquisa em ensino de química na universidade de são paulo: estudo das dissertações e teses (2006-2009) sob a perspectiva fleckiana t usp ensino de ciências 2013 barbara vieira souza carlos alberto marques a sustentabilidade ambiental no ensino de química na compreensão de professores do ensino médio d ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2013 carlos eduardo camargo cunha antônio carlos de miranda a teoria de william harvey da circulação do sangue: um traçado histórico do desenvolvimento das concepções, dos conceitos e dos modelos d unipli ensino de ciências da saúde e do ambiente 2013 rafael cezere celi marco aurélio da ros estudo sobre estilos de pensamento na educação física no contexto do sus d univali saúde e gestão do trabalho 2013 marcelo lambach carlos alberto marques formação permanente de professores de química da eja na perspectiva dialógico-problematizadora freireana t ufsc educação cientifica e tecnológica 2013 debora takehara claudia lemos vóvio hanseníase tem cura: análise dos discursos de pacientes e profissionais de saúde a respeito dos materiais educativos impressos sobre hanseníase d unifesp educação e saúde na infância e adolescência 2013 adriana lopes leal carlos alberto marques relações entre saneamento-químicameio ambiente na educação profissional e tecnológica numa perspectiva crítico transformadora. t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2013 xenia silva gomes brandao andré ferrer pinto martins uma análise da formação de professores de física do ifrn a partir da epistemologia de ludwik fleck. d ufrn educação 2014 adriane da costa goncalves maria de fatima vilhena da silva a circulação de ideias sobre biodiversidade por professores de ciências e biologia nas abordagens cts e patrimonial ambiental d ufpa educação em ciências e matemáticas 2014 sandra elisabet bazana nonenmacher josé cláudio del pino contribuições da prática profissional integrada na formação inicial de professores t ufrgs educação em ciências química da vida e saúde 2014 raquel alcides dos santos kenneth rochel camargo júnior estilos de pensamento da assistência médica aos pacientes oncológicos na rede pública de saúde do município do rio de janeiro t uerj saúde coletiva 2014 emlly hanna souza da silva maria de fatima vilhena da silva estilos de pensamento sobre biodiversidade em pesquisas de educação ambiental publicadas no epea' d ufpa educação em ciências e matemáticas 2014 monica de caldas rosa dos anjos walter antônio bazzo fronteiras na construção e socialização do conhecimento científico e tecnológico: um olhar para a extensão universitária t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2014 alexandre giacomini cristiane muenchen intervenções curriculares na perspectiva da abordagem temática: avanços alcançados por professores de uma escola pública estadual do rs d ufsmfurgufrgs educação em ciências: química da vida e saúde 2014 anai helena basso alves antônio fernando gouvêa da silva manifestações de obstáculos gnosiológicos para a seleção de conteúdos na implementação de um currículo crítico em ciências d ufscar sorocaba educação lorenzetti, muenchen, slongo – the growing presence of ludwik fleck’s epistemology in science education research in brazil 71 2014 leandro augusto pires goncalves kenneth rochel camargo júnior medicina e enfermagem – saberes e práticas incomensuráveis? uma abordagem à luz da hermenêutica e dos science studies d uerj saúde coletiva 2014 danielle souza fialho da silva dilene raimundo do nascimento o alarme que precisa ser regulado: os debates médicos sobre a fibromialgia na sociedade brasileira de reumatologia entre as décadas de 1990 e 2010 d fiocr uz história das ciências 2014 julia kleve berg kenneth rochel camargo júnior para que serve uma enfermaria de clínica médica?: reflexões a partir de um hospital universitário d uerj saúde coletiva 2015 marcos aurelio maeyama marco aurélio da ros a escolha da especialidade médica estilos de pensamento t ufsc saúde coletiva 2015 caio cesar malassise luiz marcos rodrigues da silva a história da dupla hélice interpretada a partir do quadro conceitual de ludwik fleck d uel filosofia 2015 rodrigo diego de souza eloíza aparecida silva avila de matos/ marcia regina carletto circulações de conhecimentos e práticas na formação inicial de professores de ciências: complicações, subsídios e possibilidades d utfpr ensino de ciências e tecnologia 2015 braulio silva chaves bernardo jefferson de oliveira conhecimento, linguagem e ensino: a educação em saúde na história da ciência (1940-1971)' t ufmg história 2015 alexandre tripoli vencao lucia ceccatto de lima estilo de pensamento dos professores da área de matemática no curso de engenharia elétrica d uniplac educação 2015 andre ary leonel jose andré peres angotti formação continuada de professores de física em exercício na rede pública estadual de santa catarina: lançando um novo olhar sobre a prática t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 2015 ricardo silva de macedo maria cristina martins penido o ensino de ciências por investigação e a prática pedagógica de professores licenciados no if-ufba t ufba ensino, filosofia e história das ciências 2015 cesar augusto rodenbusch poletto lucia ceccatto de lima o processo cognitivo evidenciado nos estilos de pensamento revelados nos saberes e práticas de orientação de monografias na área de odontologia lages d uniplac educação 2015 sergio choiti yamazaki jose andré peres angotti tradição do ensino de física em manuais de ensino superior t ufsc educação científica e tecnológica 72 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 72-78 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck for your eyes only: transcendental pragmatism in ludwik fleck hartmut von sass1 abstract: ludwik fleck’s main contribution lies in the awareness for the deeply social and collective dimension of scientific work, its procedures, but also its style and mode of thinking. however, it is this very focus that gives for a lot of his reader the licence to put fleck into the constructivist camp. this is wrongheaded and based on a misinterpretation of the status of the social element in research. to show that i read fleck as a humble (i.e. non-kantian) transcendentalist to appreciate both, the historically sensitive approach in fleck and its non-constructivist aspects. thereby, we find a middle ground circumventing naïve realism as well as full-blown relativism. one might call this position transcendental pragmatism. keywords: fleck; kant; transcendental arguments; pragmatism; contextualism received: 11 august 2016. reviewed: 08 november 2016. accepted: 29 november 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ es gibt eine gemeinschaft von menschen mit gemeinsamem denkstil. dieser denkstil entwickelt sich und ist in jeder etappe mit seiner geschichte verbunden. er schafft eine gewisse bestimmte bereitschaft, er verleiht sie den mitgliedern der gemeinschaft auf soziologischen wegen, und er diktiert, was und wie diese mitglieder sehen. (fleck, 2011 [1935], 226) introduction: on not starting off with james bond “for your eyes only” is the first james bond movie that is not based on an ian flemming novel; the title is rather derived from one of flemming’s short stories, and the 1981 film is the typical melange of hero-villainduality on the background of the not highly ambivalent iron curtain romantic. the not very romantic side of that historical background influenced, arguably, also the last years of ludwik fleck’s life and work. however, whereas the mentioned title means in bond’s case not some sort of visual limitation—for your eyes only, but 1 hartmut von sass is an associate professor at the collegium helveticum. eth uzh zhdk, zürich. schmelzbergstrasse 25. zürich. 8006. switzerland. e-mail: vonsass@collegium.ethz.ch. hartmut von sass – for your eyes only: transcendental pragmatism in ludwik fleck 73 simply the crucial secrecy of roger moore’s character—fleck uses, by contrast, constant and, i think, consistent visual metaphors in order to express the limits of mutual understanding and to explicate a hermeneutics of conditioned and insofar necessarily particularized epistemic access.2 in fact, fleck creates a narrative of learning to see (or: to discern) as fragmented circumscription of growing up academically. therefore, in the beginning was … the chaos, in the sense of seeing unclearly and without style (ein “stilloses schauen”), fleck holds (fleck, 2015 [1935], 121). to achieve this style is to become familiar with the sense or meaning entailed in the act of seeing, since there is, fleck adds, no seeing other than a “sense-seeing” (ein “sinn-sehen”) and no other representations than “sense-pictures” (“sinnbilder”) (fleck, 2015 [1935], 186). getting educated is to become better at seeing things, but not by looking at something with greater awareness, but rather by being advised to grasp the gestalt, i.e. the structure of a given object as embedded in a context; you might also say it is about seeing something as something, a genuinely hermeneutical act.3 this sketch leads already to three important consequences: first, it remains impossible to base epistemology on sense-data; this was precisely the confusion with empiricism; what counts as ‘data’ is already embedded in a practice that takes it to be a fact in the first place (fleck, 2015 [1929], 53). second, it is an illusion to search for an act of observation purified from prejudice and prejudgment; this notion is even as ideal impossible and an approximation beyond the potential to be right (and wrong).4 thirdly, seeing is not only thematized as epistemic act, but more specifically as a readiness or disposition to see something in a particular way; hence it is not about the object alone, but also about the non-cognitive attitudes, expectations and codes of right and wrong that are involved in that very—stylish—seeing (fleck, 2015 [1935], 85). for your eyes only—that means now: something does not show itself how it ‘really’ is, but is only accessible for the trained sight as part of a collective endeavour.5 fleck’s main contribution lies (as often and rightly appreciated) in stressing the social as well as educational aspect of science, its non-rational (which is not to say: irrational) elements.6 thus, he describes the act of seeing as multifaceted event taking— very similar to wittgenstein—into account the collaboratively structured and determined style of thought as normative cluster for scientific evaluation. it is this appreciation of earlier on neglected aspects of scientific work that led some commentators on fleck enthusiastically—and a bit hyperbolically—to expect that thomas kuhn will be in not a too distant future a mere footnote to fleck’s hermeneutical epistemology7 while giving up the old distinction between the theory of science and its history (rheinberger, 2015, 111). all that sounds modern—and is already classical. it is also disputed, because of the conventionalist or even relativist allusions to be found in fleck. my claim is, negatively speaking, that this rests on an avoidable misunderstanding of what fleck was up to; and, constructively speaking, the claim is that there is a transcendental dimension in fleck’s account of the style of thinking and seeing that has to be reconciled with his emphasis on practice. accordingly, fleck’s non-essentialist and non-relativistic hermeneutics is based on a transcendental pragmatism (or: pragmatist transcendentalism). and i will try to elaborate on that claim now in three short chapters. transcendental pragmatism. a first sketch traditionally speaking, transcendental arguments are considered to be distinctive in implying a certain kind of claim, namely that x is a necessary condition for the possibility of y—so that, given that y is in fact the case, it follows that x must be the case as well.8 now, there are two basic forms of transcendental arguments 2 for these metaphors of vision (fleck, 2015 [1935], 85, 121-122). 3 see (graeser, 1993, 559-572). 4 fleck states: “sie gibt es nirgends, weder in der geschichte noch im gegenwärtigen moment, unmöglich ist sie auch als ideal, an das man sich durch analyse oder kritik annähern könnte, weil alles ‚legitimieren’ von beobachtungsdaten genauso dem denkstil unterliegt.” (fleck, 2015 [1935] 233). 5 this seems to be a standpoint that has, anew, to be defended against a neo-realism trying to catch ‘absolute facts’; see for instance (boghossian, 2006). 6see also alvin goldman and thomas blanchard, “social epistemology”, available under: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/epistemology-social/ 7 cf. sylwia werner und claus zittel, “es wird nicht mehr lange dauern, bis kuhns paradigmentheorie zur fußnote einer allgemeinen fleck-renaissance geworden sein wird.” “einleitung” in denkstile und tatsachen, (fleck, 2015, 16). 8 see robert stern, “transcendental arguments”, available under: hartmut von sass – for your eyes only: transcendental pragmatism in ludwik fleck 74 (or considerations).9 on the one hand, we have the classic kantian version that combines the argumentative structure with apriori assumptions belonging to a theory of subjectivity with anti-sceptic ambitions. that means, kant’s transcendentalism is a claim about our epistemic apparatus taken to be culturally and historically invariant in securing that the fact that we actually possess experiences let us infer from that very fact the apriori structure of the categories and forms of ideas (“anschauungsformen”) in our mind, such as space and time.10 in contrast to this kantian approach, there is a more humble form of transcendentalism that dissolves again the combination between a transcendentally structured argument and its accompanying aprioristatus and unlimited relevance. what is left here is the claim, that there are (something like) transcendental clusters, whereas these structures are not all-encompassing synand diachronically, but embedded in concrete cultural environments, contexts, practices, or conceptual schemes. here, we deal with transcendentalism without the metaphysical ingredients of before-every-experience and the alleged universalism. it is a “situated” transcendentalism, to borrow gadamer’s term (gadamer, 1990 [1960], 310). the observation, that there is a transcendental dimension in fleck’s epistemology is by no means new or original. it might even go back to fleck’s polish colleague tadeusz bilikiewicz.11 however, it is clear, that fleck is not a transcendentalist in the first, kantian sense. i would even say that it is not easy to pin down in which sense fleck is a transcendentalist in the more decent contextualized way. what is, i think, obvious is that he did not consider himself to be belonging to that tradition. hence the label is put on him externally and has to be justified heuristically, which means by way of unfolding the implications of the transcendental assumption and the effect for our understanding fleck: what does this assumption that fleck is a humble transcendentalist let us see, and see in a new or clarified way? to begin with, fleck’s transcendentalism might be described as a culturally sensitive take that enables him to characterize scientific thinking (and, in fact, thinking in general) as an institution that entails both creative and realistic elements of scientific discovery. ‘creative’ means here, that the scientific facts are actually made up, but not by the intention of an individual or collective subject, but by a structure, style and mood of thought that, in a way, transcends the individual. one might add that fleck’s transcendentalism has no transcendental subject. accordingly, the common charge fleck had been a member of the conventionalist or even constructivist camp is wrong, since there is no explicit, only a range of unavoidable and factual conventions without the act of conscious decision-making. the assumption of a transcendental dimension—historized and aware of cultural differences and practices—restricts at the same time the relativist allusions and, in the end, undermines or withdraws them.12 the shared framework of a thought collective has, of course, contingently developed and is permanently updated, but is not in the hands of manipulation, random change, and not even subjected to practical utility and intellectual comfort. in that sense, fleck’s transcendentalism is pragmatic not in the jamesian way of useful truth, but in the wittgensteinian sense of dealing with changeable, but stable structures embedded in the practical interaction with the world that surrounds us. the transcendental in fleck. a closer look we already stated that the transcendental claim (t) says: that x is a necessary condition for the possibility of y—so that, given that y is in fact the case, it follows that x must be the case too (given the sufficient conditions are fulfilled). now, how does this rather technical formula look like from a fleckian perspective? first of all, i argue, that what fleck calls ‘thought style’ stands for the transcendental element x in question. following from that what counts as scientific fact and ‘discovery’ (expressed in true scientific statements and propositions) is the result y, which—put upside down—serves also as symptom in such a way that a given http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendental-arguments/ (rev. version 2015). obviously, it only follows that x is the case, if all sufficient conditions are fulfilled. 9 cf. dimitri ginev, who distinguishes three forms of transcendental arguments in his “the transcendental in ludwik fleck’s social epistemology”, (ginev, 2015, 379-380). 10 see immanuel kant, kritik der reinen vernunft, b275-79. 11 bilikiewicz said: “und so werde ich nicht weit von der wahrheit entfernt sein, wenn ich in den ansichten von fleck einen widerhall eines transzendentalen idealismus im sinne mancher neukantianer entdecke.” (“bemerkungen zum artikel von ludwik fleck ‘wissenschaft und umwelt’”, (fleck, 2011, 341). 12 see (ginev, 2015, 123). hartmut von sass – for your eyes only: transcendental pragmatism in ludwik fleck 75 fact brings us back to a thought style x that enabled us to have facts in the first place. on a structural level, the transcendental claim (t) does not tell us more than that there are no facts without a style, and the existence of facts let us infer from their factuality that there must be a style (which is the equivalent to the traditional anti-sceptical element in classical transcendentalism). hence, we have to ask what it is that the style actually does to the collective as the bearer of a style or the stylish bearer? fleck gives, as far as i can see, three interrelated answers. a style implies a compelling element, a cognitive compulsion that leads the members of a certain collective in a particular direction in excluding alternatives. flecks even gives a hint of how that compulsory element comes to the fore, namely by ‘colouring’ concepts which means that the ‘thought compulsion’ (“stilgemäße denkzwang”) (fleck, 2015 [1935], 131) is based on a conceptual element, a particular usage of terms, phrases and expressions (fleck, 2015 [1935], 85). then, we have the creation of a readiness or disposition to see things in a particular way; the style even dictates, fleck holds, in which way this seeing develops and gets actualized (cf. fleck, [1935] 2015, 226). one could also say that the transcendental element forms a certain expectation for particular results along the process of scientific work. and finally, there is a collective mood, fleck says, (fleck, [1936] 2015, 287), a non-cognitive atmosphere among the participants of the collective, while ‘mood’ does, obviously, not mean the personal temper and vein, but an intellectual taste and a notion of what counts as good result and appropriate way to it. all three elements allow for the possibility of the change of style; in fact, fleck underlines that his theory of thought style regards truth as the actual state within the mutation of a style (“aktuelle etappe der veränderung eines denkstils”) (fleck, [1936] 2015, 301). so, i do hope that it has become a bit clearer by now why it helps to regard the relation between style and facts in transcendental terms: what is left from the initial kantian scenario is the necessity of a style x for the possibility to have a fact y.13 the transcendental phrasing—“the condition of the possibility”— is important, because we do not deal here with mere conditions that necessarily lead to a certain result; there’s no scientific determinism here; the claim is more cautious in expressing that a style is already in place to have and find out about facts scientifically. with kant, one might suppose that there are further transcendental structures (such as space and time); and beyond kant one might consider the possibility that there is more than just one style, but a collision (not a coalition) of incompatible styles. and against kant, one has to appreciate the changes, ruptures and adaptations of a style in relation to cultural, conceptual, but even political upheavals. styles themselves are embedded in something that is more extensive than they are. and now, fleck’s definition of a thought style should not sound surprising or astonishing: ‘we can, hence, define a thought style as focused discerning, combined with a particular cognitive and factual processing of the discerned object’.14 from here, one could also re-evaluate the highly disputed question of whether (or, in which sense) we can find an incommensurability thesis in fleck. it is interesting to see that especially authors having sympathies with reading fleck in transcendental terms—i think here, for instance, of dimitri ginev—have strong reservations against ascribing to fleck something like the claim that styles of thought are (or could be) incommensurable to one another.15 i assume, however, that the transcendental reading leads into the quite opposite direction and supports the possibility that styles actually are incommensurable; this is one of the essential features making a style a distinguished style in the first place. fleck himself uses the term often and with the meaning of limiting mutual understanding and reference: the ‘incommensurability of ideas’, fleck says, indicates that there is no common object for them because of dealing with two divergent styles here. he adds, that the one style (or a term belonging to it) is not open to get replaced by another style (or term) without loss or reduction. accordingly, fleck sketches a constellation in which a notion cannot be right for a person a and wrong for a different person b. two options are left then: either a and b belong to different thought styles or the notion is not the same notion at all (fleck, 2015 [1935], 131).16 all three considerations of fleck, especially the last one, only make sense if we go for an incommensurability thesis in his approach. in fact, fleck uses this very thesis (fleck, 2015 [1935], 82 and 145; cf. also fleck, 2011 [1927], 41-51, esp. 46 and 48) for overcoming a strong and self-refuting relativism in 13 it is a fair question of whether the same move that we did with fleck’s ‘thought style’ is also applicable to kuhn’s ‘paradigm’; i think, it is with some altered emphasis; see on this matter (babich, 2003, 75-92, esp. 81). 14 the german original reads: “wir können also denkstil als gerichtetes wahrnehmen, mit entsprechendem gedanklichen und sachlichen verarbeiten des wahrgenommenen, definieren.” (fleck, 2015 [1935], 130). 15 see (ginev, 2015, 130 and 136). 16 see also (fleck, 2011 [1935], 220). hartmut von sass – for your eyes only: transcendental pragmatism in ludwik fleck 76 showing how practically embedded (and in that sense non-metaphysically determined) a thought for a member a or b of a collective really is, how deep this latent or explicit commitment reaches, and why a relative and, in a way, holistic picture of truth and facts does not allow for a full-blown relativism (cf. strobach, 2011, 111). yes, there are no absolute facts for fleck, but no, it does not mean that the facts we actually have suffer from arbitrary conditions. a historized version of transcendentalism clarifies that there is no gap bet ween these two poles. the pragmatic dimension how does fleck combine what i have called the transcendental dimension with the emphasis on change, context, and the collective element of scientific work? it has often been noted, that fleck is best known for being a pioneer and classic figure of the practical and cultural turn within the research on science.17 this turn consists of two further aspects: one, that the ‘real’ is essentially dependent on a theory; two, that there is a social element in science as performed by teams, collective groups or by schools (cf. strobach, 2011, 101). the first one is an epistemological claim that was not new even in fleck’s 1930s, but is shared by authors being critical of the positivist movement; the second, social item, however, is something that is bound to fleck’s name, and it leads us to the pragmatic element in his transcendentalism. referring to his own immunological research fleck stresses the fact of ‘how long the way is’ from a section to a theory in order to add that this a not a lack, something to regret, but rather hints to the cultural and social condition of all of our performances. from here fleck states that there are not only two, but three elements in the scientific research that one has to give an account of: the individual, the ‘objective reality’ (put in inverted commas) and a mediating collective between the first two. that is the reason for fleck to note that the thought style had made it necessary to construct the notion of a ‘thought collective’.18 the collective is the bearer of a style, while the style is the culturally embedded transcendental element for scientific work between discovery and invention. this embeddedness entails, hence, the claim that there is no contradiction between speaking of the necessity of a collective style for facts and observations and, yet, the changeability of that transcendental condition. accordingly, necessity does not imply temporal and cultural unlimitedness, but rather the possibility to lose its transcendental status as much as it has been an equal process to gain exactly that significance. now, often the side of invention (in contrast to the more realistic emphasis on discovery) has led to the aforementioned assumption according to which fleck appears to be a relativist, at least in disguise. relativism might be taken to be not only the notion that there is an essential dependence of facts to culture, language, a theoretical framework or even a form of life; but also the claim, that the choice of the peculiar context is at our disposal (cf. seidel, 2011, 219–240). this last claim is according to fleck: wrongheaded, and the reasons for repudiating that confusion are, i think, quite obvious: first, an important non-relativist (and in fact non-constructivist) element lies in the development of the style and the ways of getting integrated in it as a member. it is, as fleck highlights more than once, a question of getting accustomed to that very style, an educational matter that brings about a readiness, a partly self-fulfilling willingness to see things in a stylishly impregnated way. it is similar to what wittgenstein called “abrichten” (to train, to true off) speaking of learning a language and moving in it as a quasi-spacial entity (cf. wittgenstein, 1994, § 318).19 second, there is, fleck holds, an internal conservatism within a cluster of opinions, a resistance to change up to the point of a “harmony of deception” (“harmonie der täuschung”) (fleck, 2015 [1935], 40). hence, one cannot make up facts or the way there, since the loyalty to nature is nothing but the loyalty to the culture we are part of (fleck, 2015 [1935], 48). third, that brings about a, as it were, cult-like exclusivism. a thought collective is also the frame of mutual understanding and influence whereas outsiders are what they are because of not participating in that style. and this is not open to a sovereign option or free choice. rather one is thrown into this collective.20 fourly, we find in fleck a move that is known from gadamer’s hermeneutical 17 see (ginev, 2015, 130 and 136). 18 see (fleck, 2015 [1935], 48, 50, 56-57). 19 see also (polanyi, 1946, lecture 1); and (fleck, 2015 [1935], 111); (fleck, 2011 [1927], 41). 20accordingly, fleck defines ‚thought collective’ “als gemeinschaft der menschen, die im gedankenaustausch oder in gedanklicher wechselwirkung stehen, so besitzen wir in ihm den träger geschichtlicher entwicklung eines denkgebietes, eines bestimmten wissensbestandes und kulturstandes, also eines besonderen denkstils.” (fleck, 2015 [1935], 54-55), italics in the original text. hartmut von sass – for your eyes only: transcendental pragmatism in ludwik fleck 77 ontology. there, gadamer speaks of the game as an analogy for our understanding with the clue that the player loses himself in the game to be, eventually, being played by the game itself. fleck states similarly that the researching person does not think by himself. rather in the community he is part of, something is thought.21 fleck does not think, that it is all about mere passivity and inactive contemplation, but he underlines the passive (or receptive) element in research that appears, otherwise, to be a mere intentional endeavour.22 it is this non-subjectivist ingredient that saves fleck from turning into a relativist. while it is true that there are relativist elements in fleck—the theory-dependent character of scientific facts, the empirically under-determined justification of a theory, (cf. egloff, 2015, 59)—the transcendental dimension as covering term for educational and structural elements of thought styles lead into quite a different direction. i assume, if you like labels, one could characterize fleck’s ambitions as belonging to a hermeneutical contextualism.23 coda: facts, eyes at the end, we meet the question: what does this mean, ‘hermeneutical contextualism’? it is the attempt to bring together the different and sometimes divergent voices in fleck’s work in the history and philosophy of science. there is a deep interest in being realistic about reality, to use an ambivalent expression, i.e. fleck is as much of a realist as it is possible in relation to what he is else. being something else is necessary, because reality has at least one feature that is dependent on us, namely to be discernible by us. that is the entrance door for positions beyond a ‘robust’ realism, also in fleck. in grasping reality we do not (apart from some exceptions) change reality, but we rely on mediums (language, symbols, styles, codes) without which there is no reality at all. it is true, the thought style creates the fact, but as a transcendental condition of having and finding out about facts at all. hence, if the transcendental cluster differs between different collectives or over time, other facts are ‘created’.24 these rules of science apply also for the science on science, i.e. the transcendental dimension affects also our account of giving an account of science. fleckians can celebrate, but also suffer from the condition that only their or our eyes will see certain things accompanied by aspect-blindness for what others can and will see. therefore, the condition of the possibility for seeing a fact is, at the same time, the condition for the impossibility of seeing something with other stylish(ed) eyes. references babich, babette e. “from fleck’s denkstil to kuhn’s paradigm: conceptual schemes and incommensu rability”, in: international studies in the philosophy of science 17:3 (2003), p. 75-92. boghossian, paul. fear of knowledge: against relativism and constructivism, oxford: oxford university press, 2006. egloff, rainer. “evolution des erkennens. ludwik flecks entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache”, in: bernhard pörksen (ed.), schlüsselwerke des konstruktivismus, wiesbaden: vsg, 2015, p. 49-66. egloff, rainer. “gedankenverkehr, kreuzung und verdichtung. fleck, simmel und die völkerpsychologie”, in: ntm. zeitschrift für geschichte der wissenschaften, technik und medizin 22 (2014), p. 69-85. 21 fleck following ludwig gumplowicz in (fleck, 2015 [1935], 63); see also (gadamer, 1990 [1960], 108-109 and 498. 22 see also fleck stating: “denn erkennen ist weder passive kontemplation noch erwerb einzig möglicher einsicht im fertig gegebenen. es ist ein tätiges, lebendiges beziehungseingehen, ein umformen und umgeformtwerden, kurz ein schaffen. weder dem ‘subjekt’ noch dem ‘objekt’ kommt selbständige realität zu; jede existenz beruht auf wechselwirkung und ist relativ.” (fleck, 2011 [1929], 54) 23 another important issue that i cannot address here is the relation between fleck’s contextualism and what michael polanyi calls ‘tacit knowing,’ the inexpressible, but underlining mode of practical knowledge; see (polanyi, 2009 [1966] esp. lecture 1). 24 see also (fleck, 2011 [1936], 301) hartmut von sass – for your eyes only: transcendental pragmatism in ludwik fleck 78 fleck, ludwik. “das problem einer theorie des erkennens” (1936), in: denkstile und tatsachen. gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. herausgegeben von sylwia werner und claus zittel, berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. fleck, ludwik. “über die wissenschaftliche beobachtung und die wahrnehmung im allgemeinen”. in: denkstile und tatsachen. gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. herausgegeben von sylwia werner und claus zittel, berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. fleck, ludwik. “über einige spezifische merkmale des ärztlichen denkens” (1927), in: denkstile und tatsachen. gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. herausgegeben von sylwia werner und claus zittel, berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. fleck, ludwik. “zur krise der ‘wirklichkeit’” (1929), in: denkstile und tatsachen. gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. herausgegeben von sylwia werner und claus zittel, berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. fleck, ludwik. denkstile und tatsachen. gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. herausgegeben von sylwia werner und claus zittel, berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. fleck, ludwik. entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache. einführung in die lehre vom denkstil und denkkollektiv. mit einer einleitung hrsg. von lothar schäfer und thomas schnelle, frankfurt a.m.: suhrkamp, 2015. gadamer, hans-georg. wahrheit und methode. grundzüge einer philosophischen hermeneutik, tübingen: mohr siebeck, 1990. ginev, dimitri. “on the implicit hermeneutic facets of fleck’s work”, in: ginev, dimitri (ed.), critical science studies after ludwik fleck, sofia: sofia university press, 2015. ginev, dimitri. “the transcendental in ludwik fleck’s social epistemology”, in: social epistemology. a journal of knowledge, culture and policy 29:4 (2015), 379-394. graeser, andreas. “das hermeneutische ‘als’. heidegger über verstehen und auslegung”, in: zeitschrift für philosophische forschung 47:4 (1993), 559-572. kant, immanuel. kritik der reinen vernunft. polanyi, michael. science, faith and society, oxford: oup, 1946. polanyi, michael. the tacit dimension (1966). with a new foreword by amartya sen, chicago / london: university of chicago press, 2009. rheinberger, hans-jörg. “über die möglichkeit einer allgemeinen wissenschaftsphilosophie heute“, in: dimitri ginev (ed.), critical science studies after ludwik fleck, sofia: university of sofia press, 2015, p. 101-113. seidel, markus. “relativism or relationism? a mannheimian interpretation of fleck’s claims about relativism”, in: journal for general philosophy of science 42 (2011), p. 219–240. strobach, nico. “wirklichkeit im widerstand: vertritt ludwik fleck zum realismus 1946 noch dasselbe wie 1935 und 1929?”, in: reiner egloff und johannes fehr (hrsg.), vérité, widerstand, development: at work with / arbeiten mit / travailler avec ludwik fleck (collegium helveticum heft 12), zürich: chronos, 2011, p. 99-118. werner, sylwia; zittel, claus. “einleitung: denkstile und tatsachen”, in: denkstile und tatsachen. gesammelte schriften und zeugnisse. herausgegeben von sylwia werner und claus zittel, berlin: suhrkamp, 2011. wittgenstein, ludwig. zettel, in: werkausgabe band 8, frankfurt a.m.: suhrkamp, 1994. microsoft word 7 reading sciences layout 77 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 77-97 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 – this is an open access article article reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano1 rémi franckowiak2 abdelkader anakkar3 abstract: in this paper, we present an interdisciplinary discussion on the relations between science– technology education and culture both historical standpoint and nowadays. the idea that a human mind can produce an intellectual revolution within science and its approaches (methods and methodologies also integrated with contradictions and criticisms) strongly crossed like a paradigm both in the history of sciences and disciplines–literatures (reasoning, early enlightenment, positivism, etc.): but what about its social impact and science mission, as well? to describe the impact of the disseminated knowledge is a consequent aim. a case study on energy conceptualization and its exhibitions in society in context is discussed; their correlations with education (pedagogical aspects included), science–techniques, industry and social impacts are discussed, as well. keywords: science in context; nos–science education; cultural mediation; popularization of science and technique; energy conceptualization received: 17 january 2017. reviewed 15 october. accepted: 03 november 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.07 ____________________________________________________________________________________ an outline the science, from ancient times4 (generally speaking) to nowadays, usually built a perception within society according with the idea that science is synonymous of progress and modernity; 1 raffaele pisano is a professor at the lille university. address: pont de bois, rue du barreau – bp 60149 | 59653 villeneuve d’ascq cedex – france. he is also associate to archive poincaré, lorraine university, france and honorary affiliated to hps unit, sydney university, australia, email: raffaele.pisano@univ-lille3.fr 2 rémi franckowiak is a researcher at the claude bernard lyon 1 university / ea 4148-s2hep and an associate professor at the lille university. address: cité scientifique, p5bis, 59655 villeneuve d’ascq cedex – france. email: remi.franckowiak@univ-lille1.fr 3 abdelakader anakkar is an associate professor at lille university. address: cité scientifique, p5bis, 59655 villeneuve d’ascq cedex, france. email: abdelkader.anakkar@univ-lille1.fr 4 we remark that some parts of this paper are a historical–didactic reorganization of a short self–sufficient interlude and spot–ideas presented in previous historical researches. mainly: conceptual and mathematical structures of mechanical science between 18th and 19th centuries (pisano and capecchi 2013), lazare and sadi carnot: a scientific and filial relationship (gillispie and pisano 2014), historical and philosophical reflections on the culture reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 78 especially during period of materializations. we know that anomalies, inversions and controversies also belong to up cited erroneously so-called progress and modernity. then it would be interesting to investigate author per author to understand effectively how science worked and how society worked, i.e., the concept of civilization. for example, newton’s science certainly produced a strong impact on humanity, particularly on the western civilization both concerning the scientific and supernatural background of the law of nature, including mathematical interpretations of phenomena like non–physical laws; sometimes outside the context of the theory (i.e. providence, religion etc.). certainly, by combining scientific traditions and contributions of scholars (i.e., like copernicus, kepler, galileo and descartes) it provided to create a scientific framework based on an adequate mathematics (and geometry) for interpreting terrestrial and celestial physical phenomena, which, a priori, were geometrically idealized to be easily citizens in his new revolutionary, a posteriori so called, mathematization of the nature. on the other hand, a parallel problem related to a dialogue as communication–language between specialists (advanced and applied researches) and non–specialists (versus a scientific civilization) is a trouble matter, i.e. how is it possible to pass from science to technique and to technologies? in addition, who was really able to be mediator in any other context of society? physics, mathematics, chemistry and science education (pisano 2007) are a social phenomenon because influenced both by the needs of the labour market and by the basic knowledge of sciences necessary for every person to be able to face some operations indispensable in the social and economic daily life. therefore, the way in which scientific education is framed changes according to modifications of the social environment and know–how. for example, until the end of the 20th century, mathematical analysis was profound in most faculties. with some modifications, the situation is similar for the teaching of other mathematical disciplines: nowadays many operations needing of calculations and mathematical reasoning are developed by the computers or other intelligent machines and hence a student needs less theoretical mathematics than in the past (pisano and bussotti 2014, 2015d). another example: the problem of scientific education in the high school is a huge question and many scholars and equips of scholars have dedicated profound studies to this problem at least from the half of the 19th century. therefore, it looks legitimate to wonder why the study of the euclidean geometry has been progressively reduced in all european countries, despite we are convinced that the euclidean geometry is one of the most educative disciplines. perhaps this is also connected to the fact that in our society, scientific education in the high schools is oriented to the development of the algorithmic abilities of the students (algebra, analytic geometry, calculus, physics, and chemistry) rather than to the development of the demonstrative and rigorous reasoning. this kind of scientific education is considered more useful for the students when they will face the university and the labour market. if the social needs are a consistent part of scientific education, the other aspect is the connection between mathematics education and advanced mathematics research. namely: does advanced science influence science education? the problem is complex. juts to mention mathematics education, between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century important mathematicians as felix klein (1849–1925) and federigo enriques (1871– 1946; bussotti 2012) thought this should be the case (1972; bussotti and pisano 2015). sixty of machines around the renaissance. how science and technique work? (pisano and bussotti 2014), tartaglia’s science of weights (pisano and capecchi 2015), fibonacci and the reception of the abacus schools in italy. mathematical conceptual streams and their changing relationship with society (pisano and bussotti 2015a), the emergencies of mechanics and thermodynamics in the western society during 18th–19th centuries (pisano and bussotti 2015b), historical and philosophical reflections on the culture of machines around the renaissance: machines, machineries and perpetual motion (pisano and bussotti 2015d). thus, necessary parts are cited from them as a self–citation to go into the new subject of this paper. we warmly thanks in advance the publishers. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 79 years later, in a different context (in the 60ies and 70ies of the 20th century), an important movement of mathematics education, of which piaget (1896–1980) himself was a supporter, promoted by outstanding mathematicians belonging to the bourbaki movement, theorized the need to organize mathematics education relying upon to the concepts of abstract algebra. hence, the relation between didactics and advanced mathematics is anyway dialectic. a question arises: based on the development of sciences in past, what kind of scientific education is realizable? science and education into the history in the ancient times, mechanics refereed to machines (winch, lever, pulley, wedge, screw and inclined plane) devices and motive powers–and–displacements of bodies (pisano and bussotti 2015c). later a science of movement of weights, namely scientia de ponderibus advanced. generally speaking. sometimes it was related to the craftsmen’s activitis, other times to engineers so called scientia de ingeniis (pisano and capecchi 2015; pisano and bussotti 2015a,b). during the second half of the 12th century and the first half of the 16th century, italian cities–states developed mathematics and of science (pisano and bussotti 2015c). this kind of education was connected to the economic and social structure, e.g., scuole d’abaco. see for example luca pacioli (1445–1517) who, in his turn, had a fundamental role in leonardo’s da vinci (1452–1519) mathematical5 education (pisano 2016, 2009). the relations among these mathematicians are significant from a scientific, social and anthropologic point of view. between the 15th and 19th centuries so–called men of war achieved a consistent efficiency of cannons and guns (e.g., in france and england) even they were out (–lawed) from a scientific theoretical framework. the social milieu of the periods in question, and how that may have impacted on the science that was being carried out has yet to be fully clarified (internal and/or depending conditions in the sciences) “[…] before we appreciate their [the men of war’s] hesitations and grasp the nature of their ignorance and their failures.” (gille 1966, 240). for, where is the science–technique relationship and what is the link with society? until 18th century military weapons achieved a consistent efficiency of cannons and guns. particularly france and england were busy in that. the latter, produced interesting practical and early theoretical studies upon heat engines due to technological and social industrial events. the main interests concentrated on the research of a source of unlimited power, evidently correlated with theoretical studies on the conversion of heat in work: how? (pisano and bussotti 2015). in effect, a total conversion6 was, and it is, an ideal idea within the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics and its correlation with conceptualization of the more general energy conservation law7. that was mathematically confirmed later, mainly thanks to results of james prescott joule (1818–1889) (fox 1969; joule 1965, 277–281, 1847, 5 on the development of the arithmetic of the abacus schools into the early algebra–mathematics at that time, see scipione dal ferro (1465–1526), niccolò fontana called tartaglia (1499–1557) (pisano and capecchi 2015) gerolamo cardano (1501–1576), lodovico ferrari (1522–1565), rafael bombelli (1526–1572). 6 briefly, the total conversion work–heat is only produced within particular ideal conditions (i.e., thermodynamics cyclic process) in which the internal energy can change (∆u) during the course of a cyclic process; when the cyclic process finishes the system’s energy is the same as the energy it had when the process began (∆u=0). that also means that the ideal equivalence (idealistic total conversion) work–heat (w=q) is obtained. conventionally, within the loop of the cyclic process, w is positive, then it represents the heat engine case study; if w is negative, then it represents a heat pump case–study. 7 we precise that conservation law is a crucial concept in between the history of mechanics and thermodynamics because, i.e., it was a concept faraway from leibniz (mv) descartes (mv2) and newton (motion lost) science. on newton see recently: pisano and bussotti 2016, 2017; bussotti and pisano 2017 reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 80 173–176), rudolf clausius (1822–1888) and william thomson (1824–1907) (clausius 1850, 1865a,b, 1867, 1872); (thomson 1848, 1851a, b). in spite of that lazare nicolas marguérite carnot (1753–1823) – already in 1778 (carnot 1778, 1780, §§ 149–160) – stated this chimerical dream within his studies on general mechanical machines8 (carnot l 1786). lazare nicolas marguérite carnot (1753–1823) stated the chimerical dream of an unlimited production of work by means of a general working substance (carnot l 1786; 1778; 1780, §§ 149–160). the source of an unlimited power, evidently correlated with theoretical studies on the conversion of heat–in–work, was analytically formulated by the first law of thermodynamics and its general energy conservation (joule 1965, 277–281; 1847, 173–176; clausius 1850, 1865a,b; thomson 1848, 1851a,b). finally, thomson also analytically discussed the second principle of thermodynamics and the necessity of a second thermostat with the aim of executing a passage of heat between a difference of temperature (thomson 1848–1849, 541–574; 1882– 1911, 113–155; 1852, 248–255; smith and wise 1989, chaps 9–11). in the 18th century lavoisier assumed (1789; 1862–1893) chaleur, calorique9 (et lumière). the research carried out by lavoisier and pierre simon de laplace (1749–1827) (lavoisier and laplace 1784) is also of remarkable importance. in 1802 joseph–louis gay–lussac (1778– 1850) formulated a law of gases; then pierre louis dulong (1785–1838) and alexis thérèse petit (1791–1820) showed in 1816–19 that specific heat depended on temperature (in some cases). in particular, the adiabatic law (poisson 1823, 5–16; laplace 1822) caused some confusion and various versions of it were formulated; even when siméon denis poisson (1781–1840) formulated the right equation, most scientists did not consider the issue resolved. scientific knowledge on the matter took two main paths: 1. kinetic model of gases (on the properties of gases) 2. efficiency of heat machines (zeuner 1869), which naturally included the gas theory which would later become thermodynamics. an important advancement was done by the birth of the periodical tables (scerri 2013). nicolas léonard sadi carnot (1796–1832), son of lazare and inventor of the thermodynamics (carnot s 1824, 1978; taton 1976), already in his unpublished works (gillispie and pisano 2014, 176–183, chap. vi; gillispie 1971) proposed a new theory referred to a civil heat machines. he is relying on his father lazare’s theory of mechanical machines (carnot l. 1786, 1803, 1778, 1780; gillispie 1970–1979). his réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu10 (hereafter réflexions) and his last work on the theory on gases, recherche d’une formule propre à représenter la puissance motrice de la vapeur d’eau11 (carnot s. 1978, 223–225) appeared in quite a short period of time, approximately three years. it was a total overturning of the physics–mathematics relationship (drago and pisano 2007, 497–525), a new theory starting from the engineering practices. from strictly physics–mathematic standpoint, jean baptiste joseph fourier (1768–1830) formulated his differential equation for heat propagation in solids (1807). fourier (pisano, and capecchi, 2009), and some fifty years later, gabriel lamé (1795–1870; ivi) wrote leçons sur la théorie de la chaleur (1861). at this point, the theory of heat was a well–defined science and several important conclusions had been 8 carnot l 1786, ix–x, 89–94; carnot l 1786), vij–ix, 86–87; see also carnot l 1780, §§ 151–152; gillispie 1971, appendix c, §§ 151–152, 328–329. 9 lavoisier attempted an early distinction between heat and temperature (lavoisier 1789, 12–17, line 37). 10 sadi carnot wrote a mathematical (only) footnote (carnot s. 1978, ft. n. 1, 73–79; pisano 2010, gillispie and pisano 2014). 11 fox 1971; reech 1853, 357–378; lamé 1836. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 81 reached on by mathematicians.12 thanks to sadi carnot’s theorem (carnot s. 1978, 38) the calculation of the efficiency is independent from whatever working substance. we draw a distinction here between the vapor [steam] engine and heat [“à feu”] engine in general [“en général”]. the latter may be employed with any working substance, steam or anything else, in order to develop the motive power of heat.13 he introduced important scientific concepts, i.e. state of a system, reversible processes, cycle, phases and a by an ad absurdum proof (untypically for a physical science at that time). his physical and technological arguments were based on the impossibility of perpetual motion (pisano and bussotti 2015d). science, theory and machines sadi carnot was a pupil of the école polytechnique and invented thermodynamics theory (pisano 2010; gillispie and pisano 2014). he devoted two years to collect information, attend courses in conservatoire des arts et métiers and eventually write an early book.14 in his study of heat machines sadi carnot took in account civil engineering only. sadi carnot utilized heat at a constant15 temperature, under certain conditions, q/t (carnot s 1978, 32). nevertheless, that assumption was weak. however, presuming that this assumption (or hypothesis) is valid, within analogy, the falling of water should be considered analogous to the falling of the quantity of heat at constant temperatures. that is to say: q1/t1 – q2/t2 = δs between the two temperatures (1) [chute du calorique is quite similar chute d’eau]. but whilst for the water the performance of work is simply proportional to the height of fall, we may not put this performance in the case of heat proportional to the difference of temperature without a closer investigation.16 while in the hydraulic wheel wmax is proportional only at h, in the heat machine wmax can depend on unspecified variables. however, as sadi carnot remarks (carnot s 1978, 29) this work is not proportional to t since wmax seems to have greater experimental values at low temperatures (carnot s 1978, 72). sadi carnot’s theoretical effort reaches a standstill at this last difficulty, although he even attempted a calculation in his previously discussed famous footnote (carnot s 1978, ft. 1, 73–79) to determine the efficiency function. however, let us note that the analogy is more persuasive than it appears in modern times. moreover, around the xviii century, it was common to consider machines by performing an abstraction from the masses of bodies (carnot l 1786, § xxx, 60) and separate the wire of a pendulum from the mass. therefore, the water that falls on the hydraulic wheel could have been thought of 12 some of them: liouville 1836; dirichlet 1837; reech 1853; riemann 1861 [1868]; 1892, 391–404. riemann’s lecture (1861) “on the conduction of heat” was not published until 1868 (spivak 1979, 179–182). 13 carnot s, 1978, 8, ft. 1, line 1. 14 sadi carnot’s recherche d’une formule propre à représenter la puissance motrice de la vapeur d’eau–unpublished manuscript (carnot s 1986, 167–180). generally speaking, the correct date of publication still lacks historical decisive evidence. more or less the most recent carnot historians agree on a date before 1824 (gillispie and pisano 2014, chap. 3). 15 carnot s 1978, 32. 16 mach 1986, 201–202. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 82 without mass, that is, as a weightless fluid, as caloric fluid was conceived. this way of envisioning mechanical machines allowed (still within the caloric hypothesis) for the consideration of the analogy as a true connection of heat machines to the theory of mechanical machines which includes the case study of falling water and the hydraulic wheel. therefore, for lazare carnot, this is a fundamental analogy and for sadi carnot, who doubts caloric, it is merely striking; for us it plays a central, but not essential role. young french scientist calculated a cycle between only two isotherms, t and t+dt can leave us perplexed because the (final) result is still valid from a modern point of view. sadi carnot utilized the following adiabatic formula17:    vk vk vt lnlog lnlog )( ''      , (2) and arrived after some calculations here revised (carnot s 1978, 73–79, ft. 1; pisano 2010; gillispie and pisano 2014), obtained a dependence (with q2 > q1 and t2 > t1) from temperature only:    1 2 12 q qq rev 2 1 2 1 1 t t q q  (3) in 18th century, many amazing and innovative civil machines were constructed (gillispie 1983). later new strategist’ school advanced and the enormous power delivered by big cannons became the symbol of a new social power capable to mobilise the population oppressed by the anciens régimes (reinhard 1950–1952). nevertheless, an organized production of civil and gun machines still was weak (pisano and bussotti 2015b). science, mathematics and technology the development of the relationship between science maths teaching, advanced use of mathematics and related technological calculus machines is one of the most emblematic cases study, i.e., decimal positions, practical problems, abacus, etc. nevertheless, they cannot be compared with the ease of the calculations in the lines, which is possible by writing the numbers in a positional form and operating directly on the written numbers. in between, end of 19th and the first decade 20th century, the scientific–technical culture (stc) represented one of the foundations of the economic development and the social progress in the western and eastern industrial areas. its contribution stemmed both technical–vocational training, and media insights, i.e., books, libraries, exhibitions, conferences and public courses, the so–called popularization of science and technique. from historical standpoints, stc founded its roots in the enlightenment as well as in the industrial revolution. for, popularizing science meant a supplement to the education, or simply compensate for its absence. stc was developed by the public authorities, by the chambers of commerce, or by some associations with philosophical or religious aims, etc., and it was not free from any ideology. sciences and techniques were popularized in order to free people, to fight religion or to illustrate the “wonders of the creation”, as well as to initiate 17 carnot s 1978, 66, line 10. since no rooms here, we remind to gillispie and pisano’s book (gillispie and pisano 2014) for the others contributes to complete the history of mechanics and thermodynamics after sadi carnot’s formulation of the efficiency of a heat machine. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 83 workers with the new techniques. in addition, this popularization aimed to ensure industry the constitution (necessary for its development and its control) of an intermediate category of employees between blue–collar workers and engineers, as well as to give the young bourgeois the appetite for the industrial professions and for the industrial investments. making of a scientific education within 19th–20th centuries in the second half of the 18th century, diderot and d’alembert’s pushed sciences and crafts within a common special place: the encyclopédie (diderot and d’alembert [1751–1772] 1993). however, we should remark that scientific and technical culture has been holding a very particular importance from the following century; still nowadays, but differently combining. as above discussed on the historical case study about the founder of thermodynamics and heat theory machines, from the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, in order to maintain its rate of development, a skill as well as educated labour was necessary to the needs of the (applied science to) industrialization. the support of the ruling social class for the advances of the science and its awareness of the utility of science applications were also a necessity. as a result, a strong effort of dissemination of the both scientific and technical knowledge aimed at these audiences was produced. i.e., creation of a technical and vocational training, publication of specialized handbooks, publication of various magazines and books, articles and reports in the daily press, subject or universal exhibitions, conferences, popular libraries, industrial, farm and colonial museums, public courses, and university chairs often encouraged by the town councils. further, within last decades the novelties of the cinema, collections of didactic images and radio programmes, as combing sciences and technology, were used too18. this social phenomenon was identical for all the countries or industrial areas. however, according with institutional and political context as well as to the degree of involvement of the state in its work of education, important differences appeared. for example, taking into account france and belgium, the dissemination of the knowledge presented different initiatives, i.e.: france: the compulsory elementary school by 1870 provided a dissemination. belgium: private foundations by the end of the 19th century carried especially out a dissemination. indeed, the nature of the disseminated knowledge could obviously vary according to the thoughts peculiar to the circles, which disseminated it. therefore, a key–fact at that time is necessary to remark: the scientific and technical culture was one of the foundations of the economic development and the social progress in the industrial areas. the going through and the study of the documents about the dissemination of the scientific and technical knowledge during the 19th century and the beginning of 20th lead to throw light on a particular literary genre: the genre old works of popularization, often forgotten, sometimes scorned by the historians of science and of the literature because it is neither true scientific work nor fully literary work. however, they make it possible to highlight the differences depending on the concerned audience as for the content of the texts, the style of their writing, their images, while revealing the level of the presented scientific knowledge. the study reveals the interactions between the transmitters and their audiences 18 other kinds of material information reveal this effort of dissemination of the scientific and technical knowledge too: library and publishing catalogues, archives of diverse associations and societies, programmes of entertaining meetings, texts of conferences, visitors’ books of exhibitions. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 84 (choice of the vehicles, of the subjects), between real or supposed self–educated and scholarly institutions, but also the links between the science which was produced and the science which was disseminated. in addition through the study of the production of the scientific and technical popularization it is possible to measure the impact of the disseminated knowledge on the target groups and to estimate the speed of the receipt of the innovation, i.e. the time between the production of a scientific or technical innovation and its integration to the popularized speech, the interactions between popularization and social life, in particular as regards hygiene, food, the disease prevention, the diffusion of the medical popularization (fight against the empiricism of the bonesetters, the constitution of leagues of hygiene), and the links between the diffusion of the scientific and technical knowledge and the development of colonized territories by the empires. remaking of a scientific education in 21st century however, the relation between science and society has evolved quite largely since the beginning of the 19th century. indeed, the model of an ideal relationship between science and society set up during the 19th century in the form of an implicit social contract involving scientists who have the responsibility to propose applications of science for the welfare of a trustful society starts to be criticized since the end of the second world war (hiroshima). this will lead to renegotiations of the contract, this time explicitly, between science and society, even between scientists and citizens alone, as from now on it is not so much a question of an official control of the knowledge, as a question of participation of the public in the choice of priorities and of social evaluation of the research results. the frustration generated by the incapacity of science to solve all the human and social problems, combined with the environmental and sanitary disasters, caused by a certain scientific and technical development, led, on the one hand, to an attitude of suspicion, if not of rejection, towards science, and, on the other hand, to a higher bid in the communication of the scientific authorities and the industrialists. scientific optimism gives way to the eco– movement and the movement of criticism of science. the scientist is brought to leave his ivory tower in order to justify his social utility or to defend his field of research. research, paradoxically, becomes more and more narrowly finalized. the whole thing proceeds today within a framework of severe economic crisis and of generalized precariousness in our developed societies, while at the same time our dependence on applications of science generally and on new technologies in particular has never been so strong. in addition, our idea concerning the relationship between science and technique is quite ambivalent: between amazement/hope and fear. science, which formerly constituted the driving force of the social progress, tends to become a trap for the whole society: pollution, skids of the technique, a tendency, by the democratic states, to intensify the social control over the population, handling of the citizens by various lobbies, injunction to live fully our techno scientific modernity. yet, the place of the scientific and technical culture within culture in general should be redefined today. after making and unmaking the scientific education of the citizens, it is now time to remake it. under these conditions, an objective diffusion of the scientific and technical knowledge becomes essential; it becomes even a challenge for the democracy. the key character is in this case the “science critic” – as there are art, cinema and literature critics for these respective fields – but this title still has to be recognized. besides, the science critic is to be well trained in order to be present in our techno–scientific society and to practice the reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 85 scientific and technical mediation we need nowadays19. moreover, the science critics should be able to: problematize and contextualize scientific discoveries and new technology into society introduce culture into the science and technology and vice–versa discuss the role and the limits of expertise take a stance towards their audience regarding the scientific, technical, political, economic, social, ethical and symbolic challenges stimulate the desire to study sciences provide and communicate science for citizenship (different audiences) through a scientific education. science into the society. digital libraries the previous discussion on the dissemination of the scientific and technical knowledge is partly based on the collections of the digital library on the past of modern sciences of the lille 1 university called iris20. it would be of helpful to provide the role played by science in context and discuss between science, science education and science in 19th–21st context, as well. the digital collections of iris make reappear the science, which seemed to triumph and was honoured in the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th one, that which literally transformed our world and our opinion on it.21 through them, our techno–scientific world is reintegrated into its historical development and can be questioned in this way. in addition, they emphasize the links between science and society, science and arts, science and representations of science, science and applications of science. iris comes back to a time when the scientific and technical culture was inseparable from the culture in general, since it is regrettable that today science does not have any more the culture which it deserves while at the same time science has been for more than two hundred years producing of culture. iris was designed to be used as a tool by researchers in historical studies (history, history of science and technique, history of the economic and sociological thought, history of education); but also as a base for the students regarding their courses and projects, as well as a recourse for the organizations of scientific and technical culture (natural history museums, planetariums, technical museums, ecomuseums, thematic establishments, centres for the scientific, technical and industrial culture) for their initiatives in the mediation field towards various audiences. iris became not only a tool for the science of the past and its diffusion, but also a tool for the popularization of the science of today and for reflection concerning its place in our world. this digital library presents modern science through its history and under its multiple facets; it is a modernity constantly in reconstruction but nowadays with a new and strong will to disseminate the scientific and technical knowledge, which should be compared with the will of the past. 19 on this crucial matter, lille 1 university, in partnership with the school of journalism of lille, created a master degree in science journalism which will be developed into a master degree in “information and scientific and technical mediation”, with the intersection of the fields of science–technology–health and the social and human sciences. 20 the collections, image bank and virtual exhibitions of the digital library iris are freely accessible on the website: http://iris.univ–lille1.fr/. 21 the digital library iris a focus is also be on the north of france and the walloon area of belgium, which then formed together the same industrial and linguistic basin with a common history. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 86 energy, education and society unmistakeable that discovering of a hands–on way to practice energy made to humanity a huge leap forward, techniques, economy and education. nowadays, an ad hoc mediationeducation represents its instrumentality vehicle to provide the science in context. particularly, as technical, one can refers to improvement of the daily–life, manufacturing of machines and correlated jobs and industries (reuleaux 1786); i.e., see simply power stations of energy’s production–distribution played a crucial role in all sectors of human activities. it is not notable that produced consumption and offer–request are constantly and unequally increasing. economic, social, environmental, political and geopolitical are correlated reasons: further, the governments are looking for new and/or alternatives solutions: e.g., renewable energies, green energies are on table. in this science in context panorama, to save energy was evidently the main mediation message, but citizens without an adequate scientific education and an ad hoc cultural mediation have some serious difficulty to be part integrant of the new scientific–technical knowledge. the risk is that this crucial generational debate becomes low– dimensioned. a possibility, for example, might be a deep scientific, social, and educational understanding of the energy’s concept. if most consider that one can create energy as much as it wants, others think it that to eradicate the phenomenon of friction to improve yields machines is enough. obviously, this is false ideas since they do not take into account the universal first and second principles of thermodynamics. a new adequate education opportunely correlated with technique and technology is necessary. therefore, what is everyone talking about energy? in addition, what is energy? energy and educational misunderstanding knowledge as before discussed simple machines (and animals) represented early humans’ efforts to obtain some source of energy by means applied forces. since humankind has mastered fire, the consumption of energy (and its correlated economic, sociological, political, geopolitical, scientific, technological and ecological applications) has only increased for the following main reasons: the world’s population is steadily increasing and the evolution during the last two centuries shows that it is a very rapid expansion. the majority of the inhabitants of the planet are still far from the standard of living in developed countries. however, the only way for this population to increase its standard of living is to develop an economic activity, which requires energy. but, what is a reasonable energy and is cultural mediator in the society? the energy is mathematically interpreted (commonly appears to us) in different ways and whose common characteristics beyond our immediate understanding, i.e: gravitation, elasticity, nuclear, heat, electricity, magnetism, light, chemical reactions are manifestations of energy. generally speaking, where a change is shown, an energy is produced or lost. from education and social standpoint, to say that the energy characterizes the ability to provide work by means an applied force and related movement appears commonly convenient (cf. pisano and bussotti 2017a,b). at this stage, two consequent correlated questions arise: how can we produce work to obtain energy? in this sense, the misunderstandings between force and energy, and force and weights, heat and temperature are diffused at school and in society. for sure, the term energy is not always part of a scientific vocabulary! thus, an adequate social and mathematical interpretation is required. energy is a crucial concept of physics and its conceptualization, i.e., energy is a scalar physical quantity, reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 87 extensive, observable and measurable etc., permits both modelling and applications in other scientific disciplines. a correlated history of science, history of foundation of sciences in context can be of help as above presented. who is the mediator into the society? as before remarked, the industrial revolution is not only limited with a massive use of all kinds of machines and with their technical improvements. indeed, technological performances were not sufficient to improve the output of these machines. that is why, a scientific study about energy through the universal principles of thermodynamics was necessary. however, these principles introduce the concepts of energy and entropy, which are very difficult to understand, especially the entropy. in ralph baierlein’s words: for the instructor and the student, no single step is terribly difficult to teach or to learn, but in the course of time, students easily lose sight of the big picture, and an intellectually satisfying understanding of what “entropy” represents remains elusive.22 given the public policy–driven nature of the energy transition and the current economic situation, all of us are concerned about energy issues and express opinions, process any decision relating social issues. nevertheless, in order to take part in this societal debate, an appropriate scientific and social–technical education is required. this requires to scientists and teachers to perform an additional role: scientific mediator, as a link between sciences and societies. of course, re–thinking of alternative teaching methods (nos approach) is also a necessary condition. it is the single way to establish a lasting relationship between scientists and citizens in a society dependent more and more on science and technological progress. energy and sources in order to understand the energy in a simple way, let us consider mechanical as a first form of energy. as we above cited energy is related with work, in the following modern general terms:   efds (4) some remarks are necessary: a) distinguish the work force, b) work necessarily involves expenditure – a machine that produces the work must be supplied –, c) exert a force requires, on the contrary, no charge, etc. a confusion is usual done by students: if we feel tired due, i.e., to an eventual imperfection of our muscles, imply no movement required by no force (f), so (generally speaking) no energy is produced/lost/transformed, or in other words, no variation of work (∆w) is done. instead, if we feel tired due to bear a weight from x–position to y–position, this is due to an eventual imperfection of our muscles, but in this case, since a movement is done (an applied force for displacements), then a work is done, and a mechanical energy is possible to calculate.23 following previous reasoning, if we consider an ideal physical system by a rolling ball – supposedly free of any friction – a perpetual motion is obtained because no energy to maintain its movement is required. other examples can be done: when forces acting on a body produce (under no equilibrium conditions) a movement, 22 baierlein 1994, 15. author’s emphasis. 23 in the unified international system of unit (i. s.), the work w and energy e assume idem unit of measure, joule (j). reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 88 rotation, etc. the physical system performs a work and its correlated mechanical energy is called rotational.24 except nuclear and geothermal energy, and energy from solar radiation as a reasonable source of energy, we can classify sources into two main categories: 1. finite energy sources. these energies consume chemical or nuclear fuels. they exploit deposits nestled in the earth’s crust. fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) are finite on earth quantity and nature took millions of years to produce. uranium is also a finite resource. fossil fuels are concentrated and inexpensive source of energy that have been and are the wealth of modern civilization. unfortunately, humanity uses these energy stocks very intensively, which poses the problem of depletion term. world energy consumption is based more than 80% on fossil fuels. these have the disadvantage of emitting co2 which gradually increases the concentration of this gas into the atmosphere and increasing the greenhouse effect. this may induce climate change with many negative consequences for humanity. that is why the goal now is to gradually return to renewable energy, cleaner and do not emit greenhouse gas emissions by using advances in science and technology that we provide enough energy to a competitive cost. 2. flow energy sources. these more known as renewable energies are derived from natural phenomena from the sun or the earth, naturally unlimited renewed to human scale. it is the solar energy in all its forms, from biomass, wind, hydro, tidal and geothermal energy.25 energy and transformations – conservation – degradations transformations. as before we saw for sadi carnot’s thermodynamics, in a waterfall, a potential energy26 is available. if this energy left to itself, then it will be transformed (under certain conditions) into heat: water, at the bottom of a waterfall, is heated of all the potential energy unused. we can also force the water to drive a turbine which itself actuate an electrical machine: potential energy is transformed (under certain conditions) into electrical energy. this latter (under certain conditions) carried by conductor’s wires, can also be transformed into kinetic energy of rotation and/or translation (electric engines) into: heat energy within electric furnaces, light energy in filament lamps, chemical energy (electrolytic cells, batteries charging). if an electrical machine is actuated by means of a steam engine, the primary power source is then the chemical energy constituted, for example, by coal–oxygen system. based on historical accounts provided before, the combination of these two substances transforms chemical energy into heat energy which is to be transformed into 24 to be distinguished from the translational energy corresponding to rectilinear movements. 25 they are: 1) solar energy is that we capture directly under the following forms (converting the radiation into heat at low temperature) under thermodynamic form (conversion into high temperature heat to operate machinery) or as photovoltaic (directly conversion into electricity); 2) biomass includes all organic materials and energy crops for the production of bio–fuels. however, plant biomass is a renewable energy if we replanted to compensate for what was harvested; 3) wind energy is the energy captured by a device with blades of wind. it can be used to make machines run (mills, pumps) or converted into electricity by a generator; 4) hydraulic energy is the mechanical energy associated with the difference in water level, a waterfall or river, transformed swallows into electricity through a turbine generator; 5) tidal energy is the mechanical energy of the water created by tides and sea currents converted into electricity. geothermal energy is to exploit the natural reservoirs of steam or hot water or hot rocks present in the deep underground to produce heat. most of this energy is derived from radioactive nuclei contained (iacona, taine and tamain 2012; ngô 2009, french society of physics 2012). 26 mgh: m is the mass of the object, g is the acceleration due to gravity, and h is the altitude of the object. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 89 mechanical energy by a steam engine, into electrical energy by a dynamo. consider a motionless body on the ground, to move it at a given altitude we must provide work. fixed at this altitude, the body has a potential energy, which means that the work is entirely transformed into potential energy. during the fall, this potential energy is converted into kinetic energy and it is completely kinetic at the moment of impact. we have three situations: the first corresponding to a perfectly elastic collision, in this case the object bounces and the kinetic energy is gradually transformed into potential until the object reaches its initial altitude. if the collision is not elastic, the kinetic energy acquired during the fall becomes fully heat. the last situation is an intermediate one, that is to say at the moment of impact only a portion of the kinetic energy is converted into heat and the other part provides the object to achieve an altitude below the initial altitude until the object comes to rest on the ground conservation. we can assume: external energy: potential (ep), kinetic (ek), and mechanical energies (em). so have the following relationships: em = ep + ek. changed energy: it is the work w and heat q, which reflect respectively macroscopic and microscopic energy transferred to a system. internal energy (u) is associated to motions and interactions between the particles of the system and historically it is mathematically assumed for justifying the impossibility to equal experimentally heat and work. mechanical total energy: etm = u + ep + ec that reflects all contributions and it is therefore characteristic of the energy stored by the system. according to the first law of thermodynamics (as an extension of the mechanical total energy which include heat phenomena, too) deal with variation of the total energy of a physical system in interaction with its external environment. it is given by his general form (under thermodynamics equilibrium) as in the following27: de = δw ± δq (5) because heat and work are both means of changing the value of total energy, they do not maintain separate identities after the transfer of energy is finished. for an isolated and adiabatic physical system the variations of volume is zero (w = 0 and q = 0) so the total energy remains constant. this ideal assumption is also known as the principle of equivalence work– heat, insofar as it expresses the equivalence between the different forms of energy (under not experimental conditions). as we showed before, sadi carnot proposed what nowadays is called second principle of thermodynamics where idealist equivalence is not permitted. in other words, it is an overall assessment in which it cannot be created or lost of energy, but simply a converting one form of energy into another form or its transferring of one system 27 de (also written as du, exact differential) is the exchanges in internal energy of a system for quasistatic process. e is an abstraction to justify mathematically the process. δq (also expressed as tds, where s is the entropy and t is the temperature) is the infinitesimal quantity of heat supplied/lacking and δw (also expressed as pdv) is the mechanical work on/from the system/surroundings. the signs convention plus and minus remind this aspect of the equation (5); i.e., the heat supplied to the system as opposed to by the system (see also clausius 1850, or later on, planck [1897] 1903). the latter two quantities, δq and δw, are not exact differentials and for, they do not describe the state of the system. the equation (5), for non-cyclic processes, is written as ∆e = w ± q, from heat machines researches for producing the maximum of efficiency (pisano and gillispie 2014; pisano 2010). reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 90 to another. it is therefore educationally and pedagogically inappropriate to speak of energy production and impossible to have a perpetual motion machine of the first kind (a machine that will allegedly produce more energy than it will takes in). finally, it is worth noting that the real rationale of this law is the constant checking its consequences. degradation. let us consider a physical system as a seat of transformations that take him back to the same initial state. in this case we have: w + q = 0. this reflects, on the one hand, the quantitative equivalence between work and heat, on the other hand this means that if the system receives the work, it provides the heat, and if it receives heat, it provides work (brunhes 1991). more, equality indicates that the energy of the system is conserved during its evolution. however, it does not provide the sense of this development. furthermore, real’s transformations can always be spontaneously one way transformed into heat. thus, in this case the transformation of work into heat may be idealistically total. on the other hand, the transformation of heat into work can be achieved but only under some physical conditions. therefore, the first principle mathematically expresses the equivalence of the quantity of heat q and work w, while the second – by sadi carnot and then performed by clausius and kelvin – reflects their experimental non–equivalence (pisano 2010; gillispie and pisano 2014). in modern terms: qw   and wq  (6) the arrow indicates the direction of change of the transformation. it usually follows that these two forms of energy transfer are not equivalent: while the work w can be used to increase the energy of any form, the heat q leads directly, if it is not converted first of all into work, to increase only the internal energy of the system. therefore, the heat is classified as degraded energy and various forms of work not degraded forms. such non–equivalence between the two transformations, the transformation of heat into work and that of work into heat, leads to those natural transformations do occur in only one direction: the reduction and the complete disappearance of a potentially possible work. we can say that in all transformations, the energy fall in quality, and that, without ceasing to be constant, it deteriorates and degrades. according with this form degradation of energy, the basic idea that the second law of thermodynamics involved will be very easy to explain and to understand quite simply. indeed, it seems that conservation and degradation appear as two aspects of the general law of energy transformations: keeping the amount (first principle), loss of quality (second principle). it is clear that maintaining the quantity is expressed by equality; on the contrary, the loss of quality is reflected in the general case by an inequality. however, this inequality has as limiting case equality. one can find circumstances where equality is almost reached. the only thing that is quite impossible is to change the direction of the inequality. exceptional cases where there is equality have a considerable theoretical importance in thermodynamics, as we will see in the next section on heat machines; they correspond to reversible transformations. it is important to note that the second principle was formulated in many different ways (capek and sheehan 2005) usually equivalent to each other and all describe what the irreversibility through entropy is. this principle has no theoretical evidence, except in cases of particular models as ideal gas. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 91 this is just an empirical principle. fermi pointed out that the best proof of this principle is the failure despite all the efforts put in default by constructing an apparatus having a perpetual motion of the second kind (a device that would transform periodically work in the entire heat exchanged by anybody). heat engines and efficiency even the so–called renewable energies have their negative effects. therefore, one solution is to improve the efficiency of the used machines. in other words, increase the efficiency of the engine. it is true that technological improvements obtained by empirical trial and error, had increased engine performance. however, from a theoretical point of view, it was important to know whether these technical improvements could increase indefinitely the performance or if there was a limited theoretical forever impassable. the analysis on a carnot’s cycle leads to q + w = 0 and therefore the conservation of energy principle sets this limit to 100 %. nevertheless, the real changes are irreversible and according the two propositions of the second principle no real machine cannot reach this limit. as previously shown, sadi carnot determined a theoretical limit of much stricter performance obtained for reversible cylinders cyclically working. in french society, at the parisian polytechnic school, civil engineer clapeyron, who was also a friend of sadi’s, mathematically exposed the réflexions in mémoire sur la puissance motrice de la chaleur, adding (clapeyron 1834, 153–190) what nowadays we wrongly – both historical and didactic standpoints –read as “carnot’s cycle” (ivi, 190; see also clausius 1850, 368–397; 500–524; 379). this analytical reinterpretation of the so–called pv diagram (loop, or clapeyron diagram) of the cycle did not have a metric (i.e. with respect to descartes’ diagram). later kelvin, planck’s statement and so called kelvin–planck relationships: [kelvin] it is impossible, by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects.28 [planck] it is impossible to construct an engine which will work in a complete cycle, and produce no effect except the raising of a weight and cooling of a heat reservoir.29 every process occurring in nature proceeds in the sense in which the sum of the entropies of all bodies taking part in the process is increased. in the limit, i.e. for reversible processes, the sum of the entropies remains unchanged.30 another usual manner to display the principles in the textbooks is: [kelvin–planck relationships] it is impossible for any device that operates on a cycle to receive heat from a single reservoir and produce a net amount of work. therefore, as sadi carnot suggested (carnot s 1824, 10–11) two sources of heat are required to produce work. 28 the content of the second principle of thermodynamics and the necessity of a second thermostat with the aim of executing a passage of heat between a difference in temperature is largely discussed (thomson 1848–1849, 541–574; id., 1882–1911, 113–155; id., 1852, 248–255; thomson 1851b, i, 175–183; clausius 1850, 155, 368–397, 500– 524; 1854, 481–506; see also id., 1865a,b, 1868–1869). 29 planck [1897] 1903, 86–89. 30 planck [1897] 1903, 100. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 92 concluding remarks in the nineteenth century, in europe the figure of the scientific engineer is emerging. in paris the grandes écoles were founded, where the most distinguished mathematicians worked, writing treatises and teaching to the students. in 1794 the école polytechnique de paris, a military school for the training of engineers, was founded. joseph–louis lagrange (1736– 1813) and gaspard monge (1746–1818) were among the first professors of mathematics. on 30 october 1794 (9 brumaire, a. iii) the école normale supérieure de paris31 was also born (dhombres 1992). the school aimed to train scholars and teachers of both science and humanities. the attention of the french mathematicians toward applications was therefore, at least in part, due to the need that educational institutions train technicians for the new state; the situation was different in other european countries. particularly the core material in the scientific engineers’ curricula was mainly mathematics and physics. this means analysis (calculus) in the first half of the 18th century up to include geometry (projective geometry) in the second half. great importance was also attributed to purely theoretical disciplines, such as number theory and abstract algebra. mechanics was developed within other disciplines becoming, i.e., mécanique céleste (stars, comets, planets satellites, stability of planetarium system), planet (geodesy, cartography), mathematical physics applied to engineering (mechanics, instruments, frictions, structures, analytical theory of heat), corporeal mechanics (statics, dynamics, hydrodynamics, crystallography), molecular mechanics (elasticity). on the other hand, the interaction between scientists, engineers and society crossed the new abilities of machines and prototypes of civil engines. in this sense a scientific mediator, as a link between sciences and societies is required for re–thinking of alternative teaching methods to establish a lasting relationship between scientists and citizens in a society so much depending on technological progresses as well. for, the previous historical discussion on dissemination science and technology in the past, reveals the interactions between the transmitters and their audiences (choice of the vehicles, of the subjects), between real or supposed self–educated and scholarly institutions, but also the links between the science which was produced and the science which was disseminated. in addition, through the study of the production of the scientific and technical popularization it is possible to measure the impact of the disseminated knowledge on the target groups and to estimate the speed of the receipt of the innovation, i.e. the time between the production of a scientific or technical innovation and its integration to the popularized speech, the interactions between popularization and social life, in particular as regards hygiene, food, the disease prevention, the diffusion of the medical popularization (fight against the empiricism of the bonesetters, the constitution of leagues of hygiene), and the links between the diffusion of the scientific and technical knowledge and the development of colonized territories by the empires. with regards thermodynamics theory, energy and its application are evident that, relative to the amount of heat received, the lower the heat returned portion, the greater portion of heat converted into work. the ideal would be to minimize the returned portion to best use all the heat received; but we cannot cancel it, otherwise there would no longer need cold reservoir and we know that is impossible. finally, as we already saw in the first section, sadi carnot showed that the efficiency η (see eqs. 2, 3) of a reversible heat engine is higher than any other engine operating under the same conditions. therefore, whatever the expected progress of science, technology enhancements and technical improvements that 31 the school was closed on 1795. thus, it was re–founded on 1808, 17th march. on this model, the scuola normale superiore in pisa (italy) was founded (1810) as a branch of the école normale supérieure and later gained independence. reading science, technology and education: a tradition dating back to science into the history and historiography raffaele pisano – rémi franckowiak – abdelkader anakkar 93 could be achieved in order to reduce the influence of dissipative phenomena, friction, etc., so heat engine cannot exceed this theoretical limit, impassable as the laws of physics still apply. the idea of a science critics (scientific disciplines, history, education studies, information and communication, epistemology, sociology of science) for to knowing the sciences news, the history of scientific and technical culture, as well as and the science– society debates of the past, to inquire, decipher and present current science–society debates. consequently, in order to evaluate on various levels the challenges of the introduction of “new technologies” into society, and search and put in account the scientific and technical news (introducing culture in sciences and technology and vice–versa), problematize and to contextualize scientific discoveries and technology innovations is nowadays necessary. more, in order to be able to discuss the role played by limits of expertise, to take a stance towards their audience regarding the scientific, technical, political, economic, social, ethical and symbolic challenges, to communicate to different audiences through various vehicles, to stimulate the desire to study sciences, an adequate scientific school and university education firstly, and for scientific–technology citizenship education later, is desirable. finally, the society, since the end of the renaissance (generally speaking) to nowadays, usually built a perception within society according with the idea that science is synonymous of progress and modernity; especially during period of materializations. we know that anomalies, inversions and controversies also belong up cited erroneously so-called progress and modernity. in this sense the science in general, in all its contradictions, anomalies and developments certainly also represent a cultural phenomenon. therefore and integrated science, history and education objectives are required in the teaching science– nos and curricula. references baierlein, r. 1994. entropy and the second law: a pedagogical alternative. the american 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and m. regnault’s observations on steam. mathematical and physical papers, vol i. cambridge: the cambridge university press, pp. 175–183. thomson, w. 1882–1911. an account of carnot’s theory of the motive power of heat with numerical results deduced from regnault’s experiments on steam. mathematical and physical papers by sir william thomson, vol i. cambridge: the cambridge university press, pp. 113–155. 54 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 54-72 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science marie gueguen1 stathis psillos2 abstract: duhem’s philosophy of science is difficult to classify according to more contemporary categories like instrumentalism and realism. on the one hand, he presents an account of scientific methodology which renders theories as mere instruments. on the other hand, he acknowledges that theories with particular theoretical virtues (e.g., unity, simplicity, novel predictions) offer a classification of experimental laws that “corresponds to real affinities among the things themselves.” in this paper, we argue that duhem’s philosophy of science was motivated by an anti-sceptical tendency, according to which we can confidently assert that our theories reveal truths about nature while, at the same time, admitting that anti-scepticism should be moderated by epistemic humility. understanding duhem’s epistemological position, which was unique amongst french philosophers of science in the beginning of the 20th century, requires a careful examination of his accounts of representation, explanation, and of their interrelation. keywords: pierre duhem; representation; explanation; natural classification; holism; epistemic humility; realism received: 09 april 2017. reviewed: 24 may 2017. accepted: 31 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.06 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction duhem’s philosophy of science has justifiably attracted a great deal of attention. his the aim and structure of physical theory, initially published in 1906, offers a comprehensive account of science, its method and its value, which is difficult to classify according to standard categories such as instrumentalism and realism. the key interpretative difficulty relates to the fact that duhem himself appears to be ambivalent. on the one 1 marie gueguen is a phd candidate in the department of philosophy at the university of western ontario – rotman institute of philosophy-engaging science. address: 1151 richmond street. department of philosophy. n6a3k7 london, ontario, canada. email: mgueguen@uwo.ca 2 stathis psillos is a professor in the department of philosophy and history of science at the university of athens. address: university campus, athens 15771 greece. he is also a member of the rotman institute of philosophyengaging science, university of western ontario. address: 1151 richmond street n6a3k7 london, ontario, canada. email is psillos@phs.uoa.gr marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 55 hand, he presents an account of the method of science which renders theories mere instruments for classification of experimental laws and for predictions (cf. 1908a, 333). on the other hand, he acknowledges that theories meeting various conditions (unity, simplicity, novel predictions) are in the process of offering natural classifications of experimental laws, where a classification is natural if it “corresponds to real affinities among the things themselves (les choses elles-mêmes)” (1906, 26). this ambivalence appears in his partly autobiographical essay “physics of a believer” (1905). there he says quite clearly that a theory “constitutes a kind of synoptic or schematic sketch suited to summarize and classify the laws of observation” (1905, 277) and that “physical theory through its successive advances tends to arrange experimental laws in an order more and more analogous to the transcendental order according to which the realities are classified” (1905, 297). claims such as the above might be hard to reconcile and this had led many commentators to argue that duhem’s views are in some kind of tension.3 or that duhem was trying to canvass a middle position between realism and instrumentalism. or that he was a ‘structural realist’.4 in this paper, we will argue for the unity of duhem’s thought. from his early papers dating from the early 1890s to the magnum opus of 1906, duhem occupied a special epistemological position which can be best understood in light of the debates about science, its method and its value, that were taking place among french philosophers of science. seen in this light, duhem wanted to achieve two things at the same time. he wanted to show that physical theories have “value as knowledge outside their practical utility” (1908a, 319) and that this very assertion can only be justified if the scientist breaks with positivism and endorses a conception of rational judgement that goes beyond the strict confines of logic.5 at the same time, he wanted to show that the cognitive value of physical theory is not tied to its offering (mechanical) explanations of the experimental laws. it is, nonetheless, tied to its being responsive, in some way, to the reality behind the phenomena it aims to represent. a key point of this paper is that duhem’s philosophy of science was motivated by an anti-sceptical tendency, admitting at the same time that anti-scepticism should be moderated by epistemic humility: it should come to terms with the history of science and the fact that “it reminds [us] that the most attractive systems are only provisional representations, and not definitive explanations” (1906, 270).4 understanding duhem’s philosophy of science requires a careful examination of his accounts of representation and explanation as well as of their relation. duhem’s account of science rests decisively on the claim that the explanatory parts and the representative parts of theories can be sharply distinguished. we shall argue that they cannot be. the repercussions of this failure for duhem’s account of science will then be explored. here is the roadmap. section “representation vs explanation” will discuss duhem’s account of representation, focusing on his novel use of abstraction principles to introduce physical magnitudes and his account of explanation, focusing on his anti-cartesianism. then, in section “disentangling the two parts of the theory”, we will examine duhem’s two arguments for the existence of a sharp distinction between the representative and the explanatory parts of the theory and we will show, summoning historical evidence available to duhem himself, that this distinction is shaky and problematic. section “re-assessing duhem’s holism” will then offer a new reading of duhem’s anti-atomism (aka holism). in section “natural classification”, we will offer the main argument for the unity of duhem’s thought in light of his views on natural classifications. finally, in section “are relations the epistemic limit?” we shall briefly discuss some motivations of duhem’s relationism. 3 for a useful discussion see needham (2011). 4 fábio leite (2017) offers a nice summary of the various interpretative accounts of duhem’s philosophy of science. for an account of duhem as canvassing a middle way between realism and instrumentalism, see psillos (1999, 3437). 5 this point has been emphasized by maiocchi (1990, 398). 4 our notion of “epistemic humility” must be distinguished from the notion discussed by kidd in his (2011); and more generally, from its use in recent debates concerning whether duhem was a virtue epistemologist. kidd talks of “intellectual humility” as virtue and takes it to refer to some inherent limitation of “the scope of human mind”, circumscribing “the proper acknowledgment of the cognitive capacities appropriate to human beings, and of the proper epistemic ambitions open to us”. we take ‘humility’ to capture the epistemic modesty concerning the reach and extent of scientific knowledge, which is driven mostly from patterns of theory-change in the history of science. marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 56 representation vs explanation ‘representation’ is a technical term for duhem. it captures a specific method of constructing physical theories, which is based on abstraction. roughly speaking, a theory is said to be representative if it is constructed in such a way that its basic concepts are abstracted out of experimental facts and its basic principles—which connect the basic concepts of the theory—symbolize a set of experimental laws. the very idea of ‘representation’ for duhem is connected with symbolism: a representation is always symbolic. to be more precise, duhem took it that there are four fundamental operations in a physical theory which renders it a representation (of a set of experimental laws): (1) the definition and measurement of physical magnitudes; (2) the selection of hypotheses; (3) the mathematical development of the theory; (4) the comparison of the theory with experiment. let’s take a closer look at the four steps. abstraction principles the first step consists in determining the physical concepts which will stand for basic physical properties, viz., the simple elements from which every other physical property can be derived. these properties are extracted from a set of experimental laws, corresponding to the range of phenomena that the theory aims to describe (1892a, 6). as such, the fundamental building blocks of the theory must be closely connected to observations or experiments. the physical concepts are then translated into mathematical symbols, whose adequacy depends only on the features that the empirical property exhibits and that the physicist wants to capture. the key method duhem introduces for the specification of the basic concepts is abstraction (1892a, 3-4). here is his example. warmth is an empirical property of bodies. bodies can be as warm as others or more or less warm than others. these features, however, though “essential to the concept of warmth, do not permit the measurement of the object of this concept—that is, to regard it as a magnitude”. and yet, the relation of being as warm as, which holds between actual physical bodies given in experience, has the properties of being reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. it is, in modern terminology, an equivalence relation. duhem observes that a more rigorous physical concept (and a corresponding magnitude) can be introduced on the basis of this equivalence relation, viz., temperature. as he (1892a, 3) put it: we make two equal values of temperature correspond to two points that are as warm as each other. we make two unequal values of temperature correspond to two points that are not equally warm, and in such a manner that the higher value of temperature corresponds to the warmer point. this move allows, among other things, the transition from a qualitative property to a quantitative one. even though it makes sense to say that body a is as warm as, or warmer than, body b, it does not make sense to assert that the warmth of the body c is equal to the warmth of body a plus the warmth of body b. not so for temperature, since this is a magnitude which is additive. in fact, the concept of temperature has excess content over the concept of warmth, since the concept of temperature involves an extra quantitative assumption, according to which to each point of a body can be assigned a definite value of temperature – an assumption that permits additivity. the concept of temperature, then, is introduced on the basis of an abstraction principle over a set of physical bodies and an equivalence relation among them (being as warm as). duhem is clear that this procedure is essentially generalizable. what was said about temperature “could be repeated—at least in its essentials—about all definitions of magnitude that we find at the beginning of any physical theory whatsoever” (1892a, 4). note that this is a far-reaching approach. it shows that duhem was appealing to marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 57 what came to be known as abstraction principles in order to introduce new physical concepts and corresponding magnitudes.6 this definition of physical magnitudes by abstraction out of equivalence relations among the properties of empirical bodies makes possible the statement of mathematical-quantitative physical laws about the magnitudes thus defined. in particular, it makes possible the symbolic representation of empirical laws, even if these laws do not bear strictly speaking on the same empirical properties as the empirical laws did. for duhem, abstraction is indispensable because the magnitudes to which the theoretical hypotheses of a physical theory apply must be mathematized, so that these hypotheses state mathematically precise relations (laws) among magnitudes. hence, abstraction makes the mathematisation of nature possible. as he put it in (1893b, 58), it is abstraction that furnishes the notions of number, line, surface, angle, mass, force, temperature and quantity of heat or electricity. it is abstraction, or philosophical analysis, that separates and makes precise the fundamental properties of these various notions and enunciates axioms and postulates. but abstraction, when used within a physical theory, also implies that, as duhem (1906, 128-131) explains, a physical magnitude need only possess the relevant mathematical properties (to be expressed by a number and to be additive) and to obey the relevant mathematical laws (commutativity and associativity). hence, different symbols could be chosen for a given physical property, as long as the mathematical features of interest of the latter are captured by the symbol. apart from this requirement, the definition of the physical magnitude is arbitrary, like a sign is arbitrarily chosen to represent the thing it signifies. hypotheses and beyond the second step in theory construction consists in relating these symbols to each other through hypotheses. here again, there is absolutely no constraint whatsoever on the choice of hypotheses provided that, taken as a whole, they represent the totality of the experimental laws. from his early work some reflections on the subject of physical theories, published in 1892, to the aim and the structure of physical theory, duhem kept defining the ‘ideal’ method for choosing the hypotheses as “accepting no hypotheses except the symbolic translation, in mathematical language, of some of the experimental laws from the group (…) [the physicist] wished to represent” (1892a, 6, see also 1906, 190-191). concerning the recourse to hypotheses, duhem made clear that their formulation should be as little restricted from above by metaphysics as possible, the only logical constraint on their adoption being the principle of non-contradiction. enter the third step. from these hypotheses, the theoretical physicist proceeds via mathematical deduction to derive the (mathematical) consequences of the chosen hypotheses. this mathematical development of the theory is committed only to the rules of logic: the physical world is put in brackets at this stage of the process. finally, however (and this is the fourth step), the consequences of the mathematical deduction will be translated back into claims about observational and testable predictions, allowing the physicist to submit his theory to the verdict of experimentation. as famously put by duhem, the agreement with the experiment is the only criterion of truth for a theory. if the consequences of the deduction tally with the experimental laws, the theory will have fulfilled its aim: allowing the physicist to substitute the multiplicity of experimental laws with a few number of principles from which the laws can be reconstructed, i.e., to provide a compact representation of a vast set of experimental facts. such a successful representation would offer a condensed symbolic representation of the laws, but also a classification of them: between a set of experimental laws taken as experimentation has brought them to light and the same set of laws connected by a theory, there is the same difference as that between a mass of documents 6 abstraction principles were characterized as such by bertrand russell in his (1903) and were used by him and earlier on by frege (1884, § 63-67) to define the concept of cardinal number. it is significant that the main idea was employed by duhem. marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 58 heaped in confusion and the same documents carefully classified in a methodical collection. they are the same documents; they say exactly the same thing and in the same way. but in the first case, their disorder makes them useless, for one is never sure of recovering the document one needs at the moment one needs it; similarly, in the second case, the documents are made fruitful by a methodological grouping which places the desired document surely and without effort in the hands of the researcher (1893a, 36). indeed, qua representation, the goal of a theory is merely to recover the experimental laws, only simplified and better ordered. qua representation, then, the physical theory is seen as an economy of thought. explanation famously, duhem contrasts representation to explanation. now, for duhem explanation proceeds with positing unobservable entities and structures and consists in reducing the behaviour of observable entities (the empirical laws) to these invisible entities, their properties and their own laws of behaviour. being not given in experience these entities (and the laws they are supposed to obey) are deemed, by default, metaphysical. hence, explanation is taken to be characteristic of metaphysics, thereby falling outside the scope and bounds of science. as he put it, science “is not an explanation. it is a system of mathematical propositions deduced from a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply as completely and as exactly as possible a set of experimental laws” (1906, 19, our emphasis). given how duhem defines an explanation as an attempt to “strip the reality of the appearances covering it like a veil, in order to see the bare reality itself” (1906, 7), the physicist aiming to explain “the appearances” has to accept that there is some distinct ‘reality’ behind them and that the task of science is to reveal it. outside such a framework, as duhem puts it, “the search for a physical explanation could not be conceived” (1906, 9). thus, the success of an explanation can only be assessed on the prior adoption of a given metaphysics. to explain is therefore to step outside of physics, and to subordinate a physical theory to a metaphysics that alone can deliver the standards of evaluation of a successful explanation. for duhem, not only does this way of proceeding misrepresent the aim and object of physical theories, but it also ruins the possibility for an autonomous physics. notably, he blames descartes for having breached “the barrier between physics and metaphysics” (1893a, 44). the cartesian project to reconstruct the whole edifice of knowledge on secure and indubitable principles implies that physics rests on hypotheses not obtained through scientific methods and as such not belonging to science, but to metaphysics. but his criticism of descartes bears as much on his extreme hypothetico-deductivism as on his use of mechanical hypotheses. instead of merely translating into mathematical symbols the physical concepts appearing in experimental laws, the cartesian physicist adds constraints on the choice of properties and admits no simple property other than motion, size, shape. duhem argues that the imposition of these conditions on the physical theory will result in an extraordinary complexity: the (…) inconvenience of such a method is that in restricting the number of elements that may be used in constructing the representation of a group of laws, physicists are left with no other resource than to complicate the combinations they make with these elements in order to respond to all of the demands of experimentation (1892a, 13). disentangling the two parts of the theory explanations should be banned from ideal physical theories, according to duhem. in fact, he found energetics, qua a rival of atomism, to be as close to this ideal as possible. far from looking for the “revelation of the true nature of matter”, energetics was taken to operate by general principles (like the principle of conservation of energy) under which experimental laws are subsumed. these principles, as duhem put it, were “pure postulates or arbitrary decrees of reason” (1913, 233). marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 59 but even a cursory look at the history of science suggests that many, if not most, of actual theories were far from meeting the above ideal standard. actual theories were such that explanation and representation were intermingled. how can they be disentangled? and if they can be disentangled, what is the argument against theories that have an explanatory part? let us address these questions by noting that to motivate the distinction between two types (or two parts) of theory, duhem (1906, 52) took a cue from rankine’s (1855) distinction between “abstractive” and “hypothetical theories”. according to rankine (1855, 209), the difference between the two kinds of theory stems from the first operation we described in section “abstraction principles”, i.e., the definition of properties. an abstractive theory will consider as its fundamental properties only those that can be “perceived by the senses”: properties are introduced in the physical theory only by means of an abstraction. a hypothetical theory, on the contrary, will accept properties “not apparent to the senses” through conjectures about the underlying nature of the perceived objects or phenomena. thus, explanatory hypotheses will be introduced as soon as the relevant properties have been chosen, bearing consequences on all of the edifice afterwards. however, unlike duhem, rankine did not devalue hypothetical theories. he took them as an indispensable “preliminary step” for the reduction of “the expression of the phenomena to simplicity and order, before it is possible to make any progress in framing an abstractive theory” (1855, 213). for him, the contrast between the two types of theory was a contrast between two different modes of unification, of the “tendency (…) to combine all branches of physics into one system”. one way is to rely on the axioms of mechanics as “the first principles of the laws of all phenomena—an object for the attainment of which an earnest wish was expressed by newton”, the other being to rely on “propositions comprehending as particular cases the laws of the particular classes of phenomena comprehended under the more extensive classes”. hence, from rankine’s distinction it does not follow that an explanatory theory should be devalued. is there any other reason that duhem summons? for duhem, explanatory hypotheses are actually “the germs that kill all mechanical theories”, inasmuch as these hypotheses are not derived from any experimentation but from arbitrary restrictions added by the physicist. it might seem that the explanatory part of the theory is simply an extension of the representative part beyond the realm of the senses. not so, for duhem: the explanatory part is a restriction on theories. for him, as noted already, explanatory hypotheses consist of restrictions imposed on the construction of the theory. drawing on his criticism of descartes, he stresses that mechanical hypotheses add extra constraints on the choice of properties, since every physical property admitted within the theory must eventually be reduced to motion, size or shape. hence, they limit the admissible properties to those which can have a mechanical grounding. to see more clearly what duhem has in mind, as well as to highlight the problem with his view, let us take a brief look at the difference between newton and descartes concerning the causes of gravity. unlike descartes and later huygens, newton avoided the mechanist demand to explain any phenomena “in terms of the arrangement and motion of minute, insensible particles of matter, each of which is characterized exclusively by certain fundamental and irreducible properties—shape, size, and impenetrability” (nadler, 2000, 520), and did not try to account for the phenomena of attraction on the basis of mechanical principles: i use the word “attraction” here in a general sense for any endeavor whatever of bodies to approach one other, whether that endeavor occurs as a result of the action of the bodies either drawn toward one another or acting on one another by means of spirits emitted or whether it arises from the action of ether or of air or of any medium whatsoever – whether corporeal or incorporea lin any way impelling toward one another the bodies floating therein. (newton, 1999, 548-549) newton deliberately avoided hypotheses about the reduction of the phenomena of attraction to mechanisms and relied only on these principles which allow for the phenomena of attraction to be treated as a mathematically expressed natural law. it is arguable that newton did this not by a mere desire to stay neutral with respect to these hypotheses, but because he was actually trying to “identify and so to isolate, precisely those presuppositions that, apart from their bearing on metaphysical questions, are also necessary presuppositions of the physics that he and his contemporaries practiced” (disalle, 2013, 449-450), that is, the presuppositions of the study of any dynamical system. this quest soon made him realize that the “common methodological ground between himself and his philosophical opponents” was constituted of those mathematical principles that allow the mathematical treatment of empirical concepts, like that of attraction, marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 60 thus strengthening the distinction between mechanical and mathematical principles. pushing this line further, if those mathematical principles were to be understood as the necessary and unavoidable presuppositions of any dynamical theory, it would also make sense to consider them as fundamental principles, which, as such, need not (and should not) be reduced to any more fundamental mechanism. this kind of stance, viz., taking the law of gravity as a fundamental principle, would have certainly made it easier to identify the forces holding planets in their orbits with the force attracting bodies towards the earth. on the contrary, such an extension was not easily accessible to those who thought that gravity should be offered a mechanical explanation, simply because, as george smith (2002, 141) has noted, “no hypothetical contact mechanism seems even imaginable to effect ‘attractive’ forces among particles of matter generally”. far from extending the theory, the quest for a mechanical account of gravity would restrict it since it could not ground the universality of the law of gravity. huygens (1690, 160) himself, after reading newton’s principia, admitted that his defense of the cartesian theory of vortices had prevented him from extending the action of gravity to large distances: i had already thought, a long time ago, that the spherical shape of the sun could have been produced in a similar way to the one which, according to me, produced the spherical shape of the earth; but i never thought of extending the action of gravity to such large distances, from the sun to the planets, or from the earth to the moon; as my thoughts were obstructed by the vortices of mr. des cartes, which in the past seemed to me so plausible and which i still had in my mind (m. g. translation). this kind of case might bring home duhem’s point that explanatory hypotheses are not an extension of the theory to a realm inaccessible to sense, but chains by which a metaphysical system forced upon a theory, preventing its full growth. by the same token, however, this kind of case shows that representation and explanation need not be as far apart as duhem thinks, if explanation is taken to be unification of diverse empirical laws under a theoretical scheme. newton’s law of gravity, as newton himself admitted, is explanatory of a vast array of phenomena, even if the cause of gravity is not explained; or even if the very demand for an explanation of the cause of gravity is deflated. it is fair to say that duhem never conceded that explanation should be the aim of science. no matter how intricate the relation between representation and explanation can be, as the newton case shows, duhem thought of them as corresponding to distinct and separable parts of the theory.5 in support of this view, he offers two arguments. the first is an historical argument, expressed in the famous continuity thesis stated by duhem in (1906, 32-33): when the progress of experimental physics goes counter to a theory and compels it to be modified or transformed, the purely representative part enters nearly whole in the new theory, bringing to it 5 in the original french text of the aim and the structure, duhem translated newton’s famous words from the optics, query 31: “to tell us that every species of things is endowed with an occult specific quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us nothing: but to derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes of those principles were not yet discovered”. duhem’s own translation into french is this: “expliquer chaque propriété des choses en les douant d'une qualité spécifique occulte par laquelle seraient engendrés et produits les effets qui se manifestent à nous, c'est ne rien expliquer du tout. mais tirer des phénomènes deux ou trois principes généraux de mouvement, expliquer ensuite toutes les propriétés et les actions des corps au moyen de ces principes clairs, c'est vraiment, en philosophie, un grand progrès, lors même que les causes de ces principes ne seraient pas découvertes” (2007, 81—emphasis added). note that newton’s “to tell us” is translated (thrice) by duhem into “expliquer” [to explain]. in the first two occurrences, ‘to explain’ refers to explanation by means of occult qualities, which duhem says ‘explains nothing’. but in the third instance, ‘to explain’ refers to the explanation of all properties by clear principles. this double use of ‘explanation’ seems to suggest that duhem may well allow an explanation that does not rely on any hidden causes, but aims at the kind of unification newton offers by his laws. however, in the subsequent paragraph he seems to equate this sense of ‘explanation’ with geometric representation (représentation géométrique). thanks to an anonymous reader for bringing this subtle point to our attention. marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 61 the inheritance of all the valuable possessions of the old theory, whereas the explanatory part falls out in order to give way to another explanation. thus, by virtue of a continuous tradition, each theory passes on to the one that follows it a share of the natural classification it was able to construct, as in certain ancient games each runner handed on the lighted torch to the courier ahead of him, and this continuous tradition assures a perpetuity of life and progress for science. this continuity of tradition is not visible to the superficial observer due to the constant breaking-out of explanations which arise only to be quelled. the metaphor of a relay in which the lighted torch is passed on from one runner to the next is very vivid. it highlights duhem’s belief in continuity; in the existence of a pattern of retention in the history of science. but the retention is limited to the representative parts of theories; the explanatory parts are supposed to have been abandoned and replaced by new explanations. for duhem, the lighted torch of science is representation and not explanation. his favorite example was the theory of light-refraction. in descartes’s own work, the representative part was entirely subsumed under one law: the snell-descartes law, which asserts the constancy of the ratio between the sine of the angle of incidence and the sine of the angle of refraction of a light ray. this law is still accepted and can nowadays be found in any optics textbook. however, this representation of the phenomena of refraction was accompanied by an explanation of this phenomenon, where light was analyzed as being caused by a “pressure engendered by the rapid motion of incandescent bodies within a “subtle” matter penetrating all bodies” (1906, 33). this explanation has a history of its own: it was replaced by the emissionist theory under newton’s influence, and was resuscitated by young and fresnel one century later. but according to duhem it has never been genuinely related to the representative part of the theory of refraction. duhem provides two considerations to support this idea of a mere juxtaposition of the two parts rather than a genuine relation between them: first, when trying to explain why light travels faster in denser than in rarer medium, descartes appealed to a mechanical analogy with balls which is more suitable to the emissionist hypothesis than to the wave theory of light. second, descartes was convinced that the infinite speed of light was a necessary consequence of his explanation of light. as a result, römer’s experiment showing the finite speed of light led to the demise of descartes’s explanatory theory. nonetheless, the snelldescartes law was never jeopardized by this experiment and has been retained through all the successors of the cartesian theory of light. an obvious worry with this kind of historical argument is that it might well be the case that the alleged distinction between the two parts of the theory is ex post facto: the representative parts are those that have been retained in theory change and the explanatory parts are those that have been abandoned. is there an independent reason to draw this distinction for an arbitrary theory? is there an argument why those and only those theoretical parts that have been abandoned are explanatory? it is in order to address this kind of worry, that duhem aims to make a case for the predictive dispensability of the explanatory parts. on his view, the only part of the theory that possesses empirical content that can lead to predictions is the representative part. this is supposed to be illustrated by the wave theory of light. huygens, duhem argues, despite being one of the most ardent defenders of the mechanist philosophy and being the one who actually unraveled the consequences of a wave theory, did not use mechanical hypotheses to extend descartes’s laws of refraction to the phenomena of double refraction. he simply extended the representative theory already available to a new range of phenomena. the only hypotheses on which his reasoning was grounded were “a comparison between the propagation of sound and the propagation of light, the experimental fact that one of the two refracted rays followed descartes’ law while the other did not obey it, a felicitous and bold hypothesis about the form of the surface of the optical wave in media of crystals” (1906, 35). hence, on duhem’s view, the credit for huygens’s account of double refraction goes only to the representative part, whereas the wave hypothesis did not contribute at all to this predictive success. things, however, are more complicated. duhem himself showed this when he described how huygens used the iceland spar to study double refraction. huygens observed, as bartholin did before him, that two images of one and the same line could be produced by placing a spar on a piece of paper. moreover, one of these images would rotate if the spar itself was being rotated. one of these images, that huygens called “ordinary”, obeys descartes’s law and stays fixed when the spar is rotated. the rotating image, called “extraordinary”, does not satisfy the law of refraction. upon having explained the phenomena of reflection marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 62 and refraction based on a wave hypothesis and the propagation of light through spherical waves, huygens postulated that the two images were the results of two different kinds of wave propagation, corresponding respectively to the light propagation in the aether contained in the spar and to the light propagation in the particles constituting the spar itself. while the former waves are spherical, the latter are ellipsoidal, thus explaining the phenomena of double refraction. based on these explanatory hypotheses which yielded the ellipsoidal model, huygens thus constructed a geometrical model that succeeded in representing the phenomena of double refraction and thus extended descartes’s theory of refraction. the point here that huygens did use the wave hypothesis to construct his theory of double refraction. it was the wave hypothesis that made possible the ellipsoidal model, since as he (1690b, 73) put it: “upon having explained the refraction of transparent ordinary bodies, by means of the spherical emanations of light, (…), i went back to examining the nature of this crystal, about which i could not discover anything before” (m. g. translation). an ellipsoidal propagation as the one described would not have made sense outside the wave theory. hence, that we may, ex post facto, deem a hypothesis ‘explanatory’ does not imply that, in the reasoning that led to this model, it did not play a role. duhem, indeed, grants that huygens’s theory “represents at the same time the laws of simple refraction, the object of descartes’ works, and the laws of double refraction” (1906, 35, our emphasis). but what does ‘represent’ mean here? there are only two ways to determine whether something is a representation according to duhem: a part of a theory is said to be representative a) if it follows the fourstep method of construction of a theory and aim only at summarizing and classifying experimental facts; and b) if it is retained over time. we noted already that the second way needs independent support and that duhem’s argument we have been examining, viz., that the explanatory part does not contribute to the predictive power of the theory, was meant to offer this independent support. huygens’s case shows that huygens’s theory was not representative in the sense of being constructed in the way suggested by duhem’s four-step method. it was nonetheless involved in extending the law of light-refraction to cover the phenomena of double refraction. to sum up. the continuity thesis (viz., the retention of representative parts in theory-change), if it’s not merely an ex post facto, and hence ad hoc, way to identify the representative parts of theories, has to be supported by an independent criterion for taking a principle to be representative as opposed to explanatory. this criterion is meant to be offered by the predictive impotence argument, viz., that explanatory principles do not contribute to the predictive success of the theory. but this alleged impotence cannot be substantiated by the very cases that duhem considers. it turns out that the supposed sharp distinction between two parts of the theory (the explanatory and the representative) is either ad hoc or unsupported by historical evidence. to say the least, there is no cogent argument to the effect that the explanatory part is attached to the representative part “like a parasite” to a “fully formed organism” (1906, 32). re-assessing duhem’s holism it might be thought that duhem cannot have it both ways. he cannot be a holist and at the same time accept that only the representative part of the theory gets any credit from the empirical successes of the theory. wouldn’t commitment to holism imply that the explanatory part (assuming that we can draw such a distinction) also gets some credit by getting some of the empirical support of the theory? in this section, we shall argue that appearances to the contrary, duhem was not committed to a radical version of holism and that he used his anti-atomism as a weapon against the empirical support of the explanatory hypotheses of the theory.7 duhem wanted to make the strong point that it is a “chimera” to try to isolate a(n) explanatory hypothesis and subject it to empirical test on its own (cf. 1906, 200). we call this view anti-atomism, since the emphasis is meant to be on showing that isolated hypotheses—that is, hypotheses which are not part 7 at least part of duhem’s motivation for holism is his anti-inductivism. in his (1906, 190-194) he argues extensively against the claim that newton’s laws are inductive generalizations from experience. for duhem laws are not justified “one by one”, by observation and made general by induction. rather, testing them “is a matter of comparing the corollaries of a whole group of hypotheses to a whole group of facts” (1906, 194). marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 63 of a theoretical system—do not have their own empirical content; hence, they cannot be tested atomistically, viz., independently of a theoretical system in which they feature.8 suppose there is a dispute about a theoretical hypothesis h. ideally, there must be some prediction “of an experimental fact” drawn from h. the experiment is then performed and if the “fact is not produced”, the hypothesis h “will be irrevocably condemned” (1894, 82). duhem shows that this account of testing is an illusion, since no hypothesis taken in isolation from a theoretical system implies any predictions. as he put it: “the prediction of the phenomenon whose nonproduction will cut off the debate does not derive from the disputed proposition taken in isolation but from the disputed proposition joined to this whole group of theories”. hence, when the prediction is not brought out “it is the whole theoretical scaffolding used by the physicists” which is “shown to be wanting” (1894, 82). but where does the error lie? the experiment cannot pinpoint the culprit among the parts of the whole theoretical system. duhem’s conclusion is that how the blame is distributed among these parts is not a matter of “logical necessity” (1894, 83). all this is rather well-known. what is not typically perceived is that duhem uses this kind of argument to show that explanatory hypotheses do not have empirical content of their own. immediately after the logical argument, he offers an illustration by means of newton’s emission theory of light, which he took it to be a typical case of an explanatory theory. on this theory, light is formed of very small particles emitted with great velocities by light sources. these particles (the projectiles, as duhem calls them) are subjected to distancedependent attractive and repulsive forces and permeate all bodies. this set of “essential hypotheses”, linked (and only linked) with many others entail that light travels faster in water than in the air. this prediction, noted by françois arago, was tested by léon foucault in a famous experiment. duhem was quick to point out that the negative result of the experiment (viz., that light travels faster in air than in water) does not tell where the error in newton’s emission theory lies. hence, not only has newton’s explanatory hypothesis no empirical content in isolation of a theoretical system, but given a conflict between the theoretical system and experience, newton’s hypothesis can be saved from refutation. hence, because of anti-atomism, an isolated explanatory hypothesis is not genuinely testable. what is more, foucault’s experiment is far from crucial. it does not prove the opposite theoretical hypothesis, viz., that light consists of waves. on this hypothesis, defended by huygens, young and fresnel, light consists of waves which are propagated through an elastic luminiferous medium. this alternative explanatory theory yields the prediction that light travels faster in air than in water. one might have expected that we are faced here with a crucial experiment. it might be thought that we have two competing hypotheses h and h’, h being that light consists of particles and h’ being that light consists of waves, and a decisive experiment among them since h entails e and h’ entails not-e. but this is the wrong way to think of the matter and anti-atomism brings out what’s wrong with it. it is not two competing explanatory hypotheses that are being tested but two “theoretical groups or systems, each taken as a whole”: newton’s optics and huygens’s optics (1894, 86). given this, no experiment can decide between two explanatory hypotheses, viz., that light is a body and light is a vibration in a medium. these two explanatory hypotheses do not have their own empirical content. still, could it be that under favourable circumstances a theoretical group or system ends up being well supported by the evidence given that its rival is taken to be disconfirmed by the evidence? holism is compatible with this scenario: one theoretical system might be more supported by the evidence than another. though duhem does allow that a theoretical system might be condemned by empirical evidence and abandoned, he was firm in claiming that a theoretical system t is supported by the evidence e only if we are certain that there are no other theoretical systems (hitherto unconceived) such that were they available, they would entail e. hence, he couples his anti-atomism with a radical view of empirical support. hence, assuming the empirical failure of the emission theory of light is not proof of the truth of the alternative wave theory of light because it does not have to be the case that light is either a body or that light is a wave. we will never be able “to affirm that no other hypothesis is imaginable” (1894, 87). and because of this we can “never be certain that we have exhausted all the imaginable hypotheses concerning a group of phenomena” (1894, 87). this line of thought has become standard in arguments against a realist understanding of science: no theory t is confirmed by the evidence unless it is shown that no other theory exists or could be conceived 8 it should be noted that duhem was an anti-atomist too in that he opposed the atomic theory of matter. the two senses of anti-atomism should not be confused. marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 64 such that it is empirically equivalent to t. but it should be noted that duhem was rather careful. the point he wanted to make is that no theory can be proved to be true. he noted this explicitly in his (1908b, 110): grant that the hypotheses of copernicus manage to save all the known phenomena; that these hypotheses may be true is a warranted conclusion, not that they are assuredly true. justification of this last proposition would require that one prove that no other set of hypotheses could possibly be conjured up that would do as well at saving the phenomena. the latter proof has never been given. but doesn’t his anti-atomism extend to the representative part of the theory. the though here might well be that unless representative principles are sharply distinguished from explanatory ones by independent means, it seems that duhem’s anti-atomism does contribute to the undermining of the very distinction between two parts of the theory. don’t representative principles face the ‘tribunal of experience’ no less holistically than explanatory ones? is there a way out for duhem? duhem’s way out was the restriction of his anti-atomism to the explanatory part of the theory. as we stressed, he used anti-atomism as an argument against the testability of explanatory hypotheses. but we saw already in section ”representation vs explanation”, that representative propositions were taken to be close to the experimental facts because they, in effect, replace these facts “with abstract and symbolic representations”. this replacement is what duhem calls “interpretation” (1894, 88). but interpretation does involve theories, since the very idea of abstract and symbolic representation implies the “transportation” of a fact into a theory. though the experimental facts are interpreted by the theory that “physicists regard as established” (1894, 95), duhem is adamant that the representative part of the theory is independent from the explanatory part, the reason being that it can be interpreted within alternative theoretical systems. hence, an explanatory theory t may ‘interpret’ a certain set of empirical laws and facts according to its own conceptual resources, but the very same laws — being abstract and symbolic representations — can be “translated into the language” of an alternative theory t’. once abstraction principles have allowed scientists to treat empirical properties as physical magnitudes, the symbols, qua symbols, admit of different interpretations. when transported into an explanatory framework, the symbols and the relations they stand to each other, are interpreted in light of the relevant theory. but precisely because they can be interpreted by different theories, theories can share representative parts (1894, 96). hence it is possible to make “elements of the new theory correspond to elements of the old theory at certain points”: a representative proposition, though interpreted within a physical theory, is interpretable within alternative physical theories too. all this requires that, though interpretable by a given theory t, the representative part has empirical content of its own, independently of t. hence, it acquires its content, as it were, atomistically. it is this atomistic empirical significance of the representative propositions that makes them interpretable in alternative theories. it is this that makes possible the establishment of a “correspondence” between the symbols that represent the results of experiments in theory t and the symbols that represent the same results in theory t’ (cf. 1894, 96). it seems plausible that duhem drew the distinction between the two parts of the theory in terms of their distinct modes of testability: the explanatory hypotheses are tested non-atomistically, whereas the representative propositions are tested atomistically. but there is a drawback. this way to draw the distinction between the two parts of the theory very much depends on whether or not an explanatory hypothesis contributes to the empirical content of the theory. if it does, then it should certainly get some credit from the predictive and empirical success of the theory, even if duhem is right in claiming that it is tested as part of a whole (that is, anti-atomistically). when we discussed huygens’s account of double refraction in the previous section, we noted that explanatory hypotheses contributed to predicting the distinct geometrical forms of the two ways, viz., the spherical and the ellipsoidal. that huygens’s wave hypothesis gets no credit from this requires the aforementioned controversial assumption that empirical support accrues to the explanatory part of the theory only if it is shown that there can be no other explanation of the same phenomena available. and though duhem rightly noted that unless such as assumption is granted, no theory can be proved to be true, it’s important to distinguish between proving the truth of a theory and allowing the evidence to confirm it. the problem with duhem’s radical view of empirical support is that it makes confirmation simply impossible: no evidence can bear on a theory. duhem used the vivid metaphor of an organism to talk about physics. physics, he says, is not “a machine that let’s itself be taken apart”; it is “an organism that must be taken as a whole” (1894, 85). this marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 65 might be taken to imply that explanatory hypotheses, being part of the body of physics, can be subjected to test by subjecting to the test the whole body of physics. we have argued that for duhem the organism metaphor, his holism, is meant precisely to show that what “is commonly thought”, viz. that each of the explanatory hypotheses “may be taken in isolation, submitted to the control of experiment, and then, when varied and numerous proofs have established its validity, put in place in an almost definitive manner in the totality of science”, is wrong: explanatory hypotheses lose their significance and “no longer represent anything” (1894, 88) if they are cut off from a system. still, it does not follow that theoretical systems within which explanatory hypotheses are embedded can never be supported by empirical evidence.9 natural classification duhem had always been adamant that the aim of physical theory is classification. as he explains in the introduction to his essay the electric theories of j. clerk maxwell: a historical and critical study, for him theoretical physics “is only a schematic representation of reality. using mathematical symbols, it classifies and directs the laws that experience has revealed; it condenses these laws into a small number of hypotheses; but the knowledge it gives us from the outside world is neither more penetrating nor of a different nature than the knowledge provided by experience” (1902a, 8). but classification is always relative to a scheme of classification and there can be different and competing schemes. these schemes are “the free decree of our understanding” (1906, 286) and the only constraint in using these schemes is that they should not be mixed up. using an example from biology, duhem notes that a naturalist can classify some animals according to the structure of their nervous systems and some other group of animals according to the circulatory system. similarly, the physicist can use the hypothesis that matter is continuous to classify some laws and the hypothesis that matter is atomic in another classification (1893b, 66). this no-mixing up condition, duhem attributes to poincaré. in fact, he finds it in poincaré’s électricité et optique, where poincaré notes that “two conflicting theories can, indeed—provided they do not mix and that are not seeking the bottom of things—be both useful instruments of research, and perhaps reading maxwell would be less suggestive if it had not opened both new and divergent pathways” (1890, v; cited by duhem 1902a, 8). duhem himself is happy with this condition, since when it comes to the logical examination of theories, the only constraint he has put forward is logical consistency. otherwise, a theorist is free to represent “different sets of laws, or even a single group of laws, by several irreconcilable theories” (1893b, 66). logic imposes only one “obligation on physicists, and that is not to mix theory different procedures of classification” (1893b, 66.). to put the point bluntly, a theorist can use scheme a on mondays, wednesdays and fridays and scheme b of tuesdays, thursdays and saturdays. this way she avoids incoherence by avoiding to combine “a major premise” obtained by theory a with a “minor premise” obtained by theory b (1906, 294). the key rationale for this attitude is that the genuine content of a physical theory is taken to be the set of the empirical laws classified. as he says: “the systematic classification that theory gives [the empirical laws] does not add or take away anything concerning theory truth, their certainty or their objective scope” (1906, 285). but this is half of the story. duhem attributed to poincaré and édouard le roy the view that the nomixing up principle is the only condition on scientific rationality and let himself occupy a different, more nuanced, position. he takes it that theoretical physics “deserves the name of science on the condition of being rational” (1902a, 8). but being rational, that is responding to reasons, is not confined to following strictly and exclusively the principle of non-contradiction and the rules of logic. a scientist may be free to choose any hypothesis she pleases “provided that these hypotheses are not redundant or contradictory”, 9 it is noteworthy that if duhem was an anti-atomist, he was an anti-conventionalist too. he resisted the thought that just because hypotheses are not atomistically tested, they can be held on come what may. taking distances from poincaré and le roy, he argued against the view that some principles are elevated to conventions thereby acquiring a status of being “universally adopted” (1906, 212). for him, no principle (or hypotheses) is immune to revision; hence no principle can be held on come what may. as he put it: “the history of science shows us that very often the human mind has been led to overthrow such principles completely, though they have been regarded by common consent for centuries as inviolable axioms” (1906, 212). duhem’s opposition to conventionalism has been thoroughly discussed by maiocchi (1990). marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 66 but a unified theory is preferable to “a junk heap of irreconcilable theories” (1906, 295). this “single physical theory which, from the smallest possible number of compatible hypotheses between them, would derive, by impeccable reasoning, all known experimental laws is obviously an ideal perfection which the human mind will never reach; but if it cannot reach this limit, it must constantly be directed” (1902a, 8). in fact, duhem notes that representing by theories “unconnected with each other, or even by theories that contradict each other when they meet in a common domain” is a “transitory evil”. unity should be what physics should aim for. it might seem that in duhem’s writings, two tendencies are always fighting against each other: on one hand, his own project of proceeding to the strict logical examination of physical theories—“we shall in this book offer a simple logical analysis of the method by which physical science makes progress” (1906, 3); and, on the other hand, his desire to support some theories over others. in the first case, duhem insists on the value of the physical theory as an economy of thought, as condensing a multitude of facts and laws. in the second case, the emphasis is put on the theory as a natural classification, reflecting the true order of the world. we shall argue that duhem went beyond the positivist trend in french epistemology of science by bringing into it the thought that some kind of contact between theory and an underlying reality is necessary for taking a theoretical classification to be “a satisfactory representation” of experimental laws (1906, 298). his chief point, addressed to his fellow epistemologists, is that the ideal form of a scientific theory is achieved when a theory is a “natural classification” of experimental laws and that looking for this ideal form, even though it is a limiting condition, is reasonable and warranted (by the history of science). its justification, however, exceeds the confines of the positivist method they (and he himself) were prone to follow. all this was thrown into sharp relief after abel rey published a sympathetic but critical essay of duhem’s views in 1904 and duhem replied in 1905. but it was already there in duhem’s very early writings on the epistemology of science. let us go into this matter in some more detail. already in 1893, duhem assumed the idea of “the best classification” of experimental laws as this classification which would follow from a “detailed metaphysical knowledge of the essence of material things” (1893a, 37). this is because this kind of classification would map the order (viz., relations) there is (are) among things in the world, where this order would “result from their nature itself”. he’s careful to add that even if this knowledge were available, the physicist would still have the right to adopt another theory, “to connect physical laws in a different order, to accept another mode of representation of physical phenomena” (1893a, 37). but he adds that this attitude, though fully consistent with logic, would be “unreasonable” since “in every order of things we should choose what excels”. the very assumption he started with is “purely ideal”. but its conceivability is used by duhem to show that the sceptics—those who deny the very “principles on which experimental science logically depends” (1893a, 38)—can be blocked only if we go beyond the method of physics and look for its justification. he meaningfully dissociated himself from positivism insofar as the latter asserts that “there is no logical method other than the method of positive sciences”. hence, there is more to justification than the method of science (understood as being constrained only by the principle of non-contradiction). in another piece he published in 1893, he introduced the idea of ‘natural classification’ in connection with a perfect theory. here he noted that “considerations of pure logic are not the only ones that reasonably direct out judgements (1893b, 67). take the following rule: in physical theory, we must avoid logical incoherence because it injures the perfection of science (1893b, 67). this is not a principle of logic. yet duhem thinks it’s reasonable (legitimate). perfection is a matter of degree, but ideally a perfect theory (or the “true theory”, as he put it) would be “the complete and adequate metaphysical explanation of material things” (1893b, 68). the perfect theory would classify experimental laws in a natural way: an order which would be the very expression of the metaphysical relations that the essences that cause the laws have among themselves. [a perfect theory] would give us, in the true sense of the world, a natural classification of laws (ibid.) marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 67 although duhem talks of metaphysical relations between essences, what he really refers to are relations among unobservable entities—the minute constituents of material objects. recall that for him the atomic hypothesis (as well as any other hypothesis which refers to unobservable entities) was a “metaphysical” hypothesis. a perfect theory would pertain to the true theory, and a “natural classification” is the one issued by a true theory. avoiding contradictions and unifying the empirical laws into a single system of hypotheses is for duhem the road to perfection. in effect, duhem argues that if science aims at a natural classification, then unification is the most natural thing to look for. a natural classification cannot possibly be “an incoherent collection of incompatible theories” (cf. 1893b, 67)—even though each and every theory may save some phenomena. unification is then seen as a way to remove inconsistencies and to approach what duhem calls the “perfect theory”. note that a natural classification is still a classification and not an explanation. what makes it natural is that the scheme for the classification, far from being arbitrary, is the one that nature itself uses, so to speak, to classify “the relations” that the causes of the empirical laws have among themselves. this, again, is an ideal form. achieving it “infinitely surpasses the scope of human mind”. but this does not mean that it does not exist; that is, there are true relations among the “essences” whose manifestation are the relations among the phenomena (the empirical laws). given this ideal theory, it makes sense to aim to remove the contradictions among existing physical theories since the relations that there are among the causes of the phenomena are “neither indeterminate nor contradictory” (1893b, 68). this is the justification for the unification principle (up): physical theory has to try to represent the whole group of natural laws by a single system all of whose parts are logically compatible with one another (1906, 293). this principle was for him perfectly reasonable, though it could be denied without contradiction. so the key point we want to make is that the very idea of natural classification is part and parcel of a broader conception of reasonableness that duhem endorsed in order to distinguish his view from the positivist ones in vogue in france in his time. as noted already, this reaction to positivism was thrown into sharp relief in his exchange with rey. he actually compared duhem to most of his contemporaries (notably, rankine, helmholtz, dubois-reymond, ostwald, poincaré and milhaud). they take it to be the case that science explains nothing and that looking for causes is a venture into metaphysics. for them, rey (1904, 703, m. g. translation) says, “sciences merely record relations among phenomena, connections that are convenient to achieve an exact description of these relations, a description that allows to some extent to predict”. for rey, duhem stresses the indispensability of theoretical physics and claims that “purely experimental physics is a chimera” (1904, 704). still, theories are arbitrary; they are “formal”; “they are a set of relations between numerical values, between quantities; they do not at all worry about the real content which enters relations, the objective properties evaluated by these quantities” (1904, 718). the comparison with reality is done at the end, when the theory is tested empirically. “but at the end, this game gains meaning thanks to a set of measures, that allow to detect reality; our formula must then give us results that coincide as fully as possible with this real detection” (1904, 722). the issue rey concentrated on was the value and objectivity of theory, if all there is to it is a scheme of classification. he credited duhem with showing that empiricism (which was based on the claim that science is “a simple summary of experimental observations”) is a fiction. but he took him too to distance himself from the claim that science is an arbitrary conventional classification. the theory “has a relation that is certain with reality, i.e., with the experimental records – the fact that the experiment must eventually intervene to confirm it or refute it proves it. what is arbitrary is everything that at first sight will allow us to make the order of our thoughts correspond to the real order. what is not arbitrary anymore is the correspondence itself” (1904, 728). in fact, according to rey, duhem argued against the “neo-sceptics” that it’s not the case that every theoretical path possibly taken is fruitful. instead, “there will be a theoretical development, which, better than any other, will correspond to the order of the phenomena which we wish to describe. there will thus be a set of theories which will impose themselves at least in general lines, to the exclusion of any other. it will constitute theoretical physics; this will be determined and one, not arbitrary and multiple” (1907, 133). marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 68 in the end, rey called duhem’s view the “physics of a believer” (1904, 744). this was a charge that duhem tried to dispel in his reply. but the key feature of his reply was his insistence on the claim that natural classification is the aim of science. he noted that the natural classification of experimental laws is a “limiting form” that the theory tends to achieve, through “its successive advancements” (1906, 297). he insisted that if a scientist is not an “intransigent positivist”, he or she will come to see that “physical theory advances gradually toward its limiting form” (ibid.). now, one point that rey insisted on was that duhem’s resistance to neo-scepticism will come to nothing if the history of science showed that attempts to unify the theoretical image of the world had been a failure. duhem (1906, 295) responded to this criticism by acknowledging it and by saying that, ultimately, the issue at stake is empirical: it is up to the history of science […] to tell us whether men, ever since physics took on a scientific form, have exhausted themselves in vain efforts to unite into a coordinated system the innumerable laws discovered by experimenters; or else, on the other hand, whether these efforts through slow and continuous progress have contributed to fusing together pieces of theory, which were isolated at first, in order to produce an increasingly unified and ampler theory. duhem’s verdict was that the history of science has tilted the balance towards unity: “diversity fusing into a constantly more comprehensive and more perfect unity, that is the great fact summarizing the whole history of physical doctrines” (1906, 296). what’s also important to stress is that there is a contingent mark for a classification being natural, viz., the ability of theory to yield novel predictions; that is, the ability of theories to anticipate experiment, establishing novel predictions like prophets would reveal the future: the highest test, therefore, of our holding a classification as a natural one is to ask it to indicate in advance things which the future alone will reveal. and when the experiment is made and confirms the predictions obtained from our theory, we feel strengthened in our conviction that the relations established by our reason among abstract notions truly correspond to relations among things (1906, 28). still, the very idea that a theory is (or tends to be) a natural classification cannot be justified by the narrow positivist method that duhem himself canvassed. all the more so for his anti-scepticism. far from yielding to scepticism duhem relied on a broader conception of justification which, we might say, relies on explanatory considerations: it is truth that explains perfection and it is perfection that explains why unification should be aimed at, or at least why it is reasonable to strive for it. the fact that natural classification will always remain an unjustifiable claim on the positivist method does not make it unjustifiable: physical theory confers on us a certain knowledge of the external world which is irreducible to merely empirical knowledge; this knowledge comes neither from experiment nor from the mathematical procedures employed by the theory, so that the merely logical dissection of theory cannot discover the fissure through which this knowledge is introduced into the structure of physics; through an avenue whose reality the physicist cannot deny, any more that he can describe its course, this knowledge derives from a truth other than the truth apt to be possessed by our instruments; the order in which theory arranges the results of observation does not find its adequate and complete justification in its practical or aesthetic characteristics; we surmise, in addition, that it is or tends to be a natural classification; through an analogy whose nature escapes the confines of physics but whose existence is imposed as certain on the mind of the physicist, we surmise that it corresponds to a certain supremely eminent order (1906, 334-335). marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 69 are relations the epistemic limit? a natural question at this point is this: why does duhem insist that knowledge can extent only up to relations among “hidden realities whose essence cannot be grasped” (1906, 297). the answer to this lies, by and large, with duhem’s account of representation and the role of hypotheses in science. at one point duhem notes that “an intelligence that see essences” would classify the laws according to the “natural order” (1893b, 68). but we humans do not see “essences”. and that’s the problem for duhem. if we (have to) rely only on representations of “essences”, then we can never have knowledge of them. despite his criticism of empiricism, duhem was wedded to the view that knowledge of entities requires that they are given to us in experience. not so for knowledge of relations, though. let us see why. we noted already that duhem’s talk of essences is meant to capture the unobservable causes or constituents of the phenomena. in his (1902b, 117), he put the point thus: “contemporary physics is not metaphysics. it does not propose to penetrate behind our perceptions and come to know the essence and intimate nature of the objects of these perceptions”. the “essence and intimate nature” of perceived object were the particles posited by theories as their micro-structure, e.g., “viewing the rapid movement of particles as constituting the essence of heat (1902b, 39). the only possible access to them is via hypotheses, but hypotheses are beyond the limits of experience. hypotheses might well be indispensable in doing science but they are never a means to empirical knowledge. as he put it in an early piece: “let us never trust hypotheses for an instant, and in particular let us never attribute a body and a reality to the abstractions that the weakness of our nature imposes on us” (1892b, 177). how then can relations be knowable? for a start relations are captured by mathematical equations, which are constructed in such a way as to represent the formal properties of the empirical entities under investigation. for another, because of this formal character, resemblance is not required. it is worth repeating that for duhem, theoretical physics starts with empirical objects and aims to “represent” their properties. but “in order to represent these properties, theoretical physics defines certain algebraic and geometric magnitudes and then establishes relations between these magnitudes which symbolize physical laws to which the system is subjected” (1892c, 39).these relations are among magnitudes which bear no resemblance to the actual physical properties; they are symbolic and abstract representations of these properties and as duhem notes, stand in “no relation to [the] nature” of the properties they represent: “but we can put this non-quantitative property into correspondence with an algebraic magnitude which, without standing in any relation to its nature, will be a representation of it” (1892c, 47). representation, then, cannot cut through relations. but of this representation something more can be said, if it meets the requirements noted above (viz., unity, simplicity and novel predictions): that it is (tends to be) natural. that the mathematical relations among the physical magnitudes express real relations among “hidden realities”, of which “the essence”—what they are intrinsically so to speak—cannot be known. this kind of ‘relationist’ approach to knowledge is not far from the one that poincaré developed at roughly the same time in an attempt to defend the objectivity and value of science. in fact, duhem himself spoke approvingly of poincaré’s attitude when he wrote: the logical analysis that he had made with a pitiless rigor ineluctably led m. henri poincaré to the following fully pragmatic conclusion: theoretical physics is a mere collection of recipes. against this proposition, he felt a sort of revolt, and he loudly proclaimed that a physical theory gives us something else than the mere knowledge of the facts, that it makes us discover the real relations among things (2007, 446, m. g. translation). one of us has discussed poincaré’s relationism in detail elsewhere (psillos, 2014). the relevant point here is that for duhem too relationism is the limit of objective knowledge and at the same time his resting point against scepticism. as noted already, a key argument for this relationist approach to theoretical knowledge comes from the pattern of retention in theory-change in science. but it should be added that in making a case for theoretical knowledge of relations duhem had to rely on explanatory considerations of the very sort that he thought were illegitimate as part of science. marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 70 far from being an instrumentalist, duhem took it as fully legitimate for a scientist to accept that science does offer some substantial theoretical knowledge of the world. a scientist who would stick to a strict positivist account of rational judgement in science would at once recognize that all his most powerful and deepest aspirations have been disappointed by the despairing results of his analysis. [for he] cannot make up his mind to see in physical theory merely a set of practical procedures and a rack filled with tools…. [h]e cannot believe that it merely classifies information accumulated by empirical science without transforming in any way the nature of these facts or without impressing on them a character which experiment alone would not have engraved on it. if there were in physical theory only what his own criticism made him discover in it, he would stop devoting his time and efforts to a work of such a meagre importance (1906, 334). and he immediately added: “the study of the method of physics is powerless to disclose to the physicist the reason leading him to construct a physical theory”. conclusions duhem’s philosophy of science could be described as (increasingly) anti-instrumentalist. yet, his antiinstrumentalism did not amount to endorsement of realism. if we were to identify the realist view of science with the atomic theory of matter and with the mechanistic view of the world, then duhem was clearly not a realist, since he resisted both of them till the very end. but, to his credit, duhem distinguished emphatically between two questions: “does physical theory have the value of knowledge or not?” and “should physical theory be mechanistic or not?” (1906, 320). he answered negatively the second but positively the first. and it is the first question that is deeply philosophical. duhem’s positive answer was meant to distinguish his views from what he took them to be purely positivist accounts of scientific method and of the rationality of science. the proper appraisal of the epistemic credentials of scientific theories requires adopting substantive principles such as the principle of simplicity, the unification principle and the principle of novel predictions, which, though not forced on scientists by the scientific method, strictly understood, are reasonable and are required for taking science to offer some knowledge of the world. but this knowledge has a limit: it can only reach up to the relations there are behind the ‘hidden essences’ of the observable entities and the laws they obey. this limit (which captures what we have called ‘epistemic humility’) is licensed by the pattern of retention in theory change, as exemplified in the history of science. duhem’s view, then, is not anti-realist either. he readily admitted that there is a natural order in the world which can be fathomed by theories which possess the marks of natural classification, viz., simplicity, unity and novelty. it’s just that justifiably endorsing this kind of anti-sceptical view requires a broader conception of justification, which takes it to be the case that there is more to rational judgement than experiment and logic. accordingly, duhem occupied a rather unique philosophical position which can be characterized by a combination of anti-scepticism about scientific knowledge with epistemic humility concerning its extent. acknowledgement we would like to thank robert disalle for many useful comments and discussions. thanks are also due to two anonymous readers of this journal for encouragement and useful comments. marie gueguen and stathis psillos anti-scepticism and epistemic humility in pierre duhem’s philosophy of science 71 references disalle, r. 2013. the transcendental method from newton to kant. studies in history and philosophy of science part a 44: 448–456. duhem, p. 1996 [1892a]. some reflections on the subject of physical theories. in essays in the history and philosophy of science. translated and edited by r. ariew and p. barker. hackett publishing company, pp. 1-28. duhem, p. 2002 [1892b]. atomic notation and atomistic hypotheses. translated by p. needham. foundations of chemistry 2: 127–180. duhem, p. 2011 [1892c]. commentaries on the principles of thermodynamics. edited and translated by p. needham. boston studies in the history of science 277. dordrecht: springer. duhem, p. 1996 [1893a]. physics and metaphysics. in essays in the history and philosophy of science. translated and edited by r. ariew and p. barker. hackett publishing company, 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in the cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy, volume 2. edited by d. garber and m. ayers. cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 513-552. newton, i. 1999. the principia: mathematical principles of natural philosophy. translated by i. b. cohen and a. whitman. london: university of california press. poincaré, h. 1890. électricité et optique: la lumière et les théories électromagnétiques. paris: gauthier villars. 2nd edition. psillos, s. 1999. scientific realism: how science tracks truth. london: routledge. psillos, s. 2014. conventions and relations in poincaré’s philosophy of science. methode-analytic perspectives 3: 98-140. rankine, w. j. m. 1855. outlines of the science of energetics. read in 1855 at the philosophical society of glasgow and published in rankine w. j. m. 1881. miscellaneous scientific papers. charles griffin and company, london. rey, a. 1904. la philosophie des sciences de m. duhem. revue de métaphysique et de morale 12: 699 744. rey, a. 1907. la théorie physique chez les physiciens contemporains. paris: félix alcan éditeurs, librairies félix alcan et guillaumin réunies. russell, b. 2003 [1903]. the principle of mathematics. london and new york: routledge. smith, g. 2002. the methodology of the principia. in the cambridge companion to newton. edited by i. b. cohen and g.e. smith. cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 138-173. microsoft word 1 conde layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 1-2 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access journal from the editor women in the history of science mauro l. condé1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ the importance of women’s contribution to science and technology is far greater than what has traditionally been recorded in the history of science. these last few decades female participation in the production of scientific knowledge has increased, and as a consequence, the history of science has enhanced its focus on the role of women in science. although these new approaches are only in the beginning, the narratives concerning women’s history in science have highlighted not only their extraordinary participation in the production of scientific knowledge, but have also revealed much of what has been hidden by a patriarchal society that has dramatically hampered women’s integration into scientific activity. a historiographical reflection on the history of women in science, as a “transversal” reading, is something that aims to participate in this process of understanding the role and integration of women in science. therefore, rather than addressing this history of women in science, it is necessary to have possibilities and reflect on such historical accounts. that is to say, rather than producing the narratives of female participation in science and technology – a crucial task in itself – we need to analyze them from this “transversal” perspective. by putting forward this special issue, this “transversal” perspective was the objective of our editors. the inspiration was to seek answers to questions such as: 1) does the historiography of women in science already adequately track the production of scientific and technological knowledge by women?; 2) are there differences of a historical narrative about women in the sciences produced by women themselves?; and 3) what is the role of men in this endeavor? perhaps, it is only between the lines that this special issue is able to answer such complex questions as these, but certainly, these are open-ended questions about which, in a broader sense, we have just begun to perceive, feel, and understand. special issues such as this can provide valuable aid in this process of study. we need more clarity and discussions about the course we need to take to deepen this vital issue of women in science. perhaps, i am much more guided by the idea that it is necessary to do something than accurately know what to do. i have been marked by this problem more by personal experience than by historical analysis. my daughter and son have chosen to pursue careers in technology (engineering) and science (physics). at the beginning of their undergraduate studies, i set out to provide them with some questions about women’s participation in science and technology. at that time, they had no clear position as 1 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br from the editor women in the history of science mauro l. condé 2 to whether or not there was a real difference in the treatment of girls and boys pursuing a scientific or technological career. years later, at the end of their studies, they had informed opinions and a deeper awareness of the subject as well as identified some significant differences, if not stronger in the formation, indeed in the reception given by society to women scientists or engineers. needless to say, my daughter’s position on these disparities was far more compelling. even when perceiving the effort made by the university to reduce such differences, it is clear that we live in a society that is deeply marked by its patriarchal roots that still affect women in many ways. this is notably when women exercise specific tasks and duties, including those in science and technology. although there have been many changes in western culture, this restriction imposed on women still persists, which causes me a great deal of discomfort. i feel that, in order to change this picture definitively, among the many actions and changes in attitudes, it is also necessary to think of a pedagogy that helps us, men and boys, to enter into this new context with more clarification as to what our role is in society. i hope that women and men in the near future, all over the world (even knowing that this future reaches different places at very different times) can coexist equally in social life, the world of work, and particularly when cooperating on the production of scientific and technological knowledge. i also hope that this segregation of women in the science will soon be a sad and distant memory, so that it can always serve as a warning to all on the path that guides us into the future. i would like to express my sincere thanks to andrea reichenberger (paderborn university) and moema vergara (mast – rio) for accepting to lead the organization on the dossier women in sciences: historiography of science and history of science – on the work of women in sciences and philosophy. without their expertise, competence, and zeal, this dossier would not have existed. microsoft word 17 salomon layout 207 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 207-208 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2018 – this is an open access journal obituary: prof. gérard jorland marlon salomon1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.16 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ this past august 22, the historiography of the sciences lost one of its most essential and discreet representatives. french philosopher and historian of sciences gérard jorland (19462018) died in paris at age 71. he was a researcher at the cnrs and a professor at the center for historical research at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales in paris. gérard jorland became internationally known with the publication of his la science dans la philosophie. les recherches épistémolologiques d’alexandre koyré, published by the traditional and prestigious “bibliothèques des idées” of gallimard. this book, launched in early 1981, was a version of his doctoral thesis (doctorat d’état), defended in may 1978 at the sorbonne, under the guidance of yvon belaval. in addition to a rigorous, systematic and exhaustive study of alexandre koyré’s work, gérard jorland reconstituted in this book the presuppositions and philosophical references that propelled and guided the french philosopher of russian origin in his research. it was not directly in husserl that one had to identify such philosophical presuppositions, but in the “göttingen circle” gathered around adolf reinach. phenomenology, in koyré, was first and foremost a method (not a philosophy or metaphysics) of intuition of the essences. i said systematically and exhaustively: for the first time, koyré’s trajectory was indeed known before koyré as the famous historian of science. gérard jorland had access to and researched the personal archives of the author of the book from the closed world to the infinite universe. these archives would become public only years later, with the death of mme. koyré. jorland used to remember with good humor the research and readings of these documents, then made in mme. koyré’s apartment, which often interrupted him at his work, offering him a coffee and already engaging in a conversation. alexandre koyré was not for gérard jorland a historiographical and philosophical monument of the twentieth century. he used to insist that it was necessary to think “with” alexandre koyré, to show how his way of thinking could still be extremely productive today. he did so in 1995 in les paradoxes du capital, a fascinating study of the problem of the transformation of values into production price in the history of economic science, particularly in the long passage devoted to marx’s analysis. erudite and profound work around very complex and even technical literature, it was responsible for the renovation of the image of marx as an economist. 1 marlon salomon [orcid: 0000-0002-2446-2141] is a professor in the faculty of history at the universidade federal de goiás (federal university of goiás). address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: marlonsalomon@ufg.br obituary: prof. gérard jorland 208 more recently, in 2010, gérard jorland published une société à soigner. hygiène et salubrité publiques en france au xixe siècle, an investigation into the birth and affirmation of hygiene. for him, the nineteenth century was that of public hygiene, of the “social clinic”. this history begins at the end of the eighteenth century, with the constitution of lavoisier’s “episteme”, which marks the opening of a field for hygienist thinking and practice, which was not a discipline, but a connected set of disciplines, and extended to the early twentieth century, when the french parliament turned hygienist ideas into laws. the history of the sciences, for gérard jorland, was a philosophical history and not a social explanation of the sciences. public hygiene acted upon and transformed the society throughout the nineteenth century and was not determined or woven by it. distancing himself from contemporary social studies, jorland showed in this book that sciences are not an effect of the social, but a fundamental factor in the development and transformation of contemporary societies. the recognition of the excellence of this work was immediate: in 2010 he was awarded the prize for the best history book (grand prix de rendez-vous de l’histoire) and best philosophy book of the year (prix gegner). throughout his career, gérard jorland published and organized other books (an intellectual biography of marc ferro, for example), and wrote numerous articles and book chapters. he also stood out for his editorial work. in recent years, he worked on a project that interrelated the history of scientific thinking and aesthetic thinking. when i talked to him a few years ago about the project we were developing for a new journal dedicated to the historiography of science, he was immediately enthusiastic and willing to cooperate with us. gérard jorland was an extraordinarily gentle and considerate man, as will inevitably attested by all those who have had the pleasure of knowing him. with his death, transversal: international journal for the historiography of science loses, more than a member of its editorial board, one of its first-time collaborators and supporters. furthermore, the historiography of the sciences indeed loses one of its exemplary masters. references jorland, gérard. 1980. la science dans la philosophie. les recherches épistémolologiques d’alexandre koyré. paris: gallimard. jorland, gérard. 2010. une société à soigner. hygiène et salubrité publiques en france au xixe siècle. paris: gallimard. jorland, gérard. 1995. les paradoxes du capital. paris: odile jacob. 12 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 12-20 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae — or, does a pair of dots in swedish matter? david östlund1 abstract: fleck’s “comparative epistemology” approached its main object, thought, as human action. using english and swedish translations as test cases, this article ascribes significance to fleck’s preference for the verb denken in forming his core terminology (denkstil, denkkollektiv, denkverkehr). fleck referred to “thinking” (the word he preferred in english) as tätigkeit. this is juxtaposed with an anglophone tradition in intellectual history harking back to collingwood and speech-act philosophy. still, fleck’s stress on the profoundly social nature of denken (always being interaction) is his distinctive characteristic as a theorist of thought as things done. furthermore, fleck’s approach was formed to deal with any kind of thought, and this was important to his dealing with the special cases of science. the term denkverkehr (“traffic/intercourse” in thought) is also examined within an argument stressing the deliberateness of fleck’s linguistic choices and his flair for pursuing deeply serious intents by means of playfulness and humor. keywords: ludwik fleck; thought as action; processes of intellectual interaction; language; humor received: 30 august 2016. reviewed 14 october 2016. accepted: 21 november 2016. _____________________________________________________________________________ a serious case of toying with words it is hard to translate jokes. it is tricky to invite similar smiles or to trigger the same kind of laughter as an original text by means of a new set of words within a foreign linguistic frame of reference. a playful author’s peculiar sense of humor is highly susceptible to being lost in translation. but is this a problem in scholarly writing? has humor anything to do with serious messages in academic life? the answer to that question will probably depend on what the message is. doubtless it is possible to be dead serious precisely in choosing to adopt a playful attitude to a subject. seriousness and playfulness are hardly opposites or mutually exclusive qualities. that claim is not only valid in the sense elaborated by johan huizinga in 1938, that you need to be dead serious in order to actually play – mentally going in for it, sticking to the rules of the game (or developing them) (huizinga [1938] 1955). it is also possible to convey deeply serious messages precisely 1 david östlund is an associate professor (history of ideas) at the södertörn university, stockholm se-141 89 huddinge. sweden. in the academic year 2017-18 he will be a visiting professor at the university of michigan, germanic languages and literatures. 3106 modern languages building, 812 e. washington st., ann arbor, mi 481091275. e-mail: david.ostlund@sh.se david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 13 by taking a playful stance in doing things with words. in philosophy the typical case would probably be the critic of human hubris: the voice of warning, the jester, bringing pompous, self-aggrandizing intellectual behavior down to earth, disclosing its human brittleness and mundane limitations. irony, in particular, has been used to preach humbleness in human thought in a line of thinkers from socrates via montaigne to people like kierkegaard or j. l. austin (if we stick to the common canon of dead white males). i propose to count ludwik fleck into this lot. his attempt to provide arguments for intellectual humility was clearly fueled by a sincere ethical and political sense of mission to his contemporary world. instigating a new kind of “comparative epistemology” turned into an urgent calling rather than a trifling hobby, demanding its fair share of the medical doctor’s spare time. intellectually “making room for the future”, and doing so in a spirit of tolerance and curiosity towards people who have been shaped in their habits of perceiving and processing their world by other “schools and books” than the ones that formed one’s own, was clearly a dead serious task in fleck’s mind. the notion of forming a “democratic reality” was hardly a joke, quite the opposite. but the more glaring the contrasts to such ideals and values became among the human realities surrounding him, the stronger the strand of playfulness in his writing appeared to become. for example, in entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache (1935) and other texts from the interwar years he poked fun at the positions he attacked with his recurring analogy between the “epistemologia imaginabilis” of conventional philosophical wisdom and an “anatomia imaginabilis” of medieval medicine. in an essay from 1946, when he still must have been physically as well as mentally recovering from the ordeals of auschwitz and buchenwald, the smile between the lines from earlier texts suddenly cracked up in sheer laughter. using the example of an “epistemological experiment” he had happened to witness in buchenwald, he triumphantly claimed his ideas about human knowledge to have been empirically confirmed. (for other aspects of my take on fleck, see östlund 2007 – which uses this buchenwald example as its point of departure.) fleck did so in the form of a pastiche of a galilean dialogue. but by replacing galilei’s salviati with a certain “sympathius” in the conversation with simplicius (the simpleton), he also equipped his account with a sense of self-irony that would be hard to find in his 17th century model. although this essay was written in polish (problemy naukoznawstwa), fleck’s macabre playfulness in dealing with a still ghastly fresh experience from an absolute human hell is quite manifest also to those of us who are only able to take part in it in german or english translation. his peculiar way of applying humor in a deeply serious manner was in this case not as tightly tied to his habit of toying with words as it was in most cases. fleck had an obvious penchant for inventing his own, idiosyncratic vocabulary. this has often been treated as a problem with his texts – in the case of his writings in german as a matter of east-habsburg dialect or just linguistic maladroitness. the idiosyncrasies have not been respected as deliberate linguistic choices. theoretical interpreters and translators have been quite eager to help poor fleck out, normalizing his knotty language. this is for instance the case with the translations i am able to compare with the texts written in german: the english and swedish renditions. the english translation of entstehung und entwicklung from 1979 is in fact hardly anything better than an absentminded paraphrase of the original, using the jargon of anglophone science studies of the 1970s in an oftentimes misleading way. the swedish translation from 1997 is far more ambitious and adequate. much less of the content is lost in translation. but in swedish as in english, fleck’s sense of humor is more or less obliterated. the text has become grave and academically polished, unable to invite the smiles and laughter i have experienced, reading the original. this is a serious, even grave problem, i would say, because fleck’s playful idiosyncrasies are part and parcel of the core message. terminological choices were crucial in forming his lehre vom denkstil und denkkollektiv. in fleck’s case words really matter. the erratic dynamics of intellectual intercourse and traffic in words let us consider an example, the key term denkverkehr. it is a compound of the verb denken, “to think”, and the noun verkehr. the second part has mainly two meanings. on the one hand verkehr may mean “traffic” – both in the sense of physical communications and communication systems such as railroads, trucks, cars and airplanes (“there was a lot of verkehr in the street”), and in the sense of trade in goods or people (as in gayle rubin’s “the traffic in women”). in this case verkehr indicates the spatial relocation of things or persons. on the other hand verkehr may mean human intercourse, activities among people getting together to interact. the everyday term for “sexual intercourse”, for example, is in german geschlechtsverkehr david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 14 (literally “gender-intercourse”). now, the term denkverkehr is in the major english translations rendered as “communication”. this is the case also in the relatively qualified versions of fleck’s epistemological essays in the volume cognition and fact from 1986 (eds. cohen & schnelle). this may appear to be obvious and neat. but the problem is that this word’s immediate counterpart in german, kommunikation, is quite as common as in english, and has pretty much the same range of meanings as in english. so, if fleck really meant kommunikation, why did he so stubbornly refuse to say kommunikation? why did he persist in applying an odd homemade term, indicating something as strange as “traffic/intercourse in thinking”? why do that, instead of simply saying what the english translators think he meant to say? what was his point in making this obviously deliberate, but somewhat quirky linguistic choice? (a kindred criticism of the prevalence of the term “communication” in translations of fleck – who only used its polish counterpart twice in his philosophical writings – has recently been offered from a philological point of view by paweł jarnicki (jarnicki 2016). jarnicki is also making a parallel argument concerning the deliberateness and consistency in fleck’s way of playing with words in both of his two ”first languages”, polish and german. if we examine the line of argument in which fleck used the term denkverkehr more closely – the one dealing with the social “dynamics” of human thought – it will be perfectly clear that fleck intended to avoid speaking of kommunikation. thus he avoided a whole set of connotations, for example any invocation of the ideal of genuine and full understanding between interlocutors, all in accordance with each party’s true intentions. by using the term denkverkehr fleck was able to speak in a very different way about the messy realities of interaction between human beings, stressing the element of chance and creative misunderstanding in the development of our ways of perceiving our world and “working up” the world we perceive. looking even closer at his argument, it will be obvious that both major senses of verkehr were set in motion in fleck’s usage. on the one hand he speaks about intellectual intercourse between people within and without collectives – collectives defined by sharing more or less similar modes of perceiving and intellectually processing the world around them. intra-collective intercourse would oftentimes be fair to describe as “genuine” communication – at least that would fit with the experience of the actors involved. but such smooth intercourse is in a bigger perspective relatively sterile, according to flecks analysis of the dynamics of human thought. in fleck’s view most of the fun and creative stuff in human thought is happening when people try – and fail – to practice communication between different segments of a collective or across the borders between different collectives. such adventures in creative misunderstanding generate new modes of perceiving and thinking, according to fleck in an “authorless” way. had he been able to follow up the attempts to get his lehre phrased in english which he made late in life, he would probably have become fond of speaking in terms of serendipity. a peculiar and important instance of inter-collective quasi-communication is the case of the individual who tries to put different ways of perceiving and thinking into interplay within his or her own head. here the second main point in using a compound involving verkehr is activated. the term denkverkehr does namely also refer to processes of traffic in words. the element of linguistic philosophy in fleck’s lehre is essential and quite sophisticated. he claimed that words attain specific meanings (thus being able to function in something like genuine communication) only within collectives of people initiated in shared ways of seeing and thinking, mainly by means of “schools and books”. thus he also stressed that words and phrases always change meaning (if not losing meaning altogether) when they are transported or “trafficked” between collectives of thought. such traffic in words is, fleck’s analyses clearly implies, mainly occasioned by people’s use of the technology of writing – in particular the printed text. in fact he applied in practice an insight later phrased particularly clear by walter j. ong: writing “technologizes the word” by turning the passing acts of speaking into “things” that are persistent in time and transportable in space (ong 1982). an important example of fleck’s use of this insight is his analysis of the function of different genres of printed texts in shaping the levels of initiation and rigidity within modern scientific thought collectives (an aspect of intra-collective denkverkehr): the role of the journal article at the strictly esoteric research front; the role of the textbook in initiating generally qualified professionals; the role of popular science in translating esoteric thoughts into metaphors within a periphery of exoteric members. but denkverkehr in the sense of traffic in words is also what oftentimes occurs in the head of thinking individuals who are initiated in the thought styles of more than one collective (an aspect of intercollective denkverkehr). such individuals try to “communicate” with themselves by using the same words and phrases in different contexts. the result is that those words necessarily take on shifting meanings, becoming used in different ways. such attempts are oftentimes fruitless and confusing, but occasionally they turn out to be serendipitous – opening up new ways to see the david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 15 world. much of what fleck attempted to communicate about all this to his readers (he was well aware of the paradox involved) is lost in the english translations, as they unsuspectingly speak of “communication”. the argument thus comes across lacking much of analytical vigor of the original texts in german. this is less of a problem in the swedish translation of entstehung und entwicklung, as denkverkehr in most cases is rendered as tankeutbyte, which literally means “thought exchange”. thought exchange would probably be a workable choice in order to render denkverkehr in english as well. but there would still be a problem: english and swedish do both lack the opportunity to speak of “intercourse” and “traffic” in one single word, the opportunity which fleck exploited in such a playful way. lacking the possibility to toy with words in the same manner as fleck did, the best way out for a translator would probably be to tell the reader that he did do so, while using a stopgap as “thought exchange” in the text itself. thinking: things we do (but never alone) but as we speak of tankeutbyte in swedish, another, even more fundamental, trouble in translating fleck surfaces. the translation in swedish is actually quite inadequate – and this in a way that reveals a problem that remains hidden in english renditions of fleck’s basic ideas. the whole core of fleck’s terminology in german, the terms used to phrase the premises of the project, builds on the verb denken: denkstil, denkkollektiv, denkverkehr. it is consequently not built on the noun gedanke. this fact is actually a key to major points in his general argument. his preference for the verb-form is very salient, although he never hesitated to speak occasionally of gedankenaustausch for example – literally “exchange of thoughts” – instead of denkverkehr, as a matter of variatio sermonis. fleck’s terminology never went rigid. the occasional occurrence of alternative terms based on the noun-form only stresses the deliberateness of the choice to give priority to the verb-form in the core terminology. in order to perceive the significance of the verb-form, it is instructive to compare the challenge of translating fleck’s core terminology into english and swedish, respectively. whereas the english term “thought” may refer to an act as well as an immaterial entity, swedish – like german – offers a clear and unavoidable distinction between the verb, att tänka (the counterpart of zu denken), and the noun, tanke. this means that speaking of “thought style” and “thought collective” is in a way unproblematic in english. this is so by virtue of the fact that the words in english conceal the issue, which is not necessarily a good thing. in contrast to this, it matters crucially if one keeps or drops the pair of dots over the “a” when speaking of tänkestil and tänkekollektiv in swedish. most texts trying to convey fleck’s ideas in swedish are inadequate in this sense, leaving out the dots, speaking of tankestil and tankekollektiv. the 1997 translation of entstehung und entwicklung added the case of tankeutbyte to this pattern. at first these choices may appear obvious to swedish readers. the terms sound pretty natural, based on the noun-form. speaking, more adequately, of tänkestil, tänkekollektiv, and tänkeutbyte, may sound somewhat knotty until the ear has become used to the terms. but in fact there is nothing strange at all with such compounds, based on the verb att tänka. for example a common but somewhat old-fashioned word for “proverb” in swedish is tänkespråk. a more common term in everyday language – not quaint at all and quite fleckian in intent from the outset – is tänkesätt, which literally means “mode of thinking”. keeping the dots steady in place, it is easy to render fleck’s core terminology in a distinct and adequate way in swedish. but what about english? late in life, after leaving poland for israel, fleck actually attempted to get some of his ideas about a “comparative epistemology” phrased in english, a language he did not speak. (particularly in fleck [1960] 1986) it is thus hard to say whether the choices of words were nearly as deliberate as they were in german. but if they were, he and his assistants clearly preferred the unequivocally verb-based form – “thinking” – to the ambiguous term “thought”. denkstil and denkkollektiv became “style of thinking” and “community of thinking”. in the case of internal denkverkehr the english version of his message spoke of “mental intercourse”, alternatively “intra-communal exchange”. rendering the concept of external denkverkehr it actually applied the term “communication”, although alternately with “intercommunal exchange”. this is obviously in harmony with fleck’s consistent eagerness to deal with acts rather than objects – things that people do, rather than things that people have. avoiding to speak of “thought”, preferring the clear-cut gerund “thinking”, fits the pattern very well. the matter with the term “thought” was actually discerned the year after entstehung und entwicklung was published in 1935 by r. g. collingwood, the contemporary british thinker whom fleck probably had david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 16 most in common with. re-examining his own conception of history in general as “the re-enactment of past thought” in a manuscript, collingwood analyzed the equivocality of the word “thought”. he pointed out that it may refer to noēsis, the act of thinking, as well as to noēma, the object of thought. collingwood concluded that the task of writing history (and doing archaeology) ought to be seen as noēseōs noēsis, an act of thinking about an act of thinking (van der dussen 1994, xxxvii). the stress on understanding the thought in things done in the past – the intentions, the “point” in doing this or that (e.g. building a roman wall in northern britain) – did not mean that collingwood pointed towards some ethereal world above the everyday dealings of human beings in time and space. quite the contrary, as he made clear in his posthumously published the idea of history: what kind of things does history find out? i answer, res gestae: actions of human beings that have been done in the past. although this answer raises all kinds of further questions many of which are controversial, still, however they may be answered, the answers do not discredit the proposition that history is the science of res gestae, the attempt to answer questions about human actions done in the past. (collingwood [1946] 1994, 9) as collingwood made quite as clear in an autobiography from 1939, this attitude did in particular count for writing the history of human thought in a more narrow sense – the history of philosophy and science, or intellectual history in general. to understand e.g. the “thought” manifested in the act of phrasing the words in the dialogue parmenides was basically the same kind of challenge as to understand the point in the acts of having built a roman fort – although the former was a far more complex and demanding task in terms of the historian’s skills. the need to reconstruct the context in which such actions were done was far more challenging. just reading the words in the book was far from sufficient to understand the thought behind them, was collingwood’s key message – and he phrased it with an acerbic sense of humor that underlines his affinity to fleck as a thinker (see in particular collingwood 1939, 34-40). in collingwood’s greek and latin terms, it seems quite clear that fleck’s lehre intended to deal with noēsis as res gestae. the choice to build his core terminology on the verb denken is only one of many factors testifying to that. another crucial term in his german texts is tätigkeit, activity. fleck repeatedly used this word to indicate what the object of study within his “comparative epistemology” really was. he intended to study people doing things, situated in time and space – not non-human sets of ethereal things such as “ideas” or immaterial “texts”. this is instructively clear when he occasionally appears to be speaking of “objects of thought” with fixity over time. the most obvious case is his argument concerning urideen (“primeval ideas”). the whole point of the argument is here to stress that such ”ideas” are always in a state of flux, that they are never ”the same” in different contexts. what they really were at this or that moment in history is completely dependent on what thinking people were doing – actual people of flesh and blood, situated in specific contexts in time and space. to analyze the historical and social specificity of such contexts was a major task for a “comparative epistemology” in fleck’s sense (this in contrast to any form of epistemologia imaginabilis). there is clearly an affinity between fleck’s project and an anglophone tradition in intellectual history which has taken the cue from collingwood and brought the theme of thought as action even further by connecting its research program to the philosophy of speech acts. in particular j. l. austin’s how to do things with words (posthumously published in 1962) has been a steppingstone for analyzing past thought in terms of linguistic conventions and attempts of thinkers to intervene with linguistic “deeds” in their specific contexts in time and space. in particular the “cambridge school” in the history of political thought, with quentin skinner as a front figure, has attempted to identify illocutionary forces in philosophical texts in order to “get” the originally intended “points” in putting certain sets of words together (cf. skinner 1970, 1988, 2002). it is hardly bold to believe that fleck in such a project would have recognized kindred ways of perceiving and “working up” aspects of the world – a stimmung (“mood”) that would have made mutual understanding fairly easy. for example the theme of linguistic acts being dependent on, but also made possible by, socially and historically specific conventions – conventions also being challenged and transformed by linguistic intervention – would be fairly easy to translate into fleck’s analysis of the interplay between the usage of words and expectations created by ”schools and books”. on the other hand i must claim that fleck would have much to contribute to a critical self-reflection within this english speaking tradition. already in the interwar years fleck was much aware that authors’ intended meanings in texts are only one of many facets of thought as human tätigkeit, res gestae in history. there is an instructive corrective to a narrow focus on authors’ intentions to be found in fleck’s attempts to david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 17 shed light over the erratic dynamic of denkverkehr. a troublesome factor in the anglophone tradition is the habit to treat material artifacts within the technology of writing (in particular copies of books in print) as if they were oral speech acts, which they are clearly not. fleck was eager to analyze acts of readers, reading written material – people who were thus creating traffic in words and opening up new ways of perceiving and processing what is perceived, but doing so in an “authorless” way. such a possibility, to use fleck as a corrective, also points towards his most distinctive characteristic as a theorist of thought as res gestae. that is his persistent and ubiquitous stress on the tätigkeit of denken as something profoundly social. such a stress is in a way also present in for example quentin skinner’s theme about intellectual deeds being conditioned by historically specific social and linguistic conventions – a theme with obvious parallels in fleck’s lehre. but fleck’s focus is never limited to the individual intellectual “deed” in history. for him intellectual action is always something to be analyzed as social inter-action, and as such always tangled up in complex processes of interaction. even the loneliest, most isolated and eccentric thinker is doing something profoundly social when indulging in thought. for fleck “thinking” is the preeminently social form of action among all kinds of human activity: “das denken” is identified as “eine soziale tätigkeit katexochen”, which can never be “fully localized within the borders of an individual” (fleck [1935] 1980, 129). and when he applies this perspective to the kind of thought which in certain contexts functions as knowledge, he immediately also stresses the fundamentally social nature of the things we can do with words: this thing, knowing something [das erkennen], stands out as the most socially conditioned of all human activities, and knowledge [die erkenntnis] is the preeminently social formation, the social formation par excellence [das soziale gebilde katexochen]. already in the structure of language lies a compelling philosophy of the community; already in singular words are intricate theories given. whose philosophies, whose theories are these? (fleck [1935] 1980, 58; my translation) thought in general and science in particular at this point some readers may be protesting, as they now finally get a glimpse of the “fleck” they claim to know. hasn’t the most obvious thing about fleck been left out in the previous pages, namely that he was – above all – dealing with science? he didn’t do general intellectual history, so why would it be of any interest to see his project in parallel with the kind of analysis of classical political philosophy that scholars are doing at cambridge? hasn’t the fact that he was a theorist of science been left out of the picture? let me answer with a counterquestion: was he? did he ever say he was that? who says he was? obviously, i am not trying to deny that analyzing scientific thought was a central part of the task of fleck’s “comparative epistemology”. neither do i deny that the examples he invested most of his efforts in dealing with were fetched from natural science – in particular his own professional fields, medicine and microbiology. all this are matters of course. but we are here approaching a particularly troublesome aspect of the history of fleck’s reception in the wake of thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions, published in 1962. let me put my point in the form of a question phrased in terms of fleck’s own lehre: what theory are we as readers prepared to perceive in fleck’s historico-philosophical texts? what have we been conditioned to see by the influence of “schools and books”? i would say that probably the most harmful effect of kuhn’s book, always being there as a screen through which fleck’s writings are perceived, is the tendency to turn fleck’s attempt to initiate a vergleichende erkenntnistheorie into a mere and narrow “theory of science”, as something as restricted in its intentions as kuhn’s book was. this tendency is very plain to see in the translations of fleck in english and swedish. it is part and parcel of the problems with the distracted english paraphrase of entstehung und entwicklung from 1979. in the volume of essays titled cognition and fact from 1986 (eds. cohen & schnelle), much was dramatically improved – although denkverkehr was still rendered as “communication”. but the implicit dogma about fleck being first and foremost a forerunner to kuhn, and to the whole wave of science studies of the 1960s and 70s, was unmoved. this meant that the english in which fleck’s arguments were rendered became a procrustean bed in certain ways. although the swedish translation of entstehung und entwicklung from 1997 was far better than its english counterpart, a similar procrustean tendency became the major defect of the book. the swedish translation mainly renders wissen (knowledge, cognition) as if the original read wissenschaft, or rather “science” in the narrower sense that the term has in english. thus, when fleck speaks of a “field of knowledge” it becomes a “branch of science”. when he speaks of “the history of david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 18 knowledge” the phrase is delivered in swedish as “the history of science”. one of fleck’s sharpest thrusts against die spekulative erkenntnistheorie is turned into a vague mutter in swedish about the “theoretical theory of science” (fleck, uppkomsten och utvecklingen, 146; cf. entstehung und entwicklung, 50). this is a passage from a footnote – number 17 in both editions – but the displacement of meaning is revealing nevertheless. one may also wonder why theories wouldn’t be allowed to be theoretical – why fleck would bother to bicker about that. such a passage becomes unintentionally funny, whereas the german original invites the reader to smile in a pretty forceful way (invoking the theme of an epistemologia imaginabilis). in general the procrustean inclination in the swedish translation, the tendency to squeeze fleck’s text into a box of expectations to deal exclusively with science, is intimately linked to the earlier mentioned tendency to normalize him and to tame the playfulness in his language, making his argument far less fun to read. so, what is lost when the scope of fleck’s ambitions is narrowed down to the size of kuhn’s? paradoxically enough, probably the most important loss is the absence of contours around a point he apparently wanted to make about science. a crucial aim in making the knowledge production of modern science “researcheable” within a “comparative epistemology” was to bring science down to earth, to the mundane plane of human thinking in general. thus his lehre is an attempt to deal with human thought in general. fleck’s explicit pretention was to launch a way of examining any kind of human thinking. all the core concepts were (in sharp contrast to kuhn’s) explicitly designed to be able to apply to any kind of human thinking. thus, any kind of human thought would be possible to analyze in a comparative way. only by means of such an inclusive lehre would it be possible to treat modern science as nothing more or less than a version of the social activity (tätigkeit) called denken in general, although fleck cherished it as an in many ways marvelous and fruitful one. there was nothing that a priori separated out modern science as an elevated and privileged form of thinking, in spite of the fact that fleck really liked it – at least as long as science was humble and dynamic enough to make “room for the future” and was able to create a “democratic reality”. obviously, though, fleck invested his own major efforts in applying the concepts of his theory in analyzing scientific thought, mainly within medicine and microbiology. but it was important to his argument to also offer other forms of thought to compare science with, although such analyses never became more than scattered sketches. to deal with science in splendid isolation would have been at odds with the inner logic of the argument. fleck’s favorite example of non-scientific modes of thought became those in the world of fashion (see in particular fleck [1935] 1980, 141-142) he appears to have had quite a bit of fun writing about this, doing so in a playful way. in the world of fashion he was able to see a far-reaching set of parallels with the world of scientific thought. here were to be found certain historically specific ways of “seeing” and “working up” aspects of reality. here were to be found communities carrying (and being defined by carrying) certain styles of thinking and “seeing”. such communities were stratified in a complex way, providing patterns of intra-collective denkverkehr. in the center there was an esoteric kernel of inventive, free-minded trendsetters. around this a belt of well initiated, but fairly dogmatic, experts was formed. in the exoteric periphery the knowledgeable people trying be à la mode were to be found. fleck also made another point concerning science by forming the core concepts of a “comparative epistemology” in such a way that they would be applicable to any kind of thought. this had to do with the dynamics of intercollective denkverkehr. intellectual intercourse and traffic in words with other forms of thinking, foreign thoughtstyles in non-scientific thought collectives, was dealt with as a major factor of change and development within scientific thinking. one of the premises of fleck’s project was that one needs to have tools to analyze any kind of thought in order to analyze scientific thought, because science never lives a life of its own, retracted from interplay with other forms of thinking. a peculiar instance in which this is important has already been mentioned, namely the case in which an individual has become initiated in the thoughtstyles of more than one thought collective. the members of collectives such as those in the worlds of fashion or serology research are always participants in other thought-styles and thought-collectives as well. the sharp dresser can simultaneously be a dedicated sunday school teacher in his church, and be a skilled football coach, while also being a researcher in serology by profession. within such a person scientific, sports-related, religious, and fashion-related ways of seeing the world and acting in the world are welded together. in fleck’s view this is part of a dynamic that constantly changes the ways in which people are perceiving their world and intellectually “working up” the world they perceive. new options to “see” the world are opened up at the same time as others become shut off. in the case of science such processes sometimes, in serendipitous moments, lead to the kind of occurrences in the history of thought that we call useful knowledge, and to the intellectual compulsions we call “facts” (the ones that make initiated members david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 19 of a thought collective feel that “this can’t be in any other way”). something that fleck feared in the interest of the vitality of science was attempts to shut down of the dynamics of denkverkehr: dogmatic rigidity among experts and isolation from ordinary people’s interests in getting good means to deal with nature and reality. in order to be fruitful for humanity science should not retract from interplay with other forms of thinking, and experts within the esoteric kernels of scientific thought collectives should not lock themselves up in ivory towers. (in short he actually warned about most of the things thomas kuhn would celebrate between the lines in 1962) this was obviously one of the motives behind his eagerness to preach intellectual humility by means of undermining the epistemologia imaginabilis of conventional philosophical wisdom, providing historical and sociological arguments with a good share of playfulness and humor. as promoting intellectual tolerance was obviously a task at the center of his mission, fleck’s sense of humor was basically good-natured. his irony could be quite caustic, especially when tenets of neopositivism were brought into the line of fire. but the playful approach in his writing did never attain the tone of despise towards fellow human beings, or the pretention to be able to disclose dark truths about human thinking from a position above others, that for example have often been a trademark of intellectual traditions harking back to nietzsche. fleck’s writings are rather permeated with a forgiving sense of curiosity about the diversity of ways to perceive our world and about the possibilities that might be hidden in the vicissitudes of human thinking. in strict harmony with his analysis of the unpredictable dynamics of denkverkehr this attitude was revealed in such everyday things as what he felt could be expected of academic conferences. in a letter sent from lublin to wrocław in 1948 he gave air to his skepticism about the meaningfulness in squandering time by attending such gatherings, but added: but who knows: if people get together and start to shuffle words and sentences intensively, perhaps a new combination just happens, which may prove to be useful. perhaps it is not even noticed at once. someone takes it away and it will mature sometime somewhere. anyway such a marketplace is better than this cluttered desert we have here. (fleck 2011, 589)2 references austin, john langshaw. how to do things with words. london, oxford up,1962. cohen, robert s. & schnelle, thomas (eds.). cognition and fact: materials on ludwik fleck. dordrecht: reidel, 1986. collingwood, robin george. an autobiography. london, oxford up, 1939. collingwood, robin george. the idea of history, revised edition. oxford & new york: oxford university press, 1994. dussen, jan van der. ‘editor’s introduction’, in r. g. collingwood, the idea of history, revised edition. oxford & new york: oxford university press, 1994. fleck, ludwik. “crisis in science. towards a free and more human science” [1960]. in cohen & schnelle (eds.), cognition and fact: materials on ludwik fleck. dordrecht: reidel, 1986. fleck, ludwik. entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache: einführung in die lehre vom denkstil und denkkollektiv. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, [1935] 1980. fleck, ludwik. erfahrung und tatsache: gesammelte aufsätze (eds lothar schäfer & thomas schnelle). frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1983. fleck, ludwik. denkstile und tatsachen: gesammlete schriften und zeugnisse herausgegeben von sylwia werner und claus zittel. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 2011. fleck, ludwik. genesis and development of a scientific fact. (eds. thaddeus j. trenn & robert k. merton. translation: fred bradley & thaddeus j. trenn. forword by thomas s. kuhn.) chicago: university of chicago press, 1979. fleck, ludwik. uppkomsten och utvecklingen av ett vetenskapligt faktum: inledning till läran om tankestil och tankekollektiv. (translation: bengt liliequist) eslöv: brutus östlings bokförlag symposion, 1997. huizinga, johan. homo ludens: a study of the play-element in culture. boston, mass.: beacon press, [1938] 1955. 2 thanks to paweł jarnicki for translating from the polish original. david östlund – ludwik fleck as a theorist of thought as res gestae 20 jarnicki, paweł. ”on the shoulders of ludwik fleck? on the bilingual philosophic legacy of ludwik fleck and its polish, german and english translations”, the translator, 22:3, 2016, pp 271-286. kuhn, thomas s. the structure of scientific revolutions, 2. ed., enl. chicago: university of chicago press, [1962] 1970. ong, walter j. orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. london: methuen, 1982. östlund, david. “our preeminently social activity: ludwik fleck and thought in history”, ideas in history, vol. ii, 2007:3, pp. 9-44. skinner, quentin. ”conventions and the understanding of speech acts”, the philosophical quarterly, vol. 20, no. 79, april 1970, pp. 118-138. skinner, quentin. meaning and context: quentin skinner and his critics, edited and introduced by james tully. cambridge: polity, 1988. skinner, quentin. visions of politics. vol. 1, regarding method. cambridge: cambridge up, 2002. microsoft word 15olival layout 174 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 174-181 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access interview interview: olival freire jr.1 olival freire jr., born in jequié, bahia, brazil, in 1954, is a full professor of physics and history of physics at the federal university of bahia (ufba), brazil. he was a former president of the brazilian society for the history of science and former president of the commission for the history of modern physics of the international union of history and philosophy of science. having worked as secretary of the national council for science and technology at the brazilian ministry of science, technology and innovation during president dilma rousseff’s administration, and currently dean of the office for research, creation and innovation at ufba, and council member of the history of science society, olival freire jr.’s main research interests include the intersection between science and politics, the history of the foundations of quantum theory, the history of physics in brazil, and the role of history and philosophy of science in science teaching. interviewed by gustavo rodrigues rocha2 in april 2018 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.15 _____________________________________________________________________________ gustavo rodrigues rocha (grr): you have been interested since the very beginning of your academic and scientific career in the history of the foundations of quantum theory, beginning with your master’s thesis concluded in 1991 on the interpretations of quantum theory between 1927-1949, under the supervision of dr. amélia império hamburger, until your most recent book, the quantum dissidents: rebuilding the foundations of quantum mechanics 19501990, published in 2015. how and why was your attention first drawn to that topic? what fascinates you so much about the history of the foundations of quantum theory? 1 olival freire jr. is a professor of physics and history of physics at the federal university of bahia (ufba). address: institute of physics, rua basílio da gama, 6 salvador – ba – 40110-040 – brasil. e-mail: olival.freire@gmail.com 2 gustavo rodrigues rocha is a professor of physics and history of physics at the state university of feira de santana – uefs (brazil) and a visiting scholar at the university of california, berkeley (usa). address: universidade estadual de feira de santana – uefs, av. transnordestina, s/n, campus universitário (módulo 5), departamento de física (dfis), novo horizonte, feira de santana/ba, brazil, 44036-900. emails: grrocha@uefs.br and grrocha@berkeley.edu interview: olival freire jr. 175 olival freire jr.: i began university studying electrical engineering in 1972 and then halfway through the second year i changed to physics. this decision was influenced by the beauty, some times the mathematical beauty, of physical theories. thus since my early studies i have been attracted by the theoretical, conceptual, and mathematical side of physics. later on, though still at university, i realized that quantum physics did not fit into the classical physics theoretical framework and i also was aware of the controversy about the interpretation of quantum theory and its philosophical and even ideological overtones. all of this remained in the background of my mind. in 1978, i got my first undergraduate degree but i had become engaged in political activism against the military dictatorship and postponed taking a master’s degree for a few years. it was only around 1986 – 1987 that i began seriously to think about a master’s degree. at this time i had already decided to look for a masters in philosophy or history of science instead of a masters in physics. in this decision i was very influenced by the reading of a book on science and philosophy in the former ussr, written by the american historian of science, loren graham. this book was a revelation to me as it brought to the fore the existence of an ongoing controversy over the interpretation of quantum theory, among marxist physicists and philosophers, with strong components of conceptual aspects but also with philosophical implications. i took two courses at the federal university of bahia in 1987 prior to beginning my master’s degree at the university of são paulo. the first was about the history of the scientific thought, with felippe serpa, where we read from galileo to freud via newton, marx, and darwin. on this course i wrote a paper on the origins of newtonian mechanics. the second one was quantum physics i, with aurino ribeiro, where i was introduced to the full strength of the quantum controversy. on this course i wrote a short monograph on the interpretation of quantum mechanics by the soviet physicist vladmir fock. influenced by these readings and courses i took the decision in early 1988 to start a masters at university of são paulo – usp under amelia hamburger on the epistemological aspects of quantum mechanics. grr: david bohm’s scientific biography was the topic of your phd dissertation (1995). bohm seems to have been a figure within your research interests that somehow combines both of your earliest interests in science and politics. bohm was actively involved in communist organizations, having been exiled during the mccarthy era in us, as well as in the foundations of quantum theory, as bohm developed in the early 1950s his causal quantum theory program. how did you first come across bohm’s scientific biography and become interested in bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics? olival freire jr.: you may remember that bohm lived in brazil for three years in the early 1950s teaching at usp. he was then exiled in brazil having escaped mccarthyism as he had lost his position at princeton university. in addition, amelia hamburger had taken courses given by bohm and was interested in bohm’s later philosophical reflections on creativity. furthermore, while i was doing my master’s degree i became acquainted with alberto da rocha barros who had spent time with bohm in london in the late 1980s. we talked a lot about bohm’s later research program, about wholeness and implicate order and the subsidiary role geometry should play in this program. according to bohm and rocha barros algebraic and even more basic ideas should lead the way in this program instead of geometry. thus it was quite natural, considering my background interests in history, politics, philosophy and the quantum debates, to consider bohm and his ideas as a topic for research. furthermore, everything bohm interview: olival freire jr. 176 had written was in english, which presented fewer linguistic obstacles. however, as somebody trained in physics, i should say that i was never interested in bohm’s causal interpretation of quantum mechanics as i had always been attracted to the idea of overcoming deterministic descriptions in science. what attracted me to bohm’s causal interpretation was that i saw in it a good case to exploit the complexity of the production of science. it was a case where physics, philosophy, politics, ideology were inextricably intertwined. after i began my phd studies i also realized its value as a case of scientific controversy as through the work of john bell this controversy served to engender breakthroughs in our understanding of quantum theory. that is, it has been a fecund rather than a sterile controversy. grr: you have been using, at least since your 2009 paper, “quantum dissidents: research on the foundations of quantum theory circa 1970”, the very political expression “dissidents” to refer to those physicists such as david bohm who did not accept the shut-up-and-calculate attitude of post-war physics and wanted to involve themselves in the debate around the foundations of quantum physics. along the same lines, although from a different perspective, david kaiser published his thrilling book how the hippies saved physics (2011). what do you find most interesting about the generation of the hippie/dissident/outcast physicists in comparison with the founders of quantum physics? olival freire jr.: initially i used the term “quantum dissenters,” in a 2006 paper on the first experiments on bell’s theorem. “dissenter” was a term popper had used as early as 1982. in 2009 i began to use the term “quantum dissidents” in the title of this paper you mentioned. the term proved appealing as the journalist andreas trabesinger published an article in nature reporting my paper and quoting the term “quantum dissidents.” more recently the term gained certain traction as adam becker used it for a full section of his book, “what is real?”. i like the term because it has overtones referring to political dissidents in the 20th century, whose causes were eventually accepted. in the 2009 paper and in my 2015 book “quantum dissidents” i explored the metaphor citing the examples of martin luther king, nelson mandela, and luiz inácio lula da silva. at the time i was very impressed by the election of obama – the first president of the us from african-american background – forty years after martin luther king’s murder. now, regarding the generation of the 1960s and 1970s (bohm is from an earlier generation) my first remark is that the physicists who matured at those times did not live under the moral authority of the founding fathers of the discipline. in addition, the quantum dissidents were propelled by certain societal changes (the hippies, 1968, protests against the vietnam war) which enabled the physicists’ community to accept such themes. however, these dissidents still had to face the indifference of the discipline, or rather the stigma – according to bell – surrounding the hidden variable issue, i.e. the issue whether quantum mechanics was a complete theory or not. this was hard as their professional reputations were at stake. indeed some of their careers suffered lasting damage for their work on the foundations of quantum mechanics. thus they were notable for their independence of thinking and their resilience. grr: max jammer’s the philosophy of quantum mechanics (1974) was one of the first thorough attempts to chronicle the history of the foundations of quantum theory from its origin up to around the period jammer was writing his seminal book. your own work, the quantum dissidents (2015), seems to have taken up from around where jammer left his narrative, and expanded it covering the timeframe from 1950s to 1990s. what would be the interview: olival freire jr. 177 next step to move forward? a history of quantum computation/information? a history of quantum gravity, as actually now being pursued by alex blum and jürgen renn at the max planck institute for the history of science in berlin? what else? olival freire jr.: quantum dissidents should not be considered a kind of a follow-up to jammer’s philosophy of quantum mechanics because while the latter was an encyclopedic work covering almost all subjects concerning the interpretations of quantum mechanics, the former dealt with a more specific topic, namely how and when foundations of quantum mechanics as a topic for research moved from the margins of physics to its mainstream. consequently i chose people and episodes i considered influential in this process leaving aside topics of interest but not influential in my story, such as quantum logics and quantum optics. the history of quantum information and quantum gravity are very relevant for historical research nowadays. in the same direction, it would be interesting to have a follow-up of jammer’s book. we already have the compendium of quantum physics, edited by daniel greenberger, klaus hentschel, and friedel weinert. however, this work, useful as it is, is composed of short entries which are not necessarily historically informed. thus i am thinking of an encyclopedia or a companion volume. grr: the archive for the history of quantum physics (ahqp) was the direct result of the project “sources for the history of quantum physics” which began in the early 1960s directed by t. kuhn with the assistance of l. allen, p. forman, and j. heilbron – a very comprehensive collection of interviews, unpublished manuscripts, correspondences, and so on –, covering the history of quantum physics up to the early 1970s. more recently, c. lehner, j. renn, and m. scheffler advanced the quantum history project (qhp) at the max planck institute for the history of science which made available online the ahqp collection and added an enormous quantity of primary and secondary resources. what would be in your opinion the next big step regarding the empirical sources and archives for the history of quantum physics? olival freire jr.: the ahqp focused on physicists and debates till the mid 1930s. thus actors such as david bohm and hugh everett were not considered for interview. we have now a number of interviews which are deposited at the aip center for the history of physics. some of these interviews were made by myself, by joan bromberg, and by others. i think you are going to deposit the interviews you have done there. therefore an upgrade in this effort would be a nice idea. furthermore, we need to identify, collect, catalogue, and deposit papers from physicists who have been active since the 1950s. we have the david bohm papers at birkbeck college and rosenfeld papers in copenhagen but there is a conspicuous absence of papers by the late john bell. without doubt, we need a concerted effort to save these sources for later generations. in the past, in the 1960s, we had figures such as john wheeler supporting the ahqp project. today we need wider support than just the small community of historians of quantum mechanics to launch a similar project. grr: you edited with osvaldo pessoa jr. and joan bromberg in 2010 the jabuti prize awarded book, teoria quântica: estudos históricos e implicações culturais (quantum theory: historical studies and cultural implications), and published your most recent book, the quantum dissidents: rebuilding the foundations of quantum mechanics 1950-1990, in 2015. what’s next? what have you been working on more recently? interview: olival freire jr. 178 olival freire jr.: i am now working on an old project, a new biography of david bohm. this project was first thought of almost twenty years ago when basil hiley, bohm’s long-time assistant, dissatisfied with bohm’s biography by f. david peat suggested i write a second biography. hiley was dissatisfied because the biography did not pay enough attention to bohm’s scientific ideas, instead it had focused too much on the details of bohm’s personal life. we met each other at the university of são paulo at a workshop dedicated to david bohm and with michel paty we were both lunching at the physics institute when the suggestion was made. at that time the idea did not grab me as i had other plans at the time. i love reading biographies but i also feared writing one due to the difficulties intrinsic to this kind of historical work. then in 2015 when my quantum dissidents was published i was approached by the publisher to write a biography of one of these dissidents. i decided the time was ripe for the challenge and bohm was the natural candidate. grr: as an undergrad physics student in the 1970s and early 1980s, you lived during the brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), having moved earlier in 1969 from jequié to the capital of the state of bahia, in the middle of the so-called “years of lead” (1968-1974), the most violent and repressive period of the dictatorship. you soon got involved in the student movement and affiliated yourself to the communist party of brazil (pcdob) in 1973 to fight against the dictatorship. how do you think those earliest political experiences shaped your interests in and approaches to the history of science? olival freire jr.: my earliest passions were theories in science, particularly physical theories, and politics, which led me to an interest in history and philosophy. for years these interests marched in parallel without much interaction. only in the mid 1980s, when i decided to begin my master’s degree did these interests merge in my aspiration to take graduate courses in history and philosophy of science. thus i think my background in history, philosophy, and politics was an advantage for my studies and research. history of sciences is a highly interdisciplinary field requiring familiarity both with the science contents as well as with the contextual, that is historical, sociological, etc., aspects in which science is practiced. thus, while not planned in advance, i think my previous political activism brought something to my research in the history of science. grr: you have also been working on the history of physics (and science more broadly speaking) in brazil. do you think there would be any important lesson to the historiography of science that you may have learned over the years from studying the history of science in developing countries such as brazil? olival freire jr.: i have recently been working, on a more limited basis, with the history of physics in brazil around the world war ii and the cold war. with indianara silva we have published a paper in revista brasileira de história on the visit of arthur compton to brazil in 1941. this visit was well known among physicists and historians of physics but it was always strictly related to compton’s scientific interest in the research of cosmic rays. this was the main topic of work by the young team of brazilian physicists led by gleb wataghin in são paulo. we were making research archives in the us attentive to the relations between science and diplomacy in the context of the world war ii and found documentary evidence that compton’s trip was supported by the us as part of its foreign policy. thus, we have argued, in this episode, science and diplomacy were equal parts, which was so far unknown among us. some of my interview: olival freire jr. 179 students have written master’s theses on h. m. nussenzveig and the diffusion of quantum optics (climério paulo da silva neto) and on sergio porto and the uses of laser (walker santana). i have been working on the history of physics under the military dictatorship. some of this work has been done with antonio augusto videira and the late aurino ribeiro filho. josé eduardo clemente’s dissertation on the physics institute at federal university of bahia during the dictatorship was the first product in this direction. and last but not least, i have worked on the stay of david bohm in brazil in the 1950s. the lesson i would consider the most important is the challenge to frame science in the history of brazil, tout court, to quote an expression used by carlos ziller camenietzki when, 15 years ago, we attempted but eventually failed to write a collective work on science in brazilian history. this lesson is not unfamiliar to the historians who worked with the scientific institutions in the 19th and early 20th centuries, i am thinking of maria amelia dantes, silvia figueroa, margaret lopes, and ana maria ribeiro de andrade, among others. it is no novelty for those in fiocruz who work with the history of medicine in brazil. in conclusion we need more history of science in brazil, a history where science is framed in the history of brazil. grr: you helped to found in 2000 one of the most important graduate programs in brazil for the study of the history of science, i.e. the graduate program in history, philosophy and science teaching ufba/uefs, which is also unique as it is devoted to the research area on history and philosophy of science as applied to science education. could you please tell some more about the development and the importance of this graduate program? olival freire jr.: the creation of this program of graduate studies at ufba/uefs was favored by the expansion of programs dedicated to science teaching by capes, the brazilian agency dedicated to the evaluation and funding of the graduate studies in brazil. it was one of the first to be created in the new area of knowledge called “science teaching.” the singularity of our proposal was that it focused on the interactions among the fields of science teaching, history of science, and philosophy of science. we were not the first researchers in brazil to go in this direction, indeed my masters supervisor, amelia hamburger, worked in this approach and people in santa catarina were doing similar research. however, we were the first program to be explicitly dedicated to this interaction. in fact, we published our proposal in science & education contributions from history, philosophy and sociology of science and mathematics, which was the journal edited by michael matthews dedicated to this approach. in brazil we were strongly supported by most of the capes advisors who visited salvador, namely nilson machado, ubiratan d’ambrosio, marco antonio moreira, and arden zylbersztajn. they thought history and philosophy of science was part of the research in science education. the program began as a masters course but it grew rapidly and phds were included and it got the rating 5 from capes, which is not bad. however, i think times are changing. the program has stabilized but lacks punch to make it better. it is my view that this program needs an overhaul. and in the field of science education in brazil some want to dig a divide between history and philosophy of science, on the one hand, and science teaching, on the other hand. undoubtedly some good research in science education can be produced without contributions from history and philosophy but i am sure that the interaction among these fields can be beneficial for all. in the history of science pedagogy has become a true object of study, see for instance david kaiser’s works. in philosophy of science there is a full field dedicated to the practice of science. and most of the debates plaguing science education, such as interview: olival freire jr. 180 realism versus instrumentalism and students’ beliefs about the nature of science, or still the relations between science and religion, would be better informed if these issues are approached taking into account contributions from history and philosophy of science. in short, i regret the appearance of this divide, which had seemed to us to pertain to the past. grr: you have spent long stays abroad as postdoc and visiting scholar in institutions on both sides of the atlantic, such as the université paris diderot, paris 7 (1996-1997), mit (20042005), and harvard (2005). how would you compare, as someone having a perspective from outside both research centers, the european and the american approaches to the history of science? do you think there have been any differences in approaches to and trends in the historiography of science as developed on both sides of the atlantic? olival freire jr.: generalizations are always rather risky, but let me try to answer your question. on the french side, at least among the people i have interacted with, there is a strong tradition of merging history of science with philosophy of science, or rather more precisely, history of science with epistemology. furthermore, history of science is usually thought of from the perspective of history of concepts, scientific ideas, but this trend is not insensitive to the social dimensions of scientific practice. in this direction i am thinking about the kind of history of science developed at the former equipe rehseis nowadays sphère. more concretely, i am thinking of the work done by michel paty, olivier darrigol, karine chemla, jean-jacques szczeciniarz. on the other hand, i cannot frame everything done in france in history of science in this scenario, as the work done by dominique pestre cannot be included in this sketchy framework. in the same vein, patrick petitjean is part of the equipe sphère but his work on science and empire is more socially oriented. anyway i have the impression that in france there is always a tension regarding the philosophical assumptions taken by each approach to the study of science, while in the us i do not feel such a tension of the same strength. from my experience with scholars based in the us, i have the impression that they are more flexible in making a mix of history of science as a strictly historical discipline but very influenced by sociology and philosophy of science. i am thinking of the work of people such as paul forman, david kaiser, alexei kojevnikov (now in canada), joan bromberg, peter galison, and sam schweber. again, this is very rough view, an impressionistic view, about differences among the kinds of history of science being produced in these countries. grr: thank you so much. references freire jr., o. tenório, robinson m. 2001. a graduate programme in history, philosophy and science teaching in brazil. science & education 10 (6): 601-608. freire jr., o. 2003. a story without an ending: the quantum physics controversy 1950-1970. science & education 12 (5-6): 573-586. freire jr., o. 2004. the historical roots of “foundations of quantum physics” as a field of research (1950-1970). foundations of physics 34 (11): 1741-1760. freire jr., o. 2005. science and exile: david bohm, the cold war, and a new interpretation of quantum mechanics. historical studies in the physical and biological sciences 36 (1): 1-34. interview: olival freire jr. 181 freire jr., o. 2006. philosophy enters the optics laboratory: bell’s theorem and its first experimental tests (1965-1982). studies in history and philosophy of modern physics 37: 577-616. freire jr., o. 2009. quantum dissidents: research on the foundations of quantum theory circa 1970. studies in history and philosophy of modern physics 40: 280-289. freire jr., o. 2015. the quantum dissidents: rebuilding the foundations of quantum mechanics 1950-1990. berlin: springer, 356p. freire jr., o.; pessoa jr., osvaldo (org.); bromberg, joan (org.). 2010. teoria quântica: estudos históricos e implicações culturais. 1. ed. campina grande: eduepb e livraria da física, 454p. osnaghi, stefano; freitas, f. h. a.; freire jr., olival. 2009. the origin of the everettian heresy. studies in history and philosophy of modern physics 40: 97-123. pessoa jr., osvaldo; freire jr., o.; greiff, alexis de. 2008. the tausk contoversy on the foundations of quantum mechanics: physics, philosophy and politics. physics in perspective 10 (2): 138-162. microsoft word 4amato layout 10 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 10-17 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2018 – this is an open access article idtc dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education knowledge within anxiety andrea amato1 abstract: modern epistemology is in the peculiar position of retaining its trust in man’s ability to acquire knowledge without being capable of specifying the reasons for our gnosis success. popper was the first to state that any conclusion concerning the possibility or impossibility of knowing is a transcendental statement and he states, also, that man reaches knowledge while trying to guess. in my opinion, we know things because we assume to have always been aware of them, in the sense that some form of immediate awareness has promptly enabled us to perceive them, identify them, use them. but one needs to ascertain whether the reason is the most suitable faculty to ensure the positive development of knowledge. at last, kuhn claims the impossibility of comparing different theories. but if we establish a comparison between theories in terms of their complexity, then we must admit that there occurs some progress. keywords: epistemology; psychology; knowledge; awareness; metaphysics received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 9 september 2018. accepted: 27 september 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. __________________________________________________________________________ the reasons for the success of knowledge modern epistemology is in the peculiar position of retaining its trust in man’s ability to acquire knowledge without being capable of specifying what role reason plays with reference to the other faculties, that is without fully explaining the reasons for our gnosis success. popper (popper 1972) was the first to state that any conclusion concerning the possibility or impossibility of knowing is a transcendental statement and, echoing kant (kant 1986), he states that man reaches knowledge while trying to guess. 1 andrea amato [orcid: 0000-0001-5896-9525] is a phd candidate at the university of bari. address: piazza umberto i, n.1 – 70121 bari, italy. e-mail: andrea.amato2@tin.it knowledge within anxiety andrea amato 11 that does not prevent popper from trusting man’s rationality, though with a peculiar view which allows him to have “irrational faith in the reasonable attitude” (popper 1972, 605). he adds, also, that “empirical knowledge”, including “scientific knowledge”, “consists in guessing attempts, and that many such attempts are unlikely (that is their probability in succeeding equals zero), though they may be well corroborated” (popper 1995, 412-413). henceforth, the provision whereby “the phenomenon of knowledge is doubtless the greatest miracle in the universe” (popper 1975, 17) does not stop popper from retaining faith in it, though such faith is supported by rational methodology. lakatos goes even further, prompting popper into using “conjectural metaphysics linking corroboration to likelihood”, in order to include “an inductive conjectural principle” “within rationality” (lakatos 1996, 204). however, also in this case, the problem of distinguishing between what is rational and what is irrational is still crucial, regardless of the specific assessment criteria one wishes to use. the issue needs to be addressed if we want to explain why our cognitive activity is successful. lakatos does not wish to elude the issue, nonetheless, he finds popper’s “positive solution” inadequate (lakatos 1996, 218). so, if popper states that “we can justify the choice of certain theories in light of their corroboration, namely in light of the present state of the rational discussion over rival theories in terms of their likelihood”, in lakatos’s opinion this analytic principle should be coupled with a synthetic one “providing estimates of likelihood” (lakatos 1996, 216). also kuhn considers “impenetrable” the manner in which the individual manages to produce a paradigm and a method to “organize the collected data” (kuhn 1995, 117), whilst not doubting that it does happen. on the other hand, feyerabend urges to consider the play between the sources of knowledge and advises us “to be rational without making the mistake of believing that man could and should improve himself only through rational planning” (feyerabend 1973, 142). consequently, it is no surprise that, when popper rightly points to the need to dismantle “the idol of certainty”, on the grounds that “it hinders not only the boldness of our issues, but also the rigour of our check-up tests” (popper 1995, 311), in the eyes of later epistemologists, such need seems to contradict popper’s recurrent trust in man’s reasonableness and in scientific progress, as it does not clarify the limitations and the role of reason, leaving knowledge without valid foundations. lakatos’s methodological perplexities (lakatos 1996) thus turn into a clear request for a new type of anthropology on the part of feyerabend, who believes the rational-critical approach is debilitating, given that “theory appears to suffocate imagination and to drain all sources of speculation” (feyerabend 1973, 93-94). it is essential to counter this unilaterally rational conception of the man with alternative activities, such as playing, summoning the whole of man, including his feelings. owing to such diverse positions, there is the need for an analysis of the foundations of knowledge, namely of the reasons why we are so successful in our cognitive activity, in light of the fact that none of the mentioned authors has cast doubts that science does, indeed, reach some form of success. if success is reached, then it should be possible to identify and appraise that success. popper wonders why we use “transcendental universal laws” and answers it is due to two reasons: a) “because we need to”, as there is no “pure experience”; b) because “a theoretician is a man who wishes to explain experiences” (popper 1995, 481). in line with popper’s words, we too can say that we are successful because we need to of it and that we find explanations because we wish to and we can explain. the issue is linked to the relation between man and novelty. in my opinion, novelty exists because we trust our ability to understand what is new, hence it is really new only when it is accepted and it is considered at some stage controllable by man, that is when we reduce it to a problem manageable by man. of course, such trust would be faith or free will if during the history of each one and of mankind it had not proven itself effective. in particular, we start from the assumption that between man and the world knowledge within anxiety andrea amato 12 there is a potential relationship, and, in any case, we constantly find that the world stands as a usable set for man. such relation and usage consequently imply there is a human ability besides the practical one, namely a theoretical one. being and cohabiting with the world is a need we have, it is necessary for our survival, hence we need success. nonetheless, the number and quality of successful cognitive instances rely on man’s willingness to have an open attitude, an attitude that shows itself as a tendency to establish the greatest number of possible relationships. the same trust underpinning success exists in relation to knowledge, to our ability to know too. once again, we can say: we know things because we assume to have always been aware of them, in the sense that some form of immediate awareness has promptly enabled us to perceive them, identify them, use them. moreover, that assumption is not totally unsound, given that man possesses faculties such as intuition, understanding and formal logic, which identify with things and take possession of them. basically, man improves and distinguishes the faculties he possesses, partly and wholly for genetic reasons, through constant practice involving his surroundings. as a consequence, man did not wonder from the outset (nor do it children) whether he would succeed or not in knowing the world; he operates in the world and knows it (or thinks he knows it). from man’s point of view, rationality is something a priori which finds an explanation in the need to establish relations with the world. the logical and conceptual tools man’s gradually acquired will allow our world knowledge to reach increasingly deeper results, yet this is not a mechanical and automatic process; the degree of results also depends on man’s level of decisiveness and perseverance. beyond subsistence, knowledge is an extravagance and man decide he can afford it. however, also in the case of theoretical knowledge, trust in itself, assumed in an a priori manner, persists and is strengthened only because it proves to be effective, actual, checkable. after all, man is aware of his life continuity and hence he can verify how adequate his mental and physical resources are, including his cognitive ones. in addition, man goes from the need for stability and that for innovation; such dialectic is at the base of any cognitive development. the role of reason however, at this point, one needs to ascertain whether the reason is the most suitable faculty to ensure the positive development of knowledge and, should that be the case, one needs to understand what role and what place we assign to reason. feyerabend (feyerabend 1973) advises us to consider man in his wholeness and to recognize what contribution the other faculties can offer, even from the point of view of knowledge. in principle, such advice is appropriate and fair and should be welcomed. but, one should dispel the prejudice whereby reason is itself self-sufficient or, even worse, it deliberately excludes the intervention of other faculties. in fact, in order to relate to the world, at least initially, reason must necessarily rely on the other human faculties. for example, it may persistently and accurately repeat an action only if it is supported by will; yet again it may establish a wider range of relations with the world only if it is supported by an exploratory inclination, that will soon turn into desire; or it engages in tasks that are not urgent and not promptly useful because potential success procures it delight and selfcomplacency. the suffocating of all these psychological relationships is, thus, a decision on man’s part, that in no way complies with the ordinary course of reason. overall, reason has a partial position within the whole of human actions, as not everything is performed reasonably or consciously, and, indeed, many actions are a consequence of pre-conscious, unconscious and subconscious aptitudes. knowledge within anxiety andrea amato 13 nevertheless, in lakatos’s words, “the man who demarcates is willing to recognize that expressed knowledge is only the tip of an iceberg, yet it is precisely in this small, emerging tip of human activity that rationality lies” (lakatos 1996, 290). moreover, laudan (laudan 1979) says that, alongside j. s. mill, we may agree that knowledge must not aim at completeness. however, the knowledge does follow such an approach, thus, it must be consciously supported. given such aporia, then what is man’s basic task? it seems to be reaching the truth and, indeed, man always aims at universal knowledge and even when he does not aim at it deliberately, he inevitably gives his knowledge such universal meaning. however, man soon finds out the illusory nature of his ambition and the failure, which is more or less partial, directs all attention on to man, posing crucial questions on his fallibility, on the motivations of such fallibility, on the nature and conditions that determine mistakes, on the possible psychological and cognitive remedies, on man’s real abilities. truth, taken as a conscious scope, then turns into an ideal or a transcendent entity that may have both a metaphysical and scientific foundation. in fact, the truth is an outcome suiting man’s convictions and his level of world knowledge. in order to this, cognitive methods and logic account for the adequacy of knowledge so far reached. in general, we aim at acquiring a sufficient and plausible explanation of phenomena in such a way that they are controllable and culturally objective. henceforth, if these are overall the place and the role of reason, then one must establish what is meant by adequate, plausible and suitable knowledge. the basic problem with knowledge, in terms of the correspondence between a theory or a notion and experience, is that put forward by kant (kant 1986), namely whether it is possible to reach some form of knowledge or notion capable of including in itself all the countless, potential instances offered by experience. having assumed that the total task cannot be fulfilled, we must explore under which conditions knowledge may be considered rational, that is linked to known and foreseeable experiences and linked to them in a nonarbitrary manner. man is endowed with theoretical thinking, namely of thought that to some extent is abstract and unrelated to the world. as lakatos (lakatos 1996) and kuhn (kuhn 1995) state, by means of theoretical thinking, facts are given an interpretation even before being observed. nevertheless, it is also true that the basic feature of human thought is that of endowing itself with twofold methods and principles; in that case, theoretical thinking is coupled with intuitive and empirical thinking. any unilateral approach is excessive and sooner or later it either prompts or reactivates the opposing principle, which acts as a balancing element. the best thing is to establish an accurate dialectic method between opposing principles. this attempt pertains to self-awareness. it is a fact that man is capable of both theoretical and empirical thinking, and deductive and inductive logic, and so on. therefore, it is impossible to ascertain absolutely whether theory comes before facts or vice versa, or whether thought must necessarily be prompted by experience or it may give a meaning to experience, bringing it somehow to life. the two processes are both possible and are alternatively activated, but it is crucial to establish a contact between them. of course, science tends to place theoretical thinking before and to let it prevail over facts, yet that is not in itself hindrance as long as facts are revisited. a theory that aims at being completely independent of facts would be arbitrary, consequently, whatever representation of reality requires corroboration by facts. furthermore, whilst comparing theories, one finds that all theories try both to objectify themselves and their interpretation of other theories, while trying to objectify their interpretation of experience and their interpretation of the empirical conclusions of other theories. in other words, a theory tries to convey a non-explicitly a priori representation of the world. when it ensues from critical and self-critical practice, the process whereby knowledge is objectified distinguishes itself from the merely practical and dogmatic process of making the world knowledge within anxiety andrea amato 14 objective. besides, to put it in popper’s words, only “an isolated statement on the world … would, indeed, be beyond discussion”; yet a theory becomes isolated not only, as held by popper, if it does not “refer to its link with any other object” (popper 1972, 340), but also if it does not match a wider conceptual framework, either internal or external to the given theories. however, by and large, a theory is always synthetic, whether it refers to empirical provisions, it confronts itself with practical applications and consequences, or it reorganizes a logical process of inductive and deductive nature. it follows that a theory, generally, encounters facts. nevertheless, a real and full revisiting of those facts is accomplished when theoretical thinking clashes with the problems linked to experience or to the experiment, or to another theory, namely when the reality opposes some form of resistance to the theoretical interpretation that has been given to it. moreover, the man may radically change the experiment beyond the actually observed data by means of laboratory techniques or resorting to virtual devices. in that case, the scientific law is more precise because it has to confront itself with a wider range of instances, obtaining an advantageous proliferation of experiences in order to reach the favourable outcome, which feyerabend looks for within the proliferation of theories. at the same time, one must avoid a science that is totally virtualised or dominated by mathematical processes and which makes its own check-up tests, rather than vary and increase the tests that it really observes. a similar occurrence would open the way to a form of ideologically dominated science. the impossibility of establishing the sequence of events and theories has been mentioned, yet one must point out that it does not mean doing without the differences between “observational terms” and “theoretical terms”, or between a “discovery context” and “justifying context”, as feyerabend maintains (feyerabend 1973, 85-86). my statement whereby the outcome of research is a synthesis of these two elements does not imply that the outcome does not follow a dialectic relation between the two elements. an agreement stating the synthesis is, indeed, preceded by a reflection on facts and on ourselves, on our actions and on our results, through a detaching thought reflecting, first distinctly and then in correlation, on themselves and on facts. thinking in itself tends towards infinity and consequently tends to universalise the extent of its outcomes, yet this very process of extending results, which in some cases is arbitrary, compels it to confront itself with the many observable or supposable instances. infinity, being a tendency, it involves specularly both the theorizing and the testing that it undergoes to it, hence, as popper (popper 1995) states, the utmost exercise of man’s will concerns the decision over what should be the end-point of logical-experimental testing. it is with reference to this aspect that man prevails over facts and controls himself. if a dialectic relation between thinking and facts is necessary, how can it really come into being, how does it come into being in temporal terms? it is a shared view that a feature of science would be its ability to disentangle itself from the immediacy of a prompt answer. for example, popper underlines the difference between the scientist and “the practical action man”, pointing out that the latter “must always choose between more or less defined options”, an instance that never occurs with the theoretical man. starting from this assumption he comes to a conclusion (a rather unacceptable one, in my opinion) that among the many practical possibilities linked to a theory “it is not worth worrying because we cannot do anything about it: they are beyond our reach” (popper 1975, 42-43). kuhn shares this position concerning the difference between theory and practice when he states that “the scientist does not have to choose problems because they require urgent solution” (kuhn 1995, 198). in fact, the distinction does not only concern science and praxis, but also, in broader terms, theoretical thinking, practical thinking and their relationship with praxis. the positions so far described are true in part, because they inform us on the different relations that man’s several activities establish with life and man’s history, a relation that may be more or less immediate. knowledge within anxiety andrea amato 15 furthermore, these positions suitably identify different temporal dimensions of thinking. nevertheless, what does a similar description of the relationship with the reality entail? it is now clear that the relation between thought and the reality requires a twofold approach on man’s part. on the one hand, the man places himself before the world with his bundle of ideas and logical forms, so that he interprets reality (on the basis of his already established approach) rather than describe it. on the other hand, the man encounters novelty and problems and with them he initially establishes identifying relations, through intuition, understanding, processual logic. the relationship with the reality is real and checkable precisely because it starts on that double basis, which allows man both to find his place in the world and to recognize the world as such, without losing himself in it. thus, the detaching of theoretical thinking, which may be either preliminary or subsequent, is not a separation, yet it requires a relation that either follows a previous relationship with the reality or in any case involves revisiting the reality. a long temporal process that should not aim at a synthetic frame would be a purely mental and arbitrary exercise. knowledge and consciousness as popper points out, the detaching of theoretical thinking is, thus, linked to the possibility of carrying out a “critical debate of rival theories” (popper 1975, 110-111) in a more profound way than we do in practical life. laudan requires, hence, that this critical practice to extend on the scientist’s part to include the “philosophy of science” whence theory comes from, since “it is unavoidable that every description on part of a scientific historian be coloured by the way he perceives how science operates”. (laudan 1979, 196). however, that does not always occur. that is precisely the point: both popper’s (popper 1995) and laudan’s (laudan 1979) requests somehow refer to the man having to take a decision. as mentioned, popper (popper 1995) underlines that the arrest of the controls (including exchanges between theories) depends upon man’s choice. there is no doubt that science itself cannot do without crosstheory testing, consequently, it cannot avoid critical exercise, but its intensity relies on ourselves. moreover, critical exercise concerning one’s own theoretical framework and/or that of others does not necessarily entail a similar critical activity with regards to our cultural and metaphysical framework. in other words, theoretical critique distinguishes itself from the self-awareness of our psychological and philosophical substratum and that entails taking a further decision. henceforth, the detaching from the reality no doubt is a feature of theoretical thinking, but if it does wish to be productive and it does not want to degenerate into a process of total separation, either before or after it has to re-establish a relationship with the reality and with self-awareness. knowledge entails transforming the very world it represents and conceptualises, as well as transforming itself and, thus, it assumes a critical and self-critical revision of the being we have known. at this point let us tackle another problem raised by popper (popper 1975), namely that of how theories and ideas, in turn, affect our conscience. an original conscience relating to the world does not (originally, we only have a genetic framework and the inclination to explore). in fact, the original conscience is generated in the close contact with the outer world. nonetheless, it is also true that we constantly face the world with a unifying conscience and with a conscience that we constantly unifying. at the same time, our psychological products (which are also affected by our conscience) operate upon a unified conscience and, to varying degrees, affect it establishing a dialectic relation. by contrast, one may say that precisely such distinction between ideas or concepts and unified conscience bilaterally requires a mutual relation, almost between two objective knowledge within anxiety andrea amato 16 entities, the objective self and objectified thought. the twofold objectifying process turns into a subjective one exactly because it has to be unified through an achieving consciousness process, which, in turn, settles as an objective result that is now unified and turned into a synthesis. in order for theoretical thinking to be such (namely to be something we acquire, and we can be aware of constantly and freely), as well as for theoretical thinking to play the role of a critical device, it must necessarily undergo the process whereby its activities are made objective and subjective. yet, the free re-evocation aimed at critical practice is an opportunity we have and it entails our decision and our determination. in a nutshell, one can say that our mental and psychological activity reaches an objectifying process, though it is not unaffected by whether it is or not coupled and corroborated by critical and self-critical practice, that is necessarily linked to our willingness and to our decision-making ability. the comparison between theories and the scientific progress furthermore, as such approach makes our ideas and thoughts comparable and it makes linkable also our ideas with our thoughts, hence it opens the way to the solution of the problem of comparing different scientific research traditions. instead, some epistemologists deny that is possible. let’s take kuhn as an example, according to whom the impossibility of comparing different theories has several causes: the “arbitrary element consisting of historical and personal incidents” (kuhn 1995, 23) underpinning knowledge; the impossibility of ascertaining “whether or to what extent a specific theory suits facts”, so that between two theories one may only find which one “better suits facts” (kuhn 1995, 179) (yet how?); the fact that choosing among different theories is based on a set of values and this entails lack of communication among “those who purport immeasurable theories” (kuhn 1995, 238 239). also feyerabend mentions “several deviations from the right and rather boring path of rationality” in real science. moreover, regardless from that, given the limiting nature of the notion of “conceptual continuity”, one has to renounce the comparison between differing theories as it is only possible to discover the “inner inconsistencies” of a theory (feyerabend 1973, 112-113). yet, would such inner consistency of a theory not refer to a dialectic? on the contrary, laudan maintains that “research traditions existing at a given time” may be organized “according to the progress they achieve”, “although … they are utterly immeasurable in terms of what they purport with reference to reality” (laudan 1979, 174). one may object to kuhns’s considerations (kuhn 1995) stating that the unavoidable incidents within knowledge tend to be overcome as knowledge itself leads to a stabilizing process of both oneself and of one’s knowledge. likewise, though being assumed in an a priori and subconscious manner, values try to justify themselves and the consequently assumed behaviours, especially if one engages himself in comparing values. as a consequence, the correspondence to facts is no longer arbitrary because it is inferred from a dialectic relation between theories and between theories and facts. such matching may be measured in terms of complexity, namely in terms of accountable facts or number of features of a single fact explained, and, above all, owing to the inner and outer consistency of such complex explanations. with regards to feyerabend’s quotation (feyerabend 1973), one should also mention that a complex theory, that is one capable of including in its framework parts of contrasting theories, acknowledging their partial validity and contributing to better explaining some of their intuitions, does not exclude or preclude prejudicially rival theories. at most, as feyerabend (feyerabend 1973) himself points out with reference to a comparison between knowledge within anxiety andrea amato 17 classical theory on physics and relativism, a complex theory must also exclude and reject only some theories or parts of them. moreover, when at one point there occurs a shift in the beliefs underpinning the different scientific theories, at some stage, we become aware of the shift, consequently also their stated immeasurability, be it wholly or partially, still derives from some type of measurement and of comparison between different theories. the same decision concerning their immeasurability and our statement on it ensue from their initial assessment, rather than from a prejudicial rejection of the rival theory. only when we experience and unconsciously identify with a belief, a viewpoint, a theory, we never submit it to a preliminary analysis and a subsequent critique. by contrast, the conscious and critical immeasurability is already a form of comparison. at the basis of the notion of the immeasurability of rival theories, there is, however, the assumption that every theoretical framework includes metaphysical element, which cannot be compared. then lakatos (lakatos 1996) is right when he states that more time is needed to decide which theory is the best one and the most progressive one; from my point of view, more time is needed to sieve the ideological elements mixed within a theory. with reference to the notion of immeasurability, as lakatos holds, history is a better judge than popper’s method of falsifiability. indeed, history lets different ideologies flow over time, each one establishing a link both with its direct and previous rivals, be it even just the immediately preceding ones, so that every ideology strives to justify itself and disrepute the others, and, in order to do so, it compares itself to the others and estimates them. in other words, there comes into being a unique historiography (not a single historiography), which, though acknowledging gaps between cultures, methods and contents, seeks to introduce some form of meta-language on the basis of which man’s whole history may be unified, synthesizing within a unique framework the philosophical debate, whether it has been completed or it is underway. moreover, the passing of time tests the assumptions underlining different ideologies, hence it naturally purifies theories of their ideological element. lastly, if we establish a comparison between theories in terms of their complexity, both with reference to the explanation of reality and to the degree of theoretical expansion, then we must admit that there occurs some progress and that this cannot avoid affecting the other metaphysical aspects that a theory inevitably includes. just like our conscience affects the products of thinking, then theoretical progress reflects upon the historically acknowledged metaphysical theories. a further complex theory, indeed, involves a revision of ideologies and challenges them into being more complex, that is more apt at establishing a greater number of relations with facts and convictions. references feyerabend, paul karl. 1973. against method. milan: lampugnani-nigri. feyerabend, paul karl. 1982. how to be a good empiricist. rome: borla. kant, immanuel. 1986. kritik der reinen vernunft. turin: utet. kuhn, thomas. 1995. the structure of scientific revolutions. turin: einaudi. lakatos, imre. 1979. demonstrations and confutations. milan: feltrinelli. lakatos, imre. 1996. the methodology of scientific research programmes. milan: il saggiatore. laudan, larry. 1979. the scientific development. perspectives for a theory. rome: armando. popper, karl raimund. 1972. conjectures and confutations. bologna: il mulino. popper, karl raimund. 1975. objective knowledge. rome: armando. popper, karl raimund. 1995. the logic of scientific discovery. turin: einaudi. 7 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 07-19 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra1 ricardo batista dos santos2 abstract: this article offers a discussion of duhemian analysis of newton's method in the principia considering both the traditional response to this analysis (popper et alii) and the more recent ones (harper et alii). it is argued that in general scholium to the principia, newton is not advocating what duhem suggests in his best-known criticism, but he is proposing something very close to the establishment of a logical priority of physics over metaphysics, a familiar thesis defended by the french physicist himself. keywords: pierre duhem; newton; universal gravitation; newtonian method; principia received: 02 april 2017. reviewed: 11 may 2017. accepted: 30 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.03 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction pierre duhem is often remembered as a critic of the newtonian method. he was one of the first to undertake a more detailed logical analysis of isaac newton's masterpiece, mathematical principles of natural philosophy (1687), and to point out some inconsistencies in the claims of the famous scientist about his method. since then, duhem's criticism was followed by several well-known philosophers of science, such as karl popper, imre lakatos, paul feyerabend, among others. but it would be a mistake to think that duhemian analysis of the principia's method is limited to these more critical considerations. duhem also carried out a positive analysis of this treatise, arguing that the newtonian physical system unveiled a new and fruitful way of conceiving physical theories, inspired by the desideratum of independence of physics from metaphysics. this “positive analysis”, however, was often overshadowed by his critical statements. 1 eduardo salles o. barra is a professor in the department of philosophy at the federal university of paraná ufpr. address: rua dr. faivre, 405 – 6º andar – ed. d. pedro ii – curitiba – pr, brazil – cep 80060-140. email: eduardosobarra@gmail.com 2 ricardo batista dos santos is a phd candidate in the department of philosophy at the federal university of paraná ufpr. address: rua dr. faivre, 405 – 6º andar – ed. d. pedro ii – curitiba – pr, brazil – cep 80060-140. e-mail: ricardobat2000@gmail.com duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 8 thus, the objective of this paper is to highlight the positive duhemian analysis of newton's method from the confrontation with some historical studies on the methodology of the principia. more specifically, the chief aim of this paper is to show that, although duhem's criticisms of the newtonian method are challenged by current studies, such disputes have little impact in his positive analysis; on the contrary, in some cases they even reinforce it. in order to achieve the goal here set out, we first will present an overview of the principia and duhem’s critique, especially those aimed at newton's pronouncements in the general scholium. next, we will present objections to the duhemian critique from four different authors. finally, we will offer the aforementioned positive analysis, in conjunction with recent studies of the methodology of the principia. as we intend to show, recent interpretations of newton's methodological pronouncements in the general scholium suggest a reorientation of the interpretation of this text in the direction of the positive conclusions of duhem. the principia and duhem’s critique to the newtonian method in the principia, isaac newton presents one of the most celebrated and successful physical theories ever conceived, the theory of universal gravitation. this theory emerged with the goal of solving the famous two chief world systems problem, that is, the problem of deciding between the geocentric and the heliocentric world systems (harper 2011, 2). astronomical observations at that time reported that planets moved in oval orbits obeying some well-established regularities; however, these observations did not provide any conclusive empirical evidence to determine whether the earth or the sun should be considered the real center of these motions. kepler had suggested that identifying the cause of planetary motions could put an end to this old controversy and, therefore, one of the objectives of the principia was to determine this cause (harper 2011, 11). several hypotheses had already been formulated at the time. of course, there was the aristotelian hypothesis of the celestial orbs. yet most thinkers agreed that this hypothesis did not fit the parameters of the new science. alternatively, there was the hypothesis of a magnetic force exerted by the sun, espoused by kepler; there was borelli's attractive hypothesis; there was also the hypothesis of mechanical waves, suggested by hooke; and there was the popular hypothesis of descartes, by which the planets would be immersed in an ether that moves like a vortex of matter, driving them in its motion. in the principia, newton did not ignore these varied hypotheses. nevertheless, he sought to determine the cause of planetary motions from a rigorous and, as far as possible, non-speculative procedure. based exclusively on the phenomena established by experience, he concluded that the cause of these motions was an "attractive force" among all matter; a force that manifested itself mainly among celestial bodies of great mass (prop. 7, book iii). newton thus concludes that the force of gravity we observe on the earth's surface is a universal phenomenon, and manifests itself among all bodies and particles. it would be thanks to this force that planets are continually deflected from their rectilinear motions and obey the regularities observed by astronomers. the cause of planetary motion, therefore, is the "universal gravity." and since newton showed this force to be proportional to the quantity of matter of bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distances between them, it follows that the center of the system of the world is very close to the center of the sun. therefore, the most adequate representation of the system of the world is the heliocentric and not the geocentric system (prop. 12, book iii). from the brief introduction of the principia outlined above, it is possible to see that newton, at one time, rejected the popular cartesian vortices hypothesis, and offered an unprecedented solution to the problem of the system of the world. however, perhaps even more significant, he presented a new mode of inquiry, a mode followed by a rigorous procedure from “effects” to “causes”, or from “phenomena” to theory. both in his preface to the first edition of the principia and in roger cotes’s preface to the second edition, as well as in the acclaimed general scholium, one can see the purpose of newton in highlighting this new mode of inquiry by which his theory is constructed. in the first preface, he manifests the hope that "the principles set down here will shed some light on either this mode of philosophing or some truer one” (newton 1999, 383). in the preface to the second edition, the editor roger cotes called newton's method an "incomparably best way of philosophizing" (newton 1999, 386). and in the general scholium, newton provides a brief description of this "incomparably best" method. it is worth transcribing this memorable passage: duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 9 i have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for this properties of gravity, and i do not feign hypothesis. for whatever is not deduced from phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypothesis, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. in this experimental philosophy, propositions are deduced from the phenomena and are made general by induction. the impenetrability, mobility, and impetus of bodies, and the laws of motion and the law of gravity have been found by this method. and it is enough that gravity really exists and acts according to the laws that we have set forth and is sufficient to explain all the motion of the heavenly bodies and of our sea. (newton 1999, 943) the brand new method newton used in the principia could be summarized, prima facie, in the famous statement "i do not feigh hypothesis" (hypotheses non fingo), and in the comment that in this philosophy "propositions are deduced from the phenomena and are made general by induction". in fact, newton established here an opposition between “feighning hypothesis” and “deducing propositions from phenomena”. he points out that "whatever is not deduced from phenomena must be called a hypothesis". feighning hypotheses and deducing from phenomena are two opposed approaches. the latter would characterize the new way of inquiry proposed in the principia ― a way whose effectiveness would be attested by its successful application in solving the two difficult problems mentioned above. furthermore, the reception of the resolution of these problems in the following centuries strengthened the idea that, in the principia, newton had in fact launched a secure method in natural philosophy, one which deserved to be imitated. duhem did not disagree with this general historical perspective about the principia. however, he was responsible for one of the most influential criticisms of the argument of universal gravitation, especially as described by newton in the general scholium. according to the french physicist, newton believed he had "deduced" his theory of universal gravity from "phenomena". these "phenomena" would be kepler's observational laws of planetary motion, enunciated at the beginning of book iii of the principia under this exact denomination ("phaenomena"). however, duhem argued that it is not possible to derive the principle of universal gravitation from kepler's laws, neither by deduction nor by any inductive generalization. the conclusion of the argument (universal gravity) is simply not consistent with the premises (kepler's laws) (duhem 1991, 193). let us look at duhem's argument. he begins describing what follows from each of kepler's laws: this first law of kepler's, “the radial vector from the sun to a planet sweeps out an area proportional to the time during which the planet's motion is observed,” did, in fact, teach newton that each planet is constantly subjected to a force directed toward the sun. the second law of kepler's, “the orbit of each planet is an ellipse having the sun at one focus,” taught him that the force attracting a given planet varies with the distance of this planet from the sun, and that it is in an inverse ratio to the square of this distance. the third law of kepler's, “the squares of the periods of revolution of the various planets are proportional to the cubes of the major axes of their orbits,” showed him that different planets would, if they were brought to the same distance from the sun, undergo in relation to it attractions proportional to their respective masses. (duhem 1991, 191) according to duhem, newton infers the centripetal force toward the sun from kepler's law of ellipses (now kepler's first law); he infers the proportion of the inverse square of the distance from the law of the areas (today kepler's second law); and he infers the proportionality between the centripetal force and the mass of the planets from the harmonic law (now kepler's third law). nevertheless, the theory of universal gravity does not merely states there is an attractive force toward the sun proportional to the mass of the planets and proportional to the inverse square of the distance from its center. it states there is a mutual attraction between all the planets, something that cannot be taken from the keplerian premises. moreover, there is a mutual attraction not only between all the planets, but also between all bodies and all matter. for duhem, the result of mutual attraction between all bodies can definitely not be derived from the kepler's laws. from these laws it follows at most that there is an attraction of the planets towards the sun, duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 10 and from the satellites towards the planets, proportional to their quantities of matter and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. further, no consistent inductive generalization towards universal gravity can be provided from this result, for such generalization implies the prior recognition of a mutual attraction between the celestial bodies. moreover, and even more surprising, from the universal gravity, newton draws the conclusion that kepler's laws themselves are wrong. proposition 13 of book iii of the principia shows that, taking the theory of gravitation as the foundation, the sun does not precisely occupy the focus of the planetary orbits, and the planets do not obey the harmonic and area law in relation to the sun (as kepler's laws dictate). duhem states: "the principle of universal gravity, very far from being derivable by generalization and induction from the observational laws of kepler, formally contradicts these laws. if newton's theory is correct, kepler's laws are necessarily false" (duhem 1991, 193). newton claims to have deduced the universal gravitation from kepler's phenomena, but his own theory shows that these phenomena are false. therefore, either the theory of gravitation is false because it contradicts the premises on which it is based, or the theory of gravitation is true, but it was not really deduced from phenomena, as newton argued. apparently, duhem follows the latter option. he considers newton's methodological observations to be misleading, and seeks an alternative interpretation for the formulation of universal gravity. what alternative interpretation would this be? precisely the one that was derived from his own conception of the nature of physical theories. in his work, pierre duhem analyzed the nature of physical theory in particular. one of his main theses establishes that the purpose of physical theories is not to explain natural phenomena, but to construct a "natural classification" of experimental laws (duhem 1991, chap.1-2). in other words, the role of theories is simply the systematic coordination of experimental laws, or to make the experience more easily assimilable and manipulable without the pretense of increasing to some degree the content of truth that experience provides (duhem 1991, 327). as the author himself admits, this understanding finds parallels in mach's work, which related the goal of physical theory to a principle of "economy of thought". the purpose of physical theory would be to "replace experience with the shortest possible operations" or to provide a synthesis of a large set of experimental laws in a unique and economical formulation (duhem 1991, 327). for duhem, therefore, newton could not even have deduced the universal gravity from kepler's phenomena, for that is not how physical science works. what newton effectively did was to construct a theory that is the synthesis of a significant number of experimental laws, like kepler's laws, the galilean law of the falling bodies, the laws of motion, pendulums, motions of the moon, and so on. the theory of universal gravitation would be a "natural classification of experimental laws," and not a rigorous deductive or inductive result from kepler's laws, as newton suggested in the general scholium. objections to duhem’s criticisms to the newtonian method duhem's criticism of newtonian method became influential among important twentieth-century philosophers of science. karl popper, for example, stated "it is impossible to derive newton's theory from either galileo's or kepler's, or both, whether by deduction or by induction. for neither a deductive nor an inductive inference can ever proceed from consistent premises to a conclusion that formally contradicts these premises” (popper 1983, 140). similarly, imre lakatos stated that "newton's compartmentalized mind cannot be better characterized by contrasting newton, the methodologist, who claimed that he derived his laws from kepler's 'phenomena', with newton, the scientist, who knew very well that his laws directly contradicted these phenomena” (lakatos 1978, 210). similar comments can be found in feyrabend (1970, 164, note 11). however, in the face of the more detailed historical studies of newtonian science in recent times, duhem's analysis has begun to receive severe criticism ― starting with the rather sketchy historical details on which he based his analysis. for example, the presentation of the three fundamental dependencies of gravitational theory from kepler's three laws deviate significantly from the details of the principia's argument. although it is permissible to deduce the proportionality between the centripetal force and the mass of the planets from harmonic law (kepler's third law), newton did not deduce the centripetal force from the law of ellipses (kepler's first law), nor did he deduce the inverse square law from the law of areas (kepler's second law). considering duhem's observations, it is clear that he did not study the principia in-depth, or rely on a secondary source. even a simple reading of the principia is sufficient to realize that newton rejected the duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 11 admission of the law of ellipses as a "phenomenon" in book iii, and deduced the inverse square rule from the harmonic law, not from the area law. the area law, in turn, was used to deduce the centripetal force. the above observations, however, are not the most significant criticisms directed at duhem's analysis. more substantial objections can be drawn from the studies of george smith, nicolas maxwell, zev bechler, and william harper. initially, we will focus on the objections of maxwell, smith and bechler; later, we will discuss those of harper. according to maxwell, duhem's criticism can be summarized as a claim that "the whole argument of the principia is nothing more than a reductio ad absurdum." he exemplifies: "assume a (the laws of motion and kepler's law); derive b (kepler's laws are false). b contradicts a, therefore a is false. newton's great argument is reduced to the demonstration that his initial assumptions amount to a contradiction – not what newton claimed to prove at all" (maxwell 2014, 3-4). however, the author recognizes that when we analyze duhem's critique, we have the strong impression it does not do justice to the sophistication of newtonian argument. moreover, many should find that the fact that the conclusion of universal gravitation led to corrections in kepler's premises, "far from sabotaging the whole validity of the argument, is actually one of the great strengths of the argument, and provides additional strong grounds for holding that the law of gravitation should be accepted" (maxwell 2014, 4). in other words, this peculiarity, far from being a weakness of the principia, is "the clinching argument". maxwell, therefore, seeks to show that the conclusion of gravitation is not inconsistent with its premises. according to the author, newton's argument is a succession of steps, some deductive and others inductive. and although the conclusion of gravitation corrects kepler's initial assumptions, it does not invalidate the whole argument. he argues that if we supply kepler's observations with additional phenomena, constructing a more precise version of these premises, "and run the whole argument as before, deductive stages plus inductive stages, with these new corrected premises, no duhem inconsistency between premises and conclusion emerges at all. the whole argument becomes self-consistent"(maxwell 2014, 4). in short, duhem failed in his analysis of the newtonian method. george smith also challenges duhem's analysis. he argues that when newton declares he deduced his theory from kepler's phenomena, he would not be referring to strictly keplerian motions, but to approximate keplerian motions. following cohen's interpretation of newtonian style (cohen 1980), smith assumes the procedure developed by newton in the principia as essentially approximate. it starts from a simplified mathematical model that involves a single body of unit mass under the action of an attractive force toward a mathematical point. he draws some conclusions from this model and adds, in the following steps, more bodies, specific forms, non-negligible quantities of matter and other accidents. thus, at each step of the process, the constructed model is refined and becomes closer to its expression in the world of nature. this interpretation of the newtonian method has repercussions on duhem's criticism because it would reveal that newton has never attempted to deduce the universal gravitation from kepler's laws in the sense that the french physicist understood, nor would he be suggesting that in the general scholium. in smith's words: [newton] is using “if, then” statements that have been shown in book 1 to hold in “if (…) quam proxime, then (…) quam proxime” form to infer conclusions from premises that hold at least quam proxime over a restricted period of time. of course, this means that the deduction shows only that the conclusions, most notably the law of gravity, hold quam proxime over the restricted period of time for which the premises hold. the rules of reasoning then license the conclusion to be taken exactly, without restriction of space or time. the conclusions, so taken, do indeed then show that the premises hold only quam proxime, and not exactly. this conclusion in no way contradicts the premises. (smith 2008) in the general scholium, newton would have mentioned a "deduction from phenomena" only in a generic form. the meaning of this expression would be that the inferences that culminated in the universal gravitation were undertaken on the grounds of kepler's phenomena. as revealed in book iii of the principia, for newton both kepler's phenomena and the conclusion of universal gravitation were approximate. in smith's analysis, duhem would have ignored this essentially approximate character of the principia, a character already evidenced by cohen's work (cohen 1980). bechler's interpretations converge with that of smith. after informing that newton himself perceived and explicitly expressed the above-mentioned "inconsistency", and that he did not seem surprised or worried about it at all, the author proceeds to an enlightening synthesis that reveals newton's conclusion does not duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 12 contradict his premises. it is worth looking at bechler's arguments in detail. abbreviating kepler’s laws of ellipses, areas, and period by ki, kii, and kiii, respectively, bechler draws a distinction between "keplerian motion" and "non-keplerian motion" in a way that the former is the one that obeys at least two laws of kepler, namely, ki and kii or kii and kiii. in addition, he distinguishes a "strictly keplerian motion" (st.kp.) and a "non strictly keplerian motion" (n.st.kp.), and an "observationally keplerian motion" (ob.kp) and an "observationally non-keplerian motion" (ob.n.kp.). it is not difficult to realize that a st.kp. will be an ob.kp., but an ob.kp. can be both st.kp. and n.st.kp; moreover, it is not difficult to realize that an ob.n.kp. is also a n.st.k; but a n.st.k. can be both ob.n.kp. as ob.kp (bechler 1991, 401). from the above definitions, bechler divides the argument of the principia into four stages. in the first stage, newton considers a simplified mathematical model and derives the inverse square rule for central forces from st. kp motions. in the second stage, he shows that planetary motions are ob.kp. motions, and from this he builds his proof that planets attract themselves with a force proportional to their masses and to the inverse square of their distances. in the third stage, there is the inductive jump to universal gravitation. and in the fourth stage, assuming universal gravitation, he shows that the true planetary motions are n.st.kp. therefore, there is no inconsistency between the conclusion and the premises of universal gravitation. for – as bechler asserts – "even though universal gravitation would imply n.st.kp. motions, these still could well be ob.kp." (bechler 1991, 402). in short, the premise of universal gravitation is not the st.kp., but the ob.kp one. harper’s critique of the thesis of underdetermination harper's remarks on duhem's criticism partly diverge from the previous analyses. he clarifies that duhem was well aware that the experimental laws and, in particular, kepler’s laws, were approximate. that would not be the main point of his criticism. the main point would be that these laws, as long as they are approximate, to be useful in the inference of the theory, have to receive a specific interpretation among many others possible. in other words, newton used a "symbolic" translation of kepler's laws, and this translation implies the assumption of a whole previous theoretical body. it implies the assumption of a significant number of hypotheses. harper states: according to duhem: kepler's laws are empirical approximations that succeed in reducing tycho brahe's observations to law; but, they needed to be translated into symbolic laws to be useful for constructing physical theory, and such translation presupposed a whole group of hypotheses. (harper 2012, 130) clearly, harper is referring to duhem's famous holistic thesis, also known as duhem-quine thesis. in his analysis of physical theories, duhem realized that once experimental laws are approximated, there would never be a single hypothesis compatible with this law. in fact, there would be an infinity of hypotheses whose consequences could fit the experience. thus, in order to be able to compare the consequences of a hypothesis with experience, the physicist would first have to make a "symbolic transformation" in the experimental laws. this transformation involves the translation of these laws into a single mathematical version that can then be compared with theoretical results. however, this procedure comprises the prior admission of a set of hypotheses and additional theories that support the scientist's choice. in the light of the foregoing, duhem argues that there are two basic characteristics in the laws used by theoretical physics: they are "symbolic" and "approximate". physical theory is fundamentally a symbolic construction representing laws of experimental origin. as duhem said, physicists do not “conceive an experimental fact without simultaneously making it correspond to the abstract and schematic expression that theory gives it” (duhem 1996 [1894], 80). but what is the form of expression capable of providing abstract and symbolic representations that replace the data of experience? the french thinker states that this language of theoretical physics is mathematical analysis. analysis taken not as an end, but as an instrument to derive hypotheses through which theory must be subjected to the control of experience. on the other hand, mathematics also allows one to represent, through an algebraic or geometric quantity, the most immediate properties of the corresponding physical notions. thus, for example, the mathematical duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 13 properties of the physical notion of "temperature" represent the experimental properties of the notion of "heat." mathematical analysis relates the experimental laws to each other, using these symbolic representations of the physical notions. in the case of gravitation, in order for newton's theory to suggest the principle of universal gravitation, it is necessary that the laws collected by kepler from astronomical observations be transformed in a way such that properties of the force exerted on the planets by the sun become objects of a mathematical analysis. such a symbolic transformation of kepler's observational statements involves the physical notions of mass and force, whose meaning derive from dynamic laws. thus, the translation of kepler's laws into symbolic laws, the only ones useful to theory, presuppose "prior adherence to a whole set of hypotheses" (duhem 1991, 195). the requirement for a "holistic consistency" imposes itself again to show that "no experimental law is useful to the theorist before he has been subjected to an interpretation that transforms it into a symbolic law" (duhem 1991, 196). of course, the reflection set out above has wide consequences. for our purposes, it will suffice mentioning only three of them. the first consequence is that every experimental proposition is theory-laden, since in this proposition a series of principles converge drawn from various theories, and the result of the experiment will have consequences for the whole set. the second consequence is that no particular experiment is able to confirm or falsify an isolated hypothesis. an experiment that contradicts a hypothesis actually contradicts the set of assumptions presupposed in the situation for experimentation, so that it is not possible to locate precisely the incorrect hypothesis. in duhem’s words: "when the experiment is in disagreement with its predictions, what he [the physicist] learns is that one of the hypotheses constituting this group is unacceptable and ought to be modified; but the experiment does not designate which one should be changed" (duhem 1991, 187). the third consequence is that experimental laws are not established by being verified one by one. this kind of verification is not possible in science. in fact, the comparison of a hypothesis with experience necessarily involves the testing of the whole set of hypotheses, which are inseparable. referring to the case of universal gravitation, duhem states: such a comparison will not only bear on this or that part of the newtonian principle, but will involve all its parts at the same time; with those it will also involve all the principles of dynamics; besides, it will call in the aid of all propositions of optics, the statics of gases, and the theory of heat, which are necessary to justify the properties of telescopes in their construction, regulation, and correction, and in the elimination of the errors caused by diurnal or annual aberration and by atmospheric refraction. (duhem 1991, 194) the three consequences we posit above – that every experimental proposition is theory-laden; that it is not possible to confirm or falsify an isolated hypothesis; and that the experimental laws are not established one by one – evidently give rise to a more rigorous critique of newton's observations in the general scholium. since there are an infinite number of equally possible symbolic translations for the same set of experimental laws, newton's choice of a given dynamic translation of kepler's laws among infinite possible ones was logically underdetermined by these same laws. further, experiments cannot help him in this choice, since experience itself is not possible without the theory that underlies it. the appeal to experience in this case would be circular. therefore, the main problem with newton's claim about deducing the gravitation from kepler's phenomena would not be the supposed inconsistency between the conclusion and the premises. the problem would instead be that even if planetary motions were conceived as approximate, that is, as ob.kp, it would still mean only that newton made a certain symbolic translation of these motions among many possible ones, which presupposes his previous adherence to a certain number of theoretical hypotheses. on the face of it, his famous pronouncement hypotheses non fingo would be clearly in check. as we presented earlier, in the general scholium newton described the "deduction from phenomena" as opposed to “feighning hypothesis”. he stated thusly: "i have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for this properties of gravity, and i do not feign hypothesis. for whatever is not deduced from phenomena must be called a hypothesis". however, the symbolic transformation he had to make in kepler's experimental laws implies the prior association of many hypotheses. one could think this point to be a demerit of the theory of gravitation in particular. instead, it would duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 14 be only the recognition of the usual operation in construction of physical theories. in other terms, it would not be a problem of the argument of gravitation specifically, but rather, at most, a philosophical problem requiring justification of why, in spite of this, inferences that culminate in physical theories still deserve to be considered rational. in part, it is to justify this question that duhem formulates his conception of the nature of physical theories. in any case, constructing a theory without assuming or feighning hypotheses, or constructing a theory that is perfectly "deduced from phenomena," whatever the meaning might be given to that expression, would be impractical, not only in the principia, but also in the general framework of the scientific enterprise. in short, in one way or another, newton's description of his method in the general scholium would be mistaken. in contrast to what newton suggested in the scholium, duhem argues that among the many possible translations, the physicist "has to choose one which will provide him with a fruitful hypothesis" (duhem 1991, 199). consequently, "the motives that guides their choice will have neither the same nature nor the same imperious necessity as those which require the preference of truth over error" (duhem 1996 [1894], 104). for example, the fecundity newton observed in the principle of universal gravitation derive from the goals he drew for his theory, namely, the natural classification of celestial motions. as we have seen above, duhem considers the representational character and the continuous progress the main attributes of the physical theories constructed according to a natural classification of experimental laws. if newton indeed accomplished such objectives with his theory, the fecundity he found in the principle of universal gravitation is due to the guarantee it offered to realize such attributes of physical theories. harper realized that the main point of duhem's criticism on newtonian method would be the reflections outlined above. as described by newton in the general scholium, the method of the principia is impracticable. another interpretation should be provided. not only for the method of this particular treatise, but for science in general. nevertheless, harper also raises an objection to this second criticism of the french thinker. indeed, a good part of his book substantiates this objection. the core of harper's study in his book is to show that the method that best characterizes newton's principia, and more broadly science until today, is not the hypothetical-deductive method (hd), presupposed in duhem's analysis. harper warns that, like many interpreters of science before and after him, duhem is committed to a hd version of science, a version in which prediction of phenomena is the requirement for confirmation of theories. and this being the ideal of confirmation of science, on account of the non-accuracy of the empirical data and the experimental laws, the holistic thesis of duhem immediately follows. however, it happens that for harper, newton's method is not purely hd. from a detailed study of the principia, he sought to show that the method of this famous treatise constitutes a model of confirmation that is supported by "systematic dependencies" of phenomena based on "theory-mediated measurements". obviously, it is not possible to go deeper into the details of his discussion here, but it will be sufficient to say that this model envisages a systematic mathematical study of independent phenomena from which we draw consequences that, once converging onto the same result, produce a confirmation that excludes other possible alternatives (harper 2011). one example will suffice. in the hypothesis of the centripetal force acting on the planets being proportional to the inverse square of the distance, the confirmation of this hypothesis is not only due to its consequences from kepler's harmonic law. since this law is only observed approximately for the planets, based only on this inference we do not have any guarantee that the force law acting on these planets is an inverse square type. other options might be possible. however, in the principia newton also investigates the consequences of others force laws with varied powers of distance: force law proportional to the distance, inversely proportional to the distance, inverse cube of the distance, in addition to a whole class of force laws proportional to any integer power of the distance (dn) (cor. 7, 8 of prop. 4, book i). it is from this group of studies that newton concluded that none of the powers of distance besides the inverse square could generate a motion similar to that observed in the planets. even so newton was not satisfied. what about small deviations from the law of the square inverse? what about fractional powers between 2 and 3? are these alternatives also excluded? from another series of studies (section 9 of book i), newton concluded that the smallest deviation in the inverse square law would lead to a precession motion in the planetary orbits, which could be clearly distinguished in the astronomical observations. as no similar motion is observed for the planets around the sun, all alternatives to the inverse square law were excluded, and the study of systematic dependencies converged onto a single hypothesis. for harper, it was this set of systematic dependencies studies that allowed newton to effectively duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 15 confirm the inverse square law. therefore, newton's method is not merely hd. likewise, the same can be said of current scientific method. the expression "deduction from phenomena" would be only a generic reference to this inference procedure that makes use of the analysis of systematic dependencies from independent phenomena. newton made no mistake in describing his procedure in the principia; duhem is the one who misunderstood him. the autonomy of physics from metaphysics and the newtonian physical system even though harper's critique of underdetermination is controversial, one might wonder whether, if this thesis were accepted, there would still be some breath to the duhemian analysis of the newton's method. in the last two sections of this article we intend to show that there is. as we mentioned in the introduction, duhem's analysis of the principia's method is not limited to the negative observations presented earlier. these observations focus more on newton's description of his method than on the method itself. in analyzing the principia itself, duhem adopts a distinct discourse. for him, this treatise would be a watershed in the history of scientific thought. as we mentioned earlier, pierre duhem analyzed the nature of physical theory in his work, and concluded that the purpose of these theories is not to explain natural phenomena, but to construct a "natural classification" of experimental laws. this conception substantiates his criticism concerning the use of "mechanical models" in science. duhem was a severe critic of the use of these models in the construction of physical theories. the problem with this approach lies precisely in the pretension of explaining the reality of phenomena and things. since physical theory is barred from offering such explanations, the application of mechanical models goes beyond the limits of the content physics can legitimately sustain. the so-called "mechanicism" system, which became popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is used by duhem as an example of transgression of these limits. in duhem's words, this system would be a kind of "false ideal" that physicists had long pursued. the problem with this system as with any other that attempts to explain phenomena with mechanical models is that it makes physical theories dependent on metaphysics. since there is no possibility of justification of these explanations in the empirical plane, its bases rest necessarily in metaphysics. for duhem, this is not admissible, since what should characterize physical theory is precisely its autonomy in the face of metaphysics. for the french physicist, the autonomy of physics over metaphysics is first established through the experimental method. without this experimental element, physics could not "constitute itself through a proper method independent of any metaphysics" (duhem 1996, 34). the scientist can make legitimate use of the experimental method without certain notions (body, laws of physics, etc.) and principles (the axioms of geometry and kinematics, the existence of laws regulating phenomena) have been fully understood. what these notions and principles have of evident in themselves is what is necessary and sufficient in physics (duhem 1996 [1893], 35). besides this autonomy in the "experimental phase" (the observations of facts and their reduction to laws), physics would also be independent of metaphysics in the "theoretical phase". by incorporating them into physical theories, experimental laws have the same meaning as they did before in isolation. physical theory explains nothing "about the raison d'être of these laws and about the nature of the phenomena they rule" since it serves primarily for practical rather than metaphysical purposes. within its own limits, it is therefore absurd to seek among the truths of metaphysics either the confirmation or refutation of a physical theory, at least to the extent that it remains confined to its proper domain (duhem 1996 [1893], 36). duhem believes that perhaps it was descartes who most contributed to breaking the barrier between the methods of physics and the method of metaphysics, confounding his domains (duhem 1996 [1893], 44). the long deductive chains by which the mechanical explanations of physical phenomena are derived from metaphysical principles of matter and knowledge, make the distinction between physics and metaphysics devoid of any foundation. descartes's method, from duhem's point of view, suppressed the autonomy that peripatetics had granted to physics in the face of metaphysics. descartes, starting from the definition of matter as an extension, associated with the principles of figure (geometry) and motion (kinematics), intended to "construct the world" deducing explanations of all physical phenomena. but subjugated by the method of duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 16 metaphysics, mechanical theory has incorporated elements beyond the realm of the physical method. despite descartes' great influence on later physicists, duhem argues that mechanistic tradition found strong resistance in newton's physical system, whose work launched a new way of conceiving the nature of physical theory. duhem interpreted the appearance of the newtonian system in this manner, with an emphasis on the opposition he offered to cartesianism (duhem 1996 [1893], 46). and the main achievement of this approach was to restore physics to its full value, as far as it restored its full autonomy again. duhem points out, for example, that the use of the term "attraction" to name the force by which bodies tend toward each other does not imply any compromise with the cause or nature of that force. on the contrary. the force can remain perfectly as a symbol whose physical applicability does not depend on knowing the realities that they intend to represent. in the final comment to definition 8, newton's position is clear when he states he uses the term attraction to “any sort of propensity toward a center, considering theses forces not from a physical but only from a mathematical point of view”, so that he is not “defining a species or mode of action or a physical cause or reason (...)” (newton 1999, 408). newton is not committed to explaining the causes of this force that produces gravity. this can also be seen at the beginning of the passage quoted from the general scholium, when he admits he did not establish the "cause of gravity". this aspect introduces the principia's method into the autonomy duhem understands as one of the most fundamental features of physical theory. in addition, duhem also emphasizes that in newton's understanding the theory of gravitation retains its full value whatever the result of the investigation of the cause of that attraction. this is what is presented in the general scholium itself. newton states that although he did not establish the cause of gravity, “it is enough that gravity really exists and acts according to the laws that we have se forth and is sufficient to explain all the motion of the heavenly bodies and of our sea” (newton 1999, 943). put differently, gravitational theory would not be obliged to make claims regarding the ultimate cause of the mechanism of attraction. the theory is fully valid, despite the unawareness of this cause. notwithstanding these remarks, it should be mentioned that although newton did not explain gravity, it is evident that at least he has the expectation to explain. he said he have not "yet" assigned the cause of gravity. this is important. for duhem, it is not a question of saying that physical theory does not care or is not interested in the explanations of natural phenomena. in fact, what it does is to establish a necessary course towards explanations. the theory will move toward explanations "going from effects to causes" – to use newton's terminology. that is to say, there would be a "logical priority" of physics over metaphysics. as duhem asserts, "any metaphysical investigation concerning brute matter cannot be made logically before one acquires some understanding of physics" (duhem 1996 [1893], 32). thus, newton did not exclude any metaphysical pretension of his system of investigation. what he did was to distinguish physics from metaphysics first, then establish an order of inquiry, that is, from physics to metaphysics. this "pretension" of the newtonian system to proceed methodically toward the ultimate causes of phenomena is not understood by duhem as foreign to the scientific enterprise. while avoiding mechanical models, which confer real value to the laws, duhem also rejects the positivist and conventionalist position, which relegates the goal of theoretical physics exclusively to the development of an economic summary or an artificial classification of experimental laws. for the french thinker, what must be preserved is the epistemic value of physical theory – transcendent to its practical utility and always within the reach of the physical method. thus, it is expected from physical theory that by becoming a natural classification, it can establish a logical coordination among the various experimental laws that is the image and reflection of the true order according to which the realities that escape us are organized (duhem 1996 [1893], 31). physical theory therefore moves toward a final explanation; one could say, a "metaphysical" explanation. but it does not occur by means of a deduction of physics from metaphysics. even though it is theoretically possible, it is not possible in a practical manner. (duhem 1996 [1893], 34). given this limitation of epistemological order, the only secure methodological resource we have would be the physical method. the task of revealing the epistemic value of physical theory rests exclusively in the physical method – not directly, for these realities escape from physics – but through an analogy that imposes itself on the mind of the physicist (duhem 1990, 186). therefore, newton's principia would have established one of the most fundamental characteristics of the physical method. he would strictly follow an epistemological order of physics toward metaphysics, and never the opposite. for duhem, scientists such as euler, lagrange, laplace, gauss, fresnel, poisson, ampère, and cauchy, among others, can see the fecundity of this understanding in the significant progress duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 17 made by this approach in the research of diverse phenomena, such as electricity, capillary, elasticity and heat theories. after newton's abstract notion of "attraction" disconnected from metaphysical meanings, molecular attraction has become a potent tool for constructing synthetic representations of physical phenomena. as a result, there has been a long period of continuous progress in these "attractionist" theories, which have remained loyal to the limits established by the newtonian system. this trend, according to duhem, was prevalent until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the rapid development of thermodynamics, which corroborated descartes' assumptions about the nature of heat, triggered a new trend of explanatory theories. however, in his own time duhem diagnosed that the contradictions and failures of this new trend were gradually led the physicists “back to the sound doctrines newton had expressed so forcefully” (duhem 1991, 53). hypotheses non fingo and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics from what was discussed in the previous section, it is possible to see that for duhem, newton's system reestablished the autonomy of physics in relation to metaphysics. and it occurred largely on account of the specific newtonian approach that gave primacy to the symbolic abstractions of forces, rather than metaphysical speculations on causes. first, it is important to say that this interpretation of the french physicist finds echoes in the historical studies of i. b. cohen, who argued that one of the most fundamental aspects of the newtonian method is the priority it set for the mathematical level of analysis over the physical level (cohen 1980). it is worth remembering here that in newton's terminology, what duhem understands as "physics" (i.e., mathematical-physics), newton understood simply as "mathematics"; and what duhem understands as "metaphysics", in newton's context was part of the "natural philosophy" (which was also called "physics"). thus, the priority of the mathematical level of the analysis over the physical level, to which cohen refers, does not differ significantly from what duhem understands as the priority of physics over metaphysics. but secondly, it must also be said that in the light of even more recent studies on the principia it is possible to conclude that not only was newton himself aware of this methodological prioritization, this would in fact be the most fundamental meaning of his general scholium3 duhem's misunderstanding of newton's words in the general scholium was apparently deeper than previous criticisms suggest. duhem understood that newton's purpose in the famous scholium was to clarify or summarize the argument that led to universal gravitation. however, far from it, the context of the general scholium is to clarify the method of "experimental philosophy". written 26 years after the first publication of the principia, the focus of this conclusive text is to respond to later polemics, and especially those around the tension between the method of "experimental philosophy" and the so-called “speculative” or "hypothetical philosophy". that said, what newton seeks to reinforce in his scholium is that in "experimental philosophy" (not necessarily in the principia’s argument of gravitation), "propositions" (not "gravitation theory") are "deduced from phenomena and made general by induction." newton is not saying that "universal gravitation" was deduced from "kepler's phenomena." he is asserting that by the method of "experimental philosophy" all and every "proposition", in order to be accepted, ought to be "deduced from phenomena". the "phenomena" to which newton refers are not only the kepler's laws enunciated at the beginning of book iii. they are every and any result obtained from experience. the very argument of gravitation in book iii presents several empirical results beyond kepler's laws: magnetic experiments, collisions between bodies, data on the precession of the moon, and newton considers them all as "phenomena." therefore, to assert that in experimental philosophy the propositions must be "deduced from the phenomena and made general by induction" is merely to affirm that the method on which the principia is based is an essentially empirical method. statements that do not have solid empirical support are not accepted. moreover, since the principia are constructed following the axiomatic model of the demonstrative sciences, the verb "deduce" does not cause great surprise either. any proposition that is built upon a phenomenical statement must be writable in the form of a syllogism from that statement. universal gravitation is offered in the general scholium only as an example of the procedure of "the 3 the next remarks were developed in the author’s (ricardo santos) phd dissertation, the science methodology of newton’s principia, yet to be published. duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 18 experimental philosophy." for newton, the laws of motion were also constructed in the same way; simple empirical concepts such as "impenetrability" and "mobility", which could hardly be considered in the same sense that duhem attributes to a "physical theory", were also constructed in the same way. in short, at no point did newton intend to assert that universal gravitation was obtained by means of a strict deduction or induction from the laws of kepler. instead, he sought to clarify that gravitation was obtained by means of an argument whose inferences were made based on "propositions" taken ― all of them ― rigorously from experience, by means of a rigorous empirical-mathematical method. undoubtedly, the understanding summarized above leads the motto hypotheses non fingo to another interpretation. as was said earlier, “feighning hypothesis” is the opposite procedure to "deduce from phenomena". and this procedure implies an extrapolation of the strict limits of the empirical science is being proposed in the principia. in other words, to frame hypotheses implies assuming statements of any kind that are not empirical; but in particular, metaphysical statements. for this reason, newton adds in the scholium: "for whatever is not deduced from phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy" (newton 1999, 943). any statement that is not "deduced from phenomena", i. e., that cannot be considered as attested empirically, must be deemed a "hypothesis"; as such, it should not be accepted in experimental philosophy. thus, the "hypotheses" newton mentions in the scholium have little relation with those of the problem of underdetermination mentioned above. what the english mathematician is seeking to establish in the general scholium – ironic as it may seem – is something very close to what duhem himself understood as one of the greatest benefits brought by the newtonian system: the autonomy of physics over metaphysics. or an epistemological priority of empirical and mathematical statements over those of traditional speculative natural philosophy. in the end, duhem was not so mistaken in his analysis of newton's method as some might suppose. and newton was not such a bad methodologist as duhem supposed. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank dr. ron martinez and the academic publishing advisory center (centro de assessoria de publicação acadêmica, capa www.capa.ufpr.br) of the federal university of paraná for assistance with english language editing. references bechler, zev. 1991. newton’s physics and the conceptual structure of the scientific revolution. dordrecht, boston and london: kluwer academic publishers. cohen, bernard i. 1980. newtonian revolution. cambridge: cambridge university press. duhem, pierre. 1990 [1913]. logical examination of physical theory. synthese 83: 183-188. duhem, pierre. 1996 [1893]. physics and metaphysics. in essays in the history and philosophy of science, translated and edited by roger ariew and peter baker, 29-49. indianapolis: hackett publishing company. duhem, pierre. 1996 [1894]. some reflections on the subject of experimental physics. in essays in the history and philosophy of science. translated and edited by roger ariew and peter baker. indianapolis: hackett publishing company, pp. 75-111. duhem, pierre. 1991 [1914]. the aim and structure of physical theory. translated from 2nd.ed. by philip. p. wiener. new jersey: princeton university press. feyrabend, paul. 1970. classic empiricism. in the methodological heritage of newton. edited by e. butts and j. w. davis. oxford: basil blackwell, pp. 150-170. harper, william l. 2011. isaac newton’s scientific method: turning data into evidence about gravity and cosmology. oxford: oxford university press. lakatos, imre. 1978. the methodology of scientific research programs: philosophical papers. edited by john worral and g. currie. cambridge: cambridge university press. maxwell, nicholas. 2014. three criticisms of newton’s inductive argument in the principia. advances in duhem’s analysis of newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics eduardo salles o. barra – ricardo batista dos santos 19 historical studies 3 (1): 2-11. newton, isaac. 1999 [1729]. the principia: mathematical principles of natural philosophy. translated by i. bernard cohen and anne whitman. california: university of california press. 3rd.ed. popper, karl r. 1983. realism and the aim of science. london: hutchinson. smith, george. 2008. newton's philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. edited by edward n. zalta. acessed may, 17, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/newton-principia. smith, george. 2002. the methodology of the principia. in the cambridge companion to newton. edited by i. b. cohen and g.e. smith. cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 138–173. 112 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 112-126 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem bon sens and noûs roberto estrada olguin1 abstract: this paper is intended to link the notion of bon sens with the greek notion of noûs, that exposes the role played by the first notion in the thought of pierre duhem and explains the concept of noûs in the thought of aristotle. later, it attempts to carry out the explanation of the link that can have both notions. keywords: pierre duhem; bon sens; noûs; science; philosophy; history of science received: 30 march 2017. reviewed: 15 may 2017. accepted: 30 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.11 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction the significance of a thinker can be measured by the number of defenders and critics of his thought. if we use this measuring scale of transcendence, we can see that pierre duhem is located at the highest levels of transcendence. the meaning of the word transcendence is “to overpass”, the transcendental and the transcendent is what is beyond, which go beyond; the thought of a human being can be transcendent and transcendental because it exceeds and goes beyond the time in which it is produced; to exceed and go beyond the moment in which something has arisen can be done to the back or to forwards, this is meant in the case of the time you can go beyond the present to the past or to the future. the thought of pierre duhem is transcendental and transcendent in that sense because it goes towards the past and the future. the thought of duhem, like the thought of all great thinkers, goes to the past because it comes from a tradition and moves towards the future so it becomes a classic. we can go back and forward through time because we think about the issues that belong to both the past and the present as well as the future. the problems that duhem deals with, are those that belong to the three times. in this paper, i try to address one of these problems: the question of the bon sens. this matter has been studied by many specialists who have devoted much time to the study of the thought of the french thinker, which will be mentioned throughout this work. here i intend to address the issue from a unique perspective. in fact, i will try to study the bon sens going toward the past and the future. to carry out this, i tried to follow retrospectively the footprints of the tradition of which it may come from the notion of bon sens and i came up with the greek notion of noûs and explained how they can be 1 roberto estrada olguin is a professor in the department of humanities at the autonomous university of ciudad juárez. adress: av. universidad y av. heroico colegio militar s/n zona chamizal c.p. 32300. ciudad juárez, mexico. email: estradaa6@hotmail.com roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 113 linked these two notions. if this attempt is successful, then we can show that the question of the bon sens is one of those that belongs to the three moments in time. to state as clearly as we can, according to the scholars of this kind of thought pointed out the importance of the issue that we are dealing with in the system of thought of duhem; subsequently, i expose the link that can be established between the thought of pierre duhem and the tradition, in particular with the greek thought and, more specifically, with the notion of noûs; finally indicated how we can show the transformation of the greek notion of noûs to become the notion of bon sens, through the changes experienced by the western tradition. the bon sens in the thought of pierre duhem russell niall dickson martin (1991, 6-13) has pointed out that to understand both the reception of the works and to understand the thinking of the historical figure pierre duhem, it is necessary to consider both the internal and external factors. among the external factors mentioned the religious, the political and the philosophical context. among the internal factors mentioned "the method of working" and "the habits of publication of duhem" (martin 1991, 193-199). martin explains the work method of duhem and asserts that he had to pay a price for the ease of writing, resulting in a single draft without notes and had to pay an even higher price by having to produce a complete form with their results in the atrocious conditions of isolation in bordeaux and with a single opportunity to consult all the manuscripts that he wanted. "it was all done on the run with no chance to reflect", and without the opportunity to make changes that affected the integrity of his work, "changes of view sometimes both exaggerated and partially concealed by duhem's publication habits". on the other hand, according to martin, the publishing style typical of duhem consists of literal reprints of a series of articles that appeared in a journal, adding prefaces. for example, as was the case of the work entitled les origines de la statique that were first published in the revue des questions scientifiques from autumn 1903 to at the end of the year 1906. according martin, there is evidence that the same composition methods are followed in other works of duhem, particularly, in la théorie physique; "there can be little argument that this was how the études was written, and a detailed analysis of the système would certainly reveal evidence of similar methods of composition, though here the scale of the work probably made it inevitable." this habit of publication is played by martin as a publication of the work before being completed. the consequences of these habits are summarized by this critical as follows: "at worst unperceived changes of view during composition, works started before i knew where his argument was going to lead. changes in overall attitudes during his career, writing liable to mislead the inattentive reader into serious misreadings" (martin 1991, 194-195). the shifts in perspective not recognized are as suggested in the above quote, the most important consequences of “the habits of publication” and “the method of working” of duhem. in fact, martin believes that these changes in point of view in the works of the french physicist have consequences, one is the way his works were received and, the other is if we are trying to understand his thinking, we must understand the changes. some of these changes have been identified in the book of martin as cited above, one of them mentioning: during this essay, i have pointed out many examples of such shifts. lemonnier's example of albert of saxony is one case: after initially seeing him as an original contributor to mediaeval mechanics duhem later saw him as a repeater of the ideas of others. another is the change of focus in to save the phenomena from methodology to cosmology. yet another is the shift in the système du monde from cosmology to the overall relations of physics with philosophy and theology. these shifts affect individual works, but there is one that may have caused more trouble than any other: the increasing emphasis on the pascalian methodology of bon sens as duhem's career progressed. (martin 1991, 196) according to the above quote, the pascalian methodology of the bon sens was taking greater importance to the extent that the thought of duhem progressed and this change of importance of the bon sens is the change of perspective that has most concerned and disturbed the understanding of the thought of the french catholic thinker. in this way, we have come to the central point, which is the interest of this roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 114 small written: the origins of the concept of bon sens in the thought of pierre duhem. however, we must point out that we do not intend to confine ourselves to the thought of pascal as the source of the bon sens in the thinking of duhem. we believe that the influence of pascal on the thought of duhem has been sufficiently demonstrated by the research of various authors interested in the thought of the latter2. instead i try "to speculate" about the remote source and implicit of the bon sens, which is also the source of thought of pascal: the western thought, resulting from the merger of christianity and the pagan greek thought. i think that despite the prominent role of the apologetic aspect of the thought of duhem, the christianity and particularly, the catholicism has not received sufficient emphasis on its relationship with the notion of bon sens, to which this essay aims to contribute. of course, we say that we intend "to speculate" to the extent that in our exposure there are a high degree of conjecture, and in any way, i intended to presenter this exposure with demonstrative character. in addition, i should point out that i do not intend to draw the complete history of the transformation of the concept of noûs going through each of the links until become the bon sens which requires a much broader dimension that this little essay. in revenge, i intend to provide some evidence suggesting that the bon sens is in part the result of the transformation of the greek concept noûs. bon sens, science, philosophy and history in duhem before anything else, it is necessary to have a brief overview of the influence not only of the thought of pascal on the general thought of duhem, but also an overview of the reasoning of the physicist of the 19th century. this overview will provide us the opportunity to locate the place of the bon sens within the general thought of duhem. jean-françois stoffel, who has been devoted to the study of the relationship between the thoughts of both these thinkers, besides he emphasizes the various topics in which we can find evidence of such relationship3. he has pointed out that it is not enough with the mention of scattered topics, besides we required, in one area, observe the influences of which there is no textual evidence and, on the other hand, we need trying to gather the scattered influences in the center of a global system of thought, because "it seems to us that an influence so proven and so extensive can’t in an author like duhem be limited to a succession of particular subjects, but must indicate a much more fundamental existence of a vision of the common world which is both scientific, philosophical and religious” (stoffel 2007, 293)4. for our part, we can add that, this “vision du monde” also extends to the historical. in addition, in a previous piece of work stoffel has pointed out the problem of the historical paradox that duhem always want to be known and recognized as a physicist and, however, history has played a joke, because it has been better recognized in the intellectual context as a philosopher of physics and as a historian of science, to the side of paul tannery or alexandre koyré, but not as a physicist, to the side of max planck or einstein (stoffel 1995, 49-50). in the light of the studies that have been developed on the thought of duhem from abel rey and up until the present, and despite the efforts of the own duhem to be recognized as a theoretical physicist, we can point out that the history not only has not recognized duhem as theoretical physicist, but also that when it is recognized as a philosopher of physics and as a historian of science it is almost always associated with claims apologetic. 2 the influence of thought of pascal on the thought of duhem has been highlighted by the latter's own contemporaries such as his own daughter hélène as well as by friends and acquaintances. more recently, since 1991 martin pointed out that influence and from 1993 stoffel has been working in that direction. cf. hélène pierre-duhem 1936; martin 1991; stoffel 1993; 2002; 2007. 3 stoffel mentions the following topics in which there is textual evidence of the influence of the thought of the philosopher of the 17th century on the thought of the scientist of the 19th century: the critique of mechanicism, the capabilities of human intelligence, the different types of spirits, the research of a via media between realism and a dogmatic skeptical phenomenalism, the management of knowledge, the truth of the first principles as well as the inability to define everything and, finally, the philosophy of history optimistic and providential (stoffel 2007, 287-293). 4 “il nous semble qu’une influence aussi avérée et aussi étendue ne puisse, chez un auteur comme duhem, se limiter à une succession de thèmes particuliers, mais qu’elle doive signaler, entre les deux penseurs, l’existence, beaucoup plus fondamentale, d’une vision du monde commune qui est à la fois scientifique, philosophique et religieuse” (stoffel 2007, 293). roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 115 let us add that, in relation to the global system of thought, it has been always highlighted the extrascientifics influences about the thought of duhem; in this sense, looking for ariadne's thread that guide the understanding of the global thought of the french physicist, r. n. d. martin has pointed out a "hidden agenda" in which items are found religious, cultural and political factors that have influenced the thought of duhem5. the global system of thought of pierre duhem, like that of any thinker, we can approach it from the following general themes which, furthermore, are also the subjects in which it has been pointed out the influence of thought of pascal: the scientific, philosophical, historical and religious. the scientific aspect in the discussion on the existence or not of an antagonism between science and religion, in the words of the own duhem, between l'esprit scientifique and l'esprit religieux, in his famous letter to bulliot of 21 may 1911, duhem notes that the defenders of the existence of such antagonism argue that the logical analysis reveals the radically different methods by which science (rigorous that part of axioms and checks by the experience ) and religion (aspirations and intuitions, vague) are produced; however, duhem thinks that the antagonism between the methods of one and another is apparent. in accordance with duhem, this opposition between the methods of both human activities is due to a superficial and false analysis of such methods. but to him who has penetrated to the heart and has captured the vital principle of the methods, captures what provides its diversity and what keeps together these united procedures. it sees a same human reason use the same means essential to arrive at the truth; but in each domain, this reason is adapted to the use it makes of these means to the special object from which it wants to acquire the knowledge. […] it is recognized then, that to get to the truths of religion, human reason does not employ other means than those that has served to achieve the other truths; but she uses it in a different way, because the principles from which part and the conclusions to which it tends are different (hélène pierre-duhem 1936, 164-165).6 in addition, in a letter to joseph récamier which is quoted partially by picard, jordan, jaki and martin without identifying the receiver, but that stoffel has identified by hélène, the daughter of duhem7, shows that the latter not only affirms the use of the same human reason in various orders of knowledge, but also takes the same point of departure; in such a way that the so-called radical difference of the procedures is only apparent: to force to reflect on these difficulties, i have come to realize that it can say the same of all sciences, from those that are taken as the most rigorous, physics, mechanics, even the geometry. the fundaments of each of these buildings are made of notions which it claims to understand, despite they will not be defined; of principles that are insured, despite it not having any demonstration. these 5 in the same sense of "hidden agenda”, michel puech (1996) points out that the history of the sciences of duhem is a “crypto-theology of providence". 6 “il voit une même raison humaine”, says duhem, “user des mêmes moyens essentiels pour parvenir à la vérité; mais en chaque domaine, il voit cette raison adapter l’usage qu’elle fait de ces moyens à l’objet spécial dont elle veut acquérir la connaissance [...]. il reconnait alors que pour aller aux vérités religieuses, la raison humaine n’emploie pas d’autres moyens que ceux dont elle se sert pour atteindre les autres vérités; mais elle les emploie d’une manière différente parce que les principes dont elle part et les conclusions auxquelles elle tend sont différents” (hélène pierreduhem 1936, 164-165). 7 cf. stoffel (2001, 79, footnote). hélène pierre-duhem (1936,156), for its part, speaking of his father the christian points out, in the same sense, that what it is objected to the faith you can also object to the science considered to be the most rigorous and, recalling the charter loss directed by his father to his friend récamier, quotes the words of the letter to note the impossibility of defining concepts as clear as corps, âme, dieu, mort, vie, bien, mal, liberté, devoir; and, thus, the impossibility of proving propositions so certain as: “le monde n'a pas en lui-même une raison d'être de son existence. je dois faire le bien et éviter le mal”. the passage quoted from this letter concludes by pointing out that our sciences more certain resting on foundations of the same nature. roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 116 notions, these principles, are formed by le bon sens. without this foundation of the bon sens, nothing scientific could have some science. (picard 1921, 41)8 stoffel cites an article of édouard jordan, which this issue has been developed, almost in the same terms, and mentions that there is no doubt that jordan may object to duhem that the principles of spiritualism or of faith are not justified: but answered that, in spite the illusions to the contrary, it is the same for all the sciences including those that are taken as the most rigorous, even the geometry. they are based on the notions that we claim to understand, despite not being able to define and that are provided by the bon sens. (apud stoffel 1995, 64) thus, in its position with respect to the existence or not of an antagonism between science and religion, it is the bon sens as a fundamental part of the understanding of duhem on the procedures of science. in addition, on the other hand, martin hilbert (2000, 6) in his thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy, has pointed out the relationship between the energetics and the notion of natural classification in the thinking of duhem. the notion of natural classification was presented by duhem in his article entitled "l'école anglaise et les théories physiques, à propos d'un livre récent de w. thomson". this paper attempts to respond the question on why it should prefer a coherent theory rather than a set of inconsistent theories? the answer is that the perfection of a theory depends on a certain degree of approximation to the ideal theory, which is "the total metaphysical explanation and adequate to the nature of material things: this theory, in fact, classifies the physical laws in an order that will be the very expression of metaphysical relations between the essences, which emanate such laws; they give us the natural classification of the laws in the true sense of the word” (duhem 1987, 136). on the other hand, in la théorie physique duhem, establishes a close link between the bon sens and the notion of natural classification. in chapter ii of the first part, he explains that the notion of the physical theory as a symbolic representation of the experimental laws, implies that the logical order and the “artificial ordering” of these laws are manufactured by the theoretical physicist, however he has the “presentiment”, to the degree to become a firm conviction, that the order is a reflex of an ontological order, which is a reflex of a “natural classification”9. to justify this conviction, the theoretical physicist needs to transcend the methods and procedures of the theoretical physics, he needs to refer to: "an intuition in which pascal has recognized one of those reasons of the heart 'which reason does not know', he affirms his faith in a real order, which theories are an image clearer and more faithful every" (duhem 1906, 38-39).10 finally, in various places, and particularly in la science allemande, duhem sets out the tasks that the bon sens perform within the activities of the science: the common knowledge, common sense, good sense and the spirit of fineness provide the axioms of mathematics and the hypotheses of the physical theory. the first lesson of la science allemande entitled "les sciences de raisonnement" ask about the question of what is the source of the axioms that are the foundation of these sciences? duhem responds quoting pascal: "we know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart”, said pascal; of the latter is how we know the first principles. the second lesson of this work is entitled "les sciences expérimentales" and ask about the question how do the experience provide a proper hypothesis to serve as a principle of the experimental science? duhem responds with an example of the procedure used by pasteur: who tested a preconceived idea and through "trial and error" modifications are made in accordance with the facts are 8 “à force de réfléchir à ces difficultés, je me suis aperçu qu’on en pouvait dire autant de toutes les sciences, de celles qu’on regarde comme les plus rigoureuses, la physique, la mécanique, voire la géométrie. les fondations de chacun de ces édifices sont formées de notions que l’on a la prétention de comprendre, bien qu’on ne puisse les définir, de principes dont on se tient pour assuré, bien qu’on n’en ait aucune démonstration. ces notions, ces principes, sont formés par le bon sens. sans cette base du bon sens, nullement scientifique, aucune science ne pourrait tenir; toute sa solidité vient de là” (picard, 1921, 41). 9 in paragraph x of chapter iv, which is the last of the first part, duhem points out another trend which is the inseparable companion of the trend toward the natural classification that trend toward the unit. 10 in the last three sections of “the physics of a believer” duhem emphasizes the need to transcend the method of theoretical physics, that is, to resort to the method of metaphysics, to justify both the tendency to unity as the tendency to the natural classification by the analogy between the physical theory and cosmology. roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 117 directing: "in this work of successive retouch-ups which a first idea, necessarily risky and often false, ends up developing a fruitful hypothesis, the deductive method and intuition play one another their role; but here it is much more complex and more difficult define this role that in a science of reasoning" (duhem 1915, 27). in this way, notions richer in content, but less accurate and less analyzed that the notions of the science of reasoning are produced for the joined role of deductive and intuition methods: the rules of logic are not effective enough to be able to reason about these notions, they must be supported by "a kind of sense of fairness which is one of the forms of good sense" (duhem 1915, 28).11 the philosophical aspect first, in the criticism by abel rey, not of the physical but of the scientific philosophy of duhem, he accuses him of doing metaphysics by taking as a starting point a determined notion of human knowledge. in fact, rey said that duhem has succumbed to the temptation of metaphysics, having on his head a preconceived idea of the value, of the limits and of the nature of science. duhem responds, in “the physics of a believer”, that his "physical system" by its origins and its consequences is positive. of this to succumb to the common temptation, rey may conclude that:12 unless we limit science to nothing but the collection of empirical recipes – and even this pretension, isn’t the result conscious of a metaphysical tendency? – at times the metaphysical problems are so close to the great scientific questions; the human spirit is so eager to prolong its curiosity by imagining new whys it is chimerical and abstract to want to put an insurmountable, and above all unsurpassed, gap between science and metaphysics. (rey 1904, 733)13 does duhem put an insurmountable gap between science and metaphysics? it does not appear, but it distinguishes the science of metaphysics because it discusses their mutual independence and autonomy. but before arguing in favor of the negative answer to this question, let's ask: what is the basis on which the autonomy between science and metaphysics rests? the answer to this question is found in article “physique et métaphysique” of 1893, which sets forth the following which supports the view of abel rey before mentioned: human beings do not have direct knowledge of the essences of the external things, but of the phenomena and of the succession of these phenomena (duhem 1987, 86). in these lines, a distinction is made between essence and phenomena.14 this distinction is the basis for distinguishing between science and metaphysics. the essences are conceived as causes of the phenomena. the intelligence of man, on the one hand, know directly the phenomena and the laws according which these phenomena are related and, on the other hand, known indirectly something of the essences because the knowledge of the effects allows us to know something about the substances that produce these effects; however, this knowledge is neither complete nor adequate for these substances (duhem 1987, 86). the distinction between essences and phenomena has led us to the distinction of two types of knowledge: the knowledge that human intelligence has of the phenomena and their laws, on the one hand, and, on the 11 in section x of chapter vi of the second part, section entitled “le bon sens est juge des hypothèses qui doivent être abandonnées”, also shows the reasons why the bon sens is the judge on the choice of the hypothesis. 12 duhem does not seem to respond to the accusation of abel rey on "mais nous n'avons eu ici que l'intention d'examiner la philosophie scientifique de m. duhem, et non l'oeuvre scientifique elle-même" (rey 1904, 743-744, emphasis added), as its defense goes to show that your “physical system” is positive and does not depend on the metaphysics or religion. however, the assertion of rey that duhem makes metaphysics can justify the response of the latter. 13 “a moins de borner la science à n’être qu’un recueil de recettes empiriques – et encore cette prétention n’est-elle pas le résultat plus ou moins conscient d’une tendance métaphysique? – les problèmes métaphysiques sont, à certains moments, si près des grandes questions scientifiques, l’esprit humain est si désireux de prolonger sa curiosité, en imaginant toujours de nouveaux pourquoi, qu’il est chimérique et abstrait de vouloir mettre un fossé infranchissable, et surtout infranchi entre la science et la métaphysique” (rey 1904, 733). 14 this distinction can lead to interpret the thought of duhem as a kind of kantism, however, for kant things in itself, the essences are unknowable, while, for duhem, the essences can at least in part be known by the intelligence of man; at this point he fellows the principle of deducting the causes through the phenomena. roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 118 other hand, partial knowledge of the essences that are the root causes of the phenomena. the second of these sciences is one that receives the name of metaphysics. the first is the positive science which is divided into various branches depending on the nature of the phenomena being studied. the distinction between physics and metaphysics carried out by duhem was severely criticized because, to exclude the causal explanation of the phenomena from the task of the physical theory and reserve this task the field of metaphysics. however, duhem has emphasized the need to transcend the method of theoretical physics because basically there are two trends: 1) the need to achieve a coherent and unique theory and 2) the need to achieve a natural classification of the laws of physical theory. in other words, the affirmation that a coherent and unique theory is possible and the claim that the classification of the laws of physics theory tends to reflect the ontological order of things, both statements are metaphysical claims that cannot be founded by the procedures of the positive sciences, but that are supported by the good sense. duhem is aware that these statements are of a metaphysical character as shown in “the physics of a believer”: let us indicate what is the present form of physical theory which seems to us to tend towards the ideal form and which is the cosmological doctrine which seems to have a stronger analogy with this theory. we do not intend to give this indication in the name of the positive method proper to the physical sciences. from what we have said, it is clear to the evidence that it exceeds the limits of this method, that this method can neither confirm nor contradict it. in giving the [indication] we know that we have abandoned the domain of physics, thereby penetrating the proper domain of metaphysics, we know that after having toured the latter domain in our company, a physicist may very good refuse to follow us on the proper domain of metaphysics, without violating the rules that logic imposes (duhem 1914, 463-464).15 in this way, the duhemian distinction between physics and metaphysics is not a radical separation as can be understood by abel rey and by the interpretations of the thought of duhem that put emphasis on the apologetic role of this thought. then, it seems me clearly that, although duhem carries out a distinction between physics and metaphysics, this does not mean that he can’t formulate metaphysical statements or for him the metaphysics is a kind of knowledge16; and, on the other hand, that there is the possibility of an articulation between the two areas of knowledge.17 the historical aspect the distinction between physical theory and metaphysical – including religion in this last –, more specifically, the argument about your mutual independence, where the physical theory may not be useful to defend the religion but neither can serve to attack it, seems to correspond with the idea expressed by ariew and barker, who affirm: "for most of the nineteenth century, scholars treated 'medieval science' as an oxymoron. since nothing from the middle ages was worthy of the name 'science', no history of medieval science could be written" (ariew and barker 1992, 324). this does not seem to agree with the idea of a historical continuity of science, as it can be thought that, on one hand, are declared as independent of each other, but on the other hand it is accepted that the initiated mechanical science for galileo inherited of the middle ages its 15 “[...] il nous sera permis d’indiquer quelle est la forme actuelle de théorie physique qui nous paraît tendre vers la forme idéale, et quelle est la doctrine cosmologique qui nous semble avoir, avec cette théorie, la plus forte analogie. cette indication, ce n’est pas au nom de la méthode positive propre aux sciences physiques que nous prétendons la donner; après ce que nous avons dit, il est clair jusqu’à l’évidence qu’elle excède la portée de cette méthode, que cette méthode ne peut ni la confirmer, ni la contredire; en la donnant, en pénétrant par là sur le domaine propre de la métaphysique, nous savons que nous avons délaissé le domaine de la physique; nous savons qu’un physicien, après avoir, en notre compagnie, parcouru ce dernier domaine, peut fort bien, sans violer les règles que la logique impose, refuser de nous suivre sur le terrain de la métaphysique” (duhem 1914, 463-464). 16 from 1893, in his article "physique et métaphysique", duhem talks about the metaphysics assuming it is a type of knowledge. 17 lucas roumengous (2016) has developed this articulation in his work entitled precisely: “l'articulation entre physique et métaphysique chez pierre duhem”. roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 119 principles and the formulation of their essential propositions (duhem 1984, preface, v). this appearance of contradiction can reinforce the idea that in the thinking of duhem, there is a "crypto-theology of providence". in previous pages, it was stated that the distinction between physics and metaphysics is supported on the distinction between phenomena and essences. this last distinction also is the basis of the notion of theoretical physics as symbolic representation of the experimental laws and not as an explanation of the causes essential hidden under the phenomena. in addition, the distinction between phenomena and essences is the foundation upon which rests the idea of "save the phenomena", such as the word phenomena of this sentence can indicate it; in effect, the value granted by the theorists to the scientific hypotheses have two alternatives: realism or instrumentalism18 which is developed historically in sauver les phénomènes: essai sur la notion de théorie physique de platon à galilée: to save the phenomena is perhaps the most controversial of all duhem's works, and the easiest to misinterpret if not read with sufficient care. in it all the various criticisms of his work seem to come together: excessive positivism; neo-scholasticism; apologetic for the roman authorities. but it cannot without qualification be labelled both neo-scholastic and positivist, or both positivist and catholic apologetic. (martin 1991, 163) if all criticism of the work of duhem are presented together in to save the phenomena, it is because all aspects of this work are displayed together. as has already been pointed out, the notion of science as a symbolic representation (its scientific aspect) and the distinction between physical and metaphysical theory (its metaphysical aspect) and the struggle between realism and instrumentalism throughout history, are based on the distinction between essence and phenomena. all these aspects, as has been shown, seem to lead the ariadne’s thread that guides the work scientific and philosophical and historical of pierre duhem: the apology of the ecclesiastical authority. however, duhem assigned another task to the history of science. as is well known by all the scholars of the thought of the french physicist, duhem has exposed in various places such a task to be played by the history of physics in the conception of the physical theory. in 1892, the article “quelques réflexions au sujet des théories physiques”, it is exposed, in paragraph 7, “le rôle des théories mécaniques dans l'histoirie de la science”, and it answers the question: “if these theories are based on an idea of the role of physics that is so completely erroneous, how does it come about that they have been able to make such great progress in physics?" the answer to this question is that in the "evolution" of all science mechanical theories correspond to the first stage of the development of the physical theory. we noticed that here it is the role of the mechanical theories in the history of science and not – as in other parts of the work of duhem – of the importance of the method of the history in physics. the interest of the exposed in this article of duhem is that already on this date is the idea of "evolution" and the development of the theories of physics and, therefore, of a conception of the history of physics, idea reinforced with the analogy of the development of human intelligence. of the above, arises the problem of what is the purpose of the evolution of the theories of physics, whose stage of childhood are the mechanical theories? the answer to this question can be found in la théorie physique, chapter iii of part one – “les théories représentatives et l’histoire de la physique” – whose first section is dedicated to explaining the role of the natural classifications in the evolution of the physical theories: the purpose of the physical theory is to become a natural classification. to explain the role of these natural classifications it asks: if the theory must become a natural classification, whether it should seek a group the phenomena as are grouped the realities, then the most secure method of achieving this goal is not that of search before all what are these realities? (duhem, 1906, 45-84). the solution of this questioning is carried out by means of the distinction of two constituent parts of any theory that seeks to explain the phenomena: first a representative part and second an explanatory part. the development of each of these parts is performed independently from one another, your link is "very weak and superficial" and the explanatory part is juxtaposed to the representative part like a parasite. in 18 from the work of paul needham (1998), brenner (1990), and stoffel (2002) has deployed the debate on the realism and/or instrumentalism in the thinking of duhem. more recently, an amount of different types of duhemian realism has been deployed: the structural realism of elie zahar (2000), the motivational realism of merikangas karen darling (2003). consult the work of fábio leite (2017) for this theme. roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 120 addition, this independent development of each one of the two parts of the physical theory has a consequence related to the history of physics: while the progress of experimental physics put the theory in difficulties, while forced to modify it, to transform it, the purely representative enters almost whole in the new theory, gives you the inheritance of everything more valuable than had the old theory; while the explanatory part succumbs to leave their place to another explanation. thus, for a continuing tradition each physical theory inherits the part of the natural classification that has been able build to that which follows. (duhem 1906, 48)19 thus, according duhem the role played by the history of science generally and the history of physics particularly is reach the goal of becoming the natural classification, that is, a classification that reflects the ontological order. however, since the belief or conviction in a tendency to the natural classification, has as its foundation on "an intuition in which pascal has recognized one of those reasons of the heart 'which reason does not know', he affirms his faith in a real order, which theories are an image clearer and more faithful every" (duhem 1906, 38-39), then the apologetic role of the history of physics is maintained. in sum, in the three general and principal parts of thought of pierre duhem, it keeps the apologetic aspect of such thought. in fact, in all these parts of the thinking of the french philosopher the notion of bon sens has a fundamental role and the bon sens, in turn, is based on the doctrine of the heart of pascal, as we hope to show below. duhem and aristotle some of his commentators and selfsame duhem have pointed the aristotelian background of his thought. martin has rightly pointed out that in the conclusion of le mixte et la combinaison chimique: essai sur l'évolution d'une idée, duhem explained an analogy between your physics and that of aristotle, and in the “physics of a believer” is included the section ix entitled: "de l'analogie entre la théorie physique et la cosmologie péripatéticienne". stoffel in his turn has said that the duhemian phenomenalism is formulated not only to respond the criticisms and dangers, but that from very early has its roots in an aristotelian perspective, recognized by blondel from 1893 by calling to your correspondent: my dear peripatetic (stoffel 2007, 339).20 martin has related directly and explicitly the “aristotelian flavor” of the thought of duhem with its methodology of the bons sens. however, martin appears to reject the aristotelian influence on the thinking of the french thinker because it is based on superficial analogies. probably martin is right because this influence is not always carried out directly, but through multiple transformations occurred over a long period in the time, as we hope to show with regard the relationship between the notion of noûs and bon sens. in chapter iv of its magnificent book about duhem, martin relates the aristotelian epagôgè with the problem of the infinite regress,21 a problem that arises from the claim that we should not accept any proposition that has not been proven and we should not accept any term that has not been previously defined. the rigorous application of this idea leads, of course, the infinite regress in the demonstrations and in the definitions. according to martin, aristotle proposes as a solution the epagôgè, which in the stagirite is 19 “lorsque les progrès de la physique expérimentale mettent la théorie en défaut, lorsqu’ils l’obligent à se modifier, à se transformer, la partie purement représentative entre presque entière dans la théorie nouvelle, lui apportant l’héritage de tout ce que l’ancienne théorie possédait de plus précieux, tandis que la partie explicative tombe pour faire place à une autre explication. ainsi, par une tradition continue, chaque théorie physique passe à celle qui la suit la part de classification naturelle qu’elle a pu construire...” (duhem 1906, 48). 20 stoffel añade: “duhem poursuivra d’ailleurs dans cette voie aristotélicienne en restaurant les qualités au lieu de s’en tenir aux seules quantités et, une dizaine d’années plus tard, en établissant, d’une manière qui paraîtra peu convaincante, une certaine analogie entre la thermodynamique et la cosmologie du stagirite” (stoffel 2007, 340). 21 martin points out that: "aristotle, almost certainly the originator of both the infinite regress argument and of the formal logic, without which it could hardly have been formulated. […] aristotle's answer, epagôgè, often translated 'induction', seems to be a kind of intuitive process in which in course of continuous immersion in experience, the principles of science emerges from the contemplation of many instances of its objects" (martin 1991, 72). roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 121 closely linked with the aisthesis or sensation. aristotle’s the manner to solve the problem, says martin, is to be compared with the treatment that gives leibniz in his letter of april 1686, addressed to his friend skeptical simon foucher, where it is concluded that: "proofs could not go to infinity […]; but it remains the case that there is no way of proving these principles" (martin 1991, 73). to finish the chapter iv of his book, martin points out that pascal has his special way of dealing with the problem of infinite regress: "it is in the pensées that the full implications of his position emerge, with his doctrine of the heart that has its reasons that reason does not know”. this specialist in duhem's work appoints one of the most well-known fragments of the pensées, and concludes: however, here, pascal has other ends in view, an apology for the christian religion […]. reason and sense thus play different rôles in different subject-areas, which, […], are separated from one another, separated by method as they are separated by the subject-matter. equally, […], pascal has separated off faith from physics in just the manner we have seen in duhem, ruling out equally the use of natural reasoning to defend christianity and to attack it. (martin 1991, 75) martin has enabled us to establish a close relationship between the methodology of the bon sens and the aristotelian epagôgè through the problem of the infinite regress; and between the problem of infinite regress and the solution proposed by pascal to this problem with "his doctrine of the heart". according to martin, his doctrine leads precisely to the separation, at the same time methodological and thematic, duhemian and pascalian, of two areas that do not touch each other: the reason and the senses are two faculties that serve entirely different areas, in such a way that the natural reason may not be useful neither to defend nor to attack the faith. however, let’s not forget that to aristotle, the virtue which allows us to grasp the principles is the noûs through the procedure of the epagôgè which appears to be the solution proposed by the greek philosopher the problem of the infinite regress. in sum, it is possible to establish a relationship between the bon sens and the noûs and "doctrine of the heart". we need to return to the thought of aristotle to explain this possible relationship. aisthesis and noûs in aristotle in the sixth book of the nicomachean ethics we find the famous aristotelian classification of the different kinds of virtues by which the knowledge is acquired: téchne, epistéme, phrónesis, sophía and noûs (aristotle 1926, 1139: 15-20). later, in this work, it is argued that only the noûs can capture the principles. aristotle explains what should be understood by each of these capacities and concludes that the principles can only be captured by the noûs, although it is not very clear what the procedure by which the noûs captures the principles is. in the posterior analytics aristotle expresses: since we learn either by induction [epagôgè] or by demonstration [apodeixis]. now demonstration proceeds from universals and induction from particulars; but it is impossible to gain a view of universals except through induction [epagôgè] (since even what we call abstractions can only be grasped by induction [epagôgè], because, although they cannot exist in separation, some of them inhere in each class of objects, in so far as each class has a determined nature); and we cannot employ induction if we lack sense-perception, because it is sense-perception that apprehends particulars. it is impossible to gain scientific knowledge of them, since they can neither be apprehended from universals without induction, nor through induction apart from sense-perception [aistheseos] (aristotle 1960, 81 a35-b5). the widespread and common interpretation of this paragraph is that the described procedures are two: 1) one, take as starting point the universal and through a deductive procedure is inferred a conclusion or conclusions22; and, 2) another, ask for the origin of the knowledge of universals (posterior analytics, 99b 22 in the nicomachean ethics aristotle (1926, 1139b 20-35) uses a different terminology. it says here that the whole episteme has the ability be didaktè (teached) and matheton (learned); the teaching can be by epagôgè or sillogismòs. roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 122 15 ss), aristotle concludes that we must have a dýnamis, a faculty that captures the universal (99b 30-35). in the first lesson of la science allemande, which is about the "sciences of raisonnement", duhem (1915, 4-22.) explains the behavior of these sciences, corresponding to the previous aristotelian explanation and concludes questioning: “des axiomes, quelle est la source?” in the final part of the posterior analytics (99b-100a.) seems to be exposed, in some detail what was stated at the beginning of the metaphysics (980a-981b). the first work aristotle deals with how to acquire the principles, how they become known, and questioned what is your hexis. he proposes two alternatives: 1) we possess them (innately) and 2) we acquire them through a procedure. the first alternative is discarded as absurd, since we would have something of which we were unaware and the second alternative is in contradiction with the idea that all knowledge comes from previous knowledge. without clarifying this contradiction, it is concluded that there must be a dýnamis or power which we acquire the principles. immediately after, it is stated that there is an innate dýnamis, a faculty to distinguish, called aesthesis, sensation. there are two ways to put into action this power: 1) with persistence or perseverance and 2) with neither perseverance nor persistence. when this faculty is done without persistence, there is no more knowledge than the sensation selfsame, and when she performed with persistence there is a knowledge besides of the sensation: of the sensation arises the memory and of the repeated many times memory of the same thing arises the experience and of this experience arises the principle of art and science. aristotle explains that when in the soul some of the entities persists or is still present, then for the first time it is presented in soul the universal; and in the next place, produces a new detention or persistence of the initially achieved universal and so on until the first universals. aristotle concludes by saying that: evidently we know necessarily by epagôgè, since this is how the aesthesis produces the universal. finally, it explains that of all the hexis, the habits exposed in the nicomachean ethics, the episteme and the noûs have a relationship and which the latter is the most accurate of all, since the archai (principles) are better known than the knowledge provided by the apodeixis (demonstrative procedure) and, therefore, the principles are captured by the noûs and that there is nothing more true than this one (posterior analytics 100b 1-15). in the paragraph immediately above, we shows a close relationship between the aesthesis (the sensation) and the noûs (faculty that captures the principles): the first is the starting point of the epagôgè which is the procedure through occurs the universal in the soul, the universal is another name for the principles; while the second – the noûs – is both the hexis and areté that captures the principles and is the starting point of the demonstrative procedures (apodeixis), therefore, too it is the starting point of the episteme (science). while the ability to sense – aisthesis – is the point of departure of the procedure; the noûs, ability of grasp the principles, the noetic catchment, is the point of arrival of procedure by which are provided us the principles of knowledge. from the noûs to the bon sens a manifestation of the syncretism product from the confrontation of the greek culture with the alexandrianjewish culture was carried out by the task of translation of the sacred texts of judaism. this translation was commissioned by eleazar, the jewish high priest, to 72 jewish priests, and requested by ptolemy ii philadelphus. so, this translation is known as the bible of the 70. according to the dictionary of theology of lothar coenen and erich beyreuther and hans bietenhard, the greek word noûs is related to a group of words: noéo, diánoia, énnoia, nóema, anoia. "if it is compared the central rôle played by the noûs in greek thought, one is surprised by the low use that make the lxx of this group of words. the word appears with a greater relative frequency is diánoia, with 75 testimonies; on the contrary, noûs and noéo have only 35 testimonials each; the other derivatives are scarce even more" (1994 [1971], 10). according to the authors of this dictionary, "the limited presence of this group of words in the septuagint is because the hebrew does not have an equivalent of the greek [word] noûs", which is often translated by the words léb or lébáb, which in the version of the septuagint are used 6 times to translate the greek word noûs and 38 times to translate the greek word diánoia which 'almost always is replaced by kardia", "heart". likewise, in the version of the septuagint, also it is used [the greek word] diánoia (about the syllogism part of principles that cannot be tested by syllogism, but by the epagôgè. however, it is not very clear procedure in which consists the epagôgè. roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 123 75 testimonials) to translate the hebrew word léb or lébáb, "heart"; in addition, are also used some twists as: "an honest sense" (4 mac 1, 2, 16; 35); "a pure sense" (8, 3 testben); "good sense" (4, 12). also in josephus: a healthy sense (ant. 8, 23); in a very typical manner of old testament, the heart is called organ of knowledge (prov 16, 23; is 6.10). according to the dictionary of theology cited earlier, philo of alexandria used the greek words noûs and diánoia, referring to them as “the divine in the human” (det. pot. ins. 29), “an organ of divine knowledge” (virt. 57), that which makes man immortal (op. mund. 135). in addition, according to marta alesso, "philo says that the soul is composed of the following parts: the 'guideline' (hegemonikon) or 'rational' (logikon) part which is the same as the intellect (noûs) and the part irrational (alogos)…" (alesso 2011, 22). we emphasize that are identified logos and noûs. the encounter of greek philosophy and the jewish religion transformed the noûs, both identifying it with the logos and transforming it into the kardia, the heart. something similar happens in christianity, to display it extensively quoted from the dictionary of theology: if we throw a first glance superficial on the frequency with which the group of words related to noûs in the new testament, confirms the finding that we did in the lxx: neither in the n[ew] t[estament] plays a central rôle. noûs is attested only 24 times; katanoéo and noéo are 14 times each; the other forms derived are still more rarely. however, this statistical glance provides us a false impression. certainly, the theme of the noûs plays a secondary rôle in the gospels (with the exception lc [lucas], which uses 8 times katanoéo) and in the post-paulines letters; instead, the type of hellenistic greek mentality is found most frequently in paul (21 of the 24 testimonies of noûs belong to the so-called corpus paulinum). the noun noûs, which appears in paul and the writings of the post-paulines (eph, col. and pastorals) means mind in terms of discernment, the ability to judge, ability to discern (e.g. 2 thess 2, 2). but this discernment is the religious insight, the ability to judge religious, which is situated next to the consciousness (tit 1.15). thus, noûs occupies a place parallel to the faith, which in the pastoral letters comes to mean "religion"; in rom 7, 23 paul writes: "in my body i perceive different criteria that is waring against the criteria of my noûs”. later, in verse 25 it is said: "on the one hand, with my noûs (is to say: i as noûs) i am subject to the law of god; on the other, with my instincts (that is to say: i as meat) i am the law of sin". this noûs is the same as the éssó ánthrópos, the inner man (that is: inner man, in the most intimate, in his own interiority; cf. rom 7.22; eph 3.16) or the egó (rom 7, 9.10.14.17.20.24.25), the authentic self, that can discern between good and evil. the ego recognizes that the law is good; the ego wants to comply with the law, but the law recognized by the noûs, law of religious insight, contradicts the other law of sin. therefore, here noûs is the knowledge and understanding religious, who recognize and honor the law of god. those appointments where diánoia is in parallelismus membrorum with kardia, heart show it like this. (heb 8.10; 10.16; of the lxx jer 38, 33) (coenen, beyreuther and bietenhard 1994 [1971], 12-13) the meeting of greek thought with judeo-christian thought has transmitted to us the greek word noûs through the notion of kardia, heart, both words with the meaning of "the capacity of capture first principles". the predominance of the jewish-christian thought on the pagan greek thought, derived from his meeting, obliterated the greek concept of the word noûs and privilege the jewish-christian notion of the word heart or from the greek word kardia thought-out of jewish-christian way. this predominance of the jewish-christian thought can be displayed even we review one of the foundations of the reform movement. according to richard popkin (1989), in fact, one of the fundamental principles of the reform of luther is his questioning of the authority of the criteria of pope and councils for accepting the truth of the scriptures. if luther rejects the authority of the pope and councils as a criterion of truth of the bible, then what is the criterion that the reformer accepts to determine the truth of the scriptures? the answer is to be found in various places in the work of luther, let us mention two, the first of the discourse at the diet of worms in 1521, and the second, at the de servo arbitrio of 1525: since your distinguished majesty and your lordship demand me a response, i will give it unabashedly: unless i am convinced by the testimony of scripture or for obvious reasons – because i do not believe in the pope nor in the councils alone, since clearly they were wrong and have often contradicted themselves – i am chained by the scriptural texts that i have quoted and my conscience is captive to roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 124 the word of god. i cannot and do not want to recant in nothing, because it is neither safe nor honest to act against self-awareness. that god help me. amen (luther, 2006, 175, emphasis mine). in de servo arbitrio: but, as i said before, i will not openly express myself. in the meantime, i excuse your very good intention of heart; but do you go no further; fear of the spirit of god, who searches the reins and the heart, and who is not deceived by artfully contrived expressions. i have, upon this occasion, expressed myself thus, that henceforth you may cease to accuse our cause of pertinacity or obstinacy. for, by so doing, you only evince that you hug in your heart to lucian, or some other of the swinish tribe of the epicureans; who, because he [epicuro] does not believe there is a god himself, secretly laughs at all those who do believe and confess it. allow us to be assertors, and to study and delight in assertions: and do you favor your sceptics and academics until christ shall have called you also. the holy spirit is not a skeptic, nor are what he has written on our hearts doubts or opinions, but assertions more certain, and more firm, than life itself and all human experience (luther 1931, 9, emphasis mine). it seems, then, that the “doctrine of the heart” of pascal can be traced back to the doctrine of the greek noûs, but mediated by the jewish-christian tradition and transformed by a series of attempts to reconcile this with him. in this sense, it is possible to speak, as duhem speaks about the natural classification, of a tradition of thought which is inherited along the passage of time, but that does not pass in the same way from generation to generation, but amending and fused with other forms of thought. as well, seems that the greek noûs was inherited and transformed into the notion of "heart" of the jewish-christian and the jewishchristian notion of "heart" was inherited and transformed into the duhemian bon sens. epilogue according to stoffel, in the analysis of the task apologetic of the thought of duhem, we must set the following distinction: there are explicit and implicit tasks. according with this specialist of the thought of duhem, the apologetic task of the work of french physicist is of second type, an implicit task; that is to say, what motivates duhem to develop its special conception of the physical theory is not the apology of the religion, but there are in this work an apology of the religion (stoffel 1995). however, it seems that it is not possible to deny the existence of an apologetic task in the scientific and philosophical and historical work of pierre duhem. this inability to deny the apologetic task in the thought of the french physicist is sufficient to establish the possibility of qualifying his thought as or a "crypto-theology of providence" or as having a hidden agenda. the opposition between the scientific and apologetic reasons or motives of a system of thought, can also be derived from the perspective which there is such opposition in the science and religion’s very nature. this perspective part of determined notions of science and religion which allow us to set the opposition. duhem seems to have been aware that the opposition between science and religion is based on these determined notions of both human aspects and, precisely, one of its objectives is to combat such notions of science and religion which establish an opposition between them. instead, it proposes notions of science and religion that allow its integration. duhem does not renounce – as positivism – neither the existence of a link between science and metaphysics nor cancels – like positivism – the cognitive reaches of metaphysics. according to duhem, science and metaphysics use the same methods and take the same starting point. but neither apply in the same way such methods nor did they take the same way such starting point. they apply the methods in accordance with the specific subject-matter of study of each discipline and the point of departure is taken according to each type of thought. in this way, the sens commum can be the starting point of the principles of the sciences of raissonement and the bon sens can be the starting point for the hypothesis of the experimental sciences and the esprit de finesse can be the starting point of philosophy, of religion and of the articulation between science and metaphysics. for this reason, the spirit of fineness, in its different forms, play a role of paramount importance in the system of thought full of the multifaceted thinker of bordeaux. bon sens that comes from a tradition that goes back to the greek noûs roberto estrada olguin – bon sens and noûs 125 notion and arrives to our days. references alesso, marta. 2011. qué son las potencias del alma en los textos de filón. circe 15 (2): 11-26. http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s1851-17242011000200001. consulted june 13, 2017. ariew, roger and peter barker. 1992. duhem and continuity in the history of science. revue internationale de philosophie 46 (182): 323-343. aristotle. 1926. nicomachean ethics. translated by h. rackham. loeb classical library 73. cambridge: harvard university press. 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dans le sillage de blaise pascal. revista portuguesa de filosofia 63: 275-307. zahar, elie. 2000. essai d’épistémologie réaliste. paris: vrin. microsoft word 18 referee layout 209 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 209-210 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2018 – this is an open access journal acknowledgments to referees we would like to thank all those who have participated as anonymous referees in the editorial process of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science in 2018. without the expertise of the referees, it would be impossible to reach the editorial quality we pursue. this essential knowledge of the referees helped the editors accept the papers – or eventually reject some of them – as well as help the authors improve their works. thus, referees accompanied and certificated all the editing process. we owe a massive debt of gratitude to them. the following is a list of scholars who have read in average two papers in 2018. referees (2018) adriano correia – federal university of goiás, brazil andrea amato – university of bari, italy andrea reichenberger – paderborn university, germany antonino drago – university federico ii of naples, italy brandon boesch – morningside college, eua carlos alvarez maia – state university of rio de janeiro, brazil ana carolina vimieiro gomes – federal university of minas gerais, brazil eduardo sugizaki – pontifical catholic university of goiás, brazil fábio ferreira de almeida – federal university of goiás, brazil fábio rodrigo leite – university of são paulo, brazil francesco crapanzano – university of messina, italy gustavo rodrigues rocha – state university of feira de santana, brazil herivelto pereira de souza – university of brasília, brazil logan l. watts – city university of new york, eua luciano celi – università di trento, italy acknowledgments to referees 210 marlon salomon – federal university of goiás, brazil michel roland – université catholique de louvain-la-neuve, belgium nadia ambrosetti – università degli studi milano, italy paolo bussotti – university of udine, italy peter barker – university of oklahoma, eua philippe vincent – university of lille, france raffaele pisano – university of lille, france tiago santos almeida – federal university of goiás, brazil túlio roberto xavier de aguiar – federal university of minas gerais, brazil vera portocarrero – state university of rio de janeiro, brazil wanderson alves – federal university of goiás, brazil microsoft word 9 lã¶wy layout 104 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 104-110 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2019 – this is an open access journal interview: ilana löwy1 ilana löwy (née zelmanowicz), born in łódź, poland, is a biologist, historian of biomedical sciences and a feminist. she is “directrice de recherche” (senior researcher) at an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research unit cermes-3 (centre de recherche médecine, sciences, santé, santé mentale, société, inserm-cnrs-ehess), paris, france. she is also affiliated with other institutions, department of global health and social medicine at king’s college london, and the department of the history of science at harvard university and is an associated researcher of casa oswaldo cruz, fiocruz, rio de janeiro. ilana löwy holds a bsc and msc degrees in microbiology and biochemistry from tel aviv university, and a doctorate in immunology from paris vii university. she then retrained as a historian of science. she had studied ludwik fleck’s epistemology, history of bacteriology, immunology tropical medicine and cancer, women’s reproductive health, and more recently, congenital disorders and prenatal diagnosis. interviewed by: ana carolina vimieiro gomes2 in may 2019 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.09 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ ana carolina vimieiro gomes (acvg): you started your academic and scientific training as a biologist and has a ph.d. in immunology. how did you become interested in the history of biomedical sciences? ilana löwy: i was very lucky. when i decided to switch to the history of science, i had already a tenure-track job at the french institute of medical research (inserm). when i decided to retrain as a historian of science, i was able to persuade my hierarchical superiors – with some difficulty but also with the important support of 1 ilana löwy [orcid: 0000-0001-6963-0578] is a senior researcher at the centre de recherche, médecine, sciences, santé, santé mentale, société umr cnrs 8211 – unité inserm 988 – ehess – université paris descartes. address: 7, rue guy môquet bp 8 94801 villejuif cedex e-mail: lowy@vjf.cnrs.fr 2 ana carolina vimiero gomes [orcid: 0000-0003-2527-6970] is a professor in the department of history at the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: carolvimieiro@gmail.com interview: ilana löwy 105 my mentors – that changing orientation to social and cultural studies of science is not only a personal whim, but can benefit the institution too. i was always interested in history and art history, and followed lectures on these topics during my undergraduate and graduate studies in biology. however, at that time i was not aware of the existence of a discipline called “history of science”. i first became interested in history and philosophy of science after my doctorate, when i was invited to collaborate with clinicians on a research project on buerger disease, a rare and scary pathology. the patients, usually young men, develop inflammation and thrombosis in their fingers which may lead to gangrene, and a need to amputate the fingers, and sometimes the whole limb. buerger disease is linked to smoking and is believed to be an autoimmune condition (a pathology produced when the body's immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue). my task was to develop a mouse model of buerger disease. i had regular meeting with the clinicians at a hospital, to report about the progress of my research. the clinicians and my colleagues at the laboratory were very pleased with my results. i was less happy with myself. although i was able to induce autoimmune reactions in mice, and show that the immune cells of these mice had some similarities with immune cells from the patients’ blood, i was not sure how relevant laboratory findings are for the understanding of a human pathology; i was even not sure that they are relevant at all. i asked a friend, who taught philosophy of science, whether he knows studies about the theoretical underpinnings of the use of animal models in science, and especially the modelling of human diseases in the laboratory. today there are numerous such studies, but this was not the case at that time. my friend lent me an introduction to epistemology which discussed the ideas of thinkers such as kuhn, feyeraband, hempel, polanyi, lakatos. i found some of the ideas of these scholars very interesting, but their wrings were focused mainly on physics and astronomy, were often very abstract, and were not relevant to my practice-related preoccupations. i reported my disappointment to my friend, and the next time we met he told me: i think that i found something for you. you should read a book written in the 1930s by a polish microbiologist called ludwik fleck. acvg: you have been interested in the epistemology and scientific work of ludwik fleck since the very beginning of your academic and scientific career in the history of science. why your interest was first drawn by fleck’s reflections on medicine and science? what does attract you so much about his thinking? ilana löwy: i had a real “eureka” moment reading fleck’s genesis and development of a scientific fact. finally, an epistemological text which discussed the concrete experience of working in a biology laboratory, and dealt with human diseases. fleck’s book spoke directly to my preoccupations and provided some answers to my queries. i immediately photocopied the whole book (this was before amazon times, and purchasing a book published abroad was a complex enterprise) then heavily underlined and annotated my photocopy. i was especially impressed by fleck’s fine-grained description of laboratory practices. fleck argued that epistemologists who only read what scientists write, and fail to examine what the scientists do cannot understand what science is about. he was faithful to his own advice, and provided a highly insightful description of scientific work at the bench, and then of the long and sometimes very complicated process of production, stabilization and diffusion of “scientific facts” produced in the laboratory. interview: ilana löwy 106 in a traditional view of science, dominant in fleck’s time, science was seen as an activity conducted by “greats scientists” (as a rule white, western, upper class men) who unmask hidden “facts,” and discover the “laws of nature”. fleck proposed a very different view of science. he saw science as a dynamic, situated collective human activity. so, since science was a situated endeavor, it cannot be studied outside its historical and social context. fleck had shown that the production of scientific facts always included their validation by relevant communities, and thus activities such as talks in scientific meetings and publications in scientific journals. in 1935, when he published his book, scientific publications were already frequently authored by several researchers, for him a telling display of the collective and social nature of science. fleck was also interested by the multiple ways specific knowledge claims and practices circulate outside the professional group (“thought collective”) which had initially developed and validated a given “fact”. facts, he argued, migrate from the group that produced them, and are modified during their circulation among different “thought collectives,” professional and lay (“imperfect translations”). this process stimulates in turn innovation in science and society. acvg: many of your works are inspired by fleck’s approach to the history of science. one example is your recent book “imperfect pregnancies” where you mention fleck’s claim that [citing you] “epistemology without historical and comparative investigations is no more than an empty play of words, or an epistemologia imaginabilis”. in your opinion what are the most relevant methodological contributions of fleck’s thinking for the theory and historiography of science today? ilana löwy: fleck’s work has many reading, all of them legitimate, of course. many scholars focused on fleck’s theoretical/ epistemological views. others, such as ian hacking, extended his understanding of styles of scientific thought. other still, such as bruno latour, were mainly attracted by fleck’s focus on epistemology as a collective practice that involved learning and change. i was especially interested in a more “prosaic” aspect of fleck: his involvement with public health. the historian of science barbara rosenkrantz, who was one of my mentors, explained in one of the first reviews of the english translation of genesis and development of scientific fact that fleck worked nearly all his life in public health. this is, i believe a very important point because public health is a discipline at the crossroads of biology, clinical medicine, sociology, economy, politics and law. fleck was interested in all these dimensions and the ways they interact. he can still teach us much about the complex, multidimensional interaction between science and society. fleck lived in dark times. his book was published in 1935 when to quote the writer victor serge “it was midnight in the century”: the consequences of the economic crisis of 1929, the rise of fascism, stalin’s repression in the soviet union. genesis and development of a scientific fact, a book written in german, was published in switzerland because at that time no german publishing house would publish a book written by a jew. during the second world war, fleck and his family were interned in the lwow ghetto, then he was sent to auschwitz concentration camp, and finally to the buchenwald camp. in the latter camp, fleck witnessed nazi murderous experiments on humans. he testified about these experiments in the nuremberg trial of nazi doctors, in 1948. his wife and son survived the war, but other members of his family were killed by the nazi. in spite of his first-hand observation of horrors made by the nazi in the name of scientific research, fleck did not lose his faith in science. just the opposite is true; interview: ilana löwy 107 he passionately believed that such horrors teach us that we need a better science: more open, and more democratic. to achieve this goal, he proposed, it is crucial to educate the public how precisely science works, what scientists do, and how to judge which knowledge statements are sound and which are not. his theory of “scientific styles of thought” aimed to do precisely this: favor the public’s critical engagement with science, very different from passive divulgation of “scientific facts”. such a widespread and well-informed public engagement with science is, i believe, especially important today, in an era of “alternative facts,” in which false information often spreads faster than the true one, and leading politicians attempt to undermine science and propagate ignorance. acvg: one special hallmark of your trajectory in the history of science is an interdisciplinary approach, and you work in an interdisciplinary research institution in france, cermes-3 (centre de recherche médecine, sciences, santé, santé mentale, société). you often acknowledge the contribution of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and biomedical scientists’ reflections to your research. could you please tell some more about this interdisciplinary approach and its importance for your empirical work, analytic choices and historical interpretations? ilana löwy: i believe that it is not possible to study the history of medicine without an interdisciplinary, comparative approach. perhaps one partial exception is a philological approach to the study of old medical texts, central to “old” history of medicine, focused on the investigation of classic works in this domain. however, when one moves beyond the establishment of a critical edition of hippocrates or vesalius’s writing – of course, a very important scholarly task – studying medicine is, by definition, a multidisplinary endeavor. medicine is a socio-biological phenomenon: an individual can feel pain, have other distressing symptoms, be disabled – but to define individual’s distress as “disease” is a collective time-and place-dependent act. it is not possible to dissociate the sociocultural elements of a disease from its biological ones, either on the individual or the society level. our understanding of “disease” is shaped at the same time by the experience of perturbation of a physiological function (in psychiatric disease, a mental function), and by the social imagery linked with this perturbation. hence the need to study it from multiple disciplinary points of view. as fleck had already eloquently argued in 1926 such points of view are partly incommensurable. it is not possible to have a single, fixed understanding of a human pathology even when there is a simple definition of this pathology, a good diagnostic test and an efficient cure; even less when the pathology is complex and its causes are not fully understood. syphilis is an infection by treponema pallidum, it can be reliably detected by a blood test, and rapidly cured by penicillin. however, today too, the disease “syphilis” cannot be dissociated from the social context in which it manifests itself. the existence of efficient diagnosis and treatment may not be enough to contain the spread of infection. or, to take a more dramatic example: the new vaccine against ebola seems to work well, but it is not sufficient to stop the ongoing epidemics of this disease in the democratic republic of congo, and health experts ask sociologists and anthropologists to help them to better understand peoples’ resistance to the proposed health measures. acvg: you have also been working on the history of biomedical science in brazil, as can be noted in your association to casa de oswaldo cruz/fiocruz and some of your publications (for instance: portuguese translation: virus, mosquitos e modernidade: a febre amarela no brasil entre ciência e política, rio de janeiro: fiocruz, 2005). do you think there would be an interview: ilana löwy 108 essential lesson to the historiography of science that you may have learned over the years from investigating the history of biomedical science in brazil? ilana löwy: i learned that brazil is a fascinating place for a historian. it is at the same time “developed” and “developing” country, with an impressive tradition of scientific and clinical research and public health, but also agitated history and immense tensions and contradictions. the now defunct parisian department store samaritaine has a slogan “one can find everything at the samaritaine”. one can find (nearly) everything in brazil, including great colleagues and excellent students. brazil is, i believe, an especially interesting place to study the interactions between “center” and “periphery,” or rather the complexity and indeterminacy of these terms, and a great site to look at tensions and contradiction of diffusion of new biomedical approaches. in the era of global health, it is also an especially good place to investigate the intersections between the global and the local and to examine global health from the point of view of “globalized” populations. acvg: you are also involved in current political debates on public health in brazil, such as your participation in local and international public and scientific debates on the recent zika’s virus outbreak. how do you think these political experiences in the present, shape your interests in and contribute to your approaches to the history of biomedical science? ilana löwy: it is difficult to live outside one’s time, or isolate hermetically one’s opinion as a scholar from one’s views as a citizen. on the other hand, historical and sociological research is a specific activity. the role of academic, the british classics scholar mary beard explained, is to make issues more complicated. this may be somewhat easier when studying ancient rome than when studying recent developments such as the development of genomics or the zika epidemics. scholars who deal with difficult topics and fundamentally unresolved profound moral and material questions are frequently caught in a tension between an aspiration to be policy-relevant, and thus to simplify the debated issues, and the wish to be faithful to their material, and therefore to be especially attentive to contingency and complexity. i am trying to find the right balance between these two standpoints, but i am not sure how successful i am in avoiding the multiple traps of such “in between” position. acvg: your latest books preventive strikes: women, precancer and prophylactic surgery, johns hopkins university press, 2009 (prized by the european association for the history of science); woman's disease: a history of cervical cancer, oxford university press, 2011; imperfect pregnancies. a history of birth defects and prenatal diagnosis, johns hopkins university press, 2017, and tangled diagnoses: prenatal testing, women and risk, chicago: chicago university press, 2018 tackle issues of gender related to biomedical science. how and why do you have become involved in gender reflections in science? could you please situate the historiographic relevance of these publications to the contemporary debates on gender studies? ilana löwy: i was always interested in gender/ gender studies and their intersection with my scientific specialty, biology, at least from the time when, as a graduate student in biology. i read studies of scholars such as evelyn fox keller, anne fausto sterling and ruth hubbard (all biologists and feminists) from the mid-1990s i also participated actively in collective debates on the place of gender studies in a science studies curriculum. however, until the early 21 first century, gender was on the “back burner” in my own empirical research. at that time, i participated in collective interview: ilana löwy 109 projects the introduction of testing for genetic predisposition to breast cancer. through these studies, gender moved to a more central place in my work. i became then interested in gendered topics, female cancers, contraception, prenatal diagnosis, and now the zika epidemics, a topic closely related to the thorny issue of severe constraints on women’s sexual and reproductive rights in brazil. i am surely not the right person to discuss the relevance of my work to scholarship in gender studies. i can only hope that my focus on the concrete patterns of “manufacture of gender” through the material practices of science and medicine can stimulate more studies that look not only on rare and exceptional developments, but also mundane, routine and therefore often invisible acts, which are nevertheless the backbone of medical practices. acvg: after investigating the history of diagnosis techniques in 20th-century, such as cancer and prenatal diagnosis, what comes next? what have you been working on recently? ilana löwy: i am still deep in the study of zika epidemics in brazil, a complex multilevel event with numerous ramifications. i hope to write a book on this epidemics which will combine historical insights with an analysis of present-time events. the work on zika led me to my earlier interest in transmissible diseases, among them syphilis, since brazil is now affected by an important epidemics of syphilis, including congenital syphilis, something i want to understand better. thus, recent developments bring me back to my beginnings as a historian of science: the study of the diagnosis of syphilis, at the center of fleck’s book genesis and development of a scientific fact. acvg: thank you so much! interview: ilana löwy 110 references gardey d. and löwy i. 2000. (eds.), l’invention du naturel: les sciences et la fabrication du masculin et du feminin. paris: editions des archives contemporaines. löwy i. 2018. tangled diagnoses: prenatal testing, women and risk. chicago: chicago university press. löwy, i. 2017. imperfect pregnancies. a history of birth defects and prenatal diagnosis. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. löwy, i. 2016. fleck, the public health expert: medical facts, thought collectives, and the scientist’s responsibility. science, technology, & human values 41 (3): 509-533. löwy, i. 2016. zika and microcephaly: can we learn from history? physis 26 (1). löwy, i. 2011. a woman’s disease: a history of cervical cancer. oxford: oxford university press. löwy i. 2011. historiography of biomedicine: “bio,” “medicine,” and in between. isis 102: 116 122. löwy, i. 2009. preventive strikes: women, precancer and prophylactic surgery. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. löwy i. 2007. the social history of medicine: beyond the local. social history of medicine 20 (3): 465-481. löwy i. 2005. virus, mosquitos e modernidade: a febre amarela no brasil entre ciência e politica. rio de janiero: manguinhos. löwy, i. 2005. l’emprise du genre : masculinité, féminité, inégalité. paris: la dispute. löwy, i. 1999. science and gender. gender and history 11 (3): 514-527. löwy i. 1995. le genre dans l’historie sociale et culturelle des sciences. annales hss 50 (3): 523-529. microsoft word 19 layout rainbow 204 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 204-225 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 – this is an open access article article michael scot and the four rainbows tony scott1 abstract: we apply a physical and historical analysis to a passage by the medieval scholar michael scot concerning multiple rainbows, a meteorological phenomenon whose existence has only been acknowledged in recent history. we survey various types of physical models to best decipher scot’s description of four parallel rainbows as well as a linguistic analysis of scot’s special etymology. the conclusions have implications on scot’s whereabouts at the turn of the 13th century. keywords: meteorology; multiple rainbows; optical dispersion; middle-ages received: 17 february 2017. reviewed 26 april 2017. accepted: 12 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.18 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction the rainbow is an impressive and fascinating natural phenomenon that is observed when sunlight interacts with raindrops in the air and involves the splitting of white light into its constituent colors. the splitting of light into its colors is also observed when white light passes through a prism. this latter effect has been investigated and explained by isaac newton and arises from optical dispersion. most of us associate the rainbow with the familiar single bow in the sky. yet there are occasions in which four, or even more, rainbows are observed. the first, to the best of our knowledge, written record to that effect appears at the beginning of the thirteenth century and is due to michael scot, as quoted by lynn thorndike: it should be known that four bows, and maybe more, can be formed at once, at slight distance apart. and when so many are formed, people seeing them are much astounded, and then it is a sign of a small gathering of clouds in air, and those which are there are for the most part rare and subtle in substance. and that is a sign of very little or no rain, and they do not produce thunder but break into fragments and vanish. and such clouds appear very zalla and low and mountainous (montuose). black and thick clouds do not generate so many bows, also produce thunder and rain () (thorndike 1965, 69) 1 tony scott is a professor of physics at the taiyuan university of technology, taiyuan, shanxi 030024, china. address is near india pvt ltd., no. 71/72, jyoti nivas college road, koramangala, bangalore 560095, india. email: tcscott@gmail.com tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 205 in the quote above, the term “zalla” is italicized (and will be subject to examination in the section entitled “possible source of unknown etymology”). the quote originates from michael scotus, the latinized form for michael scot (1175-1235 ce) (thorndike 1965, burnett, 1994, 2,101-126). scot became part of history and legend as the court “astrologer” of frederick ii (abufalia 1988, benoist-méchin 1997), ruler of the holy roman empire. although well viewed by the papal authorities around 1227, scot would acquire the sinister reputation of a magician and wizard and would be condemned to the inferno in dante alighieri’s epic poem, the divine comedy (albeit “rescued” much later in sir walter scott’s poem lay of the last minstrel). michael scot and his contemporary fibonacci were members of the court of frederick ii and would play their part in transmitting much of the scientific knowledge of the muslims (largely from moorish spain) into europe (largely italy and sicily), thereby planting many of the seeds of the italian “renaissance” (haskins 1927, burnett, 1994, 2,101-126). in thorndike’s work, reference is made to a 1959 edition of a book by carl boyer on rainbows (boyer 1959), in which it is stated that “the quaternary rainbow arc is not known to appear in nature”. though thorndike’s book on michael scot was excellent, thorndike was not a physicist and was not therefore in a position to evaluate this claim. as a matter of fact, four rainbows may indeed form simultaneously in the sky. tertiary and quaternary rainbows in particular were spotted in 2011 by michael theusner (theusner 2011) as reported by the bbc (palmer 2011). if these recently observed quaternary rainbows are indeed related to the four bows described by michael scot (as illustrated in figure 1), then scot reported, in the 13th century ce, a sighting of a natural phenomenon not fully understood until the 20th century and not fully demonstrated until the 21st century! in particular, as discussed in this article, scholars in scot’s time did not believe in the possibility of formation of more than two bows in the sky. the precociousness of scot’s testimony is the subject of this article as it begs, amongst other things, the question as to the origin of the four observed bows. this would be not the first time that scholarly experts had misread or underestimated records left by michael scot. haskins for instance had examined a very detailed description in latin concerning the medical case known as “mary of bologna” and dismissed scot’s record as a “calcified fibroid tumor” (haskins 1927, 274). in the early 1970s however, the exacting detail of scot’s description enabled a new and different medical diagnosis: this was a very rare case of miscarriage or “spontaneous abortion”, not followed by immediate expulsion, of twin embryos, dead at different dates and calcified (o’neill 1973, 77-811, o’neill 1974,125-9). in short, scot had actually recorded, back in the 13th century, a rare medical case and this has not been fully appreciated until the 20th century! we note in addition that a recent analysis on the fibonacci numbers (scott & marketos 2014) suggests that scot may have played a role in the formulation of the fibonacci sequence in leonardo de pisa’s book “liber abaci”, a further indication that a conclusive understanding of fig. 1 four rainbows, an artistic impression. courtesy zhao jingying, taiyuan, china. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 206 michael scot and his contributions is yet in the making. in order to understand the physical origin of scot’s reported observation, we present, in the following, the physics of the rainbow. we also discuss physical models that give rise to multiple rainbows while at the same time keeping in mind the context of the era in which scot lived and worked. we therefore present, in addition to findings from scientific analysis, cultural, historical and even linguistic evidence, in an effort to unravel the mystery of scot’s sighting. primary and secondary rainbows a “primary” rainbow, and a fainter “secondary” rainbow parallel to the first bow are shown in figures 2 and 3. the primary rainbow results from a single internal reflection of refracted light inside a raindrop. in this case, light is refracted as it enters the raindrop, it is then reflected off the back of the drop, and is finally refracted as it leaves the drop (figure 4). the color on the outside of the primary rainbow is red, leading through to violet on the inside. the secondary rainbow is formed from rays that are reflected twice within the drop before leaving the drop. the angle of refraction depends on the frequency of radiation. this effect is known as dispersion and causes sunlight to split into its constituent colors on entering the raindrop. red light is refracted by a smaller angle than blue light as it enters the drop and red rays turn through a smaller angle than blue rays on leaving the raindrop. consequently, light in the primary rainbow is spread, with a maximum intensity at an angle of 40° — 42° (about rainbows – ucar, 2013) (see figure 3). the angle of 42° corresponds to what is called an anti solar point which is the imaginary point on the celestial sphere exactly opposite the sun. the anti solar point is the center of rainbows and can be easily identified: on a sunny day, it is located at the shadow of one’s head. secondary rainbows, caused by two total internal reflections of sunrays before they leave the raindrop, appear at an angle of 50 — 53°. as a result of the second internal reflection, the colors of a secondary rainbow are inverted compared to those in the primary bow, with blue on the outside and red on the inside. as some light nevertheless escapes the drop at each internal reflection, the secondary rainbow is fainter than the primary because a) the intensity of the light that is transmitted is smaller in this case (due to the two internal reflections) and b) the secondary rainbow itself is spread over a greater angle in the sky. a more thorough study of the interaction of sun rays with raindrops requires knowledge of the physics of reflection, refraction and dispersion. the law of reflection is easy to understand and was already known in the middle-ages. the path of any ray hitting the drop can be determined using snell’s law and simple trigonometry. dispersion on the other hand arises from the dependence of the angle of refraction on the frequency (wavelength) of radiation. the law of refraction was first accurately described by ibn sahl, of baghdad, in the manuscript “on burning mirrors and lenses” in 984 ce (rashed, 1990, wolf, 1995). this law would not be rediscovered in europe until the 1600s and then credited (1621 ce) to willibrord snell. snell’s law states that: (1) where n1 and n2 are the indices of refraction of adjacent media, labeled 1 and 2. this is illustrated in figure 5. we note that ptolemy, a greek living in alexandria, egypt, in the second century ce (harland 2007) had found a relationship involving the angle of refraction, which however was inaccurate for angles that were not small. ptolemy’s empirical law was obtained partly as a result of fudging his data to fit theory (weinstein 1996-2007). when light travels from a medium with a higher refractive index, such as water or raindrop, to one with a lower refractive index, such as air, if the angle of incidence is large enough, snell’s law requires that the sine of the angle of refraction be greater than one. this is not possible, and the light in such cases is reflected by the boundary, a phenomenon known as total internal reflection. the largest possible angle of incidence which still results in a refracted ray is called the critical angle; in this case, the refracted ray travels along the boundary between the two media, with the angle of refraction being equal to 90°. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 207 the process of total internal reflection is illustrated in figure 6 for adjacent media with indices of refraction equal to 1 (e.g. air) and 1.5 (e.g. glass). a similar situation is encountered when a ray of light moves from water to air with an angle of incidence of 50°. the refractive indices of water and air are approximately 1.333 and 1, respectively, and snell’s law (eq. (1)) gives us the relation: (2) which is impossible to satisfy for this angle of incidence. the critical angle crit is the value of 1 for which 2 equals 90°: (3) fig. 2 primary and secondary rainbows. courtesy university of illinois guide to atmospheric physics. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 208 which is very large even larger than the anti solar angle of 42°. thus, contrary to popular belief, the light at the back of the raindrop does not undergo total internal reflection and some light does emerge from the back. (this is important to remember when dealing with successive reflections and consequently multiple rainbows.) it should be noted that light coming out the back of the raindrop does not create a rainbow between the observer and the sun because spectra emitted from the back of the raindrop do not have a maximum of intensity, as the other visible rainbows do, and thus the colors blend together rather than forming a rainbow. fig. 3 angles of elevation of primary and secondary rainbows. courtesy h. moysés nussenzveig, scientific american, 1977. fig. 4 processes that result in the formation of a primary rainbow: dispersion (as light enters and leaves the drop) and total internal reflection. courtesy of kes47 of wikipedia commons, 2010. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 209 interestingly enough, in 1266 ce a contemporary of scot, roger bacon, measured the angle of the rainbow cone for the maximum elevation of the rainbow as 42° (hackett 2013). in this measurement, probably achieved with an astrolabe, bacon advocates the skillful use of instruments in an experimental science. however, bacon’s knowledge of the rainbow was understandably limited. for instance, like aristotle, he attributed the rainbow solely to reflection and not refraction. the anti solar angle of 42° shown in figure 3, which matches the total angle (later denoted  in figure 7), between incident and reflected waves shown in figure 4, can be derived from the deviation d(). according to the ideas of rene descartes (descartes 2001, osler, 2008,tipler, 2004) as illustrated in figure 7, d() is given by the formula: (4) from snell’s law of eq. (1): (5) where nair is equal to 1. fig. 7 angle of deviation tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 210 solving for , one obtains: which is then substituted back into eq. (4). the rainbow is produced by rays around this minimum deviation. solving dd()/d = 0 for  to find m , the value of the angle  for which d is a minimum, we obtain: taking the index nwater = 1.33 for a particular frequency in the red, we obtain m = 59.58°, β = 40.42°, and d() = 137.48°. now if an emerging rainbow ray from a droplet meets one’s eye, this means that this ray fig. 5 – snell’s law of refraction. courtesy math.ubc.ca fig. 6 – demonstration of refraction and total internal reflection, when the angle of incidence exceeds a critical angle. courtesy lasse havelund, wikipedia commons, 2009. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 211 makes an angle  = 180° 137.48° = 42.52° which is indeed the angle of 42° at the anti-solar point as shown in figure 4. the rainbow’s spectacular aspect, its colors, were explained by newton. in 1666 ce, newton showed that white light being refracted in a prism is split up in its constituent colors. the color scattering is due to the index of refraction being dependent on the wavelength (and hence the color) of radiation. each color in the sunlight thus produces its own bow. a rainbow is a collection of these bows, each slightly displaced from the rest. newton worked out the angles of the red bow, 42° 2' and the violet bow, 40° 17/. this gives a rainbow spread of 1° 45/. this would have been the width of the rainbow if the sun rays were parallel. as a matter of fact, the sun disk has a diameter of half a degree. taking this into account, newton concluded that the width of the rainbow should be 2 degrees and 15 minutes, a value that agreed nicely with newton’s own measurements. note that although newton’s original used a corpuscular theory rather than a wave theory, the results of his model nonetheless carry through to a wave theory (blay 2001, shapiro, 2002) and his corpuscular model is “rescued” by today’s modern particle-wave duality and the quantization of electromagnetic light waves known as photons (tipler 2004). types of multiple bows in addition to the primary and secondary rainbows, four bows may also form in the sky. these are classified as follows: 1. reflected double rainbows 2. supernumerary rainbows 3. quaternary rainbows in an effort to associate the four bows reported by scot with one of the cases above, we will first review each of these cases in the following sub-sections. reflected double rainbows a double rainbow (consisting of a primary and a secondary rainbow) and reflections on a sufficiently large shallow body of water, such as a lake or the water near a calm seashore, can produce four bows. in the reflected rainbow, the sunlight is first deflected by the raindrops, and then reflected off the body of water, before reaching the observer. a reflection rainbow is produced when sunlight reflects off a body of water before reaching the raindrops. it should be noted however that, in either case, the four bows are never parallel, as seen in figure 8. due to the combination of requirements, a reflected double rainbow is not very common. the reflection rainbow appears above the horizon. it intersects the normal rainbow at the horizon, and its arc reaches higher in the sky, with its center as high above the horizon as the normal rainbow’s center is below it. six (or even eight) bows may also be distinguished (atmospheric optics 2013, nordvik, 2007). reflected double rainbows have been cited and are more common than the tertiary or quaternary rainbows that will be discussed later. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 212 the scottish western isles are favorable for the formation of reflection bows. the prevailing warm south westerlies from the atlantic ocean bring frequent showers of fine rain interspersed by skies of exceptional purity whose sunlight is reflected in the many bays and inlets. since scot originated from south scotland, it is possible that he was aware of reflection rainbows. in his description, he made a point of emphasizing that the four bows are “at slight distance apart” indicating they are likely parallel. this is not the case for reflection rainbows, as the generation of four bows from reflection rainbows would involve a reflected double rainbow making up two sets of parallel bows that intersect each other as shown in figure 8. scot’s precise and meticulous descriptions, as demonstrated in the case of mary of bologna suggests that scot was aware of the distinction. this excludes the possibility that reflected double rainbows are the origin of scot’s observation. supernumerary rainbows a supernumerary rainbow also known as a “stacker rainbow” is not observed frequently. it consists of several faint rainbows on the inner side and within the primary rainbow, and very rarely also outside the secondary rainbow. it is not possible to explain supernumerary rainbows using classical geometric optics, as these are caused by the interference of light waves, a phenomenon that has been investigated in detail by thomas young. in 1803, thomas young showed that waves from two wave sources (e.g. two holes in a pier in a bowl of water) interfere constructively and reinforce each other, creating crests or troughs, or interfere destructively and cancel out. young pointed out that the supernumerary bows could be caused by constructive and destructive interference of sunrays which have followed different paths through the raindrop, if the difference between the distances traveled by these rays is equal to an odd number of half wavelengths (destructive interference) or an even number of wavelengths (constructive interference). fig. 8 – reflection rainbow: bows reflected on a body of water. courtesy of lawlnut, i.imgur.com, 2012. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 213 fig. 9 – over niagara falls.courtesy a. bierstadt (1830-1902). fig. 10 – in fife, scotland. corinne mills, 2011. figures 9 and 10 provide examples of supernumerary rainbows over the niagara falls and in the region of fife in southern scotland. since scot came originally from southern scotland, perhaps even from the area of fife itself, which are regions abundant in rainfall, it is possible that he may have observed supernumerary rainbows and that the four bows in his description perhaps can be classified as a supernumerary rainbow. tertiary and quaternary rainbows unlike primary and secondary rainbows, that can be observed in a direction opposite to the sun, it is also possible (but rare) to observe two faint rainbows in the same side of the sky as the sun. these are the tertiary and quaternary rainbows, appearing on the opposite side of the sky to the familiar rainbow arc, at about 40° from the sun (for tertiary rainbows) and 45° (for quaternary rainbows). a tertiary rainbow is formed by light that has suffered three total internal reflections inside the raindrop, whereas a quaternary rainbow by light that has suffered four total internal reflections within the rain drop (figure 11). it is difficult to observe these types of rainbows with the naked eye not only because of the sun’s glare, but also because the intensity of the nth bow decreases dramatically as n increases. theoretical possibilities for multiple and higher-order rainbows were described by felix billet (18081882 ce) who depicted angular positions up to a 19th-order rainbow, a pattern he called a “rose of rainbows” (billet 1868, walker 1977, 138-144, 154). in the laboratory, it is possible to observe higher-order rainbows by using extremely intense and well collimated light produced by lasers. up to the 200th-order rainbow was reported by ng et al. in 1998 using an argon ion laser beam (ng et al. 1998). examples of supernumerary rainbows tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 214 raymond lee (lee & fraser 2001, chap. 8), a meteorologist at the us naval academy, combed 250 years of scientific literature for recorded evidence of tertiary rainbows: he found just five examples. the conditions under which those five sightings occurred and a recipe for spotting tertiary rainbows has been published in applied optics (grossmann 2011). it has been suggested that such rainbows could be spotted against dark clouds after a storm. evenly sized drops were also a requirement. the arbeitskreis meteore, the german association for the observation of atmospheric phenomena, went hunting for the tertiary rainbow and michael grossmann found one following a storm in kaempfelbach, in south-western germany (grossmann 2011). because the effect is so faint, a number of shots had to be taken and superimposed. a digital enhancement known as “unsharp masking”, was also required to reveal the tertiary rainbow. soon after, another rainbow hunter, michael theusner (theusner 2011), caught another tertiary rainbow and its adjacent quaternary counterpart near bremerhaven in northern germany after processing the images in the same way. the rare conditions that lend themselves to a nearly visible tertiary or quaternary rainbow, along with the processing required to make them apparent, means that amateur sky gazers are unlikely as ever to catch sight of one. tertiary and quaternary rainbows are so elusive because the intensity of the nth bow decreases dramatically as n increases. a calculation within the descartes model using fresnel equations indicates that a secondary rainbow is about 2.4 times less intense than the primary rainbow (calvert 2003). however, dispersion and the wave nature of light are not considered in this calculation. a more refined model using the theory of diffraction was derived by the mathematician and astronomer george biddell airy in the 1820s. airy was able to express the intensity of the scattered light in the rainbow region in terms of a new mathematical function, then known as the rainbow integral and today called the airy function and explained the dependence of the intensity of the colors of the rainbow on the size of the water droplets (airy 1838, airy, 1849). modern descriptions of the physics of the rainbow are based on mie scattering (solutions to maxwell’s equations describing the scattering of electromagnetic radiation by a sphere), a body of work published by gustav mie in 1908 (mie 1908). neither the mathematical form of the airy function nor the more complex models used to explain intensities of multiple rainbows will concern us here, as these are far beyond the means of scot and his period. it suffices that the (n+1)th bow is less intense than the nth bow fig. 11 – formation of four rainbows from one, two, three and four successive total internal reflections in water droplets suspended in air. rainbows formed from one and two total internal reflections appear on the opposite side of the sun, those formed from three and four total internal reflections on the same side as the sun. courtesy robbie gonzalez, io9.com, 2011. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 215 and consequently the observation of tertiary and quaternary rainbows is extremely rare indeed. note that the four bows, consisting of two sets of two bows on each side of the sun, as photographed by theusner, differ from scot’s description of four bows at slight (visual) distance from each other. the same applies for the reflected double rainbow. the supernumerary rainbow might seem to come closest to scot’s description but it is usually not so spread out in the sky. a historical and cultural analysis is needed here. known rainbow models at the time of michael scot around 300 bce, in his meteorology (aristotle 1984), aristotle presented the first explanation for the formation of the rainbow. he attributes its formation to clouds on a hemisphere resting on the circle of the horizon reflecting sunlight to the observer where the angle is equal (to some constant angle – see figure 13) and was the first to explain the rainbow’s circular shape and the fact that the rainbow is not located at a definite place on the sky, but is seen in a certain direction. the angular gap between the primary and secondary rainbow, illustrated in figure 3, is alexander’s (dark) band, named after alexander of aphrodisias who first described it in 200 ce (lee & fraser 2001, 110111). the aristotelian theory of the rainbow made no allowance for refraction. the primary bow was believed to be caused by reflection, at a dewy cloud, of rays of sight from the eye which then were bent back towards the sun. the fainter bow was assumed to be made in the same manner. reflection in the latter case takes place at a portion of the cloud much higher than that causing the primary bow. as the assumed reflection causing the second bow took place more obliquely at a greater distance from the eye, it seemed natural that its colors should appear paler. a third bow would have to be caused by a reflection from clouds placed at a still greater altitude. fig. 12 – example of quadruple rainbow courtesy robbie gonzalez, io9.com, 2011. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 216 from boyer (boyer 1987, 141), (aristotle [works of aristotle] 1931) three rainbows or more are not found because even the second one is fainter, so that the third reflection can have no strength whatsoever and cannot reach the sun at all. consequently, tertiary and quaternary rainbows simply do not exist in aristotle’s model. according to raymond l. lee and alistair b. fraser, “despite its many flaws and its appeal to pythagorean numerology, aristotle’s qualitative explanation showed an inventiveness and relative consistency that was unmatched for centuries.” (lee & fraser 2001, 109). scot had recovered the knowledge of aristotle’s rainbow in part thanks to muslim scholars of the middleages such as averroes (see e.g. (topdemir 2007)) and avicenna. carl benjamin boyer described avicenna’s (“ibn sina”) theory on the rainbow as follows: independent observation had demonstrated to him that the bow is not formed in the dark cloud but rather in the very thin mist lying between the cloud and the sun or observer. the cloud, he thought, serves simply as the background of this thin substance, much as a quicksilver lining is placed upon the rear surface of the glass in a mirror. ibn sina would change the place not only of the bow, but also of the color formation, holding the iridescence to be merely a subjective sensation in the eye. (boyer 1954) significant developments in the middle-ages concerning scientific explanations for the rainbow include the contributions of the persian physicist and polymath ibn al-haytham (also known as alhazen; 965-1039 ce) and especially kamal al-din al-farisi (1267-1319 ce), who lived later than scot though. farisi gave the first satisfactory explanation of the rainbow and had “proposed a model where the ray of light from the sun was refracted twice by a water droplet, one or more reflections occurring between the two refractions”, also verified experimentally (o’conner & robertson 1999). nonetheless, rainbow models at the time of scot address the causes of the bows themselves or the source of their colors but never question the maximum possible number of bows in the sky i.e. two at most! it is therefore seen that scot’s observation of four bows is outside of the body of thought concerning rainbows in both the ancient greek as well as muslim scholarships in his time. in such a case, where could his reported observation of four bows originate from? presumably, from the places scot lived and worked, scotland or the wider area around toledo, spain. fig. 13aristotle’s rainbow model: clouds on the sky hemisphere reflect rays of sight. courtesy of “the aristotelian rainbow: from philosophy to computer graphics” by jeppe revall frisvad, niels jørgen christensen, and peter falster, technical university of denmark, acm, 2007. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 217 multiple bows and the tuareg to the best of our knowledge, occurrences of four bows are not very common. if one considers the wider area in which scot lived, such descriptions are only encountered in the tuareg, a berber people with a traditionally nomadic pastoral lifestyle and the principal inhabitants of the saharan interior of north africa. mahmoudan hawad (born 1950), a contemporary tuareg poet and author (chaker & claudot-hawad 1989) has observed parallel bows in the sahara-sahel region of aïr, a triangular granitic mountainous region located in north central niger, as recounted by his wife hélène claudot-hawad (claudot-hawad 2002). he had witnessed multiple rainbows during his younger days in this region and was aware of tuareg lore on the subject. these parallel rainbows were observed after thunder where the rain is able to appear at a distance. the sahara-sahel has a range of microclimate changes caused by the close proximity of deserts, oases, and green mountainous regions. today, while the aïr mountains are largely bare of vegetation, the dry wadi river valleys (known by the hausa term “kori”) dissect the mountains, channel and hold rainwater in “gueltas” (stone pools) as shown in figure 15, creating oases. hot springs are found in the mountains, as are ancient rock carvings, a testimony to a much lusher vegetation in the distant past. the sight of rainfall at a distance is possible from these mountains. in the desert, the rain can appear in the form of numerous flash floods of intense and short duration. the tuareg have been in north-africa for thousands of years. william langewiesche claimed their ancestors were the warriors with chariots pictured in sahara rock art (langewiesche 1997) which is abundant in the aïr region. in the past few centuries the sahara-sahel region has faced drought (brahic, 2012). currently the sahara desert is apparently increasing in size and the region faces serious ecological issues (schmidt, 2001). in the time of scot however, one would expect a greater abundance of rain and a higher frequency of rainbow formation. given the endless precariousness of rain water, it is no coincidence that the rainbow, which is associated with rain, appears in the tuareg mythology. it would further make sense for the tuareg to discern patterns and divination techniques based on rainbows, in an attempt to make predictions of rainfall. in the tuareg language, the word for the rainbow is “tezzel ader” which means “(she) stretches the leg”. in their cosmogony, the rainbow is the very picture of the metamorphosis (“tebedya”). it appears when, after lightning and thunder, rain cannot fall. this abortion of the storm is dangerous, disrupting the harmony between the earth and the sky. while turning into a rainbow, the multicolored snake “stretches the leg” above fig. 14 tuareg in sahara desert. courtesy photobucket. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 218 an anthill (symbol of the world below) and the wasted energy of the storm creates the curve of a transient universe. this third ephemeral world is capable of pacifying the irregularity instituted by the absence of rain, a negation of the exchange relations between the two antagonistic and complementary parts of the universe, earth and sky. the absence of rain resembles the condition of “very little or no rain” in the description of scot. further, cloud formations in these regions match scot’s description of “low mountainous clouds”. possible source of unknown etymology at this stage, we are left to come to grips with the meaning of the word “zalla” mentioned by michael scot in his description of the multiple rainbow. we also mention other unknown terms by michael scot, in particular, two words to describe musical string instruments namely ineba and senphonium which “are not found in dictionaries and seem peculiar to scot” (thorndike 1965, 12) as part of a list which included the viola, psaltery, lute and harp. michael scot had his own etymologies, a natural complement to his translation activities. nobody operates in a vacuum and it is unlikely that michael invented these words entirely on his own and it therefore becomes important to understand his historical and geographical location, namely the toledo school of translation in the 12th and 13th centuries (eq. see (kann 1993, universidad castilla 2012, wightman 332, 1953)). according to j. wood-brown, michael scotus was helped in his translations by a jew named “andrew” (brown 1897)2. although the name “andrew” is in doubt, there can be no doubt that michael scotus was helped by jews who knew hebrew, arabic and spanish when he made his translations of scholarly works from arabic to latin while in toledo. under the leadership of king alfonxo x of castille (1221-1284 ce known as “the wise”), sephardic jewish scientists and translators acquired a prominent role in the 2 it has been conjectured that andrew was a convert to christianity. it is curious at any rate that the name given him was that of scotland’s patron saint. fig.15 – a guelta near timia, in central aïr, provides water throughout the year in an otherwise dry region. courtesy wikipedia commons, 2006. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 219 school. they were highly valued by the king because of their intellectual skills and mastery of the two languages most used in the translations: arabic and spanish (muñoz sendino 1949, 15). alfonso’s nephew juan manuel wrote that the king was so impressed with the intellectual level of the jewish scholars that he commissioned the translation of the talmud as well as the kabbalah (castro y calvo 1947, 2). amongst these jewish scholars, we cite the personal physician of king alfonso himself, yehuda ben moshe ha-kohen (proctor 40, 1945,gonzález, 1998) and especially members of the ha – levi family, such as judah halevi actually yehuda ben shemuel ha-levi (1075-1141 ce ) a jewish physician and poet (see e.g. (kaplan 1993, 405-407)) as well as meir ben todros ha-levi abulafia (c. 1170-1244 ce) (kohler et al. jewish encyclopedia, 1906) a major sephardic talmudist and authority on jewish religious law and contemporary of michael scot. when michael scot was in toledo, the school of translation was under the direction of the archbishop rodrigo jimenez de la rada who played a key role in the war against the almohads and at the battle of las navas de tolosa in 1212 ce (pick 2004). kabbalah and its numerology system called “gematria” was very popular in michael’s time and place. this is an ancient system which consists in assigning a number to each hebrew letter and them summing these numbers for a given word. it is believed that identical numerical values bear some relation to each other or bear some relation to the resulting number itself. for clarification, it is not, by any means, our goal to convince the reader of the validity of kabbalah, only that it was used in many studies in locality and time of michael scotus and is relevant to his etymology. quite the contrary, we agree with the assessment of the mathematician barry simon that e.g. there is, as yet, no real proof of a socalled “biblical code” (simon 1998). rather, hebrew as a language, has particular linguistic properties: when viewed as a mathematical basis for a language, it is overcomplete. for example, the words “michael” and “samuel” both end in “-el” which means god and so each hebrew letter has a meaning in itself. thus, when the original hebrew words are constructed as compounded symbols, where each individual letter has meaning, it is not surprising that the gematria system can produce a consistent complementary meaning to the word itself. in this context, kabbalah with gematria are considered as linguistic etymological tools, nothing more. this approach is not so unorthodox if one considers that gematria has been used for coding (e.g. atbash) and encryption. concerning michael’s appreciation for music, according to “music and kabbalah” by matityahu glazerson (glazerson 1996, 23) when a person has a connection between the physical world and the spiritual world, he has a desire to sing. singing is the result of the natural world (the number seven, the ז) joining with its higher root (the א). it is written in the book livnat hasapir (2 kings, 3:15) that the reason a baby is pacified when he is sung to is because the singing reminds him of the root of his נשמה (neshama, soul), i.e. the spiritual world from whence he came. the א represents the כתר (keter, crown), the highest sphere and the source of all the spheres. כתר, in kabbalah, is called פלא עליון (peleh elyon, the sublime wonder). the word פלא contains the same letters as the word אלף. it is interesting to note that the numerical value of the word מוסיקה (musika, music: 40 + 6 + 60 + 10 + 100 + 5) is 221, which is the same numerical value of the word is not actually a hebrew word, our מוסיקה even though .כתר the term used for the sphere ,ארך sages also sometimes gave numerical values to foreign words. the reason is based on the principle that all languages are derived from and have a connection with hebrew, the holy language. such notions are not accepted by many today and an analysis based on jewish gematria may seem unorthodox but it would certainly be acceptable by michael scot in his time and place especially as he was surrounded by languages such as hebrew and arabic in the city of toledo. he appreciated etymology, numerology as well as music. accordingly, our analysis for the three words of michael scot is as follows: senphonium: looks very much like a latinized version of an old hebrew word “sumponia” or “cumponyah” and corresponds to the greek word “symphonia” meaning “symphony” (in modern hebrew סומפניא or “symphonos” meaning “harmony”. however, michael scot used this word to describe (סימפוניה a string instrument, possibly a lyre (thorndike 1965,12). the hebrew word “sumponia” is mentioned in the book of daniel (dan 3:5), and corresponds to a bag-pipe: tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 220 “that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that king nebuchadnezzar has set up.” however, there is another view that it is not a musical instrument, but rather the collective of instruments in harmony (encyclopedia judaica v. 12, 563). if we apply glazerson’s reasoning with jewish gematria, the hebrew letters of “sumponia” have respectively the numbers from right to left (i.e. from ס to א in סומפניא) are respectively 60, 6 , 4 0 , 8 0 , 50 ,10 and 1 which add up to 247. this is the same number as for “zemer” זמר which means singer and according to glazerson relates to “neshama” (soul) as mentioned in the earlier quote and represents the “highest part of the spirit within man” (glazerson 1996, 55). with both definitions as an instrument and harmony, this seems a likely source for michael scot’s word “senphonium”. ineba: this word is much more difficult as it is not a spanish word nor a hebrew or arabic word per se. nor can we find it amongst the berber languages like tamazight nor tamasheq (the ancient language of the tuareg). it is none of the hebrew words string instruments for lute or harp such as e.g. “nevel” נבל nor “kinnor” כנור. it is thus a challenge. the hebrew closest to it is “annaba” אנאבה which also sounds very much like the arabic word, a portal city in modern-day algeria (which used to be called “hippo regius”, the birthplace of pope augustine, a major influential church authority in michael’s time and thereafter). the vowels “i” and “e” do not register in jewish gematria indicating a latinization process. if we apply jewish gematria on the remaining letters “n”, “b” and the ending of the word ב ,נ and ה, we get respectively 50, 2 and 5 which add up to 57. michael scot was fascinated by multiples of 7 but this number falls short of 77 which represents the “perfection of the number seven” according to matityahu glazerson (glazerson 1996, 22) as found multiple times in the bible. michael scot certainly knew latin and would have realized that “ineba” would cognate with the latin word for inebriation. this suggests an instrument used for light-hearted situations rather than solemn religious music. though decidedly we have no actual proof, it nonetheless becomes tantalizing to think that michael scot may be actually describing the guitar which reached europe by way of spain and existed in various forms in spain and throughout northafrica. however, this remains a suggestion which we do not insist on, especially as it does not appear in the description of rainbows. this example is shown only to see how far we can push this analysis even for such an elusive example. zalla: “zalla” is very similar to the arabic “allah” which not only means god but also the “whiteness of consciousness or light it is sometimes symbolized as clouds”. the term allah is derived from a contraction of the arabic definite article al“the” and “il āh” “deity, god” ,to “al-il āh” meaning the sole deity. this is similar to the hebrew word “elohim” i.e. deity and also means sky. a word which phonetically sounds similar is the hebrew word “tzillah” צלה which means shadow, shade, umbra, or darkness which translates into the arab word “vallah”. thus, it seems, the lightness of the cloud can be mitigated, tuned and even negated linguistically. it’s gematria value (from right to left) is 90, 30, 5 which add up to 125 and this number has a special meaning in kabbalah though we are no longer dealing with music. there are the 125 “spiritual degrees that complete the correction of one’s soul” which are associated with “rashbi”, the author kabbalah’s chief work i.e. the zohar (laitman 2008, 9). michael’s word “zalla” appears elsewhere (thorndike 1965, 69) where he attributes colors of the rainbow to the color or darkness of a cloud following a quasi-aristotle reasoning: “these variations occur according to the varied dispositions of the clouds, which receive such impression from the sun’s rays, wherefore a fiery cloud makes a red color; a thin one of little substance, white; a zalla cloud, purple or blue and black or quasi-green or black like oil.” thus, the “zalla” cloud color seems to widely range from blue and green to black. the colors described here match the colors of the multicolored snake in the mythological tuareg description. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 221 verdict we finally present our answer to the question: what kind of multiple rainbow was scot describing? our answer is that it is a description from some form of weather divination lore generated and influenced by multiple eye-witness accounts of multiple rainbows over the ages. the observed phenomena were likely supernumerary rainbows and possibly the occasional reflection bow and quaternary bow. what leads us to this conclusion is as follows. firstly, he was clearly reporting accounts from other people not his own personal observations. secondly, just as the properties of the biblical manna do not perfectly match its proposed identifications such as the resin of the tamarisk tree (jewish encyclopedia 1906) or the honeydew of certain insects, etc.…, scot’s description does not fit perfectly into any of the three given categories of multiple rainbows. in form, scot’s parallel rainbows greatly resembles supernumerary rainbows but these are not localized around e.g. waterfalls, rather they located in the sky much like a quaternary rainbow. scot’s description is thus from third-party or rather mythological sources though, as is often the case, with a basis in reality. discussion and implications michael scot’s record of multiple rainbows does not originate from the muslim scholarship of his time, in which knowledge on rainbows was hardly more advanced than that of aristotle, but rather from observations either in scotland, where he lived at a young age, the or in the sahara-sahel and in particular the aïr region, where the mountainous settings and weather conditions favor a more frequent realization of multiple rainbows. such conditions do not materialize in christian europe which our conventional knowledge associates with scot: spain, sicily and the rest of italy, france and even germany given that germany was part of the holy roman empire under the jurisdiction of his patron frederick hohenstauffen ii. if this specialized and rare piece of information does not originate from scotland, it is highly possible that access to it has been gained through contact with the tuareg. these desert roaming nomads are the only tribe in the wider region in which we place scot that have a culture in which the rainbow has a central role. the tuareg have a mythology surrounding the rainbow. established in a wide region in north africa over thousands of years, with a perennial concern for rain water, the tuareg have further developed a system by which to make predictions based on the rainbow and have a “divination” technique based on multiple rainbows. mythologies concerning rainbows exist in many cultures but only hawad’s description of tuareg lore matches the description of scot. so, how did the tuareg knowledge concerning the four bows reach scot? the sahelian kingdoms were thriving during the middle-ages because their wealth came from controlling the trans-saharan trade routes across the desert, especially the slave trade within the islamic world. their power came from having large pack animals like camels and horses that were fast enough to keep a large empire under central control and were also useful in battle. camels could travel in valleys, often dry river-beds called “wadis” (or “oueds”) and ultimately at a much faster rate than horses could travel over long distances in europe. these sahelian kingdoms supported several large trading cities in the niger bend region, including timbuktu, gao, and djenné. the distance between morocco and béjaïa (algeria) where fibonacci resided could be bridged in a matter of months. given in part the connection between michael scot and leonardo fibonacci concerning the fibonacci numbers (scott & marketos 2014) and the known historical record that leonardo fibonacci had been stationed in béjaïa, located on the coast of modern-day algeria, as part of a pisan trade colony, with sea trade routes all around the mediterranean, the outcome of this analysis implies that michael scot would have ventured into north-africa, at least as far as morocco (which is not that far from toledo) and quite possibly southward where he would have learned about multiple rainbows and the lore surrounding them from actual contact with the tuareg people. there does not appear any other way by which michael could have obtained this very specialized and extraordinary bit of information as it does not appear in muslim scholarship or the models of aristotle at any time. mythologies surrounding rainbows exist in many cultures but only hawad’s description of tuareg lore matches the description of michael scotus. moreover, quaternary rainbows are extremely rare and only a people established in a given region over thousands of tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 222 years with a perennial concern for rain water would develop a belief system by which to make predictions based on e.g. the number of parallel bows in the sky. nor is there any other group apart from these desert roaming nomads that have such a mythology surrounding the rainbow. michael scot might have been aware of supernumerary or reflected rainbows from scotland but only the tuareg have a “divination” technique based on multiple rainbows and were relatively near his whereabouts in toledo, spain (or sicily for that matter). possibly, a trek to north-africa would have also included a meeting with leonardo fibonacci concerning quite possibly the translations by gérard of cremona of the works of al-khwârizmî and abûkâmil used by fibonacci himself for his book liber abaci (scott & marketos 2014). although, béjaïa lies north of the aïr mountains, we do not claim that michael scot actually reached this region, nor béjaïa itself, only that he had communications with leonardo de pisa and the tuareg tribesmen (which means he had to reach morocco at least). apart from the question of where, there is also the question of when. even though leonardo fibonacci and michael scot were part of the court of frederick ii, each of them was much older than frederick and of the same generation with respect to each other. michael scot was not part of frederick’s court until after 1223-4 ce being the dates pope honorious tried to get michael a position in cashel, ireland (which michael subsequently refused). note that the chronology of j. wood brown (brown 1897) is incorrect: michael scot was not in sicily before traveling to spain: it was the other way around. the first official translation and recorded date of michael scot was in 1217 ce (thorndike 1965) and a conjecture made by charles burnett suggests that he might have been in spain as early as 1200 ce or maybe even earlier as a young man (burnett 1994,101-126). the first version of leonardo’ liber abaci was written in 1202 ce while the second version of leonardo fibonacci’s famous book was dedicated to michael scot in 1227 ce. thus, both scholars, michael scot and leonardo fibonacci were active long before they were part of the court of frederick ii and could have met any time between 1200 ce and 1217 ce. the french writer and historian henri daniel-rops once said that history is always a conjectural science. for example, it is amazing how much science and applied science in archeology can debunk some of the most conventional notions. even though, there is no historical record, the record of multiple rainbows by michael scot indicates that his reputed thirst of knowledge starting in early boyhood (thorndike 1965) would have made him venture into “enemy territory”, namely the world under islamic jurisdiction around the time of the crusades. the outcome of the present work suggests an even greater penetration into the world under islamic jurisdiction on the part of michael scot than previously thought. the contradictory nature of the tuareg observation of multiple rainbows and the known science in his time could very well have prompted michael scot to realize that the knowledge of the ancient greeks and the muslims was imperfect and that experimentation was needed. acknowledgements i would like to thank hélène claudot-hawad for relating the memories of her husband hawad concerning the description of multiple rainbows in the sahara-sahel region. special thanks to kshama zingade of near.co, rick gould, johannes grotendorst, pan marketos, yair zarmi of the university of ben-gurion in the negev, israel, lucille geear, susan peppiatt, howard pederson, marc moyon, david harper, daniel foor, john carosella and awo falokun for invaluable help in confirming some of the information herein. special thanks go to the dear departed carlos klimann of l’inria in france who brought me to the french library known as the maison des sciences de l’homme and introduced me to the wonderful work of charles burnett and his colleagues, on michael scot, and also, to hélène e. hagan, author of the shining ones, for introducing me to h. claudot-hawad. tony scott michael scot and the four rainbows 223 references “about rainbows-ucar". the 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science 2018 (5): 133-145 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access article idtc dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts1 peter barker2 abstract: can video games teach students about the history and philosophy of science? this paper reports the results of a study investigating the effects of playing an educational video game on students’ knowledge of galileo’s life and times, the nature of scientific evidence, and aristotle’s and galileo’s views of the cosmos. in the game, students were immersed in a computer simulation of 16th century venice where they interacted with an avatar of galileo and other characters. over a period of two weeks, 71 undergraduates were exposed to lectures about galileo and the copernican revolution in a traditional classroom setting. however, only half of the students (i.e., experimental group) also played the game. the other half (i.e., control group) were only exposed to lectures. the knowledge of both groups was assessed at the beginning (i.e., pre-test) and end (i.e., post-test) of the two-week period. the results demonstrated objective improvements in knowledge for the experimental group while the control group showed virtually no change. implications of these findings for teaching and learning the history and philosophy of science are discussed. keywords: gamification; educational video games; cognitive models; history and philosophy of science education; galileo galilei received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 9 september 2018. accepted: 28 september 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.10 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ____________________________________________________________________________ gamification, or the integration of gaming elements in non-game contexts (deterding et al., 2011), is emerging as a “hot topic” in higher education. however, empirical research on the subject to date has mostly focused on the impact of gamification on students’ motivational 1 dr. logan l. watts [orcid: 0000-0001-7629-0188] is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the city university of new york – baruch college & the graduate center. address: 55 lexington ave, box b8-215, new york, ny 10010, usa. e-mail: logan.watts@baruch.cuny.edu 2 dr. peter barker [orcid: 0000-0002-1443-4227] is a professor in the department of the history of science at the university of oklahoma. address: norman, ok, 73019 usa. e-mail barkerp@ou.edu please address all correspondence to dr. peter barker. meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 134 outcomes (e.g., course reactions, intrinsic motivation) as opposed to cognitive outcomes like improvements in knowledge (dicheva et al., 2015). in this paper, we describe an empirical study of the cognitive benefits of gamifying traditional lecture courses in a novel subject area – the history and philosophy of science. game development the lecture courses investigated in the present study covered a pivotal time period in the history and philosophy of science. the focus of the lectures was on galileo’s early career and his development of telescopic evidence against the prevailing cosmology of aristotle and in favor of the new sun-centered cosmology of copernicus. galileo’s findings immediately raise issues about verification and falsification in science, as well as the rational response to dogma. at the same time, galileo was attempting to improve his career by gaining a position at the court of the grand duke of tuscany, as well as encountering church objections to his support for copernicus. this social and cultural material is particularly difficult to convey to undergraduates, as it runs counter to implicit contemporary social norms. thus, the designers of the game hoped that this material would be conveyed more effectively in an immersive game where the students could interact with avatars who acted out different norms within a historically accurate context. project background. in 2011 peter barker of the history of science program at the university of oklahoma was approached by entrepreneur brent lollis of parnassus llc, to join a project using the full resources of video game technology to teach the history and philosophy of science. the central idea of the project was to allow students to learn directly from an avatar of a historical figure, while playing a game that would recreate as accurately as possible their historical setting, including the physical and social environment. by 2011, games like assassin’s creed had already set a high bar for quality graphics, and historical realism, admittedly with a strong mix of fantasy (désilets, patrice, raymond and may, first release november 13, 2007). at lollis’s instigation, barker visited tigar hare studios in los angeles, a company that had provided high-quality graphics for some of the call of duty and lord of the rings series, among many other projects. as a result, one of the two principals in the studio, michael tigar, joined the parnassus project. lollis and barker examined a wide range of historical figures for the pilot project. they decided that galileo should be the central figure in the first game developed, largely because of his name recognition both inside and outside academe. the prototype game was developed by lollis, barker and tigar. lollis served as director and producer. barker and lollis wrote most of the script, with barker ensuring historical accuracy. tigar both supervised and contributed to the construction of the avatars and the game setting. by 2013 a beta version of the game was available for testing, and in fall 2013 barker was scheduled to teach two undergraduate classes that would cover galileo and his times. this seemed to be an ideal opportunity to test the game in a university setting. barker and lollis contacted dr. michael mumford at the university of oklahoma’s psychology department. dr. mumford invited logan watts, then a doctoral candidate, to conduct the research and testing. barker again contributed historical material in the form of banks of questions that were screened and pilot-tested by watts. setting and characters. galileo galilei (1534-1642) taught at pisa from 1588 and padua from 1592. padua was part of the republic of venice, and galileo spent much time in the city with contemporary intellectuals. in 1610 galileo succeeded in his campaign to become a courtier of the grand duke cosimo de medici (1590-1621) in florence, in part because of his discovery of the moons of jupiter, which he named after the medici family. beginning in 1611 he traveled throughout italy, demonstrating telescopes, which he constructed himself, and advocating copernican cosmology. when the church found copernicanism heretical in 1616 meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 135 galileo suffered no personal consequences, because he was protected by duke cosimo and several high-ranking members of the catholic church.3 one of galileo’s defenders, cardinal maffeo barberini (1568-1644) became pope urban viii in 1623. he gave galileo permission to write a new book comparing the copernican system with the prevailing aristotelian orthodoxy. the book appeared in 1632, but the political situation had changed and urban was offended by the content. galileo was summoned to rome and tried before the inquisition, where he was convicted of being “vehemently suspected of heresy”. he was forced to publicly deny his support for copernicanism and spent the remainder of his life under house arrest at his villa outside florence (heilbron, 2012). galileo’s contributions to science are usually divided into two main parts: his advocacy of copernicanism based on his discoveries with the telescope, and his work on the science of motion (cohen 1985, chapter 4 and 5). these subjects are connected by opposition to the received physics and cosmology of aristotle. aristotle constructed a spherical universe centered on a spherical stationary earth. the four terrestrial elements (earth, water, air and fire) were confined to the region inside the spherical shell supporting the moon. beyond the moon were concentric spherical shells supporting other heavenly bodies, bounded by a shell carrying the fixed stars. all these shells were composed of a single substance (aether) with the result that the heavens were perfect, eternal and unchanging, except for circular motions centered on the earth. the moon, for example, was assumed to be a perfect sphere. by contrast, in the region of the four terrestrial elements, the motion was in straight lines and ended rapidly. also, composite bodies visibly changed over time as they added or lost particular elements (cohen 1960/1985, 11-23). galileo’s telescopic discoveries called many of these claims into question, and especially the rigid distinction between the heavens and the earth. among the standard topics in philosophy of science exemplified by galileo’s career are paradigm choice, theory choice and falsification, as well as the reliability of observational evidence and scientific instruments (curd, cover and pincock 2012; kuhn [1962] 2012; popper 1959, [1963] 1981). for example, although galileo’s telescopic discoveries showed that many aristotelian claims were false, they did not establish that copernicus’s claims were true. he also supported the use of mathematical reasoning to settle issues originally treated in nonmathematical natural philosophy. if, for example, the moon is a perfect sphere, then the line dividing the bright from the dark portion should be a perfect circle. galileo’s observations showed that the shadow line was interrupted by mountains, valleys and craters. 3 there were many reasons why the church only acted against copernicus’s de revolutionibus in 1616. initially, the unsigned preface by osiander (copernicus 1543, fol i v ii r), suggesting that the book should be read hypothetically, may have caused confusion over the author’s real intent. quite independent of this, church leaders like cardinal roberto bellarmine took the viewpoint, from the outset, that copernicus’s book should be read hypothetically. apart from osiander’s preface, however, de revolutionibus uncompromisingly presented heliocentrism as the real structure of the cosmos. kepler publicly identified the preface’s real author in 1609 (kepler, tr. donahue 2015, p. 4 text to n. 28.). after that the possible heresy of the book became unavoidable. galileo’s telescopic discoveries undermined aristotle’s and ptolemy’s geocentric theories, but failed to establish the truth of heliocentrism. the hybrid cosmos unveiled by tycho brahe in 1588 retained a stationary central earth and equally explained all galileo’s evidence. brahe’s position became a favorite compromise among progressive elements in the church, for example the jesuits in rome (graney 2015). but it was also possible to accommodate galileo’s discoveries with very modest adjustments to traditional aristotelian cosmos (ariew 2006). the timing of the 1616 proceedings depended primarily on galileo’s noisy success in italy after 1610, and attempts to discredit or undermine him by the dominicans tomasso cacini and niccolo lorini (finocchiaro 1989, 134-41). that nothing bad happened to galileo before 1632-3 depended crucially on his patronage connections with cardinal bellarmine, cardinal barberini (later urban viii), prince cesi, grand duke cosimo de medici and his mother the grand duchess (biagioli 1993). meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 136 while in venice during 1609 and 1610 galileo made his first celestial discoveries and produced the book that reported his results as well as attracting the patronage of duke cosimo. he also demonstrated the telescope to friends, colleagues and possible patrons, using the platform at the top of the famous bell tower (campanile) in st. mark’s square. the action of the galileo game was therefore set in and around a digital reconstruction of st. mark’s square in 1609, including the waterfront on the grand canal, all the surrounding buildings, the bell tower, the basilica (cathedral) of st. mark, and the façade of the doge’s palace. the game began with players finding their way along the grand canal to the entrance to the square, where they would encounter an avatar of galileo arguing with a dominican friar. after listening and responding to several exchanges about astronomy, physics and cosmology, players would be encouraged to visit galileo in a fictional workshop, elsewhere in the square, or to take a gondola ride that triggered a dream sequence of a conversation with aristotle, providing basic information about his views on physics and cosmology. at the end of the dream, sequence players were returned to 1609. next, players who visited the workshop could help galileo assemble a telescope, and then proceed to the top of the bell tower to help galileo with his observations. it took several trips from the workshop to the bell tower to produce a telescope with high enough magnification to see celestial novelties. on each occasion the player would discuss the observations and results with galileo, leading ultimately to galileo’s conclusion that the moon was not a perfect sphere because the shadow line showed mountains, valleys and craters. although there was a clear direction of play in making and using successively better telescopes, all the sites could be visited repeatedly, and in any order, including a brief side trip to galileo’s trial in 1633. however, if players visited the bell tower without first helping galileo build a telescope, they would find it empty. as they successfully completed tasks and visited different locales, players accumulated rewards on a toolbar. at the end of the game, they were able to unlock a science-fiction transporter device inside st. mark’s basilica, which carried them to a surprise ending that was intended as the final reward for successful players. the non-player characters (npcs) in the prototype therefore consisted of galileo, his dominican opponent, aristotle, and one other character who sometimes appeared mysteriously to give the players advice. however only galileo and aristotle were interactive in this version of the game. primary tasks/objectives. based on earlier work applying methods from cognitive psychology to problems in the history and philosophy of science (andersen, barker and chen 2006; barker 2007), barker saw the educational goals of the game as encouraging the students to build mental models of aristotle’s physics and cosmology, the contrasting cosmology of copernicus, the historical setting of galileo’s advocacy of copernicus, and the general philosophical or methodological issues about science relevant to the case. from previous experience, barker also knew that while students learned aristotle’s physics and cosmology fairly easily, it was much harder to communicate galileo’s cultural situation, for example, the role of the church and the importance of patronage. barker hoped that the interactive aspects of the game would provide a new and more effective way of communicating all this material, but particularly the cultural aspects. several items were built into the game to achieve this. for example, before play began, players were asked to choose whether to play as a man or a woman.4 throughout the game, galileo would then address them using either male or female honorifics appropriate for a member of duke cosimo’s court, and would repeatedly refer to their connection to the duke’s court and his own hopes of joining it. similarly, information about the scientific method was not offered directly but embedded in the structure of the game dialogues. mental model building was encouraged throughout the game by short interactive dialogues. for example, at the site in st. mark’s square where galileo is arguing with a 4 other possibilities were to be added after the beta version. meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 137 dominican opponent, the player is invited to join conversations about the nature of the moon, the nature of stars, the spyglass (the word “telescope” had not been coined in 1609), the motion of the earth, whether copernicus’s theory is offensive to the church, whether the sun can be the center of the planetary motions, as well as general conversations of aristotle’s cosmos and copernicus’s cosmos. the dream-sequence meeting with aristotle encouraged dialogue about each of the four elements, the nature and contents of the heavens and the uniqueness of the cosmos according to aristotle. the meeting with aristotle was staged on the acropolis as it would have appeared in about 325 bce, with an introduction to the architecture as a bonus when the player and npc moved around. in the tested version of the game, npcs spoke directly to the player. the intention was to add speech recognition so that the player could reply verbally, but in the tested version the player’s replies were limited to selecting written prompts. players were free to visit any site in any order, to complete as many of the tasks offered at the site as they pleased, and to return whenever they liked. however, players were encouraged to visit the galileo/dominican scene in st. mark’s square first. from here they would receive two sorts of prompts on direction of play. first, the toolbar that was a permanent feature of the screen would light up showing that they had found the first of four major sites (the galileo/dominican dialogues; galileo’s workshop; the aristotle dream sequence; the bell tower). after completing some of the galileo/dominican dialogues players would also be prompted by a thumbnail of the next site they should find, appearing briefly. as play continued the players also accumulated rewards on their toolbars (e.g., a key, a book) which would allow them to unlock a surprise reward in st. mark’s basilica at the end of the game. psychological learning principles in order to maximize the amount of knowledge that students might acquire from playing the game, three psychological learning principles were considered throughout the game’s design, including active learning, cognitive load, and fidelity. next, we describe each of these principles, evidence for their effectiveness at promoting learning, and examples of how the game’s design was informed by these principles. active learning. active learning does not refer to a single approach to teaching and learning, but rather a principle underlying many instructional strategies such as guided exploration and experimentation. this learning principle suggests that students derive enhanced cognitive and motivational benefits from instructional methods that allow students greater autonomy in the learning process, such as those that provide immersive experiences (bell and kozlowski, 2010). traditional active learning methods include problemsolving activities, team exercises, role-playing simulations, and case studies (meyers and jones, 1993), but advancements in technology have opened the door for innovative applications of the active learning principle – including gamification. there is also strong empirical evidence for the effectiveness of active learning methods when compared with traditional methods (e.g., lecture) among students majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) fields. for example, in a meta-analysis of 225 studies, freeman et al. (2014) found that stem students taught through active learning methods scored 6% higher on knowledge tests compared with students taught through lectures. in addition, those receiving lectures were one-and-a-half times more likely to fail on these knowledge tests. in the present study, the active learning principle was designed into the game prototype by giving the learners extensive autonomy to explore the virtual world, interact with npcs, and pursue a small number of key objectives (i.e., limited guidance). cognitive load. people have limited cognitive resources available for processing complex information. the principle of cognitive load refers to recognizing these limitations when designing instructional methods (sweller, 1988). mayer and moreno (2003) meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 138 demonstrated in a series of experiments that segmenting and off-loading are two particularly effective strategies for reducing cognitive load. segmenting refers to breaking down complex information into smaller, more manageable units. off-loading refers to limiting unnecessary instances in which both visual and auditory channels are engaged simultaneously. in the present study, both of these strategies were used when designing the prototype to reduce cognitive load. for example, the prototype focused on a narrow window in galileo’s life framed around his telescopic discoveries. throughout the game, important concepts were spaced apart and delivered in small chunks (i.e., segments) as students explored and interacted with galileo’s world. these chunks were designed to fit within the overarching narrative of understanding why galileo’s telescopic discoveries were so controversial for his time. off-loading was evident when the galileo avatar interacted with other characters. when another character responded to galileo in conversation, no subtitles were presented on the screen. students would only hear the response verbally. this strategy limited unnecessary, extraneous processing that might have occurred if students were presented with both auditory information and text-based, visual information simultaneously, allowing students to devote more resources towards learning the key concepts. fidelity. two types of fidelity have been studied in the teaching and learning literatures: physical and psychological. physical fidelity refers to the extent to which the instructional method, such as a simulation or game, models the physical environment of the “real world,” while psychological fidelity refers to how much the cognitive processes unfolding during learning align with the cognitive processes that unfold during real-world performance (cannon-bowers and bowers, 2010). physical fidelity has also been shown to enhance psychological fidelity (kozlowski and deshon, 2004). in the present study, the game prototype was designed with both physical and psychological fidelity in mind. physical fidelity was strong as a result of paying careful attention to the historical accuracy of the game’s setting, characters and costumes. game designers worked with historians to simulate as closely as possible how st. mark’s square might have appeared during galileo’s life in the 16th century. as shown in figure 1, galileo’s avatar was modeled after a historical portrait of galileo. finally, psychological fidelity was also strong. students explored the physical setting, experimented with different tasks (e.g., telescope construction), and engage in dialogue while being consistently addressed with honorifics that reinforced the importance of court culture to galileo and his contemporaries. hence, the cognitive processes activated during the game probably aligned well with how these cognitive processes might have unfolded if doing these activities in the real world. caption: figure 1. generating a historically accurate avatar of galileo. copyright parnassus llc. used by permission. meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 139 although all three of these psychological learning principles – active learning, cognitive load, and fidelity – were considered in designing the game prototype, it is important to note that in some cases a balance had to be struck between these objectives. an obvious example of these tradeoffs may be observed in the relationship between physical fidelity and cognitive load. although it would have been historically accurate to present all of the dialogue in the game in 16th century italian instead of modern english, doing so would have surely interfered with learning in our english-speaking sample of students. in sum, we expected that considering all three learning principles in game design would yield a prototype that benefited student learning. specifically, our hypothesis was that students who played the game and received lectures (i.e., experimental group) would achieve higher post-test scores on knowledge tests compared with students who only received lectures (i.e., control group). method participants. undergraduate students were recruited by watts as research subjects in two of barker’s undergraduate classes. these classes were upper-level courses on the subjects of history of science from the greeks to newton and the scientific revolution. students received a course participation grade in exchange for taking part in the study, and they were offered the opportunity to complete an alternative essay assignment instead. all of the students in both classes, 71 total, chose to participate in the study. approximately 66% of participants were male, with an average age of 22. participants reported a variety of major areas of study, but the most common majors represented were the physical sciences (51%) and social sciences (14%). procedures. the study protocol and materials were approved by the university of oklahoma’s institutional review board. the study took place during two weeks of the fall 2013 semester on the university of oklahoma campus. participants in both classes were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (n = 37) or control group (n = 34) while collecting informed consent forms. all of the participants began the study by completing a pre-test designed to measure their starting level of knowledge. next, over the course of two weeks, the experimental group played the video game prototype and attended two, 2-hour lectures about galileo and science in the early 17th century. the control group attended the same lectures but were not allowed to play the game until the study had concluded. participants played the game in a computer lab on campus, and the average participant played the game for approximately 45 minutes. at the end of the two weeks, both groups completed the post-test. measures knowledge. barker wrote 120 multiple-choice questions targeting four content areas, including galileo’s life and times (34 questions), the nature of scientific evidence (24 questions), aristotle’s model of the cosmos (32 questions), and galileo’s model of the cosmos (30 questions). each question provided four potential response options, with one correct response option. knowledge of galileo’s life and times was tested by questions such as, “what was the name of the city where galileo used his telescope in the tower?” knowledge about the nature of scientific evidence was tested by questions such as, “why did galileo object to a dogmatic defense of scientific claims?” for questions about aristotle’s and galileo’s cosmos, participants were instructed to “answer from aristotle’s [or galileo’s] perspective.” for example, participants were asked to answer a question about “the center meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 140 of the cosmos” according to aristotle and later asked to answer the same question from galileo’s perspective. because completing a pre-test can artificially boost participants’ scores on a post-test (i.e., practice effect; shadish, cook, and campbell, 2002), a number of strategies were used to control for this limitation. for example, questions targeting each of the four content areas were randomly assigned to create two versions of a knowledge test (i.e., test a and test b). both test versions consisted of the same number of questions targeting each content area. in addition, the order of administration was counterbalanced so that half of participants completed test a for the pre-test (and test b for the post-test) and the other half of participants completed test b for the pre-test (and test a for the post-test). total scores on both versions of the test were strongly correlated (r = .81), providing evidence for the reliability of test scores. satisfaction and learning reactions. at the end of the knowledge post-test, participants were asked to report their reactions to the game. using a 5-point scale (i.e., 1 = strongly disagree, 3 = neither disagree nor agree, 5 = strongly agree), participants reported the extent to which they agreed with seven statements about their satisfaction with the game (e.g., “the game was fun”) and five statements about how much they thought they learned by playing the game (e.g., “i have a better understanding of galileo’s life”). finally, participants were asked to respond to four open-ended questions about what they liked most and least about the game, the most important thing they learned from playing the game, and how they thought the game could be improved. results effects on knowledge. pre-test and post-test scores were standardized on a one-hundredpoint scale for each content area to improve interpretability. thus, means (m) and standard deviations (sd) of test scores reported here represent the percentage of questions correct. cohen’s d effect sizes are also reported, to give an indication of the magnitude of each effect. cohen’s d provides a standardized estimate (i.e., in standard deviations) of knowledge gains (or losses) in the experimental group relative to knowledge gains (or losses) in the control group. by conventional standards, a cohen’s d of .20 represents a small effect, .50 a mediumsized effect, and .80 or above a large effect (cohen, 1992). using an alpha level of .05, analysis of covariance (ancova) procedures were used to test whether the experimental group (i.e., lecture + game) showed greater gains in knowledge than the control group (i.e., lecture only). pre-test scores were entered as covariates to control for any differences in starting knowledge between the groups.5 for knowledge of galileo’s life and times, the experimental group (m = 64%, sd = 14%) demonstrated statistically higher post-test scores than the control group (m = 59%, sd = 18%), f(1, 68) = 4.61, p < .05, d = .60. for knowledge about the nature of scientific evidence, the experimental group (m = 63%, sd = 14%) scored significantly higher on the post-test compared with the control group (m = 50%, sd = 23%), f(1, 68) = 8.36, p < .01, d = .64. for knowledge of aristotle’s model of the cosmos, the experimental group (m = 72%, sd = 17%) outperformed the control group (m = 57%, sd = 20%) on the post-test, f(1, 68) = 9.44, p < .01, d = .44. for knowledge of galileo’s model of the cosmos, the experimental group (m = 82%, sd = 13%) scored significantly higher on the post-test compared with the control group (m = 67%, sd = 27%), f(1, 68) = 12.62, p < .01, d = .67. when examining across all four content areas at once, not surprisingly, the experimental group (m = 70%, sd = 10%) outperformed the control group 5 using analysis of variance (anova) procedures, we also tested whether pre-test scores differed between the experimental and control groups. across all four content areas, as well as on overall pretest scores, no statistically significant differences were observed (p > .05). thus, experimental and control groups showed comparable levels of knowledge at the beginning of the study. meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 141 (m = 58%, sd = 19%) on total scores on the post-test, f(1, 68) = 20.73, p < .001, d = .73. figure 2 presents a graph to illustrate this final result. this graph also shows that the control group (i.e., lecture only) demonstrated virtually no improvement in knowledge between the pretest and post-test. in sum, this pattern of results suggests that exposure to the game, when paired with lectures, had moderate to large effects on students’ knowledge of the history and philosophy of science. figure 2 total knowledge scores for experimental and control groups satisfaction and learning reactions. participants’ reactions to the game were somewhat mixed. for example, with respect to satisfaction with the game, 66% either agreed or strongly agreed that they liked the game. however, only 37% indicated they would be interested in playing it again. these mixed reactions may be due in part to the technical glitches that affected some participants’ gaming sessions. because the game was a prototype, several bugs were still being worked out at the time of the study. these bugs occasionally led to the need to exit the game early and re-start from the beginning. nevertheless, participants’ reactions about how much they believed they learned as a result of playing the game were very positive. for example, 90% of participants either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “i have a better understanding of how galileo’s views were perceived by others during his time.” table 1 presents the descriptive statistics showing how participants responded to each statement in the reaction questionnaire. 57% 58% 59% 70% 40% 45% 50% 55% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% total pre-test score total post-test score lecture only lecture + game percentage of questions correct meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 142 table 1 descriptive statistics for reactions to game questions mean sd percentage agreeing satisfaction i liked the game. 3.58 .95 66 it was easy to imagine myself as a character in the game. 3.39 1.05 55 the game was challenging. 3.31 .97 52 the game was fun. 3.36 .96 55 the game required my full focus to successfully complete it. 3.52 .95 65 the game was not long enough. 3.17 1.04 37 i would like to play the game again. 3.13 1.00 37 learning i have a better understanding of galileo’s life. 3.87 .89 79 i have a better understanding of how galileo’s views of the cosmos differed from aristotle’s views. 4.08 .77 89 i know more about galileo’s scientific achievements. 3.84 .81 79 i have a better understanding of how galileo’s views were perceived by others during his time. 4.06 .81 90 i have a better understanding of the times in which galileo lived. 3.73 .93 70 note. n = 71. percentage agreeing includes “agree” and “strongly agree” responses. discussion before turning to the implications of these results, it is important to note some limitations of the study design. first, the sample was drawn from two undergraduate classes at one university taught by one instructor. as a result, we cannot say whether the results observed in this population and setting would also be observed among other populations and settings, such as students with different ages and backgrounds, or those taught by different instructors at other educational institutions. second, the experimental group was exposed to both the video game prototype and two weeks of lectures. it is unclear if participants would have gained the same cognitive benefits from playing the game if they had not been meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 143 simultaneously exposed to the lectures. for example, it may be that the lecture provided the framing needed to “make the most” of playing the game. alternatively, the game may stand on its own as an effective educational intervention. future research using different designs (e.g., experimental group that only plays the game) will help to address this limitation. bearing these limitations in mind, the present study yielded a number of noteworthy innovations and contributions. this effort marked the first attempt we are aware of to study gamification in the context of the history and philosophy of science. this multidisciplinary approach was made possible by drawing on a collaborative team of historians, psychologists, entrepreneurs, and software engineers. moreover, the present findings demonstrate evidence for the educational value of video games – in particular, first-person, immersive, role-playing games. not only did students self-report that they learned from playing the game, but those in the experimental group also demonstrated objective improvements in knowledge compared with the control group. finally, as shown in figure 2, knowledge in the control group did not appear to improve from two weeks of lectures. this lack of improvement in the control group raises questions about the efficacy of relying on only traditional methods of instruction when educating students about complex topics such as the history and philosophy of science. although these findings are intriguing, they raise a number of questions that might benefit from additional research. first, a clear next step is developing and testing additional modules, or extensions to the game. these modules might feature new tasks or objectives, new characters, or new settings. when exposed to multiple modules, do students evidence even greater increases in learning? of course, if multiple modules are to be developed, a practical concern comes to the fore. high-fidelity, educational games such as the prototype tested in the present study are very expensive to develop. to manage these costs, partnerships between industry and academia may be a promising approach (cannon-bowers and bowers, 2010). indeed, this is the approach that was used in the present study. a second area of future research concerns getting a better understanding of the specific elements of educational games that enhance learning. conducting research that isolates and manipulates specific features of educational games (e.g., simple vs. complex character development, short vs. long dialogue sequences, limited vs. ample opportunities for exploration, mastery vs. performance-oriented tasks/objectives) may be particularly useful for understanding the elements that facilitate or inhibit student learning. finally, future research investigating the effectiveness of educational video games relative to other instructional methods (e.g. inclass games, debates, role-plays, discussions, team exercises, case studies, etc.) could shed valuable light on the specific types of instructional content that are best suited to being delivered by games. conclusion as scholars and instructors of the history and philosophy of science, we carefully examine the past in order to inform the present and by extension, the future. like other areas of academic inquiry, our instructional methods are rooted in rich traditions, many of which rely on passive approaches to student learning (e.g., lecture). in the present study, we showed that relying solely on traditional approaches to teaching the history and philosophy of science may be inadequate. indeed, our findings demonstrate that gamification may hold great promise as an innovative avenue for complementing traditional teaching and learning methods – particularly when careful attention is paid to psychological learning principles such as promoting active learning, reducing cognitive load, and enhancing fidelity. we hope the present study serves to stimulate greater interest in gamification teaching, learning, and research. meeting galileo: testing the effectiveness of an immersive video game to teach history and philosophy of science to undergraduates logan l. watts – peter barker 144 acknowledgments: an earlier version of this work was presented at the university of oklahoma’s annual teaching scholar’s initiative in norman, oklahoma, usa. we would like to thank michael mumford, of the university of oklahoma, and brent lollis and michael tigar of parnassus llc for their contributions to this effort. figure 1 is reproduced courtesy of parnassus llc. references andersen, hanne, peter barker and xiang chen. 2006. the cognitive structure of scientific revolutions. cambridge: cambridge university press. ariew, roger. 2006. the sphere of jacques du chevreul: astronomy at 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kuhn. tomas s. 1962. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: university of chicago press. 4th edition 2012. mayer, richard e. and roxana moreno. 2003. nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. educational psychologist 38: 43-52. meyers, chet and thomas b. jones. 1993. promoting active learning. strategies for the college classroom. san francisco: jossey-bass. osler, margaret j. 2010. reconfiguring the world: nature, god and human understanding, from the middle ages to early modern europe. baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. popper, karl r. 1959. the logic of scientific discovery. new york: basic books. popper, karl r. 1963. conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge. london: routledge and kegan paul. 4th edition 1981. shadish, william r., thomas d. cook and donald t. campbell. 2002. experimental and quasiexperimental designs for generalized causal inference. boston: houghton mifflin. sweller, john. 1988. cognitive load during problem solving: effects on learning. cognitive science. 12: 257-285. microsoft word 8 machado salomon layout 98 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 03 (2017) 98-102 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 – this is an open access journal book review alexandre koyré today seidengart, jean. vérité scientifique et verité philosophique dans l'œuvre d'alexandre koyré. paris: les belles lettres, 2016. 360pp. isbn: 9782251420677 – 35 € reviewed by: hallhane machado1 marlon solomon2 received: 04 august 2017. accepted: 30 november 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.i3.08 ____________________________________________________________________________________ in february 2012 an academic conference was held at the université paris ouest-nanterre entitled vérité scientifique et verité philosophique dans l'œuvre d'alexandre koyré. this book, organized by jean seidengart and published last year, is the fruit of that event. it consists of fourteen articles, divided in three parts – koyré philosophe, philosophie et histoire des sciences and koyré historien de la philosophie – and the transcription of an original course koyré gave in 1946 with the title galilée. the collection is made up of academic articles by paola zambelli, gérard jorland, annarita angelini, walter tega, joël biard, jean-jacques szczeciniarz, anastasios brenner, bernadette bensaude-vincent, frédéric fruteau de laclos, massimo ferrari, pietro redondi, emmanuel faye, alexandre guimarães tadeu de soares and jean seidengart. seidengart explains that the purpose of editing the collective work was not merely to reproduce programmatic formulas associated to the many different readings of alexandre koyré’s work but, instead, to initiate a reflection on a “plurality of analyses” of koyré’s vast research. the book however does not manage to abstain entirely from the reductive interpretative formulae that it declaredly renounces and, in fact, the coherence and concordance of the analyses exhibited are somewhat overshadowed by the attention given to the legitimacy of the different readings in relation to koyré’s work. the proposal is taken seriously, however, by paola zambelli who opens the book with a highly original work stemming from meticulous research and lavishly provided with footnotes in which the authoress proclaims the advantages of a sweeping vision and also puts that into practice. zambelli, in her endeavor to reconstitute the stages and modalities 1hallhane machado is a phd candidate in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-90, brazil. email: hallhane@gmail.com 2 marlon salomon is a professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-90, brazil. email: marlonsalomon@ufg.br hallhane machado, marlon salomon – book review 99 99 of koyré’s intellectual and cultural integration, especially against the background of france and germany between the two world wars, rejects the temptation to present his political engagement and his intellectual trajectory as separate topics. according to her, koyré was a person who followed two lines of thinking and action at the same time. he was keenly aware of the evolution of the german tragedy, of the theoretical developments of the phenomenological school and of the works of dilthey, cassirer and max scheler; zambelli devotes special attention to scheler. she narrates how koyré accompanied the ramifications of husserl’s philosophy in heidegger’s thinking and also the latter’s adherence to nazism. she describes how koyré dedicated himself to his academic career and to his support for general de gaulle. he was an avid intellectual but at the same time sensitive to the antisemitic persecutions of his day. in zambelli’s view, koyré lived two lives. gérard jorland extends an invitation to participate in a more open interpretation of koyré’s work and presents the arguments that were part of his own thesis published in 1981 regarding the phenomenological method, or to be more precise, the historiographic method that koyré put into practice in his studies. jorland’s article, however, is by no means a mere reproduction of old arguments. he shows how the reestablishment of the foundational ontological intuitions seen through the eyes of others was richly rewarding for the historian. he describes how that might have been when he delineates and distinguishes the “basic intuitions” of galileo and descartes; the famous wedding of truth and error that koyré referred to. it was because of his persistent adherence to gravity as being the essential property of physical bodies that galileo did not explicitly formulate the law of inertia. however, it was also because of his refusal to not reduce the real to the geometrical that he was able to formulate the law of falling bodies. it was precisely through his acceptance of that reduction that descartes, based on his concept of the existence of just two substances in the world, mental substance [mind] and material substance [body], went wrong by putting space in the place of time. it was for that very same reason, however, that he elaborated the fundamental laws of modern physics. jorland does not outline the fruits of the phenomenological method in koyré’s work alone; jorland’s main invitation is for us to perceive the fecundity of that method in spheres that go beyond any specific historical period. accordingly, he applies them to the works of authors like marx, lavoisier, hegel and pasteur. annarita angelina addresses a study koyré made of jan hus in the period 1943 to 1948. the theme she has chosen is little known, but she nevertheless presents it as being in consonance with koyré’s celebrated work études galiléennes. angelina constantly compares the way koyré outlines his history of the sciences with the way he writes the history of the hussite movement. historiographic interest in error and truth is represented in that work by his interest in the history of the victor (the catholic church) and the vanquished (hus) and again in the apparent paradox of his recognition of the importance of both in the process that culminated in the calvinist reform. the force and the weaknesses of giordano bruno’s thinking makes way for the very same contradiction in the person of hus; mediocre as an individual but grandiose from the point of view of his fruits. in him galileo’s realist mathematics makes way for the hussite realist theology. that profound alteration to the aristotelian and medieval reference framework in regard to physics is replaced by an institutional reference framework, responsible for transformation through the destruction of the “medieval order”. both joël biard and walter tega distinguish themselves by not calling attention to any particular merit of koyré’s work but instead to a problem in his most well-known interpretation regarding the scientific revolution of the 17th century. in biard’s view, koyré is in solidarity with duhem in his perspective of aristotelianism which he views as an epistemological obstacle. according to biard, the key to understanding the transformations suffered by the domain of physics can be found inside the discussions of nothingness. koyré hallhane machado, marlon salomon – book review 100 100 failed to see that because he could not get beyond duhem’s interpretation or the texts that the latter cites and that made him embrace a meaning for nothingness only in the extracosmic sense of the concept, leaving aside the preeminent discussions of other aspects that took place in the heart of aristotelian natural philosophy. bernadette bensaude-vincent, fruteau de laclos and brenner take up, once more, the questions associated to the debate on belonging and the relation of koyré’s work to french epistemology. in brenner’s view, koyré took his theses on the closeness of aristotelian physics to simple common sense, on galileo’s theoretical position and on the importance of archimedes, from tannery. it was from brunschvicg that he took his positive attitude to platonism. koyré was integrated to a current of thinking that had existed since 1900, one that argues in favor of the fecundity of platonic thinking. that same concept is also accentuated in bachelard, cavaillès and lautman. brenner presents a koyré who, far from breaking with the french epistemological tradition, intervenes in that field, contributing to the construction of the profile that endowed it with its singular nature. fruteau de laclos and bensaude-vincent take a very different stance declaring that koyré is a meyersonian and meyerson does not belong to that tradition at all and, accordingly, koyré has a moral intellectual and material debt to him. bensaude-vincent underscores the communion of those two authors in regard to the fragility of the modern distinctions among science and religion, the philosophical meaning of the principle of inertia, the presuppositions of the “mathematization” of physics, the interest in hegel, the attention to errors and the rejection of precursors. in turn fruteau de laclos underscores how koyré “ne confond jamais différence des états du savoir et disqualification de la science du passé” (fruteau de laclos 2016, 206), and bachelard agrees. in the construction of his conception of thought, koyré takes inspiration from the works of meyerson and of husserl who are imbued with the same spirit as himself because, to koyré, the philosophy of the intellect is a phenomenological approximation of reasoning. in koyré, phenomenology is re-thought as a kind of anthropology of knowledge. in the light of his ideas on thought, there is indeed an affirmation of a continuity of historical transitions. these authors therefore consider that koyré breaks with the french epistemological tradition of the first half of the 20th century. far removed from that recurrent debate, pietro redondi elaborates an innovative analysis of koyré’s most outstanding methodological legacy. redondi historicizes, in koyré, his “notion of the interdependence between the philosophical-theological concepts and those of a physical-mathematical order” (redondi 2016, 248); his conception of the “unity of thinking”. he endeavors to argue that such a conception was not present in his analyses from the beginning and that in fact koyré only admitted its worth at the end of his investigation of the process that links copernicus to newton. in 1939, when he published his work études galiléennes, koyré considered galileo’s narrative of the creation of the universe [according to which god produces the planets by letting them fall and, according to the law of falling bodies, when they reach the right velocity their uniform straight line acceleration is transformed into a uniform circular movement, thereby creating the astronomical system] as being the way galileo found to announce his epistemology and reinforce the front of his battle against aristotelian natural philosophy. in 1950 koyré’s analysis is different. after the works of metzger, febvre and lenoble appeared, koyré acknowledged the importance of the plato-inspired galilean narrative and he transformed galileo’s cosmology into “a possible, if not true, story” (koyré 1960, 259). only then does he attribute any weight to those philosophical-religious considerations in the formation of galilean science. in the wake of redondi’s originality, faye presents us with an extremely interesting analysis that sheds light on koyré’s interpretations of descartes, especially those he presented in 1922 and in 1937. it is possible to highlight both a notable change and a notable permanence in koyré’s analyses. in 1922, koyré saw descartes as being, above all, the inheritor of duns scot and bonaventure of the conception of positivity and the idea of the hallhane machado, marlon salomon – book review 101 101 infinite. by 1937, however, he had become, at one and the same time, a follower and a critic of montaigne. on the other hand, koyré’s main element of interpretation persisted. while, in 1922, koyré’s descartes was the inheritor of duns scot and bonaventure, he was also a mathematician who knew how to recognize the continuity of number and by using mathematics, remove the philosophical consequences stemming from the positive idea of a real infinite. in 1937, the descartes envisaged by koyré continued to insist on the importance of that concept, a thesis that had by then become not only about god but about thought as such. what could explain that shift of koyré’s attention away from the mediaeval authors to embrace montaigne? according to faye, koyré used the figure of montaigne to criticize the idea of the essential finitude of being, a concept that he recognized in heidegger’s description of dasein. in 1937, koyré used descartes to voice his own criticism of one of the fundamental pillars of heidegger’s philosophy within which nazism acquired legitimacy. faye’s text, together with that of zambelli, which is perhaps the most provocative and innovative interpretation published in this collection, presents a somewhat furtive criticism of jorland’s classic interpretation of a supposed maladjustment between koyré’s philosophy and his time. although it contains articles quite distinct from one another, not only in terms of the contents of koyré’s work that they address but also in their ways of analyzing it, the book begins and ends with the considerations of its organizer who takes the opportunity to sketch a general interpretation koyré’s work. in his preface seidengart gives a ready answer to the provocative question suggested by the collection’s title vérité scientifique et vérité philosophique dans l’oeuvre d’alexandre koyré, which takes us back to the 1965 debate that canguilhem began with his disturbing statement that “there is no truth other than scientific truth”. in regard to the heated discussion conducted by hyppolite, foucault, canguilhem, dreyfus, ricoeur and badiou, seidengart assures us that koyré would have been in total disagreement with canguilhem insofar as he considered it impossible to separate philosophy and science because both replace sensory experiences with their own version of the real. the organizer of the book considers that koyré was most certainly an idealist, but one with the merit of having formulated a historical method whose greatest advantage was that it made it possible to “dégager les enjeux philosophiques que comportent les controverses scientifiques à propos des crises, des fondements, des mutations et des justifications des énoncés scientifiques” (seidengart 2016, 319). nevertheless, according to seidengart, who apparently forgives him for this, koyré is an idealist. he let himself be guided by a “philosophical elan”, or “platonism”, or “mathematical realism”. to seidengart, that was the philosophical and scientific truth koyré affirmed and which persecuted him in his history of the sciences where his option to study the “cosmological revolution”, through the historical processes of the passage “from the closed world to the infinite universe” (a passage that he does not explain satisfactorily) and the failure of his interpretation of einstein’s theory of relativity (albeit seidengart does not tell us where the gaps in the interpretation lie or in what that failure consisted).3 it can be seen that in spite of criticizing the programmatic formulations of certain interpretations of koyré, seidengart does not manage to do without them in his own analysis. in that aspect the book’s title is misleading because it does not achieve the objective announced at the beginning. misleading again, because not one of the authors listed on the contents page concerns himself or herself with the problem announced on the cover. if it failed to achieve its objective, it is because the problem was one that only the organizer of the book was eager to address. 3 seidengart seems unaware of the fact that koyré’s studies on copernicus, galileo and descartes in the 1930s were written concomitantly with the in-depth discussions on the philosophical and scientific consequences of the emergence of quantum physics which koyré followed very closely by means of critical appraisals that were published on the subject. hallhane machado, marlon salomon – book review 102 102 the title, however, is also revealing in regard to the current situation of the discussions on koyré’s place in the field of 20th century french philosophy, especially in construing the problems associated to his affiliation to french epistemology. the fundamental difference from canguilhem, which seindgart would like to have explained, indicates precisely that. the title of fruteau de laclos’s chapter (does koyré belong to the french epistemological tradition) is quite explicit in that regard. the same is true for the contribution (“koyré, a disciple of meyerson”) of bernadette bensaude-vincent, authoress of important studies on early 20th century french philosophy based on the files of émile meyerson. according to the interpretation proffered by the historiography of the 1960s and 70s, what is at issue here is the origin or preeminence of bachelardism. meyerson’s historiographers are right to underscore his importance in that aspect. without doubt there is a need to expand and ‘complexify’ its profile and rewrite the history of the historiography of french philosophy of the sciences and question the dated interpretations. there is also a need, however, to avoid replacing one reductionism with another. koyré would have developed a very different philosophical work on the sciences if he had not settled on french soil. the same can be said of mayerson. it is not koyré who cannot be reduced to “french epistemology” but instead, what needs to be questioned is the excessively narrow and often plurality-lacking way that particular historiographic tendency has been presented. microsoft word 15horta layout 193 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 193-203 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2018 – this is an open access journal interview: regina horta duarte1 born in belo horizonte in 1963, regina horta duarte is a professor of history and history of science (history and nature) at the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais) since 1988. her numerous publications (books and articles) focus on the field of history (political cultures) as well as the field of history of biology and environmental history. regina horta was one of the founders of the sociedad latinoamericana y caribeña de história ambiental (solcha) [latin american and caribbean society of environmental history (solcha)], an institution in which she has been active since 2003. she was also one of the founders of the group of research in history of science in graduate program in history at the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais). throughout her career, she has maintained an essential presence in the consolidation of her field of research in the national and international scene. interviewed by: natascha s. c. ostos2 and mauro l. condé3 in october 2018 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.14 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ natascha s. c. ostos (nsco) and mauro l. condé (mlc): how did your interest in history come about? regina horta duarte: i believe that my love of history arose in the earliest childhood and blended with my fascination with the narrative. my mother told me many 1 regina horta duarte [orcid: 0000-0003-0808-5435] is a professor in the department of history at the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: reginahortaduarte@gmail.com 2 natascha s. c. ostos [orcid: 0000-0002-4531-1924] is a ph.d. in history and an assistant professor in the department of history at the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: nataschaostos@hotmail.com 3 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br interview: regina horta duarte 194 stories every night, and also while cooking. when she left for work, i chased after iolanda, a lovely girl who worked at my house, asking her to read the children’s world books to me. in the midst of so much work, she always found time to attend to me. the narratives have since exerted an irresistible power over me, even before i learn to read. as a teenager, i thought about pursuing the career of a musician because i played the piano. however, my third-grade high school teacher, rejane márcia freitas de oliveira, conquered me with her narratives. when i finally chose to study history, i did not even dream that this course would allow me a path of research and writing. at that moment, it meant the option of being a teacher/narrator. nevertheless, the choice of history came from experiences lived between reading, narration and – especially – affection. despite identifying the historian’s curiosity in my view of the world since i was a child, this does not mean that this choice was given. i could, for the same reasons, have devoted myself to zoology or botany: the garden of my house was small, but it represented a complex world to be explored by me. ernst mayr wrote that history and evolutionary biology have in common the construction of plausible narratives. playing piano was also a way of constructing narratives, in this case, sonorous: i could have become a bach interpreter, my favorite, with her fugues in several voices. of course, i will never know if i would have achieved any success in these areas. at age 17, i chose to be a history teacher. and, in my next questions, i have shortened myself and corrected my claims, since the practices of research, teaching and writing in history have given me great joy since 1982 when i began my degree. nsco and mlc: although your graduate degree is in history, you transit through the area of biology, crossing with botany, zoology, ecology and evolutionary biology. where did this interest come from, and how does the dialogue between biology and history take place in your production, considering the points of tension and the epistemological gains for the two disciplines? regina horta duarte: i think my interest in biology came when i played in my home’s garden in the mornings. i compared and collected the leaves and flowers of the plants, made exsicattas4 and kept them in books. i also liked to observe the animal life that existed there, like worms, ladybugs, spiders and their webs, crickets, and hummingbirds that visited the hibiscus. i make a point of referring to this, for i believe that children take pleasure in knowledge, excited by an infinite inquiry of the world around them. and perhaps the scientist is the one who maintains and enhances this characteristic of mixing knowledge, pleasure, and joy. i have recently read a book that confirms this impression. the ornithologist marcos rodrigues published the equinox of the sabiás,5 in which he narrates a scientific adventure from the garden of his house. in 2002, i joined the research group of professor eliana dutra, the brasiliana collection. we had to propose individual research projects. i spent an afternoon in the library, looking at the brasiliana collection, and i was captivated by one of its 4 editor’s note: exsicattas is a sample of pressed plant and then dried. 5 editor’s note: sabiá is a brazilian bird. interview: regina horta duarte 195 authors, who published five titles, cândido de mello leitão. along with this zoologist, my fascination with biology was revived and most importantly fueled by the historical perspective i had been cultivating over the years in the exercise of my profession. it is true that biology is a comprehensive science and has different branches. mayr indicated a significant division between functional and molecular biology and historical or evolutionary biology. so it was this second field of knowledge that i decided to explore. mello leitão was a prolific author with a significant amount of scientific articles, works on the popularization of science, textbooks, books for the general public, and even scripts for educational radio programs founded by roquette-pinto in the 1930s. beyond mello leitão’s texts, i devoted myself to the reading of ernst mayr and stephen jay gould, as well as historians/philosophers of science such as peter j. bowler and philip pauly, among others. in interdisciplinary dialogue, a vital book was the use and abuse of biology, by the anthropologist marshall sahlins. among the points of tension between biology and history, i identify the uses of biology by many social thinkers by misrepresenting darwin’s concepts, giving them linear and unidirectional meanings that obscure the brilliance and vigor of his scientific thinking. a good example is the taxon divergence diagram which, drawn in the origin of species, shows how inaccurate the representation of evolution as a “ladder” is. the image capable of expressing evolution is that of the tree, with a broad trunk showing the common origin, followed by scattered, irregular branches, some abruptly interrupted, others also subdivided irregularly. the emergence of a species is a posteriori result of evolution, in a mixture of changes in living beings and necessities arising from the conditions of existence in which selection takes place. nevertheless, telling a historian that he or she is an evolutionist is a way of insulting him. to this day, many people continue to criticize darwin based on what “they said he said”. therefore, a careful reading of the original works is always essential for the beginning of any approach. besides, great care must be taken not to adopt postures that propose to “apply” biology to history or vice versa, as this invariably hurts the analytical sophistication of each of these disciplines. as sahlins says, one must respect the discontinuity between nature and culture. gould also warns of the danger of biological determinism, which he identifies in many conservative political discourses. however, starting from the assumption of the complexity of the world in which we live, and in which human life represents a tiny moment, it is indeed stimulating to explore windows of communication, common zones of intelligibility, in a transdisciplinary exercise of investigation between history and biology. i believe that some areas of contact are especially fascinating, namely a dizzying perspective of time, which explains the importance of the event, the affirmation of creation, the rejection of teleology and the idea of progress, and the impossibility of making predictions (even if prognoses are possible). nsco and mlc: you have a large production in environmental history, which contributed to solidifying, together with the work of other scholars, this field of research in brazil and latin america. looking back, what were the challenges you faced when you started investigations in the area and how do you assess the impact of history and nature studies on historical knowledge as a whole? interview: regina horta duarte 196 regina horta duarte: at the turn of the millennium, i discovered that there was a vigorous field of research called environmental history. i was working on a project about the politician teofilo otoni, who, disillusioned with the conservative political paths of brazil after the defeat of the liberal movement of 1842 in minas gerais, launched the venture to colonize the mucuri river valley. i started with a political approach, but as i was unfolding the documentation, i was fascinated by the rainforest and the indigenous peoples who inhabited the region. i wondered how to study all these subjects, and, on the internet, i discovered the american society for environmental history (aseh), which held annual congresses. two brazilian researchers were already well advanced in the area, josé drummond and josé augusto pádua, with significant and consistent academic works. i then contacted drummond, and we organized a round-table at the aseh meeting in denver in 2002, along with other foreign researchers, guillermo castro (panama), stuart mccook (canada) and bernardo garcía (mexico). that year, i began discovering a world of incredible books with innovative research and insights, specialized journals, and scholars of high excellence. in the beginning, the great difficulty was accessing the international bibliography, given the deficiencies of the libraries in this subject to which i have access to in brazil, and the high costs to import the indispensable books. but it is important to emphasize the decisive importance of the portal of capes journals. another major challenge is the interdisciplinary dialogue since environmental history includes biologists, geographers, sociologists, and anthropologists. nevertheless, there is something to learn, every day. a significant impact of environmental history on our field of knowledge is relearning to explore a non-anthropocentric approach to history that becomes much more than human. the constitution of social sciences in the twentieth-century privileged independence, almost the autonomy of social fact. this process was important because it freed us from geographic, biological, etc., and other determinisms. however, we end up with the opposite problem, since the agency of the natural environment in human life has been obscured, as well as the impacts of human societies on the environment. nature and society were separated, configured as alien to one another as if this were possible. however, it is not possible. the reality is complex and consists of many entangled dimensions. so here is perhaps the time to “calibrate” sahlins’ already quoted statement: one must respect the discontinuity between nature and culture, but it is also indispensable to know how to map the relations between them since one does not exist without the other. the physical medium has reality, dynamics, and transformations that are independent of human life. however, the way we describe and understand it is amalgamated with our values and assumptions which, in turn, are always historical. as the american historian william cronon puts it, when we say “nature”, we say so much about ourselves as about the things we name with that word, we speak simultaneously about the society in which we live and about the various conflicts that constitute it, whether they are conflicts of class, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. on the contribution of environmental history to the field of knowledge of history, i think it is one of the ways of connecting with some of the most certain contemporary challenges of humanity. it situates conservationist and preservationist thought in time and different societies, showing its emergence in the arenas of confrontations of the various actors (and it is interesting how it broadens the conceptions about which actors are involved: as well as human interview: regina horta duarte 197 beings, rivers, forests, animals). it also investigates the origin of diverse practices of men concerning the natural environment, revealing their dispersion and heterogeneity, allowing analyzes that go beyond moralizing visions (so prevalent in the romantic environmental representations of a “mother nature” that a homo praedator would insist on destroying). it is not a question of constructing narratives of progressive destruction, nor of the comforting evolution of an ecological consciousness that would restore a supposed primordial harmony between the human being and the natural environment – there is too much metaphysics in these conceptions. in turn, awareness of the overwhelming complexity and paradoxes surrounding the word “nature” may offer essential tools for more critical and autonomous environmentalism. another contribution of environmental history is the widening of the scope of possible dialogues with diverse scientific communities, and the increasing requirement of transdisciplinary action of its researchers in fields such as geography, anthropology, demography, architecture, tourism, law, archeology, ecology, microbiology, oceanography, genetics, zoology, climatology, agronomy, and so many others. however also consolidated fields of historical research can be enriched with the environmental focus, such as the political and social history as well as the history of the cities, gender, arts, science, etc. nsco and mlc: you were one of the founders, in 2006, of the sociedad latinoamericana y caribeña de história ambiental (solcha) [latin american and caribbean society of environmental history (solcha)], acting since then in various instances of the institution. in your opinion, how did the creation of this society energize the debate in the field of environmental history? regina horta duarte: i had very good luck to participate in the foundation of solcha. as i told you, i was in denver for an aseh congress, and there i met the panamanian historian guillermo castro. he warned me about an environmental history meeting to be held in chile in 2003, as part of the 51th international congress of americanists, and one of its primary objectives was to set the course and create a forum for latin american debates on environmental history. that meeting evidenced the undoubted need for a scientific society, and solcha was drafted in santiago de chile, even though its founding itself took place only at the congress in carmona, spain, organized by colleagues at the pablo de olavide university. at the last congress in liberia, costa rica in 2018, we took stock of the first fifteen years of our society. between 2003 and 2018, we held several events: havana, cuba (2004), carmona (2006), belo horizonte (2008, when ufmg was the sponsoring institution, and i was the organizer, along with professor josé newton coelho meneses), la paz, baja california sur, mexico (2010), villa de leyva, colombia (2012), quilmes, argentina (2014), puebla, mexico, (2016). in 2020, we will meet in quito, ecuador. in addition to the events, solcha organizes, every two years, escuela de posgrado (the graduate school), in which researchers from several countries and students of masters and doctorates meet for minicourses, workshops and, especially, the debate on the ongoing research projects of the students. this process has been a fantastic and enriching experience. a graduate student who attended escuela never forgets the significant contributions that this environment of debate provided for his or her academic trajectories. interview: regina horta duarte 198 the journal historia ambiental latinoamericana y caribeña (halac) was founded in 2011. i had the great honor of being its first publisher (between 2011 and early 2014). today the journal is led by professors sandro dutra e silva (centro universitário de anápolis unievangelica / state university of goiás) and marina miraglia (national university of general sarmiento, buenos aires, argentina), and has become an essential vehicle for disseminating knowledge of excellence produced in the area. thus, solcha has been essential for several reasons. firstly, it is conducive to orient the debate, the exchange of experience and the growing exchange among researchers of several nationalities. secondly, it has boosted the progress of graduate research in countless countries in different themes and subjects. thus, we have thought about the state of the art of environmental history in brazil, argentina, colombia, mexico, etc. however, there is another set of relationships, with networks of dialogue between those who study urban environmental history, history of rivers, history of environmental disasters, the environmental history of agriculture or livestock, the environmental history of mining, national parks, socioenvironmental movements, etc. the experiences offered by solcha have stimulated joint publications. in 2018, claudia leal (universidad de los andes, colombia), josé augusto pádua (universidade federal do rio de janeiro – federal university of rio de janeiro) and john soluri (carnegie mellon university, usa) organized and edited the book a living past: environmental histories of modern latin america, published by berghan books and will soon be published in a spanish edition, with authors such as chris boyer, micheline cariño, nicolas cuvy, reinaldo funes, shawn van ausdal, robert wilcox and myrna santiago. lise sedrez and i wrote a chapter on urban environmental history in latin america which, i hope, will be very useful for those interested in the subject. solcha is a liaison with the american researchers (organized in the american society for environmental history), european researchers (meeting in the european environmental history, eseh) and also with iceho (international consortium of environmental history organizations). in 2019, the iceho event will be hosted by the universidade federal de santa catarina (federal university of santa catarina) under the leadership of the “solchera”, professor eunice nodari, leader of the laboratory of environmental history and migration (labimha). in this network of relationships, i would be inspired by tom jobim’s song, “wave”, when it tells us in its lyrics: “it is impossible to be happy alone”. in the specific case addressed here, i would say that “it is impossible to make environmental history alone”. nsco and mlc: your book activist biology: the national museum, politics, and nation building in brazil, published in 2016, traces the history of the national museum (rio de janeiro), emphasizing the trajectory of three researchers throughout the first half of the twentieth century: edgard roquette-pinto, anthropologist, cândido de mello leitão, arachnologist, and alberto josé de sampaio, botanist. recently, in september of 2018, the national museum was devastated by a fire of enormous proportions, that destroyed almost all of its collection. considering this new reality, your book incorporates a new dimension for the reader, a “vestige” of ideas and scientific practices carried out in the institution. so, what were the interview: regina horta duarte 199 scientific and political ideals inscribed in the public performance and the knowledge produced by these scientists? regina horta duarte: yes, unfortunately, the book received relevance due to the disaster. many people wrote to me while i felt myself losing a close relative. many of the sources i worked on were collected at semear, the museum’s historical archive now reduced to ashes. when the zoologist mello leitão wrote the biology in brazil in 1938, he narrated his experience by reading the copy of a work by agassiz, present in the library of the national museum. this american scientist visited brazil in the 1860s. in his writings, he lamented the precarious conditions of this institution. on the margins of the book, mello leitão found a pencil note, signed by the ornithologist emilio goeldi, at the end of the 19th century: “still today the same thing”. with the book in his hands, mello leitão was devastated by the difficulties the museum still faced, despite the dedication of so many scientists who worked there. he resisted the urge to also add his own commentary on the margins of the book: “still today the same thing”. the tragedy that hit the national museum is so immense that we cannot even repeat what agassiz, goeldi and mello leitão said. collections, books, and documents were simply devoured by fire. the efforts of so many men and women for science now seem to be reduced to ashes. it is an irreparable loss for brazil, for scientists from all over the world, and for all those who have already felt the pleasure of going through the exhibitions of a natural history museum. nsco and mlc: your most recent research has privileged the so-called animal history, as in your article “zoos in latin america”, (duarte, 2017). what can you tell us about this field of investigation? can you say that animals make history? to what extent can knowledge-history, produced by humans, aspire to make a history of animals? regina horta duarte: the history of animals is a fascinating field of study. i often joke that it is like the series of books begun in 1987 by the british illustrator martin handford, in which many complex images are presented together with the question “where’s wally”? initially, it is hard for the observer to find wally, but after locating the character, he stands out in the middle of everything. once we find the animals in the history, they seem so obvious that we can see them all over the place and wonder how we have not seen them before. take an example: for years i taught the history of the brazilian empire. in the historical formation of the center-south region in brazil, where the portuguese court moved in 1808, the troops were fundamental. they meant the emergence of subsistence agriculture and supply, the opening of roads and paths, the circulation of ideas, books and newspapers, constituting an economic dynamism, but both social and political, as alcir lenharo has shown in his book as tropas da moderação [the troops of moderation]. well, the troops were only possible by the use of the mules, which, in turn, required the construction of pastures along the paths, transforming the landscapes of “cerrado” and tropical forest where they extended. this process certainly implied a daily relationship and of great intimacy between the “tropeiros” and their animals of load and transport. these troops carried agricultural products such as eggs, lard, bacon, chickens, and cheeses, indicating relations between humans and non-human animals on farms for raising cows, pigs, and chickens. the historical-socio-economic-cultural narrative of the troops loses a lot by forgetting interview: regina horta duarte 200 those who participated in it. it seems incredible that they have been out of the eyes of the historian for so long. the question of agency and animal protagonism has been the object of many studies, and researchers tend to say that yes, animals make history, even without any determination or conscience. this debate merges with philosophical considerations about nonhuman animals, which have been very dynamic with the advancement of the studies on animal ethology. instead of considering them without language, we begin to look at their different languages. opposing the view that animals only react, without honestly responding (as lacan defends), philosophers like derrida argue that animals respond and interfere directly in human life. from this emerges a world of relationships and interactions for reflection. in my studies at zoos, i have even concluded that animals ask: the look of the animals in a zoo is disturbing to the visitor. the history of animals challenges our anthropocentrism for the simple fact of forcefully imposing the reflection that human beings are, above all, animals. as darwin demonstrates, it is not possible to establish hierarchies among living beings. if we turn to the science of ecology since the early decades of the twentieth century, and concepts such as biome (clements, 1916), ecological niche and food chain (elton, 1927), ecosystem (tansley, 1935) it becomes unsustainable the cultural and religious tradition that sees man as the center and motive of the planet and the universe. this viewpoint enables us to solidify other relationships with the physical environment, with the plant life and – the reason for our dialogue here – with the other animals that share the earth with us. this outlook is a radical break with anthropocentrism. we are part, not the final reason for everything that is there. nsco and mlc: how do you see, especially in brazil, the relationship between the history and history of science? can we say that science has become an object of study for history? regina horta duarte: no doubt, yes, and a long time ago. in the case of brazil, we can remember the growing importance of the brazilian society of history of science – sbhc, founded in 1983, and that held its 16th national seminar in october 2018. there are important graduate programs in the area in several of the best brazilian universities. theses and dissertations on the history of science have gained prominence, and the award conferred by sbhc has publicized the excellence of what has been produced. i also mention the group of research “science and culture in history” at the graduate program of the universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais), whose excellence is recognized by brazilian sponsor agency capes, awarding us the highest mark. in this graduate program, excellent dissertations and theses have already been produced, and this is an essential contribution to this field of knowledge in brazil. nsco and mlc: you maintain a youtube channel – as quatro estações [the four seasons] – dedicated to the popularization of environmental history to the general public. tell us a little about the importance of scientific popularization and how this project has been. regina horta duarte: as quatro estações [the four seasons] is a program broadcast by radio educativa ufmg, 104.5 fm, belo horizonte / brazil. the first series debuted in september 2013 and featured fifty-one programs. the program was interrupted for a while, and a new series with seventy-five programs is underway. after running interview: regina horta duarte 201 on the radio, the programs are available on youtube, on the channel of the same name. the mission of the program is to explore the relationships between human societies and nature over time. the themes are very diverse, as you can see when visiting the channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/asquatroestações). the programs are short, in simple language, between 4 to 5 minutes, and target the broad public, with emphasis on teachers and students of high school and elementary school. i believe it is essential for anyone researching in brazil to find ways to communicate beyond the academic world. it is difficult and involves enormous learning. the idea of the program came in a conversation with a former student, cleiber pacifico, who was a producer on ufmg radio. i love doing the program, choosing themes, writing the scripts, selecting the songs that make up the soundtrack, and recording in the studio of ufmg radio. i believe that one of the most significant difficulties of scientific popularization are the intermediaries. in the case of the radio program, i myself am responsible for the final content, and my great challenge is to narrate in a simple, direct and understandable way a complex story. the goal is to achieve simplicity without being simplistic. another necessary action is to strive to acquire some skill in the use of the media. in my case, the radio is a mysterious world, for which we have not been trained, and therefore we need so much support from the professionals. at ufmg radio, i had many people, producers like cleiber, luiza glória, and technical editors, like gilberto correa and breno rodrigues, all are “radio people”. i always try to show the program to different people and ask for a real assessment, opinions about what can be improved, etc. however, it is a challenging endeavor… sometimes on youtube, i see channels that teach how to tie a shoelace, fry an omelet, open a can of sardines, put mascara on the eyes, all with thousands of views. so then i see as quatro estações [the four seasons], always with such a small number of views… anyway, it is a quixotic task. the programs are put on the air, we have a facebook page to help in the popularization of the channel, but we never pay to boost it, since it is an academic activity. my opinion is that we are always in a dark zone, with little reach, little diffusion, despite so much effort, probably because of our lack of capacity to reach the public. to bring our message to the general public, we need to be more professional and, above all, to work in teams. we owe this with maximum urgency to brazilian society, which finances public universities through the payment of taxes. nsco and mlc: what advice would you give to a young historian of science who begins his career at this time with interests in the history of biology or environmental history? what is missing in these fields? where are these disciplines pointing to? regina horta duarte: for any young historian, my first recommendation is to learn how to speak english fluently. the lack of knowledge of the english language is a real obstacle to the success of graduate studies in brazil. think of the capes portal, this fantastic vehicle that puts hundreds of publications in our hands, as long as you interview: regina horta duarte 202 know how to read in english. secondly, we live in a time when the competition is tremendous, the eagerness to publish even higher, and young researchers are always very eager for results. it is clear that academic life always involves vanity, but we live in a time when this is detrimental to our knowledge. i started this interview by talking about genuine child-like curiosity. this curiosity is what we have to cultivate: joy made possible by knowledge, pleasure in the intellectual adventure of addressing a theme, enthusiasm to share the knowledge produced with other people so that this practice is an element of transformation for the world. we are so obsessed with titles, prestige indexes, and signs of power, and we need to remember the initial motives of our decision to study history. it is hard to think what is lacking in order to research it. at first, any subject can be a new subject, provided that an innovative approach is proposed. i would have thought differently when advising a young female doctoral student or male doctoral student: what really attracts you? what would be a real pleasure to study? life is tough, sad, painful, we need to be able to research what mobilizes us, excites us, things in which we believe. no one can choose a research topic for anyone else. i, for example, see a world of possibilities in the history of animals. the theme has interfaces with such diverse areas of history, opens up so many interdisciplinary paths, is so relevant, establishes philosophical and ethical reflections so decisive for our contemporaneity and, above all, highlights the important choices of our current civilization. it is estimated that 60% of the planet’s wildlife merely has disappeared. on the other hand, we see that domestic animals dominate landscapes all over the world, and their step advances over forests, “cerrado”, diverse areas. in cities, millions of pets feed a millionaire business, selling pet foods, perfumes, ornaments, toys, vegan cookies. mosquitoes attacks us, and we had in 2018 one of the most enormous yellow fever epidemics in brazil of recent times, which involved humans, mosquitoes, and non-human primates. there are animals everywhere in the past, in the present, and this includes homo sapiens. however, some people will not get involved with the subject. so, the suggestion is research what you love, and that which energizes the life around you and, why not, your own life. well, that is how i have been guided since the scientific initiation. the intellectual activity of research and production of knowledge is a source of rejuvenation, of enthusiasm, of returning to being like children in their infinite inquiry of the whys of everything. thus, to the young people: be young! do not allow yourselves to be drawn too much by this austerity of academic titles, nor by the illusions about established prestige. in no way does this contradict the respect and recognition of the pioneers, as the best researchers yearn to be outdone by their students. the renewal will come from you. nsco and mlc: thank you very much! interview: regina horta duarte 203 references bowler, peter j. 1993. the earth encompassed. new york: norton. clements, frederick edward. 1916. plant succession; an analysis of the development of vegetation. carnegie institution of washington. cronon, william (ed.). 1996. uncommon ground – rethinking the human place in nature. new york: w. w. norton & company. darwin, charles. 2002. origem das espécies. belo horizonte: itatiaia. derrida, jacques. 2002. o animal que logo sou. são paulo: unesp. duarte, regina horta. 2016. activist biology: the national museum, politics, and nation building in brazil. tucson: university of arizona press, 2016. duarte, regina horta. 2017. “zoos in latin america”. in beezley, william (ed.). the oxford research encyclopedia of latin american history. new york: oxford university press, p. 1-21. elton, charles s. 2001 [1927]. animal ecology. chicago: university of chicago press. gould, stephen jay. 2002. the structure of evolutionary theory. cambridge: harvard university press. lenharo, alcir. as tropas da moderação. 1979. o abastecimento da corte na formação política do brasil, 1808-1842. são paulo: editora símbolo. mayr, ernst. 2000. the growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution and inheritance. cambridge: harvard university press. mello leitão, cândido. 1937. a biologia no brasil. coleção brasiliana, 99. são paulo: companhia editora nacional. pauly, philip. 2002. biologists and the promise of american life. princeton (cal.). princeton university press. rodrigues, marcos. 2018. o equinócio dos sabiás: aventura científica no seu jardim tropical. curitiba: ed. ufpr. sahlins, marshall d. 1976. the use and abuse of biology. an anthropological critique of sociobiology. ann arbor: university of michigan press. soluri, john; leal, claudia and pádua, josé augusto. 2018. a living past: environmental histories of modern latin america. new york: berghahn. tansley, arthur g. 1935. the use and abuse of vegetational concepts and terms. ecology, 16: 284-307. microsoft word 13fiant layout 149 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 149-162 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant1 abstract: the metaphor is used in the construction process of scientific knowledge. there are, however, metaphors that do not suit the objects they should represent, which thus impacts the accuracy of the knowledge which derives from these objects. it is the case of the machine metaphor, when resorted to in the study of living organisms. canguilhem has tackled problems it created in twentieth-century life sciences head on. in his criticism, he links the analysis of descartes’ work to his own philosophical thesis on “biological normativity”. by doing so, he so sheds a light on the pitfalls, both historical and biological, over which the machine metaphor stumbles. he thereby orders sciences to periodically make sure of the relevance of their metaphors and explanatory models to their objects. keywords: metaphor; history of science; philosophy of biology; descartes; scientific practices received: 29 january 2017. reviewed 15 march 2018. accepted: 11 may 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.13 _____________________________________________________________________________ according to ernst kapp in principes d’une philosophie de la technique (principles of a philosophy of technology), the functioning of the human body can be subsumed within the metaphor of the complex machine, provided that one conceives the absolute priority of the organism over the machine (kapp 2007). according to his theory of organic projection,2 tools and machines are extension and/or externalizations of living bodies’ activities. indeed, the complex machine is the copy of a mix of forms and movements derived from the human 1 océane fiant is a phd candidate at univerity of nantes – centre françois viète d’epistémologie et d’histoire des sciences et techniques. address: 2, rue de la houssinière, bp 92208 – 44322 nantes cedex 3 – france. e-mail: oceane.fiant@univ-nantes.fr 2 when formulating his theory of organic projection kapp adopts a radical anthropocentrism: according to him, man is the center of the world, and there is no other world than the world man represents by means of his consciousness – it is perception that provides the consciousness with materials. however, it happens that the consciousness identifies dark areas in its representation of the world: thus, man gradually makes the world his own through art, because art is a faculty specific to man. however, according to kapp, as a matter of principle, one can only give what one already has. hence, productions of art are externalizations of the forms of human organs, i.e. of limbs and organs and of movements of the body. for example, the hammer results from the projection of the movement that the fist and the arm make together when hitting something. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 150 organism. besides, kapp adds that “the use of mechanical laws to explanatory ends does definitely not turn organisms into machines, not more than the transfer of the organic movement and processes does turn machines into organisms”. (kapp 2007, 97) the complex machine, a copy of the organism, is technically speaking a representation of movements that indicates organic functions relying on the whole dynamic of the living organism; the movement of the machine relies on mechanisms, a motor and layout of solids that involve no suppression of the mechanism when the machine is set in motion. indeed, for kapp machine and organism are ontologically two distinct things. this circumscribes the use that could arise from the machine metaphor. in usual sense the metaphor is a stylistic device based on the transfer to an entity of a term that designates another entity. to be accurate a metaphor requires the selection of a target-entity (a), of another entity (b) the referent of which will be transferred to (a) and the existence of attributes shared by (a) and (b). to insure the effectiveness of a metaphor, the attributes of (b) must be easily recognizable by the reader or the listener that will interpret the metaphor. the use of the metaphor in the construction of scientific knowledge became a fully-fledged study object from the 1970s, mainly under the impact of research in cognitive psychology (lakoff 1980) and of works that can be linked to the new experimentalism in philosophy of sciences.3 daniel j. nicholson has proposed a tripartite share of the uses of the metaphor in sciences: the theoretic use that consists in willing to know a fact through another known scientific fact; the heuristic use that allows to understand a fact thanks to e.g. hypothesis stirred by a known scientific fact; the rhetorical use that allows transmitting and even explaining a scientific concept, thanks to another better-known concept that allows for a distillation of the components of the first concept (nicholson 2014). to go back to kapp, the reference to this tripartite share of the metaphor scientific uses and the ontological difference drawn by the author between the machine and organism allow the assertion that kapp excludes the theoretic use of the machine metaphor. yet he does not forbid though the heuristic use and one can herald he does not exclude the rhetorical use either. georges canguilhem does just the same and thinks the regularity of the functioning of the machine would not be viable in the medium term for the living thing (canguilhem 2009). the least irregularity in the functioning would see the living thing fail and unable to re-establish stable state by himself – as a machine that requires the surveillance of a technician able to mend in due course. on the contrary, the living thing is able to compensate its failures and compromise with them because he owns his own normativity. however, a look back on the history of science is enough to question the power of this argumentation against the machine metaphor. through the ages, technical progress provides technical entities that revive the theoretical claims of the machine metaphor. for example, from 1991 to 2003, the complete sequencing of the human genome had been achieved under a large publicly funded research program, i.e. the human genome project (hgp). it was expected that this research program would shed some light on the etiology of genetic diseases and would allow for the development of new diagnostic tests and treatments. researches conduced within the era of hgp were based on what one called the central dogma if molecular biology, which jacques monod and françois jacob explained by the metaphor of the “genetic program”. (jacob, monod 1961) the scientific idea behind this 3 new experimentalism is a collateral effect of the “crisis of rationality” provoked by the publication of thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions in 1962. kuhn demonstrates in his book the historicity of sciences, i.e. that theories and concepts are rooted in particular practical and social contexts. new experimentalism thus states that until the 1960s-1970s, philosophy of sciences gave too much importance to theory and not enough to practice. yet practice has a quasi-autonomous dynamic from theory and even play a part in its elaboration. thus, according to the proponents of new experimentalism, if one wants to study scientific knowledge, one shall study scientific practices. about the use of metaphor in sciences, see evelyn f. keller, 2002 and theodore l. brown, 2003. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 151 metaphor was that synthesis of a gene activator of protein can activate or deactivate other genes and so on, so that the activity of genes depends on the activity of other genes. the genome was considered a computer program. moreover, each protein was thought to have only one gene partner because of its tri-dimensional structure. according to these premises, the failure of one gene equated the disruption of the entire program. thus, the way of proceeding of researches that aimed to identify the etiology of genetic diseases within the era of hgp consisted in selecting a gene or a protein involved in the disease, and then reconstructing the cascades of molecular interactions. the “genetic program” metaphor allowed for a better understanding of some monogenic diseases; but, more importantly, the study of the entire genome sequence produced a scientific fact: that about 98% the genome is non-coding dna. molecular biologists deduced from it that the activity of genes was not stereospecific.4 as a result, hgp ended with the formulation of a model of “biocomplexity” which implied the disengagement from the metaphor. the hgp example is a good case of the problems that can arise from theoretical use when constructing scientific knowledge: metaphors may lead scientists to favor the study of particular aspects of a phenomenon instead of others that may prove to be crucial to understand this phenomenon.5 in his time and for similar reasons, canguilhem grappled with the problem of the equation of the machine and organism.6 in the last half of the twentieth century, indeed, behavioral psychology of john b. watson and benjamin f. skinner; jacques loeb’s physiology; frederick w. taylor’ scientific management theory; molecular biology7 and cybernetics of the 1950s all look in machines for models for the intelligence of structures and functions of the organism. however, canguilhem’s criticism of the machine metaphor does not resolve in the demonstration of an ontological difference between the machine and organism. in his paper “machine et organisme” (“machine and organism”) from 1946-1947, he writes himself that this argument has a slight power of conviction. as we will show in this paper, canguilhem chose a roundabout way to address the issue of the theoretical use of the machine metaphor. in our opinion, he relates his history of science to his philosophy of biology to reinforce the argument of the ontological difference between the machine and organism, and more broadly to educate scientific use of metaphors. moreover, this study will highlight the continuous nature of canguilhem’s though on the living and the permanence of its justification by means of history of sciences throughout his work. according to us, canguilhem’s criticism of the theoretical use of the machine metaphor is rooted in a youthful text, i.e. the lecture “descartes et la technique” (“descartes and technology”) he pronounced at the 9th international congress of philosophy in paris in 1937 (canguilhem 1982). vincent guillin writes that in this text, it is obvious that canguilhem 4 that means that protein activity is not determined by genes alone. 5 such problems can also arise with the heuristic and rhetorical use of metaphor. in la formulation de l’esprit scientifique (the formation of the scientific mind), gaston bachelard admits metaphor among obstacles to objective knowledge he enumerates (bachelard 2000). with regard to the hgp, we point out that factors additional to the theoretical use of the metaphor explain its failure, such as the need for researchers to use instruments acquired by laboratories that may have selectively oriented researches and results. 6 as we will show in our conclusion, canguilhem’s criticism of the use of metaphor in sciences is sometimes politically motivated. 7 in his paper “georges canguilhem et la biologie du xxe siècle” (“georges canguilhem and twentiethcentury biology”) michel morange shows that the attention canguilhem paid to cybernetic models and informational metaphors prevented him from perceiving a change in the way biology considered living organism in the late twentieth century (morange 2000). biology began to consider living being in a way that was close to canguilhem’s rational vitalism. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 152 is influenced by alain’s own reading of rené descartes.8 canguilhem set himself apart from alain when he insists of the shift in the relationship between theory and practice in descartes’ thought, though. according to dominique lecourt, canguilhem believes that he can convert this shift “into a thesis for his own use” (lecourt 2016, 68): this thesis is that of the anteriority of the living over technology, which makes technology depend from biological normativity. the concept of biological normativity canguilhem develops in le normal et le pathologique (the normal and the pathological) (1943 – 1966) is of course to be found below this thesis. first, we will bring to light in “descartes et la technique”, the basis of canguilhem’s criticism of the theoretical use of the machine metaphor: this is the symmetrical relationship between theory and practice he discovers in descartes. for “pure history”,9 descartes is the forerunner of the theoretical use of the machine metaphor. descartes, as gilbert simondon writes it, has been, indeed, “the first to formulate and transmute into philosophy the normativity and schematics contained in the pure and rational technologies of the renaissance” (simondon 2014, 103) i.e. the causal transfer without loss. but, as canguilhem states it in “machine et organisme”: “it is not possible to treat the biological problem of the organism-machine by separating it from the technological problem it supposes solved: that of the relationship between technology and science. this problem is usually solved by invoking the chronological and logical precedence of knowledge over its applications” (canguilhem 2009a, 130) before examining the relevance of equating the organism and machine, one shall demonstrate that technology can precede science: this is exactly what canguilhem does starting from cartesian philosophy, a few years earlier in “descartes et la technique” .10 secondly, we will argue that canguilhem’s reflections in “descartes et la technique” allow him to state that the living precedes technology and, thus, that they are ontologically distinct. this thesis, which canguilhem asserts in particular in “machine et organisme” supports his criticism of taylor’ scientific management theory in “milieu et normes de l’homme au travail. (a propos d’un livre récent de georges friedmann)” (“human milieu and norms at work. (about a recent book of georges friedmann)” (canguilhem 1947). canguilhem, thus, manages to put his history of sciences at the service of his own philosophy of biology, and of sciences that are contemporary with him. the symmetrical relationship between science and technology in descartes’ philosophy descartes humanism: technology, based on science, makes us “masters and possessors of nature” in his cartesian studies, canguilhem ambition is not so much to challenge descartes’ philosophy as to question what one takes for granted in it. his approach is polemical: it is based on a close and erudite reading of the cartesian corpus. he reveals its unapparent ambiguities – on which those who claim to be cartesians about technology depends, without grasping the consequences of this affiliation. in this respect, guillin points out that canguilhem, like alain, considered descartes to be an exemplary figure in french classical philosophy, because: 8jean-françois braunstein points out that alain’s thought deeply marked that of the young canguilhem (braunstein 2000). 9“pure history” refers to what canguilhem himself refers to by this term, as opposed to his epistemological history (canguilhem 2009b, 13 – 14) 10 we note that in “descartes et la technique”, which first publication was in 1937, canguilhem does not state that descartes assumes an intellectualist conception of technology. he will do so in “machine et organisme” in 1946-1947. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 153 he thought back then that existed a philosophia perennis, and that this philosophy was perennial because it faced with human problems that remains on time and places. it is this universality, and this humanity that makes great philosophies of plato, descartes or kant, and that justify that one continues to teach them: even if their authors are dead, the thought that animates them remains very much alive. (guillin 2015, 318) “descartes et la technique” no less testifies about canguilhem’s interest for descartes: for canguilhem, descartes is part of the first thinkers of technology, alongside with leonardo da vinci or francis bacon1. as for da vinci or bacon, “philosophical reflection on nature and value of technical activity is not accidental or secondary to descartes” (canguilhem 1982, 111): it is sustained by a humanist position that aims to restore man’s power in the world and, ultimately, to make him “master and possessor of nature” through “knowledge of necessity” (canguilhem 1982, 112). as guillin suggests it, at this point, canguilhem’s reflections may be dependent on those of alain: “alain’s emphasis on the moral and practical destination of cartesian mechanism (which makes it possible for one to become ‘master and possessor of nature’ and of ‘one’s nature’; human problems, indeed) has certainly profoundly marked canguilhem”. on this specific point, canguilhem notices that “there is no doubt that cartesian thought is aware of its redeployment”. the “technician profession of faith” descartes assumes in the sixth part of le discours de la méthode (discourse on the method) (1637) and in les principes de la philosophie (principles of philosophy) (1644) contrasts with the stoic tone he adopts in the third part of le discours de la méthode. let us recall, with canguilhem, that, because the stoic doctrine admits a teleological conception of nature, it does not engage in the reflection on technology. technology, indeed, is incompatible with the stoic idea that humans are overwhelmed by necessity. according to canguilhem, what allows descartes to let in a “mechanical theory of nature and […] a mechanistic theory of art” in his thought, and to make technical progress a requirement is precisely the “negation of natural finality”. (canguilhem 1982, 112) canguilhem mentions, nevertheless, that in many different texts, descartes states that technical progress depends on the truth of knowledge, he even noted that “the development of a rudimentary art means that its rules are based on unconscious truths.” (canguilhem 1982, 111) for example, descartes states in his preface letter to les principes de la philosophie that “the whole of philosophy is like a tree. the roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics and morals.” (descartes 1996, 14) descartes, to this extend, occasionally castigate “craftsmen routines, that are ignorant of any knowledge of objects and phenomena they use” or “inventors without methods”. in short, for descartes: “the awareness of the technically possible is given to us by the knowledge of the theoretical necessity”. for descartes, technology extends sciences and, de facto, is made contingent upon it. this assumption makes it difficult to conceive exchanges between science and technology. according to canguilhem, this exegesis of cartesian thought is familiar to the reader: “so far, there has been nothing in cartesian philosophy that, about technology, does not seem obvious to one; if one calls obviousness the long-lasting familiarity of modern thought to a subject that, from da vinci to marx and passing through the encyclopedists and comte, has been the occasion of a development that became classic0” (canguilhem 1982, 114). canguilhem’s proper historiography – of which michel foucault inherits and from which he develops his own historical method, the archaeology – consists in working on the document “from the inside” and elaborating it in order to highlight elements and relationships between some of these elements that have remained hidden to “pure history”. (foucault 2016, 14) by applying this method to parts of the cartesian corpus, canguilhem canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 154 discovers that descartes came up against technical failure, and that the reflection he made up around it makes his thought about the relationship between science and technology more ambiguous than it seems. the consequence of technical failure on descartes’ thought on technology descartes’ thought on technology derive from his scientific ontology. for him, science is foolproof: his physics acts upon a homogeneous and infinite matter “without qualities”, on a universe “without teleological hierarchy”. (canguilhem 1982, 112) simondon confirms it: “the cartesian continuum, the absence of void, is not only a metaphysical affirmation but the axiom, both ontological and axiological, which underlies this thought, whose basic schemes match those of pure technicity accomplishing a constructive operation”. (simondon 2014, 104) however, taking into account our daily experience of technology, it may seem questionable that technology, when sustained by a foolproof science, is itself foolproof: machines that broke down, technical objects that fails form part of our daily reality. according to canguilhem, descartes did not ignore the fallibility of technology, and this may account for his interest in many kinds of technical activities canguilhem identifies: this short inventory of technical researches in which descartes took interest in, as tiny as they may seem, had to be done; in our opinion, for not being averse to “debase his thought to the least of inventions of mechanics”, descartes conceived between theory and practice relationships whose philosophical meaning seems important to us, both for the understanding of his thought and for any philosophical reflection. (canguilhem 1982, 113) according to canguilhem, descartes’ keen interest in “recipes and practices” testifies of his finding: technology, unlike physics, works in a matter that is not amorphous. specifically, canguilhem writes that: “descartes sees very clearly that, in the passage from theory to practice, there remain ‘difficulties’ that the supposedly perfect understanding cannot solve by itself. all the possible and supposed given knowledge cannot, in some instances, get rid of a number of imperfections in the products of technology.” (canguilhem 1982, 114). canguilhem then refers to three examples, in the cartesian corpus, of what begins to emerge as a shift between theory and practice: archimedes’ mirror, a sewing thread numbering instrument i.e. the “romaine” and the astronomical telescope. those are three technical objects that descartes designed after theorizing reflection, the physical principles of leverage and refraction. according to him, when technology fails, the practice “shames the theory” (canguilhem 1982, 115). this is indeed what happened in each example canguilhem reports and, against all odds, descartes admits from his failures that the application of knowledge includes experimental trial and error: “every technical synthesis, because it works on objects whose deduction cannot be complete, must include the unpredictable and the unexpected” (canguilhem 1982, 115). canguilhem intends to radicalize descartes’ admission and, by continuing to rely on the cartesian work, he states that descartes consider that between science and technology, exists a relationship different from that which one usually attributes him i.e. that of the integral convertibility of knowledge into practice. it is a relationship where science and technology are symmetric, in which knowledge sometimes stems from the practice. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 155 the reversal of the relationship between science and technology in descartes’ thought according to canguilhem, there is indeed in descartes’ thought “another kind of relationship between knowledge and production than that which makes depend, even with restrictions, the latter on the former” (canguilhem 1982, 115). this relationship is symmetric. canguilhem refers to the example of the invention of binoculars i.e. the technical object behind descartes’ la dioptrique (optics or dioptrics) (1637). the invention of binoculars results from an accidental experiment. this is, moreover, what descartes writes in the beginning of la dioptrique (descartes 1937, 5-6): by the shame of our sciences, this invention, so useful and admirable, is firstly due to experience and fortune. about thirty years ago, a man named jacques metius, from the city of alkmaar in holland and who had never studied […] had several lenses of various shapes. by chance, he looked through two of it, one of which was a little thicker in its middle than at its edges, and the other, on the contrary, was much thicker at its edges than at its middle; he put them so fortunately to both ends of a pipe that the first binoculars we are talking about were produced. this rather basic invention was then imitated and became widespread without the optical principle on which its functioning is based being theorized, so that it did not improve and only revealed a few phenomena. descartes, therefore, assigns to la dioptrique the task of formulating optic laws in order to allow for the improvement of binoculars. according to canguilhem, this task is significant: it means that “knowledge of nature, thus depends doubly […] on human technology. first, in this sense that the instrument […] helps discover new phenomena. second, and above all, in this sense that technical imperfection provides the ‘opportunity’ of theoretical researches because it reveals ‘difficulties’ that must be resolved”. (canguilhem 1982, 116) following descartes, the role canguilhem assigns to technology in the construction of science refers to gaston bachelard “phenomenotechnics”. unlike canguilhem, bachelard believes that descartes could never have conceived that practice takes part in the construction of knowledge (bachelard 1966) in le nouvel esprit scientifique (the new scientific spirit) he restates descartes’ wax argument, i.e. where descartes demonstrates that things do not have properties attached to them,11 in order to justify his rationalism. in bachelard’s wax argument, between the observer and the drop of wax, there is a monochromatic x-ray beam. according to bachelard: “one knows that latest spectrograms, those of van laue, renewed crystallography by allowing for the inference of the internal structure of crystals. similarly, the study of the drop of wax renews our knowledge of material surfaces.” (bachelard 1966, 170) technical mediation discloses properties of things whose study enables the construction of knowledge. however, this modality of the role of technology in the construction of science is not essential for canguilhem. what is essential, according to him, is that technical failure draws science’s attention on new research pathways and allows the construction of knowledge that improves technology. it is significant that canguilhem lays the emphasis on this second modality of the dependence of knowledge on technology in descartes’ thought: this is precisely that which enables him to introduce his thought on biological normativity. according to canguilhem, indeed, the precedence of technology over science is justified by what is life: life is creation. life does not wait for science to be mature to launch itself in practice: “the technical initiative 11 the wax argument appears in the second meditation of méditations métaphysiques (metaphysical meditations) (descartes 2009). before being melted, the piece of wax has certain qualities, i.e. flavor, smell, etc. once melted, it is just wax. this is, for descartes, the demonstration of the fact that properties are not attached to things, but that is in understanding and its operations that one must seek to understand qualification. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 156 forms part of the demands of the living” (canguilhem 1982, 116) simondon, whose philosophy of technology inherits from canguilhem’s teachings, writes in “les limites du progrès humain” (“limits of human progress”) that technology refers to “elaboration and satisfaction of biological needs themselves” (simondon 2014a, 270). this is exactly what canguilhem means: “the final irreducibility of technology to science, of constructing to knowing and the impossibility of a total and continuous transformation of science into action, thus, would be equivalent to assert the uniqueness and precedence of a ‘power’.” (canguilhem 1982, 116) without wishing to anticipate on our next reflections, let us simply state that for canguilhem, technology is a universal biological phenomenon: thanks to technology, the living can adapt to its environment and can add to its organs exogenous parts.12 this precedence of the biological over the technical no longer permits the equating of biological with the machine: what ontologically distinguishes the latter from the former is its normativity. hence, the analysis of the relationship between knowledge and practice in descartes’ thought in “descartes et la technique” leads to the assertion of the existence of a biological normativity, which is a significant objection against the theoretical use of the machine metaphor. canguilhem makes it a weapon that he points, in particular, on taylor’ scientific management theory, in which “a mechanist and mechanistic vision of physiology” reflects, that makes taylor’s theory “a province without autonomy of the energetics”. (canguilhem 1947, 128) for an enlightened use of the machine metaphor in twentieth-century sciences legitimacy and limits of the machine model, from antiquity to the renaissance even if the theoretical use of the machine metaphor rests on a logical error, one can only note that it has a long history in the sciences: one can find it in descartes texts, but also in aristotle’s. in “machine et organisme”, canguilhem points out that setting an analogical relationship between the organism and machine is only allowed by the existence a specific type of machines. aristotle was able to equate the movement of limbs with mechanisms because automatic siege machines existed in his time. as for descartes, his animal-machine theory depends of the renaissance’s machines, particularly of automata. the biological and the mechanical can only be brought closer together by the existence of machines whose movement is automatic – automation can be achieved by exploiting physical milieu or thanks to the conservation of mechanical energy and its transformation in kinetic energy, as is the case with the mechanical watch: for a very long time, kinematic mechanisms received their energy from human or animal muscular effort. in those days, it was obviously tautological to explain the movement of the living by its equation to the movement of the machine, for this movement depended of the muscular effort of the living. hence, the mechanical explanation of living functions historically presupposes […] the construction of automata. (canguilhem 2009a, 133) the mechanical explanation of organisms could appear when automata were 12 canguilhem does not restate kapp’s thesis: unlike canguilhem, kapp does not address the issue of norms and normative conflicts. according to canguilhem, if life is creation and if technology too, then technology produces norms that can interfere with those of living organisms. see canguilhem, 1947. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 157 invented. but should it have appeared? canguilhem’s answer is positive: it must have appeared, precisely at times when a limited knowledge of the living and a rudimentary technology do not allow for extensive physiologic researches. descartes’ though on the genesis of the living in la description du corps humain (description of the human body) (1667) – a thought that many scholars at that time shared and that has been refuted by studies in experimental embryology – is a shining illustration of canguilhem’s claim: if one knew well all parts of the seed of an animal species, man, for example, one could deduce directly from this knowledge, thanks to certain and mathematical reasoning, the form and the conformation of its limbs as, reciprocally, by knowing several particularities of this conformation one can deduce which is its seed. (canguilhem 2009, 152) what is noticeable is that in the classical age, the theoretical use of the machine metaphor is a physiology by provision that enable scholars to understand the man already built, for lack of the means to understand how he is formed. this is confirmed by canguilhem in “modèles et analogies de la découverte en biologie” (“models and analogies for discovery in biology”) (1961-1963); referring to history of physiology, he writes that: “physiology first have been and remained for a long time an anatomia animata, that is a discourse de usu partium that seemed based on anatomical deduction, but that, in fact, drawn knowledge of functions from their equation to uses of tools or mechanisms recalled by the form or the structure of corresponding organs.” (canguilhem 2015a, 306) the analogical use of the machine metaphor was, then, well suited to an emerging physiology: “in the 16th and 17th century, the systematic use in biology of references to mechanisms analogous to organs – inspired by galilean and cartesian sciences and the new picture of the world they spread – cannot be credited with much more decisive discoveries in biology.” (canguilhem 2015, 308) canguilhem adds that: “even when it became rigorous in its principles, mechanics has not become more fruitful in its analogical applications.” after the renaissance, even if machines improved and became more complex, thanks to advances in mechanics, they were still insufficient to the understanding of the living. moreover, no machine, whatever is the technical and scientific principles by which it functions, represent a sufficient model for explanation in biology:13 adrian’s remark doesn’t just apply to the kind of research it targets: ‘what we can learn from the machines is how our brain must differ from them!’ […] elsasser since drawn similar conclusions from his study: an organism does not fulfill by itself any of the stability conditions an electronic machine requires for functioning properly. (canguilhem 2015, 314) for these two reasons, the persistence of the theoretical use of the machine metaphor in the study of the living in the twentieth century – at a time when means of scientific investigation are much more extended than those of the renaissance – exasperates canguilhem: we came to the point where recent apologists of heuristic efficiency in biology – especially in neurology –, of cybernetics automata and of feed-back models, consider the construction of standard automata as the effect of a fad without scientific interest 13 descartes recognizes it: in les ecrits physiologique et médicaux (physiological and medical writings) the use of a mechanical model for modeling embryological processes is no longer mentioned (descartes 2000). canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 158 and as recreation: standard automata do not have adaptive feedback organ. they can stimulate animal behavior or human gestures, but within the limits of one or more rigid programs. (canguilhem 2015, 308) the living organism is the model of the machine canguilhem confronts this trend with an abrasive argument in “machine et organisme”: “the mechanism can explain everything if machines are given”, yet, he points out that there is no spontaneous generation of machines. the machine is a mean that man constructs for an end: “a machine is made by man and for man, for some end to achieve, as an effect to produce”. (canguilhem, 2009a, 146) nevertheless, according to him: mechanist philosophers and biologists reflected on machine as given or if they have studied its construction, resolved the problem by invoking practical reason. […] they were abused by the ambiguity of the term “mechanics”. they noticed, in machines, only solidified theorems, exhibited in concreto by a minor operation of construction, which is the simple application of a knowledge aware of its scope and certain of its effects. (canguilhem 2009a, 130) as canguilhem demonstrated it in his lecture on descartes in 1937, machine is not the result of a calculation, of a direct transposition of knowledge into practice. technology precedes science and, consequently, is as close as possible to the biological. according to canguilhem, this is evidenced by the fact that cartesian mechanism cannot account for the construction of machines (canguilhem 2009a, 147) canguilhem even draws from the study of descartes’ traité de l’homme (treatise of man) the idea that “the construction of the living machine [implies], if one reads this text well, the obligation to imitate a given organism. the construction of a mechanic model presupposes an original.” (canguilhem 2009a, 144) this thesis enables canguilhem to reverse the prevailing relationship between the organism and mechanism in explanation in biology: if, “the model of the living-machine is the living itself’ (canguilhem 2009a, 145), then mechanist model is tautological, for invoking it is “explaining the organ by the organ”. (canguilhem 2009a, 144) rather than explaining organism by machine, one must explain machine by organism. thus, according to canguilhem, ethnologists are the closest to the constitution of organology, which he calls for in the beginning of “machine et organisme”:14 reflections of alfred espinas, andré leroigourhan and kapp are all articulated to a theory of organic projection that, somehow, intersects with canguilhem’s reflections, without overlapping them. living being’s normativity does not allow one to equate it with the machine in addition to the research pathways in philosophy of technology, the assertion of the uniqueness and precedence of living things over machine makes it possible to affirm forcefully the ontological difference of living things and machine. indeed, if it becomes possible – and even recommended – to explain the machine by living things, yet it is no longer possible to explain living being by machine. living being is revealed in all its specificity, which, as a last resort, depends on its normativity. 14 one can consider that simondon’s philosophy of technology – he was canguilhem’s student – concretizes this wish. simondon’s concept of technical invention, in particular, was inspired by canguilhem’s thought on norms. see guchet, 2015. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 159 in “machine and organisme”, when comparing the features that organism and machine share, canguilhem highlights some of the specificities of living beings. the feature that allows for a split between those entities is not their respective capacities to self-regulate or not. canguilhem notes, however, that “a machine shows a neat functional rigidity, a rigidity which is increasingly brought out by the practice of standardization” (canguilhem 2009a, 149). actually, the arrangement of the parts of a machine is designer for a particular functioning. this arrangement can produce side-effects when machine functions, as it is often the case when the properties of the parts are not completely known. however, standardization of parts tends to reduce the probability of unexpected side-effects. on the contrary, living being is labile and, therefore, normative: it can renew its own living norms in order to live in other conditions i.e. environmental or biologic ones. canguilhem’s comparison of intrinsic finalities of the machine and the organism reinforce this idea: is there, canguilhem writes, “more or less finality in the machine than in the organism?” (canguilhem 2009a, 150) in machine, the finality is “rigid and univocal, univalent”. each part of the machine has a specific role in its total functioning. on the contrary, each part of living being is multipurpose. canguilhem calls it “vicariance of functions”. in order to reinforce his statement, canguilhem refers to an experiment realized by robert courrier (1895-1986), who was professor of biology at the collège de france from 1938 to 1966: this experiment consisted in grafting the placenta of a rabbit on its intestine. courrier observed that the placenta fed normally and even survived to the removal of the rabbit’s ovaries, so in the absence of corpus luteum. thus, canguilhem concludes: “here is an example where the intestine behaved like a uterus and, one might even say, more victoriously”. (canguilhem 2009a, 151) in short, “the living organism acts empirically. life is experimentation, that is improvisation, use of opportunities; it is an attempt in every direction”. (canguilhem 2009a, 159) science must reconsider its models and metaphors: the case of taylorism the thesis of the normativity of living beings, from now on justified by history of sciences, enables canguilhem to defeat the theoretical claims of the machine metaphor in sciences in the last half of the twentieth century. his criticism of taylorism is a shiny example of his condemnation of the theoretical use of this metaphor. in taylorism, the wish to reduce the organism to machine is explicit, as canguilhem writes in “machine et organisme” (canguilhem 2009a, 162): “with taylor and the first technicians of the rationalization of worker’s movements, we observe the human organism aligned, so to speak, on the functioning of a machine. rationalization is, strictly speaking, a mechanization of the organism so far as it aims to eradicate unnecessary movements”. in “milieu et normes de l’homme au travail”, canguilhem enlists his thesis of biological normativity in order to prove the absurdity of taylorian rationalization. he brings to the attention of the reader that taylorian rationalization claims to provide a standard of the amount of work a worker can done in an interval, but in doing so, it struggles with a difficulty: which worker should be used as a basis for establishing what the standard is? actually, according to canguilhem, the standard drawn from the study of a worker cannot make sense for another worker, “understood in the biopsychic totality of its existence” (canguilhem 1947, 132). according to canguilhem, biological normativity, which is underpinned by living being’s lability, enables the living organism to establish new vital norms when faced with changes in its milieu to which it must adapt in order to survive. once living thing has adapted to its milieu, it behaves normally (canguilhem 2013). in “milieu et normes de l’homme au travail”, canguilhem’s concept of “milieu” includes the psychic and sociological dimensions, in addition to the physic and biological aspects, so, if each worker adapts to its own milieu, canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 160 each worker has a unique biopsychical life. thus, to go back to taylorian rationalization, the claim that the normal state of a worker can be equivalent to that of another worker is disputable. the norm is no longer a concept which refers to a statistical reality i.e. the standard or the average, but a concept which refers to an individual metastable balance. canguilhem refers to studies that have shown that laboratory animals developed behaviors which they would never have adopted in nature: the organism adapts to the milieu of the laboratory. according to canguilhem, the same is true for human guinea pigs whose performances are involuntarily stimulated by the scientists observing him. the standard that taylorian rationalization of work draws from the study of workers, hence, will never be universalizable: the “ambition of treating man like the object of rationalization and management comes up against resistance from the vital aspect” (canguilhem 1947, 123) in the case of man, it comes up against additional difficulties: it is the psychic and sociologic aspects, which make that “worker’s behavior reveals as a given, set against forecast and calculation”. (canguilhem 1947, 134) in canguilhem’s own words, there is “primacy of the vital over the mechanical, primacy of values over life” that make vain any attempt to equate machine and organism. the demonstration of the specificity of living beings, and its justification by the work of the very one of which the “mechanics” claim themselves, enjoin life sciences to get rid of the theoretical use of the machine metaphor. more generally, canguilhem’s criticisms of the machine metaphor prove the need for sciences, if solicitous of the relevance of the knowledge they construct, to periodically make sure that their metaphors and explanatory models are appropriate for the type of object they study and to replace them when necessary. in that, the fact that canguilhem, in “milieu et normes de l’homme au travail” warmly salutes what he recognizes as an effort to make up a human management theory based on biopsychical individuality,15 in georges friedmann’s problèmes humains du machinisme industriel (human problems of industrial machinism) (1946) seems to us significant of the pedagogical destination of his criticism of the machine metaphor in life sciences. conclusion: on the scientific and politic purposes of canguilhem’s criticisms of metaphor canguilhem’s insistence on analyzing the misuse and use of some metaphors in sciences and the fact that he questions them by history and philosophy of science reveal the purposes canguilhem assigns to his practice of these two disciplines: education of scientific uses of metaphors and, jean-françois braunstein adds, politics. in his essay canguilhem, histoire des sciences et politique du vivant (canguilhem, history of life sciences and living policy), braunstein shows that canguilhem enlists history of sciences in order to shed a light on contemporary debates. the paper “le problème des régulations dans l’organisme et dans la société” (“the problem of regulations in the organism and in society”) (1955) offers a shiny example of this tendency. canguilhem, with the help of his thesis in philosophy of biology, examine the relevance of the equation of society to the organism in political theory and sociology (in particular, in henri bergson’s philosophy and in the sociology of cybernetician walter cannon) and in the lay public representation. as far as political and sociological sciences are concerned, the problem is not new: “one must note that there has always been exchanges of good or bad practices between sociology and biology”. (canguilhem 2010, 104) it is above all the lay public 15 it is a theory where machine adapts to the individual and where this is no longer the individual that must adapt to machine, as in taylorism. canguilhem and the machine metaphor in life sciences: history of science and philosophy of biology at the service of sciences océane fiant 161 representation resulting from political and sociological theories which excuse canguilhem’s analysis of the metaphor: “i would like to show […] that if we place ourselves […] from the point of view of lay public representation, the correcting of this metonymy is urgently required”. (canguilhem 2010, 105) the equation of society to an organism suggests, on the one hand, that, like the organism, society self-regulates and then, that crises resolve by themselves and that society tends towards cohesion. on the other hand, it results in the idea that social ills can be treated by a social therapy i.e. a reform. canguilhem demonstrates that the metaphor is not relevant: in a sick organism, it is difficult to determine the etiology of the pathology, but it is simple to know where this organism should tend towards i.e. to know the purpose of therapy. the aim of therapy is the healthy organism, which is the ideal state of organisms, given during its existence. on the contrary, in society, men easily agree on the causes of crisis but can hardly see a remedy to it, for society has no purpose and therefore no regulatory ideal; society is merely a means. consequently, society “presupposes and even calls for regulations; there is no society without rules, but there is no 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psycho-sociologie de la technicité. in sur la technique, 27-129. paris: presses universitaires de france. mergedfile 37 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 37-50 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2017 – this is an open access article article pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux1 marcin krasnodębski2 abstract: les origines de la statique, published in 1905 by physicist and historian of physical theories pierre duhem, offers not only a radically new interpretation of the history of statics but also represents a milestone in the methodology of history of science thanks to a particular form of historical reasoning as deployed by the author to justify his hypotheses. this article uses a quantitative analysis of the references contained in the book’s footnotes in order to study the way duhem validated his assertions. we highlight in particular his relentless will to return to the original texts. this method is one of the reasons why duhem’s book (and more generally the duhemian methodology) had such a lasting impact on french epistemology. keywords: pierre duhem; scientometrics; history of statics; methodology in history of science; justification received: 20 march 2017. reviewed 03 october 2017. accepted: 15 november 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.04 _____________________________________________________________________________ les recherches que pierre duhem a consacrées à l’histoire des sciences auraient pu occuper à elles seules une vie. andré darbon (darbon 1927, 499). introduction the methodology in history of science has been the subject of numerous ongoing debates and discussions. it is easy to forget today that the methodological canon has evolved incessantly and that its development is due to pioneers of the discipline who laid its foundations throughout the 20th century. georges sarton defended the place of history of 1 benjamin le roux is a ph.d. candidate at university of bordeaux. address ea 4574 sph (sciences, philosophie, humanités), université de bordeaux. allée geoffroy saint-hilaire, bâtiment b2, 2e étage, 33 615 pessac cedex – france. email: benjamin.le-roux@u-bordeaux.fr 2 marcin krasnodębski is a postdoctoral researcher at university of bordeaux. ea 4574 sph (sciences, philosophie, humanités), université de bordeaux. allée geoffroy saint-hilaire, bâtiment b2, 2e étage, 33 615 pessac cedex – france. email: marcin.krasnodebski@u-bordeaux.fr pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 38 science as a separate discipline on its own.3 a generation of historians and sociologists, such as hessen, bernal or merton, “discovered” the role of the socio-economic context in the history of science (lamy and saint-martin 2014). mirko grmek introduced us to the study of laboratory notes (gourevitch 2000). finally, jacques roger, among many others, called for a “historian” history of science as opposed to sociological or philosophical approaches (roger 1995). this list would not be complete, however, without one more important figure – pierre duhem, as his pervasive influence on the philosophy of science leaves no doubt (gillies 1998; stump 2007; ivanova 2010). moreover, his interpretation of the history of physics raises debates until today (martin 1990; biard 2004; lejbowicz 2004). however, among all of these different perspectives on pierre duhem’s contributions, one aspect seems to have been neglected, namely his fundamental input into the methodology in the history of science, i.e. the practice of “returning to the sources”. it is currently widely accepted that the researcher needs to allow the peers to question his/her work in order to “intersubjectively” validate it. to be trustworthy, the research results must be potentially open to discussion. this notion is essential since, as karl popper explains in the logic of scientific discovery, “[t]he game of science is, in principle, without end. he who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test and that they can be regarded as finally verified retires from the game” (popper 1978, 286). this principle is generalizable to the humanities as well. the historians have to accept the need to expose their ideas to the risk of refutation if they want to take part in the epistemological “game of science”. one must explain one’s train of thought and choice of bibliographical references in order to submit his/her work to the judgment of the peers. the goal of our paper is not to determine the absolute rules for good justification in the history of science but rather to describe the method and references that were presented by a historian in an argumentative process. these are the “justifying” sources that we are interested in, not the ones that were actually used in practice by duhem. this distinction is close to that introduced by hans reichenbach (1891-1953), a german philosopher who was close to logical positivism, in his 1938 book titled experience and prediction: the well-known difference between the thinker’s way of finding this theorem and his way of presenting it before a public may illustrate the difference in question. i shall introduce the terms ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’ to mark this distinction. then we have to say that epistemology is only occupied in constructing the context of justification. (reichenbach 1938, 6-7) in other words, a critical evaluation of a historical work is possible only if there is an explanation of the reasoning and a presentation of the sources used, in what reichenbach would call a “context of justification”. pierre duhem’s practice in the art of justification is exemplary. the hypothesis of our article is that the “return to the sources” in duhem’s work is not only a rhetorical tool used to convince his opponents but a full-fledged methodological approach that profoundly marked his works. duhem believed that the work of a historian requires a rigorous reading of the original sources in order to confront overly simplistic narratives. it is through this return to the sources that duhem justified his new vision of science in the middle ages, going against the myth of the “dark ages”. at first glance this ascertainment may seem naïve, for is it not common practice for historians to refer to the original sources? we have to mention 3 see, for example, the biography of georges sarton on the sarton chair website of the university of gent: http://www.sartonchair.ugent.be/en/sarton/biography pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 39 two things. first, it is necessary to recall that history as an academic discipline did not flourish until the end of the 19th century in france, and its methodological practices were and are being constantly redefined, particularly to demark themselves from other disciplines of the social sciences (noiriel 1990). second, as we can see based on the examples of auguste comte and his disciple pierre laffite, who was the first chair of the general history of sciences at collège de france, in its early days in france the history of science was less a “historical discipline” and more a part of positivist philosophy (petit 1995). duhem’s approach, which seems almost banal today, was something novel in his time, precisely because of his methodological rigor. in our paper we attempt to reconstruct a small part of the “duhemian” method by using a bibliometric approach. in this sense our work joins a growing corpus of scholarly work on “scientometric portraits” that aim to present scientists through a careful study of their publication patterns (sangam, savanur and manjunath 2006; saravanan and prasad 2012). we take as a sample the first volume of les origines de la statique published by hermann (paris) in 1905 (duhem 1905) – a book that was devoted to the history of statics from aristotle to descartes – and one of duhem’s most marking publications. it is a compilation of a series of articles by duhem touching upon this field of physics that appeared between 1903 and 1906 in revue des questions scientifiques. (duhem 1903) this volume does not include an exhaustive bibliography. we will analyze the footnotes in order to characterize the sources that duhem highlighted in his seminal work on the evolution of statics. in the first part of our article we will briefly look at duhem’s perception of the history of statics and on the general content of les origines de la statique. in the second part we will present in a more detailed manner the challenges of studying duhem’s “justification” method, the raw data which we will analyze as well as our methodology of data codification. in the third and last part we will present the results of our analysis and their interpretations. the history of statics according to duhem pierre duhem, at the turn of the centuries, was an indefatigable defender of the history of science as a discipline. he publicly supported paul tannery in his attempts to establish the chair of history of science at the sorbonne. let us remark that duhem never considered himself a historian of science as such but presented himself rather as a historian of physical and astronomical theories. understanding the history of theories in physics and in astronomy was, according to duhem, crucial in his job as a theoretical physicist. (brouzeng 1987, 142) duhem’s contribution in the field of history is impressing; he wrote about one hundred articles, often compiled together in volumes (stoffel 1996), and it would be pointless to enumerate all the books he authored throughout his life in this paper. the turning point of his career, i.e. the moment when he devoted himself to the study of history of science, can be situated at the beginning of the 20th century, in the years 1903-1904 to be more precise (martin 1990, 349). we focus on this key transitional moment. during this period duhem was working on the evolution of statics and became interested in the works of jordanus de nemore.4 the analysis of de ratione and elementa super demonstrationem ponderum, of their differences as well as the use of notions such as quantulum parvi led duhem to question the true contributions and limitations of the medieval sciences (brenner 1990, 156-159). contrary to popular opinion, a number of scholars from the period surpassed concepts stemming from aristotelian physics. 4 jordanus de nemore, mathematician and specialist in mechanics, active in the first half of the 13th century (grant 1973, 171) pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 40 for duhem, science followed, in general, a continuous development. he affirms in les origines de la statique that “the alleged intellectual revolutions have not been most often but slow and long-prepared evolutions” (duhem 1905, i-iv). modern science is a fruit of these long improvements of the medieval sciences. this idea stems from duhem’s conviction that “no human intelligence, no matter what its power or its originality, would be able to produce from scratch an absolutely new doctrine” (duhem 1906a, 277). thus, for duhem, progress was possible only thanks to the contributions of numerous “precursors”. this concept is omnipresent in his history of physical theories. we can see this clearly in les origines de la statique, in which 14 pages are devoted specifically to a single unnamed author called “leonardo da vinci’s precursor” (duhem 1905, 134-147). in duhem’s epistemology, a theory is not reducible to a single name. for him, multiple researchers participate in the development of a scientific doctrine. science is made possible through this collective effort and error plays an important and positive role in this process. it is an accumulation of the work of scholars that allows for the convergence of scientific theories towards “the truth”, as unattainable as it may be. we can ask whether there is a point of origin of all these continuous developments in science. duhem answers this clearly in le système du monde: “there is no absolute beginning, as far as we follow the train of thought that prepared, suggested or announced a doctrine we always come to other opinions that had been themselves prepared, suggested and announced”. (duhem 1954, 5) as darbon explains, for duhem science has at least three large features: continuity, finality and complexity (darbon 1927). duhem’s historical research illustrates, clarifies and expands his reflection in the philosophy of science. but this does not mean that to him the history of science was nothing but a tool in the service of philosophy; on the contrary, in duhem’s writing the history of science has a least three additional functions. first, it can show that the middle ages were not the “dark ages”, against the widespread opinions of his times. second, the history of science has a specific “safeguard” role, which duhem explains in la théorie physique: “only the history of science can shield the physicist from the foolish ambitions of dogmatism” (duhem 1906c, 444). finally, the historian of science plays a pedagogical role because “the legitimate, sure and fruitful method to prepare the spirit to receive a physical hypothesis is the historical method” (duhem 1906c, 442). in les origines de la statique, duhem affirms that statics, the field of mechanics studying equilibrium, developed continuously throughout the ages. the author tries to reconstruct the conceptual mutations, long and uninterrupted, that linked the peripatetic theories in this field to descartes’ statics. in order to do so he builds up an extensive list of scholars that worked on questions involving statics.5 the book makes leonardo da vinci (1452-1519), who did not publish anything in his own lifetime, the main protagonist of this history. in fact, to duhem it was indeed leonardo da vinci who erected a bridge between medieval statics and that of girolamo cardano. when duhem writes about an author he often reserves a part of his work to a search for da vinci’s influence. however, duhem asserts that even the greatest geniuses cannot invent a doctrine from scratch, i.e. there must be a kernel of an idea beforehand. if leonardo da vinci developed mechanics like no one else, there was nevertheless no “essential idea [in his thought] that wouldn’t follow from the writings of medieval geometrists and, in particular, from the treaty of a great mechanician that we have named leonardo’s precursor” (duhem 1905, 192). according to duhem, jordanus’ school was in the center of da vinci’s influences. da vinci constructed his statics by either following or rejecting jordanus’ assertions. even if 5 this list includes aristotle, euclid, archimède, jordanus de nemore, blasius of parma, leonardo da vinci, tartaglia, girolamo di cardano, guido ubaldo, galileo galilei, simon stevin, gilles de roberval and rené descartes. pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 41 a large number of problems in statics was discussed in the middle of the 16th century, the solutions that were supposed to form the corpus of the theory were still tainted with many errors during this period. it was the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century that allowed to separate the wheat from the chaff and to find out, according to duhem, what had already been invented before. duhem successfully retraces, in the first volume of les origines de la statique, the continuous evolutions of theories on statics, from their greek roots to the independent science of descartes. he strongly argues that “in science, there is no spontaneous generation” (duhem 1905, 156). now that we have exposed the broad lines of the history of statics according to duhem we can study the way he used the footnote to justify his arguments. pierre duhem, les origines de la statique and the footnotes the codification of sources as used by duhem in les origines de la statique is facilitated by the fact that the use of references and footnotes was already normalized at the end of the 19th century (grafton 1998, 171). we will focus on the nature of the “justifying” sources and on how pierre duhem used them at the turn of the centuries – the key moment of his career. the first question we ask is: does he use translations or the original publications? the other questions that follow are: does he prefer primary or secondary sources? does he quote the body of the text or does he reformulate the ideas of the author? does he focus on bibliographical and biographical information or rather on concepts? are the references used to support duhem’s own ideas or, on the contrary, to present different points of view? is there any variation in the number or type of sources used depending on the topic discussed? does duhem have a favorite author? in order to answer these questions, we undertook an analysis of the footnotes and the bibliographical references they include in the first volume of les origines de la statique (1905). working on the footnotes of this volume, which does not have a bibliography, allowed us to study the spatial and temporal distribution of the references in the book and to construct a kind of topography. this analysis allows to observe variation, depending on the periods studied by duhem, of elements such as the number of citations by page or the type of references that were used. moreover, the 467 footnotes in the volume constitute a corpus large enough to make our analysis statistically significant. duhem occasionally mentions in the body of the text itself books without giving any references in the footnotes. we decided to exclude these references from our study because, when using the quantitative method, it is important to compare only that what is comparable (lemercier and zalc 2008, 19). and it seems to us that the references in the footnotes and those in the text convey different types of information, e.g. on page 60 duhem mentions “the oversimplified dynamic coming from galileo’s discorsi” in the text. in the footnote on the same page (but not one associated with the citation above) he writes: “les manuscrits de léonard de vinci, publié par ch. ravaissonmollien; ms. f de la bibliothèque de l’institut, fol. 84. recto. paris, 1889”. we can clearly see that the structure and information that these two examples transmit are different and hardly comparable. as a consequence, our corpus of study will be limited only to references in the footnotes. constitution of data we have to codify all of the information to obtain statistically exploitable data in order to answer the above-mentioned questions. our codification task is done via three phases for each footnote, in a spreadsheet. in the first phase we attribute a specific number to each pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 42 footnote and we gather the “structural” data, i.e. the page of the footnote and the footnote’s number. in the second phase we extract comments as well as bibliographical information, e.g. the author, title, publication date, translator’s name and the name of the editor. finally, the third phase is structured around seven questions, which we will call “steps” and which we ask regarding each footnote. to simplify our analysis, these steps have only two possible answers (0 or 1). using this binary code allows us to assemble the totality of information in a single spreadsheet and facilitates the statistical analysis. our approach, as all quantitative methods, results in a kind of reductionism; this simplification is nevertheless necessary for statistical treatment of data. (lemercier and zalc 2008, 41-42) we will now describe each of the seven steps. 1. what is the form of the footnote? reference (1) or plain comment (0)? a footnote is considered a reference if it contains at least one bibliographical reference, with or without a comment. it is considered a plain comment if the footnote does not have any reference.6 this step is necessary to warrant the consistency of our results. footnotes without references are not supposed to be taken into account in our statistical calculations.7 for the next six steps we will exclude spreadsheet lines with (0) in this column by attributing them the “/” value. 2. is the reference in the footnote a plain reference (1) or an annotated reference (0)? a footnote is considered a plain reference when it contains at least one bibliographical reference and no comment. this is the case for the footnote on page 13: “libri, histoire des sciences mathématiques en italie, depuis la renaissance des lettres jusqu’à la fin du xviie siècle. paris, 1840, t. iii, p. 11”. (duhem 1905, 13, note n°1) a note is, on the other hand, an annotated reference if it contains a commentary by duhem beyond the reference, e.g. “this pamphlet is also found in the following edition: le opere di galileo galilei, ristampate fedelmente sopra la edizione nazionale con approvazione del ministerio della publica instruzione. vol.1 (seul paru). firenze, successori le monnier 1890”. (duhem 1905, 237, note n°2) 3. is the reference in the footnote translated (1) or not translated (0)? a reference is considered translated if the book cited was translated by someone other than the author. this category includes bilingual texts.8 on the other hand, the reference is considered not translated if the footnote includes only the reference to the original version of the text.9 this second category includes authors who translated their own books. 4. is the footnote associated with a citation (1) or a reformulation (0)? 6 for example, the second footnote on page 248 that explains the notion of impeto: “this word has here the same sense as in the works of leonardo da vinci; it is close to the name force vive as used by leibniz” (duhem 1905, 248, note n°2). 7 the choice to exclude these footnotes is justified in part 3 of this article. 8 for example, the french edition of des manuscrits de léonard de vinci was translated by charles ravaissonmollien but also includes the original version of the text (leonardo da vinci 1881). 9 to authors from antiquity a manuscript in latin will be considered not translated (e.g. aristotle’s manuscripts in latin). pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 43 a footnote is a citation if in the text associated with the note pierre duhem textually cites his source by using quotation marks. it is considered a reformulation if in the body of the text duhem uses an indirect style. 5. is the reference book a treaty in physics (1) or in the history of physics (0)? a reference is in physics if it was written by a scholar from times contemporaneous to or preceding the period which is discussed in the body of the text, e.g. when leonardo da vinci is referenced in the chapter devoted to girolamo cardano (duhem 1905, 41, note n°2). a reference is considered the history of physics if it concerns a book whose author came later than the one studied in the chapter. this category includes books in epistemology, dictionaries and biographies. 6. is pierre duhem in opposition to (1) or in favor of (0) the theses of the author he discusses. a footnote is considered in opposition if in the body of the text associated with the footnote or in the footnote itself pierre duhem opposes the author’s point of view or criticizes his translation, e.g. note n°1 on page 57, where duhem criticizes the translation by richard leblanc:10 “cardan, les livres de la subtilité, traduis de latin en françois par richard le blanc. paris, l’angelier, 1556, p. 339. the citations that follow are translated directly from the latin text, they do not come from le blanc’s translation, rather obscure in this passage” (duhem 1905, 57, note n°1). this category does not include the “scientific” errors as demonstrated by duhem. in fact, his goal was to retrace the history and evolutions of an idea, not to correct the errors of the past. if this is the case, then there is no “opposition” to the given scholar’s point of view, strictly speaking. the footnote is considered in favor if it supports or justifies duhem’s assertion. 7. is the footnote of a bibliographical/biographical nature (1) or of a conceptual one (0)? a footnote is considered bibliographical/biographical if the reference or passage that is associated with it provides new information on the life, edition or circulation of the books of a given author. it is considered conceptual when the reference, or a part of the text corresponding to the footnote, develops philosophical or physical questions. now that we have established our corpus and described our method, we can focus on the extraction and analysis of the data we possess. results and interpretations we codified data extracted from 467 footnotes distributed over 360 pages of the first volume of les origines de la statique. among these, 37 (or 7.9%) were plain commentaries that will be excluded from our statistical analysis. in the remaining notes we found 454 bibliographical references that we will make use of. we constructed our dataset by applying the method described in the second part of the article to these 454 references. the scope of justifying footnotes in duhem’s work before starting the interpretation phase, it is crucial to verify whether the footnotes constitute a justification tool in les origines de la statique at all. we will analyze the table of average values obtained by our method.11 a general pattern shows that the footnotes include 10 richard leblanc (1510-1580) was a french writer known for his works on cooking. 11 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”. pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 44 at least one bibliographical reference.12 their most important function in this volume is to give references; nevertheless, they are not limited solely to this purpose, as ca. 15% of all these references are connected with some sort of commentary, either critical or descriptive.13 this is the case of the already mentioned note 1 on page 57, where duhem questions the quality of the translations done by richard leblanc. overall, however, this use of footnotes remains limited. the study of average values obtained in phase 6 of our analysis (opposition or support) of the entire volume reveals that the references usually support duhem’s arguments.14 only occasionally does duhem use the footnotes to mention theories that are opposite to his own, e.g. in a note on page 8 he comments on a proposition made by j.l. lagrange:15 “at one time it was fashionable to consider the science of aristotle and his commentators as void of substance; this prejudice was sufficient to make much of the valuable intellectual progress incomprehensible; thus in a historical introduction, indubitably beautiful, that opens mécanique analytique, lagrange wrote what follows about the principle of virtual displacements: ‘(…) guido ubaldi is most likely the first to have observed it in the lever or in mobile pulleys’”. we see in this example that duhem tries to present and justify his criticisms. he does not attack without reason the ideas of another author. in general, he prefers to develop his own ideas instead of criticizing others, and he points out that, as for the history of statics, the existing works were “limited in number; (…) and most of the time rather brief and not very detailed” (duhem 1905, i). these two facts confirm his genuine will to justify the arguments through the references in the footnotes of the first volume of les origines de la statique. our approach is validated; hence we can now establish a profile or a framework for how duhem typically used footnotes. let us calculate the mean values for the entire volume of each of the seven criteria enumerated above. as we have demonstrated, the footnotes are most often used to justify an argument,16 i.e. they take the form of bibliographical references supporting an idea, and only rarely does duhem add a commentary to them.17 they are associated in similar proportions with the citations or the reformulations.18 the footnotes most often refer to publications in their original languages.19 we can also mention the correlation that exists between the types of sources and the type of information.20 the references used by duhem give, in general, information on the theories on statics of a given author, so they are most often written by scholars from the period that was discussed by duhem.21 we see here again duhem’s “return to the sources”. to illustrate a typical case of the use of footnotes in the first volume of les origines de la statique, let us have a look at the chapter devoted to gerolamo cardano and take as an example this note: “cardan, opus novum, propositio lxxii : proportionem ponderis 12 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”, 92% of the footnotes have at least one bibliographical reference. 13 we mention here the case of references with comments. we will also study pure comments, which represent ca. 8% of the footnotes. 14 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”, 95% of references are used to support the argument. 15 joseph-louis lagrange (1736-1813) was a french mathematician and physicist of piedmontese origin. he was one of the founders of analytical mechanics and one of the fathers of variational calculus. 16 we preferred to use the table of mean values instead of studying the frequencies for each phase combination. in fact, the results, even if similar, would be more difficult to exploit in this case. 17 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”, 92% of the footnotes contain at least one bibliographical reference, 95% of references support duhem’s arguments, and 85% of references are not commented on. 18 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”, 49% of the references are associated with a citation. 19 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”, 71% of the references are not translated. 20 there is a correlation coefficient of -0.51 between the phases “physics or history of physics” and “bibliographical/biographical or conceptual”. this means that the sources in physics bring, in general, conceptual information, while the sources in history of physics bring biographical or bibliographical elements. 21 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”, 75% of the references are in physics, while 61% give conceptual information. pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 45 sphaerae pendentis ad ascensum per acclive planum invenire. basileae, 1570, p. 63” (duhem 1905, 50, note n°1). the above contains a reference with no comment attached and cites a book written in latin – the language of cardano’s publication. it is associated, in the body of the text, with a reformulation of cardano’s ideas: “in opus novum, it is proposed (1) to determine the weight of a mobile sphere on an inclined plane, the weight he [cardano] believes is, according to the principle of dynamics universally admitted at his times, proportional to the speed with which the sphere left on its own will descend on this plane” (duhem 1905, 50, note n°1). we can see that duhem extracts theoretical information about cardano’s statics from his book; hence the note subscribes itself perfectly to the duhemian canon of justification.22 however, once this framework is described it would be reductive if we limited ourselves to it since there can be “local” variations of it depending on the topic discussed or the approach as used by duhem. we will now proceed precisely to a study of these variations. a “rational” use of the translated books we can, for example, have a detailed look at one of the first questions we asked: the place of translations in the footnotes. pierre duhem’s mastery of different languages leaves no doubt: in the first volume of les origines de la statique he cites publications in german, italian, latin, ancient greek and, of course, french. hence, the use of translated sources is an interesting topic. even though they remain a minority among the references, we can, however, try to determine the particular reasons for their use. the most important reason that made duhem cite the translated publications is self-evident, i.e. when he did not speak the original language of the publication (e.g. he did not speak arabic or flemish). in les origines de la statique, he refers to translated books when he has no alternative. we can find the perfect illustration of this situation in the twelfth chapter of the book. this part is devoted to s. stevin (1548-1620), who wrote his works in flemish. only once does duhem refer to texts in the original version (duhem 1905, 264); in the rest of the chapter, readers are referred to the latin translations by w. snell (1580-1626): hypomnemata mathematica (1605).23 even though duhem mentions a later french translation (1634) in the first note on page 264, he does not use it to justify his arguments. this clearly supports, again, the will of “returning to the sources”, which is omnipresent in duhem’s work: when he is not capable of quoting the original book he refers to the oldest translation he can find, in this case to the one by w. snell. one case seems to detract from this general rule though: we notice it almost exclusively in references to gerolamo cardano. in fact, the first volume of les origines de la statique counts 24 references to this author who published in latin, but ca. 42% of them refer to the french translation by richard leblanc of de subtilitate rerum (cardan 1556). it seems that duhem had access to this text in its latin version because he refers to it three times and writes in the fourth note on page 39 (continued on page 40): “beyond the editions that have been cited we also found in bordeaux, at the municipal library and at the university library (…) two other latin editions of de subtilitate” (duhem 1905, 39, note n°4). moreover, he criticizes the quality of the translation by richard leblanc which he qualifies as “fort obscure” (duhem 1905, 57, note°1) in certain passages, and he even corrects leblanc’s errors (duhem 1905, 48, note n°2). it is nevertheless difficult to determine the reasons behind this unusual choice of references in the case of cardano. when speaking of references to the translated texts, it is interesting to point to four oddities in our table of average values.24 in fact, when we analyze the percentages of 22 in the first volume of les origines de la statique, 122 references (27%) follow exactly this profile. 23 a total of 22 out of 23 references to stevin in chapter xii refer to this book: s. stevin & w. snellius, 1605. 24 cf. appendix 1 “table of average values”. pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 46 references including translated sources, these remain relatively low for most of the chapters (oscillating between 0% to 45%), with four major exceptions (chapters ii, iv, viii and xii). in chapter xii (simon stevin 1548-1620), the percentage goes up to 89%, which is easy to understand because stevin is the author to which duhem refers continuously throughout the chapter. the particularity of chapters ii (70% of translated sources), iv (93%) and viii (90%) can be explained by the fact that in these chapters duhem often refers to bilingual texts. in fact, les manuscrits de léonard de vinci, translated by charles ravaisson-molliens (léonard de vinci 1881), is a bilingual edition with a manuscript, its transcription and the translation. once again, duhem shows the consistent practice of returning to the original sources whenever this is possible. leonardo da vinci, the central actor in the first part of the paper we mentioned the central place that leonardo da vinci occupied in the history of statics according to duhem. the french physicist states, in the first volume of the les origines de la statique, that leonardo da vinci was the author responsible for “a development on a marvelous scale” of theories in the field of statics (duhem 1906a, 193). we can ask ourselves whether this particular status is corroborated by our data analysis. in order to do so we examined the references to leonardo da vinci; 76 out of 454 references presented in the footnotes of the volume (ca. 17%) refer to the writings of leonardo. this value is even more important if we compare it with the number of references to the seven most referenced authors in the footnotes. with 220 references, these authors represent almost half (48.5%) of all references used by duhem. figure 1 number of references of the seven most referenced authors we clearly see in the plot that leonardo da vinci is the most referenced author in the footnotes, e.g. duhem makes 2.2 times more references to da vinci than to galileo, who is second on the list. this shows the importance that leonardo da vinci had to duhem in the history of statics. the french physicist deepened his interest in the works of the florentine maestro in the book in three volumes titled études sur léonard de vinci (duhem 1906b; duhem 1909; duhem 1913). let us also note that if we exclude da vinci from our analysis the number of references to the other key authors in the history of statics until descartes remains 76 34 27 24 24 19 16 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 leonardo da vinci galileo descartes stevin cardano precursor jordanus pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 47 almost uniform. more generally, in figure 1 we can see a new illustration of the duhemian will to “return to the sources”. the seven most represented authors (leonardo da vinci, galileo, descartes, girolamo cardano, simon stevin, leonardo’s “precursor” and jordanus de nemore) are scholars who played, according to duhem, an important role in the evolution of doctrines on statics. no historian of science or later commentator is present among these seven names.25 these results seem coherent with duhem’s typical use of footnotes: there are works of physicists throughout the ages that are in the heart of the duhemian justification, not works of their later interpreters and commentators. examples outside the framework we established the model type of reference for the first volume of duhem’s les origines de la statique. before concluding, we should mention, however, examples outside this baseline framework, such as the plain comments, which we have excluded from our statistical analysis.26 there are 37 pure comments in the volume, which represents 7.9% of the footnotes. their distribution is uniform, there are no significant variations and their role is, first and foremost, to explain and to criticize. of the 37 footnotes, 8 are remarks on the quality of a translation, 17 are theoretical explanations, 6 constitute complementary bibliographical or biographical information and 6 are references to the first volume of les origines de la statique itself. conclusions duhem, in his works on the history of statics until descartes, wanted to oppose the “classic” history of science from his times (duhem 1906a, 278). he affirmed that the mainstream narrative was “falsified by prejudice and truncated by voluntary simplifications” (duhem 1906a, 278). in the secular third republic, duhem contested the republican dogma which considered the middle ages as a period of obscurity when the progress of science had supposedly stopped. he thought that scientific progress was the fruit of a “continuous action of wisdom”, or of “providence”, and that nothing could stop it (duhem 1906a, 290). as a consequence, he tried to prove that statics had developed continuously throughout the middle ages. to fulfill this goal, he had to “refer to contemporaneous sources, to manuscripts” (duhem 1905, ii). we see in this quotation, once more, the will to return to the sources, which is one of the reasons for duhem’s notoriety. for duhem, the use of the “return to the sources” was a general working method in the “context of discovery”. but, as our paper demonstrates, he also used it as an argumentative tool in the “context of justification”. duhem showed, via his example, that historians should refer to scientific works in versions that are as close to the original as possible. when he argued that leonardo da vinci had been inspired by the works of jordanus de nemore he explained in detail all the links that he could determine between the theories of the two scholars and supported his arguments by using numerous references to their manuscripts. through this justification, based on the omnipresence of the original sources, duhem laid a fundamental principle: a future historian wishing to contest duhem’s affirmation would have to “go through all the manuscripts relative to statics” first (duhem 1905, ii). finally, this statistical study of the 25 the philologist maximilian curtze (1837-1904, thirteen references in the footnotes) and the mathematician and historian guillaume libri (1803-1869, 9 references) are those who appear most often. 26 we have already explored the “annotated references”, the goal of which is most often to be critical or descriptive. pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 48 footnotes clearly showed that for pierre duhem it was preferable to refer to writings that had not been translated or edited. this approach indicated that duhem did not consider a translation or a re-editing as neutral towards the text. duhem was rigorous in his approach, and his choice of sources was always coherent when he discussed the physical theories of an author. rarely did he deviate from the “return to the sources” approach; this was, for example, the case regarding the biographical elements that duhem took from later works, but we should not forget that duhem was first and foremost a historian of physical theories. thanks to our systematic study of the footnotes, we can conclude that for pierre duhem a return to the original sources, as close as possible to the theme he studied, was not a mere rhetorical trick but a full-fledged justification tool that he used consistently. our article, beyond its theoretical conclusions, also indicates a few novel methodological elements based on quantitative approaches that may be useful in establishing more pertinent scientometric portraits. it might be interesting to extend the application of this method to other historians of science in the near future. acknowledgment: the authors want to thank thomas morel for his support and advice. references biard, joël. 2004. le rôle des condamnations de 1277 dans le développement de la physique selon pierre duhem. revue des questions scientifiques 175: 15-35. brenner, anastasios. 1990. duhem : science, réalité et apparence. paris: vrin. brouzeng, paul. 1987. duhem (1861-1916): science et providence. paris: belin. cardan jérôme. 1556. les livres de hierosme cardanus medecin milannois, intitulez de la subtilité, & subtiles inventions, ensemble les causes occultes, & raisons d’icelles. translation by richard leblanc. paris: l’angelier. darbon, andré. 1927. l’histoire des sciences dans l’œuvre de p. duhem. in l’œuvre scientifique de pierre duhem edited by octave mainville, andré darbon and jacques hadamard, 499-548. bordeaux: féret. duhem, pierre. 1906b. étude sur léonard de vinci (première série): ceux qu’il a lus ceux qui l’ont lu. paris : a. hermann. duhem, pierre. 1909. étude sur léonard de vinci (seconde série): les précurseurs parisiens de galilée. paris: a. hermann. duhem, pierre. 1913. étude sur léonard de vinci (troisième série): les précurseurs parisiens de galilée. paris: a. hermann. duhem, pierre 1906c. la théorie physique: son objet, sa structure. paris: chevalier & rivière. duhem, pierre. 1954. le système du monde: histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de platon à copernic, 2e édition, tome 1. paris: a. hermann. duhem, pierre. 1903. les origines de la statique – chapitre 1: aristote et archimède; chapitre 2: léonard de vinci ; chapitre 3: jérôme cardan ; chapitre 4: l’impossibilité du mouvement perpétuel. revue des questions scientifiques liv: 462 516. duhem, pierre. 1905. les origines de la statique: tome 1. paris: a. hermann. duhem, pierre. 1906a. les origines de la statique: tome 2. paris: a. hermann pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 49 gillies, donald. 1998. the duhem thesis and the quine thesis. in philosophy of science: the central issues edited by curd, martin and cover, 302-319. new york: norton. gourevitch, danielle. 2000. mirko grmek (1924-2000). revue d’histoire des sciences 53 (3/4): 617-622. grafton, anthony. 1998. les origines tragiques de l’érudition: une histoire de la note en bas de page. paris: seuil. grant, edward. 1973. jordanus de nemore. in dictionary of scientific biography 7, edited by 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(3): 337-355. noiriel, gérard. 1990. naissance du métier d'historien, genèses 1 (1): 58-85. petit, annie. 1995. l'héritage du positivisme dans la création de la chaire d'histoire générale des sciences au collège de france. revue d'histoire des sciences 48 (4): 521-556. popper, karl. 1978. la logique de la découverte scientifique. paris: payot. reichenbach, hans. 1938. experience and prediction. chicago: university of chicago press. roger, jacques and claude blanckaert. 1995. pour une histoire des sciences à part entière. paris: albin michel. saravanan g. and s. prasad. 2012. scientometric portrait of g. thanikaimoni: a palynologist of high repute. in 1st national conference on scientometrics, sep 2012, tumkur, india. national conference on scientometrics: conference proceedings, 279 291. sangam, s.; savanur, k.; manjunath, m. and r. vasudevan. 2006. scientometric portrait of prof. peter john wyllie. scientometrics 66 (1): 43-53. stevin, simon. hypomnemata mathematica. translation by willebrord snellius. bruges : lugodini batavorum, 1605. stoffel, jean-françois. 1996. pierre duhem et ses doctorants : bibliographie de la littérature primaire et secondaire. louvain-la-neuve: centre interfacultaire d’étude en histoire des sciences. stump, david j. 2007. pierre duhem’s virtue epistemology. studies in history and philosophy of science part a 38 (1): 149-159. pierre duhem’s use of the return to the sources as a justification tool benjamin le roux marcin krasnodębski 50 appendix appendix 1: table of mean values chap ter reference (1) or plain comment (0) pure reference (1) or annoted reference (0) translated (1) or not translated (0) citation (1) or reformulation (0) physics (1) or history of physics (0) opposition (1) or support (0) bio/bibliographical (1) ourconceptual (0) number of pages chap itre i : aristote et archimède 1 0,75 0,25 0,5 0,75 0,25 0,13 8 chap itre ii : léonard de vinci 0,94 0,97 0,7 0,73 0,73 0 0,2 21 chap itre iii : jérôme cardan 0,85 0,9 0,45 0,45 0,76 0,03 0,34 18 chap itre iv : l’imp ossibilité du mouvement perp étuel 0,79 0,87 0,93 0,87 1 0,07 0 9 chap itre v : les sources alexandrines de la statique du m oy en âge 0,95 0,87 0 0,32 0,21 0,22 0,79 37 chap itre vi : la statique du m oy en âge jordanus de némore 0,96 0,77 0 0,23 0,28 0,19 0,95 26 chap itre vii : la statique du m oy en âge (suite) l'école de jordanus 0,98 0,78 0 0,15 0,76 0,00 0,52 32 chap itre viii : la statique du m oy en âge et léonard de vinci 0,89 0,9 0,9 0,74 0,98 0,00 0,02 38 chap itre ix : l'école de jordanus au xvie – nicolo tartaglia 0,94 0,75 0,25 0,56 0,88 0,00 0,44 16 chap itre x : la réaction contre jordanus : guido ubaldo – benedetti 0,91 0,81 0,12 0,44 0,91 0,02 0,26 27 chap itre xi : galileo galilei (1564-1642) 0,95 0,83 0,06 0,43 0,89 0,03 0,35 27 chap itre xii : simon stevin (1548-1620) 0,82 0,93 0,89 0,32 0,96 0,00 0,11 27 chap itre xiii : la statique française – roberval 0,92 0,82 0 0,59 0,91 0,00 0,43 37 chap itre xiv : la statique française (suite) – rené descartes (1596-1650) 1 1 0,04 0,92 0,96 0,00 0,36 26 notes a, b, c 1 0,5 0,13 0,25 0,63 0,00 0,38 6 average values (basing on the number of p ages) 0,92 0,85 0,29 0,49 0,75 0,05 0,39 23,67 microsoft word 6 islas layout evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 68 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 68-76 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 – this is an open access article article evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón1 abstract: thought experiments are widely used in natural science research. nonetheless, their reliability to produce cognitive results has been a disputable matter. this study is conducted to present some rules of confirmation for evaluating the cognitive outcome of thought experiments. i begin given an example of a “paradigmatic” thought experiment from galileo galilei: the falling bodies. afterwards, i briefly surveying two different accounts of thought experiments: james r. brown’s rationalism and john d. norton’s empiricism. then, i discuss their positions and i show that none of them may tip the balance towards the rationalism or empiricism they try to defend. finally, i put forward that the notion of confirmation, connected to the notion of increasing plausibility, can be used to develop some confirmation rules to compare the explanatory power of thought experiments in competition, regardless of their rational or empirical nature in which the discussion of this type of experiment has been engaged in recent years. keywords: thought experiments; back ground knowledge; confirmation; plausibility; success received: 05 august 2017. reviewed 31 october 2017. accepted: 30 november 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.06 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction thought experiments are “unexecuted experiments” devised to support or refute a scientific theory – or part of it. although they are conducted in the mind of scientists, most of them are formulated from certain empirical background knowledge previously accepted. thought experiments used in the natural sciences have an ancient tradition. for example, galileo galilei (1638 [1914]) used them to contrast his theory of free falling bodies against the prevailing theory of his time developed by aristotle. albert einstein et al (1935) set up the famous epr thought experiment against the completeness of copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. recently, pierre-marie robitaille (2014) suggested a thought experiment to refute kirchhoff law of thermal emission. however, despite their importance for scientific knowledge, their nature and reliability has been a disputable matter. 1 damián islas mondragón is a professor at the universidad juárez del estado de durango, méxico. address: boulevard del guadiana no. 501, ciudad universitaria, c.p. 34120, durango, mexico. email: damianislas@ujed.mx orcid: 0000-0001-8538-6835 evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 69 until few years ago, we only had three systematic philosophical studies on thought experiments, i.e., the works of ernest mach (1906 [1896]),2 karl r. popper (1959 [1934]) and thomas s. kuhn (1977 [1964]). according to kuhn, “the category ‘thought experiment’ is in any case too broad and too vague for epitome” (kuhn 1964, 241). nancy nersessian, whom has written extensively about thought experiments, has recently accepted that: “there is great variety among thought experiments and it would be an impossible task to construct a list of all their salient features” (nersessian 2007, 147). there is no consensus on the nature of thought experiments. mélanie frappier et al puts the things this way “[…] there is no consensus on the cognitive power of thought experiments, their logical character, the nature of their content, or the proper domains of their application” (frappier 2013, 1). on the contrary, some authors, leaving aside this problem, think that we do not need a definition of what thought experiments are to assess their cognitive significance for scientific development (see bunzl 1996; peijnenburg and atkinson 2003; moue et al 2006 and urbaniak 2012). the aim of this paper is not, of course, solving this debate; but to present some rules of confirmation for evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments regardless of the nature of their content. in section 1, i present galileo’s falling bodies thought experiment as an example of a “paradigmatic” thought experiment. in section 2, i briefly surveying two different accounts of thought experiments: james r. brown’s “platonic” rationalism and john d. norton’s “modest” empiricism. in section 3, i show that none of them may tip the balance towards the rationalism or empiricism they try to defend. in section 4, i suggest – following the germinal ideas of theo kuipers (2000) – that the idea of “confirmation”, linked to the notion of “increased plausibility”, can be used to develop some confirmation rules to compare the explanatory power of thought experiments in competition, regardless of their rational or empirical nature. galileo’s falling bodies according to galileo galilei (n. 1564 1642), aristotle did not share the belief, already ancient in his time, that vacuum is a prerequisite for the laws of motion. as is well known, aristotle argued that motion was precisely the phenomenon that made the idea of “vacuum” unsustainable. galileo said that aristotle never performed any “real” experiment to show that bodies with different weights travel in the same medium at speeds that are proportional to their weights, as aristotle erroneously supposed (galileo 1914 [1638]). let’s remember that according to aristotle, if we think about two rocks that fall simultaneously from a height of one hundred cubits,3 one of which weighs ten times more than the other, we can infer, aristotle reasoned, that when the heaviest rock reaches the ground, the lightest one would have fallen no more than ten cubits. that is, it would only have covered a tenth of the distance traveled by the heaviest rock. galileo assured that he did perform some experiments consisting of simultaneously dropping a cannonball weighing up to two hundred pounds and a musket ball weighing only half a pound from a height of two hundred cubits. however, galileo asserted (in the voice of his interlocutor salvati) that it is possible to show – by a thought experiment – that the heavier body does not move faster than the lightest body without executing a “real” experiment. galileo’s thought experiment is as follows. suppose we have two rocks. one is larger than the other. the largest rock moves at a speed of eight cubits while the smaller rock does at a speed of four cubits in free fall. now 2 the quotation refers to his paper “über gedankenexperimente. zeitschrift für den physikalischen und chemischen unterricht” reprinted in erkenntnis und irrtum. skizzen zur psychologie der forschung in 1906, 108-125. nevertheless, his position on the matter is scattered through all his works. 3 the cubit was a unit of anthropometric length used in many ancient cultures which corresponds to the distance between the cubit and the end of the open hand. evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 70 suppose that we form a system with these two rocks by joining them together with a rope. if both rocks are dropped simultaneously, we can expect that the smaller rock, acting as a kind of drag, slow down the movement of the larger rock, and thus the entire system would fall at a lower velocity than eight cubits, that is, at a lower velocity than the move of the larger rock falling alone. however, we can also expect that the whole system will fall at a greater rate than eight cubits, if the two rocks are considered to constitute a larger unitary system than either of the two isolated rocks. in short, the thought experiment shows us that the fastest rock would be partially retarded by the slowest, and in turn, the slowest rock would be somehow accelerated by the faster one. as we can see, galileo concluded, this hypothetical situation contradicts the original assumption of aristotle (galileo 1914 [1638], 63). the thought experiment elaborated by galileo allowed him to infer that when two bodies are in motion, the smaller body attached to the larger one does not “add” its weight to the latter and consequently does not increase its weight as when both bodies are at rest. galileo concluded that, contrary to aristotle’s assumption, large and small bodies have the same specific gravity regardless of their weight, so they move at the same speed, reaching the ground at the same time when they are left in freefall (galileo 1914 [1638], 64-65). aristotle’s idea galileo’s idea figure 1. the falling bodies according to aristotle and galileo note that the success of the thought experiment proposed by galileo lies in the empirical assumption that there is some delay in the free fall of the entire system caused by the small rock. of course, the way this system moves was not considered by aristotle. this means that the calculation elaborated by aristotle and the thought experiment devised by galileo do not share the same empirical presuppositions although both, as ana butkovic says, “mean the same thing by the word ‘faster’” (butkovic 2007, 65).4 certainly, aristotle’s concept of “speed” was an essential part of his theory of motion and had important implications for the whole of his physics. but as kuhn suggested, those implications could never have been challenged solely from empirical observation or logical 4 however, i do not agree with ana butkovic when she says that because both aristotle and galileo referred to the same concept of “velocity”, there can be no incommensurability between both paradigms (butkovic 2007, 66). certainly, the thought experiment devised by galileo has to do with the concept of “speed”; but also, as we have seen, with the concept of “size” and “weight”. it seems to me that an inter-theoretical comparison cannot be reduced to sharing a single concept. evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 71 rules in a “world” where all motions were uniform, as in aristotle’s “world”. the concept itself did not show any logical inconsistency, but a failure to fit, from the subsequent point of view of galileo’s physics, the “full fine structure of the world to which it was expected to apply” (kuhn 1964, 258). so, the aim of galileo’s thought experiment was to reveal an internal contradiction involved in aristotle’s theory of motion. galileo use his thought experiment as a theoretical instrument with a specific purpose. as we will see, this use of thought experiments will lead us to develop some confirmation rules to compare the explanatory power of thought experiments, regardless of their rational or empirical nature in which the discussion of this type of experiment has been engaged in recent years. brown’s rationalism there is a considerable amount of philosophical literature around the well-known debate on thought experiments between brown’s “platonic” rationalism and norton´s “modest” empiricism.5 one of the main brown’s contributions to the topic is his taxonomy of thought experiments, which break into two general kinds i.e. destructive and constructive thought experiments. constructive thought experiments break into three further kinds i.e. direct (which start with a well-established phenomenon and end with a well-articulated theory), conjectural (with which scientists try to establish some phenomenon) and mediative (which are used to derive a conclusion from a well-articulated theory). but there is a small class, the socalled platonic thought experiments, which are simultaneously constructive and destructive, according to brown. the importance of platonic thought experiments comes from their ability to destroy an existing theory and simultaneously build a new and presumably better one. let’s briefly see the process. according to brown, laws of nature play a crucial metaphysical role in scientific knowledge of the physical world. a law of nature is an “independently existing abstract entity –a thing in its own right that is responsible for physical regularities” (brown 2011, 199). as an abstract entity, laws of nature supposedly “exist” outside space and time. as claimed by brown, platonic thought experiments can generate a priori knowledge, this is, knowledge that is not based on new empirical evidence. this a priori knowledge is gained by a kind of perception of the relevant laws of nature with the “mind’s eye”. in brown’s words: just as the mathematical mind can grasp (some) abstract sets, so the scientific mind can grasp (some of) the abstract entities which are the laws of nature. (brown 2011, vii) in other words, since laws of nature “are relations among universals” and these “relations among abstract universals explain observed regularities in the physical world” (brown 2011, 87), we can presumably know, with the help of platonic thought experiments, the natural world through the a priori access to the abstract realm where these laws of nature supposedly “inhabit”. so, according to brown, the main cognitive function of platonic thought experiments is producing a priori knowledge of the natural world gained through intuitions. norton’s empiricism departing from an empiricist point of view, norton says that thought experiments in natural science are merely picturesque arguments in which scientists “[…] (i) posit hypothetical or counterfactual states of affairs, and (ii) invoke particulars irrelevant to the generality of the conclusion” (norton 1991, 129, original emphasis). the knowledge produced by thought 5 cammilleri (2015 & 2014); clatterbuck (2013); bishop (2012); mcallister (2004); gendler (2004; 1998); borsboom et al (2002); massey (1995); holton (1993) and gooding (1992) are some examples. evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 72 experiments “[…] comes from premises introduced explicitly or tacitly into the thought experiment” (norton 2004b, 1140). this knowledge is then transformed using deductive or inductive inferences to find out about the world without drawing on new information from the world.6 the key point of norton’s position is that the cognitive outcome of thought experiments is reliable only if the held information presupposed in the premises of its argument form is true and we preserve its truth, or its probability, using valid argumentative process. note that in norton’s account, the reliability of thought experiments matches the reliability of their argument form. this thesis is known as the “reliability thesis” (norton 2004b, 1143) and is the main reason why thought experiments are epistemically unremarkable, this is, they cannot do more than an ordinary argument can do. since it is not obvious that all thought experiments are arguments, we must reconstruct them as such. in this sense, norton asserts that he has not found any thought experiment that cannot be reconstructed as an argument. some authors have tried to support this idea. for instance, rafal urbaniak recently made a plausible reconstruction as an argument of galileo’s falling bodies thought experiment (urbaniak 2012). others, of course, disagree and have tried to show that some thoughts experiments cannot be reconstructed in such a way (e.g. bishop 1999; borsboom et al 2002; gendler 2004 and nersessian 2007). in sum, norton’s equivalence between thought experiments and arguments provides us with a general criterion of demarcation between good from bad thought experiments, i.e., a good thought experiment is a good argument while a bad thought experiment is a bad argument. so, a thought experiment is epistemically justified insofar as its argument form can justify its conclusion. discussion the supposedly “scientific intuition” gained by platonic thought experiments represents a key difference between brown’s ideas and norton’s position on the issue. in brown’s words: a way of seeing the difference between norton and me is to consider, first, real experiments. we would agree (as would most people) that a real experiment carries us from a perception (and some possible background propositions) to a proposition (a statement of the result). i hold that a thought experiment has a similar structure. the only difference is that the perception is not a sense perception but, rather, is an intuition, an instance of seeing with the mind’s eye. (brown 2004a, 35) nevertheless, brown’s position does not explain the way scientists acquire this kind of “intuition”. instead of building a reliable epistemological justification for its use; brown justifies his position appealing to an inference to the best explanation. a debatable position by itself. in brown’s words: “readers who find the ontological richness of platonism distasteful should simply recall that the alternatives are even less palatable” (brown 2011, 74). besides, it seems to me that another central problem of brown’s rationalism is that platonic thought experiments “are fallible”, as he himself claims (brown 2011, 42). but if this is the case, then the use of the terms “constructive” and “destructive” is merely tentative, and thus, the alleged essence of platonic thought experiments is straightforwardly uncertain. an epistemological consequence of this uncertainty is that brown’s stance does not provide any way for assessing the cognitive content of thought experiments and, therefore, neither an accurate procedure for distinguishing successful from unsuccessful thought experiments. 6 note that some thought experiments are not related to the natural world. for example, thought experiments in pure mathematics or in ethics. evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 73 in relation to the empiricist stance developed by norton, he asserts that a thought experiment has a justified outcome “if it proceeds from true premises” and that we cannot justify its cognitive outcome if the conclusion comes from (a) a fallacious inference or (b) the utilization of a false assumption (norton 2004a, 64). but, since norton avoided to explain how can we know if the explicit or tacit held assumptions presupposed in the premises of the argument form of a thought experiment are indeed true or false, then we neither know if its cognitive outcome is reliable or not. at this point, norton is quite ambiguous. now, although he says that his view is “a consequence of a modest empiricism” that aims to show that thought experiments are not more than “picturesque arguments” and that disguised arguments allows us to develop a “simple empiricist epistemology of thought experiments in the natural sciences” (norton 1996, 334 and 2004a, 55 emphasis added). at the same time, he contends that the justification of his epistemology of thought experiments is “independent of empiricism” (norton 2004a, 52). to justify this apparent contradiction, norton asserts that even if the philosophical stance of thought experiments as arguments is entailed by empiricism (norton 1996: 335), it is not equivalent to it because: one would need to place restrictions on the character and relationship of the premises. for example, one would have to assume that we cannot generate conclusions with experiential content unless there are premises with at least as much experiential content […] in principle, one may hold the argument view without any commitments concerning the origin of the premises used in the argument and their connection with experience. (norton 1996, 336-337) in other words, norton says that thought experiments are arguments that explicit or implicitly holds true or false premises. but i think that asserting that premises may be true or false is trivial. of course, we know that scientists can justify the outcome of a thought experiment if its premises are true and that they cannot do it if its premises are false (here the triviality). the point is that if somebody aims to uphold an empiricist position (modest of not) on thought experiments, the key point is to make explicit under which cognitive conditions the premises of the argumentative form of thought experiments are true or false. finally, galileo’s thought experiment leads us to think that there is another way to assess thought experiments beyond the rationalist and empiricist positions contended by brown and norton respectively. when a thought experiment exhibits some success in achieving certain cognitive goals – in this case pointing out an internal theoretical contradiction of aristotle’s ideas – we tend to consider this fact as a sufficient evidence to assert that the thought experiment in question is epistemically reliable. that it reaches its cognitive goal. this position can be called the instrumentalist position of thought experiments according to which the main purpose of a thought experiment is to achieve a specific cognitive outcome. in this sense, note that galileo’s thought experiment does not imply that the two rocks will reach the ground at the same time, as his theory of free fall claims. his thought experiment only aims to reveal an internal contradiction involved in aristotle’s theory of motion. nevertheless, here i will not further explore how can we empirically or rationally assess the cognitive content of thought experiments or if it is sufficient to consider the cognitive outcomes of thought experiments to assess their epistemic reliability or whether their epistemic reliability depends on more than the display of successful cognitive outcomes. these issues are important and show some future lines of research on this topic. nevertheless, in what follows what i will do is to suggest some rules that can help us to compare the cognitive success of thought experiments regardless of their rational or empirical nature. evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 74 comparing the cognitive success of thought experiments so far, we have seen that platonic thought experiments are used to access to a kind of a priori knowledge gained through intuitions. in norton’s empiricism, the cognitive reliability of thought experiments matches with the cognitive reliability of their argument form. according to an instrumentalist position – as galileo’s use of falling bodies thought experiment – the main purpose of thought experiments is to achieve a specific cognitive outcome. in what follows, i will answer if it is possible to compare the cognitive success between two or more competing thought experiments. to begin with, let’s think on the notion of scientific “confirmation” as a relation between three related scientific concepts i.e. evidence, thought experiments and accepted background knowledge. about the former concept, and according with a popperian interpretation of the concept of “evidence”, less expected evidence has more “confirmation – corroboration – value” than more expected evidence. about the later concept, the “accepted background knowledge” is seen here as those beliefs allowed by a specific conceptual frame. with this in mind, we can say that a qualitative theory of deductive confirmation7 might explain the idea of “confirmation” as the increasing plausibility of the evidence (e) provided by the cognitive outcome (co) of a thought experiment (te). then, if we interpret the notion of “plausibility” as the conceptually sound basis of te, we get the following confirmation rule: rule 1: e provided by co confirms te if and only if (iff) te makes co more plausible. note that the “conceptual sound basis” required here is determined by scientists’ no problematic accepted background knowledge. and of course, this is a lengthy debatable issue. nevertheless, the rules of confirmation presented here are thought to be independent from the rational – and empirical – content of thought experiments. in other words, to what extent the evidence provided by the cognitive outcome of a thought experiment increases its conceptual sound basis, it is not a question that can be answered using these rules designed solely to evaluate the explanatory power of thought experiments in competition. according to rule 1, if we compare two different and competing thought experiments with different co, then we can infer the following confirmation rule: rule 2: co confirms te1 more than co* confirms te2 iff te1 increases the plausibility of co more than te2 increases the plausibility of co*. if we compare the hypothetical case where a te produces two possible incommensurable co, then: rule 3: if te makes co as plausible as co*, then co confirms te as much as co* does. if we compare the hypothetical case where co equally confirms two different thought experiments, then: rule 4: if co equally confirms te1 and te2, then co confirms te1 more than te2 iff te1 is more plausible than te2. finally, we can build a general rule for thought experiment choice: 7 in what immediately follows i owe much to kuipers (2000). evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 75 rule 5: when te1 has so far proven to be more successful than te2, eliminate te2 in favor of te1 (at least for the time being). is my contention that these rules can serve to evaluate two or more competing thought experiments independently of the rationalist-empiricist debate in which the discussion of this type of experiment has been engaged in recent years. concluding remarks if we grant that the “mind’s eye” capacity of scientists to “grasp” relevant laws of nature are equivalent to the notion of scientific “intuition”, brown still should provide us with an epistemological justification to show that the use of scientific intuition is a reliable cognitive tool to grasp the metaphysics of natural laws he contends. in the case of norton, he did not make the attempt to explain under which epistemological conditions we can assess if the knowledge presupposed in the premises of the argument form of thought experiments favored by him is true or false, which makes his position trivial. finally, through galileo’s falling bodies thought experiments, i show that there is another way to assess thought experiments beyond the rationalist and empiricist positions, i.e. the instrumentalist stance. this instrumentalist point of view allows us to develop some confirmation rules to compare the cognitive success between two or more competing thought experiments regardless of their rational or empirical nature. references bishop, michael. 2012. a priori knowledge of the way the world works. metascience 21: 687-691. bishop, michael. 1999. why thought experiments are not arguments. philosophy of science 66 (4): 534-541. borsboom, denny, gideon mellenbergh and van heerden, jaap. 2002. functional thought experiments. synthese 130: 379-387. brown, james r. 2011. the laboratory of the mind: thought experiments in the natural sciences, 2nd ed. new york: routledge. brown, james r. 2004a. why thought experiments transcend experience. in contemporary debates in philosophy of science, edited by christopher hitchcock, 23–43. oxford: blackwell. bunzl, martin. 1996. the logic of thought experiments. synthese 106 (2): 227-240. butkovic, ana. 2007. what is the function of thought experiments: kuhn vs. brown. croatian journal of philosophy vii (19): 63-67. cammilleri, kristian. 2015. knowing what would happen: the epistemic strategies in gallileo’s thought experiments. studies in history and philosophy of science 53: 1-11. cammilleri, kristian. 2014. toward a constructivist epistemology of thought experiments in science. synthese 191: 1697-1716. clatterbuck, hayley. 2013. the epistemology of thought experiments: a non-eliminativist, non-platonic account. european journal for the philosophy of science 3: 309-329. einstein, albert; boris podolsky and nathan rosen. 1935. can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete? physical review 47: 777-790. frappier, mélanie, letitia meynell & james r. brown, eds. 2013. thought experiments in philosophy, science, and the arts. new york: routledge. galileo, galilei. 1638 [1914]. dialogues concerning two new sciences. new york: the macmillan company. translated from the discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno à due nuoue scienze by henry crew and alfonso de salvio. evaluating the cognitive success of thought experiments damián islas mondragón 76 gendler, tamar. 2004. thought experiments rethought – and reperceived. philosophy of science 71 (5): 1152-1163. gendler, tamar. 1998. galileo and the indispensability of scientific thought experiment. the british journal for the philosophy of science 49: 397424. gooding, david. 1992. what is experimental about thought experiments? philosophy of science association 2: 280-290. holton, gerald. 1993. the laboratory of the mind: thought experiments in the natural sciences by james robert brown. isis 84 (4): 836-838 kuhn, thomas. 1977 [1964]. a function for thought experiments. in the essential tension: selected studies in scientific tradition and change, 240-265. university of chicago press. kuipers, theo. 2000. from instrumentalism to constructive realism, on some relations between confirmation, empirical progress, and truth approximation. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. mach, ernst. 1906 [1896]. über gedankenexperimente. in erkenntnis und irrtum. skizzen zur psychologie der forschung, edited by von johann ambrosius barth, 108-125. leipzig: verlag. the translation into english is 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philosophy of science 71 (5): 1139-1151. norton, john d. 1996. are thought experiments just what you thought? canadian journal of philosophy 26 (3): 333-366. norton, john d. 1991. thought experiments in einstein’s work. in thought experiments in science and philosophy, edited by tamara horowitz and gerarld massey, 129-148. savage, md: rowman & littlefield publishers. peijnenburg, jeanne and david atkinson. 2003. when are thought experiments poor ones? journal for general philosophy of science 34 (2): 305-322. popper, karl. [1934] 1959. the logic of scientific discovery. london: hutchinson. robitaille, pierre-marie. 2014. further insight relative to cavity radiation: a thought experiment refuting kirchhoff’s law. progress in physics 10 (1): 38-40. urbaniak, rafal. 2012. “platonic” thought experiments: how on earth? synthese 187: 731– 752. 88 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 88-100 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck ludwik fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology monika milosavljević1 abstract: this article delves into the work of a researcher group based around the center for theoretical archaeology in belgrade (2007 – present) and the path they have taken to establish a foundation for further archaeological development within serbia. this process illuminates the conceptual tools fleck originally formulated thought collectives, thought style, proto-ideas – which have played a significant role in the deconstruction of the concept of scientific fact and in the historicization / socialization of the theory of knowledge. for the serbian archaeological community, one of the most fiendish aspects has been the ever present correlation between the field and the construction of a national identity an especially painful theme for the postwar balkans whose borders are still imprecisely defined. hence, this work pays special attention to long held beliefs of ethnicity, ethnogenesis and continuity, emanating from outdated racial anthropology, but unfortunately still held as fact in serbian archaeology. keywords: archaeology; thought-collectives; nationalism; ethnicity; ethnogenesis received: 30 august 2016. reviewed: 07 november 2016. accepted: 30 november 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ an introduction to the issues facing serbian archaeology serbian archaeology has undergone a long, complex transformation since the close of the 19th century, which does not allow it to easily inter-correlate with the general narrative of archaeological progress and which lends serbian archaeology its own distinct and unique tradition of scientific development (trigger, 2008; novaković, 2011, 386-400; palavestra & babić, 2016, 316-334). the serbian archaeological community therefore values a reflexive reassessment of the history of ideas in archaeology as well as the role of scientists in society as to address this uniqueness (kuzmanović, 2012). as a consequence, albeit fleck’s genesis and development of scientific fact has yet to be translated into serbian, his approach of knowledge transfers has still proven edifying in the establishment of research programs that study the history of ideas in archaeology and closely related disciplines. indeed, ludwik fleck and his epistemological ideas 1 monika milosavljević is an assistant professor in the department of archaeology – faculty of philosophy – university of belgrade, čika ljubina 18-20,11 000 belgrade, serbia. e-mails: momilosa@f.bg.ac.rs (monika.milosavljevic@gmail.com) monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 89 have found their way to becoming a relevant source for credible solutions in the process of understanding the burden of conceptual heritage and current transfers of knowledge from archaeological centers to their periphery (milosavljević, 2015, 33-40; palavestra & babić, 2016, 318; ćosić, 2016, 760-761; bandović, 2016, 832). serbia is a country whose borders have changed several times within the last 140 years. during the 1990s, under the regime of slobodan milošević and international sanctions, serbia emerged as a post-cold war, ethnic state which lived through a complete collapse of its former socialist identity, experiencing infamous hyperinflation, engaged in ethnic strife and civil war within its neighbouring states of croatia and bosnia and herzegovina (galijaš, archer & bieber, 2014). such were the traumatic circumstances during which a significant rise in nationalistic ideas and demands for revising the past occurred, as a response to its radical social context. within the history encompassing the development of serbian archaeology, this work seeks to address the correlation between nationalistic tendencies in society and archaeology, as not being merely a misuse of science but rather in the sense of isolation from international circles (babić, 2002, 309-322, novaković, 2011, 398-400). what needs to be drawn attention to is that archaeology is a field which has long been a tool that supports and establishes the aims of identity in times of crises, its evidence being cited as firm grounds for a newly changed perspective onto the past. generally speaking, in times of political shift, the question of a nation’s ethnic past becomes a burning issue (wiwjorra, 1996, 164-188; meskell, 2002, 1-12; arnold, 2008, 120-144). it is also interesting to note that during “the bleak 90s”, serbian archaeology was remanded to a passive mainstream, wherein critical discussion was mostly directed against the then ongoing war and policies of the milošević regime. critical orientation was, when it could be found, limited to marginal circles of intellectuals, who acted within non-governmental organizations and “parallel” educational institutions. the destitute economic situation, as well as the explicit control of public institutions by the regime of slobodan milošević, contributed to the additional passivity and neutralization of archaeological critical thinking skills. due to international sanctions, including a rigorous visa system introduced against the rump yugoslavia, almost all international academic relations were severed. no funds were available for the acquisition of concurrent literature, nor to attend international conferences. as a consequence, the exchange of ideas with other european archaeologists was modest at best in all serbian academic fields during the 1990s. in short, serbian archaeology spent the final decade of the 20th century in isolation, resulting in economic, infrastructural, and conceptual levels of stagnation (novaković, 2011, 398-400; babić, 2006, 655-659). the usurpation of one regime with another is by no means tantamount to a transition of the social arena proper, which serves as a backdrop against for the sciences. yet, for the ease of differentiation as to establish a more ready and comprehensible idea between historically recent periods in serbian and yugoslav history, as looking from today backwards, and as loosely defined according to institutional transformations, the following shall suffice: 1) the cessation of the slobodan milošević regime; 2) the collapse of the former republic of yugoslavia; 3) the second world war; and 4) the first world war. these are not absolute, but merely serve as useful for the task at hand of delineating the history of archaeological thought in serbia. therein, after the fall of the milošević regime in 2000, which had from the late 1980s fostered a form of demagogic nationalism throughout serbian society, the return to a more normalized state came about gradually, wherein serbian archaeology slowly started to exit its own isolation. work in concert with foreign partners started, as well as reflexive reassessments regarding the events of the decade prior, leading to questioning the role of the profession in public discourse. considerable effort to move archaeology forward survived the “bleak 1990s” in serbia, but only came recently to reveal its great potential after 2000. the change has been foremost lead by archaeology professors at the university of belgrade, through the introduction of standards in archaeological theory and the initiation of a higher education contemporary with modern european archaeological thought (babić & vasiljević, 2005, 70-76). consequently, the centre for theoretical archaeology (cta) was first established within the department of archaeology at the faculty of philosophy of the university of belgrade in order to better apply theoretical archaeology in practice. at its start in 2007, it initially focused on organizing public discussions on archaeology, covering questions of scientific theory in a general sense, epistemology in archaeology, the process of deriving knowledge from data, and promoting translations of new books on archaeological theory. from this work with the public, the subsequent phase in implementing new approaches into serbian archaeology emerged, first requiring a monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 90 harmonization of ideas upon which “traditional” serbian archaeology lie and which entailed a study of the history of ideas in archaeology. to put it in a nutshell, the first layer of issues arose after 2000, when it would have seemed that not a single known paradigm was an all held in common in serbian archaeology. to compound the complexity of the issue, serbian archaeologists of the time perceived themselves as true scholars who were doing “true” archaeological work that was supposedly non-theoretical, in spite of its clear non-scholarly nature and complete theoretical standing. the situation this academic incongruence caused then necessitated research to be carried out on the theoretical background of serbian archaeology leading up to and coming after 2000, despite archaeologists claim and belief that they were “non-theoretical”.2 due to the actual theoretical framework, it proved also necessary to come to a conclusion as to what serbian archaeologists believed to be as “normal” and “true” archaeology as the standard of archaeology as well as the commonsensical knowledge to be used thereof. for this extract reason, in order to research the history of ideas in archaeology, it is pertinent to enquire into those ideas which appeared within the framework of the center for theoretical archaeology prior to their familiarization with fleck’s work and theories (palavestra, 2013, 685; milosavljević, 2015; palavestra & babić, 2016). the centre for theoretical archaeology in belgrade in the first of phase of development of the center for theoretical archaeology which occurred roughly from 2007 to 2013, eight public debates were held which had the overall aim of introducing the general public with the basic concepts of archaeological theory. it was not until the second phase, occurring from 2013 until the present, that the concrete issues facing serbian archaeology were addressed.3 archaeologists began to group together by assembling around the centre for theoretical archaeology in order to deal with the sociology of knowledge as to derive what conceptual tools serbian archaeology has at its disposal (škorić, 2010, 339-352). to this aim, a research group gathered at the centre for theoretical archaeology in 2013 to constitute theoretical and methodological foundations for the history of serbian archaeology on the basis of the legacy of ludwik fleck. as a key concept in comprehending the development of scientific knowledge and the status of scientific fact, the group adopted a thought collective as a suitable analytical tool in line with fleck’s thought-collective theory (fleck, 1981, 38-44). such an approach has since opened up a multitude of possibilities to better reach an understanding of the history of ideas and the sociology of knowledge in archaeology as compared to the use of kuhn’s paradigm shift (its study being required in the philosophy of science for a significant number of archaeologists) (babić, 2009, 123-132; brorson and andersen, 2001, 123). hence, the group around the center for theoretical archaeology began to perceive itself as a thought collective in which ludwick fleck served as inspiration to comprehend the process of change within scientific thinking and the difficulty which the introduction of new thinking in scientific communities produces. flecks ideas were not singularly in use, as a number of possible conceptual frameworks were being considered. the group maintained a critical stance toward fleck’s theories and avoided putting him on a pedestal of total philosophic authority. therein, the center for theoretical archaeology has included a number of key authors in addition to fleck for the production of archeological knowledge and a history of ideas in archaeology: michel foucault4, karl mannheim (mannheim, 1952, 276-320), bruno latour (latour, 2005), tera pruitt (pruitt, 2011) and wiktor stoczkowski (stoczkowski, 2008, 346-359). though important to better understanding the history of science, fleck comes in addition to a number of open questions in the history of archaeology that also must be incorporated the relation of knowledge and power, theory and practice, authority, the role that institutions play, commonsensical knowledge, changes in the history of ideas as well as archaeological practice, transfer of knowledge, the sanctification of certain aspects of knowledge. given this broad expanse of incorporation as to obtaining a clear picture of the history of science vis-à-vis fleck, the usage of different theoretical tools for the history of scientific ideas is better suited to understanding the (local) history of 2 digital archive, the centre for theoretical archaeology (department of archaeology at the faculty of philosophy of the university of belgrade). 3 digital archive, the centre for theoretical archaeology (department of archaeology at the faculty of philosophy of the university of belgrade). 4 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/, consulted september 16, 2016. monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 91 archaeological thought. notwithstanding, among the numerous differing authors and approaches, fleck is salient due to the fact his theories provide for a thought collective as being the main tool for analyzing the history of science (eberhardt & link, 2015, 16-17; engström, 2015). not only may archaeology yet profit from fleckian application, their utilization also shows that archaeology can question both hypothesis and theories. this very nature also allows archaeology to be truly articulated with other disciplines that share the same interests in the history of knowledge production. a new theoretical introduction to knowledge production in science would allow for a more substantial connection between fleckian theory and the real problems of present scientific communities. this can be seen as evident through an examination of the history of serbian archaeology, which was traditionally never a perfect fit for frameworks which were developed through kuhn’s perspective to the history of archaeological thought but nonetheless still shed light on the production of knowledge (babić, 2014, 284-290; milosavljević, 2016, in preparation). today, the ‘thought-collective’ around the centre for theoretical archaeology in belgrade consists of ten to fifteen scholars affiliated with the faculty of philosophy of the university of belgrade, the faculty of philosophy of the university of novi sad, the institute of archaeology in belgrade, the institute for balkan studies sasa in belgrade, and the national museum in belgrade, as well as specialists who do not possess any particular institutional affiliation. most of the participants are phd students or post-doc researchers, the majority of its members being younger than 35 years of age. since 2013, this group has organized an archaeological conference in march or april of every year which aims to promote fleck’s approach to the history of science as applied to serbian archaeology. each year, the conference is held under the same title ‘serbian archaeology between theory and fact’ while the secondary title is differently targeted from one year to another (kuzmanović, 2013; janković & kuzmanović, 2014; janković & kuzmanović, 2015; milosavljević, 2016). the group of scholars participating within the centre for theoretical archaeology actively nurture research aims in order to understand the history of ideas in serbian archaeology as to better set a status quo in the serbian archaeological community and society in general to further archaeology into a range of promising directions. to this same aim this paper focuses on the deconstruction of the so-called ‘traditional’ manner of thinking found in serbian archaeology (i.e., archaeology without theoretical explication). opposing this ‘a-theoretical, traditional way’ is a ‘generally open-minded, post 2000 serbian archaeology’ which does take into account theory, correcting the past century of rejecting theory. all contemporary schools of archaeology are theoretically incorporative; a-theoreticalism is treated at best as an anathema.5 notwithstanding, albeit they be lacking theory as inherent to their conclusions, the a-theoretical ideas arrived at still serve as “proto-ideas” which deserve further discussion as to derive actual theory from them (rotenstreich, 1986, 161-178; gramsch, 2011, 48-71). understanding the substance of “commonsensical knowledge” (sensu stoczkowski, 2008, 346-359) in traditional way of thinking in serbian archaeology is the gordian knot in need of unraveling in this case study. by pointing to key challenges, such as the challenge of determining the roots of interpretation of the ethnic continuity of the balkans and the (mis)use of scientific duties, the history of the archaeological idea in its serbian context could better illustrate other problems that exist more generally in archaeology and in similar scientific fields. the key question is where these conservative tendencies of traditional way of thinking in serbian archaeology arise from. their ideas would seem to not be random; even though their roots are laborious to determine, certain patterns do exist. due to congruence, it has been necessary to reassess the ‘commonplaces’ of serbian archaeology, as well as to trace back their supposed occurrence in yugoslav archaeology (novaković, 2011; 2014). hence, the hypothesis is whether conservative ideas in serbian archaeology occurred as a part of yugoslav archaeology. to answer these questions, however, first requires an explanation of what yugoslav archaeology is (babić, 2011, 188-189). legacy of yugoslav archaeology analyzing serbian or yugoslavian archaeology in their totalities is far beyond the breadth of this work; therefore, it is necessary to define those characteristic ideas which may be followed in order to illustrate the 5 digital archive, the centre for theoretical archaeology (department of archaeology at the faculty of philosophy of the university of belgrade). monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 92 continuity of ideas between yugoslav archaeology (1918 1991) and serbian archaeology (1991 present). the political events of the civil/ethnic-wars of the 1990s in the former yugoslavia did indeed bring about changes in the social reality of the balkans but the methods of the interpretation of the past remained part of a continuity. the traditional manner of interpreting the past for the identity of yugoslavia simply found news modes for interpretation within the nationalist sphere, where a concern of ethnic identity arose where it had once disappeared (milosavljević, 2015). due to this permutation of identity ideas in the yugo-sphere, an examination of yugoslavian archaeology is warranted in order to define a clear origin of the ideas of ethnic and cultural identity as well as ethnic and cultural continuity in archaeological interpretations. it is pertinent therefore to examine these through the history of yugoslavian and serbian scientific thought (palavestra, 2011, 579-594; džino, 2011, 198-199). yugoslavia was a country in southeast europe that had existed in the 20th century (today is superseded by the countries of slovenia, croatia, bosnia and herzegovina, montenegro, serbia, kosovo and fyr macedonia). the concept of yugoslavia as a singular state for all southern slavic people dated from the illyrian movement of the 19th century. this state came into existence in 1918 as the kingdom of serbs, croats and slovenes to which the serbian royal family became its yugoslav royal dynasty. it was renamed the kingdom of yugoslavia in 1929, and then into as the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia, when a communist government was established led by josip broz tito (1892-1980). both the once royal and federal capital was belgrade, today the capital of serbia. in 1991, slovenia and croatia declared independence, yugoslavia disintegrated, leading to the yugoslav wars. though a civil war in origin, they devolved into ethnic conflicts from 1991 to 2001 within the territory of the former yugoslavia. the similarity of their languages as well as their common history and way of life have left ties among the people and cultures of these new states in southeastern europe, still known as the yugosphere. the connections are extremely important for scholars who were anti-war activists during the wars and who believe the experience of yugoslavia to be a common ground for future development in sharing knowledge within the yugosphere (lampe, 2003; babić & vasiljević, 2005, 70-76). as predrag novaković has aptly pointed out, yugoslav archaeology cannot be observed as a “distinctive”, national school of archaeology, but rather as a well-organized network of national archaeologies that maintained their respective specifics within the former yugoslav state. one should bear in mind that the matter of yugoslav archaeology should be discussed in at least two stages: 1) between the two world wars and 2) after the second world war. the cultural context in yugoslavia is of vital importance to the strategies of understanding the function and growth of archaeology as a discipline. analysis has shown that archaeological interconnections in yugoslavia before wwii were weak, hence should not be merely taken for granted. however, the growth in the number of institutions and archaeologists started as elemental to the process of modernization in yugoslavia directly subsequent to wwii. nevertheless, it is interesting to yet note that despite the complex picture of development in archaeological science in yugoslavia in the 20th century, the dominant focus has been placed on the importance of changes in the archaeological community after wwii and not prior (novaković, 2014, 221-254). the second half of the xx century is clearly marked by the doctrine of modernization as well as the doctrine of brotherhood and unity. together with other historical disciplines, archaeology was considered an adjunct to the process of the emancipation of the yugoslav people(s). due to its inherent ability of presenting the past and their respective heritage in a broader european context, it also served as an indicator of the accomplishments of the new post-war government. it is not as straightforward to understand whether, and in what manner, the doctrine of brotherhood and unity influenced the archaeology in yugoslavia. after the second world war, early slavic archaeology, in collaboration with medieval history, began a tendency to show south slavs as an entirely homogenous group. the ideology of brotherhood and unity required adequate roots to help their legitimization by addressing the past. admittedly, though, the historical narratives of the pre-war period supported the common south-slavic past as well (gori, 2014, 299-300). a far more interesting aspect is the refraction of certain elements of the doctrine of brotherhood and unity in pre-historic archaeology, as can easily be seen from the treatment of the illyrians from the iron age, used as a metaphor of the common pre-historic past (džino, 2014, 1-39). it is worth adding that the idea of the highly questionable continuity between the illyrians and the slavs was also considered valid; in the words of vladimir dvorniković, yugoslav identity was considered a “slavic sprout on an illyrian stump” (dvorniković, 1995 [1937], 86-87). in the context of the doctrine of brotherhood and unity, illyrians could be the example of common pre-historic ancestors. in the archaeological interpretations of the 1950s and 1960s, they are monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 93 present in the archaeological record in all the republics (and by default, peoples) of the former yugoslavia. so much was this linkage evident that even some of the presumed boundaries of illyrian expansion matched the exact borders of yugoslavia. illyrians became one of the central archaeological topics in yugoslavia (novaković, 2007; gori, 2012; džino, 2014). perusing the themes and titles in yugoslav archaeology from the 1950s to the 1960s and comparing them to the 1980s, several symptomatic differences are immediately apparent. the image of a unifying past, created in the first decades of post-world war two, were gradually superseded by a specific mosaic of several distinctly separate pasts, as interpreted by some national schools of archaeology where the reference frame of the “yugoslav past” was not as revered as before (novaković, 2014, 238−240). from today’s perspective, it could seem unwarranted to follow this change of reference frames as, with the demise of yugoslavia, the constituting nations forming their own independent republics have since established their own cultural and geographical reference frames anew. nonetheless, what has been pointed up in recent research is the conclusion that the heritage of archaeological ideas, which can be linked to the second half of the xx century in yugoslavia, has been influential throughout the former yugoslavia up to the present day (novaković, 2014, 221–254; džino, 2011, 197–198; babić, 2011, 118–119). hence, it is not a priority to reach conclusions about understanding yugoslav and illyrian (non)unity, but to consider the heritage of the interpretation of identity and continuity that has been carried over from its yugoslav context into that of serbian archaeology (palavestra, 2011, 588-589). these themes are strongly involved in an area of research termed the ethnogenesis of nations, where it is mandatory to note the tendency of theory and method as remaining approximately the same, regardless of changes in the ethnic determination of the formulation (whether it be the ethnogenesis of the yugoslav or serbian nation). it follows that yugoslav archaeology may be viewed as an incubator that has developed ideas constituting the framework of the field up to the present day, irrespective of them being understood affirmatively or presenting a conceptual burden (curta, 2002, 201-218; milosavljević, 2013). as if in a mirror, a group of the centre for theoretical archaeology researchers studying the past recognized a thought collective that initiated significant changes in the history of yugoslavian archaeology after the end of the second world war. this same archaeological thought collective predominant from 1948 to 1991, was made up of several prominent leaders, who formatively affected the “traditional” thought manner in serbian archaeology. the shift appeared as in relation the cessation of a singular authority in knowledge production from the first half of the xx century (palavestra & babić, 2016). in contrast, the postsecond world war period saw differing scholars working together for the common democratization in the knowledge production of yugoslavian archaeology. a reflexive interpretation of these changes in the past of archaeology in the centre for theoretical archaeology has brought about a clear hope that actual change in possible as well as in the present (babić, 2013, 621-631). however, a thorough examination of this shift after the second world war has turned up an unexpected dark side. it has turned out that a change has meant a culling of those aspects which will lead to change and which will be transferred to the coming generation from the corpus of “outdated ideas”, all done in the name of building up an identity of a new state that arose from the destruction of the second world war (palavestra & milosavljević, 2015, 634-640). the responsibility for this specific transfer of ideas lay in a thought collective whose oral tradition concerning them was taken as the best possible for change within the yugoslavian archaeological community post-wwii. notwithstanding, outdated ideas transferred into the transformed archaeology after the second world war were whitewashed of their racial anthropology in yugoslavia as well as considerable regressive concepts concerning ethnic and racial identity. to make matters even more complicated, yugoslavian archaeology post-world war two could be viewed as better in its function (naturally with serbian archaeology within this same framework). 1948 1991 saw far more scholars in their respective fields as well as an increase in institutions whose youngest scholars were sent abroad to further their education, a fact which lent itself to the organization of numerous local and international projects (novaković 2012, 51-71). the leaders of these changes were milutin garašanin (serbian, 1920-2002) along with alojz benac (1914-1992), a prominent archaeologist from sarajevo (bosnia and herzegovina). simultaneously, however, as supported by a number of other scholars, yugoslavian archaeology nurtured a distinct problematic viewpoint of cultural identity, which was only possible owing to a trans-yugoslavian thought collective that established its own self-representation as opposing so-called “obsolete” authorities, such as the founder of serbian archaeology, miloje m. vasić (1869-1956) (palavestra, 2013; palavestra & babić, 2016). monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 94 the analysis of knowledge production does not necessitate merely an indication of character and continuance of the thought collective, rather, an evaluation of its influence as well as the detection of the authorities pertaining to the society as a whole who promote the ideas of the thought collective to which they belong (pruitt, 2011). subsequent to this question, i would like to directly note the issue of trans-generational knowledge transfer in relation to the mechanisms allowing for the tracking of these same processes (mannheim, 1952). as an illuminating example, please consider the history of serbian archaeology. despite the conflicts and varying interpretations over the same phenomena, its concepts and ideas have carried over from generation to generation. although miloje vasić and his students acted entirely against one another due to their differing interpretations of serbian archaeology, the interpretation to the commonly held notions between them came to be the common groundwork of archaeology (palavestra & babić, 2016). these common ideas are of exceptional importance as they present a conceptual tool-box of different groups of scholars (stoczkowski, 2008, 346-359). within this segment of the text is also shown more precisely how the transfer of ideas from one generation to another functions when these ideas become commonly held. in this manner a natural view of the world is formed for the group. that which must be demonstrated is what the essence is; i.e., what is transferred. searching for origins in yugoslavia this study has striven to demonstrate a detailed, illustrated instance of what positive results may be achieved and extracted through the theory and methods of a research program as based on fleck (milosavljević, 2016, in preparation). it has selected issues and concerns not previously recognized as typically relevant in the study of the history of archaeology, such as the continuing duration of non-scientific ideas from a diachronic perspective, and has brought them to the surface for examination. the analysis provided proffers a stable ground upon which the discussion of the role of such archaeological (proto)ideas may be discussed within the political sphere of the former yugoslavia. this study has noted how the thought-collective led by milutin garašanin and alojz benac promoted yugoslavian ideas on illyrians which has influenced knowledge production to the present day. as has been illustrated, this idea was expressed explicitly at the third archaeological symposium on illyrians organized in 1968 in mostar (today bosnia and herzegovina), where seventeen presentations were held and seventyone participants attended. organized by the center for balcanological research in sarajevo, which proceeded from the two prior conferences: on the territorial and chronological expansion of the illyrians (benac, 1964) and on the illyrians during antiquity (benac, 1967). the title of the third symposium ‘preslavic elements in the ethnogenesis of the south slavs’ (benac, 1969) as well as the names of the speakers elucidate the organizers’ intentions to establish a basis for a discussion on an illyrian-slav continuity and their supposed ethnogenesis as an extremely complex phenomenon. odd it would appear then that the participants of the symposium had no corresponding opinion in regards to what the task of the symposium was in practice, nor as to the keywords such as autochtonous, ethnogenesis, substrate and continuity. in his final address alojz benac remarked: we now, for example, can certainly claim after this symposium that ethnic and cultural formations, as well as the symbiosis of disparate ethnic groups on this ground, were a long, drawn-out process. due to which, this symbiosis needs to be observed in its stages, and not as a singular whole (…) here a thesis that south slavs carried an original ethnic component with themselves has been presented and established. the goal of further research is to make visible this autochthonousness, to attempt to clearly define its components. it is only then that we may speak with more certainty about the contact – from an ethnic and cultural viewpoint – of the south slavs with the paleo-balkan peoples native to the geographical area. in this very context arises the question of differing perspectives on the process of symbiosis spread out in the region, since specific autochtonous ethnic groups had existed throughout the various areas. therefore, disparate processes occurred. i deem it particularly important to observe urban and rural processes separately … (benac, 1969, 305) at the vi congress of yugoslav archaeologists in 1963, the key subject was relegated to the question of continuity and the introductory text served as a theoretical – methodological appendix for all those willing to express interest into the subject. milutin garašanin was the author here and the purpose of the article ‘the monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 95 problem of continuity in archaeology’ was to separate the phenomena of cultural and ethnic continuity, as well as to point out to the numerous preconditions needed to address these subjects in their entirety. in the framework of cultural-historical archaeology in yugoslavia, theoretical-methodological determination in the judgment of garašanin was well summarized by alojz benac, according to whom, continuity necessitates evolution and change, which is has two modes of diffusion and migration. nonetheless, not many archaeologists in yugoslavia were able to utilize the conceptual tools benac and garašanin had at their disposal (garašanin, 1964). regardless of the criticism to be directed to the particular standpoints presented, or regardless of the possibility of any particular interpretations being rated as more or less influential, it is necessary to take into account the wide spectrum of opinions that circulated within the network of yugoslav archaeologists. if the dominant thought-collective of the center for balcanological research in sarajevo receives special attention, it could also be termed as a large and heterogeneous collective, and “democratic“ by its direction (sensu fleck, 1981), albeit critical orientation sometimes does occur within the thought collective, and, on its fringes its epistemological pessimism. at this point, it behooves us to reiterate that no single individual opinion, as according to fleck, may receive complete and total comprehension by members of a thought collective. on the contrary, translations, misunderstandings and compromises frequently occur in communication and lead to a standardization within a thought collective. in this very sense, several points may be singled out which present a standard in understanding ethnic identity, ethnogenesis, and continuity, not to mention the belief of constant contact with barbarism, atavism, cultural degradation, autochtonousness, cultural substrates, and essential determination of what constitutes “identity”. general presumptions already extant in the trans-yugoslavian thought collective based around the center for balcanological research may be brought to light with relative ease. the collective, at least since the outset of the 1990s, have frequently undertaken a moderate tone and established critical enclosures to their academic research. as a result of an affinity towards equivocation though, the illusion of critical speaking about phenomena such as ethnicity, borders, continuity and ethnogenesis is still an active issue. nonetheless, at the very least, these questions do receive their due consideration and review in a removed traditional environment for archaeological research that allows for a progression in the thought collective proper. when boiled down and impurities removed, the essence of the ides of the collective can be seen as such that archaeology is a study of archaeological cultures which are in correlation with ethnicities but not determined by ethnicity. the extracted ideas of the trans-yugoslavian thought collective of the center for balcanological research could be summarized in the following manner: there is no ethnicity as a single-component phenomenon, in lieu of which there is, however, ethnic structure, ethnogenesis, or ethnic stratigraphy (the first two consist of differing components). ethnicity cannot be estimated in a short chronological sample but rather only over extended span of time as it is unraveled in context. when examined from a broader perspective including substrates, the character of ethnicity is read from the existing substrate. for instance, resistance and endurance of which are best seen in encounters and victories over a newly introduced elements may assimilate qualities as to determine ethnicity (read enemies identifying ethnicity as counterpoised of one group to another – “they are not us and we are not them – they are the invader”). if a substrate is utilized as such as the essence of ethnicity, it enables a specific coloring of ethnicity, but this may also include non-substrate elements which are non-essential to definition of the ethnicity but are incorporated nonetheless. as a consequence of its isolation of other elements, substrate as an essence of ethnicity is easily and readily connected to conservative tendencies in a group due to the fact that it may naturally be exclusive (to illustrate this concept of conservatism, consider its most expressed form in the manner of burial and ritualization and memory for the dead of which anything other is anathema due to the singular nature and importance of the ritual). albeit they had once been crucial in reconstructing the ethnic past in this retrograde perspective, survivals are “windows into the past” also for the thought collective, in which present ethnogenetic traces of earlier customs and material culture are held as the most significant indicators of atavistic forms of ethnicity. survivals necessitate that all mechanisms of ethnic identifications in archaeology are unable to be possible if constant contact with the substrate has not been established. the standing option to slide along a timeline, thanks to being an active “window into the past” as found in the present has been utilized methodologically as a foolproof backbone and starting point. the substrate is, therefore, only possible to understand and interpret due to survivals and bares a non-inclusive or comprehensive meaning to ethnicity as such (curta, monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 96 2002, 201-218; džino, 2011, 197-206; milosavljević, 2015). substrates had served as an extremely reliable methodological backbone for the trans-yugoslavian thought collective around the center in sarajevo. the same idea had its origins in the discipline of history, from the historian fanula papazoglu, who explicitly used the concepts of unilineal evolutionism as her theoretical-methodological framework. due to the concurrence of these two different fields, this methodological aid could be taken seriously at the time. additionally, this approach was partially present in generally popular narratives about the past owing to the racial anthropologist and philosopher vladimir dvorniković who has remained popular, even today (palavestra & milosavljević, 2015, 634-640). on the methodological bases of rudimentary unilineal evolutionism as seen in the trans-yugoslavian thought collective and adjusted to the needs of archaeology as it comes in need of an ethnic origin, the concept of the continuity of an autochtonous culture was developed. while the use of this concept receives seldom theoretically explication in archaeological texts, it does seek to incorporate the presumption of the continuity of a autochtonous culture as linked to a specific geographic area, as well as a domination of the culture of the autochtons, which is transferred by insufficiently explained processes onto the (new) population of the area. this occurrence is, allegedly, recognized in archaeological material through stylistic archaism and conservative characteristics of material culture (kuzmanović, 2012). the question of origin, ethnicity, continuity, and territorial rights in its specificities have been key for serbian archaeology and have presented a basis for interpretation of the past in a nationalistic and racial prism, though the very authors of the interpretations of the past were unaware of the origin of the ideas they so expressly insisted on (yeomans, 2007, 83-122). using the history of ideas as based on fleck's concept of the thought collective, the genesis of these malign ideas is more straightforward to demonstrate and it is easier to understand the reasons of their continuing duration in the academic community of serbia. conclusions the revelation of regressive ideas that lay at the heart of contemporary archaeology in serbia is a matter of concern in and of itself, notably as one preventing the active development of serbian archaeology although the field is open to progress in the global context. the sheer character of these regressive ideas has also led to their dangerous ideation. the essence of these ideas is akin to the racial anthropology found in the german speaking world of the early twentieth century, which met their complete explication during the failed new world order of the second world war. as regards the ethical and epistemological issues arising from such rigid approaches in anthropology and archaeology, much has already been written and criticism given, hence little need be added here (brather, 2008, 317-338; bunzl & glenn, 2006, 1-30; massin, 1996, 79-154; veit, 2002, 41-66; wiwjorra, 1996, 164-188; haßmann, 2002, 67-142). the ideas that form the marrow of serbian archaeology as it stands now have been lamentably adapted from a defense of an exclusionary ethnic and racial identity which replaces pro-serbian slavicism as a corresponding integer to pro-germanic ideology of the past. the argumentation remains the same while the names merely are replaced – such is the status quo. the question may still be further raised as to why such malign ideas can be so maintained for such a prolonged period of time within a single academic community while their dubiousness remains untouched. the answer is that hidden behind the idiosyncrasy of the history of serbian archaeology. until the outbreak of the second world war, serbian archaeology was veritably a field in which one authority ruled and suffocated any work considered other to it from official circles within the archeological community. albeit that vasić was a founding father of serbian archaeology as a scientific discipline, he was ultimately responsible for the trauma of 50 years of authoritarian-led knowledge production. yet, from this very authoritative state, serbian archaeology was led down a “better path” by a though collective as headed by milutin garašanin. he laid out the trans-yugoslavian channels and brought about a functioning form of archaeology that was more democratic. this exact change generally has been perceived as truly heroic. however, this article challenges even this viewpoint based on its continuation of essentialist ideas on identity that draw on outdated and falsified concepts of racial and ethnic identity. through following which ideas were cited by members of the trans-yugoslavian thought collective in standard archaeology in a post wwii environment, it has been pointed up that this change of ideas still held close to those outdated ones which had come before, especially those concerning the understanding monika milosavljević fleck’s concepts slicing through the gordian knot of serbian archaeology 97 of ethnicity and ethnogenesis. in the context of the balkan wars of the 1990s, these ideas were transferred into a popular language of demagogic political speech. the issue of ethnic origins as connected to ethnic identity is very much alive and present in the contemporary state of serbian society, as well as that of the region of the former yugoslavia as a whole. concordant to post-colonialism, the former colonial relations which once had ruled are still hard at work but have taken on a new form. even though they may have been swept under the carpet, much like racial and ethnic tensions in developed areas of the world in which these issues result merely in unrest and not civil strife, so it is in a “post-ethnic” balkans. the question of origins has become a politicized one and not one of epistemic virtue. the political background, which the archaeologists of serbia have lived in and continue to function from, in which i am also a part, has incorporated into itself a renounced idealization originally arising from the federal republic of yugoslavia. these ideals once envisioned wider social rights, greater social and political mobility, free education, and, most prominently, a far-reaching multi-cultural state. this same idealization excluded ethnic nationalism and harshly criticized such ideologies which ironically appeared in the breakup of the former yugoslavia. in much simpler yet comprehensive terms, binary opposition has been forged between a once multi-cultural yugoslavia and its subsequent ethnically oriented post-yugoslavian nation states based on ethnic nationalism of contrast and not similarity. due to the rift between these two spheres and the active dichotomy of thought inherent to it, it is odd indeed that this paper should address and establish significant links between the concept of origins in yugoslavia and the current serbian state, which are essentially ideologically oppositional yet mutually respective of one another as two great beasts who live side by side but do not acknowledge one another’s’ existence. in the context of academia since the year 2000, when 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(eds.) blood and homeland: eugenics and racial nationalism in central and southeast europe 1900‒1940. budapest: central european university press. 2007. pp. 83‒122. microsoft word 6boesch layout 34 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 34-48 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2018 – this is an open access article idtc dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 1 abstract: in this essay, i will expand the philosophical discussion about the representational practice in science to examine its role in science education through four case studies. the cases are of what i call ‘educational laboratory experiments’ (eles), performative models used representationally by students to come to a better understanding of theoretical knowledge of a scientific discipline. the studies help to demonstrate some idiosyncratic features of representational practices in science education, most importantly a lack of novelty and discovery built into the eles as their methodology is solidified when it becomes a widely spread educational tool within a discipline. there is thus an irreducible role for the historical development of eles in understanding their representational nature and use. the important role of the historical development of eles leads to an interesting way that educators can use eles as a means of connecting students to important historical developments within their disciplines. keywords: models; representation; educational laboratory experiments; science education received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 10 september 2018. accepted: 27 september 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction as numerous investigations have revealed, the representational practices of science are numerous, wide-reaching, complex, and varied.2 some philosophical studies of this complex practice have been made by examining different sorts of representational vehicles, including models (morgan and morrison 1999; knuuttila 2005, 2011; bailer-jones 2003; mäki 2009; 1 brandon boesch, ph.d. [orcid: 0000-0002-6092-1333], is an assistant professor of philosophy at morningside college. address: 1501 morningside avenue, sioux city, ia 51106, usa. email address: boeschb@gmail.com 2 for an overview of philosophical literature on scientific representation, see (boesch 2015; frigg and nguyen 2016; suárez 2015). representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 35 weisberg 2007; godfrey-smith 2006) and diagrams (woody 2004; perini 2005a, 2005b; sheredos et al. 2013), among others. other philosophical studies have offered a general theory of the nature of representation in science – whether that theory be what anjan chakravartty (chakravartty 2010) calls an informational account (van fraassen 1980; giere 1988; french and ladyman 1999; french 2003; bueno and french 2011) or a functional account (boesch 2017b; french 2003; giere 2010; hughes 1997; suárez 2004; van fraassen 2008). most of the aforementioned studies of scientific representation and its vehicles have focused on the nature, use, and role of scientific representation and representational vehicles in the scientific research conducted by experts. while such studies are doubtlessly informative, they ignore an important part of the practice of science – namely, science education. indeed, some views of the nature of skills within action theory lend hand to the idea that a study of educational contexts of skill transmittance will provide a useful window into expertise (small 2014). regardless of whether such a view of skills is correct, it is true that science education is an important part of scientific practice which influences and informs the work that scientists do for the remainder of their careers. it is of interest to spend some time exploring the representational practices found within science education. in this essay, i will explore one form of representational activity conducted by students: what i shall call ‘educational laboratory experiments’ (eles). i begin by identifying and describing an ele from each of four major scientific disciplines (biology, physics, chemistry, and economics). these case studies help to expand our understanding of representational practice in science by exploring a novel form of representational vehicles in a context which has not yet been thoroughly explored by philosophers-science education. after describing the cases and their historical development, i will show that eles have some unique representational features which do not hold of other forms of representational vehicles (e.g. models). most important among these features is a lack of novelty and discovery built into the eles as their methodology is solidified when it becomes a widely spread educational tool within a discipline. there is thus an irreducible role for the historical development of eles in understanding their representational nature and use. the centrality of the historical development of eles provides an interesting way in which instructors can help students to connect to important historical developments within their disciplines. educational laboratory experiments representational vehicles are most commonly explored in the context of scientific research – i.e. in the use of representational vehicles by experts as applied to novel contexts with the ultimate aim of developing a new explanation, some new knowledge, to make a novel prediction, and so on. however, there are other areas of science in which representational vehicles are also used –policy-making, science communication, science funding, and so on. for example, kevin elliott and daniel mckaughan (2014) have an interesting discussion of the nonepistemic aims of scientific representations as they are used in wetland-loss mitigation efforts. one area which has been underexplored (at least among philosophers of science) is the use of representational vehicles within science education (stoeltzner 2012). there are two primary reasons why greater attention to the use of representations in science education would be of value in increasing our philosophical understanding of the nature and role of representation in science. first, science education is the means by which scientific researchers became scientists in the first place. it, therefore, constitutes a significant part of how scientists experience and understand their practice. so, to understand how scientists are using representations in cutting-edge research (as well as for other purposes), it will be of use to consider how students of science are taught to represent. what are the elements of the representational vehicles they use? what skills are they being taught? while a study of representation in science education will not result in a complete understanding of representation in scientific representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 36 research, it will still provide insights into some of the elements of the representational practice which informs scientific research. second, there is an additional point of connection between scientific research and science education. textbooks and laboratory manuals are, on the whole, written by scientists with doctoral degrees, i.e. scientific researchers (or at least former researchers). undergraduate courses and laboratories are, on the whole, taught by scientists with doctoral degrees (or those on their way to having doctoral degrees). thus, in coming to understand science in the context of education, we can come to understand how scientists themselves conceive of their practice seen in the way they share and transmit that practice with others. of course, there is the stereotype of the professor about whom students say that she or he ‘is a brilliant scientist, but a horrible teacher’. we cannot, therefore, assume that each and every science classroom and laboratory will be useful as a means of gaining insights into how scientists conceive of their practice and communicate it successfully to their students. but nonetheless, generically speaking, we can approach the classroom and laboratory settings as contexts in which scientists are teaching students to do as they do and in which they are imparting the knowledge and skills that they themselves have come to develop. in short, scientific education is the context in which scientists initiate others into the broader scientific practice and help them to become scientists themselves. there is also some evidence, coming from the philosophy of action, that science education is a meaningful means of coming to understand the sorts of skills found in a practice. will small (small 2014) offers just such a view of the nature of skills which begins by focusing on a central idea which is “plain to us in ordinary life”: (small 2014, 88) that skills are transmitted through teaching and learning; that skill transmittance and acquisition (i.e., teaching and learning) are deeply tied to (and not separated from) a skill itself. skills, on small’s aristotelian account, are rational practical capacities which have a ‘life cycle’ of three stages: learning, practicing, and teaching (small 2014, 102-5). the acquired skill is the same exact skill practiced by experts and transmitted to others. on small’s view, a complete understanding of the nature of skills will require that we pay attention not only to expert practice, but also to the ways in which skills are transmitted and acquired, since these are part of the ‘life cycle’ of a skill. put more plainly: philosophers would do well, when aiming to understand a practice in science, to attend not only to the contexts of expertise, but also to the educational contexts in which skills are transmitted from experts to novices. in this paper, i will explore the teaching and learning of some skills associated with the practice of scientific representation, as found in the undergraduate student laboratory. to do so, i will examine several case studies of the representational uses of laboratory experiments. the choice of an investigation of the laboratory is driven primarily by the fact that, for the most part and contrary to the typical undergraduate lecture hall or classroom where the educational aims are typically related to the direct transference of disciplinary knowledge, the undergraduate laboratory aims primarily at imparting practical knowledge: e.g. to learn the method of scientific inquiry, to develop particular disciplinary techniques (e.g. measurement, gas chromatography, etc.), and so on. to put it in a pithy slogan, we might say that, for the most part, while the science classroom aims at leading students to think as scientists think, the laboratory is aimed at guiding students to do as scientists do. if, as many have suggested, scientific representation is grounded in action (boesch 2017b; giere 2010; hughes 1997; suárez 2004; van fraassen 2008), then it will be of use to study the ways that students are practically taught to use representations, developing skills and expertise. thus, the practical orientation of the student laboratory provides an important access point into the practice of representation within science. in particular, i will examine what i shall call “educational laboratory experiments” (eles, for short). eles are constructed and performed primarily for the sake of an increase in knowledge (both practical and theoretical). though they involve many of the features typically found in experimentation –data collection, variable control and manipulation, hypothesis testing, statistical analysis, etc. – i shall argue that they also contain an important representational component. representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 37 four cases of eles i will now turn to examine four examples of eles, each drawn from a different discipline. in each case, i will describe three parts of the ele: the background, methodology, and evaluation. the background includes an overview of the theoretical knowledge which the ele represents. the methodology describes the steps that students take when they perform an ele. the evaluation describes the way in which instructors measure the success of the ele in terms of learning outcomes in the students. throughout each case, i will also aim to offer an overview of the historical development of the ele, including an account of how its methodology became standardized over time. marbles and genetic drift (biology) genetic drift is the change in the allelic frequencies of a population due to random effects. since there is an important stochastic element to reproduction and survival, any given population is likely to differ, at least slightly, in allelic frequency from that of its parent generation. in some cases, these random changes can accumulate and permanently alter the allelic make-up of a population, sometimes leading to sufficient genetic and phenotypic differences so as to cause speciation, i.e. the development of a new species. genetic drift is more likely to lead to such changes when the given population is small, since a small population increases the likelihood that random effects will accrue over time. genetic drift is better understood through a well-known analogy to random draw from a jar of marbles. imagine that we have a jar full of ten red and ten blue marbles. if we select only eight of those marbles, there is a decent chance that the frequency of the colors in our sample will not match the frequency of the colors of the marbles in the original jar. if we change the distribution of marbles in the jar to match the frequency of colors in our sample and draw a second time, we might find that the sample, once again, fails to match the distribution of the jar. depending on the color frequency of the sample, changing the jar’s distribution of colors a second time might move the relative frequencies back towards an equal number or may enhance a shift towards a higher frequency of one color over the other. over time, this may lead to a population which has only red or only blue marbles. the analogy to genetic drift is fairly clear: the different colors represent the different alleles of a population. through random chance, one allele may be more highly represented in later generations. over time, these changes can accumulate, leading to the fixation of whatever allele remains. the original analogy between genetic drift and marble drawing goes back to dubinin and romaschoff (dubinin and romaschoff 1932), as described by theodosius dobzhansky in his genetics and the origin of the species (dobzhansky 1937, 142). a few decades after the introduction of the analogy, several authors described the value of using the analogy as a model in classroom lectures, either as a thought experiment or lecture demonstration (bonnier 1947; house 1953; johnson 1958; p. moody 1952; p. a. moody 1947). in 1971, jamie thomerson proposed that the analogy be turned into an experiment to be performed by students, rather than just an analogy or thought experiment present in the text or a demonstration conducted in front of students. in an acknowledgment, thomerson says that he “first became aware of this kind of simulation experiment in a population-genetics course under e. peter volpe of tulane university” (thomerson 1971, 45). his acknowledgment suggests that the experiment was at least somewhat widespread by the 1960s, since thomerson performed his graduate studies at tulane university from 1961-1965 (keevin, nico, and taphorn 2015, 1096–97). as an experiment to be performed by students, it quickly became widespread. since the 1990s, it has been a relatively standard experiment within high school and undergraduate biological laboratories (mccomas 1994; froehlich and london 1996). presently, it can be found easily online, oftentimes with an outline of instructions, guided questions, and suggestions for forms of evaluation on the part of instructors. while representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 38 some of the details may change (for example, nancy staub (staub 2002) suggests using chocolate candies instead of marbles or beads), the general methodology remains more-orless the same. the ele, whether conducted with marbles or chocolate candies follows the conditions of the analogy i described above. the difference is that in this case, students are practically engaged in performing the actions described, rather than merely imagining them. that is to say that they actually engage in drawing marbles, measuring frequencies, recording changes, altering the distributions of the jar over time, performing statistical analyses, and so on. typically, students are asked to perform the experiment multiple times, using variable starting frequencies among the colors of the marbles, quantity selected in each draw, total number of marbles, and total number of colors. students are also asked to compare their results to others to help make salient that their results are stochastic. oftentimes, the experiment is tied together with other similar experiments, like having different sized marbles and therefore a different variable selection rate which can be used to demonstrate the effects of natural selection. of course, students conducting this ele are encouraged to draw conclusions not about marbles but about populations of species and the effect of genetic drift on variation within those populations. the methodology of the ele, as described in standard laboratory manuals and guides, begins with an introduction of relevant evolutionary terms and concepts. mccomas, for example, suggests that before performing the experiment “[t]he students should have had some introduction to population genetics concepts – perhaps a general treatment of the hardy-weinberg law and some explanation of the concept of selection – before they attempt this exercise” (mccomas 1994, 92). after collecting data and manipulating the systems, students are asked to respond to questions which encourage them to use their manipulation of the marble system as a means of understanding the effect of genetic drift. froehlich and london (froehlich and london 1996) ask students to analyze how the forces of evolution were demonstrated within the experiment. staub (staub 2002, 375) suggests that, in order to measure the successful outcome of the experiment, students should be asked to read peter buri’s (buri 1956) study of genetic drift in fruit flies, and should compare their results with buri’s. in this case, they are asked to apply their insights to a realworld case. the conceptual preparation and assigned forms of evaluation suggest that the main purpose of this experiment has (unsurprisingly) nothing to do with investigating the actual system of marbles, but rather with investigating the nature of genetic drift. students are led to begin considering concepts related to population genetics and genetic drift before performing an experiment on a system of non-living marbles. after performing their experiment, they are not asked to draw conclusions or statistical inferences which apply only to the system of marbles, but rather about the evolutionary mechanism of genetic drift, thinking of marble colors as allele-types, sampling as reproduction, changes in the color frequency of marbles as changes in allelic frequencies in a population, and so on. students are asked to experiment on a system and use it as a vehicle for surrogate inferences about a different system (suárez 2004). in short: students are representing genetic drift in this ele. hooke’s law (physics) hooke’s law (f=-kx) describes the extension of a spring as being directly proportional to the force applied to the spring. so, any increase or decrease in the application of a force will result in a corresponding change in the extension or compression of the spring. the law was first described by robert hooke, who used an anagram (“ceiiinosssttuv”) as a means of publishing the law. he unscrambled the anagram two years later as: “ut tensio sic vis” (translating roughly to: ‘as the extension goes, so goes the force’) (rohland 2016). given that the law was formulated in the middle to late 17th century, it is difficult to completely trace back the history of the use of experiments relating to hooke’s law in science education. one way that hooke’s representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 39 law has long played a role in laboratories – in both student laboratories and in those of scientific experts – is through the use of spring balances, which measure mass proportionate to the extension of a spring as described by hooke’s law. spring balances date back to the late part of the 17th century, with the work of jacques ozanam (benton 1941, 66). in the late 1890s, leroy colley’s (cooley 1897, 36) laboratory manual introduces the concept of hooke’s law in an introduction of the spring balance, though students are not asked to test the law in anything like an ele. as a stand-alone experiment, we can trace the origins of the hooke’s law ele at least as far back as the early 20th century. in 1911, c. l. vestal described a tool which could be used in a classroom setting to demonstrate hooke’s law (vestal 1911; haupt 1929). shortly thereafter, gordon fulcher (fulcher 1915) included hooke’s law in his outline of a course on mechanics which offered an alternative to the standard “dogmatic, mathematical presentation of mechanics” (645) which included the calibration of spring balances as a way to study hooke’s law. the purported novelty of the practical orientation of his outline suggests that this may have been one of the first occasions when students were asked to test the law on their own, rather than as a demonstration to passively watch. in the years that followed, an investigation of hooke’s law – whether through spring balances or through an alternative apparatus – became a standard experiment performed in physics laboratories (turner 1944, 19-20; tyler 1959, 18-19; avery and ingram 1961, 66-67; harris 1972, 89-91; wilson and hernandez 2005, 179-88; loyd 2013, 207-15). the methodology is fairly standard wherever it is presented. as a standalone experiment, students are typically given a spring from which they hang a series of masses, increasing in size. after the application of each mass, students are asked to measure the length of the extension of the spring. they then plot the change in extension as a function of the change in mass, which allows them to determine the slope of the line which is identical to the value of the constant k of that spring. oftentimes, students are asked to perform the same process again for several springs, showing how k is a constant value unique to each spring. more recently, given the rise of distance education courses being taught online, some have created opportunities for virtual hooke’s law experiments. in one case, students are asked to interact with a virtual spring (hatherly, jordan, and cayless 2009). in a different case, they remotely operate a real spring (torre et al. 2011). after the experiment students are often asked to answer questions about deviations between their measurement and calculation of k for a spring and the accepted or expected values of k for that spring. an important insight into the representational nature of the ele arises from how it is that students handle these deviations. indeed, most manuals ask students to explain their deviations, i.e. explain where they went wrong or what additional effects may have intervened and caused deviant results. unexpected results are treated not as signs of novelty or of the need to rethink hooke’s law, but rather as evidence of a mistake in the experiment or the environment. here we can see one of the features central to the representational use of eles, namely that deviations are not treated as evidence of something about the phenomenon, but rather as evidence of a mistake on the part of the student. more importantly, deviations from the expected values do not even prevent students from successful completion of the ele, provided they are able to account for the deviations they observed. the fact that the aims of the activity can still be achieved even in the case of deviations highlights the representational nature of the ele, since students can still come to understand hooke’s law even when an experiment goes awry, provided they can explain what went wrong. in short, students are representing the idealized theory of hooke’s law, even though there are plenty of ways in which that law is not being perfectly instantiated or measured in their experiment. common pool resource games (economics) common pool resources (cprs) are those resources which are not owned by any particular individual and are instead shared in common by a larger community. problems arise with representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 40 cprs when there is an economic gain for individuals who draw more heavily upon the resource, such that the cpr is unable to keep up with the heavy use, and so is depleted. in some cases, this can lead to a major loss in the resource, as was the case with the collapse of the northern atlantic population of cod in the 1990s, due to overfishing (eisenkopf and sulser 2013). to help students understand cprs, the economic theory around them, and the way in which they can be depleted through seemingly innocuous actions on the part of individuals, some economics teachers have recently begun to employ a cpr experiment in their classrooms (murphy and cardenas 2004; eisenkopf and sulser 2013). the precise details of the experiment are variable, but the general methodology remains the same in either case. students are told to imagine themselves to be in some particular setting in which they are drawing upon some common resource. one example had students drawing “fish” from a pond (eisenkopf and sulser 2013) and another had them “working” some number of months to collect firewood from a forest (murphy and cardenas 2002). both experiments were based on the data and details collected from real studies that had been performed for people drawing on cprs in those settings, i.e. a real fishery and a real forest. students then proceed through several rounds in which they alter their load on the cpr, changing the number of fishes they draw or hours they work to collect firewood. to help students behave sincerely, students are offered a reward for whoever can gain the most resources (or income from the resources) – e.g. candy. because of alterations in the scenario made according to the data collected in the real studies, the students’ choices will affect the cpr – changing the amount of the resource remaining after each round and its value. after each change in the cpr, students will once again alter their load on the cpr. this cycle will occur through several iterations, perhaps ultimately resulting in the depletion of the resource. throughout the experiment, students are asked to consider the nature of cprs and how our interactions with them can result in their depletion. students are often asked, after the completion of the experiment, to apply contemporary economic theory to the scenario they experienced. this payoff of the cpr ele is highlighted by the way in which economics instructors measured the success of the cpr experiment to show that they are a valuable addition to an economics course (murphy and cardenas 2004; eisenkopf and sulser 2013). in both cases, the instructors used cpr eles in their classrooms and measured the success of the experiments in terms of educational outcomes. in one of the studies, the success of the cpr experiment was defined in terms of the students’ ability to calculate nash equilibria under various conditions (murphy and cardenas 2004). the other study measured success in terms of the students’ performance on a test of economic understanding (eisenkopf and sulser 2013). here, we can see that the measurable outcomes used by instructors who introduce the cpr ele into the classroom laboratory reveal the true purpose of the ele. students are not merely altering some numbers and trying to win a piece of candy in a strange game. instead, and unsurprisingly, students are performing these actions as a means of better understanding the contexts in which cpr problems can arise, and how economic theory can help to explain them. in short: students are representing cpr problems and the economic theory which explains them. the nature of chirality (chemistry) chemistry is an interesting and complex context in which we can examine the use of eles. the reason for the complexity is that the chemistry undergraduate laboratory is in most cases, first and foremost, technically-oriented. that is to say that students are primarily led to develop relevant techniques found in the discipline of chemistry. while a theoretical understanding of chemicals, compounds, and reactions are deeply implicated by the experiments, the primary aim of the laboratory is focused on teaching vital techniques in chemistry, things like titration, vacuum distillation, and the use of nmr, spectrometry, gas representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 41 chromatography, etc. however, this is not the only aim of chemistry laboratory experiments. there is also, at least on some occasions, an important representational component of the experiment insofar as students perform an experiment not only to learn new techniques, but also to better understand some theoretical concept. such is the case, i will argue, with an ele in which students are asked to isolate carvone. carvone is a common chemical found in both the oil of caraway seeds and the leaves of spearmint. importantly, carvone exists as two enantiomers: (r)-(-)-carvone and (s)-(+)carvone. the former enantiomer is present in high quantities in spearmint leaves and is responsible for the typical spearmint smell. the latter is present in high quantities in caraway seeds, and smells (unsurprisingly) like caraway – which, if you have never smelled it, is quite different from the smell of spearmint.3 enantiomers are forms of a chemical which have the same structure, but in a non-superimposable mirror-image fashion, like the nonsuperimposable mirror image relationship between the left and right hands. measurable differences between these two enantiomers are fairly limited – they have the same boiling point, nmr spectrum, infrared spectrum, gas chromatography, and so on. there are only two differences which can be recorded: one is the difference in smell, and the other is the polarimetry of each enantiomer. one of them rotates light positively ((s)-(+)-carvone) and the other rotates light negatively ((r)-(-)-carvone). it had long been suspected that there may be a sensory difference between different enantiomers, but this was not demonstrated by scientists until 1971 (murov and pickering 1973). at that time, two different pairs of scientists showed that there was a difference in the smells between the two enantiomers of carvone (russell and hills 1971; friedman and miller 1971). shortly after the publication of their work, steven murov and miles pickering (murov and pickering 1973) suggested that experiments using carvone could be of value in education, specifically in organic chemistry laboratories. the experiment has since become widely used and frequently cited (garin 1976; davis et al. 2003; kraft and mannschreck 2010; o’shea, von riesen, and rossi 2012). there are two primary methodologies for the experiment as it is performed today. one is to perform the experiment using vacuum distillation. the use of vacuum distillation requires that carvone be separated from the other components present in the oil. there are two primary components in caraway seed and spearmint leaf oils: the respective enantiomer of carvone as well as limonene. the boiling point of limonene is significantly lower than that of carvone, and so can be boiled off.4 the second methodology is to isolate carvone through the use of gas chromatography. carvone and limonene have differentiated retention rates, and so gas chromatography can be effectively used to isolate both enantiomers of carvone. whichever method is employed, students then perform various additional tests on their distillate or sample. which tests are performed depends on the time allotted and instruments available, but typically include nmr and infrared spectrometry. these are often compared to the same tests performed for enantiomerically pure samples of (r)-(-)-carvone and (s)-(+)carvone. students are typically asked to notice, through comparison with a student who distilled the other enantiomer (or through comparison with their own results if they distilled both enantiomers), that there is no difference in mixed melting point, nmr, and infrared spectrometry for both of their distillates (barring the inevitable impurities which will typically remain) (garin 1976). thus, the standard presentation of the carvone ele includes a final step in which students measure the angle of rotation of polarized light through the use of a polarimeter. in so doing, students can recognize that (apart from the smell) the only analytical difference between the two forms of carvone is their chirality. 3 that is, unless you are among the approximately 10% of the population who are unable to distinguish between the two (friedman and miller 1971). 4 the boiling point for each is fairly high – 177ºc for limonene and 230 ºc for carvone – so vacuum distillation is used to keep the temperatures more manageable, i.e. under 100ºc (murov and pickering 1973, 74). representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 42 it is important to note that the bulk of the success of this experiment comes from the correct use of various tools, instruments, and methodologies. thus, one of the primary aims of this experiment is purely technical in scope: teaching students to use various instruments and analyze their results. such was the presumed primary purpose of the experiment as it was originally suggested by murov and pickering (1973), though they also note that the experiment is additionally useful insofar as it “familiarizes [the student] with the phenomena of optical isomerism in an unusual and dramatic way” (1973, 75). such an aim is present, even if secondary, in most contemporary presentations of the experimental methodology. for example, david garin says that “the fact that the enantiomers can be differentiated by odor heightens student interest in the topic” (garin 1976, 105). the choice of carvone rather than some other essential oil is useful in that it provides the opportunity to think more carefully about the nature of chirality. in this case, the difference is particularly striking and salient – most of the measurements yield identical results for each enantiomer. the only difference is to be found in the polarimetry and in the corresponding scent. the interesting phenomenon and the design of the experiment are partially aimed at getting students to understand the nature of chirality, that though it may only be detectable by polarimetry, it can still have interesting macroscopic effects. in short: students are also representing the theory around chirality in the carvone ele. representing in the student laboratory as i intonated at the end of each case study, there is an important representational component to each of the eles. the representational nature of the eles derives from the fact that they are being used for surrogate inferences (suárez 2004) or, put otherwise, as a means to better understand some theoretical knowledge (boesch 2017b). since they meet the theoretical requirements of scientific representation that have been described by philosophers of science, there is good reason to include eles as representational vehicles – things used by scientists representationally. the representational role of the use of eles is most evident in the way that the eles are prefaced – m with references to the theoretical or empirical object being represented – and in the way in which students are asked questions and evaluated on their work in the ele, as well as the way in which instructors measure the success of the use of an ele in the classroom – both of which attend to the students’ increased ability to demonstrate that they understand the theoretical or empirical phenomenon in question. so, for example, preambles to the genetic drift ele ensure that students are sufficiently familiar with population genetics and the concept of genetic drift. the questions they answer after the ele ask them to demonstrate an understanding of the selective force of genetic drift and, in one case, to apply their results to a real-world study of fruit flies. these questions demonstrate that students are not only being taught to follow good experimental design and methodology (with good definition of the question, data collection and recording, and statistical analysis), but are also learning more about the theoretical concept of genetic drift and the way in which it functions as a mechanism for evolutionary change. similarly, the hooke’s law ele asks students to account for any discrepancies between their measured values of k and the accepted value of k for the spring in question. aside from growing in important experimental methodology and technical skills (measurement, recording of data, and management of significant digits), students are also coming to understand the generalizability of hooke’s law by seeing its predictive power in practice and demonstrating an increased ability to apply the law to various contexts. the cpr ele was specifically evaluated by its designers in terms of the increased ability of students to understand important theoretical concepts related to the depletion of cprs. even when the development of technical and methodological skills is clearly at the forefront, there can still be a representational component to an experiment, as is displayed in the chirality of carvone ele. in addition to learning how to perform vacuum distillation and use several instruments representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 43 of measurement on their distillates, the choice of such a striking molecule along with the intentional design of the experimental methodology and student questions was clearly designed to help students come to a better understanding of the nature of chirality. insights about the representational practices of science i began this paper by suggesting that science education provides an interesting context in which to explore scientific practice. this holds true of the form of representational practice that i have described in this paper, eles. my primary task so far in this paper has been to describe a context of representation which has, so far, not been thoroughly explored: representation in educational contexts. in so doing, my goal was to increase our philosophical understanding of the nature of representational practice in science by drawing our attention to a form of representational vehicle (eles) which is distinct from other sorts of representational vehicles. it will be of use now to pause to consider explicitly what it is about eles that makes them distinct from other forms of representation in science. the primary point of distinction between the representational use of eles and that of models in scientific research is the lack of novelty found in eles. students use eles without any expectation of some novel explanation or knowledge, discovery, new predictions, and so on. this lack of novelty is a contrast to the use of, for example, models which are “supposed to produce other, preferably unexpected, results apart from the expected behavior” (knuuttila 2011, 268). eles are useful precisely when they produce the expected results, the ones which could have been entirely predicted by theory beforehand. indeed, eles are carefully constructed for the sake of these expected results, so that students will be in a position to draw the relevant theoretical insights about whatever topic is at hand. so, for example, the marble-drawing ele is defined by a methodology which is constructed with constraints (number of marbles, colors, size of draw, relative frequencies of colors, etc.) which are designed to help students arrive at the expected results. these same results could be understood using mathematical equations of population genetics, but the use of the marble-drawing ele helps to make the theoretical insights tangible and present (they are represented) to the students. better understanding the representational nature of eles can be of great use in better understanding other forms of scientific representational vehicles which lack novelty – e.g., representational vehicles found in journal articles, grant applications, and so on are similar to eles insofar as they are successful precisely when they make certain theoretical points clearer. another reason it is important to attend to representational vehicles which lack an element of novelty, apart from the aim of better understanding representational practice in all its forms, is that measures of normative evaluation for these representational vehicles are distinct from those which do include a role for novel predictions or explanation (e.g. models). eles and the representations found in journal articles are measured by whether the user of the representation (the student or the scientist reading the journal article) can better understand whatever knowledge, theory, explanation, or understanding is being conveyed. the role of representations in these cases is more communicative rather than explorative. as they constitute a significant part of representational practice in science, it is worth understanding how these aims are achieved and how they function as part of the epistemic toolbox of science. a second major payoff from an understanding of the representational practice associated with eles is that it helps to demonstrate the integral role in the representational relationship for ‘licensing’ (boesch 2017a). i include a wide range of scientific activities in representational licensing, including “the context in which [a representational vehicle] was created, the application of theoretical and empirical constraints, the awareness of and management of idealizations, and the history of its reception and use” (boesch 2017a, 979). we can see many of these elements on display in the use of eles. among the important features are the historical elements – the way in which the ele developed over time and representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 44 became a solidified element of science education in that discipline. as we saw, for example, with the genetic drift ele, there are plenty of variations about the precise details of how the ele is conducted. however, the central features of the ele have been standardized over time, tracing back to important work of population geneticists. similar remarks hold true for other eles, including the chirality of carvone ele, which traces back to important work from scientists on the link between chirality and sensation. according to my concept of representational licensing, we cannot fully explain the way in which any vehicle (including an ele) is representational without attending to these features of licensing, including its historical elements. the broader upshot for those interested in scientific representation is that greater attention should be played to the full temporal extension of representational vehicles. if we wish to understand how and why they represent, we must pay attention (in part) to these features of representational licensing which extend back to its very construction and introduction to a discipline. the examples given of eles in this paper help to demonstrate why this is important and the way that attending to the historical elements of representational licensing can yield insights into the representational nature of the vehicle. payoffs for history in science education aside from revealing insights which enhance a philosophical understanding of the nature and role of representation within science, the study of eles i have offered here provides a meaningful pedagogical payoff as well. if we generalize over the examples that i described above, the methodology for most of the eles contains three primary pieces: the background, the methodology, and the evaluation. recognizing the general features of each of these elements is useful to the development of additional eles down the road. it importantly also demonstrates several ways in which instructors can help to connect their students to the historical elements of scientific knowledge, helping them to trace out the development of the ele over time. the first piece is a background, which typically contains relevant theoretical background details and helps to set the context. the background plays an important role in helping students attend to the representational context in which the ele will be functioning. so, for example, the background of the genetic drift ele was a theory about the selective mechanism of genetic drift. similarly, the background of the hooke’s law ele is a discussion of the mathematical equation which describes the law. though i did not find any examples of a historical exposition of the relevant background theory of any of the eles i described in this paper, this is one of the ways in which instructors might demonstrate the historicity of scientific knowledge. at this stage of the ele, a background could include not only the contextual theory which is at stake in the ele, but also information about how that background theory developed – e.g., by discussing dobzhansky’s important (dobzhansky 1937) book and his citation of the work of dubinin and romaschoff (dubinin and romaschoff 1932) for the genetic drift ele. similarly, the story of hooke’s discovery of his law would make for an excellent part of the background context for the hooke’s law ele, connecting students to the discovery of the law while also helping to set up the theoretical background knowledge. the second generalized part of an ele is the methodology. the methodology is the set of instructions given to students by which they conduct the experiment. so, for the genetic drift ele, it is the instructions about how to set the original ‘population’ of marbles in the jar, and how to proceed through multiple ‘generations’ as they draw marbles out of the jars and change the population ratios of the marbles in the jars over time. similarly, for the hooke’s law ele, the methodology describes to students how they should use different masses on springs and use a resulting measure of their extension to plot a trendline between extension and mass (as a measure of force). as i described above, there are oftentimes differences in the precise details of the methodology, but the broader, more general features of the ele representing in the student laboratory brandon boesch 45 are fairly standardized. there are fewer opportunities for instructors to invite students to reflect upon the historical nature of scientific knowledge with regard to the methodology in particular, though the historical elements play an important role in the representational uses of eles, as i have described. all the same, instructors could ask students to compare their methodology with one taken from the past and use the alternative instructions as a way to alter the ele slightly as they proceed. the final typical part of an ele, and the one in which there is the greatest opportunity for instructors to invite students to think about the historical nature of scientific knowledge is the evaluation. in the evaluation, students are required to produce some measurable outcome which is used by instructors to evaluate the students’ work and assign grades. oftentimes, this will be a lab report of some sort, a short descriptive essay, or a response to a set of questions. at this stage of the ele, students are induced to make the clear connection between the theoretical ideas being represented, if they have not already made them. when analyzing the data of the marble-drawing in the genetic drift ele, students are explicitly asked to explain how the data reveals the selective effects of genetic drift. the same is true for other eles, where students are asked to compare their data with the expected results (in light of the theory at hand) or to explain its relationship to the theoretical knowledge explained in the background. some of the eles already use this stage as an opportunity to connect more deeply to the historical roots of the ideas at play. for example, one presentation of the genetic drift ele had its students compare their data to important work performed by peter buri on fruit flies (buri 1956). similarly, the cpr ele relied upon data collected from actual examples of cprs. a comparison to or reliance upon historical data is just one way to bring in a historical mindset to the evaluation phase of an ele. it is easy to imagine (if the information is not provided in the background) assigning students to give a brief report on the source of the theoretical knowledge at hand – e.g., in the hooke’s law ele, tracing back the story of hooke’s law to hooke’s work or briefly describing the development and use of spring balances. similarly, in the chirality of carvone ele, students could be asked to read the original papers describing the difference of smell associated with the enantiomers of carvone (russell and hills 1971; friedman and miller 1971). the historical nature of scientific knowledge is often ignored in science education or otherwise relegated to a brief introduction or a few dates offered in the lecture hall. but, as i have shown here, this need not be the case. apart from providing philosophers with an interesting case of representational practice which helps to better understand how representation works in science, eles can be a useful means of bringing history into science education. most importantly, it is interesting to note the way in which eles help bring historical insights into the laboratory, rather than just into the lecture hall. history becomes a part of the activities of students – a part of what they do – rather than something they just hear. rather than being thought of as a mere precursor, students are invited to see the active role that the historical generation of scientific knowledge plays in the scientific activities they conduct week-to-week. conclusion in this essay, i have identified a new context for the philosophical study of scientific representation: the representational use of eles in science education. the value of these studies extends beyond a philosophical analysis of scientific representation and extends also to offer a point of insight on pedagogy. in both cases, the insights are linked to the 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clarendon press ; oxford universitypress. vestal, c. l. 1911. a wall form of bending apparatus. school science and mathematics 11 (5): 413–15. doi:10.1111/j.1949-8594.1911.tb03409.x. weisberg, michael. 2007. who is a modeler? the british journal for the philosophy of science 58 (2): 207–33. wilson, j., and c. hernandez. 2005. physics laboratory experiments. 6th ed. boston: houghton mifflin. woody, andrea i. 2004. more telltale signs: what attention to representation reveals about scientific explanation. philosophy of science 71 (5): 780–93. doi:10.1086/421416. microsoft word 13moura layout 157 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 157-170 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2018 – this is an open access article article newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura1 abstract: in 1772, joseph priestley published the history and present state of discoveries relating to vision, light and colours, also known as the history of optics. the book intended to present all the achievements in the matter of light and colors, from the ancient times to the 18th century. this paper presents a study of the content of the history of optics, in order to analyze how it sold newtonian optics in the historiography of light. it will comprise discussions on priestley’s views on history, his involvement with optical studies, his perceptions on newtonian optics and the biographical chart included in the book. this analysis can add new elements for the current historiography on priestley, clarifying other aspects that demonstrate his commitment to a newtonian view of the history of optics, as well as an example of the prestige that newton’s natural philosophy had throughout the 18th century. keywords: joseph priestley; isaac newton; historiography of science; newtonian optics; light received: 31 july 2018. reviewed 3 september 2018. accepted: 19 october 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.12 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ______________________________________________________________________ introduction joseph priestley (1733-1804) was a recognized educator, writer and natural philosopher, widely renowned for his writings and ideas on many subjects, from religion to natural philosophy. in his biography of priestley for the dictionary of scientific biography, schofield (2008, 147) asserted that “books and articles about priestley are almost as profuse as those by priestley”. therefore, it is not difficult to find scholarly work on his life, ideas, methods 1 breno arsioli moura [orcid: 0000-0003-2130-7055] is a professor in the center for natural and human sciences (ccnh) at the federal university of abc – ufabc. address: av. dos estados, 5001, santa terezinha. santo andré – sp, 09210-580, brazil. e-mail: breno.moura@ufabc.edu.br a preliminary draft of this paper was presented at the 13th biennial conference of the international history, philosophy and science teaching group (ihpst), held in rio de janeiro, brazil, in 2015. newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 158 and achievements (schofield 1967; garret 1973; griffith 1983; rivers and wykes 2008, to cite few examples). priestley wrote more than two hundred books and papers on many subjects. although most of them have been subject to careful studies, his the history and present state of discoveries relating to vision, light and colours (hereafter, the history of optics) still occupies a secondary position.2 published in 1772, the book intended to be the first volume of a history of all branches of natural philosophy, an extensive project priestley aimed to undertake, in order to give a complete account of the history of natural philosophy from the ancient times to his own. the book was a continuation of a prior successful enterprise, the history and present state of electricity, with original experiments (hereafter the history of electricity), published in 1767. priestley wrote the book when optics in britain was largely dominated by the corpuscular tradition and isaac newton (1642-1727) was considerably popular. since the publication of newton’s opticks in 1704, a “newtonian optics” emerged, founded on the principles of the materiality of light and its interaction with other bodies by forces. the 18th century saw the popularization and transformation of newtonian natural philosophy. newton’s name was frequently associated with absolute and true knowledge, which could not be questioned or refuted. many “newtonianisms” flourished as models of authority (dobbs and jacob 1995). to be newtonian was a synonym of being always correct. my aim in this paper is to show that the history of optics is a relevant example of how newtonian optics played an important role in the historiography of light written by priestley, establishing parameters of what could be classified as newtonian – and, therefore, relevant to the history of optics – and what could not. first, i will discuss the process of writing and publishing the book, emphasizing his views on history. then, i will proceed a critical analysis of two core parts of the history of optics: the period v – where priestley discussed newton’s conceptions – and the biographical chart included at the beginning of the book. with this study, i intend to contribute to a wider understanding of priestley’s writings on natural philosophy and history and of the influence of newtonian optics on the studies on light throughout the 18th century. joseph priestley, a historian of optics the history of the history of optics began with priestley’s other book on natural philosophy, published in 1767: the history of electricity. in 1765, he had spent some months in london, where he was introduced to eminent researchers on electricity, such as benjamin franklin (1706-1790), john canton (1718-1772), william watson (1715-1787) and richard price (17231791). in his memoirs, priestley claimed to have mentioned to franklin “an idea […] of writing the discoveries in electricity” (priestley and priestley jr. 1806, 50). with their help, priestley was able to trace the main events to the development of electricity until his days, also describing original experiments (schofield 1997, 142). the reception of the history of electricity was better than priestley could have imagined. it sold very well and had four editions published years after – with revisions, corrections and additions made by the author – and translated versions to french and german. prompted by the success of his book on electricity, priestley envisioned writing a history of all branches of natural philosophy. in the preface of the history of electricity he claimed that this would be “an immense work; perhaps more than one man ought to undertake”, but he hoped to see “persons who have leisure, and sufficient abilities” to proceed part of the project (priestley 1767, vii). he soon decided to embrace the task himself. 2 the best analysis so far was presented in schofield’s biography on priestley (schofield 1997, 240-249). brock (2008, 55-57) also discusses some aspects of the book. newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 159 according to schofield, priestley planned to collect as many materials as he could from all fields and then analyze them separately. his idea was writing about magnetism first. he changed his mind by november 1770, since he had acquired more books on optics than on other fields (schofield 1997, 242). however, unlike the assistance priestley had to write the history of electricity, he did not have many supporters for the history of optics. he only acknowledged the aid of the reverend john michell (1724-1793), who probably consolidated on him the influence of newtonian optics (mccormmach 2012, 190). i will return to this topic later. soon after the publication, it had a favorable review, written by william bewley (1726-1783). bewley was particularly interested to see the continuation of priestley’s series of books on the history of natural philosophy and mentioned the necessity of financial and human support. to this piece of intelligence, however, we must not omit to add that, on account of the very considerable expences [sic] attending the execution of his general plan, and for other considerations, the continuation of this philosophical history will intirely [sic] depend on the favourable reception of the present work. on this head we can only express our wishes that the public patronage may animate and enable the author to prosecute and complete his useful undertaking. (bewley 1772, 319) the sales of the history of optics were “not such as to encourage me to proceed with a work of so much labour and expence”, said priestley in his memoirs (priestley and priestley jr 1806, 64). soon he abandoned the project of writing about all the branches of natural philosophy. in the revision of priestley’s works included in other editions of his memoirs, thomas cooper (1759-1839) suggested that the great popularity of electricity and chemistry had eclipsed the book. according to him, the subject of optics did not attract much attention from the “sciolists and amateurs” and priestley neglected many important theories, such as huygens’ and euler’s (priestley and priestley jr 1806, 285).3 schofield (1997, 248) and brock (2008, 56) add other factors to the unsuccessful fate of the history of optics. the book was significantly different from the history of electricity and did not have many parts that were eulogized, like the description of original experiments. the style of writing was tedious since priestley had to recollect a great amount of ideas, concepts, theories and experiments from other natural philosophers, describe and analyze them. furthermore, it seems he had completed the work only two months after he decided to begin it. the errata included at the end of the book indicates he had a lot of work not done when it was published. it had just one edition in english and only one german translation appeared, two years later. despite of all difficulties priestley faced with the writing and publication of the history of optics, the book remains a fine piece of 18th century natural philosophy, a portrait of what optics was and how newtonians like him saw the previous developments in the field. the book has two volumes, comprising 812 pages, along with others that included the dedication, preface and plates. there are 24 plates, with 173 pictures, most of them borrowed from the works of other authors. for example, the reader will see many pictures from newton’s opticks from plates 11 to 15. priestley divided the history of optics into six periods. period i, with no more than thirty pages, covers the developments of more than a millennium and a half in optics, from ancient greece to the beginning of the 17th century. periods ii and iii describe the achievements in 3 it is worth to mention that cooper’s view on priestley’s the history of optics may have been influenced by the status of optics at the beginning of the 19th century, when the corpuscular theory of light did not hold the same prestige as before. it seems natural that he would mention vibration theories, such as huygens’ and euler’s, but they were not widely accepted in britain when priestley wrote the history of optics. see cantor (1983). newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 160 the 17th century, especially the ones of rené descartes (1596-1650) and johannes kepler (15711630). period iv includes the discoveries until newton, whose theories are analyzed in detail in period v. period vi covers the 18th century optics. in the end, priestley included a list of technical terms he used, an index and a catalogue of books. he claimed to possess 265 books in different formats, 35 in folio, 95 in quarto, 73 in octavo and 62 in twelves (duodecimo), numbers that are greater if different volumes from the same book are taken into account. that list indicates priestley’s effort in bringing together the history of a well-stablished discipline. from a distant perspective, we can see both the history of electricity and the history of optics as historiographical works, possibly the first on both fields. however, these books had a clear purpose for priestley. they were connected with his current ideas on education and history of the secular world, as well with the 18th century conceptions of history.4 this “baconian” history (schofield 2008, 141) was a portrayal of progress, a way to see how the achievements of the past could lead society to a better and brighter future (gay 1969). priestley, immersed in these ideas, believed that history could foster in future generations a concise, objective and clear knowledge about the natural world. for him, history “was a means to discovery […] and a means of conveying information and persuasion” (schofield 1997, 139). according to kragh, “priestley was one of the many who regarded the historical development as a natural part of their science, a stocktaking of what had been achieved and of the problems that were still unsolved” (kragh 1987, 3). history was a powerful tool for teaching once it could present a wide view of all the advancements in natural philosophy. histories showed “how scientific progress needed the participation of many investigators, meaning that science was accessible to everyone” (brock 2008, 53). this is manifest in the preface of the history of optics, where priestley mentioned his historical methods, claiming the importance of two things in the process of advancement of “useful science”: the first is an [sic] historical account of their rise, progress, and present state; and the second, an easy channel of communication for all new discoveries.5 […] such histories as these are, in a manner, absolutely necessary. (priestley 1772a, i) as a “historical account of their rise, progress, and present state” (kragh 1987, 4), priestley’s historiographies enabled a quick access to available knowledge. history was not a critical study of past events, but a collection of facts and episodes designed to facilitate the understanding of the progress of societies. therefore, priestley was interested in describing the different ideas on optics in the easiest and most objective way possible. at present philosophical knowledge is so dispersed in various books and languages, that the very reading of what is absolutely necessary, in order to be properly acquainted with any one branch of it, would take up more time and attention than any person, though ever so much devoted to philosophical pursuits, would ever think of bestowing upon it; unless he should make it his business to digest the materials into a history, or system, for the use of others as well as of himself […]. (priestley 1772a, ii) priestley claimed to have adopted a “historical method”, in order “to communicate knowledge with the greatest ease, certainty, and pleasure.” he mentioned his “systematical” approach, which would be particularly useful to “young students”, so they 4 in his theological writings, priestley showed a different form of historical thinking, being much more provocative and controversial in his aim to prove unitarian beliefs through history. on the secular and the theological perspectives in priestley’s historiography, see kennedy (2008, 181-201). 5 this is a reference for scientific journals, such as the philosophical transactions of the royal society. newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 161 could access any information they wanted very quickly. he also emphasized the intelligibility of the book for those “who have little or no knowledge of mathematics” (priestley 1772a, viiviii). these passages evidence that priestley’s purpose was to offer an easy, intelligible and comprehensive image of the development of optics until his own days. as we will see, this image was dominated by the selling of the newtonian optics. the history of optics, period v: the selling of newtonian optics when the history of optics appeared in 1772, newtonian conceptions were well established among british natural philosophers, with a growing insertion in continental europe. the publication of the opticks in 1704 and its subsequent editions and translations aroused a corpuscular tradition for optics as well as the popularization of the inductive method, influencing a whole generation of natural philosophers. the focus was mainly on book i, where newton exposed a series of experiments with prisms and drew conclusions from them, and on the queries of book iii, where he speculated on the nature of light and its interactions with other bodies through short-range forces. the modern historiography on this subject is abundant and suggests a remarkable institutionalization of the newtonian optics throughout the 18th century (cohen 1956, schofield 1970, steffens 1977, cantor 1983, hakfoort 1995, among many other books and papers). priestley immersed in newtonian views early in life. when he studied at daventry academy, a dissenting school, from 1752 to 1755, he soon became familiar with the works of newton and other corpuscularians, like wilhelm jacob’s gravesande (1688-1742) and john rowning (1701-1771). the latter seemed to be very influential in priestley’s reading of optical knowledge, since rowning presented a detailed natural philosophy in a corpuscular bias. priestley might have seen in rowning’s book a compilation of what newton’s followers had been doing with the content of the opticks and the principia in their attempts to merge the concepts and explanations of both optical and mechanical phenomena (schofield 1997, 53). after a brief stay in needham market and nantwich, priestley moved to warrington, where he worked more often with natural philosophy. as mentioned above, the writing of the history of optics had the assistance of michell, more known today for his contributions to astronomy and geology. michell moved to thornhill in 1767, a village near leeds, where priestley had just arrived. they became close and exchanged ideas on natural philosophy (mccormmach 2012, 179). once michell defended the materiality of light and praised newton’s opticks, his interactions with priestley played an important role in the selling of the newtonian theory of light in the history of optics. he also helped priestley in several other subjects of optics, such as telescopes, colors and in the mathematics involved in optical phenomena (mccormmach 2012, 187-196). michell would have also “introduced (or rather reintroduced) priestley to the concept of matter as particles surrounded by concentric spheres of attractive and repulsive forces” (schofield 1997, 247). this idea was considerably popular at that time, especially due to the jesuit priest roger boscovich (1711-1787) and his theoria philosophiae naturalis, published in 1763.6 boscovich claimed that the ultimate particles of matter were impenetrable and could be considered point-atoms that interacted with each other through an alternate scheme of attractive and repulsive forces. other authors studied by priestley during his first studies had similar ideas, such as rowning, but he focused on michell and boscovich in the history of optics. the background on newtonian optics and the corpuscular nature of light contributed to the construction of a solid defense of these subjects in the history of optics. the first 6 on the works and reception of boscovich in britain, see whyte (1958), olson (1969) and schofield (1970). newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 162 evidence of this defense can be observed in the manner priestley divided the periods of the book. newton was the only author to have an exclusive period, which suggests that priestley considered the history of optics as before – periods i to iv – and after newton, period vi.7 he declared that, before newton, “we find no hypothesis concerning colours of the least consequence, or indeed, that was held in any degree of esteem among philosophers” (priestley 1772a, 240). he emphasized that newton proved by a “series of experiments” his theories and that he “attempted, and succeeded” in his purpose to unveil the properties of light and colors. newtonian optics was “justly considered as the best model for all future inquiries into the powers of nature” (priestley 1772a, 267, 270). for him, the objectors did not advance other ideas and they were not worthy to mention. newton’s occasional mistakes in his theory of light and colors were ignored or minimized. for instance, in the period vi, priestley discussed the experiments with achromatic lenses developed by john dollond (1706-1761). in 1758, james short (1710-1768) received a letter from dollond, in which he contradicted newton’s ideas on the dispersion of light. dollond showed that the dispersion of light depended on the refracting substance and observed that refracted light which was not deviated could also produce colors. even in cases in which the refraction of light was supposedly corrected, white light could not be produced. for instance, rays of light coming out parallel after a refraction, in relation to its incidence, could still show themselves colored, depending on the refracting substance (steffens 1977, 56-9; pav 1975, 3102-3018). priestley recognized dollond’s contribution, asserting that he made “the greatest improvement in optical instruments within this period, by means of original principles” (priestley 1772b, 729). he concluded that newton failed, but tried to justify his mistake: the fact probably was, that sir isaac deceived himself in this case, by attending to what he imagined to be the clear consequence of his other experiments; and though the light he saw was certainly tinged with colours, and he must have seen it be so, yet he might imagine that this circumstance arose from some imperfection in his prisms, or in the disposition of them, which he did not think it worth his while to examine. (priestley 1772b, 475) priestley was aware that not every newtonian concept was widely accepted in the 18th century. the theory of fits, exposed in book ii of the opticks, is an example. historians have pointed out the conceptual problems of this theory and its rejection throughout the century, mainly due to its incompatibility with mechanical models for optics (silva and moura 2012, shapiro 1993). priestley insinuates this sentiment in the history of optics, explicitly denying the validity of the fits. in these thin plates, and also all other cases of the reflexion or transmission of light, sir isaac newton advances an [sic] hypothesis; but, like a wise man and a cautious philosopher, he professes not to lay much stress upon it, though he seems not to entertain any suspicion of its truth. (priestley 1772a, 305) newton did not classify the fits as a hypothetical concept, in a newtonian sense. he believed they were original properties of light, like colors, and discussed them at the end of part iii and the entire part iv of book ii. priestley, on the other hand, worked actively to discredit the fits, claiming that there were “no optical experiments with which sir isaac newton seems to have taken more pains than those relating to the rings of colours which 7 this structure is very similar to that presented in the history of electricity, where priestley put franklin in the forefront (schofield 1997, 146). newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 163 appears in thin plates” (priestley 1772b, 498). he often used terms such as “conjectures”, “supposes”, “improbable supposition” to discuss newton’s arguments on this conception (priestley 1772a, 306, 308). at the end of the history of optics, priestley reinforced that much was done on that topic, “but a complete illustration of this difficult subject seems to be still wanting” (priestley 1772b, 779). the selling of newtonian optics involved the defense of the corpuscular conception of light. probably inspired by the ideas of michell and boscovich, he gave considerable attention to the “powers of repulsion and attraction” in order to account for optical phenomena.8 by the time the history of optics was published, there was a renascence of discussions about the attractive and repulsive powers of nature. priestley was among those authors who attempted to resurrect the influence of mechanism into natural philosophy, building an alternative path to materialistic views based on concepts of ether that had emerged decades before (schofield 1970, 235). for instance, after rejecting the theory of fits, priestley affirmed: “all the mystery of these coloured plates depends upon the attractions and repulsions of the particles of the bodies that compose them” (priestley 1772a, 310-311). in addition, in commenting newton’s studies on inflection, priestley copied the first four queries of book iii of opticks, which argued on the role of short-range actions in the phenomena, “observing that the preceding observations [on inflection] seem to authorize us to answer them all in affirmative” (priestley 1772a, 329). on the material nature of light, the most decisive evidence for priestley was a series of experiments performed by michell and described exclusively in the history of optics. according to him, michell had developed a method to measure the momentum of light more accurately than others had done before.9 michell’s original descriptions were never published elsewhere. the experiment consisted of a copper plate, “which was fastened to one end of a slender harpsicord [sic] wire, about ten inches long” (priestley 1772a, 387). the plate was placed inside a box, with the lid and the back made of glass. after focusing sunlight reflected by a concave mirror, he detected a slight movement of the plate. “[the copper plate] began to move with a flow motion, and struck against the back of the box as before, and this was repeated once or twice with the same success” (priestley 1772a, 389). priestley seemed to believe in the veracity of the experiment: “there is no doubt, however, but that the motion above mentioned is to be ascribed to the impulse of the rays of light” (priestley 1772a, 389). notwithstanding, he indicated some flaws that compromised the results, like the melting of the plates after some time of exposure to sunlight. he also mentioned that michell did not have a mirror in his house to continue the experiments. priestley did not go further on these issues, suggesting that, despite the problems, they showed consistent evidence of the materiality of light. shortly after the publication of the history of optics, michell’s experiments were considered by corpuscularians an experimental proof that light had a momentum (cantor 1983, 57). the corpuscular theory of light also played an important role at the end of the history of optics. in the “summary”, priestley advocated in favor of the theory, asserting that the 18th century optical studies had confirmed its validity: the observations that were made in the first part of the last period of this history will authorize us to take it for granted, that light consists of very minute particles of matter, emitted from luminous bodies. some of these particles, falling upon other bodies, are reflected from them, in an angle equal to that of their incidence, while other particles 8 in the 18th century, there were different meanings of “power” and, on many occasions, they differed from newton’s ideas – which were already diverse. a good literature on this subject can be found in mcguire (1967), schofield (1970), thackray (1970) and heinmann and mcguire (1971). 9 in the 18th century, many natural philosophers attempted to measure the momentum of light. see worrall (1982) and cantor (1983, 52-59). newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 164 enter the bodies; being either bent towards or from a perpendicular to the surface of the new medium, if the incidence be oblique to it. in general, rays of light, falling obliquely on any medium, are bent as if they were attracted by it, when it has a greater degree of density, or contains more of the inflammable principle, than the medium through which it was transmitted to it. more of the rays are reflected when they fall upon a body with a small degree of obliquity to its surface, and more of them are transmitted, or enter the body, when their incidence is nearer to the perpendicular. (priestley 1772b, 769) the defense of newtonian optics and the corpuscular nature of light also implied the depreciation or omission of rival theories. as expected for a newtonian in a context where newton’s ideas were esteemed, he criticized most philosophers before newton – including the greeks and obviously descartes –, mentioned briefly the theories of hooke and ignored huygens.10 euler, who had written a massive number of works on optics and other subjects, had his theories mentioned in no more than three and a half pages. priestley affirmed that he did not want to “trouble” his reader “with mere hypothesis”, claiming that euler’s ideas were “inconsistent” with newton’s doctrine or “contrary to experience” (priestley 1772a, 358-359). franklin’s objection to the corpuscular theory is particularly interesting. although priestley followed franklinian ideas on electricity, he deliberately omitted his comments on light. from the catalogue of books read by priestley and displayed at the end of the history of optics, we can see he possessed the 1769 edition of franklin’s experiments and observations on electricity, which contains a letter written in 1752 wherein franklin explicitly claimed that he “was not satisfied with the doctrine that supposes particles of matter called light” and proposed a vibration interpretation for optical phenomena (franklin 1769, 264). in the history of optics, priestley did not mention the content of this letter but described an experiment made by franklin that analyzed the intensity of light and heat produced by two candles. priestley wrote: dr. franklin shewed me that the flames of two candles joined give a much stronger light than both of them separate; as is made very evident by a person holding the two candles near his face, first separate, and then joined in one. for immediately upon the junction, his face will be observed to be much more illuminated than it was before. it is conjectured that the union of the two flames produces a greater degree of heat, and that this cause a father attenuation of the vapour, and a more copious emission of the particles of which light consists. (priestley 1772b, 807) it is possible that franklin demonstrated the experiment or discussed it with priestley in the time of the history of electricity, but it is unlikely that franklin would have agreed with the explanation based on the emission of particles of light (cohen 1956, 323, n. §). as an admirer of franklin, priestley might have interpreted his experiment in his own ways as another proof of the materiality of light. the biographical chart the history of optics included an important resource to priestley’s newtonian approach of optics: a biographical chart. this was not the first time priestley drew charts. years before the publication of the history of optics, he published a chart of biography (1765) and a new 10 the absence of huygens’ theory was not exclusive of priestley’s books. shortly after his death in 1695, his theories were widely forgotten or rejected in europe (hakfoort 1995, 56). newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 165 chart of history (1769). the first one included a list of two thousand people divided into six categories, such as “mathematicians and physicians” and “poets and artists”. a description of a chart of biography was published subsequently, bringing a description of the purpose of chart and a list of all the names cited in it. in the description, priestley summarized his main goal with the charts: all my ambition in the biographical chart i now present to the public, is to be an assistant to the great historians, chronologers, and biographers of all ages and nations; in exhibiting an united, a distinct, and a comprehensive view of the succession of great men of every kind, almost from the earliest accounts of things down to the present time […]. (priestley 1777, 4-5) the charts were “one of the mechanical methods of facilitating the study” of history (priestley 1777, 5). therefore, it presented an easy visual guide about the most important events or personalities of a certain period. the lines under the names in the chart represented the lifetime. where the line was full, it meant priestley was sure about the date of birth and death of the individual. where there were dots or a broken line, it meant he was uncertain about the dates. the names were of famous people, but, as schofield points out “not necessarily meritorious; chosen with care, but not with singularity” (schofield 1997, 129). priestley himself admitted he chose by “renown and not merit” (priestley 1777, 16). he complemented by asserting his “impartiality”, which, as we shall see, was not entirely true, at least for the chart in the history of optics. the new chart of history presented a visual scheme of great empires of humanity. priestley also published some months later an additional material, a description of a new chart of history, which was dedicated to franklin. the new chart was supposedly a corrected and more refined version of a french chart that appeared in england around the 1750s (schofield 1997, 128). priestley claimed he would “rectify these [the old chart], and improve the whole scheme as much as possible” (priestley 1786, 5). at the top of the new chart, he expressed his intentions: “this chart is intended to exhibit a picture of history, or to give a clear view of the rise, progress, extent, and duration of every considerable empire or state” (priestley 1769, n. p.). both charts and their descriptions were extremely successful, going through many editions each one. they were useful not only for priestley’s own lectures but also for those who wished to acquire a wide view of everything and every person considered important. sheps asserts that priestley designed the charts “to be hung on the wall for private study to augment and help reinforce what was learned from lectures or reading by using the imagination and by association” (sheps 1999, 142). nevertheless, the charts played another important role. they should be considered a true portrait of past events, or, in a literal sense, a portrait of important facts in accordance with priestley’s historiographical views. the chart in the history of optics was specially designed to perpetuate how priestley saw the history of studies on light. priestley mentioned 51 natural philosophers in the biographical chart presented in the history of optics (figure 1). according to him, those were “who have most distinguished themselves by their discoveries relating to vision, light and colours” (priestley 1772a, frontispiece). while there is no record that allows us to answer why he chose some names and excluded other ones, his list give us some hints of his strategies and purposes with the biographical chart. if priestley aimed to sell newtonian optics as a crucial element of his history and if the chart should be used as a quick visual guide of the history of optics, we must look to the philosophers of the 18th century he listed, in order to verify “who have most distinguished themselves” in this matter after the discoveries of newton. newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 166 fig. 1 – part of the biographical chart in the history of optics, as shown in the digitized version of the book. the reader can easily see the 18th century natural philosophers mentioned by priestley in the period vi. source: priestley (1772a, frontispiece). the original chart was consulted at the bancroft library, university of california (berkeley). newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 167 among the 51 natural philosophers, 15 were mentioned in period vi of the history of optics, concerning the discoveries made after the time of newton:11 giacomo filippo maraldi (1665-1729), pierre bouguer (1698-1758), james bradley (1693-1762), alexis clairaut (17131765), dollond, charles du fay (1698-1739), john hadley (1682-1744), james jurin (1684-1750), johann lieberkühn (1711-1756), thomas melvill (1726-1753), pieter van musschenbroek (16921761), william porterfield (1696-1771), servington savery (c. 1670-c. 1744), james short (17101768) and robert smith (1689-1768). among these 15 natural philosophers, at least seven were explicit newtonians: bradley, melvill, clairaut, smith, jurin, porterfield and musschenbroek.12 newton was still the main reference, but the studies of these authors were probably considered a good continuation of the newtonian legacy. in many occasions, priestley claimed that their ideas deserved “to be recited” (priestley 1772b, 649). apparently, other seven authors – bouguer, dollond, du fay, hadley, lieberkühn, savery and short – were not explicit newtonians, but there is no indication that they opposed newton. for instance, priestley argued that bouguer’s studies on reflection and absorption of light were “the most valuable materials” that he could present to his reader (priestley 1772a, 405). although bouguer was a supporter of newtonian mechanics, he was not a full defender of newton’s ideas on optics and secretly adopted euler’s approach at some point of his life (darrigol 2012, 112, 163). priestley was probably not aware of that and quoted bouguer frequently, even using his studies on reflection and absorption as proofs for the existence of some power between light and bodies (priestley 1772a, 417). dollond, as mentioned before, was eulogized for having improved optical instruments. although he demonstrated an important flaw in newton’s theories, he was not considered an adversary.13 du fay, whose ideas priestley commented on in the history of electricity, also was not an enemy of newtonian optics, being considered by voltaire (1694-1778) and émilie du châtelet (1706-1749) “an ally against the [cartesian] vortices” (heilbron 1979, 251). in the history of optics, priestley referred to du fay’s studies on phosphorescence. hadley was the inventor of an effective reflecting telescope, presented to the royal society in 1721 (king 1955, 77). he was a member of the society since 1717 and was possibly affective to newtonian thoughts. priestley asserted that his “easy construction of reflecting telescopes” was “the most effectual service that was done to astronomy within this period” (priestley 1772b, 732). nothing much was said about short, lieberkhün and savery, except in the parts on the improvements of telescopes, microscopes and micrometers. short was apparently a vibrationist (cantor 1983, 211), but priestley did not mention anything that could suggest this. the remaining author is maraldi, a french-italian astronomer, sometimes identified as maraldi i.14 in 1723, he wrote a memoir for the académie royale des sciences discussing experiments on the inflection of light, which priestley described in detail in the history of optics. it is not clear whether maraldi accepted newtonian natural philosophy or not, but it seems he was more inclined to cartesian views. priestley recognized that inclination: 11 it is remarkable that priestley listed in the biographical chart some natural philosophers that published papers or memoirs in the 18th century – such as philippe de la hire (1640-1718) and françois pourfour du petit (1664-1741) –, but did not discuss these works in period vi of the history of optics. they were described in period iv, as if they were from before the publication of newton’s opticks. 12 for their commitment to newtonian views, see cantor (1983), darrigol (2012) and jorink and maas (2012). 13 years before his discovery, dollond defended newton against euler’s suggestion that chromatic aberration could be corrected. see steffens (1977, 55) and turner (2008, 148). 14 giovani domenico maraldi (1709-1788) is usually named maraldi ii. he was maraldi i’s nephew (taton 1974, 89-91). newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th century: a critical analysis of joseph priestley’s the history of optics breno arsioli moura 168 the extraordinary size of the shadows of these small substances m. maraldi thought to be occasioned by the shadow from the enlightened part of the sky, added to that which was made by the light of the sun, and also to a vortex, occasioned by the circulation of the inflected light behind the object; but my reader will probably not think it necessary for me either to produce all his reasons for this hypothesis, or to enter into a refutation of them. (priestley 1772b, 527) the reasons that led priestley to list an apparent cartesian in the last part of his chart are undefined. a possible answer relies on the fact that he acknowledged maraldi as one “we find first upon the list of those who pursued any experiments similar to those of newton on inflected light” (priestley 1772b, 521). perhaps he felt obliged to quote maraldi, even though he seemed to hold different theoretical backgrounds. on the other hand, these were undervalued, once priestley alleged that he could contradict them. therefore, the reader of the history of optics could learn from the biographical chart that the vast majority of 18th natural philosophers that “distinguished themselves” in the matter of light and colors were newtonians – the first seven – or, in other cases, who have invented new optical instruments, which was the case of almost all other seven natural philosophers. this suggests that priestley aimed to propagate the idea that proposers of other theories of light have not been successful in their attempts. the only exception could be maraldi, but the nature of light was not discussed in the work mentioned by priestley and the brief mention of a vortex was rapidly deconstructed. final remarks priestley’s the history of optics was a book of its time, an easy and direct source of knowledge for anyone who wanted to understand the historical development of light and colors. there, one could find the “correct” knowledge, represented by newtonian natural philosophy, and not be troubled with obsolete or wrong ideas. everything that should be learned about optics was there. the book also shows how priestley devoted himself to the projects he undertook. as a polymath, he demonstrated his capacity to put together a colossal amount of information, even though displayed in an excessively descriptive style. the various elements of priestley’s the history of optics show how he managed to promote newtonianism in the historiography of light. the biographical chart indicates how the development of optics was a consequence of the works of few distinguished people, especially newton and the newtonians of the 18th century. there seems to be no rivals to the corpuscular theory of light. in addition, by ignoring opposing views on optical phenomena, priestley allowed a clear path for the consolidation of the corpuscular theory of light. the result was a fine piece of 18th century historiography, an example of the presence of newtonianism in historical accounts on natural philosophy. acknowledgements the author acknowledges the financial support of the sao paulo research foundation (fapesp, grant 2014/04366-2) and of the national council for scientific and technological development (cnpq, grant 400118/2016-5). he also acknowledges the kind assistance of the librarians of the bancroft library, university of california (berkeley), and the suggestions of the reviewers. newtonian optics and the historiography of light in the 18th 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(1711-1787), and the mathematics of atomism. notes and records of the royal society of london 13 (1): 38-48. worrall, john. 1982. the pressure of light: the strange case of the vacillating ‘crucial experiment’. studies in history and philosophy of science 13 (2): 133-71. microsoft word toc ii transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 7 (december) 2019 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2019 – this is an open access journal from the editor mauro l. condé1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i7.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ it is with great joy and satisfaction that we come to publish the seventh issue of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. as we assess this short pathway to help guide our plans to the near future, we realize that this work is comprised of about one hundred authors from 21 countries2 with 65 articles, 5 interviews, and 14 book reviews. these issues published during this short period have encouraged us to plan new special dossiers – such as the next one on the historiography of physics – and to edit and publish articles and book reviews we continuously receive for publication in other sections of the journal. this tremendous international collaboration – not only from authors, but also from referees – promotes an intense exchange of ideas among us all, readers, authors, referees, and editors. indeed, this is a massive movement that piques our curiosity and enthusiasm and keeps going on this editorial journey. according to the journal’s proposal, the articles published have focused on the critical reconstruction of the history of historiography and analyze the great diversity of authors, issues, and traditions of the historiography of science. we aspire to offer more than just a place for academic publication and strive to exchange ideas via the editorial process. we hope that all the material produced – which is freely available on the journal’s website – can be a permanent resource to readers, researchers, and others interested in the area. thus, in this way, we hope to extend this editorial project to all the community of historiography of science. as readers can see, while our journal’s focus is on promoting reflections on the historiography of science, we have also published articles on the history of science in almost equal proportion. therefore, our journal is open to receive articles on the historiography of science and history of science. in this seventh issue, we present articles analyzing the scientific revolution, the history of physics, and the history of mathematics, as well as a reevaluation of the neopositivist interpretation of vitalism. we wish you, dear reader, a great read. 1 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 argentina, belgium, brazil, bulgaria, canada, chile, china, france, germany, greece, israel, italy, mexico, poland, portugal, serbia, spain, sweden, switzerland, united kingdom, and unite states of america. microsoft word 2 maia layout 3 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 3 (2017) 03-25 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 – this is an open access article article magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia1 abstract: the historiography of scientific studies has suffered from a great impact, that is rarely referred to, from anthropological analyses of magic in so-called primitive societies. the emphasis brought by criticism during the 1950/1960’s of evans-pritchard’s 1937 classic, witchcraft, oracles and magic among the azande, brought a fresh look at certainties already consolidated in western thought, especially those relating to rational human characteristics and science. for the history, these criticisms were interesting because they were presented science as a historically situated activity, in the same way as magic. it favours, therefore, the proximity of historians tout court with the history of the sciences that resists its absences even today. this renewal helped to create a scenario that would enable david bloor to develop the strong program of sociology of knowledge in the 1970s. such a program indicates the analogous process that involves both the social production of beliefs and that of scientific truths. the comparison between magic and science usually presents them in a hierarchy. as if there were an evolutionary process in which magical thinking necessarily preceded scientific thought. the one, more precarious, would belong to the prehistory of the scientific thought, which would be the climax of modern rational action. in this paper i evaluate the proximity of magic-science from the point of view of contemporary studies about scientific activity, questioning the concepts of rationality and logic as if they were exclusive qualities of scientific activity. a kind of metaphysical gift that would show the superiority of individuals over others, as much as of science over magic. i give special emphasis to the exposition of how rationality and logic are socio-historical characteristics acquired throughout history by human subjects in their experiential practices, and which are present both in magic and technical activities; these, an embryo of science. keywords: science and magic; rationality; logic; historiography of science received: 13 april 2017. reviewed 15 august 2017. accepted: 03 november 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i3.02 _____________________________________________________________________________ there is no group of people, no matter how primitive, without religion or magic. just as there are not, by the way, any wild races that have no scientific attitude or science, though this 1 carlos alvarez maia is a professor of history in the department of history at the state university of rio de janeiro – uerj. address: rua são francisco xavier 524 – maracanã, rio de janeiro – rj, brazil. cep 20550-013. email: alvarez@iis.com.br magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 4 fault is often imputed to them. in all primitive societies, studies by competent and trustworthy observers, detected two perfectly distinct domains, the sacred and the profane; in other words, the domain of magic and religion, and of science. (malinowski 1954, 17) a simplified orthodox perception: what is the difference between magic and science? this is a non-issue for classical historiography of the sciences. in this historiography, the distance between science and magic is evident, something trivial to be measured. the distinction between them is flagrant. one is the most illustrious exponent of human rationality, while the other, in the penumbra of reason, shows the irrational in action. one is consistent with logic and walks straight along the paths of truth-seeking, the other follows a tortuous obscure pathway in which contradictions and inconsistencies become the rule. along this path traced by magic, there is the absence of logical reasonableness, only unjustified credulity materially feeds deceptions and severe errors. in it, one does not know the truth, but it is believed that something, often improbable, is true. in magic, truth is given by either the oracle or by some magician, or in other words, given through subjective expectations in fantastic powers. the objective reality of nature, cultivated in science, receives the complement in magic, of another reality, which is the supernatural. in magic, what is supposed to be true appears complete and finished, as unlikely as it is. in science, the truth of facts stems from empirical research under the compass of reason, and must be proven in practical reality. the scientific propositions obey a logical correspondence with the events of the natural world. this natural world is the recipient of scientific investigations, yet already in magical perceptions, the world expands to the supernatural. in magic, what is beyond the apparent objective reality of nature, is that which is the reason for an empirical reality. there is an unquestionable magic and mystical truth guiding the natural facts. while in science everything can be questioned by new facts that prove the logical or empirical inconsistency of previous truths. in this way, science and magic are shown to be incompatible with each other. they direct two immiscible insights that seek answers and which tend to explain the world in two different ways. the relation between science and magic: impacts on historiography in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, both the historiography of science, in particular, and that of human knowledge in general suffered a major shake-up. this is the setting for the appearance of thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions in 1962. in these days it became common to reread the classic work of the anthropologist evans-pritchard’s witchcraft, oracles and magic among the azande, from 1932. this re-reading involved authors of social sciences interested in the issue of knowledge, such as michael polanyi and peter winch.2 the new emphasis stemming from the new analyses of evans-pritchard’s text, focused on highlighting the opinions of this author whose aim was to show how the azande possess 2 it is, at the very least, a curiosity still little understood as the history tout court has remained distant from these events. that seems to confirm my thesis of the “history of sciences being an enterprise of absent historians” (maia 2013). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 5 a rational system of beliefs, besides investigating how this system manifests itself in social behaviour.3 such a system of beliefs would allow the azande to understand their collective life, their personal destinies, their successes and misfortunes. however, although evanspritchard perceived an internal coherence in such a system, he reports various inconsistencies in the explanatory forms of the azande. particularly in that who or what is defined as a witch, is the one capable of producing harm to others. heredity would be the basic factor of this determination, however it would not within itself be the guarantee of witchcraft. one should consult the oracle to verify if such an individual is, or is not a witch. and even then, the result is not definitive. determining the condition of witchcraft becomes an imbroglio that is difficult to solve, even generating some contradictions. evans-pritchard himself indicates situations in which deceptions and tricks of supposed wizards are used to deceive and thus escape their accusations. the explanatory haze used by the azande prevents them from restraining themselves to the logical consequences of their definition of witchcraft as something organic and hereditary. there are several socially sanctioned forms that allow the accused to question his wizard status. evans-pritchard notes that such logical contradictions in the azande belief system appear to be inherent in the system itself. and this fact – the logical contradictions – involves the witchcraft, oracles and magic among the azande text, and provides great interest to philosophers and social scientists. the discussion revolves around the kind of rationality that supplies a “primitive” society and the conditions of scientific knowledge. as can be seen from the text, the azande have a technical knowledge that allows them to produce a society that provides a practice in the social life of its members that meets their material needs. magic is a component of the social fabric that participates in all forms of life of the azande, and favours the goals of its actions. the magic and technique developed in practical life are not in opposition. both belong to that cultural form. peter winch was the reader of these issues that most impacted historiography when writing on the subject in the 1950s and 1960s. although posterity considers it a fundamental landmark in the theoretical-methodological discussion for the social sciences, some criticisms have emerged regarding aspects of its intercultural analysis.4 for winch, there is a harmony between the ways of thinking and acting in society. thus, the azande's understanding of the world and of life is derived from their ways of living, that is, the meanings extracted by the participants of a given culture are inherent in that culture. the azande's understanding of the world is due to the way of life that sustains them. they are two inseparable things: the way they live and the sense that is drawn from this way of living. a particular action is not understood as something isolated, in itself, but only in the context that gives it meaning, in comparison with the other cultural manifestations. this proposal had already been stated in winch’s previous essay (1967), the idea of a social science, of 1958. later in his 1964 text, more specifically, understanding a primitive society, winch (1994) details his propositions by bringing into focus his precise criticism of witchcraft, oracles and magic among the azande. in referring to the analyses of the practices of a so-called primitive society, winch declares: 3 “the zande mentality is logical and inquisitive, within the premises of its own culture, and insists on the coherence of its own language” (evans-pritchard 2005, 47). 4 see robin horton, “professor winch on safari”. in horton 1993, 138-160. horton summarizes the main criticisms received by winch from various authors, (horton 1993 406, n. 3) the title of horton's article is an ironic indicator of his assessment by mentioning that winch's work resembles a safari – the type of expedition in which nothing is learned with rigor about the place and its strange habits (horton 1993, 409, n.65). for horton, winch – despite being a noted social science methodologist – has submitted to proposals of the counterculture that take it to a position of antipathy with the scientific activity. horton says: “they (his writings) are a crusade, against the allegedly overweening claims of science, and in favor of all those modes of thought whose aims are incommensurable with those of science” (horton 1993, 159). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 6 when we speak of such practices as “superstitious”, “illusory”, “irrational”, we carry the weight of our culture behind us; and this is not just a matter of being on the fairer side, because these practices and beliefs belong and derive, in the sense they seem to have, from that same culture. (winch 1994, 42) in 1958, winch already clarified that: “ideas cannot thus be wrenched from their context; the relation between idea and context is an internal relation. it’s meaning stems from the role it plays in the system” (winch 1967, 107). or, six years later: “meaning only becomes manifest in terms that are culturally related” (winch 1994, 42).5 in this way, each culture provides an intelligibility of the world, an intelligibility that is shared by the members of that culture. it would be a serious prejudice to suppose that our culture alone favours a certain understanding of life, of ourselves, and of the world. quoting collingwood, winch defends that “some accounts of magical practices in primitive societies offered by ‘scientific’ anthropologists often mask ‘a half-conscious conspiracy to bring into ridicule and contempt civilizations different from our own’” (winch 1967, 103). following this perception, we find no reason to be surprised at the assertion that each culture authorizes and formulates meanings for the world and that such meanings have no reason to be “lesser” or less suited to human life than ours. after all, the historical duty is such that societies and human groups follow each other by transmitting their cultural contours for the future. all societies before ours allowed human life to be realized and gave continuity to the human historical trajectory, independent of its “successes” or “mistakes”. in this sense, the so-called primitive societies were successful, they fulfilled with what is to come, and they favoured the formation of our history.6 this understanding of society and the social sciences is supported by winch in the later wittgenstein manuscript, philosophical investigations. for this author, social relations are based on the act of “following a rule”. human actions in society result from the sharing of rules that are followed collectively.7 everything happens as if society were ordered in games with specific rules, built by itself, to be obeyed. living in society is based on not breaking the rules of the game, although in a sense, breaking the rule is also a possibility and thus a kind of rule. everyone must know how to play, that is, understand the meanings and dispositions of the norms that define the social game. wittgenstein uses the term “language games” that guide and condition “forms of life”. it is in the use of language that the socialization of individuals is promoted while providing the routine meanings for its users. wittgenstein’s pragmatic perspective of valuing effective practical activity is reinforced by winch, and removes any rancid intellectualist or even rationalist from the analysis of the social sciences. winch's view observes the azande society as a form of life in which the magic of the oracle is a part, as well as the development of the techniques that guarantee the collective subsistence. there is no disharmony, as they are integrated into the practice of social life. and this form of life of the azande formulates the meanings that are intrinsic to them, they integrate their language games. perhaps winch's most compelling assertion to be based on wittgenstein is: “it is not reality that gives meaning to language. the real and the unreal are shown in the sense that language has” (winch 1994, 37). 5 “it is only with reference to the criteria that govern this system of ideas or way of life that they have any existence as social or intellectual events” (winch 1967, 108). 6 it is here that the anthropological warning comes before the conflict between “we” and “them”. any moral or cognitive hierarchy that shows “our” superiority to “their” culture can cause comprehensive misunderstandings. we cannot demand that a society, called “primitive” or not, fulfill our values, ethical or epistemic. 7 only by the “use” – collective – of the language is it possible to share meaningful behaviour. thus, to understand “is grasping the point or meaning of what is being or said” (winch 1967, 115). thus, “all meaningful behavior must be social, since it can be meaningful only if governed by rules, and rules presuppose a social setting” (winch 1967, 116). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 7 language here is totally removed from the mentalism that perceives it as the representational agent of the world. it is not the mere representation nor a description, but a constructive agent of the world, a material agent. it is not the world that gives legitimacy to language by “confirming” its idealized representations, but it is the “use of language” in their games that provides meaning for the world and for human life.8 something remarkable that had unfolded in the historiography of the subsequent years was winch's understanding, which indicated that language moved all the actions in the life of the azande, and they are oriented to the mystical or practical activities. there is no distinction between them, and the meaning given by language directed any and all social enterprise. language forged reality.9 by emphasizing evans-pritchard's words, winch values this process of constructing meanings irrespective of their destiny, be it magical or technical: their mystical notions are eminently coherent, they are interrelated by a network of logical nexuses, and are arranged in such a way that they never overly contradict the sensory experience without, on the contrary, that experience which seems to justify them. (evans-pritchard, quoted in winch 1994, 49) what can be deduced from winch's analysis is that all significant action, from the most banal and routine in the life of the azande, to the most striking and influential in the collective, are actions socially conducted by their symbolic and sensory apparatus. they are reactions of form of life to situations that require the interpretive understanding – before its local and historical possibilities – in the scenario where meanings are able to be apprehended. a primitive system of magic, like that of the azande, constitutes a universe of coherent discourse as much as that of science, on the basis of which one can discern an intelligible conception of reality, and clear ways of deciding which beliefs agree or disagree with this reality. (winch 1994, 39) by this orientation, winch conflicts with the tradition already established in the studies of science that separates scientific activity from other human activities, such as the arts or magic-mystical thought. in this tradition, science is supposed to be the most complete expression of the use of reason to face natural reality. this, our scientific and philosophical heritage, has left us with the understanding that concepts such as “reality”, “rationality” and “truth” have an affinity with each other and guide the posture of scientists before the challenge of understanding and explaining the world. these three parameters go hand in hand in a single protocol: scientists seek the truth about the systems that regulate the functioning of the world (reality) by subjecting this connection (between truth and reality) to rigorous, so-called, rational criteria. thus, a rigid demarcation was constructed between the ways of examining scientific work. it would be fitting to examine the epistemology of the scientific achievements: the true value of the theories and the adequacy of concepts linked to scientific experiments and facts. already the circumstantial drama that involves scientific advances and challenges, with their difficulties, errors and correctness, belong to the historical and factual chronicle that 8 winch (1994, 90) criticizes roger trig who thinks of language as a description of reality. for winch, language is not about “describing nothing at all”. “if we really want to speak of a 'relationship between language and reality', this is not a relation between a set of descriptions and what is described”. language, as a constructive agent of reality, connects with the world through the “trace” of derrida, see maia 2015, 118 ff, 134-137. 9 this understanding generates the hypothesis of symbolic-material agency for the language, see maia, 2015. since its prehistoric formation, language is more than a mere articulation between signs, or a mental representation of the world. it is constituted by any and all meaning: the more-than-literal language, which becomes the central agent of human activities. magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 8 portrays the events related to the research. on the one hand is epistemology, examining the truth of the contents of science, on the other, is history describing the socio-cultural form of the scientific endeavour. the social sciences, history, and sociology would only be able to keep up with failures, mistakes, and misunderstandings, whereas epistemology should understand when and how the efforts of scientists were successful. winch brought to the scope of sociology of knowledge both the analysis of correctness and its misunderstandings. both the so-called “misconceptions” and the so-called “truths” would be social productions. both were due to language games that fuelled social relations, putting an end to the times of the “sociology of error” that still prevailed in the days of winch and kuhn. in this way, both truth and error should undergo sociological analysis,10 after all, winch did not confer a distinct sociological statute for the magical conceptions differentiating them by techniques, said, rational or scientific. undoubtedly, the nature of the azande life is such that it is of great importance that its crops are good. and it is also clear that they adopt all kinds of practical measures, one could call 'technological', within their capabilities, to ensure that the crops are effectively good. however, this is no reason to view their magical rituals as an additional erroneous measure. (winch 1994, 73) it deserves particular attention to follow historically how the technical foundation of this demarcation between the epistemological and the sociological took place. the bipolar understanding of scientific activity in historiography we received from the 18th century a strong scientific heritage fuelled by the ideology of enlightenment. this scientism chose scientific activity as the edenic solution to human becoming. science thus served as proof that the use of rationality by homo sapiens was the best strategy for societal development. reason guaranteed and engendered material advancement and, perhaps, good fortune and generalized well-being. this realization favoured the understanding that science was a production driven by its own logic. there was talk of a method that would put a positive gaze on the world and its phenomena. it would be the empirical commanded by reason. evidently, the myth of human progress in rhythm and under the chords of scientific rationality still survived forcefully. this context favours the imperialist pretension of epistemology and made it unthinkable that scientific knowledge could have some debt with social injunctions: science should be a neutral and objective knowledge, without the marks of the society that produced it, its religiosity or any other political or ideological premise. thus, in the actual practice of scholars of science, a reasonably tacit agreement exists: the division of powers between epistemology and history or sociology. the first and most important challenge to this understanding was given by karl mannheim, from 1923.11 mannheim pointed out how social factors actively participated in the 10 it is recalled that the sociological tradition demarcated the space of action of the sociology of knowledge for the analysis of errors, since the analysis of the truth should be of strictly epistemic ambit. it was thought that the errors were due to the societal action, and the correct ones belonged to the rational scope of the epistemology. see maia 2015, 61, note 28. 11 “among the published material during his life, three inaugural articles articulate among themselves in an operatic crescendo: “on the interpretation of the weltanschauung” (1923), “historicism” (1924), and “the problem of sociology of knowledge” (1925).” (maia 2013, 93) in this evolution, mannheim shifts his explanatory base from the weltanschauung to the concepts that will establish his sociology of knowledge culminating with ideology and utopia in bonn, 1929. to assume a sociology to deal with knowledge was a direct affront to radical magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 9 production of knowledge through the “style of thought”, denkstil, whose matrix was strongly historical-sociological. “style” would be the individual-collective way of thinking and formed the grammatical basis from which, and on which, rationality would emit its arguments. the logical structure of reasoning would start from some premises and findings constituted by the “style of thought” of that collective. “style” provides the conceptual framework that allows rationality – whatever it is – to draw its inferences (maia 2012; 2013, 94-95). mannheim's goal was to “escape the static character of substantialist metaphysics (which encapsulates the natural sciences) and nest in a dynamic ontology that exposes the world of history in its procedural becoming” (maia: 2013, 93). but for all his propositions critical of scientistic metaphysics, mannheim gives a differentiated value to the sciences of nature. however, he is insistent against static and absolutized, a-historical understandings, which disregard historical evidence in favour of a relational and dynamic understanding to evolve events. several times mannheim speaks generically about knowledge being existentially determined, seeming to encompass all forms of cognition, however there are specific statements to say that this is not the case.12 mannheim excludes the exact natural sciences and the mathematics of this conditioning or social determination, naming them as of the type “2x2=4”. immediately after the german edition of ideology and utopia in 1929, a broad debate ensued in the sociological circles: der streit um die wissenssoziologie (the dispute of the sociology of knowledge). this dispute, preceded and accompanied by the strong opposition of the wiener kreis neo-positivists, the vienna circle, to the wissenssoziologie, involved more than 30 articles in response to mannheim covering a wide range of theoretical positions (maia 2013, 96-97). in august of 1929 the neo-positivist manifesto was launched, subscribed by hans hahn, otto neurath and rudolf carnap (maia 2013, 103). however, the most efficient formulation of this group would be der logishe aufbau der welt, (the logical structure of the world), by rudolf carnap, edited in berlin, in 1928 (maia 2013, 105). carnap understands that scientific activity can be observed from two different angles. it supposes the partition between the “rational reconstruction” of theories and concepts, and the historical description of events. thus, it seeks to separate questions of validity, that are rationally justified, and questions regarding the origin of ideas of psychosocial motivation, which tend to be overlapped and confused (maia 2013, 106-107). this rupture between epistemology and history is further accentuated by reichenbach’s dichotomy for the analysis of science: “i shall introduce the terms context of discovery and context of justification to mark this distinction [...] between the thinker’s way of finding his theorem and his way of presenting is before a public” (reichenbach quoted in maia 2013, 109). this division of contexts became quite influential in the destinies of historiography until the 1980s. in a way, it was fatal to the development of a sociology of knowledge. history and sociology were banished to the context of the discovery that described the genetic processes by which a scientific event occurred. already the validity of knowledge was restricted to its rational justification and belonged to epistemology. it was said that knowing the origin of a particular piece of knowledge, does not imply its validity. rationalist premises that demarcated the exclusivity of the field of epistemology, without considering the historicity of the concepts involved (maia 2012; 2013). 12 in the article “historismus”, 1924, mannheim already mentions: “the exact sciences can make statements in the matter of that which does not enter the historical and local position of the knowing subject”. in ideology and utopia, mannheim deals with similar issues: “it is true, as to this type of knowledge, [referred to as the type 2 x 2 = 4] that its genesis does not interfere with the results of thought” (maia 2012, 57, note 13). in mannheim's own words: “a modern theory of knowledge that considers the relational character (...) must start from the suspicion that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive an absolute truth, independent of the subject's values and position, and without relation to the social context. not even a god could formulate a proposition on historical questions similar to 2x2 = 4.” (mannheim, ideology and utopia, quoted in maia 2012, 56) magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 10 in short, mannheim’s sociological initiative was abandoned. his sociology of knowledge was replaced by merton's sociology of science, moving in a direction quite different from that of mannheim (maia 2013, 202). in merton we proceeded to analyse the institutional character of science, its norms and collective routines of work, and not to venture to evaluate conceptual contents. the territory in dispute between the epistemology and the sociology was pacified, the territories themselves were demarcated. henceforth, the social sciences only have historical descriptions of the origins of knowledge, the context of discovery, or the “sociology of error” – when scientific inquiry fails. besides these alternatives, the institutional and corporate analysis carried out by the mertonian sociology still remains. it never goes into the context of justification, in a “sociology of truth” that belongs exclusively to epistemology. only with the structure of scientific revolution of kuhn, 1962, will we have the first scratches on this partition and also, of course, with winch pointing out an “achilles heel” at the epistemological pretensions. the next step: bloor, the symmetry and relativism of reason winch did not consider the premises of epistemology that preached the hierarchy of rationalistic values for objects that could, or could not be analysed by sociology. and this will be the innovative historiographical accomplishment made by barry barnes and david bloor's insight in proposing the strong program of the sociology of knowledge. bloor, in knowledge and social imagery, 1976, presents a new and revolutionary orientation contained in his “principle of symmetry” in which errors and epistemological correctness deserve the same sociological treatment. there is no distinction between truth and falsity from the point of view of sociology. both are social productions (bloor 1991, 7; maia: 2015, 61). and so, once again, the enlightenment rationalism that fed the understanding of science, suffered an intense setback. winch provided bloor with the basis of his relativism by valuing social action as a meaningful action to “follow a rule”. restricting itself to the “use of language”, the user acquires the understanding of the meaning of what he is following, and thus participates in the societal game. reality is constituted as part of that game. different societies would present alternatives to various social games. this perception of games already has serious relativistic consequences. in his analogy with sports games, winch compares the comprehensive conflict between two different cultures – one analysing the other, in this case the europeans and the azande – as if they were two sports modalities. the rules of a game are not contradictory to each other. each game is consistent in itself. there is no one “correct” game, nor one “incorrect”.13 with this, winch responds to critics of the azande's social logic, including evanspritchard himself, that the azande commit contradictions in their beliefs and customs. which, when compared to ours, the azande culture would have traces of irrationality (winch 1994, 48-49, 53-54, 56, 63, 98). would the azande have “other” logic as the foundation of their reasoning? and from there, bloor goes on. he suggests that logic itself with its “laws” and rules of inference may be subject to relativism by letting himself be led by wittgenstein's argument: “let us therefore consider a society with very different laws from ours and see if its members are indeed persuaded to reason differently” (bloor 1991, 138). it is through winch that bloor advances even more: “there must be more than one logical process: azande logic and western logic” (bloor 1991, 139). this issue is resolved by bloor in the context of the concept of “negotiation”, which is necessary when a logical 13 winch compares the game of cricket with baseball to indicate that there is no contradiction between them and their rules. this serves to soften the criticism that the azande received for showing logical contradictions in their culture, evidently detected when analyzed by europeans (winch 1994, 98-99). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 11 contradiction emerges in some dispute. “negotiation” is a key concept in bloor (1991, 146156) to resolve conflicts and occupy wide analytical space in the “strong program”. bloor himself presents what would be a contradiction in our society that punishes the murder of a person, but to safeguard the bombings and damages of war. after all, is killing a crime? is there a logical contradiction between the two attitudes? negotiated interpretive arguments solve the contradiction (bloor 1991, 142-143). the idea of a logical relativism, as it could be interpreted in its most radical form in bloor, does not flourish serenely. it is a controversial thesis as opposed to its “symmetry”, which has acquired reasonable consensus. however, these considerations of winch and bloor continue the uneasiness of thought. they oppose an absolutist and a-historical perception of human nature. in this understanding of things – with timeless validity – there seems to be a substance, perhaps even organic, that would produce the humanity of man: reason. and this would be a classical precondition for the emergence of scientific thought. what would the rationality be from the point of view of history? my main goal is to understand what generates the rules of logic that characterize the reasoning considered correct in each society. how is the human ability of logical inference possible? is it innate or acquired? do logical structures vary in each culture, as bloor suggested? or would they be more universal, but dependent on the historical learning of the human collective living in nature? i will attach bronislaw malinowski to my network of support authors. his book: magic, science and religion, remains on the path to further investigation, despite its longevity.14 there are indications that there are several procedures by which a compelling conclusion that is generalized can be obtained. as is the case with the metonymic use that appease human discomfort with the feeling of death. the cyclical succession of climatic seasons seems to induce a metonymy for human “eternal” life. it is suggested that after the decline of winter, life returns in spring with a new vitality. it seems reasonable to me that this primal perception is used as a “proof” of a mystical existence in the eternity of the human soul. this would be the “vitalist hypothesis” of the origin of religion.15 the existence of the soul or of an immaterial spirit also seems to be displaced from the fact that deceased persons “appear” in dreams. it would be the revelation of the active presence of the spirit of the dead.16 there is thus a transference of meaning from something of the natural world to serve as the mystical understanding of human nature. the meaning of, and for, human life are elaborations developed from the contact with the environment, in routine experiences. precisely through this structure that involves and is commanded by the meanings taken from 14 the actuality of malinowski's work is remarkable, being valued by such contemporary expert authors as keith thomas, when analyzing magic and religion. “however unfashionable malinowski's theories are today, they have been one of the few direct attacks against the difficult question of why magical beliefs decline.” (thomas 1991, 527) see also: the historiographical work of tambiah (1990) on magic, religion and science. 15 “for the primitive man death has meaning mainly as a step to resurrection, decay as a stage of rebirth, the plenty of autumn and the decline of winter as preludes to the revival of spring”. [...] “faith and cult spring from the crises of human existence, ‘the great events of life, birth, adolescence, marriage, death [...] it is about these events that religions largely focuses’” (malinowski 1954, 22). 16 “the savage philosopher or theologian was led to distinguish the human soul from the body. now the soul obviously continues to lead an existence after death, for it appears in dreams, haunts the survivors in memories and in visions and apparently influences human destinies. thus, originated the belief in ghosts and the spirits of the dead, in immortality and in a nether world. but man, in general, and primitive man in particular, has a tendency to imagine the outer world in his own image. and since animals, plants, and objects move, act, behave, help man or hinder him, they must also be endowed with souls or spirits” (malinowski 1954, 18). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 12 the world, is that we will have the invention of language. it is a language conceived as one that establish meaning – language as something more than literal –, in opposition to language as a mere producer and transmitter of signs (maia 2015). the reasonableness of this argument lies in its empirical aspect. the productive ways of thinking as the result of a practical activity in the world. thought is not created from nothingness. it stems from the possibilities that life offers. souls and spirits, beliefs in eternal life and the other mystical elements that fuel religions are born of existential conflicts, and the consciousness of death is the most potent of these feelings. they are born of these conflicts and present calming solutions extracted from the practice of life. i find nothing illogical in these conclusive procedures. on the contrary, they are insightful. metaphors and metonymy are indicators of abstract and rational reasoning. or, after all, what is rationality? a mana served by the gods? does the concept of causality stem from an element of the genetic code? or is it the result of an understanding of the functioning of the world that allows human survival in nature, and before its existential fragilities? i am referring this article to a hypothesis centred on human material and social coexistence. it is in the human interaction with its environment, an interaction that has always occurred in a collective and in cooperation, that advances in the understanding of the world and its things. it advances in interactive learning and shared solutions that are discovered/invented and socially transmitted. in other words, it is in historical experience that this human gift of “right reasoning” is perceived and shared. proper reasoning in the struggle for survival is a quality guaranteed by reciprocal interaction in the world. i am excluding a special gift given by some substance, organic or magical, called “reason”.17 “that criteria of logic are not a direct gift of god, but arise out of, and are only intelligible in the context of, ways of living or modes of social life” (winch 1967, 100). winch had already opposed the “rationalistic” concept of the nature of human intelligence and rationality. according to this misconception the rationality of human behaviour comes to it from without: from intellectual functions which operate according to laws of their own and are, in principle, quite independent of the particular forms of activity to which they may nevertheless be applied. (winch 1967, 54) the existence and use of human “rational quality” are not independent of the activities carried out: “a cook is not a man who first has a vision of a pie and then tries to make it; he is a man skilled in cookery, and both his projects and his achievements spring from that skill.” (winch 1967, 55) rationality is not a gift that appears ready and finished. it is built slowly through human interactions with each other, and with their environment. every decision taken by the “primitive” before a practical problem was solved, was a step towards the construction of his rationality. so, after all, what is causal reason? how do humans learn it? how do you get to the rules of logic? what criteria define something as rational? were primitive populations in a prelogical phase? immersed in irrational superstition? malinowski, in discussing what would be the “rational mastery by man of his surroundings” (malinowski 1954, 25-36) weaves considerations based on his rich field work, and generalizations that prove useful for our understanding of what is poorly understood in primitive populations. according to him, it was lévy-bruhl who was responsible for generating several myths that characterized such a “pre-logical stage” of primitive humans, plunged into seemingly meaningless superstitions (malinowski, 1954, 25). he reveals how socalled “pre-logical” societies captured in their daily readings the suitable ways of interacting 17 the “human intelligence was much overrated as a real influence on social events” (winch 1967, 105). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 13 with their environment, and guaranteed collective survival. it is evident that for this, some kind of intellection is necessary. speaking of his personal experience with the people of new guinea, he comments: “these natives [...] are expert fishermen, industrious manufactures and traders, but they rely mainly on gardening for their subsistence” (malinowski, 1954, 27). with rudimentary tools, they can produce enough crops to maintain the dense population, and still store surpluses. “the success in their agriculture depends – besides the excellent natural conditions with which they are favored – upon their extensive knowledge of the classes of the soil, of the various cultivated plants” (malinowski, 1954, 27). certainly this routine task can only be achieved with a proper understanding of the environment in which they live, and a knowledge extracted from their interaction with the world. they acquire a knowledge for which i see no other evidence than that of a rationality.18 alongside practical reasoning, the native is also subject to magical thinking, “if the fences are broken down, if the seed is destroyed or has been dried or washed away, he will have recourse not to magic, but to work, guided by knowledge and reason” (malinowski 1954, 28). they separate well what is of the technical area, and what is of magic. 19 if in one year the harvest is bad, but in the same material conditions of the previous year that was excellent, the appeal to magic is made. there is no such lack of rationality as suggested by lévy-bruhl’s stereotype of “pre-logic”, the natives know these two functions: magic and technique, very well (malinowski, 1954, 29). these functions are never confused. thus, in the construction of canoes, “empirical knowledge of material, of technology, and of certain principles of stability and hydrodynamics, function in company and close association with magic, each yet uncontaminated by the other” (malinowski, 1954, 30).20 however, in moments of real danger during navigation, magic is again used in a situation absolutely analogous to any fisherman of the present day (malinowski 1954, 30). the same alternation occurs when fishing is carried out in the calm of the lagoons, where confidence in practical knowledge prevails. in the opposite case, when fishing is on the open sea and being subject to imponderable factors, including by the appearance of shoals and storms, it is in this case that magic is triggered (malinowski 1954, 31). he knows that a plant cannot grow by magic alone, or a canoe sail or float without being properly constructed and managed, or a fight be won without skill and daring. he never relies on magic alone, while, on the contrary, he sometimes dispenses with is completely, as in fire-making and in a number of crafts and 18 “they have to select the soil and the seedlings, they have appropriately to fix the times for clearing and burning the scrub, for planting and weeding, for training the vines of the yam plants. in all this they are guided by a clear knowledge of weather and seasons, plants and pests, soil and tubers, and by a conviction that this is true and reliable, that it can be counted upon and must be scrupulously obeyed” (malinowski 1954, 27-28). 19 keith thomas also values this aspect detected by malinowski, citing him in that magic “must be expected and generally found whenever man reaches an insurmountable gap, a gap in his knowledge or in his powers of practical control”. thomas continues: “as an alternative to impotence without solution, the savage resorts to the substitutive activity of magical ritual, such as when vegetables are carefully planted and watered, but also encouraged by the recitation of spells” (thomas 1991, 527). 20 “for example, they understand perfectly well that the wider the span of the outrigger the greater the stability yet the smaller the resistance against strain. they can clearly explain why they have to give this span a certain traditional width, measured in fraction of the length of the dugout. they can also explain, in rudimentary but clearly mechanical terms, how they have to behave in a sudden gale, why the outrigger must be always on the weather side, why the one type of canoe can and the other cannot beat. they have, in fact, a whole system of principles of sailing, embodied in a complex and rich terminology, traditionally handed on and obeyed as rationally and consistently as is modern science by modern sailors. how could they sail otherwise under dangerous conditions in their frail primitive craft?” (malinowski 1954, 30) magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 14 pursuit. but he clings to it, whenever he has to recognize the impotence of his knowledge and of his rational technique. (malinowski 1954, 32) the native has to know how. and this only occurs with the numerous attempts to solve the problems of their survival. each learning, whether in fishing, or in plantations and crops, forge a logic of interaction with the environment. i repeat, logic is not a gift, it is an achievement that comes from successful interactions. logic comes with learning. how to navigate, how to grow food, how to prune, how to make fire, how to cook some food, and how not to cook others, how to produce utensils and tools, how to produce pottery: all this stems from long attempts to understand the correct and simple way to achieve the goals. and the most important: to know how to distinguish between magic and technique. the misconceptions that classical anthropology bequeathed us, as in the case of lévybruhl, served to mask the evidence of the use of rationality that was in the process of being constructed. it is not innate, it stems from a long historical process of human culture. once again, we are faced with the danger of the hierarchy of “we” and “them”, who saw the savage delivered to superstitions and magic, in a “pre-logical” state. a particular “form of life” has an intrinsic logic that can only be evaluated and perceived from within said form of life. it is not possible to accurately assess an element of a cultural system from outside the system to which that element belongs. the analysis, to be comprehensive, must use the concepts and instruments of that culture. this is malinowski's achievement. with the enlightenment came the certainty of our differential grandeur. we look at the primitive as if it were an “other”. but rationality is not an exclusive attribute of modern science. nor did logic begin with aristotle. with his organon he began, yes, the study of logic.21 but are the rules of logic, of “good” reasoning, correct and efficient to interact with the world, no longer being tested and learned for millennia? but the most forceful identification of the active human rational action is the one that allowed the conquest of its symbolic condition. man has become a symbolic animal since archaic ages. his actions did not occur only in the physical or material register by sensory motivations. he also acted, moved by the sense he extracted from the world, sharing the meanings. he has become a symbolic-material agent since the palaeolithic era for at least thirty thousand years. alongside concrete and specific material tools, the human adventure provided the most remarkable tool that gave power for achievements, and took him to places unimaginable even for the neolithic: language. after all, today, a terrestrial probe has already reached jupiter. i already dealt with this in another article (maia 2015, 111-118), but here i simply follow the indication of an explanatory gap made by malinowski.22 i have examined the hypothesis 21 curiously, it was not only the idea of logic that was not created by aristotle, the very term “logic” was yet to be invented. after all, logic is a historical production. it was up to aristotle to make the first treatise on the subject. “in organon, the substantive logic is absent. the use of rational deduction is analytic, best expressed in the verbal form used by aristotle, the epistemic. substantive logic noun is an adjectival form that refers to the symbolism itself, the logical discourse, but it is a late form, due more to the alexandrian and roman eclecticism than to the teaching of magisterium.” (gomes 1985, 10) 22 “i have chosen to face the question of primitive man’s rational knowledge directly: watching him at is principal occupations, seeing him pass from work to magic and back again, entering into his mind, listening to his opinions. the whole problem might have been approached through the avenue of language, but this would have led us too far into questions of logic, semasiology, and theory of primitive languages. words which serve to express general ideas such as existence, substance, and attribute, cause and effect, the fundamental and the secondary; words and expressions used in complicate pursuits like sailing, construction, measuring and checking; numerals and quantitative descriptions, correct and detailed classifications of natural phenomena, plants and animals – all this would lead us exactly to the same conclusion: that primitive man can observe and think, and that he possesses, embodied in his language, systems of methodological though rudimentary knowledge” […] “similar conclusions could be drawn from an examination of those mental schemes and physical contrivances which could be described as diagrams or magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 15 of the synchronic constitution of language and technique developed by the anthropologists vitor bunak (russian) and leroi-gourhan (french) who lead us to understand the simultaneous production of language, and the use of instrumental techniques. “the man makes concrete utensils and symbols, both of them resulting from the same process” (maia 2015, 115). for the development of human reason, it was fundamental that the advent of language would be allowed to organize and objectify reasoning. with language, the logical use of descriptions and arguments is allowed. what would logic, even prehistoric, be without language? how does one explain a causal relationship without language? these questions themselves bring about something remarkable: that it is the fact that language was invented by illiterate human beings. language as the material agency of collective interaction in the world, with the world, and not as mere communication between humans. it is thus authorized to share knowledge, and then reproduce itself for the next generation. history is given more dynamism. illusion finds that history only begins with writing. before writing we lived as historical beings for millennia. language, although without writing, allowed the development of these three areas of the human avatar: magic, technical knowledge, and religion. this trio has always accompanied our historical evolution. despite recent incredible technical and scientific advances, we still see symbolic forces such as the “evil eye”, “bad luck”, “big eye”, “miracle cures”, and “spells that bring a loved one”. this is besides religious cults that have multiplied infinitely. if, today, religion and science have become formal institutions, the territory of magic persists in informality, even if active. there does not seem to be an opposition between science, magic and religion so antagonistic and destructive as this. but in its origin, in pre-history, how did the differentiation between these three symbolic components of society take place? i’ll let malinowski reveal this to us. in magic, “early man seeks above all to control the course of nature for practical ends”. when he realizes “the limitations of his magical might”, it is then that he appeals to higher beings or gods (malinowski 1954, 19). roughly, we can say that on the one hand we have practical observations in science, and on the other we have the desire for power to feed the spell. 23 the border between magic and religion already has some points of contact. “both magic and religion arise and function in situations of emotional stress: crises of life, lacunae in important pursuits, death and initiation into tribal mysteries, unhappy love and unsatisfied hate” (malinowski 1954, 87). magic is “based on man’s confidence that he can dominate nature directly, if only he knows the laws which govern it magically, is in this akin to science” (malinowski 1954, 19). religion, however, comes into play in the failure of magic by recognizing that human desire is powerless to achieve all goals. formulas. methods of indicating the main points of the compass, arrangements of stars into constellations, co-ordination of these with the seasons, naming of the moons in the year, of quarters in the moon – all these accomplishments are known to the simplest savages. also, they are all able to draw diagrammatic maps in the sand or dust, indicate arrangements by placing small stones, shells, or sticks on the ground, plan expeditions or raids on such rudimentary charts. by coordinating space and time they are able to arrange big tribal gatherings and to combine vast tribal movements over extensive areas.” (ma lino wski 1954, 3 3) 23 “science, even as represented by the primitive knowledge of savage man, is based on the normal universal experience of everyday life, experience won in man’s struggle with nature for his subsistence and safety, founded on observation, fixed by reason. magic is based on specific experience of emotional states in which man observes not nature but him himself, in which the truth is revealed not by reason but by the play of emotions upon the human organism. science is founded on the conviction that experience, effort, and reason are valid; magic on the belief that hope cannot fail nor desire deceive. the theories of knowledge are dictated by logic, those of magic by the association of ideas under the influence of desire. as a matter of empirical fact, the body of rational knowledge and the body of magical lore are incorporated each in a different tradition, in a different social setting and a different type of activity, and all these differences are clearly recognized by the savages. the one constitutes the domain of the profane; the other, hedged round by observances, mysteries, and taboos, makes up half to the domain of the sacred.” (malinowski 1954, 87) magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 16 early man seeks above all to control the course of nature for practical ends, and he does it directly, by rite and spell, compelling wind and weather, animals and crops to obey his will. only much later, finding the limitation of his magical might, does he in fear or hope, in supplication or defiance, appeal to higher beings; that is, to demons, ancestor-spirits or gods. (malinowski 1954, 19) magic, as an attempt to solve the aspirations of unsatisfied desires, is thus a result of personal frustration that needs to be compensated. overcoming this dissatisfaction favours belief in a supernatural power of men over other men, and over the world. in its failure of omnipotence, in the realization that the supposed magician is impotent, it is then that religion begins to act. religion becomes the preferred mystical channel to go beyond human material boundaries. among all human frailties, the consciousness of death is the principal motive of religious demands, driven by the hope of reaching an eternal life, perhaps paradisiacal. lévi-strauss complements these perceptions: “religion consists in a humanization of natural laws and magic in a naturalization of human actions”. in this way, he defines religion as the “anthropomorphism of nature” and magic as the “physiomorphism of man”.24 i leave with malinowski his last words in his great little book: the function of magic is to ritualize man’s optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. magic express the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism. looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. but without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of culture. hence the universal occurrence of magic in primitive societies and its enormous impact. hence do we find magic an invariable adjunct of all important activities. i think we must see in it the embodiment of the sublime folly of hope, which has yet been the best school of man’s character. (malinowski 1954, 90) this historical condition, as pointed out by malinowski, in referring to magic as a supportive occurrence, is perhaps necessary for further human development toward other civilizational milestones that can be extended to religion, and, more evidently, to technique. these three corporate functions have several elements in common. separating them by the indicator of rationality-irrationality is a historical misconception that has been endorsed even by renowned anthropologists. to suppose the primitive populations are immersed in superstitions, incapacitated in a pre-logical state, reveals a pernicious ethnocentric gaze. 25 such an assumption creates difficulties in the understanding of the historical transformation as something gradual, chained, 24 and still explicit: “there is no religion without magic, or magic that does not contain at least a grain of religion. the notion of a supernatural exists for a humanity which attributes itself to supernatural powers and which in turn lends nature to superhuman powers” (lévi-strauss 1989, 247). 25 “professor lévy-bruhl tells us, to put it in a nutshell, that primitive man has no sober moods at all, that he is hopelessly and completely immersed in a mystical frame of mind. incapable of dispassionate and consistent observation, devoid of the power of abstraction, hampered by ‘a decided aversion towards reasoning’, he is unable to draw any benefit from experience, to construct or comprehend even the most elementary laws of nature” (malinowski 1954, 25). we must remember another side of lévy-bruhl and his influence on febvre and bloch, with the concepts of “mentality” and “collective representation” (tambiah 1990, 87-88). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 17 beginning in the palaeolithic and culminates with our era, which for some would already be the anthropocene. what malinowski reveals to us is, on the contrary, a gradual development of our most striking civilizational characteristics.26 it is necessary to understand these three functions as equally intelligible and intellectualized human activities. they are revealing of the creative potentiality of our ancestors in equating the problems that arose. even the use of magic does not equate us with beasts. they are existential programs that pursue objectives to be achieved. actions with well determined purposes, in this sense, are rational actions. they are intentional actions. “we do not return to the vulgar thesis that magic is a shy and stammering form of science”, as levi-strauss warned us. magic, technique, and religious thought are three historically constituted possibilities. “instead of opposing magic and science, it would be better to put them in parallel, as two unequal modes of knowledge as to theoretical and practical results.” (lévi-strauss 1989, 28) the “savage” was never more than the animal condition, still surrendered to the mastery of its needs and instincts, which often pleased us to examine. neither was this consciousness dominated by affectivity nor steeped in confusion and participation. (lévi-strauss 1989, 58) our prejudices nourish a bland anthropology, of “we” against “them”. or are we to insist that before aristotle there was no logic? were we not rational? but after all, what is logic? it may even seem like a mysterious entity, that guarantees by its use that we become the only animals said to be rational. but as we read in organon, every mystery falls apart. yes, logic is not due to a gene of divine origin, but rather it is simple and ordinary words organized in a particular way that then direct the actions of the agents more effectively. the slow and gradual construction of logical capacity – and its constitutive linguistic base – stimulated unexpected developments in the human species. the criterion of success in the collective life of animals, and not only humans, is due to the effectiveness in interactions with the environment through oral communications of understood meanings of the world. one might even say that this will be an evolutionary criterion, an agency guiding evolution. it is language that is more than literally constituted in the body of this interactive agency. the use of logic: a historically situated learning precisely these findings, combined with the fact that aristotle is the first author known to produce a treatise on logic, are symptoms for another finding. this material about which aristotle’s work speaks, was the current language of his time. this was a pre-existing material and routinely accessible to all. that is, in organon, aristotle “did not invent anything”, in the sense that everything that analytics is about (which was designated as what we call “logic”) was an arduous and remarkable work of systematic organization of the instrumental linguistic bases of analytical thought, later said to be rational. 27 in reality, the most appropriate forms of action driven by a correct and efficient reasoning for the achievement of goals and objectives, have historically been constructed in the daily work of human 26 tambiah makes some criticisms to the work of malinowski, especially (tambiah 1990, 72), alongside substantive compliments (tambiah 1990, 70-71). his criticisms, however, did not weigh on my judgment. 27organon, besides being a treatise on logic, is also a monumental study of the philosophy of language. through it one can observe how logic and language are intertwined. magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 18 inhabitants in the last millennia. a long and arduous human creation. logic is a historical product. yes, logic is a historical production that needs support for its establishment. and the support, the structural basis upon which the logical form is imprinted, is language. our symbolic universe, in which language is immersed, presents a hierarchy, a depth. first a linguistic base and then possible ways of organizing the signs, the senses. language carries, conveys, forms of meaning. and logic is one such form, just as poetry is another. what aristotle did in organon was to demonstrate this fact. he explained the linguistic format that an inference must obey to be an analytic. and, of course, he did it by ordering and modelling the terms of the support language, organizing the meanings issued by the subject. he established the syllogistic procedure to obtain conclusive meaning effects. they are effects of meaning that guarantee us greater effectiveness in the practice of life. the importance of logic, of its ordination, long before aristotle, was to make the actions directed by language more effective in the human routine. the pre-aristotelian “organon” was given by the effectiveness of human actions guided by language. for example, what is the position of the cut and the correct height of a branch or stem to prepare and produce seedlings? these are questions that, when verbalized and thus shared in human groups, show language in action. an action whose shared effectiveness only occurs if the language used to characterize this process, has the same practical consequence as those presented by the empirical learning with the stakes of the native plant. in semiology it is said that both have the same effect of sense. that is, if the stakes used by subjects in both descriptive forms are equally successful, and their process produce seedlings from the plant. the language-driven action portrays the causality extracted from the farmer’s observations. the logic expressed in language shows the supposed material connections observed in the world. this is language in effective action. here is an alert, sounding like an omen, about an urgent need for anthropological research: it is necessary to develop ethnographic studies that show, with rigour, how this human conquest – of language and, subsequently, of logical – has occurred throughout history. this need is even stronger because aristotle has not been able, by non-existence, to make any reference to some previous work.28 that is to say, the rules of efficient logical reasoning, right and true, were already circulated and socially consolidated, now fit for aristotle to systematize them. my question is: how has this historical construction occurred since the most archaic eras? is it an attempt to reproduce something that occurs in the world? i agree that it is a human creation, yes, but due to the interaction with the environment, due to the observation/perception of the functioning of the natural world. and in that sense, would it be a copy of the occurrences in the world? these questions refer us to another, more fundamental question: what is the languageworld relationship? does human logic reproduce a logic of nature? when speaking of “laws of nature”, is the genitive correct? or is it a human construction, a proposition of scientists? is there a logic of nature? finally, i present here, in this text, many more doubts than solutions to the intricate relation of thought to practice. today, what can be said strictly about the language-world relationship is that “the effect of meaning retained in language, exposed by language, is the same as that obtained from the world through our interaction with the environment.” in this sentence, which i have emphasized in the quotation marks, is missing an element that is essential: the subject that captures the meaning of both the sentence and the world. the subject is the link between language and world. effect of meaning is a semiological concept that cannot do without the 28 aristotle himself acknowledges “who, before him, had nothing to cite, despite the pains he suffered in search of possible previous sources, from which his analytical and rhetorical exercise constitute the first in the greek school and, as a result, in the other schools.” (gomes 1985, 9) magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 19 subject. the subject equals the retained literal meaning of a linguistic expression to the perceived meaning of some event in the world.29 without subject there is no language. thus, there are those who want to see the language-world relationship as a relation of “copy”, of “representation”, but that is not what it is about, it is a misunderstanding. it is also a clarification, the most productive definition of language goes beyond literality and, based on semiology, enters the meanings. the idea of a language expands beyond linguistics, gains materiality and advances through ethnology. language, in this expanded sense, a broad sense, will be conceptualized as that which carries and articulates the meanings apprehended by the subjects, whether they are apprehensions of the literal sense given by words or by the semiological sense given by objects. it is more than literal language. (maia 2015, 20) without demeaning the importance and necessity of the ontological understanding of the world, for a historical knowledge, the metaphysical propositions of being are quite problematic. for metaphysics can lead us to the thought of being itself, erasing its conditions of historical possibility. exactly this notion fuels the claim of considering language as a copy of something in the real world. in this sense, two entities are compared as if they were autonomous: the language and the world, also called, real. but the existence of language depends on humans, and not only, it also depends on the world and its interactions with. just as the perceived world also depends on the language that designs and qualifies it. 30 this innovative understanding is a merit of considering language as more than literal, forged by meanings, and not as a system of signs simply as a form of communication. the world itself is only perceived through the concepts that express its meanings.31 historians cannot think of a reality of super-sensible and isolated beings, without their conditioning environments, without their constitutive relations. the qualities of being itself seem like illusions that offend the historical understanding of both the material environment, and human beings. the entities that populate history are relational entities. they interact with each other. for history is more than useful, it is necessary, to replace metaphysics with pragmatics. metaphysics, an idealistic illusion before history? by metaphysical bias, entities seem to have a life of their own, having autonomy. they seem to gain concrete and independent existence, as isolated entities. sneaky nouns are created that gain ontological reality, become beings in themselves. as with logic, reason, language, causality, magic, science... and, in these cases, they are usually capitalized: science, nation, truth etc. we are against this guidance. i see how problematic this thought is: to suppose a real beyond the reality experienced in sensible life, a real achieved only by reflection, by the use of reason, with the purpose of unveiling the primitive and transcendent nature of the being that would be the base the world. this phrase is completely alien to the territory frequented by a historian. 29 this is the role of derrida's “trace”, as quoted in note 8, see maia 2015, 118 ff, 134-137. the subject is the one who captures a vestige (trace) of something in the world and gives it meaning and thus imposes on the vestige a linguistic expression. it is more than literal language in action, see quoted text, below. 30 remember peter winch, already quoted: “it is not reality that gives meaning to language. the real and the unreal are shown in the sense that language has” (winch 1994, 37). 31 this is a consequence of fleck, of his style of thought that provides a directed view, gestaltsehen. see maia 2015, 118-121, see also fleck 2010, 142. magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 20 the metaphysical influences that privilege the analysis of being itself are multiple and varied. those who highlight magic and science as two isolated and conflicting entities qualify magic as superstition, which is a mistake, and science as truth. but in this way, they lose decisive elements in each of these entities. an integral understanding demands that they be evaluated by their contents and by their relations, among themselves, and with their surroundings. comparing passion fruit with mango may make sense on some occasions, but nothing speaks of the specific characteristics of these fruits. it is a comparison that may be suitable for the consumer in the supermarket, or at the table, but little is clarified about these fruits, their agricultural needs and their characteristics in cultivation, or their botanical constitution. the passion fruit tree is a vine and the mango tree is a sturdy tree with a woody trunk. removing the fruit from the plant that produces it impoverishes any evaluation. like comparing magic and science without the society that surrounds and produces them. in that case, it is absolutely useless to compare magic from primitive tribes to modern science. it simply serves to justify prejudice. after all, each historical entity is a production originated from a certain economic and social formation. to understand magic, it is appropriate to follow in malinowski's footsteps, to examine the relationships established in that society. we are faced with intellectual impoverishment by letting ourselves be influenced by metaphysics. the act of “metaphysical” discourse, creating entities, is a violent act against historical thought. things, like historical entities, have a process of production inherent in them. nothing is born out of nothing, nor lies in the vacuum of the sociomaterial conditions of existence. history and metaphysics thus lie at opposite poles in cognitive inquiry. for us historians, the most divergent question between metaphysics and history is that of their respective objects of study. metaphysics applies to transcendence and to the earliest causes, away from the empiricism of the routine facts of life. unlike history, it seeks the reality underlying the reality of phenomena, the real. however, to abandon the human perceptions retained from the world, and to exclude the opinions based on the sensory activity of the individuals in favour of a transcendent knowledge, is a hard blow against history. it is true that personal judgement is not a guarantee of truth, but who has it? universal reason? and the problems for the history continue. everything indicates that there has been a contamination of the question of causality by metaphysical proposals. causality is not an ethereal substance, it is a material relation between things in the world. around the notion of cause and effect there are several unknowns and explanatory omissions, there is something magical and mysterious in the conception that links the cause with its consequence. the solution of this imbroglio cannot be a mystique that designates something resembling a transcendental reason. there is a need to produce an epistemological strategy that will exhibit and explain it satisfactorily in the investigation of the causal nature of phenomena. cause and effect, connected together, is a notion that refers to the phenomenal world, and to the events of the world. it is a relational notion whose claim is to be indicating the manner in which one event is necessarily produced by another. but to say that one thing produces another is to go beyond hypothetical logical connection discourse, or vague subjective perception. to do so, it is essential to demonstrate how causality occurs in our world of facts. how does the outbreak of the consequence arise from the cause that precedes it. it is necessary to retract in detail the effect being part of the cause. the crucial question is: how does that indicated as cause, effectively produce its effect? the demonstration of the nexus causal link between cause and effect, is essential when it comes to causality. magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 21 it should be noted that causality generally occurs as a process, a causal process. the concept of “process”, coming from the natural sciences, refers to a sequence of interrelated occurrences, each with its causal nexus. the causal process designates a chain of events that, starting from a first cause, produces as a consequence a series of consecutive effects, as it happens with the process of development of a foetus until arriving at the adult stage. the stages of human development since prehistory attest to the importance of the understanding obtained through the notion of causality. in the palaeolithic, removing splinters by making the planned collision between two stones meant having cause and effect as something almost simultaneous, which greatly facilitates the perception of the causal relationship. already in the neolithic, cause and consequence can be separated by days, months and even years. imagine the motivation of ploughing the land and planting ears of corn. it takes several articulated and sequential actions with a goal to be realized in the distant future. what about the castration of young animals with a view to their slaughter – more fruitful – years later? thus, the so-called logical reasoning has become increasingly routine, including being applied to magic-religious conceptions, and not only in the technical practice of work. through this instrument, empirical foundations have been formed to educate and foster our reasoning, called, logical. by this we can affirm that, long before aristotle, the pragmatics of human actions invented logic. the literature on the prehistoric cognitive stages is still quite lacking in the closer examination of the importance of causality. understanding the world and the possibilities of human action in this world through causal relations propitiated – i suppose – the development of human evolutionary traits, and transformed its cultural phenotype. it was through the causal understanding that the desire for power, which guides the magic, found its reason for being and its modus operandi. in magic, fantastic desire can be seen as the cause of its demands. the prehistoric subject designs for himself the agency aspired by his desire; he supposes to hold a magical power that acts on other individuals, on plants and animals. from the understanding of causal relations, the primitive being “created” the magic. by the same procedure, one sees that the more refined understanding of causality with pragmatics also decrees its opposite, the decline of magic. it suffices to verify that the spell does not rigorously comply with what is desired in the actions of the magician: the consequences of magical acts are not observed with the expected frequency. the ritual is not enough to have a good harvest as magic does not guarantee it. it is necessary though to simultaneously apply the technical knowledge already acquired. this does provide a greater guarantee of success. in this way, the same conditions that foster the appearance of magical thinking also impose the evidences of its limits. to this, keith thomas noted that malinowski already had the elements that indicated the weakening of the magical power.32 these magical-mystical conditions involving metaphysics propagate and reach various latitudes. they contaminate idyllic myths of human nature that extend to christianity and beyond. it is by obeying these rules that we become special beings in nature: “children of the first cause”, made in the image of god. and as such, we receive a gift, the reason. we become rational beings capable of apprehending and glorifying the divine work, the causality that organizes and directs the world. the world has, from these premises, its own organization, its jurisprudence: the natural laws. with causality driven by christianized metaphysics, there are prescriptions to be followed by the natural world and, of course, by men; everything that occurs is causal and emanates from an organizing intelligence of the 32 the cultural decline of magic historically occurs with the impossibility of showing how magic (as a cause) actually produces its consequences, its effects. like the "evil eye”, does the destruction of the sign of an opponent’s name, or the piercing of a needle-cloth doll produce their wrongs in others? how does the rain dance work? after all, it will always rain at some point after the dancing ritual. see also: thomas 1991, 524, 527, 681-682. magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 22 universe. when modern science was performed, researching and discovering “the laws of nature”, it was being motivated by this idyllic metaphysics. science followed its mystical mythic origin myths. and the human being, as the most illustrious subject of deity, can and ought through knowledge guided by his gift of reason, unmask such natural causalities. thus, we see that not only magic has among its ingredients the transcendental magic potion of mysticism. science also drinks from the same source. the roots of modern science grow over the same mythical swamp that gives rise to magic. of course, the differences and similarities between the magic of “cold societies”, as levi-strauss used to say,33 and modern science make comparative study attractive, but this requires a lot of care. the greatest of these is the temptation for anachronistic analysis. but note that in metaphysics there is no difficulty in comparing primitive magic with modern science, despite its temporal distance of thousands of years and its spatial drift. they are products of completely different societies, they are two distinct social and economic formations. but in metaphysics this is not the question, it is not an impediment. when one reaches the essence, the truth of being, it becomes the absolute truth, regardless of any context or chronicity. thus, one can compare magic with science. there is no historical error, there is no anachronism, since metaphysics does not take into account the historical conditions of production. there is no metaphysical relativism to act as an obstacle to the comparative analysis of these entities. despite the difference between their historicities, they occupy the same analytical space. after all, metaphysics is the realm of absolute, timeless beings. it does not question the existence of perception of causality, but the authenticity of causality as something transcendental. what is in doubt here, and is simply a doubt, is the ontological consideration of causality, and its existence as if it were an entity. without the need for material reasoning, as if his perception were enough to make his agency explicit. towards a conclusion: magic, science and religion and the perception of a causality but here i intend to focus on another aspect in addition to causality being considered as a subjective question, or a metaphysical proposition. i disregard the concept of an objective truth for causality, and i concentrate on the actual practice of its perception. i emphasize the use people make of their perceptions. after all, it is these perceptions that fuel your beliefs and motivate your behaviour and actions. and such consequences are independent of the value of truth that the supposed perceived causality has. that is, even if wrong, the perception of some causality is already causal. if individuals perceive relationships that they consider causal relationships, it is enough for effects to take place and for them to gain historical reality. the resulting assemblages produce movements and differences. this is the basis of the dynamics of human action on the environment, whether in the instrumental techniques of survival, whether in science, in magic, or in religion. to have or not to have the perception of something – that can be designated as causality – is an essential condition for ensuring the success, or otherwise, of the development of animal life in its interaction with the world, in its struggles for existence. the perception of cause-and-effect relationships had two major consequences. thanks to the belief in the metaphysics of causality, the human being constructed 33 “the clumsy distinction between 'peoples without history' and others could be advantageously replaced by a distinction between what we call [...] ‘cold' societies and 'warm' societies” (lévi-strauss 1989, 259). magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 23 religions, spells and diverse sciences. on the other hand, thanks to the belief in the pragmatics of causality, man devoted himself to routine work to survive, and to transform the world. as aristotle pointed out, causality allows us to establish a safe procedure for the attainment of knowledge. however, for such knowledge to be useful and to integrate the historical collection of human practices over time, from one society to another, it must satisfy certain requirements of every public good: must be accessible to all, and be universally known. after all, all knowledge – to be called as such – must be collective, that is, it needs to be socially shared. and of course, its diffusion and general reproduction require some pedagogy to spread the knowledge of how to execute it. this pedagogy must contain some symbolic and pragmatic features. the symbolic character stems from the need for the causal process to be understood as an event in itself, that is a signifier and that it gains meaning. the pragmatic aspect associated with this meaning makes explicit the step-by-step of that knowledge transformed into an action. that is, it must be shown how effectively a cause produces its effect – a requirement, still of aristotle (2016, 269), that the act of knowing requests its demonstration. the core of causality lies in the meaning that the subject establishes. this understanding, which provides a centrality for the subject, for the perception of the subject, leads us to a subjectivist explanatory mode. however, in this model, the subject's belief refers to an apparent paradox, since it assumes that there is a causal relation between facts in the world. that is, subjectivism relies on another belief, on the natural objectivity of the world. this confrontation between the orientations of objectivism and subjectivism becomes a difficulty in the understanding of causality. both perspectives have a common basis, consider subject and object as separate, independent entities. now the accent falls on the object, or on the subject. double equivocation. the core of the subject-object question is not found in any of the parts, isolated by analytical devices. the effective question is: the interaction between them. an interaction that is both mental and material. this is the sense of a symbolic agency that must be looked at by theory of practice.34 to reaffirm this pragmatic posture, considering both objectivism and subjectivism, it can be said that without the subject-object interaction there is no causality. without an object, without the world, there is no way for a being to become a subject. on the other hand, without a subject there is no theory of newton's gravitation, nor of einstein's. there is no science, no magic, no religion. science, magic, and religion are human narratives that describe the possible forms of subject-world interactions in the world. such interactions always occur under the aegis of the practice that transforms a doing into a knowing and vice versa. and it is with the know-how that a new knowledge takes root and enters human history, it becomes an historical fact incorporated into the becoming of future societies, as with the domination and routine use of fire. and this occurs not only with the cultivation of vegetables and the extraction of natural goods, but also with the domestication of animals. in interacting with the world, the human being perceives some regularities, there are recurring occurrences, such as day and night. there are sequences of events that seem to indicate that some predate others, such as breastfeeding after birth in mammals, or after flowering follow the fruits. there is also a different class of events in which human activity proves to produce desired and programmed consequences. like the one that produces stone chips to be used as blades. or like the one that makes a cudgel from the tibia of a great animal, 34 explaining what is implied: symbolic-material agency. this interactivity has already been well explored in maia 2015, 79 ff and in specific article, maia 2017. magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 24 or that that digging out and modelling a tree trunk produces a canoe. however, not all regularities are well acquainted with the model of causality, such as seasonal succession (although spring always succeeds the winter, it is not appropriate to say that winter causes spring). rigour requires that there be a demonstration, a logical implication of the antecedent toward the consequent, that is, a factual description of the interconnected causal stages. the idea of cause was striking not only for scientific research or to produce magic, as we have seen, but it was much broader in its effects. it drives human actions routinely to face the difficulties encountered in their environment, therefore equating them. and even more, it was by observing and understanding the effects of the use of tools, and the practice of working with such tools, that human participation was allowed to produce something. the tool and associated work were considered as the causes of the production of goods and satisfaction of their needs. in this way, the notion of cause contributes firmly to the development of culture, as dewey had already pointed out. it was this condition of adaptation to the environment that allowed human societies to conquer rigorous logical thinking as a form of possibility for the development of what is called rationality. the human being becomes the “rational animal” as a result of their collective interactions, of the historical sharing of their life experiences, of organizing a grammar for thought, considering the continuous learning in the use of symbolic linguistic forms associated with material practices. concluding: man is not born as a rational human being, but he becomes one; that is, rationality is a human gift, yes, but a gift built, and produced by the historical evolver. from the palaeolithic to the threshold of the anthropocene, resulting from the practice shared in their interactions with the environment. references aristóteles. 1985. organon. lisboa: guimarães editora. aristóteles. 2009. física i-ii. campinas: editora da unicamp. aristóteles. 2016. organon. são paulo: edipro. bloor, david. 1991. knowledge and social imagery. chicago: the university of chicago press. [1976] evans-pritchard, edward. 2005 [1937]. bruxaria, magia e oráculos entre os azande [witchcraft, oracles and magic among the azande]. rio de janeiro: zahar. gomes, pinharanda. 1985. tradução, prefácio e notas in aristóteles. 1985. organon. lisboa: guimarães editora, pp 9-16. horton, robin. 1993. patterns of thought in africa and the west: essays on magic, religion and science. cambridge: cambridge university press. lévi-strauss, claude. 1989 [1962]. o pensamento selvagem [la pensée sauvage]. campinas: papirus. maia, carlos a. 2012. mannheim, fleck e a compreensão humana do mundo. in condé, mauro. ludwig fleck: estilos de pensamento na ciência. belo horizonte: fino traço, 2012. pp. 51-76. maia, carlos a. 2013. história das ciências: uma história de historiadores ausentes. rio de janeiro: eduerj. maia, carlos a. 2015. história, ciência e linguagem. rio de janeiro: mauad x. maia, carlos a. 2017. agência material recíproca: uma ecologia para os estudos de ciência. história, ciências, saúde – manguinhos 24 (2): 447-464. malinowski, bronislaw. 1954 [1948]. magic, science and religion. new york: double day. tambiah, stanley j. 1990. magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality. new york: cambridge university press. magic vs. science in the historiography of science: the social-historical construction of rationality carlos alvarez maia 25 thomas, keith. 1991 [1971]. religião e o declínio da magia [religion and the decline of magic]. são paulo: companhia das letras. winch, peter. 1967 [1958]. the idea of a social science. london: routledge & kegan paul. winch, peter. 1994 [1964]. comprender una sociedad primitiva [understanding a primitive society]. barcelona: paidós. microsoft word conde layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (8): 1-2 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open access journal from the editor historiography of science in pandemic times mauro l. condé1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i8.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ the eighth issue of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science was produced under atypical conditions. as with the rest of the world, we are living through the covid-19 pandemic. therefore, the authors and editors of this issue were in quarantine during the preparation of this edition. unfortunately, due to these conditions, some authors were not able to conclude their contributions in time and could not participate in this issue. yet fortunately, we were able to publish this issue with many authors as well as maintain the focus and quality of past editions. more than being part of this particular moment of the history – which will certainly be analyzed by historians of science in the same way they investigated other pandemics – we can now extract from it some reflections that will certainly be explored more profoundly in the future. as we know, in recent years, we have been living in an anti-intellectual climate of science denialism, where all science has not only been devalued, but even negated. now we know that it has been fully possible for a society to choose to live without science, or, at least, without having complex scientific and technological knowledge. history has shown us societies that have dedicated themselves to magic, witchcraft, religion and politics, however, without an in-depth interest in science and technology. even today, perhaps, denying science is still possible for a relatively closed society located somewhere in a remote place on our planet. nevertheless, as we all know, denialism is no longer possible for most of our contemporary societies that have become more complex with extremely high levels of interconnectedness between them. the potential for spreading a virus around the world lies exactly in its ability to go where every human being can go, which is practically anywhere on earth. but if, on the one hand, these interconnected societies bring about this misfortune of viral dissemination, then it is this same type of society that can find a solution to this problem, since it possesses the scientific and technological knowledge to do so. during the pandemic, science and its practice got a lot of media attention in most countries. information on epidemiological controls, sanitary barriers, antiviral treatments and the hope for a vaccine, among other related topics, became a part of every citizen’s daily life. it seems, therefore, that the growing trend of science denialism needs to immediately review its positions, because it is precisely through science, to a large extent, that the 1 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br from the editor historiography of science in pandemic times mauro l. condé 2 possibility of maintaining the existence of this type of society is based. although, paradoxically, this society carries the seed of denialism within itself. i hope that this tragic episode we are experiencing can bury science denialism once and for all. but in all probability, with the appearance of a vaccine, this agenda will change, and science denialism will come back. unfortunately, it is in the interest of some groups to deny facts and ideas in order to promote an ideological position. this shows that our societies carry within themselves these paradoxes, such as the simultaneous presence of rational and irrational behaviors. there is no inevitable progress of reason with an ultimate goal to which we all are heading, since the very development of science is circumscribed to societies’ setbacks. in this pandemic, it is regrettable that, for some political leaders, only in situations like pandemics and wars – with their concentrated efforts on results – science does gain importance. and what is worse is the knowledge that for some political leaders, even in these moments, science does not seem to be of any use to them. somewhere along the road of science, i hope that this terrible feeling that the world has entered the wrong path will leave our daily lives, and we will return as much as possible to normality. a normality which, unfortunately, will probably still have to grapple with science denialism – although perhaps it now be more weakened. in short, the constant struggle of science needs to not only unveil the mysteries of nature, but defend us from mankind’s irrationality. we must always be attentive. and i believe that history and philosophy of science as well as science education have an essential critical role in this process. i would like to say that this eighth journal issue would not have been possible without the dedication and commitment of the special issue’s guest editors in the historiography of physics, prof. dr. ivã gurgel (usp) and prof. dr. thiago hartz (ufrj) to whom i would like to express my sincere gratitude. 93 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 93-107 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? víctor manuel hernández márquez 1 abstract: although pierre duhem is well known for his conventionalist outlook and, in particular, for his critique of crucial experiments outlined in his thesis on the empirical indeterminacy of theory, he also contributed to the scholarship on the psychological profiles of scientists by revising pascal’s famous distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind (esprits fins and esprits géométriques). for duhem, the ideal scientist is the one who combines the defining qualities of both types of intellect. as a physicist, duhem made important theoretical contributions to the field of thermodynamics as well as to the then-nascent physical chemistry. due to his rejection of atomism and his unrelenting critique of maxwell’s electrodynamics, however, in his later years, duhem’s work was surpassed and abandoned by the dominant tendencies of physics of the time. in this essay, i will discuss whether duhem himself can be understood through the lens of his own account of the scientist’s psychological profile. more specifically, i examine whether the subtle mind – to which he seems to assign greater cognitive value – in fact plays a key role in duhem’s critique of the english school (école anglaise), or if his preference for the axiomatic structure of theoretical physics shows a greater affinity with the geometric mind. keywords: pierre duhem; subtle and geometric minds; abstract and axiomatic theories; physical theory received: 30 march 2017. reviewed: 15 may 2017. accepted: 30 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.09 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction perhaps the most overlooked, among pierre duhem’s diverse contributions to the understanding of the sciences, is his study of the psychological dimensions of scientific practice based on his approach to the pascalian distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind (esprit de finesse and esprit de géométrie). there are several reasons for this oversight, but the most evident comes from the point of view of classical philosophy of science, since the emphasis made on the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification left aside historical, sociological, and psychological features of scientific practice to focus solely on the logic of justification. another, more precise, reason is the belief that duhem makes use of pascal’s dichotomy to settle scientific matters by means of nationalistic prejudices. by the other side, duhem’s appropriation of the pascalian distinction seems difficult to hold because one finds 1 víctor manuel hernández márquez is a professor at at the autonomous university of ciudad juárez. adress: av. universidad y av. heroico colegio militar s/n zona chamizal c.p. 32300. ciudad juárez, mexico. email: vmhernandezmarquez@gmail.com víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 94 problems to determine whether we are deal with a sharp and fundamental distinction, or whether duhem makes informal use of it in order to support his view about the value of theoretical physics as abstract theory. taking the latter interpretation allows us to deal with the inconsistencies that stand out when we closely examine the way in which duhem reworks that distinction to discuss the scientific contributions of what he calls l’école anglaise (english school) in contrast to his argument about the german and french way to build the physical theory in his late “war writings.” in what follows, i will compare and contrast duhem’s use of the pascalian distinction in his treatment of the theoretical practice of the english school in la théorie physique as well as in his early writings on the subject; namely, in his review of the french translation of william thomson’s papers. i argue that, although he claims that both modes of thought coexist at the heart of the scientific community, and that the improvement of theoretical physics renders impersonal its findings (cf. duhem 1987a [1893a], 144; 1915, 103), duhem’s philosophical and methodological papers exhibits an unquestionable preference for the subtle mind. then, i will examine whether duhem’s theoretical practice coincides with his own account of the subtle mind, or if, on the contrary, it ultimately corresponds with the geometric mind. finally, i hope that this essay sheds light on other aspects of duhem’s thought that may be worth revising. modes of thought there are several approaches to understand how human creativity works, but all of them share a certain parallelism that makes it possible to reduce them to a kind of cognitive dualism. the most popular among these approaches is by isaiah berlin (1953, 1), found in a fragment by the ancient poet archilochus: “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” this analogy is quite productive, allowing us to categorize the intellectual world into those who are guided by a single regulatory principle – at most a handful – and those who make use of all kinds of assertions without a concern for internal consistency as long as they achieve their intended goal. those with a hedgehog’s mentality need order and a system; whereas, on the other hand, those who possess a fox’s mentality can navigate – without difficulty – in a sea of information without details, for that matter, disregarding their intended goal. this distinction is not exclusive. we need not assume we are dealing with a sharp distinction, since berlin makes use of it only as a guiding principle to locate the salient features of specific thinkers by classifying them as either foxes or hedgehogs. thus, he characterizes aristotle, montaigne, and erasmus as foxes, and plato, lucretius, pascal, and hegel as hedgehogs. there are, indeed, those who dream of being of the opposite mindset despite their nature. thus, for example, in his early years, wittgenstein – a fox by nature – thought of himself as a hedgehog. the reverse, however, seems implausible, if not impossible. it is for this reason that, for james (1981 [1907]), far from being a purely intellectual matter, a distinction of this kind is a matter of temperament; this despite the fact that the majority of us are incapable of possessing a well-defined intellectual temperament (in this case, we are only ordinary people). with regard to philosophical inclinations, for james, one is either an empiricist or a rationalist according to his temperament, not by choice. in other words, we do not choose to be foxes or hedgehogs, we simply are one or the other. if we put berlin’s distinction in jamesian terms, a fox would be, by definition, an empiricist, a lover of crude facts and would, therefore, be of a rough mindset. whereas the hedgehog would always be a rationalist, a lover of abstract principles and therefore, his or her mind would be subtle. here, nonetheless, james performs a sleight of hand insofar as he makes use of the known pascalian distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind. moreover, since james was familiar with pierre duhem’s oeuvre, he takes from it what better suits his pragmatist character.2 having said that, although there are commonalities between the overall methods of each of these mindsets, for duhem, the pascalian distinction serves, first and foremost, the explicit purpose of 2 in the fifth lowell lecture, entitled “pragmatism and common sense,” james (1981 [1907], 86) writes: “just now, if i understand rightly, we are witnessing a curious reversion to the common sense way of looking at physical nature, in the philosophy of science favored by such men as mach, ostwald and duhem. according to these teachers no hypothesis is truer than any other in the sense of being a more literal copy of reality. they are all but ways of talking on our part, to be compared solely from the point of view of their use. the only literally true thing is reality; and the only reality we know is, for these logicians, sensible reality, the flux of our sensations and emotions as they pass”. víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 95 differentiating the way english physicists conceive of physical theory from the french and german view. however, this theoretical articulation does not appear in duhem’s work until the later period of his intellectual development, as we do not find aspects of this in his early writing in what will serve as the basis for the chapter that makes up the first part of la théorie physique – a chapter he devotes to abstract theory and mechanical models. before delving into an examination of such transformation in duhem’s thought, it is appropriate to take a moment to consider the historical context that gives rise to and explains some of its most prominent features. to a certain extent, it is here that we can locate a turn from duhem the physicist to duhem the methodologist or philosopher of physics – or, to put it in contemporary terms, to a physicist’s explicit formulation of his scientific philosophy.3 we can wonder, however, whether we are dealing with changes in the particular intellectual orientation of a specific physicist or with a mode of thought common to a transitional period in the establishment of a new field of knowledge. in order to answer this question, let us turn to the distinction holton appropriates from nietzsche to reestablish the debate about public image of science during the second half of the twentieth century. the new apollonians and dionysians following the dominant standpoint of our current scientific framework – reaffirmed by kuhn’s contributions – today, most members of the scientific community ignore the epistemological questions that emerge at the heart of scientific practice; and when they do address them, it is only as a pastime not unlike stamp collecting or heraldry. in the new division of intellectual labor, which brought about a reconfiguration of knowledge in the twentieth century, the ones in charge of understanding and defending scientific practice are professional philosophers of science like the logical positivists, karl popper and his predecessors, and the current naturalized philosophers. holton calls these new apollonians.4 on the other hand, we find the critics of science, who question its reductionism and its complex relations with power and the industry. holton calls these new dionysians or neodionysians. both neodionysians and new apollonians enjoy a degree of recognition among broad sectors of society. they also exert some pressure on the scientific community, although the latter pays little attention to their claims and demands. holton’s essay itself is a rare exception, and perhaps he owes his reputation as an outsider with an understanding of science to the fact that, since the beginning of his academic career, he was associated with one of those new apollonians who rose from the ranks of the vienna circle, namely philipp frank. at the same time, it appears that this very proximity made holton lose sight of the fact that the first generation apollonians were either scientists in their own right or thinkers trained in some branch of science. it is not difficult to see, then, that frank belongs to that lineage of philosopher-scientists who contributed to the stability of theoretical physics toward the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.5 during this transitional period, the quest for a disciplinary identity engenders a debate among physicists themselves: they argue explicitly on the scope and value of their conceptual elaborations; they establish the boundaries of experimental physics in light of the limits of theoretical physics; and they resort to ingenious metaphors to explain the relationship between the two subdisciplines. thus, for example, poincaré compares physics with a library that is constantly growing, where experimental physics is in charge of acquiring new books (i.e., facts), while mathematical physics is in charge of composing the catalogue 3 although we may think it was abel rey who, in 1904, coined the term philosophie scientifique to refer to duhem’s conception of science, the phrase was already in use several years before and can be found, for example, in paul tannery’s reviews in revue philosophique de la france et de l’étranger. 4 holton (1978, 102) writes: “the philosophers who have taken it on themselves to protect rationality in the narrowest sense of the word are also members of a long tradition. some of their genes can be traced back to the logical positivists of the pre-world war ii period, who are themselves descended from a long line of warriors against the blatant obscurantism and metaphysical fantasies that haunted and thwarted science in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” 5 cf. laszlo tisza’s report on frank’s undertakings as a physicist, whom he regarded more as a philosopher of science, or, in the best-case scenario, as a philosopher of physics (cf. blackmore, itagaki and takana 2001, 68-69). víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 96 (and therefore, is the one responsible for grouping and categorizing facts);6 meanwhile, duhem (1987a [1894]) makes sure to point out that there are no experimental observation devoid of theory nor crucial experiments.7 nonetheless, we can easily lose sight of the relevance of metatheoretical questions once the disciplinary domain has been fully delineated. as bordoni (2012) and others have argued, we cannot have a suitably clear idea of duhem’s contributions to theoretical physics if we do not take into account the role metatheoretical considerations play in the process of institutionalization of the discipline. i argue, however, that the process of institutionalization in question has different characteristics from those elucidated in previous scholarship on duhem. according to roberto maiocchi (1990, 386), for example, “it is not the crisis of science, but its successes which impose upon duhem the necessity of epistemological reflection.”8 broadly speaking, by the success and crisis of physics (and chemistry), maiocchi refers to what is usually catalogued under the so-called internal history of science, whereas the process i have in mind corresponds, more or less, to its external history. that being said, however, i do not find the distinction between internal and external histories adequate to describe the complex interrelations that took place among physics, philosophy, and the public image of science of the time, and, in particular, in the organization of science during the troisième république (third republic), as well as in the preceding, chaotic decades. for a number of reasons, it is a mistake to speak of the success of the discipline in the last decade of the nineteenth century, except for in hindsight, since its physiognomy was actually determined at the time if we consider, for example, that rational mechanics was regarded as a branch of mathematics while, previously (before maxwell’s theory), others branches were regarded as unrelated – as was the case with electric and optical phenomena. this lack of disciplinary cohesion manifests itself in different ways in the processes of institutionalization. suffice it to say that in the netherlands there were only two university chairs in theoretical physics until well into the twentieth century. as far as france is concerned, we may recall the decades of theoretical scarcity that separate fresnel, ampère, cauchy, and fourier from poincaré and duhem (cf. buchwald and hong 2003). on the other hand, the turn of the century witnessed an increased interest in science among the general public, which did not go unnoticed for scientists and philosophers (the apollonians and neodionysians, to use holton’s terminology), insofar as they described it as the “bankruptcy of science” (faillite de la science). this lack of perspective is also evident, for example, in one of the first english commentaries on duhem’s oeuvre. in the last chapter of the methodology of pierre duhem, under the section entitled “critical remarks and conclusions,” armand lowinger (1967, 163) states: the fundamental idea guiding our criticism is the modest role which we conceive methodology to play vis-à-vis science. methodology takes science for granted and is essentially a description of the scientific process. with regard to every question, therefore, which arises concerning the scope and meaning of science, it always has to keep a weather eye on the actual scientific process as it is carried on in the laboratory and in the study of the scientific theoretician and to give as faithful an account of it as possible. it must explain the scientific process, not explain it away by some sort of verbalistic or conceptual legerdemain; it must follow after science, not attempt to dictate or domineer science. indeed, lowinger’s remarks make sense once the disciplinary field achieves a considerable degree of institutionalization and normalization. furthermore, as noted above, holton and lowinger – as is, and can only be, the case for most scientists – view methodological questions as a posteriori to scientific practice itself, and, therefore, tend to display a strong bias against normative approaches in the philosophy of science. 6 he (1905, 144) concludes: “if the catalogue is well done the library is none the richer for it; but the reader will be enabled to utilise its riches”. “si ce catalogue est bien fait, la bibliothèque n’en sera pas plus riche. mais il pourra aider le lecteur à se servir de ces richesses” (poincaré 1905, 160). 7 according to maiocchi (1990, 392), the main concern of duhem’s reflections on the nature of physical theory was to critique the empiricist basis of the positivist conception of science, but it is difficult to ascribe such conception even to comte, as elias (1978, ch. 1) and laudan (1981, ch. 9) have rightly pointed out. 8 for a critical, albeit sympathetic, analysis of maiocchi’s preceding study on which on which this essay is based, refer to stoffel (2002, 87-94). víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 97 this is not, however, a critique that affects duhem since his reflections on theoretical physics rest on a careful analysis of scientific practice based on several schools of thought, and since they do not aim to regulate the practice of physics, at least not explicitly. on the other hand, lowinger is right in subsuming methodological questions under the category of metaphysics and in pointing out that duhem’s thesis on the autonomy of physics excludes any attempt at legislating methodological matters.9 as i will explain below, duhem feels that methodological controversies will fade away with time once common sense becomes the bon sens of the scientific community. the english scientific practice of the nineteenth century as noted above, in his early analysis of english science, duhem does not employ the famous pascalian distinction between the subtle and geometric minds; however, he does hold that its defining qualities – those that set the english apart from the french and german scientists – help us identify the fundamental character of the english mentality (esprit). for example, english scientists stand out in their striking ability to imagine complex sets of countless, concrete objects, without losing sight of the place each of these occupies and the relations they have with each other. thus, rarely do english scientists engage in more abstract research, and when they do, the results tend to be unsatisfactory. this approach is found equally among writers, philosophers, and scientists. when we focus on the activity of the english theoretical physicists, the first thing that stands out, duhem argues, is the use of what they call a “model.” unlike the abstract theory of german and french physicists, models allow us to establish a mental image of the phenomena in question. nonetheless, the english scientists’ insistence on the construction of models leads them to equate theory with the models themselves, which is evident in w. thomson’s (lord kelvin) assertion that it is only by means of the creation of models that we can understand physical phenomena. however, the english school’s notion of model should not be equated with the abstract notion of a mathematical model employed in contemporary science; after all, duhem was primarily concerned with the use of mechanical models; that is, with representations that imitate or simulate the phenomenon in question in a mechanical fashion, such that “understanding the nature of material things will be the same thing as imagining a mechanism that will represent or simulate the properties of bodies by its action.” (duhem 1996 [1893], 55)10 as duhem also notes, it is not the insistence on the mechanical representation of phenomena that sets the english school apart, but rather the particular manner in which it brings about this aim by means of models. in the young duhem’s budding, positivist interpretation of the history of physics, mechanistic explanations epitomize the triumph of the imagination over reason, or, as he claims later, of the subtle mind over the geometric mind, of modern science over the rationalist metaphysics of scholasticism: if descartes and the philosophers who followed him refused to admit the existence of any property of matter not reducible to geometry or kinematics, it is because any such quality would occult, and, being conceivable only by reason, it would remain inaccessible to the imagination. the reduction of matter to extension by the great thinkers of the seventeenth century showed clearly that during that period, the metaphysical sense, exhausted by the excesses of scholasticism during its decadence, entered into the decrepit state in which it still languishes today. (duhem 1996 [1893], 55-56)11 it may be worth recalling that this brief, historical observation squares with whitehead’s later interpretation in science and the modern world, wherein he argues that it would be wrong to regard galileo’s 9 in “la valeur de la théorie physique”, duhem (1991 [1954], 334) sharply remarks: “the study of the method of physics is powerless to disclose to the physicist the reason leading him to construct a physical theory.” 10 “[c]omprendre la nature des choses matérielles, ce sera imaginer un mécanisme dont le jeu représentera, simulera, les propriétés des corps.” (duhem 1987a [1893a], 119) 11 “si descartes et les philosophes qui l’ont suivi ont refusé d’admettre l’existence de toute qualité de la matière qui ne se réduisait pas à la géométrie ou à la cinématique, c’est parce qu’une telle qualité était occulte; parce que, concevable seulement par la raison, elle demeurait inaccessible à l’imagination; la réduction de la matière à l’étendue par les grands penseurs du xviie siècle montre clairement qu’à cette époque le sens métaphysique, épuisé par les excés de la scolastique en décadence, entrait en cet état de décrépitude où il languit encore aujourd’hui.” (duhem 1987a [1893a], 119-120) cf. duhem 1906, 115. víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 98 natural philosophy as a revolt of reason against the dark forces of tradition, since, on the contrary, and as galileo’s friend paolo sarpi’s account of the council of trent demonstrates, his was an anti-intellectualist movement in line with the anti-metaphysicial attitude of the counsel. duhem will further elaborate his account of the cartesian conception of physics in the first chapters of la théorie physique, underscoring the explanatory (metaphysical) aspects underlying the system (especially in the optics) – even when, for duhem, these aspects are dispensable from the representational or logical point of view of theoretical physics. likewise, in an essay published between the aforementioned texts entitled “l’évolution des théories physiques, du xviie siècle jusqu’à nos jours” (1896), duhem situates descartes’ theory as an important development in physics insofar as it overcomes the hidden entities of the physics of the preceding era and incorporates the theories of the english school as a form of neocartesianism, or as a partial return to it. but these remarks do not prevent duhem from noting that cartesian mechanics is ultimately false; nor will they prevent him from foreseeing, without much success, that this cartésianisme nouveau, like its predecessor, will render “the mind […] discouraged by the complexity, the bizarreness, the arbitrary and far from natural ways, by the improbable combinations which it employs in ‘constructing the world machine.’” (duhem 2002, 209)12 this position, founded on sentiments and not on logic, represents an improvement from the ambivalent assessment evident in his critical review of w. thomson’s physics, and of the english school more generally. for now, i hasten to note that the distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind that duhem will employ in the well know chapter of la théorie physique does not appear in this essay. in la théorie physique, duhem revises his initial views with the intention of offering a systematic exposition of the aim of theoretical physics. nonetheless, it is important keep in mind the position that duhem outlines in the early texts with regard to the transitory character of english physics, which he attributes to its arbitrary character and lack of natural ways – features that differ from the characteristics proper to the subtle mind, but which also constitute aspects of the physical theory conceived as abstract representation. is there, then, an evident contradiction in duhem’s outline here? scholars like martin (1991, 107-108) argue that duhem fell prey to imprecisions and shortcomings due to his approach to writing and revising his early texts. for this reason, it would be important to determine whether duhem himself noticed these flaws, given that clarifying this issue would be crucial to determine whether duhem was a subtle or geometric mind. hermeneutical perplexities in duhem’s realism and conventionalism aside from whether we are dealing with a mistake in exposition or with a more profound inconsistency, it is unquestionable that the verification of that fact leads to the establishment of hermeneutical warnings and precautions regarding the scope of what i am outlining in this essay; but neither should we lose sight of the particular context of duhem’s claims if we wish to eliminate readings that contribute to an increase in perplexity. in order to try to understand duhem himself, it may be necessary to appeal to the hermeneutical criteria pascal (1910, 684) sketches in one of his well-known reflections: “we can only describe a good character by reconciling all contrary qualities, and it is not enough to keep up a series of harmonious qualities without reconciling contradictory ones. to understand the meaning of an author, we must make all the contrary passages agree.”13 as i have noted before with regard to the contemporary scientific understanding of duhem’s methodological inquiries, it is equally important to know what it is exactly that duhem opposes when he affirms that the end or purpose of the physical theory is to represent experimental laws, and not to explain them. besides, when we undertake a contemporary reading of this assertion (that is, presupposing a current meaning of explanation), we arrive at the conventionalist conception usually attributed to duhem. nonetheless, when someone does that, she or he overlooks the fact that the representational and explicative 12 “à rebuter l’esprit par la complication, par la bizarrerie, par l’allure arbitraire et peu naturelle, par l’invraisemblance des combinaisons qui lui servent à ‘construire la machine du monde.’” (duhem 1987a [1896], 228) cf. duhem 1987a [1893b], 82. 13 in the original: “on ne peut faire une bonne physionomie qu’en accordant toutes nos contrariétés et il ne suffit pas de suivre une suite de qualités accordantes sans accorder les contraires. pour entendre le sens d’un auteur il faut accorder tous les passages contraires.” (pascal 1963, 257) víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 99 character of the physical theory runs parallel to the distinction between physics and metaphysics underpinning the famous thesis on the independence of theoretical physics from metaphysics. in addition, according to duhem, she or he also forgets that the elimination of the explanatory element is not a matter of methodological normativity, but rather a historical stage in the development of theoretical physics. in my opinion, this is evident when in the early paper on the english school, duhem describes and confronts the manner in which w. thomson appeals to the imagination and not to reason when representing the properties of the elements involved in the phenomena in question. these elements are named after objects present in everyday life, and their properties (e.g. fluidity and condensation) behave in the same manner that do normal liquids and air. generally speaking, “their nature does not need to be defined philosophically. it suffices that their properties fall under senses. the mechanisms they serve to make up are not destined to be grasped by reason; they are destined to be seen by the imagination.” (duhem 1996 [1893], 57)14 for this reason, duhem points out that the physics of english scientists is the physics of engineers; whereas, on the other hand, the physics of continental scientists is usually philosophical. to use the productive metaphor of la théorie physique, when we delve into english physics, “we [think] we [are] entering the tranquil and neatly ordered abode of reason, but we find ourselves in a factory.” (duhem 1991 [1954], 71)15 it would be a mistake to claim that duhem is contradicting himself when he argues that “the english school has thus acceded entirely to purely mechanical explanations of physical phenomena”, (duhem 1996 [1893], 55)16 or when he states, “this predilection for explanatory and mechanical theories is, of course, not a sufficient basis for distinguishing english doctrines from the scientific traditions thriving in other countries.” (duhem 1991 [1954], 72)17 to frame the issue as a question: can we legitimately read the term explanation, presupposing the meaning that duhem gives to metaphysical explanation, which he had previously rejected? in my opinion, we cannot do so, just as we cannot equate abstract reason with the metaphysical reason of scholasticism, or geometric reason with the pure reason that conceives hidden causes. when we assign a rigid and exclusive meaning to the notions of “conventionalism” and “realism” these apparent contradictions inevitably leave us with a reading of duhem marked by false dilemmas. hence, we cannot reconcile all the paradoxes that emerge when the two notions are used as opposites. the same can be said about the subtle mind and the geometric mind, since, while we can have a sense of what duhem means when, in la théorie physique, he claims that the way of conceiving the english theory of physics corresponds to the broad mentality, or subtle mind, this does not mean that there are no geometric minds who foster the creation of abstract theories among the english scientists, as is in fact the case with rankine. it may be the case that the clarification of these concepts would suffice to answer the question posed as title of this paper in the affirmative; nonetheless, it is evident that the relationship between the english school and the subtle mind has, in la théorie physique, a negative connotation – one of rejection – and which differs from the positive connotation he give it in la science allemande, wherein he links it to french science. the philosophical dimension of abstract theory as stated before, we do not find the references to pascal of the late writings in duhem’s early methodological writings, nor is there an appeal to the distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind, which appears for the first time – albeit in a rather implicit manner – in 1902, with the publication of le mixte et la combinaison chimique. the only foregoing, explicit “philosophical” reference to the distinction can be found in his essay on the development of the theory of physics, and in that case, only to further support duhem’s 14 “leur nature n’a pas besoin d’être philosophiquement définie; il suffit que leurs propriétés tombent sous les sens; les mécanismes qu’ils servent à composer ne sont pas destinés à être saisis par la raison, ils sont destinés à être vus par l’imagination.” (duhem 1987a [1893a], 122) cf. duhem 1906, 118. 15 “[…] nous pensions entrer dans la demeure paisible et soigneusement ordonnée de la raison déductive; nous nous trouvons dans une usine”. (duhem 1906, 111) 16 “[…] l’école anglaise est donc acquise entièrement aux explications purement mécaniques des phénomènes physiques.” (duhem 1987a [1893a], 119) 17 “cette prédilection pour les théories explicatives et mécaniques n’est pas, assurément, un caractère qui suffise à distinguer les doctrines anglaises des traditions scientifiques qui fleurissent en d’autres pays.” (duhem 1906, 114) víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 100 negative valuation of english physics discussed above.18 when he argues, however, that a unyielding sentiment leads him to think that thomson’s and maxwell’s theories cannot be adequate, he is implicitly appealing to a distinctive quality that he will associate with the esprit de finesse; this time, not only in la théorie physique, but more importantly, in the texts that make up la science allemande. however, in the former context, this intuition turns out to be somewhat paradoxical since this sentiment lends support to the conception of the theory of physics as abstract representation of experimental laws. as duhem argues in this essay, however, this approach is first and foremost logical, philosophical, and metaphysical, while the english school’s conception is imaginative, anti-metaphysical, and thus, practical. in order to show this, he notes that thomson does not pose any philosophical problem (e.g. whether the resulting elements of matter can occupy varying volumes, that is, if they can be condensed) since their approach to build mechanical models is not structured to be grasped by reason, but rather by the imagination (cf. duhem 1987a [1893a], 122). this is the anti-metaphysical feature of english physics. in short, english physics lacks a cosmology.19 in the case of mathematical tools, the logico-philosophical nexus is linked to the process of abstraction employed to determine concepts in physical theory; however, in the case of the english school’s mechanical models, algebraic analysis is readily available to represent relations established in the model without a concern for the existence of an analogy with the actual properties of bodies; that is to say, whether or not the algebraic magnitudes correspond to real elements. by the same token, there is no concern for the logical origins of equations. in fact, the fundamental differences between both conceptions about the physical theory can be figure out whether the theory exhibits or not an axiomatic structure. for example, duhem reproaches the chaos maxwell introduces into electrodynamics when he determines the behavior of dielectic bodies by means a new element – namely, the displacement current –, which duhem views as strange and lacking in adequate characterization. in sum, the lack of definitions of the new electromagnetic elements, by means of axioms and postulates, makes us think that english theory “c’est le système des équations de maxwell.” (duhem 1987a [1893a], 126)20 on the contrary, axiomatic abstract theory as conceived by the german and french scientists of the time satisfies – through the rigorous, logical sequencing of all its elements – the criteria of unity, order, and 18 cf. note 11. “an invincible sentiment warns us that matter cannot be constituted as w. thomson and maxwell imagine, and we are tempted to agree with pascal: “this is all ridiculous; for it is all useless, uncertain and laborious.” (duhem 2002, 209) in the original: “un sentiment invincible nous avertit que la matière ne saurait être faite comme l’imagine w. thomson ou maxwell, et nous sommes tentés de nous écrier avec pascal: ‘tout cela est ridicule; car tout cela est inutile, et incertain, et pénible’” (duhem 1987a [1896], 228). in his review of leray’s essai sur la synthèse des forces physiques, duhem (2006, 19) had already cited said aphorism, but he immediately points out that “[pascal] carefully retains this useful and practical consequence of descartes’s system, the refusal to explain every natural effect by inventing a new propriety, a special virtue.” in the original: “retient soigneusement cette conséquence utile et pratique du système de descartes qui se refuse à expliquer chaque effet naturel par l’invention d’une propriété, d’une vertu special.” (duhem 1987a [1893b], 66) 19 in his reply to the critique launched by the thomist eugène vicaire to his essay on the subject of physical theory, duhem (1996 [1893], 30) clarifies the modern meaning of the distinction between physics and cosmology as follows: “to conform to contemporary usage, we give the name physics to the experimental study of inanimate things, considered in three phases: the observation of facts, the discovery of laws, and the construction of theories. we regard the investigation of the essence of material things, insofar as they are causes of physical phenomena, as a subdivision of metaphysics. this subdivision, together with the study of living matter, forms cosmology.” in the original: “nous nommons physique l’étude expérimentale des choses inanimées envisagée dans ses trois phases: la constatation des faits, la découverte des lois, la construction des théories; nous regardons la recherche de l’essence des choses matérielles en tant que causes des phénomènes physiques comme une subdivision de la métaphysique, subdivision qui forme, avec l’étude de la matière vivante, la cosmologie.” (duhem 1987a [1893c], 85). on the relationship between this essay and his review of the english school, see leite (2006, section 2.2), and, more broadly, leite (2016). 20 few lines before, he writes: “maxwell studies the transformation of the equations of electrodynamics in their own terms, most often without seeking to see behind his transformations the coordination of physical laws. he studies them as one examines the movements of a mechanism. this is why is a futile effort to seek behind these equations a philosophical idea which is not there.” (duhem 1996 [1893], 60) the original reads: “maxwell étudie en elles-mêmes les transformations des équations de l’électrodynamique, sans chercher le plus souvent à voir sous ces transformations la coordination des lois physiques; il les étudie comme on regarde les mouvements d’un mécanisme; voilà pourquoi c’est un labeur illusoire de rechercher, sous ces équations, une idée philosophique qui n’y est pas.” ( duhem 1987a [1893a], 126; my italics) víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 101 simplicity proper to deductive reasoning. these epistemological criteria define the philosophical dimension of the physical theory conceived as an abstract theory;21 however, once duhem reworks this essay and includes it in la théorie physique, this dimension eventually disappears and is substituted by the association of abstract theory with the geometric mind (which before only appears as ‘les facultés logiques de l’esprit’), and by the economic conception of scientific thought. there are two reasons that may have motivated these modifications. the first is the definitive disassociation of the axiomatic structure of the physical theory from cosmological presumptions, which, within the mechanistic tradition, were linked to the deductive capacity of abstract theory. this separation constitutes an acknowledgment of the limits of his science on the part of the physicist, an acknowledgment that emerges from the ephemeral character of the cosmological element within the development of physics, since, as duhem argues in la théorie physique, everything that is good within a physical theory can be found in its representational components, while its unstable and sterile elements are found in its explanatory components. or as duhem asserts more emphatically: what is lasting and fruitful in these is the logical work through which they have succeed in classifying naturally a great number of laws by deducing them from a few principles; hat is perishable and sterile is the labor undertaken to explain these principles in order to attach them to assumptions concerning the realities hiding underneath sensible appearances. (duhem 1991 [1954], 38)22 we should point out, albeit briefly, that this fundamental feature of the growth and development of physical theory suffices to overthrow any simplistic and untenable idea about the accumulative character of physics in pierre duhem’s thought since what is currently referred to as a scientific revolution would be nothing other than the substitution of cosmological components – which given their own explicative nature are, for their protagonists, as dramatic as they are incommensurable. nevertheless, cosmological components are not the only factor under consideration, since other elements related to the representation of phenomena come into question; for example, the emergence of new discoveries or the difficulty in assigning magnitudes to physical properties – aspects that fall outside the field of competence of logical analysis, and that, therefore, refer back to the imagination or to intuition. moreover, as crowe (1990) notes, in la théorie physique, duhem opposes the development of the physical theory to the properly accumulative development of mathematical theories. as i mentioned above, the notion of abstract theory that duhem has in mind refer to the axiomatic structure of the physical theory, and the ideal of such structure is still the system explained in euclid’s elements. this is sufficiently evident when he claims that nothing keeps us from providing maxwell’s equations with an appropriate axiomatic formulation in the future: no doubt what is exact and truly fertile in the work of maxwell will one day take its place in a coherent and logically constructed system, in one of those systems in which thoughts are conducted in order, in the image of euclid’s elements, or of those majestic theories unfolded by the creators of mathematical physics. (duhem 1996 [1893], 64)23 21 “without doubt, all branches of pure and applied mathematics treat concepts that are abstract. it is abstraction that furnishes the notions of number, line, surface, angle, mass, force, temperature, and quantity of heat or electricity. it is abstraction, or philosophical analysis, that separates and makes precise the fundamental properties of these various notions and enunciates axioms and postulates.” (duhem 1996 [1893], 58) in the original: “sans doute, toute branche des mathématiques pures ou appliquées traite de concepts qui sont des concepts abstraits; c’est l’abstraction qui fournit les notions de nombre, de ligne, de surface, d’angle, de masse, de force, de température, de quantité de chaleur ou d’électricité; c’est l’abstraction, c’est l’analyse philosophique qui démêlent et précisent les propriétés fondamentales de ces diverses notions, qui énoncent les axiomes et les postulats.” (duhem 1987a [1893a], 123; my italics). 22 in other words: “ce qui, en elle, est durable et fécond, c’est l’oeuvre logique par laquelle elles sont parvenues à classer naturellement un grand nombre de lois en les déduisant toutes de quelques principes; ce qui est sterile et périssable, c’est le labeur entrepris pour expliquer ces principes, pour les rattacher à des suppositions touchant les réalités qui se cachent sous les apparences sensibles.” (duhem 1906, 57-58) 23 in the original: “sans doute, ce qu’il y a d’exact et de vraiment fécond dans l’oeuvre de maxwell prendra place, un jour, dans un système cohérent et logiquement construit, dans un de ces systèmes où les pensées sont conduites par ordre, à l’image des eléments d’euclide ou de ces majestueuses théories que déroulaient les créateurs de la physique víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 102 duhem’s own scientific endeavors usually exhibit an axiomatic structure and grant high esteem to those who, like gibbs and helmholtz, proceed in similar fashion. for example, in his “commentaire aux principes de la thermodynamique” (1892-1894), duhem justifies his axiomatic treatment of theory by arguing that a return to the foundations allows us to evaluate the degree of development a theory has achieved in an extended period of time, and to predict new consequences, but also to overcome the obstacles that have accumulated during a given period.24 donald miller (1970, 229) has claimed that the axiomatic outlook that duhem employs with regard to the first law of thermodynamics was novel in physics while it simultaneously anticipated, to some extent, the inquiry into the foundations of mathematics that took place at the turn of the century. yet this claim is an exaggeration with regard to the work on the foundations of mathematics since duhem’s axiomatic outlook is, in fact, informal (or intuitive) with respect to the initial definitions because they do not present themselves in symbols, and there is no trace of the distinction – even in a primitive form – between the language-object and the metalanguage by means of which the axiomatization takes place.25 in short, he does not sketch a method to address the mathematical problems proper to axiomatization, such as the nature of rudimentary terms, the independence and self-sufficiency of a given cluster of axioms, or the consistency and comprehensive nature of the system.26 but neither would he have motivations to do so, since, although he was awarded the degree of doctor in mathematics, he did so with a dissertation on the theory of physics – focusing on “magnetism by influence” (aimantation par influence)–,27 employing an axiomatic framework proper of the geometric mind. on the other hand, at the outset, he specifies which theories are presupposed (geometry and kinematics) in the process of establishing of a system, but he also discusses, at length, the philosophical considerations that seem to not belong to an axiomatization, which takes place when he holds that it is impossible, and useless, to know the real constitution of matter, or when he speaks of physicists who deny the possibility of bodies that are the result of mixtures or combinations of two bodies a and b.28 mathématique.” (duhem (1987a [1893a], 131) in la science allemande, he notes helmholtz’s and hertz’s respective treatments of the subject – although he assigns a greater success to the latter (cf. duhem 1915, 128-129). on the other hand, his reference to the euclidian framework should not lead us to think that duhem overlooks the logical shortcomings of that axiomatization, i.e., the independence of its axioms (cf. duhem 1915, 113-114). 24 “it becomes necessary to return to the foundations on which the science is based, to examine anew their degree of soundness, to assess exactly what they can support without giving way. once this work is done, it will be possible to build up the new consequences of the theory.” (duhem 2011 [1892-1894], 35) 25 cf. miller (1970, 229). it appears duhem was not familiar with the axiomatic systems developed by frege and hilbert – now known as hilbert systems – nor with the new mathematical logic couturat sought to introduce, without much success, in the french intellectual milieu based on the works of peano, schröder, and russell. for a brief approximation to duhem and couturat, see hernández (2016). 26 this does not mean that he refrains form framing the question in a traditional way and with regard to the roles the subtle and geometric minds play within them: “[…] the axioms that a science of reasoning demands that we grant to it ought no merely to agree among themselves without any shade of contradiction. they ought, further, to be as few in number as possible. consequently, they ought to be independent one from another. if one among them, in fact, could be demonstrated by means of the others, it would be deleted from the number of the axioms and relegated to the class of theorems […]. to find out whether all the axioms of euclid are truly independent of each other is a question under the jurisdiction of the mathematical mind […]. but to decide whether the postulate of euclide is true is a question that the mathematical mind, left to itself, could no answer. it must, in this case, have recourse to the aid of the intuitive mind.” (duhem 1991 [1915], 87-88) in the original: “[…] les axiomes qu’une science de raisonnement demande qu’on lui concède ne doivent pas seulement s’accorder entre eux sans l’ombre d’une contradiction; ils doivent encore être aussi peu nombreux que possible; partant, ils doivent être indépendants les uns des autres; si l’un d’entre eux, en effet, se pouvait démontrer à l’aide des autres, il devrait être rayé du nombre des axiomes et relégué parmi les théorèmes […]. reconnaître si tous les axiomes d’euclide sont vraiment indépendants les uns des autres, c’est une question qui ressortissait à l’esprit géométrique […]. mais décider si le postulatum d’euclide est véritable, c’est une question à laquelle l’esprit géométrique, abandonné à lui-même, ne saurait donner de réponse; il lui faut, ici, le secours de l’esprit de finesse”. (duhem 1915, 113-114) 27 duhem’s theory only deals with the magnetism of solid bodies, such as crystals, with quite modest theoretical intentions: “nous espérons que le présent travail, quelque restreint qu’il soit, aura contribué à élucider quelques points obscurs ou douteux dans la théorie de l’aimantation par influence.” (duhem 1888, 136) 28 cf. duhem 2011 [1892-1894], 38. it may be worth recalling that, in the introduction, duhem acknowledges that his treatment may be viewed as more philosophical than mathematical as to be included in the journal de mathématiques pures et appliquées. víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 103 that being said, the second reason why duhem was able to suppress the characterization of abstract theory as a philosophical view of the physical theory is also linked to another negative aspect of the axiomatic structure since as the deductive capacity of the theory promotes the desire to overcome the representational domain in search of a cosmological explanation of laws. similarly, the exclusive attachment to consequences derived from the theory makes philosophers hostile toward any discovery not previously accounted for by the theory. in contrast to the english school, whose model favors technological invention and application, abstract theory, for a young duhem, has the shortcoming of fostering “an unimaginative mindset, hostile to novelty, and for which continental scientists, and their academies tend to be reproached.” (duhem 1996 [1893], 70)29 in la théorie physique, duhem removes both shortcomings of abstract theory as an axiomatic system. in addition, he undermines the positive aspects of the mechanical models while simultaneously, complaining about its lack of logical rigor and its de-structured quality – a critique already at work in some of his scientific works. what is the extent of pascal’s influence? if we compare duhem’s critical review of the english school with chapter iv of the first part of la théorie physique, what is most evident is that the association of the subtle mind with the english mentality does not add substance to what duhem argues in the preceding essay since the changes described above are also not associated with the english mentality, but instead, to the continental one, which favors an axiomatic outlook. is pascal’s influence on duhem, then, more apparent that real? given that martin (1991), stoffel (2007), and cortese (2016) hold – with their respective differences –30 that there is a marked pascalian influence on duhem’s thought, it seems convenient to outline some of the arguments that lead me to believe that this influence is, at least, not as significant as the three authors argue. the first, and most apparent, evidence for the rhetorical, rather than actual, use of the distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind lies in the fact that in la théorie physique, the subtle mind is associated with the english way of doing physics, while in the writings collected in la science allemande, the subtle mind is primarily associated with the french mentality, while the geometric mind is associated with the german mindset. in other words, when compared to the english, the french display a deductive mindset; whereas, compared to the germans, the french display a broad, but weak mode of thought. how is this possible? if we immediately rule out the hasty reading that ties nationality, strictly speaking, with one of the two mentalities, it becomes clear that the modes of thought are defined not in function of the specific nationality, but rather by the physicists’ approach to the physical theory, since, if duhem has gone to great lengths to criticizing the english approach it is precisely because the success of mechanical models has led to their use beyond the english channel, and to their triumph in the kingdom of abstract theory, namely, france and germany. on the other hand, we can delimit the scope of the subtle mind in the french context if we grant that both french and german scientists are advocates of abstract theory, but that they differ in the way they view a system’s axioms and postulates, so that the geometric mind depends on because of the consequences they may derive, while the subtle mind is capable of feeling or intuiting their truth. however, although this interpretation is plausible in theory, it has the burden of being appropriate when applied to mathematical theories, but indefensible when applied to the physical theory. this is the case because the subtle mind is the one in charge of filling in the gaps the geometric mind is unable to reach, which exceed the domain of principles and of the physical theory itself, as is the case with the relationship between theoretical and 29 “our need to admit nothing except what can be clearly deduced from accepted principles makes us mistrustful of any unexpected discovery. this need leads to the bureaucratic mind, hostile to novelties, for which continental scientist and their academies are so often reproached.” (duhem 1996 [1893], 70). in the original: “notre besoin de ne rien admettre qui ne se déduise clairement des principes reçus nous rend méfiants à l’égard de toute découverte inattendue; de ce besoin découle l’esprit routinier, hostile aux nouveautés, si souvent reproché aux savants du continent et aux académies qu’ils composent.” (duhem 1987a [1893a], 140) 30 stoffel (2002) makes a strong critique of some of martin’s main theses without denying for that matter the influence of pascalian thought, while cortese (2016) follows stoffel’s (2007) reading closely. víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 104 experimental physics; as duhem says, it is not something to be deduced, but rather intuited (duhem 1915, 131). besides, as he states in la théorie physique – but also in his application for admission into the academy of the sciences, and elsewhere – theoretical laws are free creations of the intellect and their permanence is determined by their ability to synthesize experimental laws and by the productivity of their consequences.31 what truth, then, can be felt about a law, like the law of conservation of energy, which is taken to be a hypothesis that must be verified by means of its most immediate and distant consequences?32 we can respond to this question by arguing that it is up to the subtle mind to contrast and verify the theory; but this response suffers from the great inconvenience of presupposing that the problem at hand pertains to experimental, and not theoretical physics (except, perhaps, if the point is to free theory from hasty refutations). moreover, for duhem, contrary to axioms in mathematics, in physics, common sense does not suffice to feel or intuit the truth of principles; instead, scientific experience – which does stop with the perfection scientific instruments and the emergence of new discoveries – is necessary: more complex yet is the choice of hypotheses upon which will rest the entire edifice of a doctrine pertaining to experimental science, of a theory of mechanics or physics. here the matter which ought to furnish the principles is no longer common experience, spontaneously available to every man from the time he leaves infancy. it is scientific experiment [expérience]. to the mathematical sciences common experience furnishes autonomous, rigorous, definitive data. the data of scientific experiment are only approximate. the continual improvement [perfectionnement] of instruments increasingly modifies them, while the fortunate chance of discovery each day comes to enlarge the treasury with some new fact. (duhem 1991 [1915], 81-82)33 i think it unnecessary to expand on how problematic it is to give full significance and coherence to an intuition that requires a scientific experience, which renews itself endlessly in light of multiple factors, but that, at the same time, pretends to attain – in advance – the truth itself about hypotheses that are accepted as highly arbitrary and subject to revision according to pragmatic criteria linked to the productivity of their consequences. on the other hand, it seems appropriate to suggest that this appeal to scientific experience foreshadows a key concept in physics’ recent historiography, which buchwald and hong (2003, 180ff) have called unarticulated knowledge, refering to the implicit knowledge that makes possible the configuration of a theory but which also guides experimental practice in the laboratory.34 31 notice sur les titres et travaux scientifiques de pierre duhem, written in may of 1913, but published posthumously, which deals with the supposed newtonian method to arrive at principles by means of inductive reasoning, notes that according to energetism: “the principles are laid down as pure postulates, arbitrary decrees of human reason; they are considered to have successfully fulfilled their role when they yield numerous consequences that conform to experimental laws.” (duhem 1987b, 334) unfortunately, the english translation lacks the section devoted to his work as a physicist. 32 with regard to the first law of thermodynamics, he notes: “[…] it is a physical hypothesis […]. it is for experience to verify its immediate and more distant consequences.” (duhem 2011 [1892-1894], 63) 33 “plus complexe encore est le choix des hypothèses sur lesquelles reposera tout l’édifice d’une doctrine appartenant à la science expérimentale, d’une théorie de mécanique ou de physique. ici, la matière qui doit fournir les principes, ce n’est plus l’expérience commune, celle que tout homme pratique spontanément dès qu’il est sorti de l’enfance; c’est l’expérience scientifique. aux sciences mathématiques, l’expérience commune fournit des données autonomes, rigoureuses, définitives. les données de l’expérience scientifique ne sont qu’approchées; le perfectionnement continuel des instruments les retouche et les modifie sans cesse, tandis que le hasard heureux des découvertes, chaque jour, de quelque fait nouveau en vient grossir le trésor.” (duhem 1915, 106) 34 as buchwald and hong (2003, 181) elucidate, this implicit knowledge can become explicit at a given moment: “specifically, by ‘unarticulated knowledge’ we intend knowledge that is generally unexpressed but that guides research. this not at all the same thing as unexpressible knowledge, such as the kind of skill that is needed to form a beautiful piano leg on a lathe. not at all – it is knowledge that is unexpressed, that exists below the surface of explicit discourse. such knowledge is accordingly tacit, in the sense of unspoken, but it can be – and often eventually is – heard, particularly when a science settles into a reasonably stable form.” víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 105 closing remarks if what i have argued thus far seems plausible, then we can ask whether duhem’s use of the distinction between the two mentalities has the significance scholars like martin, stoffel, and cortese ascribe to it; or whether, on the other hand, duhem resorts to the dichotomy because of its popularity among the french audiences at the turn of the century without much of a concern for a consistent and systematic treatment. the latter may be due to the fact that duhem’s oeuvre addressed three different audiences: those who, following holton, i have called new apollonians and dionysians, and, of course, their theoretical and experimental counterparts. additionally, in some cases, a number of these writings were revised and published – in part or in whole – for a different type of audience, as is the case, for example, with la théorie physique, but also with le mixte et la combinaison chimique (1902), which takes up previously published essays with a philosophical audience in mind, and is, therefore, published in la revue de philosophie – a journal with catholic inclinations in which duhem participated in from its inception. as i noted toward the beginning of this essay, the philosophical inquiry into the end and value of theoretical physics is related to the process of institutionalization and recognition of the discipline; or, as bordoni (2012, 128) states, “the emergence of theoretical physics corresponds to a new sensitivity to metatheoretical issues: we find explicit designs of unification, and explicit methodological remarks, as well as explicit questioning of the foundations of physics.” in my opinion, however, bordoni is not appropriately consistent when, immediately following the above quote, he argues that “[s]cientists did not entrust philosophers with reflections on aims and methods of science: metatheoretical remarks began to emerge from inside science, rather than being addressed to science from the outside.” there is a simple explanation for this. when a discipline is in the process of its stabilization and professionalization, it is not easy to determine who is inside and who is outside. in the case of physics, as bordoni himself acknowledges, “maxwell, boltzmann, rankine, gibbs, helmholtz […] may all be described as natural philosophers and physicists,” but there are also protagonists whose professional profiles put them on the side of engineers, mathematicians, self-made men (as in the case of faraday), amateurs, and philosophers. on the other hand, in many cases, methodological discussions are aimed at literate audiences, at young students (as was the case with most of the essays collected in la science allemande), but also at new apollonians (like abel rey) and new dionysians (like bergson and le roy). in my opinion, duhem resorts to pascal’s distinction, because – besides his undeniable admiration – it is present in the collective imaginary of the french people when it was not unusual to resort to it as a rhetorical and stylistic device, as can be seen in the profiles of the characters developed by saint-simon (cf. van elden 1975). therefore, my reading does not assume a skepticism toward his sympathy for pascal, neither would i call into question the claim that duhem saw himself as an esprit de finesse. it does not follow from this, however, that he can be regarded as a disciple of pascal’s, as his daughter hélène claimed (1936, 229), or that there is a strong pascalian influence on duhem’s main theses on theoretical physics. for example, stoffel (2007, 287) lists three themes “ponctuelles et textuellement attestées” that, regardless of how much we stretch them, do not justify talk of a decisive influence, since the very fact of referring to related themes, and not to ideas and theories, suggests, in principle, a weak connection. moreover, in each case, we can have serious reservations about the possibility of attributing a pascalian influence. the first thematic affinity stoffel points out is the critique of mechanism; the second one refers to the different orders of knowledge; and the third refers to the distinction among the different kinds of mindsets or intellects. however, it should be evident that to take pascal as a critic of mechanism because of his critique of descartes, is, on the one hand, to mistake a part for the whole; on the other hand, it is to overlook the existing overlaps between both seventeenth-century thinkers, which, moreover, duhem himself points out.35 regardless, if we can claim a significant connection between pascal and duhem, it is the one duhem (1905) makes with regard to the evaluation of pascal’s scientific work, where he argues that while we cannot 35 alluding to pascal’s well known aphorism 60, duhem goes so far as to equate the universality of logic to moral law: “it is beyond argument that logic is unitary. its principles impose themselves, with the same ineluctable rigor, on the french, the english, and the germans […]. in the same way, the moral law is the same on either side of the pyrénées.” (duhem 1996 [1893], 73) in the original: “il est hors de contestation que la logique est une; que ses principes s’imposent, avec la même inéluctable rigueur, à un français, à un anglais et à un allemand […]. de même la loi morale est identique en deçà et au delà des pyrénées.” (duhem 1987a [1893a] 144-145) víctor manuel hernández márquez – was pierre duhem an esprit de finesse? 106 attribute the discovery of great truths to him, his merit lies in his reconfiguration of preceding knowledge. in duhem’s case, this work of conceptual elucidation takes place through the axiomatization of a unified abstract theory underlying his project for a general, or energetic thermodynamics. these organizational abilities, however, cannot be ascribed to the activities 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– mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access journal obituary françois delaporte (1941 – 2019) marlon salomon1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.11 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ on the 28th of may, the french philosopher and historian of sciences, françois delaporte died in amiens at the age of 78. he was an emeritus professor at the université de picardie jules verne (upjv). his death is an irreparable loss to the philosophy and historiography of the sciences. the initial trajectory of françois delaporte did not follow the traditional path of a philosopher in france. after completing his high school studies, he was accepted to the école de beaux-arts in paris in the early 1960s with the intention of becoming an architect and following his father’s, edouard delaporte, footsteps as an architect, painter and sculptor. the 1960s marked a profound philosophical renewal and innovation that would predominate french intellectual life. authors like claude lévi-strauss (la pensée sauvage, 1962), louis althusser (pour marx and lire le capital, 1965), michel foucault (naissance de la clinique, 1963; les mots et les choses, 1966), jacques lacan (écrits 1966), jacques derrida (la gramatologie, 1967), gilles deleuze (différence et répétition, 1968; la logique du sens, 1969), as well as others, radically transformed the image of thought and understanding. philosophy ceased to be an exclusively academic affair and reached the general public via mass media, which had an enormous impact and repercussion on culture and knowledge. after reading these works, delaporte was intellectually excited and influenced by this philosophical environment. he immediately decided to leave the école de beaux-arts and enroll in a philosophy course; however, he did not turn his attention to marxism – as was prevalent at that time. later in 1966, he enrolled in the philosophy program at the sorbonne to further his studies in the history and philosophy of sciences. the sorbonne university housed the institut d’histoire des sciences et techniques (ihst), which was directed by georges canguilhem since 1955. the ihst was created in 1932 by abel rey, a professor of history and philosophy of science at the sorbonne. rey directed the ihst until gaston bachelard replaced him in 1937. this institute was essential for the institutionalization and renewal of the history of science in europe. generations of historians and epistemologists received their training and formation there, where its institutional and intellectual approach was a decisive feature and strongly focused on philosophy. the history of science in france at that time was institutionalized as a philosophical discipline, and this would not be 1 marlon salomon [orcid: 0000-0002-2446-2141] is a professor in the faculty of history at the universidade federal de goiás (federal university of goiás). address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: marlonsalomon@ufg.br obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 116 indifferent as to how researchers like françois delaporte thought of this history. from 1966, delaporte began to regularly attend canguilhem’s courses, and soon after in may of 1968, he began his master’s studies under his professor’s guidance. two years later, he presented his master’s dissertation, on issues surrounding the notion of vegetality in the eighteenth century. delaporte then started to work on a doctoral thesis (troisième cycle). georges canguilhem, however, could no longer advise him, since he would retire in 1971, so canguilhem asked michel foucault, who used to attend the institute and was elected at the end of 1969 to be the chair of the history of systems of thought at the collège de france. canguilhem had not only been foucault’s teacher, but had also advised his doctoral thesis on the history of madness in the classical age. at the time, foucault was interested in the theme of sexuality, and delaporte’s research project proposal on the history on the concepts of vegetal sexuality pleased him – if i am not mistaken, this was the only thesis foucault ever advised. early in 1976, delaporte defended his thesis entitled les questions de la végétalité au xviiie siècle. there was a noticeable shift concerning the original project. instead of a history of the notion of plant sexuality, it became a study of “the historicity of a knowledge whose object is the very nature of the vegetable” and an analysis of “the practices” through which the objects of knowledge “are elaborated according to precise rules” (delaporte 1979, 205). the emergence of a “problematic” around “vegetable issues” is of the utmost importance because, as we know, before lamarck, there was no definite criterion for indisputably distinguishing animals and plants (delaporte 1977, 49-59). it is not, however, in the classical age that one should locate the birth of plant physiology belonging to nineteenth century biology. at the same time, it is a little bit surprising that the classical age, often described as the “period of representation”, based mainly on the taxonomic model derived from botany, finds in the case studied by delaporte a great inversion. the study of the prehistory of plant physiology showed that knowledge of the animal provided the models of intelligibility of vegetable knowledge. in 1979, delaporte published le second règne de la nature. the title of the book was suggested by foucault himself. after defending his doctoral thesis in the “troisième cycle”, delaporte participated in michel foucault’s seminars at the collège de france from 1977 to 1979. at that moment, he decided to write a thesis of doctorate of state [doctorat d’etat]. he wanted to move away from the history of biology, and spend some time researching something related to the history of medicine. foucault advised him and suggested at least three possibilities of research that included a study which became the subject of his analysis, the cholera epidemic of 1832 in paris (salomon 2012, 248-262). foucault again agreed to advise him. delaporte resumed, to a certain extent, the study of naissance de la clinique at the place where foucault had left it. from 1971 to 1979, delaporte worked as a technical collaborator of the centre national de recherche scientifique (cnrs). during the academic years of 1980-1981, he worked as a guest researcher at the department of history of science at harvard university with a grant from the arthur sachs foundation. at harvard, delaporte was associated with barbara g. rosenkrantz and everett mendelsohn. it was at this institution that he was able to advance his project on the cholera outbreak of 1832. it was not just a matter of “restoring” the stages of history to a precise epidemic outbreak. the purpose of his study was to research this phenomenon from the medical practices mobilized during the epidemic outbreak and to understand how the working classes and medical theories were put to the test by the events of 1832. this episode was a decisive event that radically transformed the history of medicine. thanks to the use of registration methods and statistical notation, the “analysis of the conditions of existence” of the population became the “central problem” (delaporte 1990, 177). within the history of this epidemic emerged the theme of society’s medicalization and the normalization of the popular classes. “the population and the environment were then obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 117 judged according to certain standards of life and health” (delaporte 1990, 177). delaporte describes this process as the constitution of biopolitics, a political medicine, and a government of the people and their first medical dispositifs (delaporte 1990, 65). at the beginning of 1984, the first version of his doctorat d’etat thesis was ready. the doctorate of state was, however, finished in france that year, so this work moved away from its original proposal. foucault, who died in june of that year, still had the opportunity to read it. in 1986, it would be published in english under the title, disease and civilization: the cholera in paris, in 1832, with a preface by paul rabinow. in 1982, delaporte went to mexico where he remained until 1989 as a visiting professor at the institute of historical research at the national autonomous university of mexico (unam). the years he spent in latin america led him to reflect seriously on the need to constitute singular objects of research in this new field of work. latin american medical thinking was confronted with questions and problems of orders different from that of europe. it was necessary to realize the uniqueness of this history. instead of merely studying the spread of bacteriology outside europe or dealing with general public health issues in different latin american countries, delaporte looked for singular events, “disconcerting stories” (delaporte 1999, 183), unprecedented encounters of medical thinking with problems that marked and deeply reconfigured the history of medicine. for delaporte, the history of medicine is always the repetition of difference. hence the importance, in his works, and their use of the archaeological and epistemological analyses (and their transformations) of the fields of knowledge. the image of medicine that emerges from the delaportian historiography is not homogeneous, uniform, or standardized, but plural, multiform, and surprising. for delaporte, an archaeological and epistemological analysis inevitably provides a greater complexity of the history of medicine. published in 1989, histoire de la fièvre jaune: naissance de la médecine tropicale was the first result of this effort. a new form of knowledge and medicine was born from the moment the vectors became the object of knowledge, and its role in the transmission of certain diseases were defined. from then on, new disciplines could be configured, such as in experimental parasitology and medical entomology.2 through a series of unprecedented procedures put into action, the very definition and scope of epidemiology had radically been transformed. however, it was not a matter of saying that through the revelation of a complex set of interactions between microorganisms, hosts, vectors, the environment, and man, the invisible had finally become visible. the birth of tropical medicine implies a transformation of the very field of visibility of medical thinking. it would not be exaggerated at last to say that delaporte founded in this book, what we might call retrospectively, a global history of medicine. only an accurate historiographical perspective could reconstitute and establish a set of relations not admitted by his contemporaries and ignored by medical historians among research carried out at one point in china, cuba, and india. in 1990, histoire de la fièvre jaune was awarded with the prix medec for its contribution to the history of medicine. in 2013, gérard jorland defined this work as one of the two most essential books on the history of medicine in the last 50 years. ten years later, in 1999, delaporte published la maladie de chagas: histoire d’un fléau continental. again, it was “the history of a meeting between brazilian medical thinking and an insect” (delaporte 1999, 17). it was no longer central america, but south america, a history of a series of medical research studies being done in brazil and argentina. from the history of an epistemological problem: if the brazilian doctor carlos chagas had even discovered the “disease” that bears his name, why did it take almost three decades for it to become a “continental scourge”? in order to deal with this problem, delaporte describes the constitution of an episteme from 1909: definition of an object, formation of a concept, and elaboration of a theory. with the work of the argentinian physician cecílio romaña, from the 2 on the birth of medical entomology, see (delaporte 2009, 101-131). obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 118 1930s onwards, there was an epistemological transformation in this field of knowledge, that is, a profound epistemic reconfiguration of what had previously been understood as chagas’ disease. a transformation of the object of medical knowledge makes it possible to understand this time span between chagas and romaña. his effort in la maladie de chagas was precisely to reconstitute the historicity of this object. in this book, perhaps more than in any other, delaporte explains his way of conceiving the history of medicine. the object of the history of science, he affirms, “is the never foreordained historicity of what men do in order to be able to speak about things” (delaporte 1999, 20). it is a history of practices that make certain types of discourse possible. hence, his refusal to accept as “data” the objects of the history of the sciences. some of his critics did not understand the kind of historical thinking that was at stake here.3 in 1989, delaporte returned to france intending to establish himself institutionally. until 1993, he worked on several specific projects through temporary contracts. he was a guest researcher at institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (inserm) and the natural history museum in paris as well as a fellow of the national center of letters and the medical research foundation. he also worked at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales (ehess) as chargé de conférences. through a project funded by the association française contre les myopathies (afm), delaporte began to research the history of the knowledge of muscular affections. in 1998, he co-authored the histoire des myopathies with patrice pinell. in 1995, delaporte fulfilled a publisher’s request to publish a short book entitled: les épidémies, after the cité des sciences et de l’industrie conference on the history of epidemics in paris. the book is a history of the “attitudes towards collective pathological phenomena” (delaporte 1995, 8), from the renaissance to the modern bacteriological and epidemiological revolution. delaporte never lost contact with his former teacher from the sorbonne. georges canguilhem, who had already prefaced his book on vegetality in the eighteenth century, also wrote the preface for his histoire de la fièvre jaune. during the years that delaporte was outside of france, they regularly corresponded. on his return to france, canguilhem entrusted him with the manuscripts from the period in which he wrote his thesis on le normal et le pathologique. for editorial reasons, it was not possible to publish this book in french, which only came out in english in 1994 with a preface by paul rabinow and a critical bibliography organized by camille limoges (canguilhem 1994). the book on the history of myopathy was the occasion of a meeting concerning the french physician duchenne de boulogne’s work on the clinical applications of electricity – and what such applications made possible – by exploiting electro-muscular properties. with the work of this physician with whom charcot called the “master”, it became possible, for the first time, to deal with the problem of laughter, as stendhal wanted, “in anatomy style, not academy style” (delaporte 2003, 1). until the mid-nineteenth century, no one doubted that the problem of expression of emotions had an anatomical origin. however, facial myology had hardly advanced until then. it was necessary to develop a technique and a method capable of apprehending the structure and understanding the function of the facial muscles, which could not be observed when they were dissected by a scalp. this became only possible with duchenne de boulogne’s eléctrisation localisée. however, the anatomie des passions is not restricted to a description of the distinctiveness of the anatomical-physiology of the facial muscles. it is an archeology of the knowledge of expression, resulting from the emergence of a new style of anatomy in the mid-nineteenth century. a fundamentally superficial knowledge: the emotions happen as a surface effect that are produced by muscular stimulation. for delaporte, therefore, it is not in descartes that there is a more significant event in the study of the problem of this locus of passion, but in duchenne de boulogne. with him, the relationship between physiology and 3 see (delaporte 2009, 159-185). obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 119 psychology or between body and soul was radically altered. from duchenne de boulogne, there is no more emotion without skin, passion without a body. in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the results of his research study would be presented at the école nationale de beaux-arts. more than three decades after leaving it, this nomadic historian of sciences returned to the beaux-arts, or more precisely to its archives, and then revolutionized the philosophical reflection of passion. in an erudite and eloquent way, anatomie des passions articulated a transdisciplinary set of fields of study that were typically segregated in disciplines reserved for specialists: anthropology of body, art history, physics, medicine, photography, philosophy and aesthetics. this fruit of patient, meticulous, and gray work, was based upon original texts, many of which were largely unknown and neglected by the philosophers and historians of the passions, delaporte recreated this field of study by showing the importance that figures – hitherto ignored such as duchenne de boulogne – had been apart of this history. in 2004, the société française d’histoire de la médecine awarded him with the book prize of the year. in 1993, delaporte became a professor at the université de picardie jules verne (upjv). he lived with his family in amiens, and was actively involved in university life. he was a member of the board of directors and the council of the doctoral school at upjv. he was responsible for the research team in “epistemology, history of the biological and medical sciences” and later co-founded the “center of history of societies, sciences, and conflicts”, which was responsible for putting together a transdisciplinary team of historians, historians of sciences, physicians, and philosophers. even after his retirement in 2010, when he became professor emeritus at upjv, he remained active and worked on many projects. of all the projects and meetings that were born there, i would like to highlight one that has notably marked his trajectory of work in the last decade and a half, his meeting with bernard devauchelle. at the end of november 2005, the surgeon and professor at the upvj – university hospital bernard devauchelle led, in amiens, the team that conducted the first face transplant in the world. certain ethics professors soon after attacked the need for this surgical procedure, and considered it irresponsible from the medical point of view as well as questionable from the moral perspective. the media widely reported this transplant at that time. in march 2006, delaporte published an article that applied the philosophy and historiography of medicine to confront the criticisms raised by those who spoke in the name of morality (delaporte 2006, 28).4 the repercussion of his response was significant in the public debate. bernard devauchelle did not fail to thank him publicly for what he called “the most beautiful response to criticism that could be formulated by the different media” against the first transplant of the face of history.5 the example of this meeting between the two teachers in amiens on the frontiers of knowledge – devauchelle participated, years before, in the colloquiums that delaporte organized on the history and philosophy of medicine6 – seems interesting because it brought together on the same front, the leading research in medicine and the history of medicine, medical knowledge, in the present, taking a step towards the unknown and defying its own limits, and the knowledge of the past of medicine understood as the history of an adventure, that is, of a chéminement toward a new realm of understanding with unpredictable risks. here we can certainly observe the vitality and timeliness of an epistemological and archaeological history of medicine. this is a type of meeting that seems 4 later, he would return to this problem in another work. see (delaporte 2009, 77-102). 5 see: “vivre avec un visage d’un autre”. identités. 8e printemps des sciences humaines et sociales. université de lille, 11-31 mars 2016. https://live3.univ-lille3.fr/video-recherche/vivre-avec-le-visage-dunautre.html 6 in 2000, “the enigmas of the face”, and in 2004, “the unthinkable and the unthinking”. obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 120 to characterize the work of this nomadic historian of sciences, of this epistemigrant of knowledge and wisdom. delaporte and devauchelle organized several transdisciplinary colloquiums around issues that approached medicine and history of medicine, which they turned into a book in the years that followed. in 2010, they presented la fabrique du visage: de la physiognomonie antique à la première greffe (delaporte and others 2010). in 2015, transplanter: une approche transdisciplinaire: art, médecine, histoire et biologie (delaporte and others 2015). these books bear witness to the vitality of the delaportian approach i mentioned above. it allows, for example, to inscribe the disconcerting novelty of devauchelle’s surgical gesture in history, that of the “factory of the face”, “from duchenne de boulogne to devauchelle d’amiens” (delaporte, fournier 2010, 8). it should be worth mentioning here that there were two other collective projects in which delaporte participated. he was one of the editors, in 2004, of the dictionnaire de la pensée médicale, directed by dominique lecourt. this reference book for the history and philosophy of medicine brought together more than 200 authors of diverse nationalities contributing hundreds of entries. delaporte himself personally wrote eighteen articles for this dictionary. more recently, in 2015, he was responsible for the critical edition of naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical, for the first volume of michel foucault’s oeuvres published by bibliothèque de la pléiade. delaporte also published two books that gathered a sparse set of texts published over the years. in 2002, filosofía de los acontecimientos – investigaciones históricas: biología, medicina, epistemología was published in colombia with a preface by alberto castrillón aldana and complied texts published between 1977 and 2000. in addition to the specific epistemological problems addressed in the texts, this book brought together a series of delaporte texts on theoretical, historiographic and methodological questions related to the history and philosophy of science for the first time. prefaced by emmanuel fournier, in 2009, delaporte published figures de la médecine, a book that gathered the result of an unprecedented set of investigations into the history of medicine (on the history of blood transfusion, rhinoplasty, birth of medical entomology and robles disease), a combative text about the facial transplant, and a historiographical text in which he challenged criticism of his la maladie de chagas. delaporte worked on several other projects, such a history of organ transplants and on a history of artificial fertilization in collaboration with his dear wife, cecília delaporte (delaporte, f.; delaporte, c. 2004, 481-488). for more than two decades, along with all the research and projects i mentioned above, delaporte worked on a history of vivisection. the outline of this project most likely emerged at the time of his research on the history of knowledge of expression. it was not a history of animal experimentation, from the renaissance to the eighteenth century, and the discoveries that were made possible by it. his objective was to understand the reasons that transformed vivisection, in the eighteenth century, into a philosophical, political, and epistemological problem.7 the history of a “big division” in western culture. from vesalius at the end of the seventeenth century, the vivisectionist practice developed unnoticed and without posing any problem. this changed radically in the next century. “in the eighteenth century, the will to end vivisection is the expression of an intolerableness within western societies: the torture of the condemned generates a problem” (delaporte 2015, 1). as always in delaporte, it was a question of a problem: “why we need to wait until the eighteenth century for philosophers, not the less important ones, to start defending the animals?” (delaporte 2015, 3). at the end of 2017, delaporte delivered two conferences in brazil related to this investigation. the first of these was entitled “the anthropology of vesalius” and the second, 7 delaporte presented on several occasions the partial results of this investigation. see, for example, (delaporte 2015, 1-30). obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 121 “the questions of experimentation in the classical age”. at the beginning of this second lecture, he joked – as he used to joke – that the title chosen for his presentation was too academic and that the book he was working on would have a more agreeable title: “history of vivisection in the classical age: essay on the threshold of intolerances”. 8 there is not solely a history of man’s attitudes towards animals, but also the relations between men and beasts and, consequently, of man’s relationship to himself. a history of the invention of sensitivity before animals. at that time, delaporte said he would need one to two years to complete his book. unfortunately, death took him before he could complete it. in addition to the books and projects i mentioned above, françois delaporte has written hundreds of articles and book chapters. he was a member of the french committee on the history and philosophy of sciences, and a corresponding member of the international academy of history of sciences. his books and works have been translated and published in several countries. he has been a visiting professor at numerous universities around the world. he was a tireless, extremely disciplined worker. his workspace was in the mansard roof of his house, which he had converted into an office. bookshelves took up most of the space on the walls with numerous books and folders neatly arranged and sorted according to the themes of his research topics. except for one wall, where one could read jacques prévert: “mangez sur l’herbe / dépêchez-vous / un jour ou l’autre / l’herbe mangera sur vous” (eat on the grass / hurry up / one day or the other / grass will eat on you). in the middle of the office, there was a large drafting table, in which he worked as an architect on his books. from the window of the mansard roof, there is a little back garden of the house, where one could see the beautiful city of amiens, and its main historic buildings. so as not to get away from work, he slept right there, close to the ideas and texts that he worked on day after day. he never left his ideas and writings, they always accompanied him. delaporte worked seven days a week. his intellectual journey began at 6 a.m. in the morning and lasted until noon. he would then take a “pause” from work and walk for an hour in the parc de la hotoie. however, he kept working. he carried a notebook with him to record the ideas that came to him during his walk.9 he did not doubt the importance of body movement for getting ideas flowing. in this way, he was a nietzschean. in the afternoon, he would resume work until dinnertime. a regulated and disciplined life was, for him, a determinant of intellectual work. deleuze said that a man who works hard lives in absolute solitude. not sad loneliness, but a solitude populated with ideas, concepts, stories, problems, epistemic adventures. “a multiple solitude, creative” (deleuze 1992, 51). in a radio documentary produced by france culture, delaporte was rightly presented as an “ascetic” leading a “monastic life”, totally devoted to intellectual work. he was not a simple “teacher” of philosophy and history of the sciences. his life was the philosophy and history of science. 8 in november 2017, françois delaporte gave a series of lectures for the graduate program in history at the federal university of goiás (ufg) in brazil. his first lecture was entitled “anthropology of vesalius”, the second, “the questions of experimentation in the classical age”, the third, “georges canguilhem and the history of sciences”, and the last “a history of the philosophical notion of being in the true [être dans le vrai]”. the last two conferences took place in the framework of a colloquium on georges canguilhem. all of these conferences – except for the latter – are available on youtube in spanish: https://youtu.be/obizncjgvc4. 9 see: “françois delaporte: vie monastique, pensée en mouvement”. france culture, l’atelier de la création, december 19, 2013. https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/latelier-de-la-creation-1415/francois-delaporte-vie-monastique-pensee-en-mouvement obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 122 references delaporte, françois. des organismes problematiques. dix-huitième siècle, número spécial, 9, 1977, pp. 49-59. delaporte, françois. le savoir de la maladie. essai sur le choléra de 1832 à paris. paris: puf, 1990. p. 177. delaporte, françois. la maladie de chagas. histoire d’un fléau continental. paris : payot, 1999. p. 183. delaporte, françois. l’effet manson. in: delaporte, françois. figures de la médecine. paris: cerf, 2009. pp. 101-131. delaporte, françois. l’erreur chagas. in: delaporte, françois. figures de la médecine. paris: cerf, 2009. pp. 159-185. delaporte, françois. les épidémies. paris: la cité, 1995. p. 8. canguilhem, georges. a vital rationalist. edited by françois delaporte. new york: zone books, 1994. delaporte, françois. anatomie des passions. paris: puf, 2003. p. 1. delaporte, françois. un visage, l’oeuvre de la main. le monde diplomatique, março de 2006, p. 28. delaporte, françois. la greffe de visage. in: delaporte, françois. figures de la médecine. paris: cerf, 2009. pp. 77-102. delaporte, f.; devauchelle, b.; fournier, e. (ed.). la fabrique du visage. de la physiognomonie antique à la première greffe. avec un inédit de duchenne de boulogne. turnhout : brepols, 2010. delaporte, f.; devauchelle, b.; fournier, e. (ed.). transplanter. une approche transdisciplinaire : art, médecine, histoire et biologie. paris : hermann, 2015. delaporte, f.; fournier, e. présentation. delaporte, f.; devauchelle, b.; fournier, e. (ed.). la fabrique du visage. de la physiognomonie antique à la première greffe. avec un inédit de duchenne de boulogne. turnhout : brepols, 2010. p. 8. delaporte, françois; delaporte, cecília. fécondation artificielle. in: lecourt, dominique (ed.). dictionnaire de la pensée médicale. paris: puf, 2004. pp. 481-488. delaporte, françois. les questions de la vivissection au xviii siècle. bulletin de la société française de philosophie. séance du 24 janvier 2015. paris: vrin, t. cix, 2015. pp. 1-30. delaporte, françois. les questions de la vivissection au xviii siècle. bulletin de la société française de philosophie. séance du 24 janvier 2015. paris: vrin, t. cix, 2015. p. 1. deleuze, gilles. 1992. conversações. rio de janeiro: 34, p. 51. salomon, marlon (ed.). teratologias, sobre os jogos entre o verdadeiro e o falso: encontro com françois delaporte. história da historiografia, 8, 2012, pp. 248-262. françois delaporte – main works delaporte, françois. le second règne de la nature. essai sur les questions de la végétalité au viiie siècle. préface de georges canguilhem. paris: flammarion, 1979. english translation: nature's second kingdom. cambridge: massachusetts institute of technology press, 1982. german translation: das zweite naturreich. frankfurt: ullstein materialen, 1983. delaporte, françois. disease and civilization. the cholera in paris, 1832. foreword by paul rabinow. cambridge, mass./london, england: massachusetts institute of technology, 1986. french translation: le savoir de la maladie. paris, presses universitaires de france, 1990. spanish translation: el saber de la enfermedad. bogota: universidad del rosario, 2005 delaporte, françois. histoire de la fièvre jaune. naissance de la médecine tropicale. présentation de georges canguilhem. paris: payot, 1989. spanish translation: historia obituary: françois delaporte marlon salomon 123 de la fiebre amarilla. mexico: universidad nacional autonoma de méxico/centre d'etudes mexicaines et centraméricaines, 1989. english translation: the history of yellow fever. cambridge: massachusetts institute of technology press, 1991. japanese translation: ounetsu no rekishi. tokyo: misuzu shobo, 1993. delaporte, françois. a vital rationalist: selected writings from georges canguilhem. françois delaporte ed. new york: zone books, 1994. delaporte, françois. les épidémies. paris: cité des sciences et de l'industrie, presses pocket, 1995. spanish translation: las epidemias. barcelona: rba editores, 1995. delaporte, françois. histoire des myopathies (avec patrice pinell). payot, paris, 1998. delaporte, françois. la maladie de chagas. histoire d'un fléau continental. paris: payot, 1999. brazilian translation: a doença de chagas, história de uma calamidade continental. ribeirão preto: holos editora, 2003. english translation: chagas disease. history of a continest’s scourge. foreword by todd meyers. new york: fordham university press, 2012. delaporte, françois. filosofia de los acontecimentos. medellin: universidade nacionale de colombia, universidade de antioquia, 2002. delaporte, françois. anatomie des passions. paris: puf, 2003. spanish translation: anatomia de las pasiones. baranquilla: universidad uninorte, 2007. english translation: anatomy of the passions. california: stanford university press, 2008. delaporte, françois. figures de la médecine. préface de emmanuel fournier. paris: cerf, 2009. english translation: figures of medecine. blood, face transplants, parasites. foreword by christopher lawrence. new york: fordham university press, 2013. delaporte, françois. la fabrique du visage. de la physiognomonie antique à la première greffe. avec un inédit de duchenne de boulogne (avec bernard devauchelle et emmanuel fournier). turnhout: brepols, 2010. delaporte, françois. transplanter. une approche transdisciplinaire: art, médecine, histoire et biologie (avec bernard devauchelle et emmanuel fournier). paris: hermann, 2015. 31 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 31-45 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck artur koterski1 abstract: one of the factors that adversely influenced the worldwide reception of fleck was the rather narrow critical interest that his ideas had aroused in poland. apart from a few reviews of his book (1935), only two polemics were published before wwii, and these likewise fell into oblivion. the philosophical views of one of those polemists, tadeusz bilikiewicz, shared the same fate. since an acquaintance with bilikiewicz’s background would seem to be a necessary condition for a (full) understanding of his controversy with fleck, the aim of this paper is to sketch his views on the history and sociology of science, and to clarify certain errors regarding the facts of his life. keywords: tadeusz bilikiewicz; history of medicine; sociology of science; realism; constructivism received: 30 august 2016. accepted: 30 october 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction bilikiewicz is mainly remembered by his psychiatry students, and a fairly narrow group of medical historians and philosophers — predominantly fleck scholars — for a dispute with ludwik fleck, which began in 1939, following fleck’s critical remarks on bilikiewicz’s approach to history. as his polemics with fleck attracted attention, his contribution has been invariably used as a pretext to scrutinize and explain fleck’s views. accordingly, bilikiewicz’s position, as formulated in his book on the history of embryology (1932), and his numerous papers from the 1930s, have been ignored and remain virtually unknown. the aim of this paper is therefore to sketch bilikiewicz’s life and his philosophical background in his exchange with fleck. this 1 artur koterski is an assistant professor in the department of logic and cognitive sciences – faculty of philosophy and sociology – maria curie-sklodowska university. pl. mcs 5. lublin. 20-031. poland. e-mail: zlimn@hektor.umcs.lublin.pl artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 32 should clarify some of the factual errors found in works where bilikiewicz is mentioned and assist in better understanding his exchange with fleck. life tadeusz antoni bilikiewicz was born in lwów (now lviv, ukraine) on april 5, 1901 — at that time under franz josef occupation. when the great war broke out, he was a scout and served as a courier for piłsudski’s legions. being of age in 1918, he joined the legions as a volunteer and was soon severely wounded in an encounter with ukrainian troops near chorośnica (khorosnytsia, now in ukraine). when bilikiewicz left the army as a corporal, he decided to study “exact philosophy”, convinced by his father that “philosophy not based on natural science led to speculations” (bilikiewicz, 1978, 8). following this advice, he began studying medicine at the jagiellonian university in kraków (cracow). having graduated with a phd in 1925 (a thesis was not then required to obtain a doctorate from the medical faculty), bilikiewicz began working in an infirmary in kraków and continued his philosophical education. his health soon deteriorated, and he left for leysin in switzerland, to recuperate in a sanatorium, where he stayed from 1926 to 1928. during this period, he wrote and published his first book, the problem of life in the light of comparative psychology (1928) and worked as a volunteer (volontärarzt) at the “burghölzli” psychiatrischen universitätsklinik in zürich. during his four-month internship (from april to august 1928), he made a very good impression, and the director, hans w. maier, offered him an assistantship. however, bilikiewicz declined, and accepted an offer from his kraków philosophy supervisor, witold rubczyński. rubczyński advised him to do his habilitation in the department of history and philosophy of medicine. this was the first academic department of its kind in europe. it was established in 1920 and had since been chaired by władysław szumowski (cf. szumowski, 1920, 278; löwy, 2000, 295–296; gajda, 2005, 10). thus, bilikiewicz returned to poland in 1928 to obtain in a junior assistant position at the jagiellonian university in september that year. at the outset of his career as a medical historian, bilikiewicz owed a lot to szumowski and even more to henry e. sigerist, whom he considered a teacher and a friend (cf. bilikiewicz, 1969, 112). as sigerist had left zürich in 1925, bilikiewicz could not meet him during his stay there. however, he had a recommendation from maier, so he was able to communicate with sigerist. they made an appointment in bern: in the meantime, using my sojourn in switzerland, i established communication with prof. henry e. sigerist, the director of the medical history institute in leipzig. i did not know him personally. but he proposed a meeting in a café. i would recognize him by an ostentatiously held copy of völkischer beobachter. it came off. i apparently made a good impression on him because we have since become friends. […] i came to be greatly indebted to sigerist afterwards. (bilikiewicz, 1978, 11; cf. bilikiewicz, 1957a, 558)2 while sigerist’s friendly attitude is well-known, it would appear that it was more their extensive agreement on professional matters that induced sigerist to help bilikiewicz. sigerist immediately invited bilikiewicz to leipzig, where he, bilikiewicz, spent two or three weeks (sources conflict) at the institute during the fall/winter semester of 1928. sigerist offered bilikiewicz his assistance in obtaining a rockefeller foundation stipend for his research into the history of medicine and considered taking bilikiewicz with him to baltimore in the future. soon after their meeting, sigerist explored the options of having a german translation of the problem of life published. sigerist tried to interest the felix meiner publishing house, but to no avail. interestingly, he also wrote a letter to fellow townsman hans driesch, whose views are discussed and used extensively in bilikiewicz’s book: 2 curiously, in a 1957 paper, most probably due to censorship, bilikiewicz did not mention the nsdap organ as the identification sign, but rather a liberal german newspaper — the vossische zeitung. (the quotations from the sources unpublished in english are translated by the author) artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 33 a young polish colleague, dr. bilikiewicz […], has written a book entitled the problem of life in the light of comparative psychology. the book has appeared in polish, so no one can read it, and the colleague would like to have it published in german. […] please excuse me this unsolicited communication; this concerns a very amiable man, who has made quite an impression on me and to whom i would like to be of assistance in whatever way i can. (sigerist to driesch, dec. 14, 1928)3 on dec. 12, 1928, sigerist wrote to bilikiewicz that he had discussed the book with driesch, and that driesch had expressed an interest in meeting him. whether the two did in fact meet is not known. in any case, their efforts to have the book published in german came to nothing. bilikiewicz received his first rockefeller stipend, with the assistance of sigerist, in 1930. this supported 6 months’ research at sigerist’s institute (from april to october). he worked on german translations of hippocrates with sigerist and owsei temkin. in may, 1931, with his 1928 book as his thesis, bilikiewicz earned his second phd in kraków, this time in philosophy. in that same year, he also published a book on john johnston (1931),4 which was accepted as his habilitationsschrift on the history and philosophy of medicine. bilikiewicz was awarded his first venia legendi in june, 1931. the award was conferred by the medical faculty of the jagiellonian university and approved by janusz jędrzejewicz, then head of the ministry of religious creeds and public enlightenment on aug. 22, 1931. according to bilikiewicz’s memoirs, the council of the medical faculty of the stefan batory university in wilno (now vilnius, lithuania) appointed him extraordinarius of history and philosophy of medicine on june 30, 1931. however, an impending transformation of the polish education system (the “jędrzejewicz reform”) prevented the council’s plans from coming to fruition, and neither the chair for bilikiewicz nor the department of history and philosophy of medicine were ever founded. thus, he did not go to wilno, staying instead in kraków, where he taught as a privatdozent and junior assistant.5 bilikiewicz was granted another 6-month rockefeller stipend in 1932. he went to paris, where he met sigerist again. this time, he was not bound to any institution, so he simply worked with historical sources in parisian libraries. that same year, he published a book that he had written in leipzig entitled the embryology in the age of baroque and rococo. this work was commissioned by sigerist and published as the second (and, as it turned out, the final) volume of arbeiten des instituts für geschichte der medizin an der universität leipzig series.6 in june 1932, sigerist signed the introduction that he had written for this book, and in august, he left for the united states where obtained a position at john hopkins university in baltimore. bilikiewicz, however, decided to stay in poland. he gives patriotic reasons for this and for some other decisions concerning his professional activities in his memoirs.7 that bilikiewicz was unable to obtain an appropriate academic position in kraków was definitely not due to any academic shortcoming on his part. in april 1934, the ministry, under the direction of jędrzejewicz, rejected an application from the council of the medical faculty of the jagiellonian university in kraków to promote bilikiewicz to an adjunct professorship and raise his salary. he continued to work there as the senior assistant (although with the payment of the junior assistant) till the end of april, 1935, and as a private 3 “ein junger polnischer kollege, dr. bilikiewicz […], hat ein buch geschrieben, das den titel führt: ‘das problem des lebens im lichte der prinzipien der vergleichenden psychologie’. das buch ist polnisch erschienen, sodass kein mensch es lesen kann, und der kollege möchte es gern in deutscher übersetzung herausbringen. […] bitte entschuldigung sie die störung. es handelt sich um einen sehr liebenswürdigen menschen, der mir einen vorzüglichen eindruck gemacht hat und den ich gern behilflich sein möchte, wenn es sich irgendwie machen lässt” (henry sigerist’s collection at the universitätsarchive leipzig, med. fak. d05/1e, item 758; italics added). 4 bilikiewicz published a 25-page résumé of this book in german (1930). 5 while the jędrzejewicz reform was officially introduced in march, 1932, and only applied to tertiary education a year later, some trenchant actions (e.g. layoffs) had already been undertaken in the fall of 1931. it has been noted (nasierowski, 2009) that bilikiewicz’s failure to obtain permanent positions in kraków and wilno possibly saved his life in both cases. he avoided the sonderaktion krakau (nov. 11, 1939) and the mass deportation of the polish intelligentsia by the soviet occupation authorities (june, 1940) on the polish territory they acquired pursuant to the ribbentrop– molotov pact. 6 the first in the series was stephen d’irsay’s book on albrecht von haller (1930). 7 although they remained in touch after that (except for wwii), their last meeting took place at the international congress for the history of medicine in madrid in sept., 1935 (cf. bilikiewicz, 1957a, 560; the paper incorrectly gives the year as 1936). artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 34 docent afterwards (he remained a docent of jagiellonian university until dec., 1946; cf. archiwum uniwersytetu jagiellońskiego, s ii 619, tadeusz bilikiewicz’s personal files). in 1935, bilikiewicz accepted a post of ward head of a psychiatric hospital in kocborowo (german: konradstein; now a district of starogard gdański). he stayed there until 1946.8 a year later, he was awarded another habilitation (from wrocław university), this time in psychiatry. he moved to gdańsk and was made chair of the department of history and philosophy of medicine at the medical academy, and director of the clinic of psychiatric diseases. in 1953, he obtained a full professorship. bilikiewicz was a member of numerous scientific societies, among others the deutsche akademie der naturforscher leopoldina (now the nationale akademie der wissenschaften). besides the history of medicine, bilikiewicz’s later career was devoted to psychiatry and psychology — focusing on the etiopathogenesis of mental illnesses, psychoneurosis, psychosis and sexology. (he also made a remarkable attempt to solve the mind-body problem — see bilikiewicz, 1971; bilikiewicz, 1974). he retired in 1971 and died nine years later on nov. 10, 1980, in gdańsk.9 fleck and bilikiewicz belonged to the same generation, were born in the same place, studied the same professions, worked on closely related problems, and finally engaged in a polemical exchange, but there is no evidence that they ever met in person. the aims of history of medicine the early attempts made by scientists themselves to understand and describe the mutual dependency of science and the cultural milieu began in the late 1920s (cf. fleck, 1986 [1929]; dembowski, 1930; schrödinger, 1935 [1932], 66–106).10 bilikiewicz’s book, die embryologie… (1932), also belonged to this trend. it was one the first works on the development of embryology in the 17th and 18th centuries, then a gap in the history of medicine, and to document the evolutionary conversion from the mechanicist to the vitalist position in this field.11 in terms of the sociology of medicine, it was to trace the impact of two consecutive general cultural trends on the content of embryological theories and their progress. in his understanding of the aims of the history of medicine, bilikiewicz followed the guidelines of the sigerist’s program quite closely (cf. sigerist, 1922). on the one hand, the history of medicine fulfills its obvious historical aim, as it preserves cultural heritage. on the other, it serves methodological purposes. the history of medicine enables the current state of medicine to be understood as the result of a long, complicated, multithreaded, and ongoing process that often leads to error (cf. bilikiewicz, 1928a, 829). by drawing attention to such errors, the history of medicine assists in the realization that contemporary medicine likewise swims in a sea of errors. in so doing, it fosters an anti-dogmatic attitude (cf. bilikiewicz, 1933, 1 & 4). the development of medical ideas is highly conditioned and the history of medicine should study this topic in socio-cultural contexts (cf. bilikiewicz, 1932a, 52). on the sigerist-bilikiewicz view, the understanding of the medicine of the past requires a close collaboration between the exact sciences and the humanities. in this way, the history of medicine constitutes a juncture between them (cf. bilikiewicz, 1933, 4; bilikiewicz, 1935, 63; bilikiewicz, 1938a, 292). finally, the history of medicine also has practical value for the present in that it provides knowledge about relatively rare medical situations e.g. the great 8 the german occupation authorities decided to maintain just one mental asylum in the reichsgau danzigwestpreussen, and it happened to be the hospital in kocborowo. bilikiewicz witnessed the implementation of nazi policy towards his patients for five years, and in 1948, he testified as an expert witness in the supreme national tribunal in the case against the war criminal albert forster, the gauleitner of the reichsgau danzig-westpreussen (cf. bilikiewicz, 1948; see also his 1966 and 1978, 15–17). 9 cf. bilikiewicz, 1978; see also: sieńkowski, 1981 (includes a comprehensive bibliography of bilikiewicz’s works); konopka, 1981 (with a bibliography of bilikiewicz’s works in history of medicine); suchodolski, 2002; kujawski, 2012 (with a bibliography of selected reviews by bilikiewicz); gryglewski, 2013. this biography is also based on the sources from universitätsarchive leipzig, germany, and archiwum uniwersytetu jagiellońskiego, kraków, poland. 10 it is worth noting that the existence of the “the same style of thinking and doing” in different cultural areas and that this orientation “makes us pay careful attention to detail and at the same time recognizes the great lines which run through the whole” was also indicated in the vienna circle. (cf. carnap, 1968 [1928], xviii; see also dahms, 2004) 11 it was preceded by works of cole (1930) and sarton (1931). artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 35 epidemics (for bilikiewicz, this was rather a byproduct of the history of medicine — cf. bilikiewicz, 1933, 1; bilikiewicz, 1938a, 292). in his book, bilikiewicz also acknowledged the influence of two contemporary basel professors — the historian heinrich wölfflin (who was a student of jacob burckhardt, sigerist’s intellectual master), and the idealist philosopher karl joël, who had recently published a work on the cultural history of philosophy and the philosophy of history — and their ideas of synthesis, zeitgeist, and style of thought, its development, and change (cf. bilikiewicz, 1932, 10; see also bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939], 259 & 264; wölfflin, 1950 [1915]; joël, 1928). elsewhere, bilikiewicz mentioned another idealist historian, leopold von ranke (burckhardt’s teacher in berlin), who saw the task of history as finding the essences behind the facts (cf. bilikiewicz, 1933, 4; novick, 2005, 28). there is no doubt that in terms of methodology of science bilikiewicz followed the principles expounded by władysław biegański. biegański holds that truth is “the final aim of every cognition” and he comprehends this claim within the framework of his previsionism (biegański, 1990 [1908], 112; biegański, 1910, p. ii; see also kijania-placek, 2009, 192–196). according to this view — usually epitomized in the comtean maxim savoir pour prévoir — scientific cognition consists in predicting properties, relationships, and causes and effects of things and phenomena (cf. biegański, 1910, 80–85; biegański, 1915, 24). as predictions include retrodictions and explanations in this theory, bilikiewicz could apply it to the history of medicine. accordingly, he maintains that: the aim of historical research is not in the least to reproduce the past, or even to approach the truth […]. truth as such does not interest a historian. […] the reproduction of historical truth is not possible due to the incompetence of a knowing mind. […] this circumstance has undermined to a high degree the objective value of historical sources. (bilikiewicz, 1938a, 292; see also bilikiewicz, 1938, 120; bilikiewicz, 1957, 352; biegański, 1914, 1–2; biegański, 1915, 259) history does not provide faithful models but it serves “only to acquire a cognitive orientation as to reality” (bilikiewicz, 1938a, 292; see also bilikiewicz, 1938, 125). this aim is achieved when long developmental lines are identified. this is where bilikiewicz complies again with sigerist, who ascribes such a task to the history of medicine (cf. sigerist, 1926, 19). this quest invariably has a re-constructional nature. whether from a lack of data or an inability to recognize all the material facts, the historian is forced to invoke fictitious constructions. this “necessary epistemological evil”, which is responsible for the falsity of a historical theory as a whole, is principally detectable in varying degrees in all scientific domains, including the hard sciences. this is also how bilikiewicz reconstructed the rejection of epigenesis at the outset of modern embryology, the acceptance of preformationism, the debates between the “animalculists” and the “ovists”, the cessation of these ways of thinking, the final triumph of epigenetics, and the emergence of vitalism from mechanicism. bilikiewicz depicts the development of culture, which naturally encompasses science and philosophy, as a process guided by the spirit of the time, i.e. the zeitgeist. this sets the ideals that are followed, mostly unconsciously, in any branch of cultural activity. in science, the epoch-specific zeitgeist sets the aims and the scope of the problems to be solved, specifies the methods used to obtain the solutions, and influences both the choice of evidence, and the interpretations of the empirical data (or, in lakatosian terminology, it marks off the logic of scientific discovery). since the ideals set by the zeitgeist are the same for everyone, some parallelisms between apparently disparate domains can be observed. bilikiewicz tries to demonstrate this with the history of embryology during the baroque and rococo periods. thus, the objectives of his research are formulated as follows: in addition to the important embryologic-analytic material, we will generally try to include all the significant historical events that form or appear to form the spirit of the time in this synthesis. […] we will uncover the dependence of the dominant [embryological] view in a [given] period on trends, theories and world-views in […] seemingly quite disparate branches of science and psychologically examine the mysterious parallelism of influences that a particular epoch exerts on authors from the most diverse areas. (bilikiewicz, 1932, 10) the concept of the zeitgeist plays a crucial role in reconstructing and understanding the past, as it enables history to be rendered as more than a mere collection of facts. this is especially important for the history of artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 36 science and making sense of conceptand theory-formation, scientific change, and the cultural dependency of such processes. on that view, history requires a synthetic, i.e. constructivist, approach (cf. bilikiewicz, 1931a, 250; bilikiewicz, 1933, 4). this is far from obvious: what we call the zeitgeist, or character of an epoch, […] what determines the choice of specified theories and the discardment of others, what is embodied in the style, fashion, current views, morals, and the life of an individual and a society — when considered from a distance — it all appears as something supraindividual, as an “objective spirit” that binds individuals and communities into a uniform, harmonized whole with invisible ties. (bilikiewicz, 1932, 11) however, a zeitgeist is not discovered but rather constructed: “what we call the spirit of the time is not infrequently a creation of our subjective judgment with which we, as it were aprioristically, begin to process historical material” (bilikiewicz, 1935a, 203; see also bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939a], 259–260). the zeitgeist is a historian’s construction that helps pin down some features of constantly changing phenomena, and a conceptualization of reality that sets some directions “in the chaos that surrounds us” (cf. bilikiewicz, 1938, 120). the concept of the spirit of the time introduces a certain order and, therefore allows retrodictions to be made. when it is “identified”: the gaps in the sources cease to be a nightmare that jolts the historian’s conscience. the enormous field that is left for his individual historical construction, creativity, and intelligence makes it possible to fully use the sources, even if they are residuary and fragmentary, as the building blocks in the historical synthesis undertaken from this general standpoint. (bilikiewicz, 1932a, 53) once the given spirit of the time is determined, it is considered and investigated as if it were a real object. it might be thought that bilikiewicz’s constructionism would have been appreciated by fleck, but it was otherwise. the debate with fleck fleck’s comments on bilikiewicz’s book (1932) are interesting for several reasons. most importantly, the book sparked a discussion on fleck’s conception. this was an extremely rare occurrence at the time. in contradistinction to izydora dąmbska’s criticism (1937; see also fleck, 1938), bilikiewicz’s reply is written from a standpoint close to that of fleck, notwithstanding all the differences that both sides tried to point out. it is no accident that the disputants formulated objections against each other that were similar, if not identical. this section, however, focuses on whether fleck’s criticism finds a rationale in bilikiewicz’s views on the nature of scientific truth, the scientific character of history, the plausibility of its results, and the peculiarity of the objects investigated by historians. 1. truth. fleck deems bilikiewicz guilty of an improper approach to styles and the environmental conditioning of scientific knowledge; one that eventually leads either to dogmatism or relativism. bilikiewicz contributes to the danger that “a new generation of future scientific workers is growing up to believe that truth in the good, old professional sense of this word does not exist anymore” (fleck, 1990a [1939a], 251; translation modified). 2. scientificity. in the proper, i.e. scientific approach, research proceeds within the general sociology that investigates the rise and development of a directed, collective, cognitive mood that leads to a thought-style. bilikiewicz’s sociology, however, does not really go beyond rather vague, belles-lettres considerations.12 12 we might note here that similar criticisms were voiced against other authors of a similar historical orientation. thus, reviewing joël’s book (1928), sydney hook writes: “it is written with journalistic verve, reveals a bowing acquaintance with many fields of knowledge, and by the use of dramatic, stylistic antitheses conveys a quality of breathlessness which makes at least for interest if not altogether for accuracy” (hook, 1937, 131). artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 37 3. plausibility. bilikiewicz tries to examine and compare two comprehensive wholes in embryology. according to fleck, however, different thought-styles — even when they belong to the same period — often represent contrary tendencies that cannot be captured consistently without some flagrant oversimplifications. furthermore, new discoveries are possible when an observer’s cognitive alertness has been shaped and changed, and this kind of influence appears only within thought-collectives. therefore, it is they who should be sociologically examined. the intellectual development of the past is judged better, fleck concludes, when separate thoughtcollectives and their interactions are compared and investigated (including interactions across eras). 4. incommensurability. in general, the difference between thought-styles may involve their incommensurability.13 it is therefore advisable to confine their comparative analysis to individual sentences from particular texts, and not to work on “entire views and theories”, as was attempted by bilikiewicz. further exchange between fleck and bilikiewicz reveals deep disagreement over scientific realism (cf. fleck, 1990b [1939b]; bilikiewicz, 1990b [1939b]. therefore, bilikiewicz’s position on all five issues raised by fleck, and not just the four he originally addressed, are investigated here. ad 1: bilikiewicz on truth, relativism, and dogmatism. bilikiewicz is rather laconic about truth and his concept of style may easily — but superficially — prompt a relativistic interpretation. such a reading would be supported by the consideration that, as bilikiewicz was under the noticeable influence of biegański, he could also accept the latter’s non-classical theory of truth, which dispenses with the absoluteness of truth and makes it relative to “the content of earlier acquisitions of our cognition” (biegański, 1910, 139, see also 163). however, bilikiewicz firmly rejects the charge of relativism, and in his works on biegański, he is in principle silent about the latter’s theory of truth. in his reply to fleck, bilikiewicz mentions that when writing his 1932 book he assumed “that there exists an objective state of affairs which is cognizable to a high degree. the purpose of science is to study this objective state of affairs […] and the transmission of the content of cognition, i.e. the truth (as it appears to us), to other researchers” (bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939a], 261; translation modified). the tension between objectivity and stylishness can be resolved by his twofold understanding of truth. bilikiewicz, most probably following husserl (cf. husserl, 2008, 311–312), claims that truth can be understood in two ways.14 first, epistemologically, as an agreement of our judgment with a real state of affairs. in this sense, true judgments are fallible and relative to our state of knowledge. second, truth, in its metaphysical meaning, is that very state of affairs. in this sense, it is objective and absolute (cf. bilikiewicz, 1928, 17–18). bilikiewicz holds, as do many other fallibilists later, that principally there is no absolute certainty as to whether scientific judgments correspond to absolute reality (cf. bilikiewicz, 1928, 43), but we sometimes know that we are not wrong and “the state of affairs determined in our judgment coincides 100% with that state of affairs we call the truth” (bilikiewicz, 1928, 140). it should be noted that bilikiewicz never equalized all belief systems in terms of cognitive value. for instance, he criticized the mystical and irrational tendencies in 1930s german medicine, which eventually turned into what he called “medical hitlerism”, and manifestly ridiculed the dialectical materialism that haunted soviet science and philosophy (cf. bilikiewicz, 1931b, 240; bilikiewicz, 1932b; bilikiewicz, 1933a, 243–244; bilikiewicz, 1934, 264 and bilikiewicz, 1933b). he repeatedly stressed the reluctance of the polish school of medicine towards speculative thinking (cf. sine auctoris, 1928, 834; bilikiewicz, 1929, 141; bilikiewicz, 1935, 63) and called for criticism and exactness. these appeals were made from a perspective far removed from scientistic dogmatism (cf. bilikiewicz, 1932b). bilikiewicz agrees with fleck that the claim regarding the influence exerted on scientific results by the intellectual environment can induce the acceptance of a relativistic or skeptical position. however, he is convinced that the research on the stylishness of science “in fact sharpens the accuracy and firmness of our knowledge of reality through a criticism of the way we perceive reality” (bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939a], 261). 13 in the relevant passage of the english translation the polish word used by fleck, “niewspółmierne” (i.e. “incommensurable”), is rendered as “incomparable” (fleck, 1990a [1939a], 253). 14 the conjecture is that bilikiewicz never relinquished this idea, as he was still talking about two kinds of truth in a 1976 conference paper entitled “the influence of criticism and censorship on determinations of historical truth” (1976, 1–3), which the communist censors did not allow to be printed (this was not the first time — see suchodolski, 2002, 42 & 45), and in his autobiography (bilikiewicz, 1978, 44). artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 38 ad 2: bilikiewicz on the scientific nature of the history of medicine. undoubtedly, it would be easier to comment on bilikiewicz had he followed his own recommendations on exactness more closely. however, fleck’s remarks may create a false impression as to the character of bilikiewicz’s book (nb: that of fleck met with similar criticism). bilikiewicz, who as a scientist impressed not only sigerist but also karl sudhoff, wrote a historical book that adequately met the scientific standards that were commonly accepted at the time in this field. it does not therefore significantly differ in that respect from other acclaimed works on the history of medicine. bilikiewicz nevertheless agrees that historical research will never obtain the degree of exactness of the hard sciences — and from this perspective, his work may seem to be “artistic, literary, intuitive, and subjective rather than scientific”. however, as history also belongs to science, the charge regarding the nonscientific character of his work is unjustified (cf. bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939a], 264–265). ad 3: bilikiewicz on the plausibility of zeitgeist-based historical reconstructions. in the preface to his book, bilikiewicz informs his readers that ambitious history requires fictional thought constructions. constructing the zeitgeist consists in finding the cultural quintessence of the given period. without that, historians would be lost in a multitude of facts, so they are forced to proceed according to the law of economy. for aesthetic reasons, the creative historian strives to complete the picture of the epoch. those elements not in harmony with the zeitgeist are eventually seen as unimportant, detached from the zeitgeist, and replaced by well-orchestrated ones. this procedure certainly gives the historian a lot of freedom. however, bilikiewicz imposed some significant limitations in order to preserve the division between nature and culture. these constructions are by no means arbitrary. they have to be internally and externally consistent. the requirement of consistency with the main theories accepted in other domains of science (if fulfilled) makes bilikiewicz’s account testable in principle and grants it scientific status. this is emphasized by bilikiewicz in his rejoinder to fleck: “i did not try to transcend the experience” (bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939a], 261; translation modified). bilikiewicz suggests that fleck’s objection stems from a different vision of the sociological approach to science. for him, it is meant to explore the influence of the environment on the content of science, whereas for fleck it aims to show the influence of the environment (or the thought collective) on scientific work — or the sociological influence on the cognitive conditions of the mind (cf. bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939a], 257). bilikiewicz admits that both these objectives deserve more attention from the scientific community, but at the same time, he is convinced that his historical findings would lose their importance if viewed through a fleckian prism, because of the constructivist metaphysics that underlies fleck’s theory. however, he implies that these two approaches rather supplement each other. ad 4: bilikiewicz on the incommensurability of styles and scientific change. the curious character of the relationships between the views formulated within disparate thought-styles, familiar from fleck’s work and underlined in their exchange, was not unknown to bilikiewicz. in particular, he recognizes the possibility of semantic incommensurability: is there not a concern that historical sources […] will not provide what is needed by the modern researcher? for who produced these sources? the physicians of yore, educated in a world of entirely different medical concepts, knew nothing about modern symptomatology, and had no comprehension of modern methods of examination and observation. are those insights then […] translatable into the language of modern medical concepts? there is no doubt that in many cases this is possible, but not always. the objection that uniform conclusions perhaps cannot be drawn from two sets of premises formulated differently in terms of methodology must therefore be considered. (bilikiewicz, 1933, 3; italics added) on this point, the difference between fleck and bilikiewicz seems to be one of degree. for the former, incommensurability holds in so many cases that a new type of comparative epistemology, which he outlined in his book, is required to overcome it (fleck, 1979 [1935]). if fleck is correct as to the commonness of incommensurability (in any sense he had in mind), then his advice to confine the studies of two thoughtartur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 39 styles to a comparative analysis of particular texts and sentences is generally correct. however, the antecedent in this conditional is rather disputable. it is worth mentioning that, in addition to incommensurability, bilikiewicz indicates some other features that may be problematic for the rational reconstructions of scientific change, and his view of the development of science does not sound unfamiliar to modern ears. each spirit of the time goes through two phases. during the first, the ideals set by the new zeitgeist come to prominence, and are more and more successfully realized in different cultural domains. in this period, the spirit of the time influences the choice of scientific evidence, and the interpretations of experiments. this claim refers especially to false confirmations and to cases where falsifications are ignored. thus, in “the century of the woman”, buffon, who supported the idea of equality of the both sexes, reported the discovery of female spermatozoa (cf. needham, 1963 [1931], 208; needham, 1959 [1934], 216; gasking, 1967, 89– 90), while the discovery of the parthenogenesis of aphids did not make van leeuwenhoek abandon animalculism (cf. fry, 2000, 28–29; schierbeek, 1957, 83–91, 96–97; see also pinto-correia, 1997, 103– 104). on the other hand, in its second, decadent period, the zeitgeist is usually burdened with empirical problems which can no longer be simply ignored. if, however, they are partly absorbed by a theory, then this happens either with a significant departure from its initial tenets or with a violation of some of the ideals set by the zeitgeist. during the first period, metaphysical stipulations are commonly used to reconcile the empirical data with the current zeitgeist if need be.15 however, changes introduced in this way are — to use lakatos’ terminology once more — heuristically progressive. this is usually not the case during a crisis. this kind of corruption of the old ideals catalyzes the process of acquiring the ideals of the new zeitgeist.16 when the new zeitgeist finally arrives, the old one seems unbearably outdated, although the theories formulated within the new framework may contain “kuhnian losses”. for instance, when pierre louis maupertuis converts to epigenesis, he, in contradistinction to the preformationists, cannot explain continuity within species (i.e. that cats bear cats etc.) or exclude abiogenesis. the proponents of the epigenetic approach also had to abandon all the extra-embryological “benefits” of preformationism, due to which it was used as an argument against atheism, or a justification for otherwise morally questionable habits like arranged marriages (cf. roe, 2010). on the other hand, the new theory allowed maupertuis to address some of the questions that had mystified the preformationists, e.g. the resemblance of offspring to both parents (especially in the case of hybrids). in principle, two spirits of the time cannot co-exist in the same society in the same period, although it is impossible to draw a clear boundary delineating when and where the old one was finally superseded. therefore, after a noticeable zeitgeist-shift, the old theories usually have their epigones and the old views are not completely abandoned (cf. bilikiewicz, 1932, 90). the transition has an evolutionary nature.17 the partisans of a new competing theory, developed under the auspices of a new zeitgeist, handle the same data collected by the adherents of the superseded one, but reinterpret them within the new framework as confirming evidence (cf. bilikiewicz, 1932, 151). when the evidence is limited, as often happens in the case of new theories, scientists make use of untestable hypotheses as explanations. metaphysics is in any case indispensable as “even the simplest research, the simplest inference from empirical facts, contains some metaphysical presuppositions” (bilikiewicz, 1935, 63). science is a social enterprise, undertaken by entire generations. considered in the long term, it changes in an evolutionary and cumulative manner (cf. bilikiewicz, 1932, 169; bilikiewicz, 1935, 63). 15 years later jay gould made the same observation: “i finally read the major works of preformationism in its heyday […] — and i greatly admired the major arguments and their rationales. i understood, first of all, that the most ‘absurd’ notions (from current perspective) made reasonable sense under the ‘factual lacks’ of eighteen-century science” (gould, 1997, xv). 16 a methodological application of the maxim corruptio unius, generatio alteris is exemplified by the dispute between caspar wolff and albrecht von haller, the epigone of preformationism (cf. needham, 1963 [1931], 211–214; needham, 1959 [1934], 220–222; gasking, 1967, 101–104, 107–115; roe, 1981). 17 in his book, bilikiewicz applies the adjective “revolutionary” in a scientific context twice. in neither case does it have the kuhnian or popperian meaning (cf. bilikiewicz, 1932, 41 & 104). artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 40 ad. 5. bilikiewicz and scientific realism. the fleckian commentators usually agree that he is a constructivist (see, e.g., löwy, 1990, 215–224; herrnstein smith, 2005, 46–83; egloff, 2015, 54–62; see also strobach, 2011; seidel, 2011). a kind of constructivism is also present in bilikiewicz’s methodology. therefore, the bone of contention between them would appear to be not whether the use of constructions is acceptable in a theory of science, but rather how constructionist the theory can be. it will be argued, however, that bilikiewicz’s theory is at least compatible with scientific realism. bilikiewicz never questions that the world exists independently of any knowing subject. in the debate with fleck, he argues that his opponent’s position involves unacceptable metaphysics, namely the rejection of objective reality (cf. bilikiewicz, 1990a [1939a], 258; bilikiewicz, 1990b [1939b], 275). it is concluded here that he is a metaphysical realist. this is, of course, too little to ascribe scientific realism to him. this may seem a difficult task since bilikiewicz’s methodology deals almost exclusively with modern history of medicine on the one hand, and the rather outdated biology on the other, while the current debate between scientific realism and instrumentalism concerns mainly the matured disciplines. it is, however, possible to regard him as a proponent of scientific realism in its moderate version. strong scientific realism claims that the best theories (matured and successful) are nearly true (cf. psillos, 1999, xv; chakravartty, 2011, 157). bilikiewicz, however, thinks that in history it is otherwise, i.e. that even the best theories are (most likely) false. those fallibilists who adopt the scientific realism position often accept the truthlikeness thesis that successive theories, while literary false, approximate the truth better and better. bilikiewicz does not endorse this claim in history, but that is not tantamount to saying that history does not find any truths at all. they can be achieved “with the methods of natural science that enable a historian to determine a historical truth, which is individual, one-time, and particular” (bilikiewicz, 1938a, 292).18 when it comes to historical generalizations, however, the use of fictitious construction is inevitable. strong scientific realism claims that the central terms of the best current theories are genuinely referential (cf. leplin, 1984, 1). according to bilikiewicz, there are indispensable terms in historical nomenclature that do not have any real reference, for instance, the spirit of the time or the style. it is not clear what status he would assign to other important historical concepts, e.g. state, crisis, and revolution, but nowhere does he claim that no theoretical concept has any reference. in addition to historical constructs, bilikiewicz points out the occurrences of non-referential terms in scientific hypotheses (e.g. harvey’s aura seminalis), and experimental results (e.g. hartsoeker’s homunculus). bilikiewicz thinks — to stress it again — that terms without a genuine reference enter science under the influence of the current style and that this impact can be discovered, reduced or eliminated when the zeitgeist is analyzed (cf. bilikiewicz, 1939a, 261; bilikiewicz, 1933, 4; see also fleck, 1938, 195). bilikiewicz’s views clearly echo the instrumentalism taught by biegański. however, his position would seem to be more accurately classified as a weak version of scientific realism. bilikiewicz maintains that historical theories have truth value and that their falseness depends on the structure of the world. this in principle makes him an ontological realist. bilikiewicz agrees that justified historical beliefs are possible, and this makes him an epistemological realist. this realism is very weak indeed. however, it should get stronger once the constraint to history is lifted and other domains of science, where the role of construction is not as important as it is in the humanities, are taken into account. this finds confirmation in bilikiewicz’s way of speaking, as he ordinarily uses plainly realistic language when talking about the theoretical entities of modern physics. for instance, when considering very small, hypothetical primitive organisms, he says: “these creatures take a direct part in processes about which we people […] can only […] conjecture. they are able to look and see nearly directly […] chemical reactions as such, touch the bounds of a molecule, and perhaps see the structure of an atom” (bilikiewicz, 1928, 183). furthermore, bilikiewicz not only endorses metaphysical realism but he also admits that the scientific world descriptions approach the truth: indeed, this reality does not perhaps appear as we depict it […], howbeit […] we acknowledge not only that the external world and its objects exist but, moreover, that the degree of probability with 18 it is a necessary condition that the historian’s research is able to give “[…] the outcomes that correspond to reality only when it is conducted in a strict co-operation of humanist and naturalist minds (cf. bilikiewicz, 1933, 4, italics added). artur koterski – tadeusz bilikiewicz’s background in the debate with ludwik fleck 41 which we predicate about the objects of this world, and with which the relationships between these objects hold, nearly coincides with the degree of the objective truth. (bilikiewicz, 1928, 148) there are good reasons to say that bilikiewicz is an epistemological optimist. this fact is overshadowed by the skepticism which he expressed in his book on embryology and smaller works in the 1930s; however, this skepticism was related and practically confined to the humanities, and more particularly, to history. it was his realism that lied at the bottom of his disagreement with fleck — despite many striking similarities in their views. conclusion at the end of the day bilikiewicz concludes that his and fleck’s viewpoints are too far apart to continue the debate (1990b [1939b], 274). the discrepancy would not be easily visible without their polemics. on the other hand, this real disagreement over realism was merely the upshot of a not quite accurately addressed criticism. fleck was definitely mistaken if he thought that bilikiewicz was in any way sympathetic to the alethic relativists. and this was established. the answer to the question of whether bilikiewicz’s style of writing unintentionally supports a relativistic interpretation of his own views is rather subjective. it may be noted that a non-relativist rendition of fleck’s thought still represents a demanding challenge to fleck’s commentators. the complaint about the non-scientific slips in bilikiewicz’s book from an author whose style of writing could not find the approval of scientific philosophers from the lviv-warsaw school also calls to mind the biblical dictum medice, cura te ipsum. the more serious remark that stood behind it, namely, that general sociology offers a better framework for investigating the environmental influence on cognition, should be seen as a proposal that was considered and met with a rejection from bilikiewicz, who justified this decision by their different research goals. if bilikiewicz is right, then two of the other objections raised by fleck lose their importance. while from this perspective, their debate does indeed prove to be largely vacuous, it does have other merits. first, it definitely clarified bilikiewicz’s position on the realism/constructivism controversy. second, it gives the best but apparently still unrealized chance to interpret fleck’s teaching in a way that would permanently detach it from postmodern eisegeses. references sine auctoris, “iv zjazd polskich historyków i filozofów medycyny w krakowie”, polska gazeta lekarska, r. vii, nr 45 1928, 833–835 [“iv convention of polish historians and philosophers of medicine in cracow”, in polish (a report most likely written by bilikiewicz)]. biegański, władysław. logika medycyny, czyli krytyka poznania lekarskiego, warszawa: księgarnia e. wendego i s-ka, 1908, 2nd ed. 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four models of scientific theory; incommensurability; radical variation of meaning; suggestion for a new didactic of pluralist nature received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 10 september 2018. accepted: 16 october 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ the current situation of the scientific education notwithstanding a radical change occurred in society in the last half of century, and a radical change in the scholastic educational process, at the present a teacher still enjoys ample space for developing a gratifying work within the school. first of all, a teacher still has a visual relationship with the students, even if this relationship is polluted by youth fashions, consumerism, drugs and communication devices; through this visual relationship a teacher remains the only one person that creates convictions, not opinions. in addition, he can find the collaboration of other colleagues (also at world level), associations of teachers and some 1 antonino drago [orcid: 0000-0001-6002-1258] is a retired assistant professor of history of physics in the department of physics ettore pancini at the university federico ii of naples. address: via cinthia 80126 naples – italy. e-mail: drago@unina.it suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 67 other innovative schools; finally, with respect to a teacher of fifty years ago, he has at his disposal an enormous number of teaching aids as well as cultural resources. however, present science teaching is informed by the ideal of the unity of science, although the variety of the foundations of science cannot be hidden to high school pupils: chemistry is usually under evaluated as a low-level theory; thermodynamics’ notions of friction and cycle oppose to mechanics’ abstract notions, which are commonly presented as the most assuredly scientific notions; then, modern physics requires a so deep change of scientific mentality with respect to classical physics to result as inconclusive (even in many physicists’ minds); in addition theoretical biology does not accept anything from a three centuries-long development of theoretical physics. last but not least, no appraisal of the historical development of science along four centuries can be transmitted to the pupils, because no appraisal is shared by scientists’ community, apart from the vulgar conception of a unceasing accumulation of formidable achievements. in order to cover this obscure cultural situation, the popularization of science presents to the pupils surprising scientific notions, brilliant discoveries, marvelous advancements, without any relationship with the hard scientific method (whatsoever this method may be, after the inconclusive debate among science philosophers). since the present, highly informative science teaching presenting no evidence for the claimed unity of science, and modern physics teaching, stressing many scientific notions which are at odds with the intuitive ones, corroborate a separation between the two cultures, i.e. the humanistic one and the scientific one. unfortunately, a conciliation of these cultures cannot be obtained from a study of five centuries long pondering by the philosophers of science on this subject; indeed, inside the classroom philosophy teaching pursues a separate own target, i.e. the autonomous rise and fall of kantian synthesis, or the subsequent hegel’s system. for this lack of a valid cultural synthesis, a pupil is attracted by ephemeral philosophies of the present stage of the scientific development as they would be the last word on the subject. a quick history of the paradigms in science teaching in this ill-certain cultural framework, the critical question is whether a teacher is fully aware of the work he is doing and in particular whether he commands the subject of his teaching so that to have the awareness of the culture that he transmits to his pupils. unfortunately, this consciousness is not there yet; neither the current education at undergraduate level stimulates a teacher to perform an autonomous process of learning on the subject. not only, as kuhn says, (kuhn 1969) the history of science has gone through paradigms (ptolemaic, newtonian, etc.), but also science teaching has gone through different paradigms. a quick reflection identifies four didactic paradigms, valid at least for physics teaching. in the following, in order to facilitate the grasping of their content each of them is marked by a specific word:2 1st paradigm (<1958) science is “truth”; experimental results are absolute truths, which are codified by textbooks in a systematic way and authoritatively presented by teachers. these truths are independent of society, men and human faculties; hence, a science teacher 2 the year 1958 is chosen as the borderline of two science teaching attitudes since in such a date the launch of the first satellite to orbit the earth was a coup for the soviet union, a communist country and america’s principal international rival in the cold war. the soviets’ history-making accomplishment created concern that the soviets had beaten americans into space and may be after a short time in the whole challenge. in 1958, congress approved $1 billion for the national defense education act, or ndea, the first of more than a dozen programs at all levels of american education, meant to help us students compete with the soviets. since few high school pupils usually chose scientific subjects the entire scientific education was radically changed in order to present more appealing and pleasant subjects. (hare 1999) suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 68 transmits to the pupils truths that are independent of their persons and their interpersonal relationships inside the classroom. 2nd paradigm (1958-1980) physics teaching is facilitated by reducing physics to its backbone (plus some innovations); it is referred mainly to experiments since they characterize science with respect to any other kind of knowledge; mathematics is added as a further constitutive element. moreover, by overcoming the old physics didactics, which ignored the student as a person, some hard problems within the process of physics learning are recognized; however, it is believed that they are surmountable by introducing the kind of pedagogy which radically changes the pedagogical tradition, i.e. the “active pedagogy”; this one facilitates the learning process by, above all, suggesting appropriate motivations for studying physics; and then by inserting all kinds of attractions (fascinating experiments, colored figures, photos, cartoons, amusement mathematics, ideals of a great scientist career). also the organization of the education process inside the classroom undergoes a complete revolution; teaching process changes from being centered on scientific truths, collected by textbooks, to being centered on pupils, whose learning process – more than performed by studying a textbook – is supported and facilitated by both attractive experiments and an assist by the teacher, who is informed by his specific guide about the best teaching method. however, no critical view on this kind of the scientific knowledge was introduced; hence, two attitudes to learning this kind of indubitable knowledge were possible within a pupil; either a disaffection for a knowledge which is detached from the common life or an a priori consensus to an attractive teaching. with respect to this divide, the active pedagogy had the merit to carry a minority of students from the former to the latter attitude, but the learning process of a large majority of physics students remained determined by activities and influences experienced outside the school. 3rd paradigm (1980 – present) in order to be most effective, the physics teaching has looked for a pedagogy that also it is scientific in nature: therefore the new teaching introduced computer-aided teaching and first of all “the cognitive sciences”, those sciences promising to indicate how the human mind understands and learns; it is hoped that these sciences will suggest a safe teaching formula, in view of an automation of as most as possible education processes. in synthesis, science teaching changed into a paradigm centered on cognitive processes. 3 4th paradigm (2000 – present) the paradigm is centered on the “web” (and more in general, mass media), where the pupil is a mere knot and the teacher a navigation assistant. the learning process constitutes an introduction to a community network. people within a classroom is changed into an almost informal grouping of persons, who are very different in ages and levels of culture and moreover lacking any rule which is intrinsic to the cultural process the persons are producing each one for himself. physics teachers have moved to teach through physical notions after sixty years of innovations, science teachers are not still satisfied by the received suggestions for solving the problems of their physics teaching. from the time of the second paradigm onwards, physics teachers have begun to be aware that their teaching is objectively difficult because the main physical theories cannot be reduced to elementary experiments plus some pre-calculus computations; in this way, physics teaching seems reduced to a practicality. the basic question is: beyond objective physics, what other aspects of physics should be taught? in other words, to have abandoned the (positivistic) truth of the science left a cultural void which can be correctly filled by only an autonomous 3 this historical development is parallel to the historical development of the factory work organization (drago 1977). suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 69 philosophical view of the scientific knowledge, but in the lack of specific suggestions, how to avoid an indoctrination? none of these trends may gratify a physics teacher wanting to teach true scientific knowledge. in addition, he has begun to be aware the undergraduate studies did not suggest any tool to deal with these problems. in sum, the paradigm-changes resulted to be weakly effective in improving pupils’ knowledge and facilitating their education; even less to answer teachers’ problems. then spontaneously physics teachers tried to treat their subject–matter similarly to how the other teachers, especially the humanist ones, treat their subjects; they ventured to work on the concepts of physics (subjective science). inside science, a single physical quantity (e.g., space, time, force, mass, etc.) is usually well defined through both its process of measurement and its mathematical formula (objective physics). however, in the history of theoretical physics the concept of e.g. “space” has received the following very different physical meanings: absolute space, a container, reference system, force field, hilbert space, space-time; the same holds for the notion of mass which in special relativity changed in massenergy; for not saying nothing about the chameleonic notion of energy. hence a physics teacher is led to conceive in a unitarian way so many theoretical meanings of a single physical quantity. but this unifying conceptual process leads him to add philosophical meanings. in fact, each concept, when detached from its objective determinations for being referred also to philosophical aspects (such as the relationships of its several physical determinations) may present a multitude of meanings, not only in physics’ language but also in natural language. this fact gives rise to a great cultural difficulty; at the present, nobody can control the language of these widened concepts, because it belongs to the philosophy of knowledge; which in the last two centuries met a great crisis. rather, few decades ago some teachers were successful to suggest an innovative physics teaching by changing the roles of physical notions inside a theory, e.g. mechanics. karlsruhe school of physics (hermann 1995, hermann 2000) has changed the basic notions of theoretical physics; e.g., it considers as fundamental momentum instead of force, flows instead of quantities. thus, its new physics education gives a new conceptual framework of theoretical physics. by this change of the roles played by basic notions, it overcame the bound of all the previous paradigms: it has operated on the foundations of the physical theories; so that it suggests a different epistemological conception of theoretical physics. however, this novelty did not result more productive than the traditional conception. this fact proves that the main stumbling block of the improvement of physics teaching is constituted by the lack of a comprehension of the foundations of science, being not known the foundations of physics as first. the foundations of science: the two dichotomies i obtained a characterization of the foundations of science as constituted by more than one notion (e.g., space, force, etc.), or several notions (e.g., all notions produced by ruler and compass; the lagrangian t-v), or a theory (e.g., euclidean geometry, newton’s mechanics, etc.) or a semi-philosophical notion (e.g., set, chaos, determinism, etc.), or a single dichotomy (e.g., either classical physics or modern physics), but by two mutually independent dichotomies. these dichotomies are supported by ten evidences, i.e. a leibniz’s suggestion (drago 1994a), an interpretation of koyré’s and kuhn’s historiographies, (drago 2017a) a historical analysis of the classical physical theories (drago 1996) and also classical chemistry (drago 2010), an interpretation of both special relativity and the birth of quantum mechanics (drago 2013), plus an interpretation of the histories of logic, mathematics (drago 2012; drago 2017b; drago 2017c) and biology (drago 2015). these foundations are constituted by two well-known philosophical dichotomies, respectively the dichotomy on the kind of infinity – either actual infinity (ai), or potential infinity (pi) – and the dichotomy on the kind of the organization of a theory – either the suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 70 deductive one from few axioms (ao), or the organization aimed at finding out a new scientific method for solving a given crucial problem (po).4 to them correspond two formally defined dichotomies, one on the kind of mathematics – either classical one or constructive one (bishop 1967) – and the other dichotomy on the kind of logic – either classical one, or intuitionist one (heyting 1960). philosophical aspect scientific aspect the foundations of science infinity actual infinity classical mathematics potential infinity constructive mathematics organization organization through few axioms classical logic organization aimed at solving a problem intuitionist logic tab. 1: the foundations of science the four possible pairs of choices on the two dichotomies define four models of a scientific theory (msts). in theoretical physics each mst may be baptized by means of its most representative theory: newtonian (ai&ao) descartesian (pi&ao), lagrangian (ai&po), carnotian (pi&po). notice that each mts has its own representative theory; hence, the four centuries long creative theorizing by physicists on the several aspects of the reality exhaustively explored all the foundational possibilities. the collective mind of physicists was very powerful. being impossible within science a deeper cultural difference than that between the two kinds of infinity (more accurately, the two kinds of mathematics) or that between the two kinds of organization (more accurately, the two main kinds of logic), two theories founded on different choices are mutually incommensurable. this phenomenon manifests itself through the radical variations in meaning of the common notions (rvms).5 being mutually different in an essential way in both the basic choices and in the basic notions, the four msts cannot be unified. as a consequence, a theoretical physicist founding a new theory has to choose among the four msts the more suitable mst to his purpose, since his work, aimed at constructing a theory, has to conform itself to a particular mst. an mts that is culturally dominant over others is called a paradigm. i stressed the mutual incommensurability of newton’s formulation of mechanics and l. carnot’s formulation (drago 2004a). they suggest an instance of the rvms of their common notions; e.g. within the former formulation, the notion of time is continuous, while within the latter formulation is discrete. within the former, the notion of space is absolute and infinite while within the latter is a zone of space; within the former the force plays the role of basic notion, while within the latter the true notion is ma and force is its shortening symbol; etc.). this divergence is puzzling for the supporters of the unity of science; also because a convergence appears instead between the notions of two theories concerning very different fields of phenomena, i.e. l. carnot’s mechanics and s. carnot’s thermodynamics; these theories share some concepts (e.g., work) without rvm (drago 4 the relevance of this dichotomy for physics teaching was stressed for the first time by (fergusonhessler, de jong 1987). 5 (drago 1996) both notions of incommensurability and radical variation of meaning have been independently introduced by t. s. kuhn (kuhn 1969) and p. feyerabend (feyerabend 1976). suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 71 2007, drago 2017a, 114). instead, by conceiving the foundations of science through the two dichotomies the explanation of these relationships is plain; the basic choices of the former pair of theories are different (pi&po vs. ai&ao) and hence some their basic notions are different; while the choices of the latter pair are the same (pi&po) and hence their basic notions may have the same meanings. a corroboration coming from the creative experience of both physics teaching and chemistry teaching the problem of the foundations of modern science began at the very moment of its birth; galilei has recognized the two dichotomies,6 but he did not choose on them. then, the research on this subject has risen up to the most abstract speculations of philosophy, but without decisive results. instead, the humble (with respect to scientific glory), but long practice of high school physics teachers, who are attentive to transmit to pupils the entire physics, has recognized, by intuition, four theories as the most representative of theoretical physics; remarkably, they well represent the four mts’s mentioned in the previous section. the following table shows this correspondence (drago 2004b). oa op ia newton’s mechanics electricity and magnetism trajectory, line of force ip geometrical optics thermodynamics distance, process absolute space, reference system field, system tab. 2: the four theories taught by high school physics teachers according to the four models of scientific theories notice that: 1) both mechanics and electricity & magnetism make use of infinitesimal operations (ai), while geometrical optics and thermodynamics do not (pi). 2) the theories of mechanics and optics are deduced from principles; hence, they choose ao; the elementary introduction of electricity and magnetism at the high school level implicitly poses the problem of their connection; hence, it chooses po. the placement of thermodynamics may seem erroneous because this theory is currently presented as derived from principles; but these principles is disputable for two reasons: his first principle is idealistic (heat would be entirely converted into work!) and it, oddly enough, was added twenty-five years after the birth of the second principle (which suggests how to solve the problem of the heat conversions into as much as possible work); in fact, at its historical origin thermodynamics was op, being aimed to solve the problem of the maximum efficiency in the conversions of heat into work. 7 6 galilei posed the problem of the kind of the organization of a scientific theory when he wrote the dialogue (1638), which concerned not only the organizations of both celestial and terrestrial worlds, but the organization of a theory too; in fact, he illustrated his theory in a dialogical form, as in plato’s books, not so much in a deductive way, as aristotle taught that one has to organize a theory. galilei posed also the problem of the foundational role played by the notion of infinity inside a physical theory at least on the first journey of the discourse (1640); here he correctly posed the alternative between the actual and the potential infinity (drago 2017d). 7 most textbooks, as first pssc, substitute “statistical mechanics” for as most as possible of thermodynamics. actually, what high school teaching calls “statistical mechanics” is no more than the kinetic theory of gases. this theory interprets some thermodynamics laws through mechanical suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 72 3) because of the different choices, each pair of the four theories is mutually incommensurable; inside the table, an arrow represents the incommensurability between mechanics and thermodynamics; it is the most apparent one because it occurred inside their histories and moreover the comparison of their conceptual frameworks manifests it. 4) there exist rvm’s in the basic notions shared by mechanics and thermodynamics: space, time, body (either a point-mass or a system); some of them are of the kind all-ornothing; e.g., the notions located at the side of the various theories are mutually exclusive (while they are suitable for the pairs of theories at the corresponding row or column). 5) classical chemistry shares the same choices of thermodynamics since its mathematics is even more elementary (pi) and its organization is based on the problem (po) of how many elements there exist inside the matter. the undergraduate teaching of chemistry presents a similar scheme of four kinds of chemical theories (bauer and drago 2005).8 ai pi ao quantum chemistry physical chemistry state, entropy po chemical kinetics classical chemistry chemical reaction continuous time, electron before / after time, equilibrium tab. 3: the undergraduate didactics of chemistry also the undergraduate teaching of physics presents four representative theories, but according to a more complex scheme. owing to the theoretical change from classical to modern physics, some of the previous theories are different: special relativity (usually taught according to an ao) supersedes geometrical optics, and quantum mechanics (clearly a po theory within undergraduate didactics), electricity and magnetism. undergraduate teaching includes some more theories, which remarkably play the roles of bridge theories (in each case two curved arrows indicate the two theories connected). the most apparent incommensurability phenomenon is not so much the classical one – between newton’s mechanics and thermodynamics –, but that between quantum mechanics and special relativity; it was the stumbling block of 20th century theoretical physics. laws; but that does not concern newton’s mechanics, which was committed to the model of the perfectly hard body, whose impact does not conserve energy owing to its fixed shape; moreover, this theory wrongly modeled a gas as composed by fixed mass-points interacting through gravitational forces. rather, daniel bernoulli started a kinetic theory of gases as a continuation of leibniz’s laws of the elastic impact of bodies; and in 1858 eventually maxwell recuperated (in a geometrical way) these laws for founding the modern theory. therefore, this theory was implicitly derived from lazare carnot’s mechanics. (drago 2017e). hence, high school didactics makes violence to both history and theoretical physics when it presents the “statistical mechanics” as a prolongation of newton’s mechanics. 8 high school chemistry teaching deals with little more than classical chemistry, or rather, by following a technicistic attitude, it mixes the concepts of many chemical theories idealistically, without worrying for the rigor; for example, it often anticipates the concept of atom of quantum chemistry in order to study the periodic table of classical chemistry. suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 73 ao po bohr atom ai electro-magnetism newton’s mechanics quantum mechanics statistical mechanics trajectory pi special relativity thermodynamics transformation reference system system tab. 4: the undergraduate didactics of physics in biology teaching the deep fracture between darwinism and mendelism, or rather between functionalism and structuralism (mayr 1972; gould 2002), parallels the mutual opposition between the newtonian mst and the carnotian mst; it is represented by the opposition of the same two pairs of choices (drago 2015). in conclusion, it is an extraordinary fact that high school teachers of scientific subjectmatters have discovered a deep foundational structure inside a subject where even the philosophers of science were unable to obtain a result of the common agreement. however, the merit of this collective intuition of these teachers is diminished by the fact that they usually adhere to the traditional vision of a unity of all four physical theories; actually, this unity has existed only in the eighteenth century, when mechanics monopolized theoretical physics; but after that time, it was forever gone. the incommensurability as the bound of physics teaching: the radical variations in the foundations of the different formulations of mechanics let us analyze more in detail the implications of accepting the above pluralism. we see that table 2 summarizes the main problems met by a physics teacher, beyond all rvm’s of the basic notions, as e.g., force, trajectory, transformation, system, etc. 1) the main incommensurability implies that the theories present a radical difference in the kind of mathematics. thermodynamics lacks of geometry, which instead plays an essential role in the two theories of the higher row (geometry plays no more a foundational role within electricity and magnetism since it is subordinate to the physical notion of force). 2) the discrete time of thermodynamics opposes to the continuum of all variables of the other theories. suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 74 3) the cyclical way of reasoning of both the periodic table of elements within chemistry and sadi carnot’s theorem within thermodynamics, opposes to the mathematical reasoning of the other theories. 4) the use of doubly negated propositions (as the impossibility of a perpetual motion and the non-decreasing variation of entropy within thermodynamics) opposes to the certitude of the deductive development of newton’s mechanics. the rvm’s concerning physics teaching may be stressed by analyzing the different versions of the inertia principle, the door to the modern science. let us recall newton’s version: “every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed”. lazare carnot suggested a different version of the same principle: “once a body is at rest, it cannot move by itself; and once it is in motion, it cannot change by itself its velocity nor its direction” (l. carnot 1803, 49). a first difference is that newton refers to “every body” in every time and in every place; instead, carnot bounds the content of his proposition to indicate a limited set of situations, in which it can be stated that a single body under examination is at rest or it is in motion. he refers to them by means of a deliberately inaccurate premise: “once”; thanks to it, carnot’s version avoids the problem which is implicit within newton’s statement, namely how recognize by means of experimental tools a perfectly uniform and perfectly straight motion, which would take place “until” a unspecified time occurs (hanson 1965); that is, carnot’s version does not require the verification of the absence of forces (f = 0) on the entire (possibly infinite) trajectory of the body, nor it mentions such notion of force (which for carnot, as for d’alembert too, is the merely shortened symbol of ma). carnot was well aware of this novelty. he maintained that it is not possible to judge in a certain way “if a motion is absolute [as newton says it], or if there is a motion or a dragging force”, and that it took “a lot of effort to correct this error”. a further problem comes from newton’s claim to establish exactly when a body is at rest or it is in the state of motion; that is, to decide whether both v = 0 exactly (not v < ϵ!) and v ≠ 0. in general, each of these checks is impossible through experimental means which always give approximate values (apart from specific situations); the same occurs in constructive mathematics which is based on the approximations of real numbers, only in specific cases it obtains accurately determined real numbers. owing to this impossibility, carnot deliberately made use of the expression “once”, which refers to particular (experimental and / or theoretical) circumstances in which we know how to decide whether a body is at rest or in uniform motion along a straight line; in other words, this evaluation remains our judgment of an empirical and occasional nature, rather than a general one. in fact, in the history of mechanics the principle of inertia has been applied when the physicists were capable to approximately indicate a state of either uniform rectilinear motion or rest – with corrections increasingly sophisticated – with respect to the initial inertial reference system of the ground, considered as immobile. at this point we understand that the situation described by newton's statement, the absence of forces idealizes the real situation; he thought both limits of f as exactly 0 and v as an exact constant of an exactly uniform value, plus a reference system idealized as absolute, i.e. absolute space. furthermore, the premise of carnot’s statement assumes that we have already operationally defined the state of uniform rectilinear motion of the body under examination. in this particular situation, the body in motion may well be used for operationally defining both the inertial reference system and the instrument for measuring time, i.e. a clock whose notion is based on a uniform motion. thus, carnot’s version allows building, without any vicious circle, the three constitutive notions of the conceptual scheme of dynamics, i.e. “the physical content of the principle”, “a reference system”, “a clock”. instead, within newton’s version (of course deprived by the two metaphysical notions, i.e. absolute space and absolute time) each of the above three notions cannot be defined without referring to the suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 75 other notions; that is, they constitute a definitory circle, which is commonly accepted inasmuch as it is located at the limit of idealized experiences. by considering a motion which occurs inside a finite space and is measurable within experimental errors, carnot restricts the discourse to what is observable experimentally. understood in this way, the inertia principle indicates a method of investigation: if the observed body changes its motion, it is necessary to look to other bodies in order to find out those which act on it. this search introduces to an interaction dynamics. thus, carnot suggested a version of the inertia principle that it is very adequate for what has been actually done and also to what currently is done by experimental physicists; instead, newton’s claiming to have established some universally valid properties turns out to be a tautology. under newton’s cultural influence, also present didactics does it, at the cost to mislead and contradicting the experimental nature of theoretical physics. let us now notice that carnot’s version of inertia principle, as all methodological principles, is a doubly negated proposition: “it cannot change” (where the word “to change” has to be considered negative because it requires a physicist’s explanation why the body exited out the state of rest). now let us pause for a moment on the theoretical importance of a doubly negated proposition, as used by l. carnot’s version. it marks a great distance between the two kinds of organization of the two formulations of mechanics under examination. it represents the way of conceiving the whole theory which this proposition belongs to. in fact, if a doubly negated proposition (of non-classical logic) is translated (by removing the two negatives) in the corresponding affirmative sentence (of classical logic), the content of the latter is unverifiable; it may belong to a physical theory as long as the theory allows idealizations, as an ao theory does in some principles, which, by summarizing a variety of phenomena through few propositions, idealizes the experimental facts; in such a case, also the consequences of these idealized principles may be idealized propositions with respect to reality, provided that they are eventually compatible with the experimental data. this gives a degree of theoretical freedom which is apparent for example inside newtonian mechanics, which makes use with impunity of the idealized notions of pointmass, perfectly rigid body, the continuum of matter. however, we know that there are chemical, physical and mathematical po theories that have been organized without idealized principles. first, classical chemistry (whose basic problem is to know how many elements there exist inside the matter) and, originally, thermodynamics (which wants to solve the problem of the efficiency of heat conversion into work), as well as other physical and mathematical theories, such as lobachevsky’s noneuclidean geometry, aimed at solving the problem of the number of the parallels lines. the fundamental problem of such a po theory is exactly expressed through a doubly negated proposition for which it is not valid the logical law ¬¬a = a; e.g., in sadi carnot’s thermodynamics the problem is expressed by the proposition: “it is not true that the heat is not work”. within a po the proposition ¬¬a cannot be idealized as a since the problem motivating the po theory would be cancelled. e.g. if one states that heat is the same as work, then no longer there is a problem. then the formal characteristic of an op theory is the presence of doubly negated propositions; the first one of them expresses the problem of the theory; it and their consequences cannot be replaced by equivalent positive propositions because there are no operational means to prove them. so it is clear that while inside a deductive theory, ao, one deduces from the top of the first principles a pyramid of theorems, succeeding each other, to infinity; inside a po theory the theoretical development is essentially of a cyclical kind, in the sense that, after having presented the problem as ¬¬a; the theory develops for discovering a general method that eventually closes the circle of the argumentations by finding out how much more content is possible of that proposition a that at the beginning could not be made true by means of a simple intellectual operation of suppressing the two negations. suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 76 in fact, by removing the two negations of l. carnot’s version one obtains an abstract word lacking physical meaning: “perseveres”, or “continues” which are animistic in nature. actually, they are the words of newton’s version! this version is precisely the affirmative, idealistic proposition which corresponds to l. carnot’s doubly negated proposition. thus, l. carnot’s double negation is not a rhetorical figure without importance for theoretical physics, because within physics this double negation lacks an affirmative equivalent, as instead, all rhetorical figures of speech do. all in the above manifests the relevance of the choice ao/po of physics teaching. newton’s version postulates an infinite inertial straight motion, which is not different from a perpetual motion (thomson and tait 1879). lazare carnot denies this kind of infinite motion because in the commentary to the seven hypotheses of his mechanics he remarks that it is impossible because always there exist limitations due to other bodies, as well as unavoidable loss of energy; hence, the fundamental doubly negated principle: “perpetual [=without an end] motion is impossible” (l. carnot 1803, preface) holds true.9 this principle can be operationally translated by stating that there is no finite series of physical operations (i.e., a machine) that allows us to produce an endless motion. then this principle corresponds to a translation into physics of the basic principle of constructivism; according to which a mathematical notion exists only if we can calculate it; hence, both definitions require operations, which are performed, in the case of the physical theory of carnot, by means of experimental apparatus or a machine; and by calculations in the case of mathematical constructivism. having established this connection, it is natural that carnot’s version of inertia principle is expressed through constructive mathematics. also carnot’s language (“once”) mimics the language of constructive mathematics in order to express a problem which is undecidable in general, which yet is soluble in special cases. for example, in constructive mathematics it is a undecidable problem to state for which point one function f(x) has an extreme, but in the case the function is a polynomial of degree two in the variable x, then we can establish the point x° such that the derivative of f (x) is zero by calculating the discriminant equated to 0 (in constructive mathematics the last problem is decidable because there exists an algorithm for calculating a square root of the discriminant). similarly, lazare carnot’s proposition takes into account those special cases in which we are capable, in an appropriate way with respect to our experimental tools, to effectively establish if v = 0 or v = const. let us add that the first formulation of infinitesimal analysis was suggested by both cavalieri and torricelli through the new method of the “indivisibles”. they considered as numbers the final elements of infinite series, notwithstanding eudoxos has considered this passage as an improper one. during this historical passage from the traditional, constructive mathematics to the mathematics including the notion of ai, both have proposed a specific version of the inertia principle (drago 1997). more than cavalieri, torricelli considered as legitimate the passage to the limit of a given sequence to its “final element”; this passage according to him was “the privilege of a geometer”; actually, it corresponds to the use of the least upper bound, which is performed by a more powerful mathematics than the constructive one. torricelli considered also the corresponding physical situations. in particular, he discussed whether the supports of the two plates of a scale with equal arms are parallel or not. he correctly stated that they are not parallel since on the earth all vertical lines meet at its center, but he suggested that the “true” situation is the ideal one that is obtained when the scale was moved more and more from the earth; then in the “final” 9 notice that there exist no operative means to test its corresponding affirmative proposition: “every body in motion stops”, because one cannot establishes the terminal time or the terminal point of earth’s motion, or even of a pulsed billiard ball; one would have to know in anticipation the friction experienced by the mobile along the entire, but a priori unknown, path. suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 77 condition the supports would be exactly parallel lines.10 similarly, torricelli suggested inertia principle (albeit through the following incidental period, occurring in the course of a demonstration of a property of a parabolic motion): “it is clear that, without the attraction of gravity, the mobile would proceed to rectilinear and equitable motion along the direction line ab” (torricelli 1644, 156) twelve years after him descartes enounced his version, which was reiterated by newton (wrongly attributing it to galilei). a fourth version of inertia principle has been recognized by enriques. his “inertia generalized principle” suggests an infinitesimal act of motion (ai), in order to offer a solution to the universal problem (po) of the motion of a material point in whatsoever reference system.11 since the principle works as a methodological principle for studying a complete motion in all cases, it introduces to a po theory. hence it corresponds to the choices ai&po, whereas newton’s one to ai&ao, torricelli pi&ao,12 carnot’s to pi&po.13 the conservative and misleading role played by high school mathematics teaching the above foundational scheme of four theories does not apply to present mathematics teaching. the reason is not the lack of deep internal divisions among the mathematical theories, but a different attitude of the great majority of mathematicians from that of physicists. whereas the latter ones had to bravely start anew their science after the crisis of the first years of the 20th century, the former ones, since the time they have perceived problems inside the foundations of mathematics (i.e. since the birth of non-euclidean geometries and much more in the first years of 20th century) tried to merely reform them in a conservative sense, i.e., by searching to preserve the unity of all theories of mathematics, as it held true before the birth of calculus. i will quickly sketch this story by making use of the notion of a paradigm. since the ancient times, euclidean geometry played the role of a paradigm for the entire science, and in particular the entire mathematics. in the 18th century a new theory, i.e. infinitesimal analysis, threatened (e.g. through lagrange) to dethrone euclidean geometry from this role. but at the end of this century some experimental theories, chemistry and thermodynamics, born without infinitesimal analysis and even without the assured basis of the previous theories (e.g. optics and newton’s mechanics), i.e. geometry. in the first half of 19th century new kinds of geometries born; hence, euclidean geometry could no longer play the role of foundational theory for the entire mathematics. however, at the end of this century, cantor claimed that his set theory enjoyed this role. yet, he was unsuccessful owing to both the discovery of antinomies (e.g., russell’s) and its insufficient covering of all important subjects of mathematics. at the beginnings of 20th century hilbert suggested as the foundations of the entire science – in particular, the entire mathematics – a unique, uniform methodology for assuring their certainty; he wanted to formally axiomatize each 10 recall that even galilei had presented a similar experience; a falling ball from a certain height of an incline (on the left hand) which at the bottom goes up (on the right hand) on another incline till up the same height; the inclination of the latter incline may be varied; in the extreme case of angle 0 – i.e. the incline is the extreme situation of a horizontal plane – then the ball should proceed indefinitely. galilei proposed this case only as a mental experience, which he maintained as impossible in reality. 11 (enriques 1906, 424). this principle is extensively quoted and then commented by (drago 2007, 140.) 12 the choice on the infinity is pi in a subjective term, since both cavalieri and torricelli thought that their inclusion of the final elements was basically justified by the geometrical intuition of these points. 13 the incompatibility among four formulations of mechanics has been perceived also by darrigol (2007): the distance action mechanics, contact action mechanics, mechanics of continuous media, and impact mechanics. they may be respectively attributed to newton, lagrange, cauchy and l. carnot. they can be interpreted as the formulations corresponding to respectively the pairs of choices ai&ao, ai&po, pi&ao, pi&po (drago 2012). suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 78 scientific theory, first of all, the basic theories of mathematics. yet, after few decades goedel’s theorems stopped his program, by showing that even arithmetic is not assuredly deductively true. however, most mathematicians did not renounce to their hope for an ultimate unity of their science. at the same time of the previous result, bourbaki renounced to found mathematics on either a single theory or one methodology and even deliberately dismissed the problem of the foundations; he introduced a new conception of the entire mathematics in a technical sense only, i.e. by promoting as basic some “structures” which are useful for coordinating research within the several branches of mathematics, accumulated along the previous two centuries. yet, also this attempt was unsuccessful because some parts of mathematics are ill-covered by bourbaki’s structures (drago 2017c). in addition, since the year 1905 brouwer has introduced a kind of mathematics relying upon pi. he presented this mathematics in exclusive terms, so much to reject any other kind of mathematics. for this reason, inside mathematics occurred a harsh debate on its foundation, without any reconciliation before the 1960s; however, this reconciliation has represented more an accommodation than a comprehension of the basic reasons of the divergent viewpoints (martin-loef 2007). in retrospect, mathematicians supported a prejudice, i.e. the unitarian nature of mathematics, which assures a unique truth to each scientific proposition. all in the above suggests that brouwer implicitly introduced the dichotomy pi/ai. in addition, 20th century studies have suggested that classical logic no longer can be considered as the unique logic; there exist many well-formalized non-classical logics, which are to be considered of the same importance (if not more important) than the former one according to the specific situations to which they are applied.14 as a consequence, mathematics is subjected to the dichotomy on the kind of logic, i.e. either classical logic or intuitionist logic (as the most representative logic among the non-classical ones), or equivalently, the dichotomy ao/po. in conclusion, neither external events (the birth of new physical theories) nor interior events (the births of both non-euclidean geometries and galois’ algebraic theory), nor the great crisis of the first half of the 20th century led mathematicians to reform according to a pluralist attitude the foundations of their science. instead, present mathematics is fractured not so much in many theories which are mutually different, but according to the abovementioned dichotomies. ironically, during this long period of a crisis concerning foundations, high school mathematics teaching could apply no innovation attempting to solve the crisis. set theory was plagued by antinomies since its beginnings. in 1899 euclidean geometry received a modern version by hilbert. however, in his longtime study of mathematics never a pupil is exposed to axiomatic geometry since it is too difficult (24 axioms!). recent attempt of attributing to bourbaki’s version of set theory the same extraordinary role played by euclidean geometry along past centuries15 failed, because this theory does not cover in easy terms a variety of indispensable mathematical subjects. 14 in addition, we must take note of the crisis of the axiomatic attitude owing to not only goedel’s theorems but also the failure, against hilbert’s expectations, of this method within physics, since one cannot suggest the correspondence axioms of the theory with reality. moreover, the recent “reverse mathematics” has shown that only three axioms are enough to produce almost all undergraduate mathematics! (simpson 1999) all of this was outside of the reach of hilbert, cantor and bourbakists. 15 whereas after the sputnik the federal government of us suggested to change mathematics teaching through the msp, in the 1960s it was the oece (european organism of economic cooperation) and then e.g., in italy the ministry of the education that have imposed the “advancement” which was dominant among mathematicians, that of bourbaki, through a scholastic version of it (drago and forni 1978). suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 79 also owing to the failures of the attempts (by cantor, hilbert, bourbaki, etc.) to improve the foundations of mathematics, mathematics teaching remained subordinated to the conservative attitude of mathematicians (a unique mathematics assuring “certainty”!) which has influenced the whole science. at the present time, being the foundations of all mathematical theories (arithmetic too) under examination, mathematics teaching has preserved the old choice to attribute a paradigmatic role to euclidean geometry according to a minimally modernized version, stressing its deductive organization (ao), to be considered par excellence as the kind of organization of a theory – actually, a mild support to the misfortunately failed hilbert’s program.16 more in general, this teaching remains committed to platonist philosophy of ideal and absolute truths (according to the myth of plato’s cave). more precisely, mathematics teaching has been confined within one mst, that of the conservative choices for oa (mild hilbert program) and ia (sympathetically to both set theory and bourbaki), without recognizing any alternative. owing to the fascination for the theory of euclidean geometry, the program of mathematics teaching adds to geometry only some techniques of disconnected theories (e.g. algebraic equations, real numbers, analytical geometry, trigonometry, calculus, projective geometry, cantor’s set theory); notice that no one of them is presented as a theory. hence, no global view of the different theories inside mathematics is transmitted to a pupil, leaving him to think that after the aristocratic era no new mathematical theory born. of course, this decision greatly reduces the cultural value of mathematics (drago 2008). as a result, high school mathematics teaching, far from enlightening the basic language of all scientific theories, has degenerated to a teaching of a set of mathematical tools, to be applied soon or later in an instrumental way to nature. this technicist kind of teaching destroys the great advantage given to the scientific teaching by the wise recognition of the four fundamental theories, as the basic ones, by both physics and chemistry teachers. rather, the present technicist attitude of mathematics teaching influences the teaching of each scientific theory according to an instrumental attitude for a personal empowerment sharing a mythical mankind’s progress. suggestions for a pluralist scientific teaching in the present time, the knots are coming to the comb; two centuries of failed attempts to re-found mathematics can no longer be ignored. indeed, we see that within mathematics a conservative cultural attitude can no longer be proposed. the time is come to overcome the search for only one mathematical theory on which may be based the entire body of the scientific theories, or at least all mathematical theories. not only the attitude of physicists to found on only calculus both rational mechanics and mathematical physics has been denied by the birth of discrete quanta (anticipated by the elementary mathematics of both chemistry and thermodynamics); not only theoretical physicists since the 1960s have preferred group algebra to the differential equations, but the studies on both mathematics and logic foundations have recognized the two internal dichotomies. in particular inside social life the mathematics without actual infinite has become essential because of the relevance of computers (they choice is for pi since their physical operations cannot materialize ai); and, in addition, they make use of several non-classical logics. 16 of course, metaphysical notions (e.g. that of a point) have been suppressed and euclid’s version of the parallel postulate is superseded by that suggested by playfair in 1846; it includes unicity of the parallel line, which is considered as including its points at infinity (“in a plane, given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to the given line can be drawn through the point.”). of course, the last characteristic features are idealistic in nature, so that euclidean geometry through this postulate is based on ai. suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 80 it is also time for a great renewal of scientific teaching, long delayed by the suggestions of new pedagogical paradigms that however changed only non-fundamental aspects. currently, the insufficiency of the conservative attitude inside mathematics teaching is experienced by all teachers who have to introduce the computer into the classroom: this novelty suggests an upsetting practice which is an alternative to traditional mathematics. this theory adds evidence, beyond the evidence coming from both chemistry and thermodynamics, for the validity of a po (computer science basic problem is what is a computation). also, at present time, this novelty in science teaching is exorcised by deevaluating it as a mere application. but this will not last, also because this theory is one of the most profound ones, not a simple application of mathematics (drago 2016). all in the above suggests that the time is come to enlarge the pluralist attitude of physics teaching to the teaching of the entire science. from this new attitude, many indications for educational innovations may be drawn. the first indication is to explain the present situation of science teaching to students, with respect to the foundations of science. but surely that does not mean the suggestion of a lesson of the philosophy of science; rather it constitutes the conclusion of an innovative didactics that highlights the foundations of alternative science to the dominant one. in order to this aim i suggest some innovations. 1° start physics teaching from the most operative and the most (according to both mach and einstein) foundational theory, thermodynamics, and then introduce mechanics as a limit theory – since frictionless –, of the former one (drago 1994b). 2° teach the two dichotomies by comparing newton’s mechanics and thermodynamics (drago 1996). being classical chemistry a carnotian theory, i.e. pi and po, (bauer and drago 2005) add a comparison between newtonian mechanics and classical chemistry. 3° critically analyze some basic notions suffering rvm’s (e.g. space, time, inertia, force, mass). 4° introduce the four principles of inertia according to the four mts. 5° reveal and stress the choice of the four theories of physics teaching and then reveal the pluralism in science. 6° revise traditional mathematics teaching by not only criticizing its idealistic notions of real number, limit and set, but also introduce four foundational theories in correspondence to the four mst’s; for instance: euclidean geometry (pi through the ruler and compass, ao), limits and the extension of integer numbers to real ones (ai&po), boolean algebra (pi&po), cantor’s set theory (ai&ao) (drago 2008). 17 7° introduce logic teaching through the elementary distinction between the two kinds of logic as given by the failure or not of the double negation law. the main doubly negated propositions occurring inside the original texts of the theories which make the history of po inside mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology constitute a basis upon which a teacher can plainly introduce pupils to the two kinds of logic. 8° add to the usual school’s information about computers a quick theory of computer science through both a presentation of turing machine and elementary proofs of both universal halting theorem and universal machine theorem; then characterize the choices of this theory as those of the carnotian mst (drago 2010). 9° illustrate the historical emergence process of each mst and also the occurrences of paradigms (as along two centuries the newtonian mst, dominating all others physical theories, was). 17 calculus may be easily presented through its version of cavalieri’s mathematics (drago and vella 2006). suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 81 10° ponder on the history of western philosophy of knowledge in order to recognize the defective steps of the main philosophers; recognize that not kant’s ideas, but leibniz’s suggestion of two labyrinths, anticipating the two philosophical dichotomies, constituted an introduction to the scientific pluralism.18 references bauer, carlo and drago, antonino. 2005. “didattica della chimica e fondamenti della scienza”. in atti xi conv. naz. storia e fondamenti della chimica, acc. naz. sci. xl, 123, 29: 353-364. darrigol, olivier. 2007. “on the necessary truth of the laws of classical mechanics”. studies in history and philosophy of science, pt. b. 38 (4): 757-800 drago, antonino. 1977. organizzazione del lavoro e didattica delle scienze, per la critica dell’organizzazione del lavoro. analisi e documenti, n. 16: 25-32. drago, antonino. 1994a. leibniz’s scientia generalis reinterpreted and accomplished by means of modem scientific theories. logica e filosofia della scienza. problemi e prospettive, edited by cellucci, carlo et al. pisa: ets, p. 35-54. drago, antonino. 1994 b. mach’s thesis: thermodynamics as the basic theory for physics teaching. science and education, 3: 89-198. drago, antonino. 1996. mathematics and alternative theoretical physics: the method for linking them together. epistemologia, 19: 33-50. drago, antonino. 2003, the introduction of actual infinity in modem science: mathematics and physics in both cavalieri and torricelli, ganita bharati, bull. soc. math. india, 25: 79-98. drago, antonino. 2004 a. a new appraisal of old formulations of mechanics, am. j. phys., 72 (3): 407-9. drago, antonino. 2004 b. lo schema paradigmatico della didattica della fisica: la ricerca di un’unità tra quattro teorie. giornale di fisica, 45 (3): 173-191. drago, antonino. 2007. four ways of logical reasoning in theoretical physics and their relationships with both the kinds of mathematics and computer science. computation and logic in real world, edited by cooper, s. barry; et al.. siena: univ. siena, dept. of math. sci., p. 132-142. drago, antonino. 2008. la tradizionale didattica della matematica tra astrattismo e strumentalismo. rivista di epistemologia didattica, 3 (5-6): 141-162. drago, antonino. 2010. la teoria chimica come la più chiara teoria scientifica moderna. la chimica nella scuola, 32(4): 2-9. drago, antonino. 2011. 1 quattro modelli della teoria meccanica. intorno a galileo: la storia della fisica e il punto di svolta galíleiano, edited by toscano, marco; giannini, giulia and giannetto, enrico. rimini: guaraldi, p. 181-190. drago, antonino. 2012. “pluralism in logic. the square of opposition, leibniz’s principle and markov’s principle”. around and beyond the square of opposition, edited by béziau and jean-yves; jacquette, dale, 175-189. basel: birckhaueser, p. 175-189. 18 there is no space for illustrating one more suggestion concerning the detailed model of po (which may be illustrated on the lobachevsky’s text suggesting the first non-euclidean geometry; i.e. analyze the ad absurdum proof as it is presented by both sadi carnot theorem and the abovementioned theorems of computer science; each one concluding a doubly negated predicate; the author feels himself justified to translate it (through leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason) into an affirmative hypothesis, which then is tested with experiments. leibniz’s pluralist attitude is confirmed by his further suggestion of two are the logico-philosophical principles of human reason, i.e. noncontradiction principle (concerning ao theory) and the principle of sufficient reason (playing the role of concluding a po theory) (drago 2012). suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 82 drago, antonino. 2013. “the emergence of two options from einstein’s first paper on quanta”. physics, astronomy and engineering. critical problem in the history of science and society, edited by pisano, raffaele; capecchi, danilo; and lukesova, anna. 227 234. siauliai: scientia socialis, p. 227-234. drago, antonino. 2015. una concezione leibniziana della vita biologica e della teologia, philosophical news, no. 11, 51-73. drago, antonino. 2016. defining peirce’s reasoning processes against the background of the mathematical reasoning of computability theory. model-based reasoning in science and technology. logical, epistemological, and cognitive issues, edited by magnani, lorenzo and casadio, claudia. berlin: springer, p. 375-398. drago, antonino. 2017a. “koyré’s revolutionary role in the historiography of science”. hypotheses and perspectives in the history and philosophy of science. homage to alexandre koyré 1892-1964, edited by pisano, raffaele; agassi, joseph and drozdova, daria. berlin: springer, p. 123-141. drago, antonino. 2017b. dalla storia della fisica alla scoperta dei fondamenti della scienza,. roma: aracne. drago, antonino. 2017c. a pluralist foundation of the mathematics of the first half of the twentieth century, j. of indian council of philosophical research, 34(2): 343-363, doi 10.1007/s40961-016-0089 drago, antonino. 2017d. what was the role of galileo in the century-long birth of modern science? fundamenta scientiae, 21-1 (1):35-54. url: https://www.cairn.info/revue-philosophia-scientiae-2017-1-page-35.htmbb drago, antonino. 2017e. the kinetic theory of gases was unwarily derived from huygens leibniz-carnot’s formulation of mechanics. società italiana degli storici della fisica e dell’astronomia: atti del xxxiii convegno annuale / proceedings of the 33rd annual conference, edited by fregonese, lucio and gambaro, ivana. acireale, catania, siracusa 2013, p. 445-457. drago, antonino and forni, giulia. 1978. a che serve l’insiemistica? scuola documenti, n. 14:40 -48. drago, antonino and vella, maria rosaria. 2006. una nuova proposta didattica per l’analisi matematica. rivista di epistemologia didattica, 1, pp. 253-277. enriques, federigo. 1906 [1975]. il problema della scienza. bologna: zanichelli. ferguson-heller, monica and, de jong, antonius .1987. on the quality of knowledge in the field of electrivity and magnetism. american journal of physics. 55: 492-297. feyrabend, paul. 1976. against method. outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge. london: verso. galilei, galileo. 1632 [1995]. dialogo sui due massimi sistemi. rimini: guaraldi. galilei, galileo. 1638 [2011]. discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intronoa due nuove scienze. amsterdam: elsevier. gould, stephen jay: 2002. the structure of the evolutionary theory. harvard: harvard u.p. hanson, norwood russell. 1965. newton’s first law: a philosopher’s door in natural phylosophy. beyond the edge of certainty, edited by colodny, robert garland. englewood: elsevier, p 6-28. hare, donna leigh. 1999. sputnik and united states k-12 science education. collection for university of nebraska – lincoln. aai9942167. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/aai9942167. herrmann friedrich and haas, karen. 1995. der karlsruher physik kurs. koeln: aulis. herrmann, friedrich. 2000. the karlsruher physics course, eur. phys. j., 21: 49-58. heyting, arend. 1956. intuitionism. an introduction. amsterdam: north-holland. koyré, akexander. 1957. from the closed world to the infinite universe, baltimore: university of maryland. suggestion for teaching science as a pluralist enterprise antonino drago 83 kuhn, thomas. 1969. the structure of scientific revolutions, chicago: chicago university press. martin-loef, per. 2007. the hilbert–brouwer controversy resolved? one hundred years of intuitionism (1907–2007) edited by van atten, marc et al., berlin: birkhaueser, p. 245– 256. mayr, ernst. 1972. the growth of biological thought. lakonia nh: belknap press. simpson, stephen. 1999. subsystems of second order arithmetic. berlin: springer. tomson, williams and tait, peter gutrie. 1879. treatise on natural philosophy. london: university press. microsoft word 7roth layout 64 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 64-77 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth1 abstract: it has become customary since foucault to present canguilhem as a man whose work is voluntarily restricted to a particular domain of the history of science. yet the current edition of his complete works reveals that canguilhem has never considered himself a true historian of science. if he traced “the history of the formation, deformation and rectification of scientific concepts”, it is above all to nurture his profession of professor of philosophy with “unknown material”. on the assumption that canguilhem subordinates the history of science to teaching, this article will try to make a further step and show that its inter-regional approach of knowledge can serve as a paradigm in educational sciences, when the knowledge to be transmitted is a-disciplinary and has a strong normative dimension. keywords: georges canguilhem; education; regional epistemology; norms; values received: 2 february 2018. reviewed 13 march 2018. accepted: 16 may 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.07 _____________________________________________________________________________ in philosophy, there is no segregation canguilhem 1991 in 1987, canguilhem received the prestigious gold medal from the french “centre national de recherche scientifique”. it came as the crowning of a rich and long career as a philosopher and historian of science. while thanking the management of the cnrs for the attention paid to his work, canguilhem confided at the ceremony held in his honor that he did not understand what could justify such a distinction: 1 xavier roth is an assistant professor at université grenoble-alpes – laboratoire de recherche des apprentissages en contexte (larac-ea 602). address: ufr shs – bshm université grenoble alpes cs 40700 – 38058, grenoble cedex 9 – france. e-mail: xavier.roth@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 65 what merit of originality can i, without pretension, attribute to myself? i studied and started teaching at a time when “research” did not exist as an activity outside the academic career. it did not occur to me that one could work in any other capacity than as a teacher and to teach. teaching is not necessarily rehashing. i have never confused philosophy with the fact that textbooks contained quotations accumulated under the headings of a program. (canguilhem 1987, 1) canguilhem could not have been clearer. if he had studied history of science, it is above all to support his activity as a professor of philosophy. such a subordination of the history of science to neither epistemology, nor even to philosophy, but to the teaching of philosophy, is surprising. it is especially so since it has become customary, since foucault, to present canguilhem as a “man, whose work is austere, intentionally and carefully limited to a particular domain in the history of science” (foucault 1991 [1978], 7-8). “i’m not really a historian of science” however, the ongoing work surrounding the editing of canguilhem’s complete works in 6 volumes reveals that this retrospective statement is in fact part of a long series of declarations, whose coherence commands admiration. twenty-five years earlier, in 1972, canguilhem actually declared in an obscure medical journal recently traced by camille limoges: i am not really a historian of science, i am actually a professor of philosophy who is interested in a number of issues, which are the relationship between philosophy and science and in particular that of manufacturing, of birth, the import and export of a certain number of interpretive concepts of biological functions. (canguilhem, as cited by limoges 2015, 29) a professor of philosophy and not a historian of science, or at least “not really”? certainly, canguilhem taught eleven years in secondary schools since 1929, when he began his career as a teacher, until his refusal to serve the vichy regime in october 1940; and after the war, from 1948 to 1955, he was an inspector-general for philosophy at the ministry of “éducation nationale”, where he was both feared and respected. still, such a statement remains odd coming from someone who had just spent 16 years at the head of the “institut d’histoire des sciences et des techniques” in paris (1955-1971). this is because, according to canguilhem, the object on which he worked all his life is not, as one might expect, “science in its history” (canguilhem 2002 [1968], 200). in 1972, he mused that the heart of his investigations consisted in the examination of “relations”: the relations between philosophy and science respectively. and more precisely, he says he is interested in the trajectory (formation, import / export) of “interpretive concepts of biological functions”. this summons reference to the famous studies devoted to the concepts of “reflex”, “milieu”, “regulation”, and of course that of “norm”. what does it all suggest? the sibylline nature of such an assertion seems to be able to receive some light from another statement of canguilhem’s, made a few years earlier in a televised interview bringing together, among others, paul ricoeur, michel foucault, jean hyppolite and the young alain badiou. interviewed in 1965 alongside his colleagues about the nature of the relationship between “science and truth”, canguilhem wanted to remind the viewers of the show that “all modern philosophy, especially since kant, is characterized by this, that the knowledge of the truth is not sufficient to solve the total philosophical question” (canguilhem 2015 [1965], 1131). when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 66 assuming that one day one can answer in a peremptory way the question “what can i know?”, the questions “what should i do?” and “what can i hope for?” are nevertheless not answered. the critical attitude in philosophy breaks definitively with traditional dogmatism in that “reality”, “being”, “real”, cease to be absolutes to which the ancients used to subordinate thought. with kant, it is no longer the being who confers his value on thought; it is, on the contrary, thought that confers a value on being. and philosophy becomes precisely the court where the judgment of knowledge is itself judged, and this is so due to the relation of the value of truth – which is proper to the judgment of knowledge – with other values, such as moral values, politics or aesthetic. we begin to see why canguilhem considers that he is not a “true” historian of science. not that the history of science is worthless to him; on the contrary. but it has the value of a means: it is indeed worthy as an essential part of the work of the philosopher, whose objective is to formulate a response to what canguilhem calls “the total philosophical question”. this “total” philosophical question basically consists of a problem of evaluation, or, to put it better, a hierarchy. it is a matter of determining what the value of truth is in relation to the other values included in the human experience (roth 2013, 238-240). this is why canguilhem states, in the wake of the 1965 television interview, that “philosophy has to confront certain special languages [i.e. those of the sciences], certain codes, with what remains fundamental and fundamentally naive in lived experience”. (canguilhem 2015 [1965], 1123). and the history of science, “which treats a science in its history as an elaborate purification of norms of verification” (canguilhem 1977, 44), is for the philosopher an excellent tool for determining the proper place to assign to the truth in the hierarchy of values of a given historical experience. “i am actually a professor of philosophy” considering that the philosophical practice consists essentially in an examination of the relations between heterogeneous values, canguilhem fully follows in the footsteps of kant. to understand this, it is useful to recall here some socio-historical elements. at the time when he was studying in the 1920s, critical philosophy had dominated the french academic institution for half a century (schmaus 2003). at the university, leon brunschvicg's neokantianism (1869-1944) ruled the sorbonne. in secondary education, following the example of jules lachelier (1832-1918) and jules lagneau (1851-1894), the illustrious émile chartier known as alain (1868-1951), of whom canguilhem was the pupil and then the disciple at the lycée henri iv de paris, considered kantian philosophy as the insurmountable philosophical horizon of his time. canguilhem also testifies retrospectively, at a symposium devoted to his former teacher in december 1992: neither lagneau nor alain relinquish [i.e. kantian philosophy], and thus when i entered khâgne in 1921, i was invited, like all my comrades, to obtain the critique of pure reason, translated by barni and reviewed by archambault. (canguilhem 1995, 69-70) like all apprentice philosophers under the third republic (1870-1940), canguilhem had been initiated into kantian philosophy very early. now, at the end of the critique of pure reason (transcendental doctrine of the method, architectonic of pure reason, ch. iii), kant focuses very precisely on showing that “philosophy is the science of the relation beziehung of all cognition to the essential ends of human reason” (kant 1998 [1781], 694-695). this definition is due to the essentially critical nature that the königsberg philosopher attributes to philosophical activity. the word krinein means both an examination that discriminates elements, but also, and above all, the appreciation of a fact in the light of a right (guillermit 2008, 20-21). which is to say that, for kant, philosophy is fundamentally a matter of evaluation. it is the discipline that must determine the value of this or that knowledge in when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 67 relation to the “essential ends of human reason”, which are in the kantian approach of a practical nature. in other words, and to use the words used by canguilhem in the 1972 interview, the object of philosophy is “the relationship between philosophy and science”. now, like canguilhem, we remember that for kant, “one cannot learn any philosophy; for where is it, who has possession of it, and by what can it be recognized? one can only learn to philosophize” (kant, as cited by canguilhem 2015 [1953], 534). one could only legitimately claim to be a philosopher who has managed to unify, in a peremptory manner, the plurality of conflicting values in experience. but this philosopher, where is he? barring usurpation, it can only be found in the world of ideas, as a regulative ideal of philosophical activity which aims at the harmonious articulation between the true, the good and the beautiful. this is why canguilhem has always refused the title of philosopher: if one can only learn to philosophize, then the philosopher is only a professor of philosophy. it does not have the power of the philosopher to fix definitively the sense of the hierarchy of values included in the experience; but as a professor of philosophy, it is his task to make these axiological conflicts appear, to rely on his knowledge of the different ways in which the great authors of the tradition have striven to coordinate these values, in order to enlighten the individual’s judgment today. as canguilhem wrote in 1953 in a report on the “teaching of philosophy” in the world commissioned by unesco: “the philosopher does not have to exhort, to convert, not even to moralize. to make values appear is not to preach” (canguilhem 2015 [1953], 541). that is why there are no philosophers; there can only be “philosophers-teachers”. in the sunset of his life, canguilhem will especially insist on this point when, in 1991, he was asked the question: what is a philosopher in france today? (canguilhem 1991). a history of science subordinated to the teaching of philosophy the retrospective statements made by canguilhem in 1987 and 1972 contain much that is disconcerting to the reader: a professor of philosophy and not “really” a historian of science... and yet, they have a familiar ring to the ear of a reader of canguilhem’s works, including the best known ones. consider, for example, the case of knowledge of life, published in 1952. in many respects, this book may be regarded as a remarkable collection on the history of science and epistemology. nevertheless, canguilhem affirms in the first lines that “the attention every philosophy preoccupied with the problem of knowledge gives to the operations of knowing distracts it form the meaning of knowledge” (canguilhem 2008 [1952], xvii). in 1952, the one who will be considered twenty years later as the tutelary figure of “historical epistemology” (lecourt 1975 [1972]), explicitly proclaims the inanity of any epistemological enterprise that would be conducted for its own sake: knowing only in order to know is hardly more sensible than eating in order to eat, killing in order to kill, or laughing in order to laugh, since it is at once an avowal – that knowledge must have a meaning – and a refusal to find in knowledge any meaning other than itself. (canguilhem 2008 [1952], xvii) what is this to say, except that epistemology can have no other value than that of a means? for canguilhem, epistemology and history of science are subordinate disciplines. and now we know that their only value is that they pose problems for the teaching of philosophy. in this connection, no text is more explicit about the nature of the business that canguilhem wants to conduct than his masterwork: the normal and pathological. canguilhem actually presents himself from the first page not as an epistemologist or historian of science, much less as a philosopher, but as a “professor of philosophy [...] having taken up medical studies when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 68 some years after the end of [his] philosophical studies” to benefit from “an introduction to concrete human problems” (canguilhem 1991 [1966], 33-34). the anteriority of “unknown material” to philosophical reflection in general, little attention is paid to the fact that his famous medical dissertation – devoted to the study of “some problems concerning the normal and the pathological” – opens with an original definition of philosophy. “philosophy is a reflection for which all unknown material matières étrangères is good, and we would gladly say, for which all good material must be unknown” (canguilhem 1991 [1966], 33). when commentators pay attention to it, with a few rare exceptions (le blanc 1998), their focus is most often on the second part of the statement, because of the philosopher’s call to “unknown material” (schwartz 2000). yet such an expression is fully intelligible only so far as it is referred to the first part of the proposition, where canguilhem explicitly identifies philosophy and reflection. reflection is an act of thought by which it reacts to itself after experiencing “unknown material” matières étrangères that have broken its happy and innocent continuity. so to identify philosophy and reflection is to recognize the necessarily secondary nature of philosophy in relation to the problems that have aroused it, and to which the philosophical doctrine once constituted tries in return to provide an answer. from there, in a course taught during the writing of his dissertation, canguilhem concludes by affirming the “corrective, normative character” of philosophical speculation. and this is so because of the functional anteriority of the problems to the philosophical examination itself: the same goes for philosophy as it goes for all norms. it has already been mentioned that the abnormal, as ab-normal, is secondary to the defintion of the normal, that it is a logical negation, even as it is the anteriority of the abnormal that arouses one’s normative attention, which motivates the normative decision and provides the use of the norm with the oportunity to instore the normal […] so, practically and functionally speaking, the normal is an operative negation of the state at hand, which thereby becomes its logical negation, so that the ab-normal which is logically secondary, finds itself to be functionally primary. philosophy can therefore only be secondary moment. it doesn’t create any values since it is the result of their conflicts differends. (canguilhem 2015 [1942-1943], 87) if dealing with “unknown material” in the traditional field of philosophy is an obligation for the philosopher, it is because the starting point of an authentic philosophical reflection can not be of a philosophical order. it is certainly destined to become one, according to the dynamics of problematisation that his reflexive activity will impel. but at first, if he wants to renew himself and not “necessarily rehash” as canguilhem says in 1987, the philosopherteacher must put himself in a learning situation with “unknown material” to philosophy. in 1929-1930, canguilhem thought of this “unknown material” in terms of knowledge about tools and techniques. from 1936 on, medical matters took over; then, from 1955 to 1971, it is the history of the life sciences which came to feed into the philosophical teaching of canguilhem (limoges 2012). today, in 2018, it is the question of the epistemological conditions of the transmission of the memory of the holocaust and its links with civics that will serve as “unknown material” for philosophical reflection. citizenship education as “matières étrangères” in accordance with the “corrective, normative character” of philosophy, the need to put canguilhem to use in the field of education was triggered by the experience of two problems when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 69 encountered while participating in the design and implementation of educational pathways within a memorial-site dating from the second world war. located near aix-en-provence, les milles camp is the only large french internment and deportation camp still intact (1939-1942). it now houses a museum of which more than half of the visitors are made up of schoolchildren (60 000 for the year 2016-2017). its purpose is to rely on the analysis of the tragic history of the place and the genocides of the twentieth century, to reinforce, the visitor’s vigilance and responsibility of facing threats of extremism, racism and anti-semitism through the historical, memorial and reflective aspects of its museography. in short, it is a question of supplementing the traditional and necessary memorial approach with the pedagogical presentation of a multidisciplinary understanding of the individual, collective and institutional mechanisms that led from racism or antisemitism to mass crimes. thus, in the three sections of the site-memorial, there is an articulation between the multi-sensorial experience of the visitors who walk through the places of internment on the one hand, and an awareness of the dynamics that have conditioned the genocides of the past (historical and reflexive components) on the other hand. problem n° 1: how to educate when the knowledge to be transmitted is no longer regional? one of the first difficulties encountered by the educational service in charge of designing educational programs of les milles camp concerns the articulation of the plurality of the knowledges involved in citizenship education. in a nutshell, this is the problem of practical implementation of interdisciplinarity contents. unlike multidisciplinarity, which “can be understood as a juxtaposition of disciplines on an object, each discipline using its own concepts”, interdisciplinarity aims at the construction of “a common representation of a problem”, thus constituting “islands of rationality or intelligibility” (lange 2013, 51, lange 2014). the need to move from multidisciplinarity to interdisciplinarity is due to the educational project of the museum: to rely on the history of les milles camp to explain how democratic processes have been transformed to such a point that they very quickly became capable of genocidal acts. the museum of les milles camp is based on the idea of a “convergence of memories” of the different genocides of the twentieth century. the historical and comparative analysis of the gears that led democratic societies to mass crimes reveals that such processes are fully intelligible only by adopting a point of view at the crossroads of different disciplines such as history, law, political science, sociology, psychology, etc. (de swaan 2015, semelin 2005). it is this point of view that is progressively being introduced into the museography. however, it turned out that a certain number of pupils had difficulties in adopting such a point of view. for the most part, the difficulty lies in the co-ordination of the different “regions of knowledge” (bachelard 1986 [1949]) mobilized to understand how societies could very quickly prove themselves capable of genocide acts. there is in this operation of coordination of heterogeneous knowledge what can be considered an a-disciplinary condition imposed upon the practice of multidisciplinarity. borrowing a term from kantian epistemology, it seems that the acquisition of a point of view at the crossroads of several "regions of knowledge" results from an operation of synthesis of the various disciplinary contributions, when this operation itself is not disciplinary. here we face a problem that following kant, the philosophical tradition has called the problem of the unity of experience (roth 2013). at the existential level, the meaning we give to our experience is a function of the degree of conciliation – and therefore of unification – that we are able to institute between multiple more or less convergent norms. this is what wittgenstein saw when he states that “a philosophical problem has the form: ‘i don't know my way about’” (wittgenstein 1958 [1953], § 123). the discomfort and confusion experienced by the individual arise precisely from a mixture of “language games” whose respective normativities do not overlap; so, wittgenstein says “that we are therefore as it were when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 70 entangled in our own rules” (§ 125). the normality of our experience, including the experience of finding oneself in a learning situation, therefore depends on our ability to allow for the convergence of norms that, in themselves, do not converge. recall here the thought of bachelard, according to which “thinking an experience means therefore giving coherence to an initial pluralism” (bachelard 2002 [1938], 22). thus, the conditions of possibility of any “education towards” (education toward citizenship, health, sustainable development, etc ...) appears. this is reminiscent of the wellknown paradox developed by plato in meno, all knowledge already presupposes the presence in the pupil of this that they aim at the same time to develop. this is the “judgment” – we would speak today more of critical thinking – as defined by the reflexive tradition in philosophy following kant (merleau-ponty 1945). by judgment (or critical thinking), we mean here a synthetic, a-disciplinary activity from which the individual enacts the convergence of a plurality of norms and knowledge that he encounters into a unity the. at the didactic level, the question is then how to activate and stimulate such a synthetic activity in the student? problem n° 2: how to train critical thinking when the content to be transmitted are norms? the second problem encountered by the teachers in charge of the design of the educational programs of the les milles camp is that of pedagogical correctness. like all “educations towards”, civics education is problematic epistemologically since the knowledge transmitted consists of norms that seek the rectification of practices deemed unsatisfactory (barthes, lange and tutiaux-guillon 2017). this is not without posing some problems in terms of education. how can the teacher coordinate the epistemic requirements of the human sciences to establish what is, with the normativity of educations seeking the institution of what ought to be? how far can an apprenticeship lead to a lasting change in practices without neutralizing the critical thinking of students? in short, how can one ensure that, in a place like the milles camp, pedagogy does not proceed by the injection of “moraline” (nietzsche 1991 [1895])? too often in education the researcher françois audigier laments, the values on which the norms guaranteeing communal life are “presented as obvious, tolerance, respect for the law and others [...] the fact that the values are in tension or in conflict with each other is avoided” (audigier 2015, 19). if this is the case, we understand that the whole challenge of the educational act is therefore, paradoxically, to complicate the falsely immediate relationship that the student maintains with his own values, without losing it. this, in a sense, has always been the subject of philosophy. “the function of philosophy is to complicate the existence of man” writes canguilhem (1977, 139), echoing the formula of the master of his own master, jules lagneau, for whom “to philosophize is to explain, in the vulgar sense of the word, the clear by the obscure, clarum per obscurius” (lagneau 1964 [1950], 96). in short, it is a matter of questioning the conditions of a civics education that does not do away with the reflexive aspect of such learning. neutralizing the reflective dimension, may be comfortable for the teacher. but this comfort is at the cost of an unacceptable dogmatism. hence the need to develop the student’s critical sense – the kantian double sense of discernment and evaluation – so that he can assess for himself the value of democratic values. educational sciences and “french epistemology” as the history of science illustrates, epistemological reflections are most often triggered by problems encountered in practice (gingras, keating, limoges 1998). education sciences, like all other sciences, do not escape this dynamic. there are also obstacles encountered in the exercise of the teaching profession which gradually led the pedagogues to reflect on the epistemological conditions of the transmission of knowledge. when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 71 in general, canguilhem is far from occupying a position as central as a figure like dewey in the epistemological french debates in education (fabre 2015, bulle 2016). but we cannot say that he is completely absent either (cornu 2009). canguilhem is thus at the heart of an epistemological quarrel opposing the supporters of “education towards” to the defenders of disciplinary knowledge. the dispute here concerns the legitimacy of the reversal of traditional ways of thinking about the knowledge to be taught. for alain beitone (2014), the proponents of “educations towards” would seek, “against a backdrop of exaltation of postmodernity and relativism [...] to challenge the scientific process and the existence of scientific knowledge”. however, believes beitone, they would not have the epistemological means to think to the end of the educational reversal that they wish for. indeed, the author continues, their criticism of disciplinary teachings is characterized by the fact that the epistemological references used are extremely fragile [...] we can have respect for jacques ardoino’s pedagogical reflection, but epistemologically speaking, to situate it on the same level as g. bachelard and g. canguilhem is frankly ridiculous. (beitone 2014) alain beitone mainly supports his argument with a collective text where researchers make use of the “multi-referential approach” of french pedagogue ardoino (1927-2015) against “regional epistemology” that would have been developed by bachelard and canguilhem after him. according to these researchers in education sciences, it is necessary to determine which epistemology would be suitable for the field of education towards sustainable development: starting from a reflection related to this field, a reflection deeply rooted in the history of the science at hand, some authors build a philosophy of science or even a philosophy such as that of bachelard or that of canguilhem. here we can see how a regional epistemology seems to us, at first glance, not very adapted to the economic-socioscientific concepts of sustainable development. the multi-referential approach of ardoino (1988), because it takes into account, without exclusivity a priori, islands of rationality related indifferently to the fields of the sciences of nature, social sciences, or human sciences, and because it questions the values involved and accepts zones of ignorance, seems to be more appropriate to the aim of exceeding this limit (simonneaux j., simonneaux, l., lange, girault, victor, fortin-denart 2006). what simonneaux et al. criticize as “french epistemology” is essentially the compartmentalisation of the field of knowledge. for example, with regard to bachelard, the need to delimit “distinct regions in the rational organization of knowledge” (bachelard 1986 [1949], 119), and thus to recognize “regional rationalisms”, involves that scientist methods differ depending on whether one is interested in electricity or mechanics. this is why bachelard declares that he has “fragmented rationalism in order to associate it well with the matter it informs, with the phenomena it regulates, with the phenomenotechnics it supports” (bachelard 1986 [1949], 119). it is such a fragmentation of rationalism into distinct regions (“electrical rationalism”, “mechanical rationalism”) that stands as an obstacle for those researchers trying to reflect on the knowledge involved in “educations towards”. because it is fragmented, such an “applied rationalism” seems at first sight hardly appropriate “to the intermediary nature – between natural science and human sciences – of the kind of knowledge involved by ‘educations towards’”. whether we talk about education towards sustainable development, education towards health, or citizenship education, each time, what is appealed to are “ideas of catch-all concepts, drawers, intersections, or complexes” (simonneaux and al. 2006). when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 72 is canguilhem’s epistemology “really” regional? one may nevertheless wonder if “french epistemology” is not taken here by these authors in a way that is far too monolithic? let’s go even further. it is widely held that bachelard and canguilhem practice a “regional epistemology”. jean-françois braunstein, to whom we undoubtedly owe the most enlightening studies on the history of the history of science in france, considers that whereas “philosophical history”, like hegel’s, is based on the point of view of universal reason, the history of science according to french epistemology is essentially a regional history. (braunstein 2002, 934) if talking about regional epistemology to describe the work of bachelard is entirely legitimate, the same does not go for canguilhem, whose texts seem on this point much more ambiguous. he is certainly the author of advanced studies in a particular area of the history of life sciences. consider for example “the effect of bacteriology at the end of medical theories in the nineteenth century”, “pathology and physiology of the thyroid in the nineteenth century”, or the thesis for the doctorate of philosophy, with its undoubtedly bachelardian title la formation du concept de réflexe aux 17e et 18e siècles. but at the same time, what makes the originality of these stories of scientific concepts, and thus contributes to their value, is that the teaching that the reader draws from it goes beyond both the information of a scholarly study of the history of science like rené taton’s, but also the framework of epistemology stricto sensu. it is because, in the words of one of canguilhem’s former students, “his thought was mainly elsewhere” (debru 2008, 9). indeed, if a work as specialized as the essay on some problems concerning the normal and pathological spoke to all of us in the past, as it speaks to all of us today, it is because it also speaks of something other than its ostensible themes, physiology and pathology, science and technology, norm and value, or diabetes, electroshock, neuroglioma disease, diseased cells. it tells us about what is alive in us. it relies on this to give us a masterful lesson of life and in this way achieves the highest goal of philosophical thought. (debru 2008, 9) there is in these few lines of claude debru much more than just a game about the polysemy of the word life. maintaining his reader within the context of acute problems in a well-defined area of the history of the sciences of life – life being understood here in its biological sense –, canguilhem would show him at the same time, but without ever saying it explicitly, a life lesson taken in its existential sense. this “paradox” had not completely escaped the notice of foucault, who had made a point of raising it when he had to introduce his master to the american public. however, this paradox disappears as soon as we know that canguilhem subordinated his concise incursions in the history of life sciences to the exercise of his profession as a professor of philosophy. now, it has always been clear to him that philosophical practice is not a work of specialization. on the contrary, it is an effort to “totalize the experience of an era” (canguilhem 1965). this is a perennial position, which runs through all of his work, and so since his early writings. already in 1938, he associated himself with his friend and teacher rené le senne (1882-1954) to declare: “‘we defined the philosopher as a teacher of unity’ (le senne). everyone will agree on it otherwise we will not get along” (canguilhem 2011 [1938], 501). and in the traité de logique et de morale, which he published the following year for the benefit of his high school students, he declared at the outset that “if a philosophical teaching has an educational meaning, it is in so far as it can give the taste of this unity” (canguilhem and planet 2011 [1939], 635). philosophy is a quest when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 73 for unity: it aims at the unification of a subjective experience made problematic in that the values included in it are in conflict (roth 2013). if the contemporary world is a “problematic world” (fabre 2011), it is because modernity is characterized essentially by a “polytheism of values” as max weber had diagnosed it. on the existential level, the modern individual faces a real axiological puzzle: how to reconcile the moral requirement, the political need to live together and the thirst for beauty on the one hand, with the aspiration to truth that on the other hand, continues to grow with the innumerable successes that the sciences have encountered for four centuries? it is understandable then that regarding this requirement of unity, a “regional epistemology” is essentially unsatisfactory. this is why we cannot legitimately bring canguilhem’s approach back to that of bachelard, his predecessor at the sorbonne, to whom he is too often reduced (gayon 2006). far from defending a strict epistemological regionalism, canguilhem, like foucault in the order of things, believes on the contrary that the profession of epistemology consists, in “challenging the specialization of the specialists and trying to become a specialist, not of generality, but of inter-regionality” (canguilhem 1967, 609). without adopting an interregional point of view in epistemology, how can anyone account for the emergence of a scientific ideology such as spencer’s evolutionism (canguilhem 1977)? how to understand that the concept of milieu has become “a universal and obligatory mode of apprehending the experience and existence of living beings”, without retracing “the historical stages in the formation of this concept, the various forms of its utilization, and the successive inversions of the relationship in which it is one of the terms – in geography, in biology, in psychology, in technology, in economic and social history” (canguilhem 2008 [1952], 98)? how to explain the popular success of a scientific concept such as reflex, without bringing it back to the socio-economic context of “an industrial civilization [which] cultivates rather the reflex reaction, whereas an agricultural civilization cultivates rather a slow or delayed reaction” (canguilhem 1977 [1955], 163)? one could import a concept drawn from the sociology of law into the field of epistemology, and say that the objects of canguilhem’s history of science are “phenomena of inter-normativity”. his examination is not concerned with the objects of the different sciences, but with “the whole of the phenomena constituted by the relationships that are formed and resolved between two categories, orders or systems of norms” (carbonnier 1988, 313), namely epistemic norms on the one hand, and social norms on the other. to be convinced of this, one just needs to enumerate some of the inter-normative concepts whose history he has retraced: the concept of “milieu”, “reflex”, “regulation”, and of course, that of “norm”. all these concepts could be considered as standing at the crossroads of several regions of knowledge. and it is precisely because of their composite nature that canguilhem was interested in them. inspired by the kantian gesture, he effectively demands that these concepts produce their titles, and judges their potential usurpations in and through the social field. hence his interest in 1972 in the question of “the manufacturing, of birth, the import and export of a certain number of interpretative concepts of biological functions” (canguilhem, quoted by limoges 2015, 29). canguilhemian landmarks for educational practices back to problem n° 1: an “inter-regional approach” to knowledge in education this inter-regional approach to knowledge is rich in lessons for thinking about the objects of “educations towards”. foucault defined his master’s approach as “a search for the normativity internal to various scientific activities, as they have actually been implemented” (foucault 2001 [1985], 1590). from this point of view, reflecting upon sustainable development or civics education, is therefore showing the norms and values of the various when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 74 regions of knowledge they involve, and revealing their interference. if environmental or political issues are the subject of public controversy, it is because they consist of activities whose “internal normativity” do not overlap or even conflict. hence the need, in terms of didactic transposition, to practice a pedagogy centered on the construction of problems involving conflicts of norms by the students. this is materialized empirically in the practice of french philosopher erick prairat (2017) which he calls “a pedagogy of dilemmas”. based on the reflections of the english philosopher bernard williams, prairat means by dilemma a moral conflict whose logical structuring is presented in two ways: “in the first, it seems that i must do a, and that i must do b but i can not do both a and b; in the second, it seems that i must do this and not do it” (williams, quoted by prairat, 2017). in sum, the pedagogical challenge consists in activating and stimulating the student’s synthetic judgment on the basis of the examination of inter-normative situations that are problematic insofar as they all imply interferences between conflicting normative frameworks. back to problem n° 2: make values appear by experiencing their anti-values examining the composite nature of the objects of the “educations towards” from the interregionality of knowledge seems to respond in part to the aforementioned problem concerning the obviousness with which one too often presents the values of living together in citizenship education. in their text of 2006, the proponents of “educations towards” believe that “another limitation of the french epistemological approach concerns the lack of attention given to the question of the values involved in scientific knowledge” (simonneaux and al. 2006). here again, the criticism seems illegitimate in the case of canguilhem. let us remember already that he worked for twenty-five years on the concept of norm, which can be precisely defined as a technical means of inscribing into some value into the real: when we know that norma is the latin word for t-square and that normalis means perpendicular, we know almost all that must be known about the area in which the meaning of the terms “norm” and “normal” originated, which have been taken into a great variety of other areas. a norm, or rule, is what can be used to right, to square, to straighten. (canguilhem 1991 [1966], 239). moreover, his examination of the relationship between the normal and the pathological reveals that only the “experience of negative values” of the pathological can bring out the value of the regulations of the normal. extending bachelard’s reflection on “epistemological obstacles” (2002 [1938]), canguilhem defends the idea that “every value must be earned against an anti-value” (canguilhem 1991 [1966], 239). a dynamic and controversial concept, the norm draws indeed its value from the rectification it imposes on an abnormal logical second (normal + ab privative), but historically prime. the abnormal is the condition of possibility of the norm, which normalization subsequently aims at. in other words, it is through the experience of “negative values” that the value of the norm is dynamically revealed: “in order to truly enjoy the value of the rule, the value of regulation, the value of valorization, the rule must be subjected to the test of dispute” (canguilhem 1991 [1966], 242). in terms of citizenship education, understood as an “education towards the law, an education towards power” to which is added “a work on belonging” (audigier 2009), the memory section of the les milles camp is devoted to this essential point. the republican philosopher charles renouvier wanted “to teach the child to feel the evil, while we try to disguise it” (renouvier 1930 [1903], 92). without perhaps going quite so far, consider the following hypothesis. experimenting during the visit of the internment places still intact the terrible conditions in which the internees lived, realizing that it is the tilt of democracy in the authoritarianism of vichy which provided the institutional framework of the deportation of when the content to be taught is a norm: canguilhem-inspired contributions to educational practices xavier roth 75 more than 2000 innocents, it can be hypothesized that students actually experience these “negative values”. this is why an empirical investigation currently under way is trying to verify whether such an experience makes the students look dynamically at the value of the values of the republic, the negation of which made such a place possible in the years 1939 1942. several studies will be conducted with a population of students who will visit the sitememorial in a school setting. based on measurement tools developed in social psychology, we will seek to determine the nature of the influence of a visit of the les milles camp, which stands as a reminder of the anti-value of the values of the republic. we shall observe the adherence of students to republican principles. in doing so, we believe that we follow the requirement previously formulated by canguilhem regarding the function of the professor of philosophy: “the philosopher does not have to exhort, to convert, not even to moralize. to make values appear is not to preach” (canguilhem 2015 [1953], 541). references audigier, f. 2009. l’école et l’éducation à la citoyenneté : le choix de miser sur l’histoire. entretien réalisé par j.-f. cardin, formation et profession, bulletin du crifpe 16 (1) : 9 16. audigier, f. 2015. les éducations à…, quel fatras! in j.-m. lange (ed.), actes du colloque « les “éducations à ...”, levier(s) de transformation du système éducatif ? » (pp. 9-24), novembre 2014, rouen, mont saint aignan, france. barthes a., lange j.-m. and tutiaux-guillon n. 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toulouse: octarès. wittgenstein, l. 1958 [1953]. philosophical investigations. oxford: basil blackwell. microsoft word 3 beikã¼fner layout 6 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 6-14 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2019 – this is an open access article special issue – women in sciences: historiography of science and history of science – on the work of women in sciences and philosophy women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic?1 karin beiküfner2 with a commentary by andrea reichenberger3 abstract: beiküfner’s report reflects on woman’s place in the history of logic. these reflections date back to a larger research project entitled case studies towards the establishment of a social history of logic (1985–1989). the project was initiated under the direction of professor christian thiel, university of erlangen-nuremberg, and funded by the german research foundation dfg. the main focus of the erlangen research project was laid in the historical analysis of the emergence of modern logic in great britain and germany during the 19th and early 20th century. this research prompted the discovery of a series of important female authors in the anglophone and german speaking area. this led, firstly, to the question of what might be gained from the research results for the project’s objectives and, secondly, to a closer examination of the methodological demands and problems of a feminist historiography of science. keywords: female logicians; history of logic; erlangen logic documentation; feminist historiography of science received: 15 april 2019. reviewed: 23 may 2019. accepted: 30 may 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _______________________________________________________________________ in today’s lecture, i do not want to present any new research results, but rather perform a stocktaking of my previous work. particular research projects in the field of “women and logic”, or “women in the history of logic”, could be continued in various directions. within 1the following article is the english translation of a short report by karin beiküfner. the german original was published in 1989 as “gray literature” within the research project case studies towards the establishment of a social history of logic (1985–1989), funded by the german research foundation – dfg. thus, with this english version republished in a journal directed towards a large and specialized audience, we hope to give beiküfner’s ideas the attention they deserve. karin beiküfner: “frauen und logik. was kann frauenforschung für die geschichte der formalen logik leisten?” arbeitsberichte aus dem dfg-projekt fallstudien zur begründung einer sozialgeschichte der logik, no. 25, [erlangen] july 1989, pp. 22–26. we would like to thank the author karin beiküfner and the editors of the report series, volker peckhaus and christian thiel, for their permission to translate and publish the contribution. 2 karin beiküfner is a former member of dfg project case studies towards the establishment of a social history of logic (1985–1989) which was initiated under the direction of professor christian thiel, university of erlangen-nuremberg. as a graduate student, she has written 13 reports within the project. after completing her master’s degree, she worked for private foundations dedicated to the promotion of interdisciplinary research. 3 andrea reichenberger [orcid: 0000-0001-5007-935x] is a postdoctoral researcher at the faculty of arts and humanities: institute of philosophy at paderborn university, germany. address: technologiepark 21, room: tp21.2.31, 33100 paderborn, germany. e-mail: andrea.reichenberger@upb.de. women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 7 the framework of our research project, the current problem is, therefore, the weighting of the particular research directions and the integration of women’s works in the context of the overall project. since the topic “women in the history of logic” was not initially part of our research project, i would like to briefly describe how this research came about. in the history of logic, several authors mention female logicians. however, hardly any details about these women are given. therefore, we picked them out and investigated them in the same manner as the other authors. first, the most important biographical and bibliographical data were determined. in this context, it quickly became clear that these female logicians worked in completely different social and institutional environments. further, the conditions under which they developed their contributions to formal logic were substantially different from those of their male colleagues. the question as to how the unequal conditions of scientific work for men and women could be taken into account led to a closer examination of the methodological demands and problems of a feminist history of science. the subject of this still very young discipline is the question of how women can be methodologically recorded as subjects and objects of historiography. initially, our project case studies towards the establishment of a social history of logic was not intended as a feminist project in which the discovery and research of women in the history of logic occupy a central position. this led to the question of what might be gained from the research results for the project’s objectives and how the newly developed sub-project “women in the history of logic” can be integrated into the overall context of the project. we defined the following six areas of research: biographical research a major focus, especially at the beginning, was the compilation of the most important biographical data of those women who were mentioned in works on the history of logic and by logicians. among others, christine ladd-franklin, emily elizabeth constance jones, susanne k. langer, grace chisholm young, janina hosiasson, lizzie susan stebbing, and sophie bryant were recorded. in the near future, the biographical data regarding marie deutschbein and jane a. winscom will have to be supplemented, but this still requires further extensive historical research. bibliographical research subsequent to the data collection and biographical overview, a compilation of the works published by the respective female logician is planned, which is currently only available from e. e. c. jones.4 bibliographical material on the other female logicians is only fragmentarily available so far. the acquisition of the logical works also encounters some technical difficulties, since not all monographs or journals, in which the women have published their works, are accessible via the national library lending system. the purpose of the bibliographical research is to answer the question of what importance the logical works have concerning the female authors’ oeuvre as a whole and how their contributions to formal logic are to be evaluated. 4unfortunately, this bibliography of the works of e. e. c. jones cannot claim to be complete. see karin beiküfner, “a new law of thought? zur biographie der werke von emily elizabeth constance jones”, arbeitsberichte aus dem dfg-projekt fallstudien zur begründung einer sozialgeschichte der formalen logik no. 21 (december 1988), 18–26. women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 8 documentation and evaluation of logical works a substantive discussion of the works written by female logicians has so far only be done for christine ladd-franklin.5 the connection to other logicians and the reception of their works has to be examined. reception of the works of female logicians starting from women’s writings on logic, the question must be asked in which context these works were created, and which influences become visible, i.e., whether and in what way these works refer to other logicians. conversely, it is necessary to examine by whom and in what way the logical works of women were received. in this context, particular attention is paid to the question whether the fact that these authors were female logicians influenced their reception. the history of institutions the reconstruction of the conditions under which women worked in the field of formal logic includes, besides the investigation of the socio-cultural environment, a history of the institutions providing the possibility of scientific activity, i.e., the educational institutions accessible to women. for the period of our project, the problem of women’s education and access to scientific institutions was at the center of the demands of the feminist movement. so far, the history of women’s studies and the discussion on the admission of women to higher education have been outlined for the nations of germany, switzerland, england and the united states of america, which were relevant to the development of formal logic. in addition to the general scientific working conditions, the question of the possibilities of working in the field of logic and participating in the internal discussions in this field is to be answered in particular. methodological problems of the integration of female logicians in the overall context of the research project finally, the different working conditions for women compared to those for men require a methodological reflection on the treatment of female logicians within the framework of a social history of formal logic. the question of how the different working conditions that were and are valid for women should be taken into account is not only an important part of fundamental considerations in writing the history of logic, but also in the historiography of other scientific disciplines. the criticism of traditional sciences studies from feminist perspectives as well as several feminist positions regarding the philosophy of science has already been discussed and will be published in the near future. open questions the research results on women in the history of logic raise a whole series of specific historical and methodological-theoretical questions that are currently still unanswered and probably cannot be answered satisfactorily within the time-frame of the project. the current interesting questions are as follows: 5 see volker peckhaus, “brilliant young lady-mathematician – ernst schröders urteil über christine ladd-franklin”, arbeitsberichte no. 16 (march 1988), 38–54. women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 9  how can women’s studies be legitimized within a history of logic which is the subject of our project?  can the impression be verified that the percentage of women in the formal sciences – logic and mathematics – is significantly high? is a comparison with other disciplines at all possible or meaningful?  is there a demonstrable connection between the activities of women in the scientific field and their involvement in the feminist movement?  can the social-historic approach to the history of logic be combined with the demands of a feminist history of science, or at least brought into accordance? a well-founded answer to these questions presupposes, however, that the historical research on women in the history of logic is first continued. commentary by andrea reichenberger the dfg project case studies towards the establishment of a social history of logic (1985– 1989) was initiated under the direction of professor christian thiel, university of erlangennuremberg. christian thiel has worked on topics related to the history of modern science, in particular on the logic of the 19th and 20th centuries and the work of gottlob frege (thiel 1965, 1982, 1995, 2006). the members of the research group were (in alphabetical order): karin beiküfner, thony christie, randolf hümmer, volker peckhaus, and michael sperl. the members of the committee with whom there was an exchange of experiences and research results were: irving h. anellis, ivor grattan-guinness, gerhard heinzmann, dieter hoffmann, lothar kreiser, albert lewis, and jan woleński. a total of 97 reports written by the members of the research group were published as “gray literature”. volker peckhaus has written two reports on the status of the project, one for the period from 1985 to 1987, the other for the period from 1987 to 1989 (peckhaus 1989; see also peckhaus 1986 and peckhaus 1997). both reports together give us a well-founded overview of the research organization and document the research process. they summarize the aims and scopes of the theoretical framework of a social history of logic by emphasizing the primacy of a problem-oriented reconstruction of ideas. the methodology of the project, called “contextual historiography of scientific disciplines” (see peckhaus/thiel 1999), was divided into two parts: a quantitative data collection and a qualitative analysis. at the end of the project, the databases consisted of 1025 persons. the qualitative analysis was divided into three topics: (i) case studies about logicians, (ii) case studies about logical textbooks, (iii) case studies about teaching classes. the focus was on the historical development of the algebraization of logic in great britain and germany in the 19th century and the institutionalization of mathematical logic in the early 20th century. a documentation center for the history of formal logic was planned, but could never be realized. the erlangen logic documentation is now at paderborn university, in the archive at the professorial chair of volker peckhaus. research on female logicians within the dfg project was prompted by a series of important contributions to modern logic by female authors in the anglo-american area, among them christine ladd-franklin and emily elizabeth constance jones. in peckhaus’ reports, this research is subordinated under historical research on education and plays only a minor role. women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 10 at the end of the project’s period, the “erlangen documentation” included 60 female logicians from twelve countries, 22 of whom are also mentioned in alonzo church’s bibliography of symbolic logic (church 1936/1984). the period of coverage begins in 1725 with johanna charlotte (unzer 1751). in total, the documentation recorded sixteen germanspeaking women: lilly buchhorn, marie deutschbein, olga hahn, elli heesch, grete henryhermann, lily herzberg, philippine freiin v. knigge, edith landmann, hilda v. mises, martha moers, wilma papst, rosemarie rheinwald, amalie rosenblüth, karoline schelling, johanna charlotte unzer, elisabeth walther-bense. pioneering work in this field has been carried out by karin beiküfner, supported by the erlangen group members michael sperl, christian thiel, and volker peckhaus. their reports were published as “arbeitsberichte” within the erlangen-dfg-project. most of them were never published anywhere else. karin beiküfner has written 13 reports: “christine laddfranklin und die john hopkins university”, “sophie bryant (1850–1922)”, “emily elizabeth constance jones (1848–1922)”, “christine ladd-franklin (1847–1930)”, “a new law of thought? zur bibliographie der werke von emily elizabeth constance jones”, “zum frauenstudium in den usa. christine ladd-franklin und die johns hopkins university”, “zum frauenstudium in deutschland: sonja von kowalevsky in heidelberg”, “die entwicklung des frauenstudiums in deutschland zwischen 1850 und 1910”, “berichte ausländischer studentinnen über ihr studium an deutschen universitäten ende des 19. jahrhunderts”, “der beginn des frauenstudiums in großbritannien”, “frauen in der wissenschaftsgeschichte. überlegungen zu einem frauenspezifischen zugang”, “schreiben frauen eine andere wissenschaftsgeschichte? zur feministischen diskussion der wissenschaftsforschung”, “frauen und logik: was kann frauenforschung für die geschichte der formalen logik leisten?”. michael sperl has contributed to janina hosiasson-lindenbaum, susanne katharina langer, and lizzie susan stebbing and volker peckhaus to christine ladd-franklin and olga hahn. christian thiel has reported on “davies’ (psycho-)logical ladies”, and “zur mitarbeit von r. adamson, c. ladd-franklin und c. s. peirce an baldwins dictionary of philosophy and psychology.” thiel has also published an article about “philippine knigges versuch einer logic für frauenzimmer”, in: adolph freiherr knigge in kassel, ed. birgit nübel (weber & weidemeyer: 1996, 98–06). the erlangen work on women in logic was later continued by adelheid hamacherhermes in the rwth-funded project women in logic at the beginning of the 20th century in germany at the university of aachen (1994–1996). her final report (hamacher-hermes 1996) includes short biographical and bibliographical information as well as documentation and evaluations regarding the following women: buchhorn, lilly; deutschbein, marie anna; haack, hildegard; hahn, olga; heesch, elli johanna anna; herzberg, lily, née wagner; kahlfurthmann, gertrud, née furthmann; krenz, editha; landmann, edith , née kalischer; mises, hilda v., née geiringer; matzun, uta; moers, martha franziska constanze; papst, wilma; rand, rose; rosenblüth, amalie; schmitz, thekla. hamacher’s comprehensive report never officially appeared. she published two articles, one about rose rand (hamacher-hermes 2003), another about elli heesch (hamacher-hermes 2008). both hamacher and beiküfner’s research intended to make the contributions of women visible and to evaluate their works for the developments in logic under their particular conditions of origin. against this background, beiküfner and hamacher-hermes have investigated the educational situation of women at the beginning of the 20th century in germany, after the universities were opened to women. the demonstrably good performance of women in the formal sciences, especially in mathematics, has encouraged discussions about women and logical thinking worldwide (or, at least, in the western world). in 1893, christine ladd-franklin, well-known for her contributions to symbolic logic and the women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 11 theory of color vision, intervened in the discussion. in her article “intuition and reason” in the monist, ladd-franklin remarked: it is not true that men’s minds and women’s minds have a different way of working; […] it is not true that the creator has made two separate kinds of mind for men and for women; but it is true that society, as at present constituted, offers two somewhat separate fields of interest for men and for women, and that the nature of their conduct is of necessity determined by the character of the action which is demanded of them. (ladd-franklin 1893, 211f.) christine ladd-franklin’s strong passion for promoting and advancing women in academia is one of many examples for the impact of the feminist movement on science and on the education system in the late 19th century. during this period, a number of articles and monographs appeared on this topic. noteworthy is alphonse rebière’s book les femmes dans la science, published in 1894 (rebière 1894). it followed the encyclopedia format, listing the women alphabetically, giving their names, dates of birth, the social conditions under which they had lived, their contributions and publications. also in germany, renowned mathematicians were committed to the advancement of women, among them wilhelm lorey, felix klein, and david hilbert. in germany, the controversy over the admission of women to universities culminated at the end of the 19th century. in november 1895, berlin newspapers announced that heinrich treitschke and eric schmidt had expelled several women from their classes. in the following year, the theologian arthur kirchhoff invited 103 leading university professors and intellectuals (all males) to discuss the prospects of admitting women to german universities (kirchhoff 1897). in kirchhoff’s volume, several famous scientists advocated better educational opportunities for women, among them felix klein, who highlighted foreign female mathematicians as outstanding examples. however, some of them also expressed deep prejudices about women’s academic work, among them max planck. the undeniable gender differences in academic careers are well and widely explored. in comparison, there are hardly any studies about female logicians in german-speaking countries until today. beiküfner and hamacher-hermes’ studies are one of the few exceptions. a problem-oriented integration of women’s contribution within the framework of a social history of logic and its reconstruction of ideas is missing until today. the focus of the erlangen research project, namely the historical development of modern logic in great britain and germany, would have been perfectly appropriate for this purpose. at this point, we want to give an outlook for highly relevant possible research in the near future. according to widespread opinion, “the great epoch in the history of logic did open in 1879, when gottlob frege’s begriffsschrift was published” (van heijenoort 1967, vi). this work “presented to the world, in full-fledged form, the propositional calculus and quantification theory” (ibid.). frege rested his logic not on the distinction between propositions and terms or between subject and predicate but instead on the distinction between function and argument. therefore frege is often called the founder of modern logic. historians of logic have criticized that the claim of a “fregean” revolution neglects the complexity of the historical development and reduces the algebraic logic of augustus de morgan, george boole, charles sanders peirce, and ernst schröder as belonging to the aristotelian tradition. today, there is a broad agreement that when frege published his quantification theory, an equivalent one was (being) developed at the same time in the school of charles s. peirce, later taken over by schröder, and extensively discussed in the second volume of the vorlesungen über die algebra of logik (schröder 1891). later, the theory of quantification became known as classical first-order logic. the early part of the 20th century witnessed the discovery of many of its deepest properties through the development of metalogic and proof women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 12 theory, especially in the form of model theory and recursion theory. that is all well-known, thoroughly documented and widely discussed. it is an astonishing fact that women’s contribution to that development are excluded from standard textbooks and introductions until today, although many of their works have been known for a long time and are the subject of well-funded historiographical studies. the new view of algebra as the study of operations captured by rules for the symbolic manipulation of formulae suggested the possibility of applying this approach to domains other than numbers, or mathematics in general. it was ada lovelace who hinted at this in her brief proposal of a machine to compose music (see priestley 2011, 68; hollings et al. 2017). the first application of these ideas to a domain outside mathematics was then made by george boole, whose overall goal was to mathematize logic. among others, volker peckhaus has shown that the british tradition of the algebra of logic was recognized in germany with a delay of 30 years (peckhaus 2012, 2005). in this context, the german mathematician ernst schröder played a key role. schröder was not only heavily influenced by peirce, but also by christine ladd-franklin and her study of william stanley jevons and hugh maccoll. ladd-franklin, in turn, was well acquainted with both schröder’s and peirce’s work. she reviewed schröder’s logic in the mind (ladd-franklin 1892). in turn, it was schröder who drew her attention to frege’s begriffsschrift (frege 1879). laddfranklin, on the other hand, drew peirce’s attention to schröder’s review of frege in the 1880 zeitschrift für mathematik und physik (anellis 2018). as many logicians of that time, both laddfranklin and schröder underestimated the importance and innovative aspect of frege’s ideas. frege became known to a wider circle of (anglophone) readers after the appearance of bertrand russel’s principles of mathematics (russell 1903). emily e. constance jones discussed russell’s objections to frege’s theory in the form of an elaborated critique (jones 1910). in her modern introduction to logic (stebbing 1933), lizzie susan stebbing referred to both ladd-franklin and jones, although she did not discuss them. but let us come back to the german-speaking female logicians. according to irving h. anellis, “the conception of a fregean revolution was further disseminated and enhanced in the mid-1920s thanks to paul ferdinand linke” (anellis 2011, 134), who came to jena in 1907, where he taught until the end of his days. in 1946, linke published an article entitled “gottlob frege als philosoph” (linke 1946). linke did not present an introduction to frege’s philosophy, but interpreted frege through the glasses of the brentano-school. a much more challenging and worth reading introduction was offered 13 years earlier by wilma papst. her book has the same title: frege als philosoph (papst 1933). papst not only presents an overview of frege’s philosophy, but discusses its ontological premises and epistemological implications in detail and contextualizes the results within the historical background, by comparing frege with husserl, bolzano, and russell, just to give a few examples. in an original way, she combines her interpretation with hermann weyl’s reflections on the relationship between formal symbolism and the construction of the real world and tries to build a bridge between logicism and formalism via gestalt theory. linke did not refer to her contribution, but he was probably familiar with her work, at least since 1954. in this year, günter mortan, who was an assistant of linke in jena, finished his dissertation gottlob freges philosophische bedeutung (mortan 1954), in which he made several references to papst. linke was the first referee and supervisor of mortan’s doctoral thesis. the second referee was the neo-kantian hermann johannsen, who became one of the most important representatives of modern logic in the ddr after the second world war. one of johannsen’s early students was editha krenz, who received her doctoral degree in 1942 with a work on frege’s concept of number at the university of vienna (krenz 1942). in her curriculum vitae, she mentions johannsen as the one who advised her to work on frege, when she was studying in jena. krenz’s work was an important contribution to frege’s women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 13 philosophy of arithmetic. influenced by friedrich waismann’s introduction to mathematical thinking: the formation of concepts in modern mathematics (waismann 1936), she also reflected on foundational issues in the light of gödel, gentzen and skolem after and beyond frege. particularly worth mentioning are the contributions of female logicians within the vienna circle (hilda geiringer v. mises, olga hahn (neurath), rose rand, amalia rosenblüth et al.) and the lwów–warsaw school (eugenia blaustein, daniela gromska, janina hosiassonlindenbaum, maria kokoszyńska-lutmanowa, janina kotarbińska et al.), which cannot be explicitly addressed here. it remains to be desired that logic experts recognize the relevance of the task to investigate, evaluate and interpret the works of female logicians. at the very least, i hope that my short commentary has demonstrated that women have highly contributed to the history of modern logic. much harder to answer is the question of how a problem-orientated historiography of logic can be combined with the demands of a feminist history and philosophy of science. karin beiküfner has given a remarkable approach that should be pursued and expanded. references anellis, i. h. 2011. did the principia mathematica precipitate a fregean revolution? the journal of bertrand russell studies (31): 131-150. anellis, i. h. 2012. how peircean was the ‘fregean revolution’ in logic? (preprint. an abbreviated version of this paper is scheduled to appear in logicheskie issledovanya). url: arxiv:1201.0353. consulted may 10, 2019. beiküfner, k. 1988. a new law of thought? zur biographie der werke von emily elizabeth constance jones. arbeitsberichte aus dem dfg-projekt fallstudien zur begründung einer sozialgeschichte der formalen logik (21): 18-26. beiküfner, k. 1989. frauen und logik. was kann frauenforschung für die geschichte der formalen logik leisten? arbeitsberichte aus dem dfg-projekt fallstudien zur begründung einer sozialgeschichte der logik (25): 22-26. frege, g. 1879. begriffsschrift. eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete formelsprache des reinen denkens. halle: nebert. hamacher-hermes, a. 1996. frauen in der logik zu beginn des 20. jahrhunderts. abschlussbericht, gefördert von der rheinisch-westfälischen technischen hochschule aachen: aachen. hamacher-hermes, a. 2003. rose rand: a woman in logic. in friedrich stadler (ed.). the vienna circle and logical empiricism. re-evaluation and future perspectives. dordrecht/boston/london: kluwer, 365-380. hamacher-hermes, a. 2008. frauen in der logik – elli heesch. in peter bernhard / volker peckhaus (eds.). methodisches denken im kontext. paderborn: mentis, 269–282. hollings c., martin u., rice a. 2017. the lovelace–de morgan mathematical correspondence: a critical re-appraisal. historia mathematica 44 (3): 202-231. jones, e.e.j. 1910. mr. russell’s objections to frege’s analysis of propositions. mind (19): 379386. kirchhoff, a. 1897. die akademische frau. gutachten hervorragender universitätsprofessoren, frauenlehrer und schriftsteller über die befähigung der frau zum wissenschaftlichen studium und berufe. berlin: hugo steinitz verlag. krenz, e. 1942. der zahlbegriff bei frege. phd diss. university of vienna (typescript). ladd-franklin, c. 1892. review of schröder’s vorlesungen über die algebra der logik (exakte logik). mind (new series) (1): 126-132. ladd-franklin, c. 1893. on the algebra of logic, in charles s. peirce (ed.). studies in logic, by members of johns hopkins university. boston: little, brown & company, 17-71. women and logic: what can women’s studies contribute to the history of formal logic karin beiküfner 14 linke, p. f. 1946/47. gottlob frege als philosoph . zeitschrift für philosophische forschung (1): 75-99. mortan, g. 1954. gottlob freges philosophische bedeutung, phil. diss. friedrich-schilleruniversity jena (typescript). peckhaus, v. 1986. case studies towards the establishment of a social history of logic, history and philosophy of logic (7): 185-186. peckhaus, v. 1988. brilliant young lady-mathematician – ernst schröders urteil über christine ladd-franklin. arbeitsberichte aus dem dfg-projekt fallstudien zur begründung einer sozialgeschichte der formalen logik (16): 38-54. peckhaus, v. 1989. bericht über das projekt sozialgeschichte der logik (th 106/6-1/2). dfgreport (unpublished). peckhaus, v. 1997. logik, mathesis universalis und allgemeine wissenschaft. leibniz und die wiederentdeckung der formalen logik im 19. jahrhundert. berlin: akademie verlag. peckhaus, v. 2005. calculus ratiocinator vs. characteristica universalis? the two traditions in logic, revisted. in michael beaney/erich h. reck (eds.). gottlob frege. critical assessments of leading philosophers, vol. 1: frege’s philosophy in context. london/new york: routledge, 176-190. peckhaus, v. 2012. algebra of logic, quantification theory, and the square of opposition. in jean-yves béziau/gillman payette (eds.). the square of opposition. a general framework of cognition. bern et al.: peter lang, 25-41. peckhaus, v. and thiel, c. (eds.). 1999. disziplinen im kontext. perspektiven der disziplingeschichtsschreibung. münchen: wilhelm fink verlag. priestley, m. 2011. a science of operations: machines, logic and the invention of programming. london: springer. rebière, a. 1894. les femmes dans la science. paris: librairie nony and co. russell, b. 1903. the principles of mathematics. london: allen and unwin. schröder, e. 1880. rev. frege 1879. zeitschrift für mathematik und physik (25): 81-94. schröder, e. 1890-95. vorlesungen über die algebra der logik (exakte logik), 3 vols. leipzig: teubner. stebbing, s. 1933. a modern introduction to logic. london: methuen. thiel, c. 1965. sinn und bedeutung in der logik gottlob freges. meisenheim am glan: hain. thiel, c. 1982. erkenntnistheoretische grundlagen der mathematik. hildesheim: gerstenberg. thiel, c. 1995. philosophie und mathematik. eine einführung in ihre wechselwirkungen und in die philosophie der mathematik. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. thiel, c. 1996. philippine knigges versuch einer logic für frauenzimmer. in birgit nübel (ed.). adolph freiherr knigge in kassel. kassel: weber & weidemeyer, 98-106. unzer, j.c. 1751. grundriß einer weltweißheit für das frauenzimmer. halle: gebauer. van heijenoort, j. 1967. from frege to gödel: a source book in mathematical logic, 1879-1932. cambridge: harvard university press. waismann, f. 1936. einführung in das mathematische denken, wien: gerold & co. microsoft word 16amunategui layout 204 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 204-206 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access book review book review pierre duhem, a hundred years later pierre duhem, cent ans plus tard (1916 – 2016). actes de la journée d’étude internationale tenue à tunis le 10 mars 2016, suivis de l’édition française de l’histoire de la physique (1911). [pierre duhem, a hundred years later (1916 2016). proceedings of the international study day held in tunis on march 10, 2016, followed by the french edition of the history of physics (1911)]. edited by jean-françois stoffel, with the collaboration of souad ben ali. tunis: université de tunis, 2017. 412 p. isbn: 978-9973-06-968-9. godofredo iommi amunátegui1 received: 10 october 2018. accepted: 5 november 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.15 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ the studies on pierre duhem’s work has come of age. after a number of publications laying out the ground, we encounter now a series of texts that are in a position to take such a “tradition” for granted. the essays presented at tunis, some of them at least, open up new areas of investigation and they do so with enough historical care and intelligent analysis to broaden the horizon of the scholarship dedicated to the french author. the themes of “moving tensions” and “unresolved conflicts” seem to characterize all of them. the present review outlines very succinctly the content of each article and, occasionally, indulges in a brief remark. for duhem epistemology is a “simple logical analysis of the method by which science progresses”. however, his researches into the history of physical theory allow his epistemology to exceed the limits of a simple methodology. s. ben ali carefully discerns in duhem a deep relationship between science, history of science and philosophy of science. consequently, the history of sciences becomes a search for those theoretical categories which best represent the various scientific notions. in a very pertinent manner, s. bordoni points out that duhem may be considered as the end point of a tradition forged in francophone countries in the 1860s, and whose relevant trait – a subtle alliance between the history and the philosophy of science – appears in authors such as c. bernard, cournot, comte and é. boutroux. in this context, bordoni signalizes the special importance of ernest naville. in “la physique moderne: études historiques et philosophiques” (1883), naville wrote “les théories passent, la science demeure”. this short sentence condenses a concept which lies at the core of the scientific 1 godofredo iommi amunátegui [orcid: 0000-0001-6063-7810] is a professor at the pontifical catholic university of valparaíso – pucv – institute of physics. faculty of sciences. address: 2 poniente 232. depto. 63. viña del mar 2520234 – chile. e-mail: godofredo.iommi@pucv.cl godofredo iommi amunátegui – book review 205 activity. (as a marginal note, let me recall that, unexpectedly, lautréamont in his “poésies” refers to naville’s “le problème du mal”) (lautréamont 1970, 278). m. fortino supports the idea that duhemian symbolism is neither an expression of rationality which is nominalist, pragmatic and instrumentalist nor is it a negation of falsificationism and scientific progress. she thinks that, all in all, it is possible to refute the traditional interpretation and that duhem, in a way, initiates a crusade against the conception that science can discover the “reality” of nature. since the 1980s a significant portion of specialized literature deals with the non-conventionalist aspect of the philosophical work of duhem. fábio r. leite questions the structural realism attributed to the french scholar and he argues that in duhem one finds evidence of the realism of entities for to believe that the truth of the theory is a relative one implies the belief that the theoretical entities exist as well. he analyses a relatively unexplored opus entitled “le mouvement absolu et le mouvement relatif” in order to state that duhem is realistic in a traditional way. l. roumengous tries to formulate with due clarity the continuity that we glimpse between duhemian phenomenalism and the notion of natural classification, in other words, to reveal the link between the physical and the metaphysical which would serve to maintain the coherence of his work. roumengous’ argument might be integrated into the debate surrounding duhemian neo-thomism. jean seidengart examines with remarkable lucidity duhem’s main epistemological proposition: the principal task of physical theory should be “saving the phenomena”. a theory provides an accurate description of the appearances and does not pretend to understand what lies behind the sensible world’s skin. in principle any model which allows a geometrical interpretation of the phenomena is possible. according to duhem, the course of history sustains this perspective i.e., a scientific hypothesis is a well-told tale whose subject is “reality”. however, “salvare apparentias” is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to establish the truth of a theory. seidengart analyses, from a logical point of view, duhem’s statement which implies that a true theory must be able to save all the phenomena. the theory, besides, gradually, becomes “the reflection of an ontological order”. and this is the critical point of duhem’s “fictionalism”. nowadays “fictionalism” indicates a rather clearcut conceptual domain. h. field, for instance, claims that “a mathematical realist believes in the existence of mathematical entities and believe them to be mind-independent and language-independent. the fictionalist can say that the sense in which “2+2=4” is true is pretty much the same as the sense in which “oliver twist lived in london” is true: the latter is true only in the sense that it is true according to a certain well-known story, and the former is true only in that is true according to standard mathematics (field 1989, 2-3). for alexander koyré “to save the phenomena” means “to explain the phenomena” and he agrees with copernicus, descartes, galileo and all the rational realists. i think that duhem’s “fictionalism” is not quite of “the field kind” but has a different ontological meaning, closer to leibniz’s “fiction bien fondée”. j.-f. stoffel pursues two intertwined objectives (1) to establish the historical significance of duhemian phenomenalism by positioning it within a millenary tradition and by examining the consequences that arose from the various ways of comprehending the idea of physical theory and (2) to provide a new setting for the galileo affair which takes into account its epistemological and historical aspects. in a kind of a final turn of the screw, stoffel proposes an open question: whether or not duhem himself believed that he had put phenomenalism in solid ground. perhaps the key to solving the puzzle may be found in the title of stoffel’s book “le phénoménalisme problématique de pierre duhem”. i mean that the answer to the question is a problem in its own right. at the end of the proceedings, the reader discovers a beautiful gift: a history of physics written by duhem for an american audience and published in 1911. two texts composed by stoffel and bordoni underlines some features of this work. stoffel indicates the first godofredo iommi amunátegui – book review 206 appearance of the word “revolution” and develops a terminological research of the use of this term within duhem’s opus. bordoni displays the principal issues which duhem treats all over this history: his attribution of a vital role of the so-called “école de paris” in the emergence of a new natural philosophy at the beginning of the fourteenth century and to the bishop étienne tempier in the condemnation of aristotelian theories. interestingly enough duhem regarded newtonian physics as the ultimate realization of a research program that had been initiated four hundred years before. in fine, let me add that all these essays engage us in subtler and more complicated questions that we even know how to ask: that is a measure of their true achievement. references field, hartry. 1989. realism, mathematics and modality. new york: basil blackwell. lautréamont. 1970. oeuvres complètes. paris: gallimard, collection “bibliothèque de la pléiade” microsoft word 10 izquierdo david lorenzo izquierdo – book review 111 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 111-114 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2019 – this is an open access book review book review after american studies: rethinking the legacies of transnational exceptionalism herlihy-mera, jeffrey. after american studies: rethinking the legacies of transnational exceptionalism. new york: routledge, 2018. 188 p. isbn: 9781138054059 – hardback; 9781315167053 – ebook. $ 150.00 david lorenzo izquierdo1 received: 24 september 2018. reviewed: 15 may 2019. accepted: 30 may 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.10 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ after american studies, by jeffrey herlihy-mera of the universidad de puerto rico, is a critical cultural-studies examination of the foundational theses in the transnational turn in american studies. however, it is aimed, at the same time, to rethink and deconstruct some of the key tenets of the field. indeed, after american studies engages a post-national and post-cultural argument, the core of which provides important nuance to the transnational turn. the book is comprised of an introduction and nine chapters, parts of which were previously published in academic journals. herlihy-mera’s purpose is made clear in the introduction: “after american studies is a critique of national and transnational approaches to community, their forms of belonging and patriation, and initiates a theoretical gesture toward new considerations of postgeographic and postcultural communities” (p. 1). the chapters are grouped in three large sections. in the first section are chapters 1 and 2: “the ontology of cultural groups in modernity” and “place-making”. in them, the author explains how state-supported (and ostensibly non-state) cultural canons attempt to influence the individuals exposed to them. the analysis uncovers how the us political body has used the physical spaces of the american continent to build myths, symbols and values, and then imposes them somewhat uniformly on the population (on every individual) as a function of the geographical location of their residence. the second section is comprised of chapters 3 to 7: “literature as a device of cultural appropriation”, “a coda to literary canons”, “art and power”, “forced acculturation” and “transmedia storytelling”; these chapters are presented as “case studies” by herlihy-mera. in them, the author illustrates, with examples from different areas (literature, art, media and public policies), the ideas explained in the two initial chapters. 1 david lorenzo izquierdo (orcid: 0000-0002-7647-4224) is a professor of anthropology and ethics at the saint john of god nursing school – university of barcelona. address: feixa llarga, s/n – 08907 – spain. e-mail: dlorenzo@santjoandedeu.edu.es david lorenzo izquierdo – book review 112 the third section includes chapters 8 and 9 (“colonial problems, transnational american studies” and “imagining new communities”), that function as a conclusion (chapter 8) and a proposal on new forms of cultural study (chapter 9). herlihy-mera argues that the concepts of “nation” and “national culture” (and other related or derivatives) are based on canons that, in most cases, are little beyond a dominant group’s “common” cultural prescriptions, imposed on a group of people who live in a geographically delimited area, a process which leaves other characteristics or realities aside or subordinates them through hyphenation (p. 20). in this dynamic, he argues that space itself is used as an element of homogenization and control (p. 21). once that space is delimited and constructed, and the values that “characterize” the dominant group are created, the difference between “us” (those who inhabit that space and identify with the myths communicated in the physical material) and “them” (everyone else) is established, thus implementing the center of the cultural system. the controlled space is the base, scope and access to certain cultural realities: it is saturated with the same language, the same symbols (pp. 26, 31) and thus foreignizes many cultures and languages that are native to the regions. in this regard, and in reference to the us, herlihy-mera states: “the ‘american’ space is constructed on social and cultural pillars that seize the fundamental blocks of human communication, including language, spirituality, time; and the rituals surrounding birth, death, and betrothal. it is also common for specific elements of the preexisting cultures – sometimes words, imagery, icons, heroes, and so on – to be appropriated into the dominant myth, a syncretization of material that interpellates it as an inferior component of the broader system” (pp. 35-36). the process of building “an american” implies, for example, exposure to unified language system (centered on english), habits and time (the same calendar, the same hours to organize the day) and spaces (the configuration of the public spaces where people live and interact). in chapters 3 to 7, the author illustrates (with examples from various areas, including literature, art, media and public policies) the ideas explained in the preceding chapters. in chapters 3 and 4, herlihy-mera analyzes the role of literature as a means to generate collective identity feelings. he describes literature as a “device of cultural appropriation” (p. 52). the authors considered ‘canonical’ and their works (their characters, language, and landscapes) have buttressed and echoed the political claims of the us government (pp. 5355). herlihy-mera comments, as examples, works by maría a. ruiz de burton, jack kerouac, ernest hemingway, cormac mccarthy, among others, making the case that these works should not be labeled as ‘american literature’ per se. in doing so, the author intends is to characterize “american” as an artificial, fantasy construct, even when the authors themselves use that term. for that reason, herlihy-mera argues that “the atomization of literary studies and abandonment of ‘american’ and other such prescriptions will open a new set of spaces of inquiry, analyzes that are not dependent on supposition, imagined affiliations, or identities” (p. 69). in chapter 5, the analyses examine visual art as a means of domination or power over communities and individuals. “art”, affirms herlihy-mera, “is part of the ecosystem of ideology. the ways ideas are given physical form (in paintings, buildings, photography, currency, and so on) and the structure of the environment where these objects are displayed for public review, are a dimension of how the dominant groups use physical and nonverbal entities to promote and legitimize sets of ideas, as well as to inaugurate specific affiliations and cultural norms” (p. 96). to this end, the author analyzes the use of certain colors (red, white, blue) in notable paintings of american art, symmetry in buildings or spaces (such as the white house and the national mall), the image of the ideal human being and the story that certain representations convey” (pp. 100-102). in chapter 6, herlihy-mera explains how the construction of the “nation” and “culture” of america is manifested in public policies, with particular emphasis on immigration david lorenzo izquierdo – book review 113 regulations (detailing the discriminatory process of obtaining a visa). next, in chapter 7, he analyzes how the values and criteria that the us considers natural and common are transmitted to individuals through unofficial means or instruments, such as advertising, sports, among other commercial material. he comments on the advertising used by brands such as chevrolet, macdonald’s, and coca-cola. in an argumentative – not merely descriptive – sense, chapters 8 and 9 are the most important in the book. in them, the author not only analyzes a reality but proposes another reality (or series of ways) to improve the existing reality (especially in chapter 9). his work in this section demonstrates how american studies has not jettisoned the national ballast, or the limits of the concept of nation by engaging a transnational vision: as “the transnational iteration relies on the national frameworks” (p. 149). therefore, “transnational american study is an exercise in distortion” (p. 153). also, what is an alternative to the concept of a nation? “age” – responds herlihy-mera. the author argues that age should emerge as a criterion – or the main criterion – to re-center cultural studies relating to behaviors, feelings, expressions and experiences of individuals. “as an alternative to the national and transnational; the religious, linguistic, and ethnic; and the geographic and cultural, the broad-based fraternity of an age system could elide some of the demographic discriminations of the present and gesture toward a universal community” (p. 171). cultural studies (and other disciplines) could be organized by age, not by country, culture or movement (ideological, aesthetic, etc.), the author maintains, as such a system would be emancipated to a degree from the rigidities of other forms of cataloguing, including geographic and cultural. if relationships between individuals were based on age, “the preexistent political territoriality (often based on location) would be modified and / or abandoned. the members would be reorganized democratically (universal voting rights and public representation), have access to the same resources (education, health care, and infrastructure) without consideration of region. each community would have an internal democratic structure, with delegates (number of representatives based on the population of each age community) who would participate in a global governing body” (p. 179). it is certain that after american studies is a critical book. it is so in a tripartite sense. it is “critical” because, in the first place, for the depth and comprehensiveness of the analysis. it aims to uncover the concealed foundation of concepts such as “nation”, “culture”, “transnational”, “american” (and its derivative terms), as well as “identity”. in a second sense, it is “critical” because, when evaluating those concepts, herlihy-mera shows their limitations – their negative character, both socially and academically. so, it is “critical” (third sense) because, in making this analysis and formulating this evaluation, he aims to generate or open a critical break the discipline of american studies – to separate it from the transnational and national traditions. (this is appropriate, as, in greek, “crisis” means “separate”.) the book aims to rupture the limiting parameters and concepts of the status quo, exhausting them to the degree that a new stage of engagement may arise; that is, a proposal of new inquiry parameters and new interrogative concepts (like “age”). the book, therefore, moves or has proposals in two different areas: the epistemological / methodological and the ontological. for herlihy-mera, american studies (even when oriented towards a transnational duality), as a knowledge discipline, as a medium or domain of knowledge (epistemological aspect), are unreliable because they are based on a reality that, in effect, does not exist in the ways critics imagine: the concept of “nation” or “culture” as an explanatory reality of the individual (ontological aspect). thus, that which does not exist (ontology) cannot be the basis of a knowledge discipline (epistemology). american studies or transnational american studies are based on the assertion that “america” is stable and unified, and that – says the author – does not occur in the ways prescribed by critics (page 6). the “us political body” as an entity has been constructed through diverse means (political, economic, literary, artistic, etc.) that force or “violate” david lorenzo izquierdo – book review 114 reality (p. 2). similarly, as herlihy-mera’s dialogue with studies in psychology reveal, personal and cultural identity lack the stability necessary to maintain the critical grammars common in american studies (pp. 9-10). in this way, herlihy-mera’s book poses many challenges for the transnational base and for scholars who work use those concepts in research (p. 8). as the author pithily makes clear, “when the circumstantial nature of identity and affiliation occupies a more central position in critical interpretation, concepts like patriotism, (trans) nationality and cultural identity in general lose traction” (p.160). after american studies is an achievement. the post-national and postcultural stances represent new ground that is yet unresolved in american studies and in the transnational turn; indeed, the book aims to reframe the fundamental core on which the discipline (american studies) exists, and raises many questions that the american studies establishment – including scholars like janet radway, winfried fluck, rita felski, wai chee dimmock, and donald pease, among others – have yet to consider. as the author states: “it is time to unplug american (and other areas) studies from geographies, languages, citizenships, collectivities, cultures, and political molds, and their emancipations of already power” (p. 150). microsoft word 6 kilakos layout 49 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 49-64 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access article special issue – women in sciences: historiography of science and history of science on the work of women in sciences and philosophy sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos1 abstract k. marx’s 200th jubilee coincides with the celebration of the 85 years from the first publication of his “mathematical manuscripts” in 1933. its editor, sofia alexandrovna yanovskaya (1896–1966), was a renowned soviet mathematician, whose significant studies on the foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic, as well as on the history and philosophy of mathematics are unduly neglected nowadays. yanovskaya, as a militant marxist, was actively engaged in the ideological confrontation with idealism and its influence on modern mathematics and their interpretation. concomitantly, she was one of the pioneers of mathematical logic in the soviet union, in an era of fierce disputes on its compatibility with marxist philosophy. yanovskaya managed to embrace in an originally marxist spirit the contemporary level of logico-philosophical research of her time. due to her highly esteemed status within soviet academia, she became one of the most significant pillars for the culmination of modern mathematics in the soviet union. in this paper, i attempt to trace the influence of the complex socio-cultural context of the first decades of the soviet union on yanovskaya’s work. among the several issues i discuss, her encounter with l. wittgenstein is striking. keywords: sofia a. yanovskaya; history of logic; women in sciences received: 2 july 2018. reviewed 24 march 2019. accepted: 29 may 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction sofia alexandrovna yanovskaya is a prominent figure for the history of mathematics in the soviet union. unfortunately, though, her contribution remains relatively unknown, especially beyond the former soviet union. yanovskaya is chiefly known as the editor of the first publication of k. marx’s “mathematical manuscripts” in 1933. undoubtedly, this was a significant milestone in her successful career within soviet academia. however, i maintain 1 dimitris kilakos [orcid: 0000-0002-6174-6741] is a post-doctoral fellow in the faculty of philosophy at the sofia university “st. kl. ohridski”. address: 15 tzar osvoboditel blvd., bulgaria – sofia 1504. e-mail: dimkilakos@hotmail.com sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 50 that yanovskaya’s life and work deserve more scholar interest for several more reasons. in this paper, i trace the influence of the complex socio-cultural context of the first decades of the soviet union on her fascinating life and career. s. a. yanovskaya was born in 1896 into a jewish family, in pruzhany, a small village then in russian poland (now in belarus)2. her birth name was neimark and her father, aleksander, was an accountant. when she was almost two years old, her family moved to odessa; there, in 1905, the 9-year old sofia witnessed the worker’s uprising. after graduating from the gymnasium in 1914 with a gold medal, sofia neimark entered the higher school for women in odessa, which was part of the novorossiisk university. there she studied mathematics, being tutored by ivan jure’vich timchenko (a noted historian of mathematics) and samuil osipovich shatunovsky (a well-known then mathematician in russia). during her studies in odessa, she developed her mathematical skills in a variety of topics, as well as her interest in the history of mathematics. in those turbulent revolutionary years, sofia was politically active. while studying in the gymnasium, she assisted political prisoners as a member of an underground organization. she actively took part in the social uprising burst out throughout russia with the great october revolution, giving up her studies in the university. in november 1918, she joined the bolshevik wing of the russian communist party. during the civil war, which broke up since counterrevolutionary forces from inside and outside russia resisted to the victorious revolution, she defended the revolution. in 1919, she served the red army as a political commissar.3 amidst the turmoil, s. a. yanovskaya married her comrade isaac ilyich yanovsky in 1918. as her friend m.g. shestopal describes, isaac was “her mentor and friend, a man of bright individuality, a pure soul and a deep, clear mind. along with him, sofia conducted political activities in the ranks of the bolshevik party, shared with him the military life in the civil war, repeatedly being exposed to mortal danger” (shestopal 1982, 116).4 when the red army defeated the counterrevolutionary forces, communists had to deal with the even more laborious task of building the new society. among other duties, of primary importance was the enlightenment of the masses. in that fashion, sofia became an editor for the “kommunist” newspaper in odessa. from 1920 to 1923 she worked for the odessa regional committee of the bolsheviks. throughout these years, mathematics was not a priority for yanovskaya. however, being an earnest and driven communist, soon after she responded to the call for a new intelligentsia to serve new society’s needs. thus, in 1923 yanovskaya moved to moscow and returned to her studies, attending seminars at moscow state university. in 1924, she 2 for a concise, well-informed and accessible to english-speaking readers biography, one may look at the relevant article on mactutor history of mathematics archive, written by j. j. o’ connor and e.f. robertson (url: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/biographies/janovskaja.html accessed on october 11, 2018). several interesting biographical details are also offered in bashmakova et al. (1966), gorskii (1970), bochenski (1973), anellis (1987a), anellis (1987b), bashmakova et al. (1996), kushner (1996), trakhtenbrot (1997) and bazhanov (2001). levin (2012) is a comprehensive overview of yanovskaya’s life and work. a short and rather modest autobiography is (yanovskaya 1982). 3 kilberg describes the following episode from that time: “during the retreat from odessa, the whites captured several red army soldiers. they shot the prisoners on the bridge, and they fell into the river. among them [...] was sofia alexandrovna. a bullet shot through the high hat's hat. sofia alexandrovna fell into the river, managed to swim out and then spent the whole night sitting in the water in the reeds” (kilberg 1982, 105). 4 sofia and isaac had a son, who unfortunately was mentally ill and committed suicide shortly after his mother’s death. (kushner 1991, 71; bashmakova et al. 1996, 360). sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 51 entered the institute of red professors, where she became a student of v.f. kagan (a significant geometer and historian of mathematics and a specialist on lobachevsky)5. one may not exaggerate in suggesting that those heroic times deeply affected her character. as one of her closest friends writes, s. a. yanovskaya lived a life imbued with kindness to people. her whole existence was determined by a sense of duty, selflessness, and unselfish service to the cause. a modest and open-minded person, sofia aleksandrovna was exceptionally benevolent towards others. a very lively, cheerful and sociable person, she constantly felt the need to communicate with people […] the name of sofia alexandrovna is surrounded by an atmosphere of moral purity. for everyone she met, she evoked a feeling of sympathy. […] being an extremely kind person, unusually delicate, she was always ready to respond to someone else's misfortune, to help a good cause. it was done quietly, with inherent tact. (kilberg 1982, 104-107) the quest for “red scientists” before the great october revolution, admission to higher education was not an option for the vast majority of young people (especially workers and peasants). besides the declared vision to raise class-barriers, the situation mentioned above has been troublesome for soviet authorities: the number of scientifically educated personnel in pre-revolutionary russia was insufficient for the implementation of the vast program for the reorganization and modernization of the economy and society in general. the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia neither sufficed for nor was in its totality eager to pursue this goal. as long as mathematicians are concerned, it seems that efforts to draw them to marxism had considerably less success than among other scientists (joravsky 2009, 158). arguably, this could be at least partially explained if the long-lasting influence of religious mysticism among leading russian mathematicians (especially in moscow) is taken into account; however, a thorough discussion on this issue is far beyond the scope of this paper. in this context, soviet authorities introduced several multifaceted policies to alter this situation rapidly. they aimed to reinforce the proportion of workers among students and, upon their graduation, in academia. these efforts proved to be remarkably efficient. it is noteworthy, for example, that between 1928 and 1932, the number of students trebled and the teaching staff doubled (joravsky 2009, 238). as the soviet mathematician o. iu. shmidt mentions, “a young man who studies our science, has every chance of becoming a professor at twenty-five” (joravsky 2009, 238). among several initiatives aiming to address the challenge mentioned above, one deserves particular attention for our current purposes, due to s. a. yanovskaya’s participation in it. the institute of red professors of the all-union communist party (bolsheviks) was founded in february 1921 in moscow. it was a specialized higher educational institute, meant to address the shortage of marxist professors. its programs were training teachers for higher educational institutions, as well as specialists for scientific research institutions and the communist party’s and soviet state’s organs. between 1921 and 1928, 1966 students were accepted for study at ikp, yanovskaya being one of them. administration’s reports highlighted two main channels of employment after ikp: into party journals and newspapers and into “party-pedagogical work”, including ikp itself. in 1928 over half of 5 for further details on those who influenced yanovskaya’s intellectual development and her scholar interests, see (anellis, 1996). sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 52 ikp’s faculty was its graduates (david-fox 1997, 165). it is estimated that almost 25% of ikp graduates continued an academic career. in the 1930s, higher education and research institutions in the soviet union were sufficiently developed. hence, ikp gradually lost its importance and finally integrated into the system of higher party schools of the central committee of the communist party of the soviet union. yanovskaya’s academic career while studying at ikp, yanovskaya also led seminars on the methodology of science and mathematics at moscow state university by 1925. in this manner, she came into contact with several prominent soviet mathematicians. the need for university professors who could serve the new society was imminent, and yanovskaya was a promising candidate. being talented and skilled in mathematics as well as a militant marxist, she had already earned respect both in academic circles and among her comrades in the communist party. those years, a considerable portion of muscovite mathematicians were influenced by the so-called “moscow-school”, which had a profound counterrevolutionary and idealistic background. this background was not compatible with what soviet authorities held that was needed for the training of young soviet scientists.6 yanovskaya portrays a vivid picture of the situation in those years: if there is a low percentage of natural scientists sharing marxist views, then among mathematicians this percentage is even lower [...] the old professorship from the socalled “moscow school”, whose authority among the mathematical milieu was unshakable, made every effort to save mathematics from the malicious influence of materialistic philosophy, which did not hide its party orientation and its class, proletarian character. even the word “comrade” was neither accepted at the institute of mathematics and mechanics, nor at the mathematical society [...] in contrast, among the members of this society, the percentage of white émigrés is rather high. (yanovskaya 1930, 88, 94) accordingly, yanovskaya was asked in 1926 to teach in moscow state university’s mathematics department, although she was still a student. being a member of the faculty already for 5 years– and teaching the history of mathematics since 1930 –, she was appointed as a professor in 1931. simultaneously, she continued her studies and received her doctorate from the faculty of mechanics-mathematics of msu in 1935. in 1936, she started teaching mathematical logic and in 1943, after the red army beat the nazis, yanovskaya was appointed director of seminar in mathematical logic at msu.7 as uspensky notes, she actually founded this seminar, which was the first such institution in the soviet union (uspensky 1997, 459). in 1946, she started teaching formal logic within the philosophy department. in 1951, yanovskaya was awarded the “order of lenin”, which was the highest national decoration of the soviet union.8 6 for a discussion on this complex socio-cultural context and the problem posed to soviet authorities by the idealistic foundations of moscow school, see (kilakos 2018). for a review of yanovskaya’s involvement, see (levin 2012). 7 during the war, msu was temporarily relocated to perm. 8 the “order of lenin” was awarded to soviet citizens for outstanding services rendered to the state. sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 53 in 1959, yanovskaya became the first head of the newly established department of mathematical logic at moscow state university; she held the chair in mathematical logic until her death in 1966. kushner (1991) vividly describes the reminiscences of his first encounter with yanovskaya in the early ‘60s, when he attended one of her lectures in the mathematical school of moscow university: near the blackboard stood a little old lady in an out-of-fashion black dress (she almost always wore this dress, as i was to learn later). her face, rather round in shape, was very kind, and big round glasses were in complete harmony with the face. a small, shabby, leather briefcase on the desk was somehow similar to its mistress and completed the picture. all those non-official and old-fashioned attributes immediately charmed me, as well as the very slow and distinct manner in which the lecture was delivered. (kushner 1991, 67-68) bazhanov mentions that it was due to yanovskaya’s efforts that chair in logic and sector of logic were established at leningrad state and the institute of philosophy of the academy of sciences of the ussr (bazhanov 2017, 74). s. a. yanovskaya’s scientific work while yanovskaya is mostly known for her work in mathematical logic and as the editor of the first publication of marx’s “mathematical manuscripts”, her scientific work ranged in a variety of fields. her special place in history is not so much due to her original contributions in research, but due to the credit she deserves for making research in mathematical logic possible to others (uspensky 1997, 459) and her contribution to the promotion of soviet studies in logic in the 1940s and 1950s9 (bazhanov 2001, 4). yanovskaya contributed to the publication of textbooks, original articles and monographs, and, most importantly, carried out the translation and publication of logical foreign literature (bazhanov 2017, 74). yanovskaya worked on the foundations of mathematics, on mathematical logic and on the philosophy of mathematics and logic (getting engaged with the work of frege, russell, couturat, cantor, etc.), as well as on the history of mathematics. among other issues, yanovskaya dealt with ancient egyptian and greek mathematics, rolle's criticisms of the calculus, descartes’ geometry and lobachevsky’s non-euclidean geometry. the titles of some works she published are indicative for the scope of her interests and activities:10  on the so-called ‘definition by abstraction’, 1936  on the theory of egyptian fractions, 1947  michel rolle as a critic of the infinitesimal analysis, 1947  the leading ideas of n.i. lobachevsky a combat weapon against idealism in mathematics, 1950 9 a detailed overview of yanovskaya’s efforts to promote the study of logic in the ussr in the 1940s is offered in (anellis 1996). 10 a more comprehensive bibliography of selected works by s. a. yanovskaya may be found in (anellis 1987b, 54-55) and in (levin 2012). sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 54  on the philosophy of n.i. lobachevsky, 1950  on the weltanschauung of n.i. lobachevsky, 1951  on the history of the axiomatic method, 1958  on the role of mathematical rigor in the creative development of mathematics and especially on descartes' 'geometry', 1966. she also published two major studies on the history of mathematical logic in the ussr:  foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic, 1948  mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics, 1959 of significant importance is yanovskaya’s translating work (mostly in mathematical logic), not only because due to it some important works became known to and utilizable by soviet scholars, but also because of the interpretative introductions yanovskaya wrote for them, which are of original scientific importance. among other works she translated in russian, of significant importance are the following:  d. hilbert and w. ackermann, grundzüge der theoretischen logik (outlines of theoretical logic – the first foreign book in mathematical logic published in ussr)  a. tarski, introduction to logic and the methodology of deductive sciences  g. polya, mathematics and plausible reasoning  r. carnap, meaning and necessity  a. turing, can machines think? yanovskaya’s original marxist approach of modern mathematics yanovskaya’s scientific work reflects her aspiration to contribute to the needs of the new society from the standpoint of an academic, militant marxist and member of the communist party. as she acknowledged, this was a difficult challenge: “the goal of stratifying mathematicians and defining the truly soviet components is a difficult and urgent problem. a problem that demands maximal vigilance” (yanovskaya 1930, 94). explaining these difficulties, she further notes that “[t]he modern crisis of capitalism robs mathematics of materialistic tools and methods (intuitionism), widens the gap between theory and practice, and aggravates its spontaneous and unplanned character” (kolman and yanovskaya 1931, 118-119).11 11 ernst kolman (1892-1979), who co-authored with yanovskaya this paper, was a leading marxist mathematician, philosopher and historian of mathematics during the first decades of the soviet union. he was a member of the soviet delegation to the 1931 international congress of the history of science and technology, held in london. kolman is a rather controversial figure in the history of sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 55 her attempts to address these challenges lead several scholars to describe yanovskaya as a contradictory figure. this view stems from the inclination of its proponents to juxtapose yanovskaya’s commitment to marxism and to the interests of soviet society with the importance of her scientific work. as a marxist, yanovskaya severely criticized idealism12 in mathematics, which, according to her, was apparent in the works of frege, russell, cantor, etc. yanovskaya argued that their views were close to true idealism and mysticism, “the example of which is platonism.” according to her, “bourgeois science in the imperialist era does not evolve from hegel to marx, engels, and lenin, but regresses” (kolman and yanovskaya 1931, 119). her commentary on a. tarski’s work is indicative of her understanding of modern philosophy of mathematics. according to yanovskaya, he was a logical positivist, representing “the blatant type of philosophical conservatism”, as she wrote in the preface to the translation of tarski’s ‘introduction to logic and to the methodology of deductive sciences’ .13 as anellis comments, yanovskaya, in her writings on philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of logic, “took the offensive against the idealist philosophy of the bourgeois west, represented in her mind by gottlob frege, and against the so-called machism, that is, conventionalism, represented by rudolf carnap and his principle of tolerance, according to which in logic one is free to choose one’s rules” (anellis 1987a, 82). in her work, s. a. yanovskaya proffered a profound analysis of philosophical problems of mathematical logic, which was a troubling issue for marxists. as anellis notes, soviet scholars were facing trouble with drawing a line of demarcation between classical logic and mathematical logic – actually, some of them made no essential distinction between the traditional aristotelian logic and mathematical logic: to them, both were the hated ‘formal’ logic (anellis 1987b, 47). it is impossible to appreciate yanovskaya’s contribution to its full extent, unless one is aware of the context of the relevant discussion among soviet scholars. therefore, the following digression is justified. the relation between dialectical logic, which is constituent of marxism-leninism, and traditional ‘formal’ logic of the aristotelian tradition14 was a compelling philosophical issue for marxists. some soviet marxist philosophers questioned whether formal logic was early soviet science, since he is typically considered as an ideological “watchdog” in scientific issues. however, it is noteworthy that in 1938 kolman removed from his post as head of the department of science of the moscow city committee of the communist party. in 1976, kolman fled to sweden and gained more fame in the western world as a soviet dissident. 12 a clarification is necessary, since the term ‘idealism’ is used throughout this paper in the sense it is understood in marxism, denoting the philosophical views establishing the primacy of mind (or consciousness, or reason) over matter (or reality), as opposed to materialism. this distinction between idealism and materialism bears significant consequences for ontology as well as for the theory of knowledge. for marxist dialectical materialism, existence in all its forms is material and everything that is real is material and ultimately cognizable. thus, in this context, idealism is not confronted with realism, since the latter posits the existence of immaterial entities which may or may not be accessible to cognition. therefore, for example, realistic trends in philosophy of mathematics, rooted in varieties of platonic ideas, are rendered idealistic from a marxist standpoint. 13 bazhanov (2001) offers a different perspective in dealing with yanovskaya’s stance as depicted here, arguing that utterances like those cited here (and by him) resulted from her attempt to compromise with the need to pay tribute to the ideological requirements while at the same time serving the actual needs of an academic community. 14 in such an account, ‘formal’ logic could broadly be understood as the traditional logic, developed as an autonomous discipline in the aristotelian trend, enriched by the contributions of medieval scholars and j.s. mill’s considerations about induction. sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 56 bound to its subject matter, due to its pure abstractness. another hotly debated issue was the relation of logical laws to the laws of reality, which is ever-changing by law-governed processes according to dialectical materialism.15 these philosophical questions may seem irrelevant to mathematics. however, they became relevant for soviet marxist philosophers, who got worried by the growing interest shown by mathematicians in mathematical logic and the foundational issues of mathematics. according to the current understanding, mathematical logic developed as a discipline, spinning-off from formal logic. its roots were traced back in the second half of the 19th century when rigorous mathematical methods were introduced in the study of logic and symbolic notations were extensively used in logical reasoning. in the view of many soviet philosophers, mathematical logic was merely a new phase of formal logic, the latter being understood as an incomplete approach to the study of the laws of thought. on these grounds, philosophers and mathematicians were engaged in thorough discussions on whether logic is a philosophical discipline or a special branch of mathematics. those who argued that logic is a philosophical discipline felt rather uncomfortable with dealing with mathematical logic as logic. in fact, several soviet philosophers dismissed mathematical logic as being of mathematical interest only and perhaps not even logic at all. in this discussion, lenin's strictures against 'idealism' and 'formalism' were used to render mathematical logic 'idealistic' and hence incompatible with marxism-leninism. the following passage exemplifies the hostile attitude of a portion of soviet marxist philosophers: the mathematization of logical relations and operations, and the rise of logical calculi, is one of the sources of idealistic delusion and speculation on the interpretation of thought and the process of cognition, just as the mathematization of physical relations was one of the reasons for the appearance of ‘physical idealism’. (vojsvillo et al. 1959, 176) the content of these disputes very little in common with today’s discussion about the various positions in mathematical logic. therefore, it may surprise those who are unfamiliar with soviet marxists’ critique of philosophical idealism. however, these discussions are substantial, since, as bochenski rightfully notes, “not only because they might bring some new insights in this difficult field, but also for the understanding of what is happening in soviet philosophy” (bochenski 1961, 34). while soviet philosophy is not the primary focus of this paper, one should take into account with regard to mathematics that in yanovskaya’s times, these problems, “which were elaborated in hard struggle by soviet logicians, have never been sufficiently studied, from the modern point of view, by any school of western logicians” (bochenski 1961, 33). thus, albeit the quite idiosyncratic employment of various terms and “-isms” in these discussions, one should bear them to understand yanovskaya’s pivotal role in the development of mathematical logic soviet union. to perform this role, yanovskaya should defend mathematical logic against the misconceptions of those who confused it with the philosophy of mathematics (anellis 1987b, 47), in which idealistic trends were prevailing. she concisely deploys her views on this issue in a letter to the editors of the highly appreciated soviet philosophical journal ‘voprosy filosofii’ (yanovskaya 1950). in this letter, yanovskaya argues that logic is not a special mathematical discipline; it is merely logic. in this argumentation, yanovskaya endorses the view expressed by stalin in his 'on marxism and linguistics' (1950) on the 15 for a concise yet detailed discussion of this discussion from an anti-marxist perspective, see (wetter 1958, 523-535) and bochenski (1961). sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 57 distinction between language and linguistics. hence, yanovskaya implies that stalin’s line of reasoning supports her view that mathematical logic should be unconfused with the philosophy of logic or philosophy of mathematics. it should be noted that yanovskaya consistently employed this solid view throughout her work – even before stalin deployed his views on linguistics. for example, she argued for the distinction between the methodological formalism of mathematical logic and the idealism of the formalist philosophy of mathematics, since mathematical logic “can be considered not only as logic of mathematics but also as mathematics of logic, for it is in large part the result of the application of mathematical methods to the problems of logic” (yanovskaya 1947a, 341). in the context as mentioned above, soviet scholars attempted to set up a historical and philosophical study of mathematics based on marxist dialectics, as a. n. kolmogorov writes in the entry on mathematics in the great soviet encyclopedia (kolmogorov 1938, 394). despite its significance, a study on the foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic was an arduous task for soviet marxists theorizing on mathematics. logicism,16 which was one of the most influential currents for the development of modern mathematics, was rejected by marxist scholars, who argued that it reduced mathematics to a branch of formal logic, fully detached from the dialectics of practical life and existential conditions (vucinich 1999, 108). it is reasoning, based on an absolute reign of symbolism, was criticized as “a shortcut to solipsism”, as bammel wrote (bammel 1925, 57). in short, soviet marxists used to accuse logicism of its emphasis on rules and formulas devoid of any specific content. this attitude was extended to several other trends oblivious to content, since –as it was argued they could not reflect reality. in this line of reasoning, operating on forms without any content inevitably leads to philosophical idealism. ergo, this kind of mathematics was incongruous with the acute methodological needs of science and the technical needs of society, amid vast transformative process on both domains. as vucinich notes, soviet mathematicians “in contrast to marxist theorists, showed a clear tendency to refrain from any effort to interpret their science in the light of dialectical materialism” (vucinich 1999, 111). from a philosophical standpoint, the troubling issue was the accommodation of formal logic within the broader scope of dialectical logic. according to dialectical materialism, formal logic is not capable of grabbing the essence of reality in its motion and its reflection on our understanding and knowledge. at best, formal logic may offer rules for logical inferences and reasoning with fixed concepts and judgments – actually, it is indispensable when one is dealing with such kind of problems. therefore, any attempt to render mathematics founded on the grounds of formal logic was, in marxist understanding, detaching them from reality, something unacceptable.17 as one would expect, yanovskaya was aware of this marxist critique regarding mathematical logic. she held the view that modern science (including mathematics) should be demystified by the idealistic presumptions guiding its development in capitalist 16 logicism in philosophy of mathematics tried to define the basic concepts of mathematics by means of logical terms, or, to put it differently, to infer all mathematics from some logical terms. it was grounded on the kantian doctrine, according to which the truths of logic are paradigm cases of analytic truths, being true only by virtue of internal relations among the linguistic (and mathematical, in the case of mathematics) expressions involved. for a concise yet detailed discussion on logicism and neologicism (the distinction between them is beyond my concerns in this paper), see (tennant 2017). 17 for a summary of the main points of contention in the debate between the dialecticians and the formal logicians, see (cavaliere 1990) and (anellis 1994). sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 58 countries. however, she firmly believed that knowledge of mathematical logic is indispensable for marxist mathematicians and philosophers. as yanovskaya explains in her preface to the russian translation of d. hilberts’s and w. ackermann’s grundzüge der theoretischen logik, ideological struggle with idealistic perversions of bourgeois science presupposes a command of techniques that enable one to swing the enemy’s weaponry against himself” (yanovskaya 1947b, 6). retaining this view of the matter, yanovskaya argued on the compatibility of dialectical materialism and mathematical logic. küng (1961, 39-41) concisely reconstructs her argumentation. by referring to the incompleteness of every formalization as demonstrated by gödel, yanovskaya refuted the formalist conception, which treats mathematics as a mere abacus. according to her, the principle of non-contradiction of formal logic could be reconciled with the dialectical conception of the contradictory nature of reality. as she argued, an interpreted axiomatic system can be contradictory unless one undertakes precautionary measures concerning the formulation of the axioms and the applicable means of logical deduction. the trouble, then, is only until any particular question is concretely formulated. if one manages to reach to such a formulation – a course which is guided by dialectic principles – then there is only one, completely determined and unambiguous, answer to the question under study. thus, actually, yanovskaya pointed to the fact that dialectical logic is about how any dialectical contradiction, being inherent in reality and reflected on the intellect, is resolved. as she further underscored, “a dialectical contradiction has nothing in common with formal-logic contradiction” (yanovskaya 1959, 118). moreover, yanovskaya emphasized on the fruitfulness of the application of mathematical logic in mathematics and cybernetics and stressed on the connections of mathematical logic with its technical applications. according to her, there was a significant development in the field of mathematical logic in the first half of the 20th century due to the rapid development of computational techniques, to which it contributed (markov, kuzichev and kuzicheva 1996, 5). thus, focusing on relevance with real-world and problems of substantial economic interest, s. a. yanovskaya disentangled the advancement of mathematical logic from the philosophical discussion on the relation between formal and dialectical logic. in fact, she proceeded even further, portraying the foundations of mathematics as an issue of interest in the advancement of socialism. as she explicitly stated in her contribution for the book struggle for materialistic dialectics in mathematics (1931), ‘‘[t]o give a [sound] foundation to mathematics means to rebuild it based on theoretical understanding of the practical problems of constructing socialism’’ (cited by lorentz 2002, 185). several scholars who have dealt with yanovskaya’s work (i.e. bazhanov, anellis, kushner, etc.) hold that yanovskaya’s adamant marxist critique against the idealistic formalism and logicism was a tactical move, serving her purpose to contribute to the establishment of mathematical logic as a discrete discipline in the soviet union. however, i maintain that such an understanding diminishes the importance of yanovskaya’s contribution. as i understand her work, yanovskaya was striving to proffer an original marxist understanding of modern mathematics. besides mathematical logic, this also holds for other fields of mathematics she also worked on –among others, for example, in her interesting deployment of a marxist view of the infinitesimal calculus. according to yanovskaya, real analysis is understandable as the algebra of motion or the “mathematics of a variable quantity [which] must be of an essentially dialectical character” (yanovskaya 1983, xi). the proposed understanding of yanovskaya’s attitude towards mathematical logic is arguably omnipresent in her writings. for example, in her (1948), yanovskaya declared that sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 59 soviet mathematicians rejected the view that mathematical propositions say nothing about reality. to support this claim, yanovskaya pointed to a.n. kolmogorov’s work on intuitionistic mathematics, sharing with dialectical logic the rejection of the law of excluded middle. in her view, the problems faced by mathematical logic and its philosophical interpretation could be responded by the development of constructive logic, in which, for example, the law of excluded middle is rejected. accordingly, soviet logicians should axiomatically develop constructive logic while discarding the idealistic philosophy adjoint with brouwer’s intuitionistic logic. in order for this task to be performed, according to yanovskaya, work should be done on extending the laws of the logic of finite domains to infinite domains. on this line of reasoning, other principles of formal logic, i.e. the law of non-contradiction, could also be eliminated. notably, if such an attempt proves to be successful, then it would be compatible with dialectical logic. furthermore, as yanovskaya argued, soviet logicians also responded to the logical paradoxes, by developing multivalued logic (for a detailed discussion on these issues and yanovskaya’s argumentation, see anellis 1996). prominent soviet mathematicians, such as a.n. kolmogorov, v.i. glivenko, a.a. markov, d.a. bochvar, p.s. novikov, m.i. sheinfinkel (schönfinkel) etc., worked along these lines. it should also be noted that plenty of them were participating in the seminar on mathematical logic in msu, organized and directed by s. a. yanovskaya. the adventure of marx’s mathematical manuscripts undoubtedly, one of the most significant milestones in yanovskaya’s fascinating life and career is the fact that she was the editor of the first publication of k. marx’s “mathematical manuscripts” in 1933. let us focus on this milestone. an obvious question that one may ask is why these manuscripts remained unknown and inaccessible to scholars for such a long time after his death. in fact, the story of editing and publishing marx’s mathematical manuscripts is a rather adventurous one. after marx’s death in 1883, these manuscripts passed into fr. engels’ hands, who unfortunately did not have the chance to publish them. after engels’ death, the entire collection of papers by him and marx passed into the hands of the german social democratic party (spd), without any plan for their publication. the great october socialist revolution in russia in 1917 and the birth of the soviet state renewed the interest in unpublished work of the classics of marxism. the manuscripts were discovered in spd archives by d. ryazanov, the founding director of the marx-engels institute, who created ‘mega’ (marx-engels-gesamtausgabe) aiming to publish the complete works of marx and engels. ryazanov was rather surprised to discover that many marx’s notebooks were devoted to mathematics, amounting to 865 a4 sheets in very small writing. he photographed them and stored them in the marx-engels institute. the first attempt to edit them in order to be published was assigned by ryazanov to e. j. gumbel, but the result was found insufficient by the new leadership of the institute under v. a. adoratskii; thus, this first attempt did not lead to a publication. in 1932, the task was reassigned to a group of mathematicians led by s. a. yanovskaya – the other members of the group were d. raikov and nakhimovskaya.18 thus, it was only in 1933 that a selection of them appeared for the first time in public, in russian translation, in the pages of the magazines under the banner of marxism and markismi estestvoznanie. yanovskaya also wrote a commentary introduction entitled “on the mathematical manuscripts of k. marx”. although the complete edition of marx’s mathematical manuscripts was expected to take place quickly after the 1933 publication, the outburst of ww2 posed a necessary 18 for a detailed discussion of this story, see (alcouffe and wells 2009). sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 60 change of plans. the archives and the library of marx-engels institute were shifted from moscow to the far east in order to be secured and did not return to moscow until the red army beat the nazis. up to then, s. a. yanovskaya, who remained in charge of the endeavor was also heavily engaged with her work in mathematical logic. in the 1950’s, the appointment of k.a. rybnikov as her assistant for the edition of marx’s mathematical manuscripts seemed to provide a good opportunity for the acceleration of the project, but unfortunately until the end of the decade it appeared only the publication of a note entitled “on the concept of function” in the journal voprossy filosofii (no. 11, 1958). while yanovskaya died in 1966, her contribution in work done to prepare the complete and annotated publication that finally appeared in 1968, in facsimile and also in russian and german, was immense. the present paper is not the appropriate venue to discuss in detail marx’s mathematical reasoning, the influences it portrayed19 and its relative position in marxian work. however, i maintain that a hint could be given, to underline the scope of the work done by yanovskaya not only for the publication of the manuscripts, but also on a thorough study of marx’s perspective on mathematics. historical surveys have discovered that marx’s interest and studies in mathematics covered a long period from the late 1850s until the early 1880s and his death. yanovskaya (1968) notes that marx’s formal studies in mathematics were oriented around the texts that cambridge students used during this period. concerning marx’s influences on his mathematical studies, kol'man and yanovskaya (1931) stressed the influence of hegel’s science of logic. among the several issues they raise, they discuss in particular the issue of hegel’s notion “quantitative infinities”. the relation between hegel’s intuitions in science of logic and marx’s studies on mathematics was also noticed by engels, who, in a letter, he wrote to marx notes: so old hegel was quite right in supposing that the basic premise for differentiation was that most variables must be of varying powers and at least one of them must be the power of at least 2 or 1/2. now we also know why. (marx & engels 1992, collected works, vol.46, p. 131) in fact, engels was so enthusiastic about marx’s interest in mathematics that in a letter he wrote to lange in march 1865 mentions that the only man who has enough understanding of mathematics and philosophy to be able to edit the mathematical manuscripts that hegel left behind, was marx (marx & engels 1987, collected works, vol. 42, p. 138). one could barely imagine the impact of the publication of marx’s mathematical manuscripts for militant marxist mathematicians in the early 1930s and what it reflected for the status of the editor of this publication. given the discussion in the previous section, yanovskaya’s career before and after the publication proves that she was able to bear the burden of responsibility. wittgenstein in moscow one of the most intriguing (especially for the western reader) episodes in yanovskaya’s career was her encounter with l. wittgenstein when he visited moscow in 1935, almost a year and a half after the first publication of marx’s mathematical manuscripts. 19 for a concise yet detailed and well-informed discussion on marx’s writings in mathematics and his influences, see (matthews 2002), on which i have relied for large parts of this section. perhaps the most classical paper on the issue is (struik 1948). sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 61 when his five-year research fellowship at trinity college expired, wittgenstein was looking for the next step in his career. among other career-paths, he considered, one of particular interest was the possibility of taking up a career in a soviet academic institution. although such interest may seem peculiar to a modern reader, the fact is that wittgenstein’s interest in soviet russia was not an instant impulse. in fact, the idea of visiting soviet russia was occurring in wittgenstein’s mind for quite a long time, since he first wrote about it to a friend in 1922 (moran 1972) and he had been taking lessons in russian since 1933. in order to arrange his travel to ussr, wittgenstein asked j.m. keynes to introduce him to the soviet ambassador in london, i.m. maiski. the travel was finally arranged and on september 12, 1935, wittgenstein arrived in leningrad, from where he traveled to moscow, arriving there on september 14. after spending almost two weeks in the soviet union, wittgenstein returned to cambridge on october 1, 1935. yanovskaya was assigned by soviet authorities to curate wittgenstein’s stay in moscow. it is not difficult to think about why she was chosen for that. it is obvious that having such a highly-esteemed visitor from the west, soviet authorities should assign someone suitable to accompany him. yanovskaya was an excellent candidate for this task, for several reasons. at first, her partisanship and her commitment to the soviet state and the communist party could not be put into question. furthermore, she was well aware of the challenges that soviet academia faced, after its reorganization in the first decades after the revolution and could convincingly discuss this situation with a western intellectual of wittgenstein’s caliber. moreover, even if there is no record that i know of about her possible prior engagement with wittgenstein’s work, the fact that she had studied logical empiricism/positivism and the marxist critique thereof, made her capable of thoroughly discussing with wittgenstein on philosophical issues of his interest. finally, one should not disregard that wittgenstein’s no-content theory of logic in the tractatus was tantalizingly suggestive about how mathematics could be integrated into an overall empirical theory of the world, as creath (2017) notes. on this particular issue, yanovskaya had devoted much of her work. the majority of the scholars who have dealt with yanovskaya’s work and wittgenstein’s visit in moscow claim that yanovskaya persuaded him to give up the idea of relocating to moscow. however, sources close to wittgenstein offer a different perspective. according to them, yanovskaya not only did not dissuade him from staying in ussr, but actually (obviously on behalf of soviet authorities) offered him a job. as monk recollects from his conversations with wittgenstein, yanovskaya recommended wittgenstein for the chair of philosophy at kazan university (lenin’s old college), as well as for a teaching post at moscow university (monk 1990, 351). cornish also reaffirms the job offer for kazan university (cornish 1999, 73-74). according to the same sources, wittgenstein and yanovskaya were impressed by each other, had interesting discussions and continued their correspondence even after wittgenstein’s departure from russia. moran (1972), who managed to contact and then elicit several comments from some of the russians involved in wittgenstein’s visit to moscow, reports a. soubotine from the institute of philosophy recalling a conversation with the yanovskaya, who said that wittgenstein impressed her favorably with his friendly simplicity, that he showed an interest in dialectical materialism and that she gathered from their conversations that he was interested in soviet philosophic thought and followed its development. moran also refers to g. h. von wright, one of wittgenstein’s literary executors, who remember wittgenstein talking about his meeting with yanovskaya, “a likable woman philosophy professor”. it seems that the conversations between wittgenstein and yanovskaya were charming and philosophically interesting. according to them, yanovskaya advised wittgenstein to “read more hegel” (monk 1990, 351, and rhees 1984, 209). after his return from moscow, wittgenstein continued to correspond with sofia a. yanovskaya: the marxist pioneer of mathematical logic in the soviet union dimitris kilakos 62 yanovskaya and, as monk further informs us, when he went away to norway, he arranged with fania pascal for yanovskaya to be sent insulin for her diabetes” (monk, 1990, 347). it follows, then, that yanovskaya not only managed to gain wittgenstein’s respect for her intellectual status and character, but they also developed a friendship. this is certainly indicative of the caliber of yanovskaya’s personality. to sum up zinov'ev rightfully characterizes s. a. yanovskaya as “the pioneer of the discussion of the philosophical problems of modern logic” in the soviet union, including “the relationship between constructive and non-constructive methods, the introduction and removal of abstractions of higher orders, the application of the criteria of practice to logic and others” (zinov'ev 1968, 212). the profoundness and the impact of her contribution justify the assessment that yanovskaya founded a distinct “school in history and philosophy of mathematics and mathematical logic” (kushner 1996, 67). research on the work of this school and the context in which it developed is an issue of significant interest. future research may focus particularly on the impact of the socio-cultural context within which this school proffered its contributions. it may also inform a more profound understanding of how and why this context favored the emergence of woman as a leader of a distinct school. furthermore, an issue that deserves further research is the impact of yanovskaya’s leading role on the status of women in the philosophical, mathematical and logical community in the soviet union. in this paper, i have attempted to trace the impact of the complex socio-cultural context of the first decades of the soviet union on yanovskaya’s intellectual course and academic career. contrasting other scholars who argue about a purported schism between the “political” and the “scientific” life of yanovskaya, i argue that her work in its totality was informed by her solid commitment to militant marxism and her persuasion that she could contribute to the building of the new society by performing her duties as a member of soviet academia and as a member 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(english translation of matematicheskierukopisi, s. a. yanovskaya (editor), moscow, nauka, 1968). zinov’ev, a. a. 1968. logic in the u.s.s.r. in r. klibansky (editor), contemporary philosophy: a survey, i, logic and foundations of mathematics (firenza, la nuova italia editrice), pp. 209-219. 140 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 140-156 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections joão príncipe1 abstract: the object of this article is to show a certain proximity of duhem to poincaré in his first philosophical reflections. i study the relationships between the scientific practices of the two scholars, the contemporary theoretical context and their reflections. the first part of the article concerns the changes in epistemological consensus at the turn of the century. the second part will be devoted to poincaré's reflections on the status of physical geometries and physical theories, as they appear in his texts written around 1890. then i analyze the first reflections of pierre duhem on physical theory, in particular his thesis of the hypothetical/symbolic character of physical theories and his criteria for selecting good theories, partly associated with his ideal of physical theory; the whole set of considerations, highlighting the poincarean inspiration. keywords: pierre duhem; henri poincaré; fin-de-siècle physics; conventions received: 13 april 2017. accepted: 10 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.13 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction2 in his text “quelques réflexions au sujet des théories physiques” (1892) pierre duhem wrote: we are not alone in professing the ideas we have just set forth, and if there is an opinion which we are pleased to be able to invoke in support of ours, it is certainly that of the analyst who has written the following: “the mathematical theories are not intended to reveal to us the true nature of things; this would be an unreasonable claim. their sole object is to coordinate the physical laws which experience teaches us, but which without the help of mathematics we could not even state”. (duhem 1892, 165; quoting poincaré 1889a, i) these reflections immediately follow poincaré's first reflections on the status of geometries and on physical theories, published around 1890. the explanation of this agreement expressed by duhem is one of the purposes of our article, which aims to compare the first epistemological theses of the two savants 1 joão príncipe is a professor at the university of évora instituto de história contemporânea / cehfci. address: largo dos colegiais 2, 7000 évora, portugal. email: jpps@uevora.pt 2 i thank olivier darrigol and fábio leite for stimulating discussions. joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 141 philosophes. this will illuminate the history of the debate between the two (brenner 2003, chapter iii). this debate is reflected in an opposition that is explicit in the aim and structure of physical theory (1906); it manifests itself in the refusal of maxwellian physics by duhem and in his lack of interest in the achievements of atomism, associated with lorentz's theory of electrons, the development of experimental microphysics (gas discharges, x-rays and radioactivity), black-body theory (planck, einstein), works on brownian motion (smoluchowski, einstein and perrin) and the maxwell-boltzmann kinetic theory; whereas poincaré, after 1893, took an interest in atomistic theories and gave important contributions. but this dissonance must not erase the common ground of their reflections, which is related to their judgment on the state of theories around 1890. the complex evolution of physics in this period is diffracted in the individual epistemological reflections of the savants-philosophes, who judge theories in situation. this is because maxwell, mach, hertz, boltzmann, poincaré or duhem try to integrate a variety of motifs: their perception of theories, their actual and personal scientific practice, a broader questioning inspired by the philosophical tradition, which imposes long lasting questions. the first reflections of poincaré and duhem, made before the rise of the physics of electrons and ions, have similarities which can be understood according to the contemporary state of physical theories, at a time when the laplacian tradition, attached to a mechanistic reductionism based in the conception of the center-of-force atoms, is defeated by thermodynamics and electromagnetism, two domains to which poincaré and duhem are interested as researchers. the recognition of the hypothetical nature of theories, theoretical pluralism, stylistic differences between the french tradition and the physics of models, the complex nature of inter-theoretical relations and the relationship between theory and experience, constitute a common ground for questioning.3 the first part of our article concerns the changes in epistemological consensus at the turn of the century. the second part will be devoted to poincaré's reflections on the status of physical geometries and physical theories, as they appear in his texts written around 1890. then we analyze the first reflections of pierre duhem on physical theory, in particular his thesis of the hypothetical/symbolic character of physical theories and his criteria for selecting good theories, partly associated with his ideal of physical theory; the whole set of considerations, highlighting the poincarean inspiration. the relationships between the scientific practices of the two scholars, the contemporary theoretical context and their reflections will drive this investigation.4 changes in scientific consensus between the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the 1910s, experimental access to the intimate structure of matter favored a consensus on the relevance of atomistic hypotheses of statistical mechanics. the french notably poincaré, becquerel, curie, langevin and perrin contributed to this evolution, associated with the physics of electrons and ions, new radiations and brownian motion. in 1905, the société française de physique invited h. a. lorentz to speak on "thermodynamics and kinetic theories". he distinguishes between two kinds of theories in mathematical physics. there are those which seek to "penetrate the intimate mechanism of phenomena" and those which, using certain general principles, establish relations between quantities "directly accessible to observation". given the state of contemporary research, the fields of application of the two theories, which are taken as examples, are different and each one proves itself powerless where the other makes it possible to reveal relationships (lorentz 1905, 533-534). this same pluralistic perspective can be found in jean perrin’s book les principes (1903), dedicated to thermodynamics. in the preface, perrin states that molecular hypotheses correspond to the “deductive method”, which "consists in imagining a priori for matter a structure whose direct perception still escapes our imperfect senses, and such that its knowledge would make it possible to deduce the 3 poincaré was a member of the jury of the (second) doctoral thesis of duhem (1888); the only known correspondence between the two is of this period and without epistemological interest (poincaré 2007, 157-158). around 1890, poincaré saw duhem as the great french specialist in thermodynamics (poincaré 1892a, xix, 233, 321-338, 366; 1892c, 63). 4 in the context of studies on duhem, i reconstruct poincaré's reflections and the french scientific context of the second half of the century in an unusual manner and that sheds another comparative light on their contributions; contrast with (mcmullin 1990; maiocchi 1990; stoffel 2002). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 142 sensible properties of the universe" (perrin 1903, vii). perrin emphasizes the heuristic value of this method, which makes it possible to follow "a perfectly logical march"; but he goes further: it seems to me that we still have the right to attribute to the molecules, atoms or corpuscles, a greater reality. and i do not fall back into metaphysics. i do not cease to forget that sensation is the only reality. this is the only reality, on the condition that all possible sensations are added to current sensations. (...) moreover, and precisely at the moment when the interest and the legitimacy of their method were under attack, the atomists have proved it again by striking discoveries, of which the corpuscular theory has succeeded in making a harmonious whole. it seems therefore reasonable in all respects to regard the debate as settled by the reconciliation of two methods [inductive and deductive] which are by no means incompatible. (perrin 1903, ix-x) but this consensus, increasingly favorable to atomism and rendering energetism untenable, does not characterize the situation around 1890. john heilbron, in his study on fin-de-siècle physics, admitted the existence of a minimum epistemological consensus, which he calls descriptionism. this includes the common aspects of the reflections of mach, hertz, poincaré, duhem and boltzmann, made in the late nineteenth century and inspired by maxwell and kirchhoff (who limited the role of physical theory to a “description” in his lectures in mechanics of 1875). among the philosophical inspirations heilbron refers to kant, with his “objective idealism” which rejects access to the thing-in-itself, and the positivism of comte. this consensus reflects the tensions between mechanics (and the associated reductionist ideal) and thermodynamics and electromagnetism, and also the success of maxwellian physics (consecrated with hertz's experiments on the existence of electromagnetic waves in 1888) and the legitimization of theoretical and methodological pluralism, including the british physics of models, accepting the use of analogies and a degree of inconsistency among models and among theories, justified by fertility. from a sociological and institutional point of view, it reflects a defensive position against those who criticized science from religious and philosophical points of view and undermined its reputation in an industrial society that finances research institutions and promotes a new professional class.5 the term "descriptionism" favors a phenomenological perspective; but it hides the plurality of viewpoints on physical theories, including the persistence of atomistic beliefs. for example, in the french case, these are very present in the discussion that follows the publication in 1895, in the revue générale des sciences, of an article by wilhelm ostwald, on the defeat of materialism in the sciences. the translators have called it "the defeat of contemporary atomism." it is primarily the mechanistic reductionism (matter and movement) that ostwald criticizes, based on his vision of thermodynamics. in his reply, alfred cornu, vice-president of the académie des sciences, renews his credo in favor of a mechanistic reductionist conception based on notions of material points and reciprocal actions. marcel brillouin, on his reply, advocates methodological pluralism and individualism, pointing out the success of mechanistic theories in chemistry and of the mechanical wave theory. 6 as olivier darrigol has remarked, heilbron's thesis is interesting in that it tries to identify a consensus, but this consensus is not achieved around a phenomenological perspective of physical theories. it rather promotes their hypothetical nature, which is clearly present in the title of the book science and hypothesis, which includes texts written by poincaré until 1900 (darrigol 2016). the epistemological reflections of poincaré and duhem, made during the 1890s, are also a sign of this epistemological consensus, which precedes that which will be formed at the beginning of the 20th century and which will also include atoms.7 5 indeed, many physicists, in their practice, abdicated sophisticated epistemological reflections and adopted a realistic spontaneous epistemology (heilbron 1982, 56). 6 on this debate see: (bensaude-vincent and kounelis, 1991; abrantes 1985, 130; príncipe 2008, 240-243). 7 one of the central figures of this movement of recognition of the hypothetical nature of physical theories is helmholtz (schiemann 2009). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 143 poincaré's initial reflections: conventions, pluralism and simplicity henri poincaré, who built his initial reputation in mathematics, is one of the principal responsible for the revival of french mathematical physics, being recognized at the turn of the century as one of the best theoretical physicists. his courses in mathematical physics, initiated in 1885, were very successful, being translated quickly into german. the prefaces of a few of them contain important philosophical reflections to which duhem will react, on the one hand, by showing his agreement with this mathematician who has become a paladin of the physics of principles; of another recognizing poincaré as the central figure of the introduction in france of a british style of doing the theoretical physics which he will criticize. poincaré: conventions and geometry the first epistemological reflections of poincaré concern the status of metric geometries. poincaré knows the work of bernhard riemann, for whom the curvature of the space in which we live must be determined by empirical measurements, those of hermann von helmholtz for whom the axioms are a posteriori being possible a sensible intuition of the three geometries that allow the free movement of rigid bodies, and those of marius sophus lie, where continuous groups provide a rigorous mathematical elaboration of helmholtz's researches.8 in 1887, in his seminal article “sur les hypothèses fondamentales de la géométrie”, poincaré questions the origin of euclid's postulate of parallels and the presence of synthetic a priori judgments in mathematics. on the status of the axioms of geometry, poincaré considers three options: they are facts of experience, or analytical judgments, or synthetic a priori judgments. he argues that none of the three options is valid and states: geometry is nothing else than the study of a group and, in this sense, (...) the truth of euclid's geometry is not incompatible with that of lobachevsky's geometry. (...) we chose from among all the possible groups a particular group to report the physical phenomena, as we choose three axes of coordinates to report a geometrical figure (...) the chosen group [the euclidean] is only more convenient than the others and one cannot say that the euclidean geometry is true and the geometry of lobachevsky false. (poincaré 1887, 215) the general philosophical significance of this article is elaborated in an article of popularization published in 1891 in which it is shown that the ontological claims of some empiricists and the kantian framework of the transcendental aesthetics are not acceptable. poincaré points out that a dictionary can be constructed between terms of the geometry of lobachevsky and terms of ordinary geometry, which makes it possible to translate the theorems of the first into theorems of the second. he summarizes his discussion by saying that geometric axioms are disguised conventions or definitions they result from a free decision of the mind, motivated by experience (poincaré 1891, 773). the word "convention" is used with two meanings: due to the consistency and inter-translatability of (pure) metric geometries, one can not assign preferential validity to one of them (except for simplicity reasons); the second meaning refers to the choice of a physical geometry which involves a package of coordination rules with empirical definitions. physical geometry involves mechanics, thermodynamics (measurement standards) and optics (postulation of the rectilinear propagation of light rays). the geometry belongs to a more elementary level than the other domains (nonhomogeneous or stratified holism) (friedman 1999, 74, 80-1): the test using the parallax of the stars admits that the light rays are straight lines; but a result apparently contrary to euclidean geometry would best be interpreted by modifying the laws of optics: "needless to add that everyone would regard this solution as more advantageous." the choice of conventions is therefore not arbitrary, because it is based on a constraining intersubjectivity. poincaré therefore believes that "a geometry can not be more true than another; it can only be more convenient [commode] (...) euclidean geometry is and will remain the most convenient" (poincaré 1891, 774). 8 on his sources of inspiration see: (giedymin 1977; poincaré 1891, 769; heinzmann 2001; darrigol 2007). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 144 the mathematical physics courses: pluralism and the method of comparisons one of poincaré's first courses (1885-1886) is dedicated to pure kinematics and mechanisms, a traditional subject which could have helped to understand the illustrative mechanical models typical of british approaches. the course at the sorbonne in the first semester of 1887-1888 is devoted to the mathematical theories of light, an area in which there was a clear de facto pluralism. the alternative between molecular ether and continuous ether was known since the 1830s, considering the compatibility of george green's theory with continuous ether. poincaré compares six competing theories and shows the equivalence of these theories despite the different physical hypotheses of departure.9 after the assertion, which duhem will cite (see introduction above), that mathematical theories do not reveal to us the “true nature of things”, poincaré notes that the ether is only a convenient hypothesis, neither true nor false. the several theories of mechanical ether are all “equally plausible”. to confine oneself to one of them would produce a blind confidence; the most instructive is to compare them. he notes that the molecular hypotheses, typical of french theories, "play only a secondary role. (...) i borrow from molecular hypotheses only two things: the principle of conservation of energy and the linear form of equations which is the general law of small movements (...) this explains why most of the conclusions of fresnel remain unchanged when we adopt the electromagnetic theory of light [that of maxwell]" (poincaré1889a, iii). in the “conclusions”, poincaré reinforces his instrumentalist point of view: besides, we cannot complain of being unable to make a choice [among the rival theories of the ether]. this impossibility shows us that mathematical theories of physical phenomena are to be regarded only as instruments of research (poincaré 1889a, 398-399).10 poincaré also teaches the theories of capillarity (the molecular theories of laplace and gauss), and the theories of elasticity, about which he distinguishes between molecular theories and phenomenological theories: there are a great number of theories of elasticity. they can be reduced to two classes: in the first class we will class theories based on molecular hypotheses; in the second, those whose authors have sought to free themselves from all hypotheses on the intimate constitution of bodies; these latter theories are generally based on thermodynamics. (poincaré 1892c, 27) poincaré points out that the two methods lead to the same equations, but that the molecular hypotheses are speculative (poincaré 1892c, 62, 64). in the preface to his thermodynamics he seems to be more explicit about the demise of molecular explanations: abandoning the ambitious theories of forty years ago, encumbered by molecular hypotheses, today we are seeking to build upon thermodynamics alone the whole edifice of mathematical physics. (poincaré 1892a, v) the course of the second semester of 1888-1889 is dedicated to theories of electrodynamics and to maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light; after that, poincaré will deal with the theory of helmholtz and the experiments of hertz. he will continue with his method of comparisons, showing, for example, that maxwell's theory is a special case of that of helmholtz (darrigol 1993, 215, 222; 1995, 5-8); he notes that comparisons (mathematical ones) must not make us forget the distinct physical senses attached to the theories: hertz considers that the very substance of maxwell's ideas lies in the equations he obtains, and that a theory may be regarded as equivalent to that of maxwell, provided that it leads to the same 9 on the history of ether theories see schaffner (1972). 10 the underdetermination of the theories of the ether is here the result of the linear character of the equations (poincaré 1889a, 398-400); this will favor poincaré's skepticism towards ether, and his preference for the views of hertz, who abolished the ether (darrigol 2000, 356). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 145 equations. thus helmholtz's theory contains, as a special case, that of maxwell, and yet maxwell would not have accepted this interpretation, in which actions at distance still play a part. (poincaré 1892b, vi) in spite of his admiration for helmholtz, poincaré will recognize with hertz that helmholtz's theory is contrary to the unity of the electric force; this unitary conception based on considerations of symmetry (and not of experimental origin) justifies poincaré's preference for maxwell (abrantes 1985, 208-212; darrigol 2000, 355). from the 1890s, helmholtz's theory will no longer be considered as an alternative to maxwell's, despite duhem's efforts (atten 1992, 10-11 and 444-448). maxwell's treatise: its fundamental idea, national styles in the preface to his lectures on the theories of maxwell (1889), poincaré wants to show that the treatise contains a fundamental idea, despite the fact that "the english scholar does not seek to construct a single, definitive and well-ordered edifice"; in fact "it seems rather that it raises a large number of temporary and independent constructions, between which communications are difficult and sometimes impossible" (poincaré 1890, viii). he notes the advantages of this method, which he attributes to maxwell: we must not, therefore, flatter ourselves with avoiding all contradiction; (…) indeed, two contradictory theories may, provided they are not mixed up, and that they do not seek the substance of things, may be both useful instruments of research, and perhaps reading maxwell's treatise would be less suggestive if it had not opened to us so many new divergent paths. (poincaré 1890, ix)11 according to poincaré, this appearance of fragmentation conceals the fundamental idea of the treatise. it corresponds to a profound change in the concept of mechanistic reduction of phenomena: maxwell does not give a mechanical explanation of electricity and magnetism; he merely demonstrates that this explanation is possible. (...) if a phenomenon includes a complete mechanical explanation, it will include an infinity of others which will also give a good account of all the peculiarities revealed by experience. (poincaré 1890, vii, xiv) this theorem, stated in maxwell's treatise (maxwell 1873, ii, §831), is demonstrated in detail by poincaré, using the lagrangian formalism. the generalized coordinates correspond to observable/measurable parameters. these can be related to an unobservable molecular coordinate system. there are an infinity of such systems which, by transformation of variables, allow us to obtain the same hamilton function, t + u. this theorem justifies the attitude of those who find the "complete explanations” (typical of the ideal of the laplacian program) unnecessary, especially the speculations on the ultimate structure of the ether. but the opposite attitude remains valid: among all these possible explanations, how can we make a choice for which the help of experience is lacking? perhaps a day will come when physicists will lose interest in these questions, inaccessible to positive methods, and abandon them to the metaphysicians. this day has not come; man does not resign himself so easily to ignore eternally the substance of things. (poincaré 1890, xv) then poincaré remarks how ontological preoccupations about the nature of the substance or the inner mechanism are alien to the spirit of maxwell's fundamental idea: the same spirit is found throughout the work. what is essential, that is, what must remain common to all theories, is brought to light; anything that would fit a particular theory is almost always ignored. the reader thus finds himself in the presence of an form almost empty of matter which he is at first tempted to take for a fleeting and elusive shadow. but the efforts to which he is thus condemned 11 on the interpretation of maxwell by poincaré see darrigol (1993, 216-7, 220-223). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 146 compel him to think, and he ends by understanding what was often a little artificial in the theoretical ensembles he once admired. (poincaré 1890, xvi) the epistemological value of the theorem is emphasized by poincaré, who sees in it an explanation of the indecision between rival theories present in historical cases: the preceding is confirmed by the history of all the parts of physics; in optics, for example, fresnel believes the vibration perpendicular to the plane of polarization; neumann regards it as parallel to this plan. we have long sought an "experimentum crucis", which enabled us to decide between these two theories, and we could not find it. all these facts are easily explained by the properties of the lagrange equations which i have just recalled. (poincaré 1890, xiv)12 the explanations that postulate unobservable quantities are therefore a cause of underdetermination of theories. also, the theorem highlights the abstract dynamics, favored by some of the british physicists. among the old theoretical ensembles we find the molecular physics of laplace. poincaré establishes a close relationship between the tradition of french mathematical physics and the difficulties in understanding maxwell's works: the first time that a french reader opens maxwell's book, a feeling of uneasiness, and often even mistrust, mixes at first with his admiration. (…) why do the ideas of the english scholar have so much difficulty in acclimatizing among us? it is no doubt that the education received by most enlightened frenchmen disposes them to taste precision and logic before any other quality. the ancient theories of mathematical physics gave us a complete satisfaction in this respect. all our masters, from laplace to cauchy, proceeded in the same manner. starting from clearly stated hypotheses, they deduced all the consequences with mathematical rigor, and then compared them with experience. (poincaré 1890, v-vi) poincaré emphasizes here the style of presentation, the logic and precision favored by the training of french physicists. he also recognizes the persistence of the laplacian program, which contains an ontology of center-of-force atoms, the conception of an unobservable matter, "which have only purely geometric qualities and whose atoms are nothing but mathematical points subject to the laws of dynamics" (poincaré, 1890, vi). simplicity and coordination of the rapports vrais poincaré seems to favor a physics in which the "differential equations deduced from experience can be put into the lagrangian form" (poincaré 1890, xii); and he questions the merit of the complete mechanical explanations, since as soon as one is sure of having the lagrangian version, maxwell's theorem guarantees the existence of a myriad of such explanations, which takes away their value. but it is more complicated than that. poincaré indeed values the unifying role of atomist hypotheses – for example, in 1892 he points out that helmholtz's (1858) theorems on a perfect liquid, implying that the vortex rings "must retain their individuality," inspired william thomson (1867) to conceive an atomic theory of matter based on a universal perfect liquid, which would allow "a mechanical explanation of the universe" (poincaré 1893c, 2). in addition, while poincaré valorizes the lagrangian approach, he questions his universality by showing that the second principle remains rebel even to this more phenomenological mechanistic approach.13 indeed, from 1893, poincaré will favor the statistical approach of maxwell and boltzmann (príncipe 2008, 293-334). his conception of mathematical physics is rather flexible, favoring the critical and comparative appreciation which presupposes methodological pluralism and a kind of suspension of judgment. 12 poincaré alludes to the experiences of wiener (poincaré 1891b; langevin in collectif 1914, 73). 13 admitting that thermodynamics can be presented according to the hamiltonian formalism, poincaré believes to have demonstrated that no function of the state of a system governed by hamilton's equations can be constantly increasing – the clausius principle is incompatible with that of the least action (poincaré 1899b; príncipe 2008, 279-293; príncipe 2014, 135-137). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 147 however, poincaré's pluralism, like that of maxwell, is not a variety of relativism that would fragment the body of physical theory because, beyond the differences of individual and national style, poincaré postulates an intersubjectivity based on constitutive principles (mathematics being a constitutive language from this point of view) and on principles of convenience (in the sense of kant) that allows us to determine which theories are the simplest and most harmonious. for example he remarks: our choice can therefore be guided only by considerations in which the share of personal appreciation is very high; there are however solutions that everyone will reject because of their quirkiness and others that everyone will prefer because of their simplicity. (poincaré 1890, xii) in the preface to his thermodynamics, poincaré emphasizes the role that considerations of simplicity have in the construction of theories. poincaré affirms that our mind is endowed with a faculty which is the condition of possibility of science: the faculty of generalizing the empirical data. it allows us to satisfy our need for order and harmony and at the same time allows us to foresee. the laws are formulated "after relatively few experiments and which present certain divergences". since "every proposition can be generalized in an infinite number of ways", the choice of the general law is made according to our criterion of simplicity, by obeying "a necessity to which the human spirit cannot escape" (poincaré 1892a, vi, vii). it is simplicity that favors the acceptance of the principles of thermodynamics: the imposing simplicity of the principle of mayer [energy conservation] also contributes to affirm our faith in it. in a law deduced immediately from experience, such as that of mariotte, this simplicity would appear to us rather a reason of mistrust, but here it is no longer the same, for we see elements, disparate at first glance, to be arranged in an unexpected order and to form a harmonious whole. (poincaré 1892a, viii) poincaré also remarks the advantage of teaching the historical course of "long groping by which man arrives at the truth (...) we shall note the important role played by various theoretical or even metaphysical ideas" (poincaré 1892a, v). poincaré believes that the synchronic and diachronic comparison of theories allows the sedimentation of laws, which he will later call true relations [rapports vrais] (poincaré 1900, 1168; 1902a, 292-3). theories coordinate physical laws; for example, "the laws of optics and the equations which translate them analytically (...) will remain true, at least as a first approximation" (poincaré 1889a, i-ii), (poincaré 1892b, vi). in his thermodynamics he says: "the accuracy of physical laws is always limited by observation errors. but at least they pretend to be first approximations and we hope to replace them gradually by more and more precise laws" (poincaré 1892a, xiii). poincaré understands the complex nature of theories, which derives in large part from the multiplicity of inter-theoretical interrelationships, but he believes in the human capacity and need to reduce complexity in an unforeseen historical march towards the systematic unity of theories, which makes it possible to us to identify structures of true relations, subjects that he will deepen in his later texts, especially in those that will form science and hypothesis. duhem: physical theories faced with the bankruptcy of mechanics in 1892, duhem published his first major epistemological reflection, his opening lecture of the course of mathematical physics and crystallography at the faculty of sciences of lille, and also the first part of his commentary on the principles of thermodynamics, with which he continued his research program whose aim was the creation of a "general theory of material transformations, which encompassed physical sciences" (bordoni 2012, 11). the agreement with poincaré is explained in the commentary: every physical theory rests on a certain number of definitions and assumptions, which are, to some extent, arbitrary; it is therefore permissible to attempt to expound such a theory in a logical order; but to claim that he was given the only logical order of which it is susceptible would be an unjustifiable claim. (...) we are convinced that the principles of thermodynamics can be chained in a way other than that which we have adopted and yet also satisfactory, perhaps more satisfactory. (...) if the joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 148 question we have examined seems rather philosophical, let us be permitted to invoke (...) the interest shown (...) by an illustrious analyst [duhem means (poincaré 1892a)], for researches which concern the principles of thermodynamics. (duhem 1892c, 270) in this work, duhem explicates and clarifies the basic hypotheses of thermodynamics, starting from a strictly phenomenological conception, notably by presenting an "axiomatic treatment of the first law of thermodynamics which is surprisingly good by present day standards" (miller 1970, 229). duhem calls "conventions” the introductory axioms, which will make it possible to obtain a mathematical expression symbolizing the transformation of a system in the presence of foreign bodies. he notes that the nature of this contribution of the action of foreign bodies to the energy of the system remains obscure. to penetrate its nature "is not the object of physics but of metaphysics" (duhem 1892c, 290). the word "convention" appears here in the framework of a theory with principles, being associated with “axioms” and with the criticism of the hypotheses of a theory, themes present in poincaré's reflections.14 definitions and hypotheses let us follow the considerations of duhem's first epistemological text (duhem 1892a). duhem considers the classical amperean idea that raw facts are organized by experimentation, which is the beginning of an ascending classificatory march that leads from facts to laws and from laws to theories (braverman 2016, 71-72). a theory is constituted by a series of operations, the first being the definition of the quantities which symbolize the corresponding physical notions: for example, temperature symbolizes the notion of heat. the choice of the physical quantity is "to a high degree arbitrary", because "between these two ideas, being warm and temperature, there is no kind of natural relationship (...) physical definitions constitute a true vocabulary (...) definitions are a set of conventions matching a magnitude to each physical notion" (duhem 1892a, 143-144). in the commentary, duhem shows how the construction of a physical notion, although starting from sensory experience, mobilizes the abstraction that corrects the logical imperfections that stem from the limited nature of the sensations associated with our organs: this property of the bodies which we characterize by the words: to be hot, to be cold, to be more or less warm, our faculty of abstraction is soon going to attribute to it characters that sensation does not give us. (duhem 1892c, 284) the concept of thermal equilibrium, essential for the construction of the concept of temperature, presupposes the concept of an isolated system, which is an abstraction (duhem 1892c, 274, 285), and results from generalization from vulgar observations. once the "law of thermal equilibrium" is established (for an isolated system to be in equilibrium all its material parts must be equally warm) it "leads us to correct the data of our sensations (...) our sensations do not always inform us of the degree of heat of a body" (duhem 1892c, 285-286). this is why duhem emphasizes that experimental physics rises above empiricism (duhem 1892a, 140). duhem considers that the correspondence which must be constructed between the notion of “being warm” and "temperature" can only be a partial analogy. it takes up the distinction between quantity and quality (aristotelian distinction which is related to the kantian distinction between extensive and intensive quantities); this distinction is present in the considerations of maxwell, mach and helmholtz concerning the discussion of the concept of measurability, and in particular of that of temperature. helmholtz (1887) believes that "intensive quantities, for which no concrete addition is known, could only be measured through a connection with extensive quantities" (darrigol 2003, 519). duhem judges that the establishment of this necessary connection introduces an arbitrary element. the "being warm" property is not a quantity because 14 in his justification of the phenomenological approach, he invokes a criterion of simplicity, in a passage of poincarean flavor: "in physics, it is both impossible and useless for us to know the real constitution of matter. we are simply trying to conceive an abstract system that provides us with an image of the properties of bodies. to construct this system, we are free to represent a body which seems to us continuous either by a continuous distribution of matter in a certain space or by a discontinuous set of very small atoms. the first mode of representation, leading in all parts of physics to simpler, clearer, and more elegant theories, will be preferred to the second." (duhem 1892c, 272) joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 149 it is not susceptible to addition; the correspondence between this property and an algebraic quantity is arbitrary because numbers have properties that do not correctly represent the properties of the corresponding physical notions: "we do not understand what it means (...) body a is seventeen times warmer than body b" (duhem 1892a, 142). the characters that are required by the correspondence (to respect the zero law of thermodynamics and the transitivity of the relation "body a is warmer than body b") leave the temperature defined modulo a continuous and strictly increasing function. the material concretization of the correspondence depends on postulates defining what is a thermometer, admitting that a quantitative property of the thermometer depends only on temperature. maxwell, mach, poincaré and duhem thought that thermometers should be considered "as purely conventional means to identify and order thermal states" and, in addition, mach and duhem (...) believed that the confusion between quality and quantity belonged to the mechanical reductionism they both condemned" (darrigol 2003, 519).15 after the first operation (definition of the quantities that symbolize the physical notions), a second operation is then implemented: hypotheses relate the physical quantities and by mathematical deduction, we obtain consequences that are tested experimentally (duhem 1892a, 145). duhem does not believe possible the existence of theories without hypotheses and criticizes the "hypotheses non-fingo" of newton and ampère, the idea that theories can be deduced from experience alone: what then has newton done to formulate the law of universal gravitation? (...) he took as a hypothesis a proposition of which the experimental laws [the laws of kepler] placed at the beginning of his theory are only particular consequences, exact or simply approximated. this is the general method employed by all theorists. to formulate their hypotheses, they make a choice of some of the experimental laws, the whole of which must be embraced by their theory; then by means of correction, generalization, and analogy, they compose a proposition of which the laws are exact or simply approximated consequences, and it is this proposition which they assume. (duhem 1892a, 148) the paths of theoretical invention are multiple and as soon as an hypothesis makes it possible to deduce a wide range of consequences, it is not necessary that it directly symbolizes the experience, although it is its relation to experience which gives it physical meaning. as in the case of the definition of quantities, there is arbitrariness in the choice of hypotheses. duhem will be particularly concerned with the question of the criteria for choosing hypotheses, combating arbitrariness. a first case of arbitrariness is the one resulting from the conventional choice of the definitions that allow the measurement: in order to represent the same notion, one can in general make use of a multitude of extremely different magnitudes (...) the simple change of the definitions would already lead to changing the hypotheses [which would correspond to translate] the same hypothesis by means of different symbols, and these two statements of the same hypothesis in two different systems of symbols do not constitute any more two different hypotheses than the statements of the same proposition in french, latin and greek constitute three different propositions. (duhem 1892a, 152) this adjustment between definitions and hypotheses reminds one of poincaré's reflections: poincaré speaks of the intertranslability of metric geometries and the fact that the choice of a physical geometry (which makes it possible to measure lengths and angles) implies a set of rules of coordination with empirical definitions; duhem notes that the conventional choice of definitions (which allow measurement) implies adjustments in the hypotheses, but that these adjustments are related to each other as translations in different languages of the same idea. also their discussions on the concept of temperature (their common sources being 15 on the conventional character of the equality of temperatures in (poincaré 1892a) see darrigol (2003, 563). darrigol shows that helmholtz inspired the conceptions of poincaré and duhem on measurement; duhem is individualized by his ideal of a physics of qualities, a neo-aristotelian conception according to which qualities remain irreducible to quantity – "a property identified as a quality had to remain a quality for ever" (darrigol 2003, 568), thematic preference (in the sense of holton) to which duhem remains faithful throughout his career. on the history of the concept of temperature see also (chang 2004). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 150 maxwell, mach and helmholtz) exhibit the need for conventions in order to measure.16 the good theories in a good theory, the consequences of the axioms form a complete and varied set, which demonstrates the ability of the theory to coordinate/symbolize experimental laws (duhem 1892a, 145-146). duhem acknowledges the existence of different sources of indeterminacy of theories (duhem 1892a, 149-151). firstly, the hypotheses of a theory go beyond the simple symbolic translation of experimental laws, introducing modifications that are the work of the scientist's mind. secondly, the presence of experimental error allows for competing theories, that yield different laws and yet agreed with experience, in the interval of experimental uncertainty. thirdly, the extension of a theory may not be well known: a theory is designed to be applied in a certain domain, and its extension to a larger domain may not be appropriate. fourthly, a theory is useful or good depending on the precision required in its applications – the simple gas law of gaylussac, the generality of which has been invalidated by the experiments of victor regnault, may remain good for a chemist or an engineer. among these considerations, duhem notes the role of experience in accepting or rejecting a theory. if there is a discrepancy between the expected consequence of the theory and "the methods of observation of which the theory accepts the control, the theory must be condemned" (duhem 1892a, 151).17 the sources of indeterminacy allow us to understand the theoretical changes studied by the history of science. the value of a theory being relative (or conditional), a theory might be good and yet be replaced at the same time by a better one, either because the last one is capable of representing a wider class of laws, or because it is capable of represent the same laws with a greater degree of approximation. this substitution can be obtained either by a more continuous process, which maintains the hypotheses of the first theory by adding new parameters or some new hypotheses; or by a process which requires deeper modifications "which alter the definitions and assumptions upon which the first theory was based" (duhem 1892a, 152). according to the preceding considerations, the value of a theory depends on the examination of the extent of the domain of a theory, of experimental uncertainty, and of the concrete use of a theory (its more immediate instrumental character). duhem proposes other more internal/logical criteria to make the choice between competing theories: logic leaves the choice of hypotheses free; but it requires that all these hypotheses be compatible among themselves, that they are all independent of one another; a theory has no right to invoke unnecessary assumptions; it must reduce its number to a minimum; it has no right to bring together consequences deduced from irreconcilable assumptions. (duhem 1892a, 166; see also 169) until now, duhem, in his overview of the criteria for evaluating the value of a theory, remains in the consensual plan of a certain good sense, as long as we accepts the central role of hypotheses and of the convenient definitions needed for measurement. this plan is abandoned when duhem judges contemporary theories. firstly, after citing the passage of poincaré on the french style of presentation of the theories (see above), duhem sees a weakness of the mind in the style of the treatise of maxwell (duhem 1892a, 168), which implies a mixture of irreconcilable hypotheses -a subject developed in a subsequent text on the english school (duhem 1893); in the latter text, among his long considerations, duhem does not tell us his opinion on what poincaré considered the fundamental idea of maxwell’s treatise, most probably because it is in harmony with the research program of duhem: the lagrangian approach valorizes a phenomenalist 16 there is a passage in which duhem alludes to helmholtz's considerations on non-euclidean geometries (poincaré refers them to the end of his article of 1891) and on arithmetic and the problem of measurement: "these profound researches on foundations of geometry and these meditations, so satisfying to the mind, concerning the origin of the axioms of arithmetic" [reference to zahlen und messen, published in 1887] (duhem 1893, 375). 17 i am the one who emphasizes. experimental control is not therefore a simple and immediate action. in the commentary, considering "absolute movement", duhem points out that supplementary hypotheses are always associated with the assumption that a trihedron has its axes absolutely fixed (duhem 1983c, 271), which prefigures the broader discussion of (duhem 1894) and makes one think of lakatos' protection belt; see leite (2017, 145). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 151 view in which mechanics has a more abstract structuring role. for duhem there exists an ideal form of theory: the hypotheses of a theory must be the symbolic translation of experimental laws, in which case the theory is modified by a continuous process. when hypotheses move away from experimental laws, theories become more vulnerable to demolition (duhem 1892a, 153). implicitly, he sees an opposition between phenomenological theories and theories that postulate unobservables, which is typical of atomic mechanical theories. duhem believes that this last class of theories has fulfilled its historical function and is in a state of rupture. the bankruptcy of mechanical/atomic theories around 1870, in chemistry, atomic hypotheses were rejected by the adepts of the theory of equivalents. the atomist adolphe wurtz was opposed to marcellin berthelot and to henri saint-claire deville. in this connection, two debates took place at the académie des sciences (1876, 1877) between physicists and chemists; the first one had as a pretext the result of kundt and warburg's experiments on the specific heat of mercury vapor (the ratio between the specific heats obtained, γ = 5/3 = 1.66, corresponding to a monoatomic gas according to the predictions of the kinetic theory), the second concerned the law-hypothesis of avogadro and the law of dulong and petit for specific heats (base of the atomic hypothesis in chemistry). the debate made it clear that the elite of french physicists was predominantly in favor of atomic hypotheses (príncipe 2008, 190-200). in 1892, in his article on atomistic hypotheses, duhem took the side of the equivalentists, judging that atomistic hypotheses produced only "difficulties which had arisen from the presumptuous desire to take a classification for an explanation." duhem cites in his favor the ideas of sainte-claire deville (1818-1881) for whom chemistry must follow a method not "in the manner of geometrical concepts, but in the manner of naturalists", that is, a method of classification (duhem 1892b, 452). in his lessons on affinity of 1867, the mentor of jules moutier speaks of atomistic hypotheses as "contemporary tendencies to abstraction" to which we ought not to give reality: let us gradually do a work of classification that will be for a long time, that will perhaps always be, incomplete (...) but we must never rely on hypotheses that last only a moment (...) all the hypotheses accepted today will necessarily disappear from science. i make no exception, even for (...) the hypothesis of the luminous ether. (sainte-claire deville cited in duhem 1892b, 453) this agreement means that duhem has a unitary vision of chemistry and physics, inspired by a phenomenological methodology and translated by his notion of natural classification.18 duhem recognizes that the ideal of mechanistic reductionism is a majority trend in france (duhem 1892a, 153, 154; príncipe 2015c). here is a definition of mechanical theories: to each physical notion, the theory had to substitute, as a symbol, a certain magnitude. this magnitude needs to present certain properties, the immediate translation of the characters of the notion which it symbolizes; but, apart from these characters, which in general are few in number, its definition remains absolutely arbitrary. in a mechanical theory, one imposes in addition to all physical magnitudes (...) the condition of being composed by means of geometrical and mechanical elements of a certain fictitious system; to all hypotheses, to be the statement of the dynamic properties of this system. (duhem 1892a, 154) 18 jules moutier, duhem's professor at collège stanislas (paris), was a disciple of deville. duhem found in deville the french pioneer of physico-chemistry: to build a chemical mechanics, based on thermodynamics, “it sufficed that berthollet’s main idea was revived and that it was irrefutably established that the laws governing physical changes and the laws governing chemical reactions are of the same nature. that was achieved by the work of henri sainte-claire deville” (duhem 2002 [1899], 264). this text continues attributing to the “high priest of official science” – allusion to berthelot – the responsibility for the difficulties in the development of physical chemistry in france; see also (klein 1990, 53-54). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 152 duhem considers that a serious disadvantage of these theories is "the obligation to include in these definitions and hypotheses only a very limited number of notions of a determinate nature", and there is no guarantee that "all experimental laws can be symbolized by a combination, even very complicated, of mechanical concepts alone" (duhem 1892a, 156, 157). this question is natural in the theoretical context of that time. duhem illustrates his judgment on the impasse to which the ideal of mechanical theory leads by three contemporary examples: the theories of the ether, those of heat and those of electricity. the first example is that invoked by sainte-claire deville and which has aroused the reflections of poincaré in the preface to his lectures on the theories of light. the luminous ether has been constructed using the theories of elasticity, the ether being conceived by some as a continuous medium and by others as being formed of isolated atoms (duhem 1892a, 155). considering the mechanical theories of heat, duhem alludes to the mechanical analogies formulated by clausius (1871) and studied by moutier around 1875 (príncipe 2008, chapter 6), and those of helmholtz (1884 and 1886) criticized in (poincaré 1889). duhem concludes, paraphrasing poincaré, that they cannot "give a satisfactory account of the principle of carnot" (duhem 1892a, 157). according to duhem, maxwell, in treating the subject of electricity, formulates several contradictory theories, imagining mechanical media with very complicated properties, and that are incompatible with the well-established theories of hydrostatics and elasticity (duhem 1892a, 156, 168). duhem expresses his conviction that "mechanical theories disappear from science one after the other" and this is due to the fact that "among the hypotheses upon which a mechanical theory rests, there are a great many which have no source in experience and which arise only from the demanding conventions arbitrarily laid down by the physicist" (duhem 1892a, 157). he therefore suggests that, contrary to the case of those conventions that must be introduced with the definition of physical magnitudes, one must eliminate the conventions attached to hypotheses and which are only a consequence of the work of the mind of the physicist. conclusions the object of the article is to show a certain proximity of duhem to poincaré in his first philosophical reflections. the agreement with poincaré concerns global aspects of physical theories. the theory represents an economy for the mind: "the theoretical science aims at relieving the memory and helping it to retain more easily the multitude of experimental laws" (duhem 1892a, 140); it is intended to provide a systematic classification or representation of experimental laws, not pretending to provide "a metaphysical explanation of the material world" that would "contemplate the very structure of the world" (duhem 1892a, 150, 158 159). however, like poincaré, duhem recognizes the importance of the interactions between metaphysics and physics (and their criticism), a recurring subject of his historical work (leite 2013). theories are constructed from hypotheses, taken as the starting point of the mathematical deduction, and they do not have to be a mere translation of experimental laws. like poincaré, duhem distinguishes between phenomenological theories and (mechanical) theories that postulate unobservable entities. both value mathematical physics and its tool: mathematics. mathematical analysis, duhem writes, is "a necessary instrument for the construction of any physical theory (...) and the physicist must be able to use, if necessary, all the parts of this instrument". at the same time mathematical analysis deserves to be cultivated by itself because of its beauty, and because sometimes its internal improvements end up rendering service in other fields of physics (duhem 1892a, 171-173).19 the points of convergence between duhem and poincaré are quite numerous, since more than half of the "quelques réflections (...)" illustrate this agreement (duhem 1892a, 139-165). duhem differs from poincaré only in his appreciation of the various methodologies or styles of making theory (duhem 1893; see maiocchi 1992, 377-380); and he makes judgments that reflect his ideal of a more phenomenological theory 19 this is another resonance; poincaré will say: "mathematics have a triple goal. they must provide an instrument for the study of nature. but that is not all, they have a philosophical aim, and, i dare say, an aesthetic aim" (poincaré 1897, 857). joão príncipe – poincaré and duhem: resonances in their first epistemological reflections 153 and his constant concern for global coherence and uniqueness of representation.20 although the comparison given in this article is limited to the early 1890s, let us point out some factors of the progressive separation of duhem and poincaré.21 in the following years, poincaré frequented the neokantian and republican milieu, becoming one of the collaborators of the revue de métaphysique et de morale (a journal in which duhem published only once, in 1916), see (soulié 2009, 68, 222-225), (príncipe 2015a et 2015b). it seems to me probable that duhem's divergence from poincaré’s ideas, explicit in his later texts, is partly an effect of his rejection of neo-kantianism, although poincaré's interest in the progress of atomism may have played a more important role. duhem frequented neo-thomist circles hostiles to kantianism, see (rossi 2006, 123, note 35). poincaré's flexible epistemological views are in harmony with his anti-dogmatism, his opposition to clerical intolerance, his republican spirit in favor of the egalitarian ideal, free thought and the right to seek and to speak the truth.22 references abrantes, paulo coelho. 1985. la réception en france des théories de maxwell concernant l’électricité et le magnétisme. thèse de doctorat pour le troisième cycle. université de paris i. atten, michel. 1992. les théories électriques en france à la fin du xixe siècle, la contribution des mathématiciens, physiciens et ingénieurs 1870-1900. paris, thèse de doctorat, université paris diderot (paris 7). bensaude-vincent, bernadette et kounelis, catherine. 1991. les atomes une anthologie historique. paris: presses pocket. bordoni, stefano. 2012. widening the scope of analytical mechanics. duhem’s third pathway to thermodynamics. preprint 428, max planck institute for the history of science. available at: http://pubman.mpiwgberlin.mpg.de/pubman/faces/viewitemoverviewpage.jsp?itemid=escidoc:643409:4 braverman, charles. 2016. ampère et duhem: classification naturelle et engagements ontologiques. latosensu revue de la société de philosophie des sciences 3 (1): 69-78. brenner, anastasios. 2003. les origines françaises de la philosophie des sciences. paris: puf. collectif (pierre boutroux, jacques hadamard, paul langevin, vito volterra). 1914. henri poincaré, l’œuvre scientifique, l’œuvre philosophique. paris: librairie félix alcan. chang, hasok. 2004. inventing temperature. oxford: oxford university press. darrigol, olivier. the electrodynamic revolution in germany as documented by early german expositions of ‘maxwell’s theory’. archive for the history of exact sciences 45: 1993, 189-280. darrigol, olivier. 1995. henri poincaré’s criticism of fin de siècle electrodynamics. studies in history and philosophy of modern physics 26 (1): 1-44. darrigol, olivier. 2000. electrodynamics from ampère to einstein. oxford: oxford university press. darrigol, olivier. 2003. number and measure: hermann von helmholtz at the crossroads of mathematics, physics, and psychology. studies in history and philosophy of science 34: 515–573. darrigol, olivier. 2007. diversité et harmonie de la physique mathématique dans les préfaces de henri poincaré. in jean-claude pont et al. (eds.), pour comprendre le xixe: histoire et philosophie des sciences à la fin du siècle, florence : olschi, pp. 221-240. 20 duhem expressed his initial admiration (see my introduction) for the philosophical reflections of poincaré elsewhere; for example, in his intervention during the third international catholic scientific congress in brussels (september, 1894), where he was attacked because of his reflections on the relations between physics and metaphysics; duhem considers that "metaphysicians should have a knowledge of physical theories, acquired by ten to fifteen years of first-hand experience, rather than by reading prefaces to physics textbooks, before seeking to define the relation of physics to metaphysics: "if you want to make the philosophy of sciences, be a helmholtz or a poincaré!" 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pergamon press. soulié, stéphan. 2009. les philosophes en république, l’aventure intellectuelle de la revue de métaphysique et de morale et de la société française de philosophie (1891-1914). rennes: presses universitaires de rennes. stoffel, jean-françois. 2002. le phénoménalisme problématique de pierre duhem. bruxelles : académie royale de belgique. toulouse, édouard. 1910. henri poincaré. paris: flammarion. microsoft word 11soulier layout 118 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 118-139 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier1 abstract the term “genetic load” first emerged in a paper written in 1950 by the geneticist h. muller. it is a mathematical model based on biological, social, political and ethical arguments describing the dramatic accumulation of disadvantageous mutations in human populations that will occur in modern societies if eugenic measures are not taken. the model describes how the combined actions of medical and social progress will supposedly impede natural selection and make genes of inferior quality likely to spread across populations – a process which in fine loads their progress. genetic load is based on optimal fitness and emerges from a “typological view” of evolution. this model of evolution had previously, however, been invalidated by robert wright and theodosius dobzhansky who, as early as 1946, showed that polymorphism was the rule in natural populations. the blooming and persistence of the concept of genetic load, after its theoretical basis had already expired, are a historical puzzle. this persistence reveals the intricacy of science and policy-making in eugenic matters. the canguilhemian concept of ‘scientific ideology’ (1988) is used along with the concept of ‘immutable mobile’ (latour 1986) and compared with the concept of ‘co-production’ (jasanoff 1998), to provide complementary perspectives on this complex phenomenon. keywords: genetic load; eugenics; history of genetics; scientific ideology; co-production received: 27 december 2017. reviewed 29 march 2018. accepted: 2 may 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.11 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction in population genetics, the genetic load model describes a reduction in the selective value of a population, compared to a population in which all individuals have the same, most favored genotype. in 1937, j. b. s. haldane had already proposed that deleterious mutations, regardless of their severity, could drastically decrease the selective value of a population. this conclusion draws upon the theory of hidden variability in natural populations, which states that recessive mutations eventually show up causing genetic drift. the idea, if not new, found its 1 alexandra soulier is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at uppsala university – center for research ethics and bioethics – address: husargatan 3, bmc, entrance a11, uppsala, sweden and université paul sabatier-inserm (umr1027) – address: 37 allées jules guesde 31000 toulouse, france. e-mail: alexandra.soulier@gmail.com “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 119 mature formulation in 1950. in our load of mutations, henry j. muller coins the expression ‘genetic load’ to express his concern for the human species which was taking a tragic turn – biologically speaking – under the combined actions of medicine and politics of solidarity. because modern systems of assistance and care prevent the elimination of less favored genotypes, they allow disadvantageous mutations to spread in populations. in turn, this accumulation of deleterious genes impedes the work of natural selection even further. with the accumulation of deleterious mutations, muller states, a mechanism of degeneration has been triggered that ultimately threatens the survival of the human species. eugenics is proposed as the unique solution to the problem of genetic load. from a historical perspective, however, the emergence of the theme of genetic load and its success as a scientific topic are highly problematic. genetic load is a mathematical model that measures a deficit in adaptation and is based on optimal fitness: it emerges from the “typological view” of evolution, according to which “variation is simply noise with no inherent meaning” (parichy 2005, 476). this model of evolution was, however, experimentally invalidated by robert wright and theodosius dobzhansky, who showed that polymorphism was the rule in natural populations four years before the term genetic load was coined (wright & dobzhansky 1946). how, then, to explain the persistence of genetic load as a concept when its theoretical basis had already expired? the present paper is an attempt to solve this historical puzzle. our analysis is theoretically grounded within a corpus of studies that has documented how extra-scientific concerns get conveyed into scientific production, thereby blurring the boundaries between societal concerns and scientific topics. the concept of ‘scientific ideology’, developed by canguilhem (1988), provides a framework for understanding how the concept of genetic load could be produced within two distinct contexts: population genetics and evolutionary humanism. the transportation of the concept between these two corpora of writings is apprehended through the concept of the “immutable mobile”, developed by latour (1986). while focusing on scientific writings gives no clue as to the persistence of the concept, analysis of genetic load conceived as a theme of science fiction in humanist essays explains how the metaphor of the load and its scientific modelling served both as a vivid background and a truth effect justifying eugenic-oriented policies. using genetic load as a case study, we conclude by showing the fecundity and limits of the canguilhemian approach, in comparison with the more recent approach of ‘co-production’ supported by science and technology studies (sts). genetic load: a scientific ideology an epistemic puzzle ‘genetic load’ is a mathematical model for determining the rate of evolution in populations. it was developed in the field of quantitative genetics. this branch of population genetics concentrates on the ways that individual variation in genotype and environment contributes to variance in phenotype.2 through quantitative genetics, the challenge is to reconcile the discontinuous nature of mendelian inheritance with the continuous variation pictured in evolution. due to the complexity of the population-level processes examined and to the long time scales over which analyzed evolutionary processes occur, mathematical models are developed that do not directly explain how evolution proceeds, but provide information on the possibility of various scenarios (plutynski 2004). 2 r. fisher introduced the term “variance” and proposed a formal analysis of variance in a 1918 article “the correlation between relatives on the supposition of mendelian inheritance”. his first application of the analysis of variance was published in 1921. analysis of variance became widely known after being included in fisher's 1925 book, statistical methods for research workers. “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 120 model building is not, however, without consequence. although population genetics may benefit from the simplifying value of the biostatisticians’ assumptions (crow 2001), mathematical models also act as idealized constructions that embark scientists into “fictional states of affairs” (godfrey-smith 2009; rao & nanjundiah 2011). idealization is a cognitive operation that allows for treating things as if they possessed features they do not have but would be concrete if real. mathematical models of early quantitative genetics relied on different kinds of assumptions some of them more powerful than others (servedio et al. 2014). to consider populations as if they were infinite3 is, for example, a logistical kind of assumption: it allows for identifying the effects of certain determinants by placing them in a simplified context. nobody believes that populations are infinite. however, when biostasticians count genes as if they were differently colored beans in a bag, all independent one from another and without interacting effects, the assumption is not logistical but critical. in this case, the relevance of the model depends on a certain conception of evolution, which states that different genetic compositions at a single locus are associated with specific traits in the organism. evolution is therefore portrayed as a statistical game where single alleles have constant and absolute selective values and where mutation is the exchange of one kind of bean for another.4 in this model, each allele is assigned an absolute fitness value; adaptation is understood as a process of selection of the fittest allele and evolution is seen as a process leading to uniform populations composed only of the most favored genotypes – all identical, all homozygous. these mathematical models rely on the assumption that evolution results in a state of absolute conformity among the fittest individuals within a population. consequently, early quantitative genetics fits into the scheme of typological thinking, which can be defined as a preoccupation with equilibrium rather than change (lewontin 1974) and homogeneity over variability (dreuil 1996). the mathematical model of the genetic load makes no exception to the typological rule, relying on the predominance of uniformity. because, for sufficiently large populations, the rate at which a favorable gene spreads is determined essentially by the strength of selection, natural selection (if not impeded) should gradually eliminate any less favored genotype until the fittest becomes the rule. in this model where, all things being equal, variability tends to be ruled out, genetic load is nothing but a product of a disturbance in the forces. without the imbalance that naturally favors the selection of the fittest, the genetic load model predicts the explosion of hidden variability, the spreading of genes of inferior quality and the dissolution of the human species. according to muller’s model, once the mutation load of the human species has exerted too much pressure, the unit of the species will lose its consistency, its contours will shade, and the only connection of our descendants with mankind will be the historical one (muller 1950, 146). there will be no more humans. under an unbearable pressure from mutations, not only would the species lose its chance for enhancement but also its consistency as a unit, and would therefore disappear. this potential implosion of the species reveals another typological view according to which species are morphological kinds threatened by variability (amundson 1998). this idea contrasts with population thinking; according to which species are aggregates of individuals with a profile that shows a distribution of characteristics (mayr 1970; chung 2003). as such, genetic load is the typical product of the typological reasoning of early quantitative genetics. nothing particularly innovative. nothing worth mentioning. except that this type of thinking had already expired when the genetic load model was formulated. since 1946 and the rise of adaptive polymorphism, typological reasoning had already been invalidated. the experiments lead by wright and dobzhansky on wild drosophilae had 3 the hardy-weinberg equilibrium (1908), for example, predicts unchanging genotype frequencies in a randomly mating, infinitely large population in the absence of selection, migration, or new mutation. 4 mayr coined the expression “beanbag genetics” to designate the “gross oversimplification” inherited from classical population genetics that consisted in treating genes as independent entities and therefore negating interactions between them (dronamraju 2010). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 121 shown that polymorphism was the rule in natural populations (dobzhansky 1946; 1949; 1950). as the two scientists swapped the standard melanogaster (usually used in morgan’s drosophilist group) for the wild pseudoobscura that had not yet been stripped of its natural genetic diversity, they were able to study experimentally the process of variation and evolution in nature. by doing so, they proved that natural populations did not reflect the state of uniformity predicted by early quantitative genetics and that variation was crucial for adaptation and fitness. the comforting standards of uniformity were abandoned and variation welcomed as an essential feature of the emerging paradigm.5 without the support of underlying data or observations, typological models of evolution were considered devoid of biological meaning. as early as 1946, the assumptions critical to typological mathematical models (such as genetic load) had already been proved biologically unrealistic. once typological thinking had been discredited, the idea of a genetic load should have been disqualified. but the opposite happened. genetic load persisted long after its theoretical foundation had already expired. hence the puzzle.6 our hypothesis is that genetic load persisted as a relevant scientific theme while it served as a scientific support for political, social and moral arguments related to eugenics. the eugenics behind the history of genetics scientists played a leading role in the history of eugenics. the term eugenics was created in the late 19th century by francis galton, a cousin of charles darwin, who set himself the task of investigating the origins of natural ability so as to improve humanity. he established an anthropometric laboratory in london, where biologists and mathematicians who shared the same premises developed methods to understand population phenomena. from the rather obscure science formed around galton, eugenics grew rapidly into a worldwide political movement.7 genetics and eugenics are so closely interwoven that the evolution of the eugenics movement can be traced in correlation with theoretical debates between the mendelians and the biometricians (kevles 1995). paradigm shifts in eugenics are shown to result from major scientific advances in genetic research and population analysis.8 one of these shifts 5 “dobzhansky, following chetverikov, viewed species as collections of different local populations. sturtevant, in contrast, had a rigidly typological view of species. as ernst mayr later observed, “he almost acted as if he considered every species genetically homozygous” (e. mayr to provine 1979). in other words, sturtevant treated wild flies as if they were standard, domesticated melanogaster. dobzhansky was always aware of the difference.” (kohler 1993) 6 a puzzle that may be assembled differently, as shown by the historian diane paul when she asks whether eugenics rested on an elementary mistake (paul, 1987). eugenists in the first part of the 20th century indeed argued explicitly that mental defects were linked to a recessive mendelian factor, leading some commentators to suggest that eugenists had been in error if they believed that by sterilizing only those individuals thought to be defective, the factor for defectiveness would thereby be eliminated from the population. paul notes that the eugenics movement expanded after the time when the mistaken beliefs had been thoroughly exposed. after reviewing the literature of that time, she came to the conclusion that the majority of eugenicists favoured eugenic sterilization, even though they knew eugenic methods would not eliminate the “defective factor” from the population as a whole. 7 for accounts of various national eugenics movements, see (kevles 1995); (proctor 1988); (adams 1990); (stepan 1991); (paul 1995). 8 a) the “mainline” eugenics group, based on the early biometric theories of pearson and the unitcharacter mendelian theories, dominant between 1880 and 1930; b) the “reform” eugenics group, based on experimental chromosome research with animals and mathematical analysis of population genetics carried out by the british biologists j.b.s. haldane, julian huxley, and lancelot hogben and “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 122 corresponds to the “reform” eugenics group and refers to a very specific moment in the history of biology, the modern synthesis. this synthesis reflects the consensus, produced between 1936 and 1947, about how evolution proceeds. at its heart was the question of whether mendelian genetics could be reconciled with gradual evolution by means of natural selection. evidence for such a rapprochement was primarily gathered from biologists, trained in genetics, and mathematicians who proposed models designed to test the compatibility of mendelian genetics and selection theory. the new breed of scientists emerging from this movement developed specific eugenic views. although they shared their predecessors’ concern for the degradation of the germ plasm and remained convinced that human improvement would proceed better with the deployment of genetic knowledge, their concerns were anchored in liberal social values (ludmerer 1972; kevles 1995) or even marxist views (paul 1987; esposito 2011) that contrasted with the early conservative eugenic leadership. they notably insisted on the importance of developing a twofold eugenic framework that would take into account genetic as well as social factors.9 the theme of genetic load stems from views that promote social progress through the manipulation of human heredity. although the model was presented in population genetics, the core argument of genetic load relies on an analysis of the “social obstacles” (muller 1950, 173) that supposedly cause natural selection to malfunction. on the one hand, technological advances and social systems are blamed for relieving the pressure of natural selection. on the other hand, existing social patterns are assumed to discourage the reproduction of higher classes and encourage the reproduction of lower classes, thus producing harmful selective effects. although genetic load describes genetic mechanisms, it is originally based on the assumption that our social constructs are inadequate with respect to our evolutionary makeup.10 in our load of mutations, the burden described by muller is ours inasmuch as we have set up a social environment that both prevents natural selection from operating and nurtures unnatural selection.11 scientific ideology: exploring the ideological contexts and contents of science is genetic load a response to a scientific inquiry or does it express a social worry? is it even possible to distinguish one from the other? the philosopher georges canguilhem (1988) uses the term ‘scientific ideologies’ to address statements whose status appears ambivalent or ambiguous. in outline, a scientific ideology is an explanatory system that stands in a particular relationship with science and whose main characteristics can be crystallized around three features: the american biologist herbert s. jennings, between 1930 and 1960; and c) the “new” eugenics group based on the latest research in human biochemical genetics and genetic engineering, dominant since the end of the 1960s. 9 “one major difference between the two groups (the mainline and the reform groups) rests towards the effect of environment on character traits, with the reformers more willing to admit that environment can influence development and that sociological factors must be considered in any eugenic program. thus charles davenport would argue that prostitution was caused by a gene defect, whereas a reformer might stress sociological factors. both however would agree that a prostitute should not have children.” (melher 1987, 618). 10 “both environmentally and genetically the present state of mankind is unstable, at war with itself”. (huxley 1948, 56) (our italics). 11 “eugenically speaking, our system is characterized by the social promotion of infertility and the excess fertility of social failure”. (huxley 1948, 54). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 123 scientific legitimacy: “our load of mutations”, muller’s inaugural paper, was published in the american journal of human genetics a worldwide renowned scientific review in 1950. muller himself was a famous scientist who was notably awarded a nobel prize in physiology/medicine in 1946. genetic load became a successful theme of research in population genetics from 1958 (at the time the equation was developed) until the end of the 1960’s when its ideological content started to be refuted. theoretical ambition: the concept of genetic load was constructed during the synthesis of evolutionary studies,12 a period characterized by the ambition to explain systematically all evolutionary phenomena through the integration of mendelism and darwinism within a coherent framework (cain 2009). the architects of the synthesis, however, built a project that cannot be confined to its biological dimension since evolutionary knowledge was applied to the comprehension of the entire cosmos (esposito 2011) and extended towards a reflection upon the origins of morals and politics (delisle 2009). flanked by so-called evolutionary humanism, neo-darwinism is driven by an immoderate ambition – not only to explain exhaustively how evolution works but also to take control of it (esposito 2011). scientific crisis: controversies surrounding the genetic load led to the birth of the neutral theory and contributed to the end of the synthesis (dreuil 1996; rao & nanjundiah 2011). when, in 1966, richard c. lewontin and jack hubby discovered the magnitude of polymorphism in natural populations at the molecular level, they questioned the sheer phenomenon of genetic load. if populations could carry alleles of lower fitness at very many loci, the cost of doing so would be impossibly high, unbearable, according to genetic load. motoo kimura (1968) proposed a solution which allowed both theories to coexist: if the vast majority of evolution changes at the dna sequence molecular level were caused by genetic drift of selectively neutral mutants, most mutations would be neutral. the neutral theory, while rescuing the genetic load concept, denies natural selection at the molecular level. the theoretical cost is high. the debate opposing neutralists and selectionists marks the fragmentation of a unitary theory of evolution and the break-up of the synthesis. genetic load meets the criteria of a scientific ideology, as defined by canguilhem. however, the analysis doesn’t stop here: it can start from here. now that genetic load has been identified as a potential scientific ideology, its content requires to be examined. what exactly does genetic load tells us, at this historical moment, about the normative beliefs of elite scientists, who belong to the dominant class of society? only by exploring the ideological content of genetic load, can we explain how geneticists were able to defend, for two decades, a model that did not fit with their latest experiments but could fit with their representation of society. the concept of ‘scientific ideology’ inspired by marx, indeed highlights the interplay of interests in a given situation and arises in response to a major social challenge. an ideology is an epistemological concept with a polemic function, applied to systems of representation which express themselves in the languages of politics, moral, religion, and metaphysics. these languages claim to express things as they are, whereas in reality they are means of protecting and defending a situation, that is, a particular 12 see, for example, (caplan 1978); (mayr 1980); (gould 1983); (provine 1988); (burian 1989); (cain 1993, 2003, 2009); (smocovitis1996); (delisle 2009). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 124 structure of the relations between (men among themselves and) 13 men and the things. (canguilhem 1988, 29). the canguilhemian approach thus pushes us to look for extra-scientific elements that would have been integrated into a scientific reasoning so as to provide ‘truth effects’ to be used by scientific experts in their positioning towards social struggles. de facto, in the aftermath of world war ii, there were no shortage of challenges for an emerging class of ‘experts’ preoccupied by both population phenomena and social policy-making – who had to deal with the changing demographic patterns of western societies, the disruption of social status quo in many realms (labor, family, imperialism, etc.) and the threat of eugenics due to the consciousness-raising of nazi crimes. exploring the context in which the concept of genetic load was formulated shows how social, moral and political concerns may have been absorbed into scientific practice. as a scientific ideology, this research topic was not only subjected to scientific arguments but also nurtured by other sources. although muller’s paper was published in a scientific journal, an attentive reading of its core argument leaves no doubt as to the extra-scientific concerns that intervened in the construction of genetic load. genetic load: a set of societal concerns packaged up as a scientific inscription the shaping of genetic load as an ethical argument muller’s ambition in “our load of mutations” is to refute the prevailing hypothesis according to which "mutation as a direct cause of disease is extremely rare and of little practical significance". anterior measures of hidden variability resulted from experiments on drosophilae but muller’s point is that these results cannot be extrapolated to modern humans. as progress in technology, living standards and medicine has relaxed natural selection, the human species has escaped its natural condition. muller therefore dissociates the evolutionary model of “primitive man” from that of the “modern man”, under the assumption that the determinants used to predict the evolution of the human species cannot be given the same weight when humans are no longer immersed in nature. although distinct, primitive man and modern man remain biologically bound. more precisely, we, modern man, are twice the product of our predecessors. we are the lineage descendants of our ancestors and we inherited our genetic fitness from their harsh conditions of living. their struggles, muller argues, made our fortune. as the argument moves from a descriptive to an evaluative stance, the genetic load becomes the subject of an ethical discussion. because each generation is responsible for the living conditions that influence the quality of the germplasm they pass on to the next, generations are not only genetically bound but also morally bound. our debt to primitive man obliges us towards future man. muller uses the argument of indirect reciprocity14 to assert that acting on behalf of future generations may be required as a generalized form of reciprocity for benefits received from previous generations. is it moral to opt for our comfort at the cost of the fitness of future generations? is it moral, asks muller, to be “the debtors” (muller 1950, 165) of our descendants when we are 13 the part in brackets is translated from the french sentence, omitted in the english version we refer to. 14 this argument is now well developed in the context of intergenerational justice. see for example (fotion & jan 1997); (ryberg & torbjön 2004). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 125 indebted to our ancestors? 15 or do we owe to our descendants a certain “quality” of germplasm to supply future generations with the best genetic resources? our current political, technological and social choices, predicts muller, not only put the natural dynamics of hard-earned selective advantage at stake but actually threaten the human species.16 if selection can no longer counteract the pressure of mutations and if these mutations are deleterious to our species, the survival of humanity is at stake. the moral tale narrated by muller concludes the existence of an imminent danger that, although occurring through genetic mechanisms, would ultimately be due to our moral failure. throughout the article, muller insists on the scale of the problem: genetic load can only be apprehended through the big picture.17 a misapprehension of this scale would lead to major flaws in reasoning. this is a failure also attributed by muller to malthus’ opponents, who, by misjudging the gravity of the modern situation, failed to comprehend that it could not be handled by social measures alone18 and that man’s heredity needed to be controlled through eugenic measures. because what is at stake with genetic load is not simply the refutation of a scientific statement as announced in the introduction to the article but the extinction of the entire human species, the task of estimating the magnitude of the risk dictates its own philosophical treatment – a task well handled by muller. to paraphrase pascal’s wager, there is here an infinite to gain (enhanced humanity) and an infinite to lose (humanity itself), and no matter the risks of gain and loss (“even a 10% risk of extinction”), if the stake is finite (“purposive control over reproduction” (muller 1950, 150) then the rational choice is to wager to gain the infinite.19 the several pages devoted by muller to the ethical discussion and its political implications constitute the core argument of the genetic load concept. there is a visually obvious parenthesis of prose in “our load of mutations” that refers only to humans. once muller has (ethically) justified the formulation of the load in its human context, he can go back to calculating rates of evolution. and, with the formulae, the drosophilae flutter back to the paper. the article articulates two different concerns in two different formats: for the drosophilae, a flat description of experimental facts interspersed with calculations; for humans, a passage of prose dedicated to the chronicle of a death foretold. the differential use of text and formulae betrays the exceptionality of the concern for the human species. at this point, genetic load was not a model easily transposed to different species or populations: another operation was required to erase the heterogeneous roots of the mathematical model and render it an apparently pure scientific argument. 15 the term “debtor” is appropriate for such generations because, by instituting for their own immediate benefit ameliorative procedures which delay the attainment of equilibrium and raise the equilibrium level of mutant gene frequency, they transfer to their descendants a price of detriment which the latter must eventually pay in full. 16 “his only connection with mankind would then be the historical one that we ourselves had after all been their ancestors and sponsors, and the fact that his once-human material was still used for the purpose of converting it, artificially, into some semblance of man” (muller 1950, 146). 17 there are for instance 28 occurrences of the expressions “on the whole”, “as a whole” and “the whole population” in the paper. 18 these methods are “in the long run, as effective as trying to push back the flowing waters of a river with one's bare hands” (muller 1950, 146). 19 “[…] even a 10% risk of any kind of death or extinction is a very sizeable danger. few persons would be free from misgivings if they had to undergo an operation, to take a trip, or to contract a disease, with this amount of risk” (muller 1950, 143). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 126 crow’s equation: an immutable mobile it was only the equation proposed by j. crow in 1958 that truly facilitated the circulation of the model in animal and human studies alike. this equation, published in a human population genetic study, was applied to animal models the following year. where is the maximum value of the fitness and is mean fitness how much explanatory burden does this tiny set of figures carry in the concept’s fate? let us count the frequency of “the genetic load” in scientific articles: used only once (dobzhansky 1957) between 1950 and 1958, there are 77 occurrences between 1959 and 1970 – most of them concerning animal studies.20 so, why would the condensation of the concept into an equation mark such a turning point in the scientific use of genetic load? firstly, because an operational inscription is crucial to the construction of harder facts that complete a scientific ambition. secondly, because, without its long justification in prose, the equation is ready to use in any context (human or animal) and the topic of genetic load available for experiments. the format of the equation erased the concern for the human species that lay at the origin of the model and made the genetic load operational. genetic load is a mathematical model that did not fit the chronology of biology but fitted perfectly with the spirit of the reform eugenics group; a rather sophisticated ethical argument developed in the middle of a scientific paper and a calculation adjusted to the social and cultural dimensions of the human species that was extended to animal studies. genetic load is obviously the byproduct of intersecting processes but its rendering as an equation enabled its outsourced social and ethical concerns to be condensed under an operational format. transformed into a scientific inscription and used in experimental models, the theme of genetic load gained scientific legitimacy. b. latour (1986) developed a theoretical interest in the kind of objects through which many worlds and practices are re-assembled to be made presentable in a different setting. these objects, latour argues, must be both transportable and unchangeable during transportation: they are “immutable mobiles”. once these objects succeed in folding layers of scientific practices into a flat format, they are ready to circulate outside the laboratory in order to convince those who have not supported their birth. we argue that the privileged formats of genetic load – as a metaphor21 and as an equation22 – make it a topic particularly disposed to travel between the bodies of biological and humanist writing. more importantly, we argue that this circulation reinforced both the scientific legitimacy and the political efficacy of the genetic load. the metaphor developed in our load of mutations “vehicles”23 the assumptions of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis regarding not only how evolutionary processes work but to what end human progress ought to tend. as such, the label 20 web of science, consulted on 07.25.13 21 the english metaphor derives from the 16th-century old french métaphore, which comes from the latin metaphora, “carrying over”, in turn from the greek μεταφορά (metaphorá), “transfer”. 22 an equation is an optic device: it is “a complete hybrid (nature seen as fiction and fiction made as nature), with all elements made so homogeneous that it is now impossible to reshuffle them like a pack of cards” (latour 1986, 8). 23 a metaphor is described as having two parts: the tenor and the vehicle. the tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. the vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed. “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 127 “genetic load” is anything but neutral: it implies that variation is a burden we carry at a time when social diversity was considered harmful for our society. the use of a pejorative vocabulary (e.g. mutational load or cost of selection) is crucial as it conveys the eugenic style of thinking; the equation proposed shortly afterwards allows the transportation of the model across different fields, without mentioning its heterogeneous roots and its ideological content. the social destiny of the concept of genetic load does not, therefore, stop with its formulation as an equation but becomes all the more fascinating as the topic starts to circulate between scientific articles and humanist essays. the following section is an attempt track genetic load as a central theme in the corpus of evolutionary humanism. whether they express their thoughts in conclusive chapters of biological works or devote entire books to the societal and political implications of evolutionary studies, the architects of the synthesis demonstrate varying commitment to the humanist cause. we are particularly interested in julian sorell huxley and theodosius dobzhansky, who left a sufficient quantity of published material to allow a fairly complete reconstitution of their humanistic theses that include the promotion of the genetic load and who occupy a very different position with regard to science. huxley’s bibliography rehearses the double identity of an author who wrote essays of a biologist in 1923 and essays of a humanist in 1964. but huxley is not only a brilliant scientist and an enthusiastic humanist. he also is a politician. his political career led him to become the first director-general of the unesco in 1946. during his investiture speech, huxley defended scientific humanism as the unique source of inspiration for effective politics. huxley explained how the fact of evolutionary progress provided an objective foundation for "ideology" – a term he used to denote an integrated system of morality, ritual, emotion, and belief. interestingly enough, most historians of science working on huxley reversed this connection between evolution and politics and admitted that huxley's idea of evolution was rather structured by his political commitments and his humanist aspirations. what makes huxley’s humanism so unique is the connection between two spheres: science and politics; which considering his own path is not so surprising. huxley emphasized that knowledge meant power of control and he was obsessed with designing a ‘technocratic utopianism’ (esposito 2011) whereby the whole would prevail over the individuals. this mode of reasoning belongs to a history of well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition, where idealized images of social order were created and then millions of lives ruthlessly redesigned to match their vision, so as to finally go tragically awry (scott 1998). common to all these planning disasters is the "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life. a theme highly familiar to huxley, whose scientific legitimacy and political status conferred him the power to promote a form of social order tending to excellence, where eugenics could considered a desirable mean. dozhansky is a prolific author. his name is associated to more than 600 writings. he published experimental works as well as theoretical papers, some anthropological essays and philosophical books – all related to the notion of evolution. an important claim in the definition of evolution by dobzhansky lies in the refutation of biological reductionism: “human evolution is the outcome of interactions between biological and cultural factors” (dobzhansky 1956, 56). but dobzhansky worries about culture interfering with the course of evolution. dobzhansky still refers explicitly to the genetic load as an inescapable prophecy in a humanist opus written in 1962. his defense of the genetic load is all the more striking given “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 128 that the next year, he does not credit the concept of any scientific validity in his biological writings (dobzhansky 1963). in 1968, in his book written with boesiger, he devotes one entire chapter to the refutation of genetic load. the arguments rely mainly on knowledge of polymorphism he already had gained in 1955. the difference in attitude results from a difference in concern, since in his humanist writings; the theme of the genetic load occupies a crucial position between dramatic developments about the tragic turn of human populations and a faithful defense of eugenics. since both authors have developed a rich humanist perspective, where science is intertwined with moral and politics, although they both lead a different career and speak about science from a different perspective, we propose to examine huxley and dobzhansky’s humanist essays in order to shed light on the thematic patterns that knit together scientific and moral, political or social representations concerning genetic load. genetic load: a successful theme of science fiction whether expressed as a mathematical model or a narrative, genetic load includes fictional thought. based on a series of “what ifs”, the genetic load extends the path of known evolutionary processes to predict the possible future of populations. as such, humanist essays that elaborate on genetic load benefit from both its scientific legitimacy and its dramatic impact. genetic load thus deserves to be treated as an element of science fiction, i.e. a “realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method” (heinlein et al. 1959). these narratives are precious in the canguilhemian analysis, based on the notion of ideology, as they explicitly inscribe scientific practices in the current representations of the society in which they were developed. ‘back to the future’ the architects of the synthesis are used to time travelling. modern synthesis bridges the gap between the work of experimental geneticists, naturalists, and paleontologists. under the umbrella of the synthesis, the fossil record has become a major support for evolution and interest in the primitive stages of the human species has gained scientific value. but evolutionary humanism goes further. in humanist essays, the picture of prehistoric men is turned into the hypothetical condition that preceded our corruptive modernity. prehistory here plays a role analogous to the state of nature in political philosophy – a thought experiment unveiling an original position of man and guiding both our understanding of the present and ultimately our planning of the future. humanists typically look back from the future to interpret present and past. huxley sketches this exact movement at the end of his book, man in the modern world. whether or not i have been asking you to accompany me too far into the visionary future, i will end this essay with a concrete suggestion for the present, backed by a warning from the immediate past. (huxley 1948, 61) several rhetorical devices settle this dialectic of time. the first time machine is time’s arrow. humanists draw the direction of evolution on a “natural history”, where the impulse of both the profusion of mutations and natural selection operate as a motor of history. as long as selection lowers the pressure of mutation, a sense of direction is can be traced (huxley 1956, 105) – connecting past, present and future. this connection is essential as it allows us to “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 129 understand the present in light of the past and to plan the future according to our action in the present. the second time machine is the scenario. in the scenarios that proliferate in evolutionary humanism,24 present and future both determine each other: the future depends on our present behavior and the vision of the future shapes our action today. as an illustration, huxley masters the art of script writing when he describes and combines three possible futures – each one being the product of our present way of dealing with genetic load (huxley 1948, 50-3). the most desirable future depends on our current determination to create a social environment favorable to the expression of desirable genetic qualities. although the selection of the most favored traits is in itself a somewhat arbitrary decision based on the ideals of the era in question,25 the pressure of selection is in fine favorable as it promotes standardization and increases the chance of equity among the future members of the population. we are not a million miles away from the standardized melanogaster here. and, de facto, huxley sets up the experimental geneticist as a model for this operation of standardization.26 based on their scenarios, humanists take up the old idea that society needs to be managed through scientific planning.27 planning presents a way to travel both through time dimensions and from science to power. planning therefore reveals the true mission of science, which is to increase “both comprehension and control” (huxley 1964, 103). using planning as a third time machine, genetic load becomes the perfect narrative through which to call for responsibility towards the future and motivate political action. ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ scientists have a duty to enlighten politics so as to promote a social environment which connects our social realm with our genetic makeup. this is the only way to counteract the corruptive modernity and reposition humanity on its path towards endless progress. knowledge calls for action. the architects of the synthesis cannot restrain their views to the purely scientific realm because the general knowledge they have acquired may (and therefore should) benefit humanity. paving the way for the future experts who would soon invade political institutions and ground policy-making in scientific knowledge (jasanoff 1998), the contributors to evolutionary humanism are first and foremost scientists who feel obliged towards humanity by virtue of their superior knowledge. as muller argues: it is the responsibility of those who already have knowledge of the genetic facts to be prime movers in driving home an adequate realization of them among both the lay and medical public, and among all groups concerned with social matters, until appropriate changes are adopted in their daily practices and precepts. (muller 1950, 163) 24 “they (the architects of the synthesis) shared an obsession with the future of humankind; an obsession that was often translated into speculations about possible future scenarios” esposito (2011). 25 “even if we imagine we are working to absolute genetic standards, we are in reality thinking of them, albeit unconsciously, in relation to some ideal environment of the future, or to the needs and realities of the present social environment, or, very frequently, to our bias and a priori views about this present environment and how our opinion it ought to be changed” (huxley 1948, 48). 26 “[…] to disentangle the effects of nature from those of nurture in so far as we follow the footstep of the geneticist and equalize environment” (huxley 1948, 52). 27 “man needs to use his best efforts of knowledge and imagination to use a system of thought and belief which will provide both a supporting framework for his present existence, an ultimate or ideal goal for its future development as a species, and a guide and directive for practical action and planning” (huxley 1964, 77). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 130 the theme of responsibility is also pervasive within the argument of the genetic load. as dobzhansky puts it: “man is not just an overgrown drosophila” (dobzhansky 1962, 148). evolution has culminated in the human species28 to the point that humans have escaped the natural order and are now in charge of their existence. the rubicon has been crossed: humans occupy a chosen place in nature, a place actually above nature, and this dominant position confers upon them a mission: man’s destiny is to be the sole agent for the future evolution of this planet. he is the highest dominant type to be produced by over two and a half billions of years of the slow biological improvement effected by the blind opportunistic workings of natural selection; if he does not destroy himself, he has at least an equal stretch of evolutionary time before him to exercise his agency. (huxley 1964, 81-2) (humans are) called upon to participate in the construction of the best thinkable universe. (dobzhansky 1973, 115-6) the human species is not an object that humanists are interested in but matter they propose to work on by taking charge of its heredity. ‘a brave new world’ architects of the synthesis rely on their genetic knowledge to prove that eugenics is both necessary and omnipotent. the list of “genetic disabilities” (huxley 1964, 256-7), whose burden should be removed from humanity, includes pathologies of diverse severity, vague categories (“some mental defect”) and conditions whose genetic conditioning has not yet been proven (“some kinds of sexual deviation”). huxley also reports the successes of human behavioral geneticists in proving that intelligence but also “persistence, willingness to work, originality, creativity, leadership, ability to get along well with others, and plain human decency” (huxley 1964, 40) are grounded in the genetic endowment. eugenics should therefore draw on genetics knowledge to re-shape humanity and allow human enhancement. positive eugenics can favor genetic susceptibility for curiosity and improve future scientists. eugenics can favor creative imagination and improve future artists. eugenics can even favor devotion and improve future saints (huxley 1964, 259)! two complementary modes of action are usually proposed: euthenics which “proposes to work with existing genetic equipment and to create environments in which the best potentialities will be brought to realization” (dunn & dobzhansky 1949, 83); and eugenics which “aspires to alter the genetics of human populations and mankind” (dunn & dobzhansky 1949, 85-6). eugenics exists under two forms: positive eugenics programs urge people who are regarded as carriers of desirable gene combinations to undertake the responsibilities of parenthood. [...] more enthusiasm has been shown in many places for negative eugenics, which urges elimination of undesirable genes by discouraging or making it impossible for persons who show the effects of such genes to have children. since voluntary abstention from parenthood may be difficult, sterilization for individuals who are likely to have severe hereditary defects is recommended. (dunn & dobzhansky 1949, 83) 28 “the biological evolution has transcended itself in the human revolution. a new level or dimension has been reached. the light of the human spirit has begun to shine. the humanum is born” (dobzhansky 1967, 58). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 131 scientists are not simply interested in designing eugenic plans. they are enthusiastic about it. the rhetorical use of emotion in the architects’ writings is, in itself, a further indication that the concept of genetic load encompasses sorrows and visions that exceed the scientific argument. in our load of mutations, muller’s prophetic insights about the extinction of the human species turned him into a cassandra of modernity. the insertion of drama or joy into scientific accounts is all the more surprising given that the scientists are themselves wary of it. dobzhansky is, for instance, suspicious about emotions that would harm his argumentation. he prefers the term ‘genetic elimination’ to ‘genetic death’ because of the latter’s emotional impact,29 but at the same time does not hesitate to embark on colorful descriptions of the genetic load that are themselves relatively emotionally loaded. the acceptance of emotion on the one hand when it is refused on the other can be interpreted as a shift in perspective. genetic load threatens the human species whereas eugenics only threatens individuals. or, as huxley emphasizes, the scale according to which problems are considered impacts their moral examination. how much does the evanescent present weigh in the horizon of evolution? all the objections of principle to a policy of positive eugenics fall to the ground when the subject is looked at in the embracing perspective of evolution, instead of in limited perspective of population-genetics or the short-term perspective of existing socio-political organization. (huxley 1964, 282) population genetics, the biological basis for genetic load, is itself disqualified to the benefit of a more poetic vision of evolution open to the infinite.30 genetic load is a scientific fiction that relies on the ‘truth effects’ of science (methodology, experiments, and formulae) but supports aesthetic, moral and political commitments. the history of the genetic load provides a basis for further discussion of the connection between scientific claims and policymaking. science and policy the translation of genetics into the promotion of eugenics the genetic load model is an argument that connects genetics and eugenics. this connection is not easy to define as eugenics itself varies in status and may be considered by the same author as a religion,31 a social science,32 a methodological effort to bridge social research and 29 (dobzhansky 1962, 290): muller (1950, 1954, and other writings) refers to the elimination of detrimental genetic variants as genetic death. i prefer a less dramatic term – genetic elimination. […] “genetic death” is obviously an emotionally loaded phrase. it invites misunderstanding. genetic death does not always produce cadaver. 30 “most important of all, (evolutionary humanism) brings together the and largely unutilized resources of our knowledge, and orders them to provide a new vision of human destiny, illuminating in every aspect, from the broad and enduring sweep of cosmic process to the present-day politics, from the planetary web of world ecology to the individual lives entangled in it, from the dip roots of man's past to the dawning possibilities of his far future” (huxley 1964, 78). 31 “once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex of sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion” (huxley 1948, 28). 32 “eugenics is not, as some of its devotees have unconsciously assumed, a special branch of natural science: it is a branch of social science. […] true that it aims at the improvement of the human race by means of the improvement of its genetic qualities. but any improvement of the sort can be made “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 132 social reform,33 or an application of natural science.34 when considered as an applied science, scientists are fully aware of the risks pertaining to the translation from science to its application. dobzhansky, for instance, is lucid about the potential collapse of darwinism with current ideologies (like colonialism35). he details some precedents of “a manifold misuse of biology for purposes of political propaganda” (dobzhansky 1956, 57). in his analysis, dobzhansky is particularly concerned by the value-laden notion of ‘progress’, which may be vulnerable to a political hold. this point is crucial because, although the notion of ‘progress’ violates the taboo against introducing value judgments into science, it remains a prevailing theme in synthesis writings (greene 1990). historians of science explain this widespread use differently. esposito (2011) relies on an historical analysis of post-war, challenging times when he suspects that “this definition of evolutionary progress was especially important […] because the humankind’s future progress was not guaranteed”. ruse (1988) grounds progressivism in psychological reasons: since, in science, competitive research yields to cumulative progress, scientists consider themselves the product of an improving humanity and are thus predisposed to believe in progress. when we turn to the texts in which the architects of the synthesis directly address the origin of the notion of ‘progress’, we encounter a spiral argument, where factual evolution is believed to lead to the emergence of human conscience, thus asserting that subjective values and factual progress advance together.36 the precious dialectic hereof produced turns out to be fruitful for both scientific and humanist writings, as it inscribes both missions towards the same horizon: the enhancement of humanity. faith in progress, from which the concept of the genetic load emerges, is a gateway for the intrusion of social concerns into scientific claims. through the notion of progress, social values guide what is considered the telos of humanity. according to dobzhansky, however, qualified biologists are immune to the misappropriation of progressive evolutionary views (dobzhansky 1956, 59). science is pure. and this view extends to the translation of science provided it is monitored by scientists. when dunn and dobzhansky wonder about the conditions under which scientific knowledge is ready to be applied, they argue solely on the basis of intrinsically scientific criteria (dunn & dobzhansky 1949, 83). if the scientific knowledge is advanced, as they believe genetics to be after its rapid progress in the 1930’s and 1940’s, this knowledge can be turned into actions. in this argument, maturity of science is evaluated endogenously and the process is assumed to be informed and guided by realized in a certain kind of social environment, so that eugenics is inevitably particular aspect of the study of man in society” (huxley 1948, 31). 33 “the next step for eugenics, as i urged at the beginning of this essay, is a methodological one. we eugenists must familiarize ourselves with the outlook and the concepts of sociology, with the technique and practice of social reform; for they are indispensable part of the machinery we need to realize our aims” (huxley 1948, 62). 34 “the thread running through most of these essays is the attempt to discover and apply in certain fields as much as possible of this scientific conception to several different fields of reality” (huxley 1923, xiv). 35 “the tenor of the theory of natural selection suited the intellectual climate of the second half of the nineteenth century remarkably well. […] with colonial empires abuilding and with imperial nations preparing to dispute each other’s claims to world mastery, it was a comforting thought that when the strong exploit or oppress the weak they are merely obeying natural laws and striving towards ‘progress’. […] darwin’s theory was good biology which was perverted by others to support bad sociology” (dobzhansky 1956, 59). 36 “what we have found is that there exists a certain general direction of movement in the evolution of living things; towards the increase of certain of their properties. but when we make a further analysis, we find that movement in this direction is a movement towards realization of the things judged by the human mind to have value (increase of power, knowledge, of purpose, of emotion, of harmony […]). what is important is that the human idea of value finds its external counterpart in an actual historical direction in phenomena, and that each becomes important because of the relationship” (huxley 1923, 59-60). “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 133 scientists themselves. society is considered a pure recipient and societal forces can neither shape the orientations of science, nor oppose any resistance to scientific imports. this comprehension of the translation and application of science has changed over recent decades. the notion of “scientific ideology”, in particular, challenges this vision of an immaculate science. the model of scientific ideology vs. the model of co-production science, according to canguilhem, embraces a cyclic temporality, where transitions from one theory to another are phases susceptible to incorporate extra-scientific concerns and thus convey ideological expressions. the identification and deciphering of ‘scientific ideologies’ is thus particularly helpful in informing our critical approach to the relationship between science and society, by highlighting the themes and patterns that, throughout the history of science, connected scientific practices and social concerns. since canguilhem’s work on ‘scientific ideology’, several disciplines in science studies have shown how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and how this, in turn, affects society, politics and culture. the concept of co-production developed in the field of science and technology studies (sts) is particularly interesting from this point of view. co-production is shorthand for “the proposition that the ways in which we know and represent the world (both nature and society) are inseparable from the ways in which we chose to live in” (jasanoff 2004, 3). with the model of co-production, sociology of science moves from extreme technological determinism and social constructivism, to a more systemic understanding of how technology and society ‘co-produce’ each other. contrarily to the historical concept of ‘scientific ideology’, the sociological framework of co-production can be applied to understand reciprocal relations in the making, between science and society. other than questions of temporality, there are at least two profound differences between the two concepts that underline contrasting views on both science and society. first, as a sensitizing concept, the idiom of co-production looks at four themes: “the emergence and stabilization of new techno-scientific objects and framings, the resolution of scientific and technical controversies; the processes by which the products of techno-science are made intelligible and portable across boundaries; and the adjustment of science’s cultural practices in response to the contexts in which science is done” (jasanoff 2004, 72). these are sensitive places to investigate, along the scientific process, how scientific experts and other groups co-generate new knowledge and technologies rather than specific phases in the theoretical cycle of science. when ‘co-production’ emphasizes the practicality of science, ‘scientific ideology’ relies firstly on the examination of its inner theoretical content, as expressed within scientific concepts. second, ‘co-production’ is functionally comparable to the concepts of positive feedback or co-evolution, which describe how two or more variables of a system affect and essentially create each other. in this systematic framework, all scientific claims incorporate social factors and are subject to negotiation. the notion of ‘scientific ideology’, on the contrary, introduces a dichotomy between ideological and no ideological science. canguilhem thus maintains a place for a substantially defined scientific rationality and even uses the inherently normative history of science to “judge” the past of science (canguilhem 1970, 13). going back to the case study of genetic load, one can however ask how to disentangle, historically speaking, ideological genetics from ‘pure’ genetics and if this proposition would even make sense. “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 134 as our vision of the relation of science and society has evolved, there may not be a place any longer for the notion of scientific ideology in the tools box of the historian of science. the emphasis on the practicality of science – significant enough to lead to developing subfields of philosophy and history of science in practices (ankeny, chang, boumans, & boon 2011; leonelli 2012; müller-wille & charmantier 2012) –, and maybe more importantly, the systematic approach that enables historians to interpret a seminal debate about experimental science in relation with its political fallout without judgment as to the intrinsic scientific value of the arguments involved (shapin & schaffer 1985), may prevent from an approach that seeks for ‘scientific’ concepts that betray the penetration of ideology in critical theoretical phases. however, we argue that the heuristics attached to scientific ideology remains fruitful to discuss the framework of co-production and its potential pitfall: noetic flatness. if science and society co-produce each other equally, the justification for maintaining the boundary between them dissolves. co-production, if used to broadly or uncritically, thus leads to a radical discourse of relativism and to the loss of scientific rationality. in contrast with this systematic framework, the canguilhemian approach invites historians to identify and decipher scientific concepts where extra-scientific elements permeate scientific rationality, thus maintaining boundary-work within the process. canguilhem’s appreciation of the intricacy of science and non-science remains subtle throughout his work. first, canguilhem recognizes the decisive role of valuation within science (canguilhem 1966). second, his judgment on otherwise wrong theories includes the appreciation of potential beneficial effects in the course of science. that was for example the case for vitalism, considered as an epistemological obstacle to the development of better theoretical systems in explaining biological phenomena, that however kept biologists’ concepts open to the uniqueness of the phenomena they are designed to understand and that did warn them against the reductionist pretentions of successful mechanistic theories (canguilhem 1977). canguilhem’s critics against vitalism are as such rather nuanced. it is thus not surprising that the concept of scientific ideology inherits from the same kind of ambivalence, being “at the same time an obstacle and a condition of possibility […] for the constitution of science” (canguilhem 1988, 38). as such, canguilhem’s lesson may well lead to a nuanced understanding of science rather than to a clear-cut separation of ideology and genuine science or to the loss in significance of scientific rationality. conclusion: past and present genetic load history is intriguing because its ideological content nurtures its scientific fate. it is also alarming because this specific ideological content touches the darkest hours of eugenics. based on our examination of genetic load as a scientific ideology, we conclude by indicating how some ideological elements that allowed the genetic load to persist as a relevant topic of population genetics beyond the expiration of its theoretical basis can still be observed in up-to-date science. in an evidence-based movement, where some knowers are privileged over others in policy decision-making, the legitimacy derived from experimental fact is key. this was true at the time of emergence of the genetic load model and is still true today. the ‘from cells to society’ approach, recently developed in a public health context, constitutes an attempt to anchor social interventions in molecular knowledge. the growth of the discipline of environmental epigenetics illustrates such a program. epigenetics is commonly defined as the “the structural adaptation of chromosomal regions so as to register, signal or perpetuate altered activity states” (bird 2007). put more simply, epigenetics refers to those mechanisms of gene regulation that do not involve changes in dna sequence. the discipline therefore brings debates about soft inheritance back to the fore (meloni 2015). if material and social factors seem massively engaged in producing aspects of our own biology, then social control may “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 135 allow us to take charge of our own heredity. here we are, more than half a century after the genetic load model was formulated, on the basis of entirely different claims, with the same proposal to enhance social progress and population health via the manipulation of our most intimate chemistry. a significant body of scholarship has already started to outline the implications of the anticipated translation of environmental epigenetics to social measures. in this matter, the political application of scientific claims is a double-edged sword. showing how acquired traits can be inherited may, hopefully, serve to promote social reform provided social investment proves worthwhile by the passing on of good habits across generations. however, if bad habits become bad biology, and the scars of past exposures and traumas give rise to ideas of specific groups being too damaged to be rescued, epigenetics may well become the basis for reproducing and consolidating structural differences in society – class, gender, and race (katz 2013; mansfield 2012). whether or not the translation of epigenetic into public health follows one set of values or another is not up to the scientists to decide but will eventually depend on the broader socio-political context in which science circulates (dupras 2014). although every era tends to assert that “its science somehow levitates above the social, economic, political forces of the day – and is free from such immersion” (duster 2015, 22), scientists are always caught in the social fabric of their times and the potential translation of scientific claims into policy-making adds thick layers imbued with social meaning and power to the investigation. a specific interest in the application of science might even shape the pursuit of scientific endeavors. because intervention might well be the telos that orients the generation of knowledge, there are ‘political epistemologies’ at stake in the most experimental settings. in the end scientific claims cannot be separated from their ideological surroundings. eugenicists seemed to have the weight of rigorous, quantitative, and thus scientific evidence on their side when, in actual fact, their scientific claims were controversial and were ultimately invalidated. to those with economic and social power and imbued with the new spirit of scientific planning, the tale of the eugenic load offered a rational approach to dealing with social problems. but it turned out that those social concerns had, to a great extent, led to the construction of the concept of genetic load (and not the other way around). the way in which society shapes scientific endeavor is not obvious. the pursuit of science presupposes metaphysical, political and moral commitments, such as those identified in the construction of the genetic load model. but scientific ambition for objectivity overturns these commitments and strips them away. advocates of evolutionary humanism were thus reduced to claiming the scientific sanction of evolutionary biology for values that originated elsewhere and could be argued for in the language of ethics and politics. the persistence of the concept of genetic load results from its position in limbo between a scientific argument and a political argument. recent developments in science result from the same kind of ambiguity. to cite just one example, the rise of environmental epigenetics is not only playing an important role in shaping the contours of socio-biological boundaries, but doing so, it also advocates in favor of certain conceptions of justice (loi 2013). because of the weight given to scientific claims and, in particular, to experimental evidence in policy-making – or, to put it differently, “when men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (thomas 1928, 571) – we must remain aware of the fact that laboratories are not places outside the world but reflect our own struggles within society. this might well be the lesson of canguilhem today. “genetic load”: how the architects of the modern synthesis became trapped in a scientific ideology alexandra soulier 136 acknowledgements i would like to thank alexandra ribéron (université paul sabatier toulouse 3) for his kind and precise supervision on population genetics as well as eric meslin and alessandro blassime for their help and encouragement with this article. references adams, m. b. 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york: knopf. wright, s. & dobzhansky, t. 1946. genetics of natural populations – xii. experimental reproduction of some of the changes caused by natural selection in certain populations of drosophila pseudoobscura. genetics 31: 125-156. microsoft word 8 celi layout 89 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 89-103 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access article article peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi1 abstract the aim of this paper is to show how the studies in energy field are intrinsically crossdisciplinary. energy undergoes to the general physics laws and, in particular, to the thermodynamics ones, but often we think it like a separate field, regard, for example, to the ecology. we show some example useful to see the analogy between those fields of study and how these analogies could enlighten the scientific explanation in both fields. keywords: peaks; cliffs; analogy; renewable and no renewable energy resource; energy depletion; energy return on investment (eroi). received: 2 july 2018. reviewed 14 march 2019. accepted: 20 january 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.08 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _______________________________________________________________________ introduction: the power of the analogy one of the most powerful instruments for the development of a specific field of knowledge is, sometimes, look at other fields and try reasoning “outside the box” and using the analogy. in history of science, there are many examples of this kind of “contamination” and a first way to distinguish them is the similarity that can be internal (the same field of study) or external (different field of study). we proceed with a couple of examples. the internal one is, for example, the case of pierre de fermat (1601-1665) who announce the theorem: an equation in the form xn+yn=zn have no solution for n>2. fermat wrote, in a book border, to have found the solution of this theorem (which from then on took his name), but this solution was never found. only in 1993, andrew wiles found the solution (and for that, he won the fields’ medal). in a popular science book (singh 1997) is reconstructed the story who lead wiles to this discovering and – without going down into details – the main point is that discovery it was possible thanks to the analogy between two fields of mathematics far from each other and 1 luciano celi [orcid: 0000-0002-9706-0469] is a researcher at the institute for the chemical and physical processes – national research council. address: via giuseppe moruzzi 1, 56124 pisa – italy. email: luciano.celi@pi.ipcf.cnr.it peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 90 without common points: the numbers’ theory and the differential geometry. both of them contribute to the solution: the value of mathematical bridges is enormous. they enable communities of mathematicians who have been living on separate islands to exchange ideas and explore each other’s creations. mathematics consists of islands of knowledge in a sea of ignorance. for example, there is the island occupied by geometers who study shape and form, and then there is the island of probability where mathematicians discuss risk and chance. there are dozens of such islands, each one with its own unique language, incomprehensible to the inhabitants of other islands. the language of geometry is quite different to the language of probability, and the slang of calculus is meaningless to those who speak only statistics. the great potential of the taniyama-shimura conjecture was that it would connect two islands and allow them to speak to each other for the first time. barry mazur thinks of the taniyama-shimura conjecture as a translating device similar to the rosetta stone, which contained egyptian demotic, ancient greek and hieroglyphics (singh 1997, 219-220). this example shows the dynamic inside a single discipline: mathematics. obviously, there are many examples of productive exchange, for example, between physics and mathematics. one of the most famous in recent times is the relationship between the tensor calculus and the general relativity theory. indeed, the “engine” of einstein's theory of general relativity, one of the most scintillating gems of twentieth-century science, is the work of an italian mathematician: gregorio ricci curbastro. albert einstein, after having been the victim of a real “block of the scientist”, found in the ricci tensor calculus the algorithmic apparatus that allowed him to transform an elusive intuition into a solid physical theory. that famous theory that represents the perfect condensation between einstein’s physical genius and the power, synthesis and elegance of mathematics created by ricci curbastro (toscano 2004). another example of the powerful prediction involves mathematics and astronomy and it is quite famous: the discovery of neptune. probably the liveliest description of this episode comes from the nobel prize in physics richard feynman: if we have confidence in a law, then if something appears to be wrong it can suggest to us another phenomenon. [...] jupiter, saturn and uranus were big planets that were known, and calculations were made about how slightly different from the perfect ellipses of kepler the planets ought to be going by the pull of each on the others. and at the end of the calculations and observations it was noticed that jupiter and saturn went according to the calculations, but that uranus was doing something funny. another opportunity for newton’s laws to be found wanting; but take courage! two men, adams and leverrier, who made these calculations independently and at almost exactly the same time, proposed that the motions of uranus were due to an unseen planet, and they wrote letters to their respective observatories telling them – ‘turn your telescope and look there and you will find a planet’. ‘how absurd’, said one of the observatories, ‘some guy sitting with pieces of paper and pencils can tell us where to look to find some new planet’. the other observatory was more… well, the administration was different, and they found neptune! (feynman 1965, 23-24). a quite singular case, where the mathematics was better than a telescope. in the following part of this paper, we show analogies between energetic resources, ecology, and a quasi-economic theory. peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 91 the concept of eroei (or eroi) and what the eroei means inside of the energy field study, one of the most important concepts is the eroei (or eroi), the acronym of energy return on (energy) investment. the concept comes from the ecology, it is relevant for many disciplines and charles hall developed it, in energy field (hall 2017). the simplest example of this cross-disciplinary approach is about the case of huntercroppers’ tribe. we can imagine a tribe that arrives in a savanna. they establish their camp and the men go hunting. initially, they find much prey but in few days the animals turn away from the camp and the men have the necessity to cover more distances to find new preys. how much time the camp remains in that piece of savanna? the (qualitative) answer is quite simple: they remain there until the energy spent to hunt preys (for themselves and tribe) is balanced by the number of preys (and then the number of calories they have). in other words: the energy return (er) must be greater than energy invested (ei) and, in particular, the value of eroi (= er/ei) must be bigger than one. this concept can be applied to the tribe but also to the energy resource like oil, pv panels and so on. in the case of oil, the quality (and the slope) of the curve for declining about energy comes from the study on the eroi. classical examples of this count are the extraction of oil. to have a qualitative measure of an implant is necessary having the net value of extraction (for example 100 barrels/day) and the value of energy necessary for the correct functioning of the implant (for example: 2 barrels/day). therefore, the eroei is 50. if we imagine using simple numbers to show the quality of the curve, the results are the following (with er = 100 and ei = from 1 to 20): picture 1: the hypothetical graph for a declining eroi, with energy investment from 1 to 20 however, to better understand “where we are” in the graph (always for the example of the oil extraction) a more useful parameter is the net energy, defined as: net energy (ne) = energy return energy investment. if we divide all terms for a single quantity er, the result is: ne/er = 1-(1/eroi), and, under the theoretical hypothesis of the er always equal 100 for the society, the ne value can be expressed in percentage. so, the equation is: ne(%)= [1(1/eroei)]*100. now, if we make a graph ne vs. eroei the result is the following: peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 92 picture 2: the “net energy cliff” and the bias of perception about this the red lines are precisely the meaning of the carrying capacity of the (eco)system: with eroi = 10 (more or less the point (a)) nothing seems to happen, but if eroi goes down again from 10 to 2, for example: so more or less the point (b) the decreasing of net energy is dramatic. the (real) history of st. matthew island’ reindeer population: when the renewable resources become no renewable some scientist uses the analogy between mankind and what happened in this remote angle of the world since 1944. almost at the end of wwii, the us coast guard colonized the st. matthew island for logistic reason. this island – in the middle of the bering sea – before 1944 was deserted. technicians and soldiers arrived to install a device useful for the navigation of ships around the area, and they brought with them 29 reindeer as food back up in case of bad weather or war problems. some months later the war was finished: the people go home, and the reindeer are vacated in an optimal habitat for them, without natural predators. for years, the entire world forgets the reindeer and in 1957 some researchers go to the island and found more or less 1,350 healthy animals. only six year after, in 1963, there are 6,000 reindeers but their conditions were not a good one: they ate all lichen in the island and they are only capable to grazing the sedge grass, but... also this resource of food is coming to the end. in 1964 the population dramatically fell down and there are on the island only 42 members: the entire population died for starving. the problem is that 41 are female and only 1 male, the last one infertile for the scarcity of food. so, in the eighties, also the last reindeer died. here, the curve of the population: peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 93 picture 3: trend of reindeer's population. this graph – made in matlab with few points – shows the real values (broken line) and the interpolation (smooth line). and here the graph of world population since 1000 b.c.2: picture 4: world population since 1000 b.c. the analogy between reindeer’ population and the humankind is evident: our island is the entire earth planet, but, as what happens to the reindeer, we have no natural competitors for thousands of years. from the industrial revolution, the human population grows substantially linear to the availability of energy per capita with high eroi. what about our future? something must change. from the hubbert’s peak to the seneca cliff in 1956 marion king hubbert, a shell geologist, in a meeting in texas, had predicted the us oil crisis in 1973: many colleagues did not believe him, but he had all the elements to do this: the amount of oil extracted per year in the usa and the growing consumption of the society. he became famous for a kind of theory3 that said something like this: “one day in the past we extracted the first oil barrel. one day in the future, we will extract the last one. in the 2 source: u.s. census bureau. 3 really closer to a formalization of a commonsense consideration than a theory tout court. peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 94 middle probably there is more or less a bell curve that indicates the maximum amount of oil extracted worldwide: the peak oil”. the peak oil became the hubbert’s peak.4 picture 5: hubbert’s peak oil and his depletion prevision could be the hubbert prevision changed? many things happened from 1973 and the world itself is changed, but focusing our attention on the curve, to what kind of force it is subjected? there is a force that transforms the peak into a cliff5 because the consumption is faster than the past, and the main cause is basically the population growth. another force (in the opposite direction to the previous) “extend” the time we have to make an energy transition: the technology enhancement. this happens with a greater ecological cost,6 but all can be measured with the eroi index. fast or not? one of the most relevant aspects of our society is the tendency to grow up in terms of capacity and speediness (we have constantly under the eyes cars faster and bigger than thirty-forty years ago). generally speaking, our society requires constantly a surplus of energy to perform jobs faster than before. 4 there is a little video clip where he personally explains, in a tv program, his theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usjoqxtvgz0 (all links are checked on june 30th, 2018). in this brief video, he shows another important thing: if we take a graph with the human history from the 5000 bc to 5000 ac, the oil peak becomes something more similar to a dirac impulse that a peak. in other terms: our society has available a lot more energy than they have had the past societies (and probably the future one). recently a young australian scientific communicator, stuart mcmillen, wrote a comic about the life of hubbert: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/peak-oil/. the picture comes from the original hubbert's work, presented to the geologists congress in 1956 at austin (texas): nuclear energy and the fossil fuels. 5 the cliff paradigm comes from ugo bardi and his intense activity of dissemination, in many blogs (http://thesenecatrap.blogspot.it/, http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.it/) and mailing list management (energy transition). recently he reorganized his work in a new book (bardi 2017). 6 a way to have an idea of this ecological devastation is sufficient a brief search: with google images look at “tar sands canada”. peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 95 ugo bardi, lecturer of chemistry at university of florence, uses a kind of paradigm to show his students this phenomenon: the higher will be the intensity in use of energy, the faster our society will fall down. in particular, bardi has used a famous sentence that comes from the ancient philosopher lucio anneo seneca: “it would be some consolation for the feebleness of ourselves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid”7. useful cases, in both animal and human populations, show this: in the next paragraph, we will suggest a linguistic analysis about a best seller like collapse (diamond 2005). jared diamond, famous for his previous book (diamond 1997), in collapse has analyzed the way in which ancient populations – often in uncertain balance with the environment – have faced the question of their survival and in which cases their strategies have had success or not. the leitmotiv about the decline is the same of the growth: “fast” and “rapid”. in particular: «writers find it tempting to draw analogies between those trajectories of human societies and the trajectories of individual human lives – to talk of a society’s birth, growth, peak, senescence, and death – and to assume that the long period of senescence that most of us traverse between our peak years and our deaths also applies to societies. but that metaphor proves erroneous for many past societies (and for the modern soviet union): they declined rapidly after reaching peak numbers and power, and those rapid declines must have come as a surprise and shock to their citizens» (diamond 2005, 6, bold mine). and talking about events happened on the easter island, we have found: around 1680, at the time of the military coup, rival clans switched from erecting increasingly large statues to throwing down one another’s statues by toppling a statue forwards onto a slab placed so that the statue would fall on the slab and break. thus, as we shall also see for the anasazi and maya […], the collapse of easter society followed swiftly upon the society’s reaching its peak of population, monument construction, and environmental impact (diamond 2005, 110, bold mine). again, along with the book, when he writes about the anazasi population: that should make us modern americans hesitate to be too confident yet about the sustainability of our first world economy, especially when we reflect how quickly chaco society collapsed after its peak in the decade a.d. 1110-1120, and how implausible the risk of collapse would have seemed to chacoans of that decade (diamond 2005, 155, bold mine). we don’t give here extra examples, but it is relevant to underline that diamond cannot avoid an explicit parallelism with our society: like easter island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise beads, maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster – reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern american ceos. the passivity of easter chiefs and maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels (diamond 2005, 177, bold mine). 7 lucius anneaus seneca, letters to lucilius, n. 91. the complete description of this paradigm, called the seneca cliff, can be find online at:http://thesenecatrap.blogspot.it/2015/11/the-seneca-effect-whydecline-is-faster.html peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 96 in nature, societies of animals normally find a balance with the environment (1) for the normal prey-predator dynamics8, or (2) for the particular hard condition of the environment itself. however, in some (not properly natural) cases, it is possible to find out that, without natural boundaries (weather conditions and prey-predator dynamics), the populations grow up until the limit of carrying capacity of the ecosystem, like the history of the reindeer in st. matthew island's suggests us. there are also some independent researchers (greer 2008) that thinking in another way the shape of declining. the society is more resilient than we expect and the time of transition between phases could be sufficiently long to allow a social adapting to the new phase. another peak (and cliff) in history of science: the “guano age” in peru there are examples in history of science (and maybe in history tout court) where we can see applied the hubbert peak or/and the seneca cliff? we have seen some cases (diamond 2005) and we can see them from an energetic point of view when also the renewable resources can become no renewable because of the consumption intensity (celi 2017). one of them, not listed in diamond and did not found elsewhere, is the “guano case”. the socio-political condition of peru in the mid-19th century knew a period of stability and prosperity thanks to revenues generated by the export of guano and the strong leadership of president ramón castilla, in 1845, when he started his first administration. guano, or bird droppings, had been accumulating on the coastal islands of peru for hundreds of years when, due to scientific breakthroughs in europe, it was suddenly discovered to have great value as a fertilizer. for forty years, the young peruvian state knows the prosperity, but in the 1870s was for peru's economy “a decade of crisis and change” (greenhill, miller 1973). nitrate extraction rose while guano extraction declined and sugar cane dethroned cotton as the main cash crop. guano exports dropped from 575,000 tons in 1869 to less than 350,000 tons in 1873 and the chincha islands and other guano islands were depleted or close to be so. deposits elsewhere were of poor quality (greenhill, miller 1973) and the “guano era” ended. a typical case of (low) renewable resource depletion, similar to the whale case at the beginning of the 19th century9. a few years later, as in the whale case, the question was resolved by a technological discovery: the haber process (also called the haber-bosch process), an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia and mainly used to produce fertilizer today. for the peruvian state, according to government experts, to only way to cope with the guano depletion was to supplement this one with synthetic fertilizer. foreign companies were brought in to construct plants, which used the haber-bosch process to create fertilizer. as a result, the guano administration company was renamed the corporacion nacional de fertilizantes (conafer). 8 see the lotka–volterra equations, explained also in an old book (d’ancona 1942). 9 this case is well described in a book (bardi 2014) and ironically, the whales, hunted for the (whale) oil, are saved by the beginning oil production. peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 97 last (ecological) example: oil dynamics market and the north american spruce budworm10 the behavior of complex systems is one of the most intriguing phenomena investigated by recent science; natural and artificial systems offer a wide opportunity for this kind of analysis. the energy conversion is both a process based on important physical laws and one of the most important economic sectors; the interaction between these two aspects of the energy production suggests the possibility to apply some of the approaches of the dynamic systems analysis. in particular, a phase plot, which is one of the methods to detect a correlation between quantities in a complex system, provides a good way to establish qualitative analogies between the ecological systems and the economic ones, and may shed light on the processes governing the evolution of the system. this section aims to highlight the analogies between some peculiar characteristics of the oil production vs. price, and show in which way such characteristics are similar to some behavioral mechanisms found in nature. in a previous study (celi, della volpe, pardi, siboni 2017), we tried to show how a phase plot of oil production (vs. the price) has an irregular trend (random walk) with two important features that identify as inelastic the oil market (the two lines in red, in the following picture). the relationship, even if only qualitatively, shows two peaks upward where the oil price became very high in few years, and then rapidly decreases (green lines: obviously, we are looking at the general trend, without considering the “random walk behavior” in the middle). picture 6: phase plot oil production vs. price, years 1965-2016 this kind of “swinging behavior” recalls some typical phenomena, investigated by some theories in the domain of complex systems. in particular, this is the case of thom’s catastrophe theory (thom 1972, cited in scheffer 2009). the behavior shown in the phase 10 this contribution was a part of the speech spruce budworm and oil price: a biophysical analogy held in the annual conference of the international society for biophysical economics, developing economics for a resource constrained world, wells college, aurora, ny, usa, june 2018, 13-17th. this work had also the contribution of claudio della volpe, stefano siboni (university of trento) and luca pardi (italian national research council, pisa). it is also a part of celi (2019). peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 98 plot (picture 6) in his simpler version could be represented as follows. we can imagine having two oil wells: one at a lower cost of extraction (i.e. 100 $/barrel) and one higher (200 $/barrel), as schematically shown in picture 7. picture 7: intensity of oil production vs. price if in our hypothetical world the consumption is in the range between 0 and 1,000 barrels/day, we use the oil at a lower price (green rectangle), with a price (ideally) inside the range 0-100 $/barrel. if the intensity of consumption grows, we need to use the second stock of oil at the higher price (red rectangle). in this case, the oil price increase quite rapidly, and the phase plot should be the following, in picture 8. picture 8: phase plot consumption vs. price the ecological model the phase plot should be like this because in our ideal world we expect that, if the oil price increases rapidly, the consumption decrease and, sooner or later, the society come back to the previous range of intensity of extraction (so in the green rectangle, picture 7). the main characteristic of this simple oil-price dynamics, here described, is that there are two rapid movements on the cycle (rise and descent of the price: phases 4-1 and 2-3) and two slow (consumption that goes up and down, to adjust itself to the oil price: phases 1-2 and 3-4)11. 11 the graph in picture 6 has higher prices because take into account the inertia of the social system. peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 99 the analogy between this characteristic of the oil market and some dynamics in ecology (for example kar, batabyal 2010; piltzy et al. 2017) is suggested at least by a model well studied (royama 1984; may 1977), where we have three species in competition between them, following a variant of the lotka-volterra model: 1. prey: the american spruce, whose needles are the food of caterpillars of the species choristoneura fumiferana (this is the slow variable since the regeneration of the leaves – and not only is a process that lasts several decades); 2. predator: the population of the caterpillars choristoneura fumiferana, considered able to vary rapidly (fast variable, since there are periodically observed demographic outbreaks of this species, considered a real scourge); 3. “super-predator”: the population of birds, which eat the caterpillars, but do so at a rate that we can consider constant (identified as a “natural” rate of mortality of the caterpillars themselves) because this predator actually does not feed exclusively on these caterpillars. the demographic explosion of the latter, however, saturates the space for all prey (the needles of the spruce). in this sense, we will not take into account, in the following discussion, this variable. in the construction of the ecological model, we start with a preliminary model in which the caterpillars’ population n is the only variable, while the spruces’ population s is introduced as an assigned parameter. we define a range s≤ s ≤ s+ of values for s, inside the caterpillars’ population could have three state of equilibrium (indicated in picture 9): 1. a “low” value of equilibrium n(s)-, asymptotically stable; 2. an intermediate value of equilibrium n(s)u, unstable, and 3. a “high” value of equilibrium n(s)+, also asymptotically stable. picture 9: equilibria of the system.12 12 (scheffer 2009, 20). peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 100 this notation recalls us that all equilibrium states are function of the parameter s. because of its instability, the equilibrium level n(s)u is inaccessible to the caterpillars’ population, inasmuch as any variation of the population determine a rapid leaving from equilibrium and a fast convergence of the system towards n(s)or n(s)+. for s < sonly the stable equilibrium n(s)is defined, while for s > s+ we have only the stable equilibrium at n(s)+. the preliminary model explains the outbreaks and collapses of caterpillars’ population as imputable to slow variations imposed by the parameter s, which due to these variations “crosses” the critical values sand s+. the variations of s are assumed “almost-static”, i.e. so slow to ensure that almost instantly the population of caterpillars settles at the corresponding equilibrium value (the relaxation times at equilibrium of the n population of the caterpillars are considered much shorter than those of variation of the parameter s). the typical cycle of outbreaks and collapses of the caterpillars’ population n is described as follow: 1. the process can start from a value s < s-, for which the caterpillars’ population corresponds to the equilibrium value n-; 2. then, we increase the value of the parameter s, corresponding to an increment of the spruce biomass. the parameter reaches and overtakes the critical value sand still grows up until the critical value s+. in this interval, the caterpillars’ population grows up but stands to the asymptotically stable equilibrium level n(s)-, because of all the possible fluctuations are lessened and reabsorbed. the compresence of the equilibrium n(s)u is not relevant, because of its instability; 3. the parameter s overtakes the critical value s+. the equilibrium n(s)suddenly disappears, along with n(s)u, and the population rapidly grows up to reach the “high” equilibrium value n(s)+, the only available and asymptotically stable. further increments of the parameter s determine a further, but contained, increase of the caterpillars’ population, in any case always corresponding to the equilibrium value n(s)+; 4. the next step is reducing the parameter s, to simulate what in reality happens: the overpopulation of caterpillars depletes the spruce biomass and determines its reduction. the parameter s reaches and overtakes the critical value s+, following its decrease until s-. the caterpillars’ population slowly decreases, maintaining itself, as long as possible, close to the asymptotically stable equilibrium point n(s)+,. also in this part of the cycle the intermediate equilibrium n(s)u, even if defined, does not play any role because of its instability; 5. the last step: the parameter s finally passes below the critical value s-. this results in the destruction of the equilibrium n(s)+, as well as that of n(s)u, with a consequent rapid collapse of the caterpillar population to the only available equilibrium value n(s)-. any further decrease in s leads to a reduction in the population of the caterpillars, which however remains at the equilibrium value n(s); 6. now the caterpillars’ population is at the minimum level, the spruces biomass can start to grow up again, so that the parameter s grows up in turn and the cycle restarts. the previous model with a variable (n) and a parameter (s) suggests a more complex twovariable model in which the population of caterpillars and the biomass of spruces are peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 101 considered both as dynamic variables, in mutual interaction. in the further differential equation that governs the dynamics of s the characteristic constant parameters are chosen to ensure that the variation of s over time remains relatively slow. in this way, we can consider that the trends observed in the preliminary model with a single variable persist also in the new two-variable model, giving rise to a stable limit cycle characterized by two rapid growth and decrease phases of the caterpillars’ population n. these rapid variations of budworm population alternate with two relatively slow growth and decrease phases of the same population, while the biomass of spruces varies always rather slowly, both increasing and decreasing, throughout the cycle. picture 10: 10.1: the matlab simulation for the phase plot caterpillars’ population vs. spruces foliage and (10.2) the same values in time. the transition to economics the shift from ecology to the economy (oil price-eroi cycle) is suggested by the following qualitative considerations: 1. the price of oil is potentially able to undergo very rapid changes, being linked to the delicate balance between supply and demand. on the contrary, eroi presents itself as a parameter that changes slowly because its decrease naturally derives from the exploitation of deposits, while its increase can be obtained through the implementation of cultivation technologies already available (at best), the search for new deposits, or the improvement of the technologies themselves, operations that require time and significant investments; peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 102 2. a very low level of eroi can be associated with a rapid increase in average prices, due to the difficulty of extracting the resource at low energy costs; on the other hand, a very high eroi will favor high levels of production and a general decline in the price of the resource. these observations suggest identifying: (a) the population n of the caterpillars with the average price of oil and (b) the biomass s of the spruces with the reciprocal of the eroi, variable that assumes low values when the eroi is high and vice versa. this is an index of the energy cost that must be borne to obtain a unit of useful energy. the interesting aspect of the model is that the price is not described as a function of the eroi, because two different price levels correspond to the same value of eroi, according to the historical phase of the economic cycle where the system is placed. basically, we are faced with two zones of stability, one with high content and one with a low content of “predators” (price), which are alternately reached. the reason why the sizes were chosen is that, in the oil model, the quantity that varies faster is the price, while both the total production and the eroi (which depends on technology and investments) are sizes with too many constraints to be able to vary quickly. eroi does not succeed because of the technical conditions of production, while production because of the constant energy hunger. conclusions the concept of eroi here described is used to look at the quality of an energy resource (in the broader sense of the term). as shown, this is not only a good parameter of evaluation but also a way to compare different energy sources, because, from a mathematical point of view, the eroi is a dimensionless number. this concept is powerful: we have shown its use in different fields of study and it could be seen as a method or a point of view to teaching science in a cross-disciplinary way, with the aim to enlighten with analogies, the typical dynamics of disciplines apparently far from each other. references bardi u. 2014. extracted: how the quest for mineral wealth is plundering the planet. chelsea green publishing: vermont, usa. bardi u. 2017. the seneca effect. why growth is slow, but collapse is rapid. springer: germany. celi l. 2017. far from (the sense of) equilibrium: some cognitive aspects of our way of life in the present era. italian version in cruciani m., tabacchi m. e. (eds.) nuovi sguardi sulle scienze cognitive. corisco edizioni: messina, italy. english version available in the elsevier open access repository at the address: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3336688 celi l. 2019. modeling and communicating the dynamics of energy market, ph.d. thesis in environmental engineering, university of trento. celi, l., della volpe, c., pardi, l. et al. 2018. biophyscal economics and resourse quality 3: 15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41247-018-0048-1 celi l., della volpe c., pardi l., siboni s. 2017. oil economy phase plot: a physical analogy. «arxiv»: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03533 d’ancona u. 1942. la lotta per l’esistenza. einaudi: turin, italy. diamond j. 1997. guns, germs and steel: the fates of human societies. w.w. norton publisher: new york, usa. diamond j. 2005. collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed. viking press: new york, usa. peaks and cliffs: an example of the power of analogy across disciplines luciano celi 103 feynman r. 1965. the character of physical law. mit press: cambridge, massachusetts, usa. greenhill r., miller r. 1973. the peruvian government and the nitrate trade, 1873–1879. journal of latin american studies 5: 107-131. greer j. m. 2008. the long descent. a user's guide to the end of the industrial age. new society publisher: gabriola island, british columbia, canada. hall c. a. s. 2017. energy return on investment. a unifying principle for biology, economics, and sustainability. springer: new york, usa. kar t. k., batabyal a. 2010. persistence and stability of a two prey one predator system. international journal of engineering, science and technology 2, 2: 174-190. may r. m. 1977. thresholds and breakpoints in ecosystems with a multiplicity of stable states. nature 269: 471-477. piltzy s.h. et al. 2017. a predator-2 prey fast-slow dynamical system for rapid predator evolution. «journal of applied dynamical systems», 16, 1: 54-90. royama t. 1984. population dynamics of the spruce budworm choristoneura fumiferana. ecological monographs 54(4): 429-462. scheffer m. 2009. critical transitions in nature and society. princeton university press: uk. singh s. 1997. fermat’s last theorem. fourth estate ltd: uk. thom r. 1972. structural stability and morphogenesis. w. a. benjamin publisher: san francisco, usa. toscano f. 2004. il genio e il gentiluomo. einstein e il matematico italiano che salvò la teoria della relatività generale. sironi editore: milan, italy. microsoft word 9estellita-lins edler layout 90 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 90-107 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the authors 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins 1 flavio coelho edler2 abstract: the article explores theoretical convergences between the work of georges canguilhem and lucien febvre on the theme of science and technique. in comparing the scholarship of both authors from the 1920s through 1940s, we endeavor to show that their critique of mechanistic determinism was rooted in the concept of the genres of life (not only human) and its creative interaction with the environment. keywords: technique; genres of life; annales; georges canguilhem; lucien febvre received: 6 january 2018. accepted: 8 april 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.09 ____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction the work of georges canguilhem, philosopher and historian of science, has been the object of serious reevaluation in recent decades. initiated in 2011, the publication of his complete works has shed light on the shaping and linkages of an extensive oeuvre that had been hard to access, especially prior to 1939. a trenchant writer, during his long life he did not write books but mostly papers, an outliving scholarship that stretches from the period between the two world wars through post-holocaust reconstruction, existentialism, structuralism, and the protests of may 1968. interpretations that assign canguilhem’s work to the realm of epistemology can now be viewed as unsatisfactory and incomplete. working with archives and primary sources, as well as interviews, news reports, and other observations by canguilhem himself, three researchers – camille limoges, jeanfrançois braunstein, and vázquez garcia – identified a dialogue between canguilhem and the strasburg circle. vázquez garcia (2016) investigated the matter in depth and asked if there might not be a subtle relationship between the french history of sciences and the school of the annales d’histoire économique et social. obscure, complex, and fragmented, not much is known about the former. maimed by the death of jean cavaillès, the field would head in even 1 carlos estellita-lins is a professor of the graduate program in health information and communication at the oswaldo cruz foundation. address: av. brasil, 4036 – manguinhos, rio de janeiro – rj , 21040360, brazil – email: cefestellita@gmail.com 2 flavio coelho edler is a professor of the graduate program in the history of the sciences and health at the oswaldo cruz foundation. address: av. brasil, 4036 – manguinhos, rio de janeiro – rj , 21040361, brazil – email: fcedler@gmail.com charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 91 more unexpected directions with michel foucault and michel serres. the annales school is firmly recognized for its profound historiographic renewal, but it never intersected with the french history of sciences. in reaching his conclusions about this absence of any encounter between the two, vázquez garcia thoughtfully portrayed the current evaluation: random observations by foucault, who is recognized as a disciple or associate of canguilhem’s; observations by historians of philosophy; debates over french intellectual history in recent decades; and considerations by the latest generations that branched out from the annales. he leaves us with the presupposition that these two movements, centered on the investigation of history, were mutually unaware or uninterested in each other. however, the exception lies precisely in canguilhem, who maintained personal relationships with maurice halbwachs and georges friedmann, as vázquez garcia ascertained in his documental research. we know that canguilhem frequented the same strasbourg circle as marc bloch and lucien febvre, although he began teaching at the école des lettres (which moved to clermont-ferrand) only in late 1941, by which time bloch and febvre had gone back to paris. both movements were also influenced by a number of the same scholars, such as vidal de la blache, françois simiand, henri berr, and lucien lévi-bruhl, not to mention the french school of sociology. a quarter of a century ago, roberto machado, one of the first commentators on the relationship between archeology and epistemology, asserted that canguilhem’s work presented a remarkably homogeneous reflection on life that, thematically speaking, focused on what the “partisan philosopher” called the “history of life sciences”. machado also affirmed that canguilhem’s goal was the “evaluation of scientific rationality; in short, a judgment regarding scientificity” (machado 1982, 17). for the first time, this valorization of canguilhem in brazil, and likewise in france, evinced his important role in the formation of the issue of knowledge in michel foucault’s archeology (machado 1982; 1988). on the other hand, machado’s interpretation might have overlooked the philosophical and historical provenance of the concept of living being (vivant) in canguilhem’s work–nothing unusual for the time. in these pages, we argue that life’s dynamic normativity, sprung from vitalist roots, guides and interweaves a good share of the author’s epistemological reflections on the complex relationships between nature and art, science and technique. as to febvre and bloch, it is worth noting that there has been a major rediscovery of the theme of technique (technology and applied science) in the historiography of the annales. pamela long wrote: […] seven years after founding their journal, bloch and febvre published a special issue titled les techniques, l’histoire et la vie, a collection of empirically based articles, criticism, and prescriptive and programmatic statements. it is a landmark in the historiography of technology. (long 2005, 178) their goal was to fill a gap they could identify as editors in a subject until then neglected by historians. this endeavor encompassed investigations into feudalism, medieval man’s relation to the land, the taylorist assembly line, and the issue of labor and tools. a marked reliance on economic archives in the realm of production seems to have cast special light here. françois dosse delineates the initiative, pointing out that: they endeavored to adapt their historical approach to the technical, technocratic era of the 1930s in order to prove useful to the economic decision-making centers. it was thus that bloch and febvre surrounded themselves with leaders from the international administrative hierarchy and business world. (dosse 19853) 3 all citations in french without any english published translation have been translated by the authors from the original text. charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 92 it should be underscored that technique was a pioneer issue in the annales, less as something novel and much more as a first effort to address its challenging incorporation in the field of historiography. in the words of bertrand gille: in the annales of 1935, lucien febvre and marc block do not appear to have just discovered the history of techniques, but rather they were emphasizing the interest of the subject, and the little attention paid to it by historians. this does not mean that it had been completely neglected until this point, but by its very nature it was placed outside the main body of history. it was as difficult to integrate technical history into history as a whole as it was to integrate the techniques themselves into a general economic theory, to take but one example. lucien febvre clearly discerned that there was a conflict of spheres. (gille 1986, 3) in addition to gille and long, other scholars of technique, like pestre and edgerton, have stressed the unique nature of this project, as well as its pertinence and prestige (edgerton and pestre 1998; gille 1978; 1979; long 2000; 2010; pestre 1995). we offer the hypothesis that this very specific field of the annales historians was to play a pervasive yet relevant role in canguilhem’s work, influencing his choice of research questions and how he linked them. we call special attention to his notion of “techniques of the living being”, which was clearly laid out when he addressed medical therapeutics as a vital technique, starting in 1945. in agreement with braunstein (2000), we recognize the strategic importance of technique in canguilhem’s thought and seek to identify something common to both projects, shared semantic fields as it were, an argument that gains plausibility through contact with intercessors (places, people, texts). neither machado, cristina chimisso, nor françois delaporte emphasized technique in canguilhem’s work, probably due to the difficult access to “canguilhem before canguilhem”. it must be underscored that rheinberger (2005) and méthot (2013) – besides braunstein (2000) – also acknowleged the question of technique in their investigative approach. the cultural roots of concept and techniques is discussed but a proper problematization of the annales is still lacking. the last text published by michel foucault himself explains canguilhem within a brief history of contemporary french philosophy (foucault 1985). there are no traces of any discussion of the topic of technique in foucault’s arguments. however, while this matter was not of direct interest to him, it is evident that his remarkable concern with the “materiality of discursive techniques” and “power technologies” tied his genealogical project to his former phd advisor. foucault talks repeatedly about political body technology, truth technology, self techniques, and life techniques. as peter dews has in fact suggested, “canguilhem has also influenced foucault through his interest in the social and technical conditions which intervene in the history of the sciences” (dews 1992, 10). this lends broader scope to an examination of the relationships between the historiography of the annales and the history of life sciences through a historical and philosophical problematization of technique. therefore, the examination of the relationships between the historiography of the annales and the history of life sciences through a historical and philosophical problematization of technique lends broader scope to our subject. we would like to emphasize that canguilhem’s analysis of scientific discourse, which the french philosopher understood to be processual and historical, centers on conceptual interrelations and thus on intellectual context and notions of discontinuity and recurrence. this reflection conjoins two issues: on the one hand, the relationship between life and norms and, on the other, between life and knowledge. here life is not only a concept but primarily a philosophical question. this requires a distancing from late nineteenth-century germanic charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 93 philosophies of life (lebensphilosophien), as well as from the positivist or physicalist solutions derived from auguste comte in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and acknowledged by canguilhem’s mentor, alain (émile chartier) (bianco 2009). focusing on canguilhem’s early approach, dating from the 1930s through 1950s, we highlight how he sought to redefine the scope of narratives regarding scientific knowledge and their technical dimension (of the living being and life) within the academic debate. canguilhem calls for a project of the history of the life sciences, defined by strict boundaries and conditions of possibility, that is, a history of the living being, which poses life as a question. knowledge and technique inaugurated the reflexivity of the living being grappling with life, rather than constituting elements of a philosophy of the subject or of consciousness appended ad hoc. this epistemological and historiographic project was entirely new, concentrated on a conception of life and knowledge as correlates, and it renovated and reshaped the project of a philosophy of life. canguilhem chose a number of interlocutors, in addition to the first generation of the annales, to engage in the dialectical construction of his main theses. let us remember the intellectual context that shaped this generation from strasbourg, which encompassed sociologists, ethnologists, economists, and geographers. although relevant, the philosophical realm lies well outside the scope of this paper. it must only be noted that canguilhem was a disciple of alain, like simone weil; that he and his generation were fascinated by bergsonian philosophy; and that he was a contemporary of sartre, aron, and nizan, among others. in-depth studies of kant, hegel, and marx were institutionalized in france, and his generation would live out the decision to embrace or reject phenomenology and its developments. the weight of merleau-ponty, ludwig binswanger, and eugen minkowski’s phenomenology must of course be recognized in the normal and the pathological (canguilhem 1991), albeit circumscribed to issues of perception, psychology, psychopathology, and psychiatry. the discussion of life as technique certainly requires one to address nietzsche’s philosophy (within the specific framework of how it was received in france), along with bergsonism, as read by canguilhem. moreover, the discussion also depends greatly on layers of interpretation of darwinism, something else that lies outside the bounds of this paper. given that the whole of canguilhem’s work has been the object of broad, thoroughgoing analytical investigations, the present paper limits itself to pinpoint the debate over the relationship between human life and technique in the french intellectual context of this particular time. philosophy of science kept its distance from the emerging field of technique. on the one hand, we must remember the enormous, unexplored legacies of pierre duhem and émile meyerson within the history of physics and, on the other, the deep schism between continental philosophy and the wiener kreis, devoted to a unified, propositional-semantic science or logico-mathematical formalism. a biographical fact relevant to the debate within the history of science was canguilhem’s meeting with jean cavaillès, which guaranteed the former a road into the teaching of philosophy.4 cavaillès was quite close to canguilhem and was a major partisan leader.5 as the author of a singular epistemological renewal, he was a mathematical philosopher concerned with math history and “mathematical becoming”, who persistently problematized mathematical institutionism and constructionism while keeping to a formalist path. his (unfinished) approach earned him a place among french philosophers who were discussing mathematics, logic, and physics before wwii. understanding mathematics to be a science independent from logic, he reserved a special place for 4 canguilhem would take cavaillès’s post as professor of philosophy at clermont-ferrand. 5 bloch, halbwachs, wallon, and cavaillès died as heroes of the resistance, while canguilhem, friedmann, and lautmann occupy even more notable places in the pantheon of resistance fighters than jean rouch, dina dreifuss, or even de gaulle (sartre, beauvoir, and lévi-strauss being their almost diametrical opposites). charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 94 technique. remarking on the crisis in mathematics, he recognized mathematicians for abandoning “the hope of grounding arithmetic and analysis in a purely logical notion”, while he also hailed them for “the effort through which they transformed a philosophical conception of mathematics into a mathematician’s technical problem” (cavaillès 2012, 491). the project sur la logique et la théorie de la science – a posthumous publication rescued from a gestapo prison by the resistance and published by canguilhem himself in 1946 – seems to have permitted a certain distancing from phenomenology and a complete rupture with logical neo-positivism.6 this premise aside, we can note that cavaillès’ archeology still endeavored to engage with husserl’s “origin of geometry”. this was possible through a rereading of kant’s transcendental logic via ludwig bolzano and via cantor’s and frege’s set theory (cavaillès 1997). the intellectual climate of the 1930s echoed the disillusions of the 1920s, deepened by the capitalist crisis of overproduction and the great economic depression (ory and sirinelli 2002). as an outgrowth of the paradoxes fostered by the mechanization of productive processes and the dissemination of technological products in daily life (which engendered both positive expectations and frustrations), this newfound sensitivity may account for the emergence of the theme among historians and philosophers alike. bloch, lefebvre des noëttes, guilleux la roërie, friedmann, and febvre were among the pioneers of these breakthrough approaches in france, as were lewis mumford and others in great britain (goff et al. 1990). for its part, rural history drew french researchers closer to polish historians, such as franciszek bujak, jan rutkowski, geremek, and kula, in the realm of land-use and agricultural labor techniques (geremek 1986). a historiography of technique emerged during this same period, exemplified by the journals blätter für technikgeschichte (vienna, 1932); recueil annuel des travaux de l’institut d’histoire des sciences et des technique de l’université de paris (1934); annales d’histoire économique et social, first released in poland in 1931 (with the support of bloch); and archives of the history of science and technique, launched in leningrad in 19337 (gama 1985, 3-4; gille 1990, 580). focused on this same era – during which the image of progress reflected in the mirror was irremediably shattered – exploratory works ranging from arthur vierendeel, in esquisses d’une histoire de la technique (1921), through andré ducasses, histoire des techniques (published in 1945 as part of the collection que saisje?), reveal the dynamic nature of the topic, which by then had reached the public at large. after the nazis took power in 1933, anti-communism and anti-fascism became the benchmarks of european political engagement. in 1934, against this backdrop, georges friedmann published problémes du machinisme en urss et dans les pays capitalistes (friedmann 1935). the book was well received by the editors of the annales, who had parted ways with the circle of ideologies hostile to rationalization and the intensive use of machines in factories. in a laudatory review, febvre noted that, in contrast with the prophets of the soulless world who viewed technique as a cause of moral and intellectual decay (henri bergson, georges duhamel, oswald spengler, gina lombroso), friedmann argued that the essence of the problem lies in the use of technique in capitalism, where “the products of thought turn against men rather than serving them” (febvre 1934, 398). from 1933 to 1934, the cercle de la russie neuve, founded in 1932 by a group of sovietophile intellectuals, brought mathematicians, astronomers, biologists, linguists, psychologists, historians, and philosophers together to compare the status quo of these sciences in the ussr and western countries. praising the initiative, febvre noted the affinities between the project of the annales group and these french marxists’ view of the fragmentized way in which the field of 6 cavaillès attended the davos seminars, along with levinas, among others, and there met rudolf carnap. cavaillès’ opposition to logical neo-positivism mirrored canguilhem’s own: both men deemed as inappropriate this degree of hostility towards the metaphysical tradition, especially given its subsequent replacement with a “metaphysics of physics”. 7 архив истории науки и техники (archive of the history of science and technology). charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 95 western science was organized (that is, grounded in biases about schools, sectarianism, and career considerations), while he also called attention to the vast methodological problems raised around a common theme: science and technique (febvre 1935a, 615-23). some authors were tightly associated with the philosophical and historical interrogation of technique. not only did friedmann question the limits, dangers, and specificity of technique from a marxist perspective; we can further identify a deep heideggerian interrogation (“frage nach der technik”, for example), along with a third project, focused on the ontology of technical objects, represented by the work of gilbert simondon, who was in fact canguilhem’s student. “techniques, history, and life” our intention is to explore convergences surrounding the theme of science and technique. the title of this section has been lifted verbatim from the 1935 annales dossier that was dedicated to reflections on the history of techniques. the dossier presented a set of theoretical and methodological problems, alongside some monographic studies on the development of certain technologies. marc bloch’s famous study on the advent of watermills was published in this issue, as well as studies on vessel rudders; taylorism; the forge and metallurgy; the origin of cultivated plants; harnesses, horseshoes, and yokes for traction animals in antiquity; and ogives in gothic architecture. the issue is considered a veritable research program. in his brief introduction to the dossier, febvre offers methodological considerations on the meaning of a history of techniques, laid out in three parts. he begins by linking the notion of technique to the idea of human labor in general, that is, to tasks, activities, and ways of proceeding employed by each trade, occupation, or industry in different eras. his focus is on both the “‘workers’, in flesh and blood, or [tools,] in wood or metal: men or machines” (febvre 1935, 531) the underlying proposal was to foster an inventory of tools and machinery and the ways they are used and manufactured, through an interdisciplinary approach that called on the expertise of technicians, historians, and ethnologists. and since techniques, like tools, are lent or borrowed, and because secrets always come to light, no matter how well locked up, febvre felt that the historian should follow them “on their journeys through time and space” (febvre 1935, 531). pamela long also points out that, paradoxically: “this history of techniques must be written by technicians”, yet “even a ‘technical history of techniques’ must be grounded in an understanding of the general conditions (social, economic, political) within which they were used and transmitted” (long 2005, 178). in a way, the methodological demand made by the new program born in strasbourg was fulfilled quite precisely by canguilhem, who obtained his degree in medicine and qualified himself by writing “essai sur quelques problèmes concernant le normal et le pathologique”, a veritable textbook of axiological philosophy (or perhaps history of science), disguised as a concluding medical thesis. febvre’s second methodological consideration, related to discontinuity in the development of techniques, bears a resemblance to the canguilhemian approach in two ways: first, febvre hesitates to conceive of the history of technique as evolution in the sense of kinship and ongoing refinement. he sees “progress” in the realm of technique as the result of both an amassing of small discoveries and a series of abrupt changes, revolutions that generate radically new situations (fevbre 1935, 532). what matters to the historian is being equipped “to understand the progress of techniques, both their incremental transformation and the precipitous changes or ‘revolutions’ that create radically new situations” (long 2005, 179). this problem involving discontinuities in knowledge, so dear to canguilhem, translates immediately into the problem of the relationship between theory and practice, which both authors saw as a major issue. febvre expressed this second sense as “the problem of science”: “to what extent – certainly varying according to era and technique – do the creation or modification of tools and the development and transformation of procedures depend charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 96 either on chance (or on what has come to be called mechanical necessity), or on a strictly technical chain of causes and effects, or on a set of advances that are scientific per se?” (fevbre 1935, 532). when febvre developed his thoughts on the relationship between science and technique, he rejected any single meaning or causal determinism. he believed that the “problem of science” unfolded at different levels: from cause to effect, from effect to cause, wherein time, moment, and opportunity each played a substantial role. blending concepts from marx and cournot, he conjoined the material contexts needed to solve technical or scientific problems, a necessary but not sufficient condition for discovery, because scientific consequences only come about if chance crosses paths with a prepared human spirit. it should be underscored that febvre labeled himself a critic of the self-image of western science, which he felt was neither as pure nor as disinterested as its spokespeople liked to proclaim. the irrefutably temporal and utilitarian goals of western science, imprinted on french science institutions like the école polytechnique and école normale supérieure, revealed how the actions of the state were grounded in practical needs. in his review of à la lumière du marxisme – a collection of contributions from the scientists who took part in the event organized by the cercle de la russie neuve, mentioned earlier – febvre seconded a number of the concepts defended by henri wallon in the book’s introduction, especially regarding relationships between science and technique: “we shouldn’t believe in easy games – here, technique; there, science; between the two, the tough cable of unidirectional causality”. therefore, in addition to endorsing the proposition that “technique and science are merely two notions, between which human activity establishes a back-and-forth”, he shared the ideas (“so close to the ones i support”) that saw in man “the craftsman who, in transforming his physical environment, likewise obliges himself to transform the social environment – and thus transform himself” (febvre 1935a, 618). the view that science and technique enjoyed marked autonomy was pertinent to the first generation of the annales and highly influential in the french social sciences of that day. the relative independence of each complicates the task of studying their relationships. the history of the life sciences in fact gains meaning through this dimension, rejected in the anglo-saxon world for a variety of reasons. equally important are febvre’s thoughts on the contribution of georges friedmann, who advocated a marxist approach to the mechanization of work, evincing the role of human will in history, in contrast with the “fatalism of a history that unfolds automatically, without the intervention of human will – men finding themselves purely and simply manipulated by economic conditions, like pieces on a chess board” (febvre 1935a, 619). evident in both views are echoes of the vidalian concept of genres of life (genres de vie),8 as conceived by febvre, with a rejection of the mesological determinism of life in general and especially of human life, as we will discuss later. it should also be noted that the 1935 annales dossier included a biographical sketch of taylor, along with comments on his contribution to the scientific organization of work, written by george friedmann. this marxist philosopher would publish his findings on the problems of the technical rationalization of work and machinism in les problèmes humains du machinisme industriel (1946), lauded by canguilhem in his thoroughgoing review (canguilhem 1947). febvre’s third and last analytical consideration derives from a theoretical presupposition dear to the strasbourg historians, to wit, the conception of a general, or 8 the term “genres de vie” should be envisaged as a pregnant concept. it has been translated as “ways of life”, “types of life”, “modes of life”, “forms of existence”, and even “lifestyle”. in this text, it has been consistently rendered as “genres of life” not keeping with “ways of life”, in the 1925 translation of febvre’s la terre et l’évolution humaine, entitled a geographical introduction to history. althought the french word “genre” means both gender and genre in english, we believe that the second one keeps the original polysemic array that vidal de la blache and febvre foresaw, such as: biological, philosophical, linguistic and literary. charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 97 integral, history that presupposes that technique is subject to the influences of other human activities, with which it interacts. this means that “each era has its technique and each technique displays the era’s style, a style that shows to what extent everything is entwined and interferes in human facts” (febvre 1935, 533). according to febvre, whether responding to the needs of religious, artistic, political, military, or any other social group, techniques are human works meant to satisfy many other human needs in a given era. the problem with general history, understood as a totality, is thus made clear, as is the problem of man or of anthropology. this program is meant to be organic and subsumed to a single unit: these three approaches to a history of technology – the technical history of techniques, the study of both incremental and revolutionary change, and investigation of the relationships of techniques and other human activities – must be inseparable and “perfectly united”. (long 2005, 179) amidst this effervescence, canguilhem, in an article published in 1937, convokes cartesian philosophy to intervene in the reigning dispute between science and technique. we should bear in mind the political and intellectual path that led the philosopher to address the matter of technique. as we well know, two things caused canguilhem to distance himself from his mentor alain, and also from jules lagneau, in the mid-1930s. his rejection of pacifism tightened his ties to the committee of anti-fascist intellectuals and made him a supporter of peasant struggles, stances taken earlier by bloch and febvre. according to braunstein, canguilhem viewed alain’s “integral pacifism” in the face of germany’s advancing nazism as both a political mistake and a philosophical shortcoming. braunstein also argues that it was canguilhem’s opinion that alain was absolutely hostile to history: “against the historical spirit, he [alain] believes in human nature, in eternal history” (braunstein 2000, 15). embracing the same explanation for the split between mentor and disciple, giuseppe bianco argues that this political and philosophical distancing fit into a broader framework of transition from one philosophical sequence to another. canguilhem questioned “both the anthropology of alain (his theory of knowledge and his physiology) and his sociology (his theory of society and its transformations)” (bianco 2009, 129). for his part, renzo ragghiantie (2012, 69) presses home the notion of a slower yet quite profound political and ethical distancing, while georges navet steers clear of a similar interpretation as he looks for bridges between pacifism and resistance (navet 2012, 82-83). as stated earlier, canguilhem was in line with bergson in this theoretical regard. according to braunstein, it was bergson who furnished him with the arguments against the “veneration of facts” and “rejection of values”, arguments borrowed earlier from alain. as a veritable antidote to descartes, the key contribution of bergsonism was the development of a biological philosophy of mechanism, which saw machines as organs of life and laid the foundations of a general organology (braunstein 2012, 98). correspondingly, cartesianism provided an opportunity for an in-depth discussion of the machine and mechanism. thus, in descartes et la technique, canguilhem – the young professor of philosophy who had taken over alain’s post in toulouse – asked what possible contribution the 16th century thinker might make to the contemporary theoretical debate: “is technical activity a mere extension of objective knowledge, as has become the common view, based on positivist philosophy, or is it the expression of an original, essentially creative ‘power’ for which science would subsequently devise a development program, or a cautionary code?” (canguilhem [1937] 2011, 491). here canguilhem was endeavoring to demonstrate the direct yet nuanced way in which the author of discours de la méthode approached the phenomenon of technique. according to him, theory takes precedence over practice in a good share of cartesian formulations. however, in dioptrique (1637), we can note an awareness of a relation between knowledge (theoretical) and construction (technique), by which the former depends on the latter. canguilhem thus finds elements to support his idea that in cartesian charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 98 philosophy, “science proceeds from technique not as if truth were a codification of utility […] but, conversely, to the extent that technical dilemmas, non-success, and failure invite the human spirit to question the very nature of the resistances revealed by human art, to conceptualize obstacles as objects independent of human desires, and to pursue true knowledge” (canguilhem 2011, 498). as canguilhem saw it, the effort to correct and refine technique – which science seeks to govern – lies not in understanding, even if understanding endows the informed man with the means to move beyond the artisan’s practical knowledge. in his words, “technical initiative lies in the demands of the living being” (canguilhem 2011, 498). here we see that canguilhem believed there were deep, inextricable links between technique and the demands of life. this idea displays blatant thematic continuity with his concluding medical thesis, completed six years later. it should likewise be pointed out that the meaning of vitalism changed radically through canguilhem, apparently resulting in historical reevaluations of the brands of vitalism prevalent in montpellier and paris. we can say that holism/organicism was reconfigured along neo-vitalist lines or into a rational vitalism (vitalisme rationel) following world war ii. canguilhem’s exchange with the neurologist kurt goldstein is not detached from a translation of the “philosophies of life” into a conceptual history of physiology, a development that played a decisive role. although, writing in 1937, canguilhem clearly conceived of vitalism as never reducing living beings to their physical or chemical environment (canguilhem 2011, 294), he doubted that one could safely and wholly affirm that the analogy between thought and life “goes beyond a metaphor”. a sophisticated reflection on the problem of vitalism and mechanism is woven through his work in the same proportion that he himself believed that this antinomy weaves through the history of medicine. in his view, profound reasons underlay the insistent alternation between mechanistic and vitalist models. life, technique, and science in canguilhem in his concluding medical thesis, “essai sur quelques problèmes concernant le normal et le pathologique” (1943) – undoubtedly canguilhem’s most well-known work, as published in 1966 in an expanded version – the philosopher from castelnaudary explains that his choice to engage in philosophical reflection on a topic specific to medicine was underpinned neither by an interest in producing a narrative of its history nor any intent to renew it through an incorporation of metaphysics, but rather by the fact that medicine provided access to “concrete human problems”. his decision to address the history of both concepts found in medicine (the field being understood as technique or art at the confluence of various sciences) quite explicitly represented an opportunity to address two problems that, as we have seen, were already present in his thought: the problem of the relationships between science and technique and the problem of norms and the normal (canguilhem 1990, 15-17). as many commentators have noted, canguilhem’s philosophy of life revolves around the concept of norm and, correspondingly, the concept of norm inevitably harks back to the idea of life. life is thus the idea that the concept of norm allows one to grasp. hence illness, understood as a symptom of a pathological state, intervenes concretely (as a matter of existence rather than of knowledge) in the relationship established between the patient’s lived experience and the physician’s art. as illness engenders normative activity, it pushes life to strive towards self-understanding. what canguilhem does in his essay is precisely to set the organizing principle of norm against the history of its problematization. here philosophy is being viewed as a critical attitude that questions a fact of life, because subjacent to, yet distinct from, the scientific problem of the normal and the pathological as reconstructed down through the history of medicine is the concrete question of life as dynamic, creative normativity. as guillaume le blanc (2007, 16-21) reminds us, canguilhem held that life, in its normative relationships to environmental circumstances, charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 99 appears as the unquestioned, the uncontemplated, within the art of medicine. the historical, critical construction of the concepts of normal and pathological thus becomes a method for apprehending human life. clinical experience assesses the types of knowledge from which its applications are drawn, based on therapeutic intervention. analogously, canguilhem’s epistemological project consists of a practical evaluation of discourses surrounding a recurrent problem. if philosophy directly introduces the question of norm, in a critical, judging attitude, it does so after life, without losing sight of the needs of life and while organizing human experience around the demand for meaning. we will see shortly how these intersections ground canguilhem’s reflections on the advent of technique. in the introduction to a collection of his writings originally published in 1952 under the title la connaissance de la vie (canguilhem [1952] 2015), canguilhem notes that “the attention every philosophy preoccupied with the problem of knowledge gives to the operations of knowing distracts it from the meaning of knowledge” (canguilhem 2008, xvii). there is a clue here that must be unraveled. our author necessarily emphasizes the meaning of knowledge – such approach poses questions about science and its performance or growth, from a point of view that belongs to life itself. this understanding of the core meaning of the knowledge process poses challenging questions that cannot be avoided neither by the subject of knowledge nor by his own knowledge process as a living being. in the years immediately following world war ii, the intellectual climate opposed (scientific) knowledge to life, where the reciprocal accusation was intellectualism (the destruction of life by rational knowledge) and mysticism (life as a blind, mechanical, ignorant energy). our philosopher rejected the affirmation that scientific knowledge destroys life. while, on the one hand, science may have proscribed empirical, sensitive experience, on the other, its goal was to abstract out reasons for employing caution, by analyzing failures. canguilhem redefined the bases of the conflict, which he saw not as “between thought and life in man, but between man and the world in the human consciousness of life” (canguilhem 2008, xvii). as he argues, if we enjoy “not the laws of nature [that which was decomposed, reduced] but nature itself”, not that which has been quantified, measured, and put into an equation, but rather qualities, relations, and beings, it is because “thought is nothing but a disentangling of man from the world […] [given] the search for security via the reduction of obstacles [through] the construction of theories that proceed by assimilation” (canguilhem 2008, xvii-xviii). in this sense – from general method to the direct or indirect resolution of tensions between man and environment – canguilhem views scientific knowledge as an extension of human technique and art. canguilhem’s philosophical reflection thus crosses the boundaries established in aristotle’s conception of mimesis and technique as craft or artifice. knowledge springs from a deep concern with technique and technology, to which historiographic renewal and the strasbourg environment made a substantial contribution, as we will see ahead. something quite singular was explored within the relationship between thought and technique. this was a philosophy of praxis but likewise of a history of the life sciences: the technique inherent to the living being is knowledge and intelligence; it is an artifice but also a resource of life itself and, in this sense, inseparable from the experience of the living being. therefore, the philosophy of medicine and biology developed by canguilhem in his oeuvre is better understood if we bear this perspective in mind, where the living being (human) endeavors to understand how knowledge modifies his relation to life. as one interpreter of canguilhem’s work has put it, “this effort to contemplate life and knowledge together is paramount to his philosophy, given that the reasons for knowing life scientifically are not related to any ideal cognitive subject placed outside of life” (le blanc 2007, 5). this effort is grounded in the fact that “man is here a living being separated from life by science and attempting to rejoin life through science” (canguilhem 2008, 62). in the following years, two essays, which appeared in 1946 and 1947, “machine et organisme” and “le vivant et son milieu” (later published as chapters 4 and 5 of knowledge charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 100 of life), evinced not only the persistence but also the centrality of his concerns about the correlation between life, technique, and science, while they also revealed convergences between canguilhem’s epistemological thought and those concepts of the group he called “febvre and his school”. in “machine and organism”, he deals once again with the problematic relationship tying technique and science, arguing that technical phenomena are ancient, original and more fundamentally ontological than any counterparts within scientific realm. once more developing reasoning against mechanistic philosophers’ and biologists’ interpretive tradition, who assumed that any problem between technique and science had been solved through machine-organism relationship. canguilhem stands that technique should never be considered as a by-product of logical or chronological application of science. this text unfolds in three parts: first, a discussion of the relationship between mechanism and finalism; next, the history of both concepts, inverting the traditional relationship between machine and organism; and, lastly, an exploration of the philosophical consequences of this reversal. early in the article, canguilhem hints at the critical path he will follow: the problem of the relations between machine and organism has generally been studied only in one direction: almost always, the attempt has been to explain the structure and function of the organism on the basis of the structure and function of an already-constructed machine. only rarely has anyone sought to understand the very construction of the machine on the basis of the structure and function of the organism. (canguilhem 2008, 75-76) canguilhem’s presentation is consistently didactic and scholarly. after defining the machine as an artificial construct whose essential function depends upon a mechanism – which is in turn “an assemblage of deformable parts, with periodic restoration of the relations between them”, (canguilhem 2008, 77), such that movement does not destroy the configuration – he stresses that living beings, and their forms (except for vertebrates), rarely display devices that call to mind the idea of a mechanism. thus, what constitutes a rule in human industry is, for biology, an exception in the structure of organisms. throughout the time when “kinematic mechanisms were set in motion by human or animal muscular effort […] it was obviously tautological to explain the movement of a living being by likening it to the movement of a machine” (canguilhem 2008, 78). only when the action of devices such as clocks, water mills, hydraulic sources, or automatons (so revered in the 17th century) could forego muscular effort did it become possible to explain the organism through the machine. in the wake of philosopher pierre-maxime schuhl (1938), canguilhem stated that it was this set of new machines, whose energy source (engine) did not depend on direct human and animal action condition of possibility allowing the emergence of mechanistic discourses. when taking up descartes’ writings on the human body, in treatise on man (1664), the epistemologist clarified that the construction of a mechanical model of man presumes a vital original, for the theory of the animal-machine (created by god) is a “rational reconstruction, which ignores only by means of a feint the existence of what it represents” (canguilhem 2008, 85). it would be such because “the model for the living machine is the living itself”. aristotle’s four causes are therefore preserved, albeit concealed, in cartesian mechanics (canguilhem 2008, 85). this is how the mechanical model of automatons, or moving machines, would legitimate the construction of a mechanical model of the living body, including therein the human body. animals have no souls but do have life, which consists of the warmth of the heart and of sensitivity, in turn dependent on the arrangement of the organs. that is to say, the animal-machine, by relations of pure causality, can only be explained by eliminating the very point of departure that contains a purpose. for this reason, canguilhem denies that it is possible to oppose mechanism and finalism or mechanism and anthropomorphism. to obliterate all teleology from life, descartes had to first reassemble it at its point of departure charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 101 (god). this mechanization of life and the technical use of the animal are inseparable from the devaluation of the animal-machine, just as aristotle had construed the slave, turning him into an instrument and denying him (and likewise all nature) any natural purpose. it is also in descartes, in his 1648 treatise “the description of the human body”, that canguilhem detects the emergence of the complete 19th century theory of automatic and reflex movements, the core of determinism. in this passage, descartes defends the idea that, on the other hand, “the body obeys the soul only on the condition of first being mechanically predisposed to do so” (canguilhem 2008, 86). continuing with this reasoning, descartes emphasizes that, on the other hand, “when all the bodily organs are disposed for some movement, the body has no need of the soul in order to produce that movement” (descartes, 1648, cited in canguilhem 2008, 86). in this regard, canguilhem inverts the cartesian equation regarding the relation between machine and organism when he holds, along with raymond ruyer, that machines do not produce machinery; to the contrary, they can be deemed organs of the human species. as with the oldest technical inventions, like axes and arrows, machines are organs, and organs are tools or machines. consequently, there is no opposition between mechanism and finalism. “no one doubts that a mechanism is needed to ensure the success of a given purpose, and inversely, every mechanism must have a sense” (canguilhem 2008, 87). unlike machines, where repair and upkeep require a mechanic’s ingenuity, vigilance, and surveillance, canguilhem notes that the phenomena of self-regulation, self-construction, self-conservation, and self-repair can be observed in an organism: in the machine, the rules of a rational accounting are rigorously verified. the whole is strictly the sum of the parts. the effect is dependent on the order of causes. in addition, a machine displays a clear functional rigidity, a rigidity made increasingly pronounced by the practice of [industrial] standardization. (canguilhem 2008, 88) in this sense, he observes that there is “more purpose in the machine than in the organism, since the purpose of the machine is rigid [and] univocal” (canguilhem 2008, 89). in contrast, we observe the possibility of variation in functions, “a polyvalence of organs” (canguilhem 2008, 89). an organism displays greater lability, less purpose, and more potential than a machine. as our philosopher painstakingly laid out in his concluding medical thesis in 1943, life is experience, improvisation, and the use of occurrences. it is tentative in all senses, and for this very reason endures monstrosities (teratological malformations). there is no pathology in mechanics, nor any distinction between normal and pathological in physics. therefore, from canguilhem’s philosophical perspective, explaining the machine matters less than understanding it. “and to understand it is to inscribe it within human history by inscribing human history in life, without, however, neglecting the appearance, with man, of a culture irreducible to simple nature” (canguilhem 2008, 92). inverting descartes’ mechanistic argument – which identified these same natural, physical (mechanical) principles as acting just as much on the gears of a watch as on a tree that produces fruit – canguilhem proposes that the gears of a mechanism assembled to produce an effect (a watch, for example) are the product of a technical activity as authentically organic as a tree that is bearing fruit. this principle would be, “in the beginning, as little conscious of the rules and laws ensuring its efficacy as plant life is” (canguilhem 2008, 92). relying on examples drawn from archeology and anthropology, he goes on to assert that machines and instruments, in the form of crude tools, emerged before the theories that explain them. only much later, at a given moment in human history, did the logical anteriority of the knowledge of physics regarding the construction of machines come into play. this fact “cannot and must not allow us to forget the absolute chronological and biological anteriority of the construction of machines to the knowledge of physics” (canguilhem 2008, 92). charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 102 based on this inflection, which affirms that the organism cannot be reduced to the machine, canguilhem, grounded in a kantian argument, insists that art likewise and symmetrically cannot be reduced to science. in the section of critique of judgment that analyzes teleological judgment, kant uses the example of the watch to compare the functioning of a machine with that of an organism; he concludes that the machine has a driving force but no formative energy capable of communicating with outside matter and propagating. in the same text, the german philosopher distinguishes man’s intentional technique from life’s involuntary technique. still drawing support from kant, in a passage that reviews aesthetic judgment, canguilhem asserts that all technique contains a vital originality irreducible to theoretical rationalization. in completing his robust argumentation, canguilhem goes on to list the arguments of various other philosophers (paul krannhals, ernest kapp, henri bergson), sociologists (alfred espinas, georges friedmann), anthropologists (andré leroi-gourhan), and biologists (lucien cuénot, andrée tétry, albert vandel) in order to corroborate his notion that, unless we take into account that the earliest tools were merely an extension of human organs in movement, we cannot explain the formative movement of technical inventiveness – that is, dexterity in making adjustments and synthesis in the production process, or practical faculty, as distinct from theoretical faculty, like technique in opposition to theory. in this regard, canguilhem takes the non-contemplatable concrete – the norm of the living being – as the foundation of knowledge. the rationalization of techniques makes one forget the irrational origin of machines. and it seems that in this area, as in any other, one must know how to cede a place to the irrational, even and especially when one wants to defend rationalism. (canguilhem 2008, 95) it is precisely here in this argumentation that henri bergson appears, in a note where canguilhem emphasizes that the author of creative evolution is “one of the rare french philosophers, if not the only one, to have considered mechanical invention as a biological function, an aspect of the organization of matter by life” (canguilhem 2008, 174, note 64). and he closes his essay “machine and organism” by stressing that, since technique is a universal biological phenomenon (cuénot, tétry, vandel), and not only a human intellectual operation, “one is led […] to affirm the creative autonomy of arts and crafts from any knowledge capable of appropriating them […] or informing them so as to multiply their effects” (canguilhem 2008, 96). taken together, these studies, according to our philosopher, made it possible to explain that “science and technique must be considered not as two types of activities, one of which is grafted onto the other, but as two types of activity, each of which borrows from the other sometimes its solutions, sometimes its problems” (canguilhem 2008, 95). the convergence with the ideas of febvre (not cited in this work) is obvious. the subsidiary nature of (scientific) knowledge is confirmed here, leading us to the second text, “the living and its milieu”. the living, its milieu, and febvre’s geo-history in “the living and its milieu”, a text that is remarkable both for its theoretical breadth and for the breadth of its historical and interdisciplinary references, we will first focus on the meaning of knowledge and the relationship between life, art, technique, and science. we will then compare canguilhem’s argument regarding the meaning of knowledge and the relationship between life, art, technique, and science to the vidalian notion of “life genres”, as presented and developed by lucien febvre, whose book la terre et l'évolution humaine is cited in canguilhem’s article. we will try to show how much both authors’ critiques of charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 103 mechanistic determinism were rooted in the notion of life in general and not only human life, in a creative interaction with the environment. our primary interest is in the argument involving an affirmation drawn from the vast literature consulted by canguilhem: that the environment (milieu) on which the organism depends is structured and organized by the organism itself, that is, that which the environment offers the living being is a function of its demands. man does not escape this general law of living beings. as signaled earlier, the environment proper to man is first and foremost the world of his perception, “the field of his pragmatic experience, the field in which his actions, oriented and regulated by the values immanent to his tendencies, pick out quality-bearing objects and situate them in relation to each other and to him” (canguilhem 2008, 118). the human world is therefore the subjective world of qualia, so that “the environment to which he is supposed to react is originally centered on him and by him” (canguilhem 2008, 118). therefore, “the essential function of science is to devalorize the qualities of objects that comprise the milieu proper to man; science presents itself as the general theory of a real, that is to say, inhuman milieu” (canguilhem 2008, 119). this objectified scientific world, without reference to the subjective human scale, is the world shared by all living beings and thus peculiar to the experience of each. abstract scientific realism “can be applied only to the absolute universe, the universal milieu of elements and movements disclosed by science” (canguilhem 2008, 119), where sensory data are discounted as illusions. the phenomenal reality described by science pursues universal truth as a transcendent value, yet it does not have more reality than that formed from the sensory and technical values proper to the human environment, or to the environment of the “gray mouse”. this universe of phenomena and laws built by man – that is, in canguilhem’s words, the science that claims “to dissolve living beings, which are centers of organization, adaptation, and invention, into the anonymity of the mechanical, physical, and chemical environment”– must be understood as “a sort of enterprise as adventurous as life”, as a human need (canguilhem 2008, 119). therefore: […] if science is the work of a humanity rooted in life before being enlightened by knowledge, if science is a fact in the world at the same time as it is a vision of the world, then it maintains a permanent and obligatory relation with perception. (canguilhem 2008, 120) as human production, the (universal) reality revealed by science does not resolve into the environment proper to man, who is not situated within the universal environment of chemical and physical laws. this is why canguilhem calls for a biology and a psychology that do not submit to the spirit of physics and chemistry, just as a living being, with its adaptive and creative needs, does not mechanically reduce to a “crossroads of influences”. herein lies the meaning of knowledge and its intrinsic relation with the technique and art of the living. we need not insist that, in reconstructing the historical phases of the notion of environment and its uses and constitution as a category of contemporary thought, canguilhem relied heavily on the aforementioned work by febvre (1922) to narrate the evolution of the tradition of anthropogeography, whose source is the famous hippocratic treatise on airs, waters, and places and its successive appropriations by bodin, machiavel, montesquieu, buffon, ritter, humboldt, ratzel, michelet, and taine. as observed by other authors, canguilhem’s contact with vidalian geography and the “strasbourg school” occurred between 1930 and 1936. vázquez garcia (2016) points out that it was during this period that canguilhem both distanced himself from the intellectualist philosophy of his mentor alain, who “contrasted spirit and world”, and also shifted towards vitalism, understood here as a philosophy of life rather than a philosophy of the spirit. vázquez garcia likewise stresses that this transition was mediated by a “geo-philosophy (philosophy of the charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 104 earth), [which saw] the earth, the landscape, not as inert reality but as a product of human activity, particularly of technical activity, an idea embodied in the notion of genres of life, which refers to the set of actions through which man takes advantage of the possibilities offered by nature” (vázquez garcia 2016, 43). imbert (2015), who was also interested in deciphering the multiple circuits that drew canguilhem toward the notion of genres of life, proposed by vidal de la blache in 1903, argues that the mediation of febvre and halbwachs was decisive, especially their use of the relationship between way of life and development of techniques: “febvre employed it in conjunction with the notion of civilization, and halbwachs employed it when endeavoring to distance himself from the sociologism attributed to durkheim and to defend the geographic relativism of the norm” (imbert, 2015). when febvre published la terre et l’évolution humaine in 1922, he took the side of vidalian geographers in the dispute initiated by durkheimian sociologists – simiand, mauss, and halbwachs, in addition to durkheim himself. they critiqued the vidalians’ regional monographs, deriding their inability to discern any system of causality. febvre, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about advances in human geography, which responded to the mesological determinism present in ratzel’s anthropogeography. although febvre aligned with durkheim and mauss in their critiques of telluric determinism as a “formule passepartout”, he valued the vidalian method even more for its understanding of the geographer’s role: “to grasp and reveal, at each instant of their duration, the complex relations of men, the actors in and the creators of history, with organic and inorganic nature, and with the many factors of their physical and biological environment, is the proper role of the geographer when he sets to work on human problems or researches” (febvre 1925, 61). unlike the social morphology advocated by simiand, febvre argued that “geography makes no claim to be a science of necessities” (febvre 1925, 73). as françois dosse has observed, febvre felt that this was the strength of geography, whose richness did not lie in a search for laws of correspondence between physical conditions and social facts: “geographers can only find possible conditions and do not intend to reach exhaustive explanations or simple causal inferences” (dosse 2004, 117). instead of passively adapting to the geographic environment, vidalian human geography perceives man as a geographic factor, whose trademarks are initiative and mobility. in opting for the vidalian notion of “possibilism”, in opposition to geographic determinism, he rejects the notion that nature is a neutral entity, for it is humanized, having been modified by man from the beginning. there is no mesological fatalism because man is a being endowed with his own activity, “capable of creating and producing new effects, in which case there is an end of determination, in the true sense of the word; and in its place we have only approximations and probabilities” (febvre 1925, 367). however, it must be emphasized that this conception of human life as essentially creative and diverse, characterized by the preponderance of technique in an interaction with the environment, is rooted in a broader conception of the relation between organism and environment. referring to an anti-lamarckian author revered by canguilhem – the evolutionary biologist lucien cuénot – febvre had this to say: adaptation, in the old literal sense of the word – the idea that any organism placed in a certain environment acquires, by the direct and mechanical action of that environment, characteristics which give it special advantages there and disadvantages elsewhere – this idea has had its day in the domain of science. it is not true of plants. it is not true of animals. it is vigorously combated by biologists versed in physical chemistry. (febvre 1925, 105) opposing the mechanistic conception of life, which he attributed both to darwin and lamarck, febvre joined with cuénot and bergson in asserting that living beings possess a spontaneity, an ability to create something new within an environment that remains unaltered and that “truly constitutes life, is a convenient artifice” (febvre 1925, 366). thus he charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 105 salutes cuénot’s theory of preadaptation, which he views as a form of vitalism that stirred a great scandal in circles of mechanistic intellectuals and scientists because it affirmed the notion of “the fruitful and by no means unscientific idea of chance” (febvre 1925, 366). according to the historian of the annales, there was a clear analogy between life, as studied by biologists and naturalists, and human societies, because both rejected finalism. ideas would always lie between man and his natural environment, “always creeping in and intervening”. if there are no human facts that are “simple facts”, likewise “natural facts” never exercise a purely mechanical, blind, and fatal action on the life of man” (febvre 1925, 363). ergo, febvre insists on linking the theory of preadaptation in biology to the geographic theory of genres of life, whether its author, vidal de la blache, was “fully conscious of it or not”, since both were fitting translations of “intellectual needs of just the same, or at any rate, of very similar character” (febvre 1925, 367). currently available texts can better enlighten and instruct us about henri bergson, an unquestionably inescapable shadow. bergson’s primary question in creative evolution – the intelligence of life in the genitive case – was tightly connected to an interpretation of the evolution of species of darwinist bent. this intelligence-thought, understood as an evolutionary factor, is problematized through the living continuity of the “interior milieu”, organism, and geography. canguilhem returned to this understanding of the environment throughout his writing. recent publications (abiko et al. 2012) have begun to focus on canguilhem’s academic commentaries about the third chapter of this singular work by bergson. we know that these observations constituted a painstaking exegesis that informed the various courses taught by the philosopher. the meaning of darwinist evolution, in a hostile, competitive environment, is developed through a correlation between geography (understood from the perspective of vidal de la blache) and organism, with claude bernard on the horizon. in a memorable issue on techniques, from 1935, jules sion’s sheds light on the matter: “the history of technique bears a relationship to the physical environment. this idea, so simple, conveys the professional misconceptions of the geographer”, but why, after all, flee from its truth (sion 1935, 633)? we can suppose that this alliance between the new geography and the new history stirred innovative reflections on physiology. conclusion the inversion of the relationship liking environment and living being, in which man, as a historical being, becomes a creator of the geographical configuration and thus does not know any “pure physical milieu” – which canguilhem attributes to lucien febvre and george friedmann, among others – is a fundamental component of his critique of so-called technological determinism (canguilhem 2008, 109). as canguilhem argues, this human environment, in which man is “subjected to a kind of determinism… of artificial creations, from which the spirit of invention that brought them into existence has been alienated” (canguilhem 2008, 109), this new human environment was already leaving its stamp on the new environment of machinism. the living creates its own environment. as indicated in writings by friedmann that were published in annales (friedmann 1935), the same reversal had already occurred through the psychotechnique of engineers, emerging from taylor’s ideas. this new science was able to recognize, as a shadow – “an irreducible center of resistance, the presence in man of man’s own originality in the form of a sense of values” (canguilhem 2008, 110). the notion that man, even subordinated to the machine, cannot comprehend himself as a machine was further advanced by canguilhem during the course of his theoretical journey, as he criticized both philosophical pragmatism and behaviorism, but this moves beyond the scope of this paper. charting links between life, science, and technique: georges canguilhem and lucien febvre carlos estellita-lins – flavio coelho edler 106 references abiko, shin. et al. 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historical induction; scientific realism; antirealism; natural classification; energetics received: 30 march 2017. reviewed: 13 may 2017. accepted: 30 may 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.07 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction debates between scientific realists and antirealists have persisted in the philosophy of science literature of the past half century following the demise of logical positivism. realists view scientific theories as largely faithful representations of reality; antirealists do not. on the realist image of science, scientific theories reveal the reality that underlies and causally explains the phenomena. on the antirealist image, in contrast, scientific theories are representational fictions constructed by human beings to solve problems that seem pressing at a particular time, to save the phenomena, etc.3 a good deal of the dialectic between the two 1 i thank two anonymous referees whose comments significantly improved this paper. i also thank both the national science foundation for a grant (nsf ses-0726051) and the university of wisconsin-milwaukee for a sabbatical award that supported this and other research on duhem. 2 professor of philosophy at the university of wisconsin-milwaukee. address: department of philosophy, university of wisconsin-milwaukee, po box 413, milwaukee, wi 53201. email: mnliston@uwm.edu 3 thus drawn, the distinction between realist and antirealist images of science is broad-brush and generic. the variety of specific proposals is large: for example, there is realism/antirealism about the existence of unobservables and about the truth of fundamental laws; there is selective realism about the causes of phenomena and about structures; there are disputes about the intelligibility and/or point of the debates. here i focus only on the debates insofar as they rely michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 74 relies on meta-level inductions on the history of science. realists apply an optimistic induction on the history of science. they see it as the continuous, progressive evolution, guided by reality, of increasingly correct theories and increasingly reliable methods that put us in closer contact with reality: the history of modern science, they argue, is a history of increasing instrumental success; such a history would be a miracle if scientific theories were not successively tracking reality more closely with the passage of time – if they weren’t progressively converging on the truth (putnam 1975, 1978). antirealists press a pessimistic induction. they see a graveyard of past theories that enjoyed significant empirical success but turned out to be false and were discarded – phlogiston theory, caloric theory, and fresnel’s aether theory of optics, for example (kuhn 1970; laudan 1981). though few are nowadays persuaded either by the optimistic path to realism or by the pessimistic path to antirealism, qualified versions of these debates continue today with little resolution.4 these contemporary philosophical debates bear striking similarities to debates about physics that took place in the late 19th century. the contemporary philosophical literature makes passing references to the 19th century debates. for example, poincaré is correctly considered to be a precursor of contemporary structuralism (worrall 1989); far more controversially duhem is variously considered to be a “paradigm antirealist” (van fraassen 1980), an antirealist “who rejects theoretical laws” (cartwright 1983), a convergent realist (lugg 1990), and a structural realist (psillos 1999). however, this engagement is unsystematic and consists mainly in selectively drawing examples that support one’s position or in citing some 19th century figure as authority for that position. this is unfortunate, because the 19th century debates provide an ideal study of the use of historical arguments to support realist and antirealist views about science. the principals of these debates – duhem, helmholtz, hertz, kelvin, mach, maxwell, and poincaré – were primarily reflective physicists (philosopher-physicists, as i think of them).5 their primary motivation traces to their concerns as historically informed, working physicists attempting to make sense of their enterprise based on their reflections on the history of science and the state of extant theories. they wondered, as our contemporaries do, about the relationship between physics and metaphysics, the aims and methods of science, the content of physical theories, and the extent to which the progress of science, understood as a series of attempts to fathom the depth and/or extent of the universe, is a “bankrupt” history. most importantly in the context of using them as a test case, some of them made pronouncements about the future state and proper aim of science based on their historical extrapolations, pronouncements that we can now assess with the benefit of 100 years of hindsight. in this paper i will focus on some of duhem’s historical arguments as such a test case. duhem was the historical expert among this historically informed group – not only did he write a number of histories devoted to special branches of physics; he is widely acknowledged to be the founder of the history of medieval science.6 as such, one would expect him to get the projectable historical patterns right if anyone could. in this, i will argue, he was only partly successful. his story provides us with an illuminating example of philosophy of science developing as a contingent, though natural, response to problems arising in a particular scientific context and under a particular understanding of the history of science in that context. i will conclude that the history of science provides little support for interesting theses about the proper aim or future state of science. on historical arguments. for a comprehensive account of the twists and turns the debates (including their historical dimensions) have taken from the late 19th century to the present, see (liston 2016). 4 thus, for example, it is now commonplace to argue that we should be (selectively) realist about those parts (and only those parts) of scientific theories that explain their instrumental success and are preserved in successor theories, where those parts are variously understood to be structures (worrall 1989), working posits (kitcher 1993), core causal descriptions (psillos 1999), detection property clusters (chakravartty 2007). (stanford 2006) challenges all such selective realist strategies. 5 their separation into realists and antirealists is complicated, but helmholtz, hertz, kelvin, and maxwell had realist sympathies and duhem, mach, and poincaré had antirealist doubts. though duhem, kelvin, mach, and poincaré were active into the 20th century, they are 19th century thinkers. 6 mach, of course, also authored important critical histories of mechanics and of theories of heat. however, while mach’s histories were selective, pursued primarily as an illustrative guide to the present, and largely relied on secondary sources, duhem’s histories, especially after 1903, increasingly became excavations of primary sources, particularly texts of the middle ages. this is convincingly argued in (martin 1991). michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 75 19th century images of science, duhem’s historical arguments duhem begins his major philosophical work (duhem 1991 [1906], 7) with two images of physical theory, characterized in terms of aims:7 r: a physical theory … has for its object the explanation of a group of laws experimentally established [the stripping of reality of the appearances covering it] ar: a physical theory … is an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and classify logically a group of experimental laws without claiming to explain these laws. he argues that r makes physics subordinate to metaphysical systems since, at any given time, it requires that our physical theories be guided by a metaphysical picture that shapes the explanatory fit. but this is bad, he thinks, for two reasons. first, the history of modern metaphysics is one of irresoluble disputes (action-at-a-distance versus contact action, atoms versus continuous matter-stuff, etc.) with the disputants accusing each other of positing absurd or occult causes. second, a metaphysical system at best provides directions for constructing models showing that physical theories are consistent with it, but no metaphysical system suffices to derive a physical system from it. the cartesians and leibnizeans, for example, argued about what quantity of motion was conserved in the universe as a result of god’s immutability – momentum (mv) or vis viva (mv2) – each was consistent with their fundamental metaphysical systems, but only experiment determined (or could determine) that leibniz was right. given the sorry track record of metaphysics guiding physics, duhem concludes that r hinders the progress of physics: physics must be autonomous; i.e., not be hostage to substantive metaphysical or cosmological hypotheses. however, duhem does not quite conclude, as mach does, that ar is correct, that a physical theory is merely an economical instrument for organizing the phenomena (mach 1960 [1893], 577-595). while physics must not be subordinate to substantive metaphysics, it is ultimately grounded in a general metaphysical conviction: that nature is orderly: “the belief in an order transcending physics is the sole justification of physical theory” (duhem 1991 [1908], 335) while we can’t prove the existence of an ontological order, the metaphysical truth that nature is orderly is presupposed and displayed in our scientific activities and expectations (our urge to generalize and unify expecting success); we have an instinctive belief in this metaphysical truth that cannot be shaken by philosophical doubt. accordingly, duhem introduces a third image (duhem 1991 [1906], 30). nc: a physical theory is a natural classification. for duhem a natural classification is a mathematical physical hierarchical organization of the phenomena which, as it becomes more complete, is the reflection of an ontological order. newton’s great achievement in principia, he argues, is a natural classification that unites heavenly and terrestrial motions so that neptune’s existence was predicted and subsequently discovered. as a theory makes novel predictions, we can’t but feel it is providing a natural classification – no merely contrived artifice should be expected to “be a prophet for us”. by making physics depend on metaphysical speculations r puts the cart before the horse; instead we need to use the natural classifications of the phenomena provided by physics to tentatively guide metaphysical investigation, since they allow us to see dimly the cosmological/metaphysical realities behind them. duhem’s sympathy for nc/ar and antipathy to r is motivated by an induction from the past and current state of physics to the conclusion that proponents of causal explanatory theories guided by r allow metaphysical preconceptions to influence their physical theorizing and end up with theories that fail to satisfy the requirements expected of an explanation – and thereby fail to achieve their defining explanatory goal. by contrast, the proponents of abstract representative theories guided by nc have made slow but steady progress in fulfilling their aims. 7 compare with the contemporary pithy “aims” characterization in (van fraassen 1980, 6-9): science aims to give us a literally true story (realism) or an empirically adequate story (antirealism). michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 76 most of (duhem 1991 [1906], part i) is an historical argument designed to show that the abstract representative approach guided by nc is the progressive path to a perfected physics that reflects an ontological order in contrast with the problem-strewn random path of the causal-explanatory approach.8 versions of this historical argument can be found throughout duhem’s writings. his theories of heat (1895) is a brief for thermodynamics contrasted with kinetic theories; his mixture and chemical combination (1902) advocates physical chemistry based on thermodynamic and thermochemical foundations contrasted with chemistry based on atomism; his the evolution of mechanics (1903) is similarly a brief for energetics as opposed to mechanics – though the settings are different, the central theme and argumentative structure are the same. key themes are: first, causal-explanatory hypotheses (atoms, ether, etc.) wax and wane, while the history of abstract theories displays steady cumulative growth with later theories preserving earlier theories as special cases; second, unification is achieved by the mathematical organization of experimental data rather than by the search for deep explanatory mechanisms; third, divergences of opinion about mechanisms are irresoluble, while disagreements about abstract theories are eventually settled. the first crisis in physics: synthetic physics of mechanism or analytic physics of principles but the primary motivation for this comparative exercise lies less in duhem’s historical analysis than in his reflections on the state of science and the extant theories of his day, including the theories he was working on as a practicing physicist, and they provide the best insight to his view. by the 1880-s it had become apparent to working physicists that classical mechanics lacked both the conceptual and mathematical tools to properly describe a host of phenomena. this sense of dissatisfaction with classical mechanics is elegantly expressed in the writings of both poincaré and duhem. poincaré describes the grand, majestic conception of a physics inspired by newton’s and laplace’s treatment of the heavens, a physics of central forces acting between material points attracting or repelling each other with inverse forces, a physics that attempted “to penetrate into the detail of the structure of the universe, to isolate the pieces of this vast mechanism, [and] to analyze one by one the forces which put them in motion”.9 and he continues, “nevertheless, a day arrived when the conception of central forces no longer appeared sufficient” and calls this the “first crisis” of physics (poincaré 1913, 299). the old physics of mechanisms guided by r was failing, and it was time for a new physics of principles. duhem similarly distinguishes two types of methods, synthetic and analytic (duhem 1903). synthetic methods, guided by r, build up the mechanism from the sizes, shapes, and masses of its elementary bodies and fundamental forces acting on them, construct the law of motion in differential equation form, and compare with experiment the results obtained when initial conditions are set. only synthetic methods were used for much of modern physics, duhem says, and he cites some celebrated results: the cartesian explanation of weight by vortex motion, lesage’s explanation of gravity by impulses of particles on bodies, kinetic theories of gases, kelvin’s gyroscopic ether, maxwell’s mechanical models of electromagnetism, and contemporary mechanical models of light, electricity, and new radiations proposed by lorentz, larmor, j.j. thomson, langevin, and perrin. most contemporary physicists, duhem points out, have concluded that synthetic methods cannot deliver mechanical explanations of natural phenomena that are complete, unified, general, coherent, or empirically adequate. instead, duhem claims, like poincaré, most contemporary physicists have turned to analytic treatments. 8 on duhem’s telling of the history each approach has its heroes: descartes, huygens, boscovich, laplace, poisson, kelvin, and maxwell favor the causal explanatory approach, while newton, fresnel, ampère, fourier, rankine, helmholtz, gibbs, and duhem himself favor the abstract representative view. 9 he mentions laplace’s celestial mechanics, briot’s hypothesis that etherial atoms attract each other with forces that are proportional to the inverse 6th power of the distance, and maxwell’s hypothesis that gas molecules repel each other by inverse 5th forces. michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 77 synthetic treatments: problems synthetic treatments are guided by r, by a picture of the universe in which all empirical regularities are the effects of fundamental processes involving fundamental entities. they attempt to derive from the bottom up the equations of motion of an isolated mechanical system s from the laws governing s’s elementary parts: the state of s is determined by the positions and motions of its component bodies (understood ultimately as fundamental particles), and the motions of s are determined by the motions of its parts and the forces to which they are subject, generally assumed to be inverse functions of their relative distances from each other. it is a physics of differential equations whose natural class of applications is initial value problems. while this worked very successfully to describe the motions of heavenly bodies, duhem argues, there were many difficulties, especially when it came to dealing with terrestrial phenomena. some of the difficulties concerned empirical adequacy. for example, poisson’s physical mechanics, a synthetic theory, predicts various bulk and elasticity ratios that disagreed with experiment and, in some cases, were absurd. some of the difficulties were conceptual. according to mechanism, energy added to a system, like that produced by heat or friction, is converted into energy of the system’s elementary bodies. but now the same problem arises at the lower scale: how is energy distributed to an elementary body b? changes in b’s kinetic energy t must be compensated by corresponding changes somewhere. moreover, both energy distribution at the microscale and spectroscopic data implied that molecules, if they exist, must have elastic properties like modes of vibration. it was therefore important to have a better account of elasticity. but accounts of elasticity attempted by physical mechanists like poisson were empirical failures. some of the difficulties were mathematical. any physical system will have a huge number of degrees of freedom, and the system of differential equations needed to solve the problem of its motion will become unsolvable. to get around these tractability problems, various techniques appealing to macroscopic constraints and boundary conditions have to be deployed to narrow down the number of degrees of freedom to a manageable set. but these techniques are not validated by the synthetic basis (they are added from above, not derived from below); sometimes they cannot be understood within the conceptual framework of the synthetic approach and their consistency with the basic picture is questionable. finally, some of the problems concerned generality/extendibility. conservation of energy can be derived from newton’s laws only for conservative systems, where no net work is performed by forces acting on the system. few natural systems are conservative; indeed, many concrete systems (steam engines, e.g.) lose energy through heat or friction. extending synthetic treatments to such systems thus became pressing. physical mechanists had responses to these problems, but they seemed stretched, ad hoc, and objectionably complicated to duhem. poisson, for example, adds elements to his models that are inconsistent with his background assumptions and is forced to replace summation by integration, a replacement that requires crude approximating conditions. duhem’s criticisms of them are trenchant: they employ “ruses and chicanery”, retain the theory only by “subtleties and subterfuges” (duhem 1903, 45), and lack mathematical rigor. his criticisms of kelvin, lodge, maxwell, and the victorian penchant for synthetically constructed models are caustic. he comments with gallic flair on lodge’s modern views of electricity: “we thought we were entering the tranquil and neatly ordered abode of reason, but we find ourselves in a factory” (duhem 1991 [1906], 71). he points out that there are as many kinds of material molecules as there are kinds of physical phenomena or experimental laws (duhem 1991 [1906], 82-83). similar critiques are directed at maxwell’s and lodge’s different mechanical analogies of electromagnetic phenomena and at kelvin’s vortex atom model. faced with failure of a model, they switch to new models that are inconsistent with other models they use. such theories, duhem concludes, cover only “a miniscule fragment of physics” and the “fragmented representations may not be welded together to form a coherent and logical explication of the inanimate universe” (duhem 1903, 100). in a nutshell, then, physics developed according to the synthetic approach had failed, according to its critics. “visualizable” material points or atoms subject to position-dependent central forces, so successful for representing celestial phenomena, were ill-suited to represent electromagnetic phenomena, “dissipative” phenomena in heat engines and chemical reactions, fluid phenomena, etc. deformable bodies and viscous fluids are conceptually difficult to construct from atom-like material points; shearing forces are incompatible with central force assumptions; frictional and electrical forces are velocity-dependent. physics had become a disorganized patchwork of poorly understood theories, each dealing with special cases in its own domain michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 78 and inconsistent with others, without adequate unified foundations or empirically determined values of microscopic parameters. lacking coherence, unity, and empirical determinacy, these theories could not claim to be explanatory or realistic. analytic treatments: promises this is where the new physics of principles (poincaré) or physics developed on the analytic approach (duhem) comes to the rescue. physicists responded to this crisis, poincaré explains, not by giving up the dream that the universe is a machine, but by, in a sense, side-stepping the problems. suppose we have a machine whose initial and final wheels are open to view but whose intermediate machinery for the transmission of energy between the two is hidden. we can determine by experiment that the final wheel turns 10 times less quickly than the initial wheel and, using the principle of conservation of energy (pce), determine that a couple applied to the one will be balanced by a couple 10 times greater applied to the other. in order to know that equilibrium is maintained by this compensation, we do not need to know how the forces inside the black box compensate each other. similarly, using the principles of dynamics, we can draw conclusions about macroscopic motions based on observations of them without knowing anything about the microscopic machinery, conclusions that will hold true whatever the microscopic details may be. in addition to pce poincaré lists several other principles whose application to physical phenomena suffices “for our learning of them all that we could reasonably hope to know” (poincaré 1913, 300).10 similarly, on duhem’s view, analytic treatments develop from general principles like pce and carnot’s principle (duhem 1911, vol i, 2). historically they began with lagrange, who condensed statics into a general principle, the principle of virtual velocities (pvv). pvv tells us that a mechanical system x is in static equilibrium just in case in all infinitesimal virtual displacements of x the forces applied to x perform zero work. in a perfectly balanced see-saw, for example, the sum of the work done by both the external forces (like gravity) acting on it and the internal forces holding it together is zero. lagrange’s analytical mechanics has several attractive features that were later heavily exploited in analytical treatments. first, it was extendible. using d’alembert’s principle, lagrange showed how to extend pvv from statics to dynamics: we simply add fictitious “inertial” forces to balance the external forces that are really acting on x to produce its acceleration, so that x is in equilibrium at each instant. then the work done by the external, internal, and inertial forces will sum to zero. second, it provides a powerful algebraic method (lagrange multipliers) that uses constraints in a principled manner to reduce the number of degrees of freedom and thereby to overcome the tractability problems mentioned earlier. third, lagrange heavily relies on conjugate pairs of generalized coordinates/quantities and actions that are mathematically related to each other as are position and force: the quantities are “position-like” in the algebraic sense that their empirical behavior is related to the empirical behavior of their 1st and 2nd derivatives as position is related to velocity and acceleration. the actions can be interpreted as force, moment of a couple, surface tension, or pressure for corresponding generalized coordinates understood as distance, angle, surface, or volume, respectively; the products of the actions and the corresponding coordinate shifts yield generalized work (as [force times distance moved] is work) as well as generalized versions of “kinetic energy-like” quantities (functions of the squares of the 1st derivatives of the coordinates), “potential energy-like” quantities (functions of the coordinates but independent of their 1st derivatives), etc. this history is sketched in (duhem 1903, part i). duhem was struck by the analogy between these methods of lagrangian mechanics and the pioneering methods of thermodynamics developed by clausius, helmholtz, and gibbs, which also relied on equilibrium as a central concept, on work-energy relations, and on highly abstract mathematical processes mimicking real processes as the carnot engine mimics heat engines. throughout his life as a theoretical physicist, he formulated, defended, and actively pursued a program of energetics (generalized thermomechanics), extending analytical principles to a wide range of mechanical, thermodynamic, chemical, and electromagnetic systems. in the style and method of lagrange’s analytical mechanics, duhem further generalizes: the conjugate coordinates α may be any collection of variables, functions of which determine the physical state of a system (including its mechanical, thermodynamic, chemical, electrical, and magnetic 10 he lists degradation of energy, equality of action and reaction, galilean relativity, conservation of mass, and least action. michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 79 state); the corresponding actions a are just abstract analogs of mechanical force that are empirically determinable; virtual displacements become virtual modifications of any variable determining the state; locomotion becomes any change of physical state; and equilibrium is a similarly generalized notion covering mechanical, thermodynamic, chemical, and magnetic equilibria. 11 on duhem’s generalization, the αcoordinates may include standard position and velocity as well as entropy, volume, number of component substances, electric and magnetic charge, etc. similarly, the a-actions may include standard distancedependent forces as well as velocity-dependent forces (like friction), temperature, pressure, chemical potential, and various actions associated with electric and magnetic fields. in this way he hoped for a truly general unified theory of rational mechanics that would have better empirical support than rivals and be mathematically and conceptually coherent. this theory expresses a tree at the root of which is the generalized principle of virtual modification covering all systems in mechanical and chemical statics. these systems, like our earlier perfectly balanced see-saw, are in equilibrium if, and only if, for every virtual modification achieved without temperature change, the work performed by actions “which are to symbols for various quantities what forces are to coordinates of mechanical systems” (duhem 2002 [1901], 293) is balanced by the internal thermodynamic potential of the system. the tree grows by addition of branches for various kinds of systems, in effect by supplementing the root equation with new terms to balance work for that type of system, analogously to lagrange’s earlier extension from statics to dynamics by addition of balancing inertial forces. mechanical and chemical statics are extended to mechanical and chemical dynamics, to viscous fluids, and to a host of systems classified by their phenomenological properties mathematically expressed: systems with friction, static systems exhibiting hysteresis (like annealed steel, permanently dilated glass, colloidal absorption of water vapor); dynamical systems involving hysteresis; thermal systems without friction or hysteresis (reversible heat cycles); thermal systems with friction and/or hysteresis (irreversible heat cycles); etc. the various principles thus supplemented by their own appropriate terms sitting on the various branches of this tree yield equations of “motion” for the type of system characterized by the principle. duhem sketches these extensions in (duhem 1903, part ii) and (duhem 2002 [1901]) and lays out the details in his major (1000+ pages) text in physics, (duhem 1911). the perceived superiority of these analytic over synthetic treatments rested on the following reasons. first, and most importantly, they allowed physics to avoid hidden mechanisms, and this was considered by many to be a positive given the lack of empirically determined specific information about particles. just as we can explore the energy connections between poincaré’s two wheels without knowing anything about their physical connections, we can use our balance equations to calculate, for example, the value of the internal thermodynamic potential or the entropy change of a system from empirically determinable quantities like temperature, pressure, and change of volume, without knowing what constitutes any of these quantities. second, they promised more empirical success than synthetic methods. writing in 1892, the elastician a.e.h. love claimed that the best modern experiments supported the multi-constant results of the analytical theories over the rari-constant results of poisson’s synthetic theory (love 1892, 14). third, by avoiding hidden mechanisms and developing coherent continuum theories of elasticity they allowed physicists to side-step problematic conceptual questions about how energy is distributed among particles and the whole problem of replication of macro-problems at the micro-level. fourth, by enabling the free choice of suitable generalized coordinates that fit constraints, and by inventing algebraic procedures (like lagrange’s method of multipliers) for reducing calculational complexity in a principled way, the analytic mechanists avoided the mathematical problems mentioned earlier. finally, the theories promised to be extendible to dissipative systems in principled ways. in a nutshell, then, physics developed according to the analytical approach promised to succeed where the old physics had failed. however, what most inspired the proponents of the new physics of principles was the generality they promised. lagrange’s analytic mechanics unified under a single principle, the principle of virtual velocities, long-known laws like the ancient law of the lever and pascal’s law of hydrostatic pressure, was extendible to cover a wide class of dynamical problems, and provided a systematic way of solving them. gibbs and helmholtz further extended that system to thermodynamics and physical chemistry. duhem hoped to extend it to wider and wider classes of dissipative phenomena. 11 the products on the right side of the thermodynamic identity, du = tds – pdv (where u, t, s, p, and v are internal energy, temperature, entropy, pressure, and volume, respectively) are conjugate action-coordinate pairs. michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 80 reactions to the crisis as a result of the crisis, physicists became increasingly pre-occupied with foundational efforts to put their house in order. there was widespread belief that the most promising physics required general analytical principles that could not be derived from newtonian laws and the abstract concepts (action, energy, internal potential, entropy, absolute temperature) needed to construct and apply these principles could not be built from the ordinary intuitive concepts (position, mass, force) of classical mechanics. the more reflective physicists, however, reacted in different ways to this state of affairs. here we look at four of them in ascending order in their opposition to realism. kelvin seems to have held on to the physics of mechanisms to the end, claiming that synthetic models were necessary and sufficient for understanding – “i am never content until i have constructed a mechanical model of the subject i am studying. if i succeed in making one, i understand; otherwise i do not” (kelvin 1904, lecture 20) – and that “there must be something in this molecular hypothesis and that as a mechanical symbol, it is certainly not a mere hypothesis, but a reality” (kelvin 1904, lecture 1). it should be noted, though, that despite his hard-headed realism kelvin, the youth, was a principal early developer of energy physics; so, though wedded to the mechanical viewpoint, he was flexible enough to experiment with other styles of theorizing. although maxwell had achieved great success in the treatise using the analytical (or as he called it, the “dynamical”) approach, he nevertheless felt that its methods were too algebraic and did not provide a proper understanding of the phenomena unless they were underwritten by physical ideas involving forces and mechanisms. in this he followed the tradition of the “northern wizards”, thomson (kelvin) and tait, who developed analytical approaches which were designed to facilitate ignoration of coordinates (avoidance of hidden mechanisms) but were based on work-energy theorems themselves based on newtonian impetus. he holds that the electromagnetic field must be a medium for energy transport but admits that we lack any clear representation of the details of its action, and he proposes the mathematical relations between the phenomena that he develops in the treatise as a first step toward clarity. maxwell’s approach seems both provisional and commendably tentative.12 he employs ignoration of coordinates tentatively and methodologically: given our present ignorance of the hidden mechanisms and the absence of empirically determined values for many of their parameters, we should press on with theorizing that will allow us to avoid them and hopefully learn more about at least the form of their parameters from those theories. maxwell, we might say, espoused a local variety of antirealism about action-at-a-distance forces. though he employed analytical techniques, he was no antirealist of the in-principle sort. (he believed in atoms but acknowledged that not much was known about them, for example.) but others, like poincaré and duhem, reacted to the crisis by espousing more global forms of antirealism. poincaré seems to have taken a less militant approach to the crisis. though he saw there were problems with the causal explanatory approach, he also saw problems for the principles approach looming on the horizon. he refers to these problems as a possible 2nd crisis in physics: the experimentally acknowledged random motion of atoms, the null results of the michelson-morley experiments, and newly discovered radioactivity, respectively, were challenging the universal validity of the principles of degradation of energy, galilean relativity, and conservation of mass and energy.13 in 1905 none of these experimental results was well understood; so it was not clear how theory would respond to the challenges. but poincaré is hopeful that they will be resolved and the theories that meet them will retain the best current principles as approximations. poincaré adopts a structuralist position: current entities may be discarded as past ones were, but the structural features of the world or of the phenomena that are expressed by the mathematical equations of current theories will be retained in future theories. 12 his mixed approach was, of course, roundly criticized on all sides. kelvin could not understand the treatise as providing a physical theory because he felt maxwell had too much focused on the mathematics and had lost sight of the mechanisms altogether. poincaré and duhem complained that maxwell had too much and unnecessarily focused on mechanisms and had lost sight of a rigorous, coherent development of the abstract concepts and equations. 13 as maiocchi and others have pointed out, duhem completely ignored this 2nd crisis to which relativity and quantum mechanics responded, believing instead that a physics of principles, as realized in his generalized thermomechanics, was displaying (and would continue to display) steady progress toward a natural classification (maiocchi 1990). michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 81 duhem, as we have seen, rejected all physical theorizing guided by r that appealed to underlying causal mechanisms and instead placed all his confidence in analytic physics guided by its associated ncaim. it is hard to emphasize how different the analytic and synthetic styles of theorizing are. the synthetic style deals with relatively concrete “visualizable” bodies, subject to actual displacements that result from experimental manipulation and the application of physical forces, and moving in paths in spacetime. the generalized analytic style deals with highly abstract properties of abstract systems classified under an abstract principle, pvv, subject to virtual displacements that result from conceptual manipulation, and “moving” in paths that are a continuous sequence of static states (each of which is allowed enough “time” to relax to equilibrium from a virtual manipulation). natural classifications exploit formal, mathematical rather than sensible, intuitive analogies and end up classifying phenomena in ways that are unexpected from the classificatory perspective of everyday common sense. duhem thinks of the tree structure that results from these analytic techniques as a natural classification of the phenomena into types of systems. such a classification would be unified (since organized under one general principle, the root equation) and completely general (since new branches could be added in a well-motivated manner as new systems were discovered). aftermath with hindsight we can see that each side – the proponents of mechanisms and the proponents of principles – turned out to be partly right and partly wrong about the physics. on the one hand, a physics of principles was partly vindicated by later developments. einstein held that proper understanding requires synthetic theories but progress is often hindered by premature synthetic theories (howard 2004). in such cases principles theories can come to the rescue by providing extra constraints that make more determinate the synthetic options, and einstein’s own theories of special and general relativity do exactly that (as maxwell’s had earlier). during the 2nd half of the 20th century clifford truesdell and his students, using new mathematical techniques, provided a rigorous grounding for much of the macroscopic physics of continua that was conceptually and mathematically problematic in the 19th century and that pushed physicists to develop analytic techniques. these contemporary treatments accept a background of atoms and fundamental forces, but they do not try to explain continuum phenomena in terms of atoms and fundamental forces. instead, they work entirely at the macroscopic scale and, following duhem’s lead, try to impose conceptually and mathematically coherent order on the domains they study. on the other hand, a partial vindication of atomism was just around the corner (due to einstein’s theoretical and perrin’s experimental studies of brownian motion), and nearly everyone, with the exception of duhem, was converted. no doubt, as poincaré’s references to indifferent hypotheses and duhem’s references to “the absolute indeterminacy of the masses and hidden motions” (duhem 1903, 97) make evident, the inability of scientists before perrin’s experiments on brownian motion to empirically determine with any accuracy the properties of atoms and molecules (like their absolute sizes, gram-molecular weight, and number per mole) played an important role in supporting the skepticism/agnosticism of the anti-atomists. but they greatly underestimated the ingenuity of theorists and experimenters and their ability to devise hypotheses that would tie empirically measurable parameters to parameters of elementary bodies sufficiently tightly to determine the latter. the story of how this work led to perrin’s multiple determinations of the values of various parameters including avogadro’s number and their interlocking, mutually supporting consilience is told in various places, e.g., (van fraassen 2009). but fast-forwarding another twenty-five years or so, quantum mechanics had become generally accepted as the most empirically adequate account of atomic behavior, and though everyone believed in atoms, hardly anyone believed their behavior could be modeled in terms of physically familiar parameters and operations, and the abstract conception had returned in full force. scientific progress was made, but it appears to have assimilated strands from both the synthetic and analytic traditions. some philosophical and historiographical lessons i conclude by drawing some lessons, largely negative, about the current practice of appealing to the history of science to draw philosophical conclusions about science. michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 82 first, we should be wary of using history to set limiting scientific images like r, ar, and nc, characterized in terms of aims and goals. such restrictive images sound suspiciously a priori. in setting a causal explanatory agenda for science r presupposes that in principle everything is explainable bottom-up from the workings of fundamental entities or stuff. but, other than by an act of faith, we do not have good reasons to believe that. we do not have bottom-up explanations of entropy and many of the processes duhem and his truesdellian successors study. nevertheless, entropy is an important physical quantity that provides important information about physical systems. if proper science required us to fathom the deep explanatory structure of the world that causally explains the unfolding of all else, then continuum mechanics and macroscopic thermodynamics wouldn’t count as science. but surely they are science; it’s just that they are not illuminatingly organized under r. but, by the same token, contrary to duhem, neither do we have good reason to believe that the path to progress lies only in the pursuit of nc. if proper science required that, then much of 20th and 21st century physics wouldn’t count as science. the 19th century example and its aftermath should make us question notions like the proper aim and form of physical theory, since such notions may be responding, as they were in the 19th century writings, only to contingent features of our current and past theories. not only was duhem partly wrong about the path physics would take, he was completely wrong about the proper aim of physics. it is one thing to propose freeing physics from unsuccessful mechanical conceptions and advocate the pursuit of relatively promising analytical theories. it is quite another thing to restrict the aim and scope of physics to the discovery of real relations between hidden entities underlying the phenomena (poincaré) or to the non-literal abstract representation of the phenomena that leads to a “natural classification” (duhem). why didn’t the antirealists follow maxwell’s example and say, “well, right now, we don’t know enough about the minute workings of nature, and we should use analytical techniques or indeed any other techniques we can come up with to see whether we can impose more order on the phenomena which in turn might provide us with more empirical information that might be used to better home in on the minutiae”? we should be, like maxwell, as humble about our philosophy of science as about our science itself, because nature can surprisingly force us to change our most entrenched historical course. duhem provides a good example of the need for caution. at his best, he proceeds urging such caution about inferences from past and present states of physical theory to its future states and about inferences from present states of physical theory to conclusions about the world underlying the phenomena (duhem 1991 [1905]). he also acknowledges that newly discovered radiations “have revealed (…) some effects so strange, so difficult to subject to the laws of our thermodynamics, that no one would be surprised to see a new branch of mechanics swell up from [their] study” (duhem 1903, 185). and he is modest about the fate of his general thermodynamics: “it would be quite presumptuous to imagine that [this] system (…) will escape the fate common to the systems that have preceded it (…); but (…) [the theoretician] has the right to believe his efforts will not be sterile; through the centuries the ideas that he has sown and germinated will continue to increase and to bear their fruit” (duhem 1903, 188-189). but though duhem attempted to be impartial, he did not succeed. the historical evidence seems not to support as clear a distinction as he draws between the good guys and bad guys, with a given physicist being singularly committed to one goal rather than another. on the one hand, duhem’s newton made the first great contribution to natural classification (in principia), yet the unofficial newton toyed with causal explanations of gravity, and newton’s emissionist theory was not only causal but arguably sufficiently influential to retard the mathematical development of optics. on the other hand, despite his atomism, for which duhem criticizes him, huygens’ optics was purely mathematical and provided the basis for fresnel’s subsequent mathematical development of the wave theory. similarly, duhem’s examination of extant theories of mechanics downplays the fact that many of the mechanists whom he vehemently criticized contributed significantly to the abstract approach duhem favored. kelvin virtually invented the analytic approach to heat and energy in the 1850s and strongly influenced rankine’s energetics program, which duhem acknowledges as his inspiration. and maxwell’s treatise on electricity and magnetism was the 19th century zenith of the principles program applied to the novel phenomena of the day. duhem was nothing if not a sensitive historian – his massive work on medieval physics and the clear superiority of his histories of mechanics and heat compared with those of mach amply demonstrate this. he was surely aware of these subtleties in the historical record. unfortunately, he largely ignored them. it would be all too easy to convict duhem of partiality, to claim that his views were motivated primarily by the desire to combat certain kinds of godless cosmologies associated with metaphysical atomism and physical mechanism and to defend a michael liston – duhem: images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics 83 cosmology and physics more closely aligned with the teachings of mother church. perhaps he was consciously or unconsciously influenced by such desiderata. but, when assessing his motivations we must also attend to what he literally committed to print, and here he is thoroughly frank about his metaphysical and religious predilections and emphatic that his conclusions about the connections between physics and metaphysics are based entirely on his examination of physics and its history. i take him at his word and doubt that this omission had dishonest motives. nevertheless, one can only assume he thought these historical connections to be unimportant because they didn’t fit the pattern of progress and cumulativeness he saw and the image he endorsed. the general problem with historical extrapolations of the kind duhem and our own contemporaries want to make is that it is all too often too easy to find a suitable pattern to project. his attempts to extrapolate structures and predict the future of physics should make us wary of all such arguments. historically sensitive and cautious though he was, duhem blundered. why should we think we can do better? the history of physics is a delphic oracle and its future, shaped as it will be by our contingent and accidental approach to the world, is unlikely to be predictable with any confidence. references cartwright, n. 1983. how the laws of physics lie. oxford: clarendon press. chakravartty, a. 2007. a metaphysics for scientific realism: knowing the unobservables. cambridge: cambridge university press. duhem, p. 1895. les théories de la chaleur. revue des deux mondes 129: 869–901; 130, 379–415, 851–68. duhem, p. 1901. on some recent extensions of statics and dynamics. in duhem, p. 1902 [2002]. mixture and chemical combination. translated by paul needham. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers, pp. 291-309. duhem, p. 2002 [1902]. mixture and chemical combination. translated by paul needham. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. duhem, p. 1980 [1903]. the evolution of mechanics. translated by michael cole. alphen aan den rijn: sijthooff and noordhoff. duhem, p. 1905. physics of a believer. annales de philosophie chrétienne. reprinted as appendix to duhem, p. 1991 [1906] the aim and structure of physical theory. 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new york: the science press. psillos, s. 1999. scientific realism: how science tracks truth. london: routledge. putnam, h. 1975. philosophical papers 2: mind, language and reality. cambridge: cambridge university press. putnam, h. 1978. meaning and the moral sciences. london: routledge. stanford, p. k. 2006. exceeding our grasp. oxford: oxford university press. van fraassen, b. 1980. the scientific image. oxford: clarendon press. van fraassen, b. 2009. the perils of perrin. philosophical studies 143: 5-24. worrall, j. 1989. structural realism: the best of both worlds. dialectica 43: 99-124. 101 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 1 (2016) 101-115 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2016 — this is an open access article dossier ludwik fleck ludwik fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited: circular arguments in the medical literature on inflicted head injury in the light of fleck’s epistemology nicholas r. binney1 abstract: a curious feature of medical literature on the evaluation of diagnostic accuracy is the frequent deployment of circular arguments. using a case study from the medical literature on the diagnosis of child abuse, i argue that this occurs because researchers fail to distinguish what ludwik fleck called the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge. i review the scholarly literature on this aspect of fleck’s epistemology to try to understand why it has not been put to more use in the medical literature. scholars have admitted that fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge has confused them, and it has been read in at least three different ways: as an extreme form of relativism, as a form of realism, and as a ‘middle way’ inbetween these poles. i argue that this ‘middle way’ view is both more congenial with the bulk of fleck’s work, and more palatable to medical practitioners. keywords: ludwik fleck; active; passive; relativism; non-accidental head injury received: 30 august 2016. reviewed: 23 november 2016. accepted: 01 december 2016. ____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction ludwik fleck’s account of the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge is an important and underexamined aspect of his epistemology. this aspect of fleck’s work is important not only because fleck uses it extensively throughout genesis and development of a scientific fact (1979 [1935], 9-10, 40, 49-50, 79, 82-83, 95, 100-101, 141, 178), but also because it is a valuable philosophical tool that can be used to describe and analyse epistemological difficulties encountered in medical practice today. in this paper i describe a commonplace problem encountered in medical research into the accuracy of diagnostic tests, and argue that this problem is the result of researchers failing to recognize that there are active elements of knowledge in addition to passive ones. i also explore some of the many different ways that fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge have been read by other scholars. these different readings 1 nicholas r. binney is a phd candidate at the university of exeter. egenis – the centre for the study of life sciences, byrne house, st german's road, exeter, devon, ex4 4pj, uk. e-mail nb357@exeter.ac.uk nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 102 will be considered with fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge in mind, and in the light of the medical problems discussed. the medical problem to which i refer is the use of circular arguments in medical research into the accuracy of certain observations for the diagnosis of disease. i will illustrate the problem using a paper from the medical literature on the diagnosis of inflicted traumatic brain injury2: ewing-cobbs et al (1998). this paper examines the diagnostic value of retinal haemorrhage (rh) (bleeding at the back of the eye) and subdural haemorrhage (sdh) (bleeding under one of the membranes that cover the brain inside the skull) for the diagnosis of inflicted traumatic brain injury. ewing-cobbs et al (1998) argue that the presence of sdh and rh in an infant who has not been involved in a major traumatic event (like a motor vehicle accident) is highly specific for inflicted traumatic brain injury. to do so, however, they use a circular argument. despite appearances, their conclusion is not supported by the empirical observations they make. rather, it is assumed by these researchers in order to carry out the study. in other words, the linkage of sdh and rh to inflicted traumatic head injury is an active element of knowledge, and not the passive result of empirical observation. i will apply fleck’s account of active and passive elements of knowledge to this case study, and argue that if researchers recognised the presence of active elements of knowledge in addition to the passive ones then these difficulties could be avoided. this failure to take account of the active element of knowledge is quite commonplace in the medical literature on the evaluation of diagnostic tests, and circular arguments are often found in this literature. as fleck identified the active element of knowledge over eighty years ago, it is frustrating that its existence goes unrecognised today. this may be because fleck’s account has often confused philosophers. thomas kuhn, in the foreword to genesis, said that he found fleck’s epistemology problematic, and that “fleck’s occasional attempts to develop it by distinguishing between the passive and active elements of knowledge are to me unenlightening” (kuhn, 1979, xi). according to stephen toulmin “obscurities remain, in particular, in his distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements in knowledge, and his claim that the outcomes of science are ‘inevitable’” (toulmin, 1986, 277). in addition to soliciting confusion, fleck’s account of the active and the passive elements of knowledge has been read in a number of different ways by other scholars. all these different readings relate to the question of whether fleck’s epistemology is an extreme form of relativism. some readings emphasize fleck’s discussion of the active element of knowledge, and read fleck as an extreme form of relativist. such readings say all of the constraint experienced by researchers is the result of social and cultural pressures supplied by the researchers themselves and wider society. others emphasize fleck’s discussion of the passive element of knowledge, and read fleck as a form of realist. such readings present the constraint experienced as the passive element of knowledge as being completely autonomous the active element of knowledge, and fully determine by the way that the ‘world in itself’ is. others suggest a more moderate reading of fleck, which provides a middle way between these realist and relativist poles. i argue that on this view the active element of knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for the production of the passive element of knowledge, and thus for the production of facts about the characteristics of different diseases. i refer to this reading as the ‘middle way’ reading, and in my view it is the optimal reading between realist and relativist poles. after introducing fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge (section 1), i discuss the difficulties that arise when this distinction is not attended to (section 2). i present the medical case study referred to above (section 2.1), and argue that the circular argument identified in this work results from the failure to acknowledge the active element of knowledge (section 2.2). following this, i discuss different readings of fleck’s work that have been made in scholarly literature (section 3). i discuss the problems with relativist readings of fleck’s account (section 3.1), and with realist reading of fleck’s account (section 3.2). finally, i discuss the ‘middle way’ reading, which i argue is the most helpful both for understanding fleck and for addressing the medical problem at hand (section 3.3). 2 this condition has various names, including “abusive head trauma”, “non-accidental head injury” and “shaken baby syndrome” (moran et al, 2012). nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 103 the active and passive elements of knowledge fleck argued that what the facts are on any matter is not fully determined by the way the ‘world in itself’ is. as is apparent from the title of his book, fleck viewed facts as things that were produced in particular cultural contexts by groups of people working in society. as others have pointed out (kuhn, 1979, xi; heelan, 1986, 287), fleck’s epistemology has a kantian flavour to it, as he argued that certain preconditions had to be adopted before observers could experience anything. fleck called these preconditions “active linkages”. groups of observers (“the collective”) had to adopt these before they could experience the facts of any matter, which he called the “passive linkages”: cognition therefore means, primarily, to ascertain those results which must follow, given certain preconditions. the preconditions correspond to active linkages and constitute that portion of cognition belonging to the collective. the constrained results correspond to passive linkages and constitute that which is experienced as objective reality. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 40) fleck used the example of the fact that hydrogen has an atomic weight of 1.008 atomic weight units to illustrate the relationship between the active and passive elements of knowledge. in the early 1900s, the weight of individual atoms could not be measured directly, but their weight relative to the weight of other atoms could be determined by weighing equal volumes of different gases. in order to measure the weight of a hydrogen atom, it was first necessary to stipulate the weight of another sort of atom that would serve as a standard. in fleck’s day, the weight of an oxygen atom was used as this standard, and this was stipulated as exactly 16 atomic weight units, “if 16 is assumed as the atomic weight for o, oxygen, of necessity the atomic weight for h, hydrogen, will inevitably be 1.008” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 83). following the active association of oxygen with the atomic weight 16, it became possible to produce the passive association between hydrogen and the atomic weight 1.008. active associations are necessary for the production of passive associations and facts. fleck recognised that the “origin of the number 16 for the atomic weight of oxygen is almost consciously conventional and arbitrary” (1979 [1935], 83). most of the time, however, he thought that observers were not consciously aware that they were adopting active associations to produce passive ones. he claimed that usually researchers if asked why it was they had made a certain active association in their research, would answer “because it is true” (1979 [1935], 102). fleck argued that observers usually took their own activity for granted, failing to recognise that active associations were adopted due to a social consensus, and not simply as the result of empirical observation. active associations tended to become “natural and, like breathing, almost unconscious, as a result of education as well as through [their] participation in the communication of thoughts within the collective” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 141). fleck’s work focused on the production of facts about syphilis, and he described this in a similar way to the production of facts about the atomic weight of hydrogen. for researchers to produce facts about syphilis, they must first agree about what the disease is. fleck argued that, in the early modern period, all venereal disease was understood to be a manifestation of the same disease, referred to as the “carnal scourge” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 10). as this was something observers had to do before they could make observations of patients with syphilis, fleck referred to this association made between all patients with venereal disease as an active association: “in our history of syphilis the combination of all venereal disease under the generic concept of carnal scourge was thus an active association of the phenomena” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 10). having made this active association, observers could then look and see what the characteristics of patients with the carnal scourge were. observers could, for example, see whether or not the carnal scourge was cured by treatment with mercury. according to fleck, treatment with mercury produced mixed results, “sometimes mercury does not cure the carnal scourge but makes it even worse” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 10). one way in which fleck’s epistemology is markedly different to kant’s is that fleck did not think that all observers necessarily had to adopt the same set of active associations3. different groups of observers could adopt different sets of active associations, and this had the power to change the observations that 3 fleck’s active element of knowledge has much in common with kant’s synthetic a priori, excepting that this a priori knowledge was not transcendental, and could be different in different historical periods and for different cultures. nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 104 were subsequently made. fleck argued that at another point in time, syphilis was defined as a disease that got better when treated with mercury. syphilis was no longer actively associated with all cases of venereal disease, but rather was actively associated with being cured with mercury. if this definition was applied uniformly to all cases4, the passive consequence of this would be that not all patients with venereal disease would have syphilis, as not all patients with venereal disease would be cured by treatment with mercury, “if the curative effect of mercury were alone decisive [for the diagnosis of syphilis], other venereal diseases such as gonorrhoea and soft chancre should not have become related to syphilis at all, since these remain unaffected by mercury” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 4). according to fleck, active associations are necessary for the production of passive associations, and changing the active associations that are adopted can lead to a change of the passive facts produced. one final feature of the relationship between the active and passive elements of knowledge to which it is worth drawing attention is that fleck distinguished these different elements according to whether they obeyed the will of the relevant group of researchers. active associations obey the will of researchers, as they are whatever the relevant group of researchers collectively (and most likely unconsciously) decided that they are. in contrast to this, passive elements of knowledge do not obey the collective will of researchers: the work of the research scientist means that in the complex confusion and chaos which he faces, he must distinguish that which obeys his will from that which arises spontaneously and opposes it. this is the firm ground that he, as representative of the thought collective, continuously seeks. these are the passive connections, as we have called them. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 95) once active associations (such as the ‘atomic weight of oxygen is 16’, and ‘all patients with venereal disease have the carnal scourge’) have been stipulated by the collective, the passive associations that then manifest (such as ‘the atomic weight of hydrogen is 1.008’ and ‘mercury sometimes does not cure the carnal scourge but makes it even worse’) are no longer for the collective to decide. a problem from medicine, the diagnosis of inflicted traumatic brain injury in infants having introduced fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge, i can use it to describe the argument presented by ewing-cobbs et al (1998). these researchers set out to “characterize neuroimaging, physical, neurobehavioral, and developmental findings in children with inflicted and noninflicted traumatic brain injury (tbi) and to identify characteristic features of inflicted tbi” (ewing-cobbs et al, 1998, 300). to do this they inspected a population of children with head injuries to see if they could find characteristics that distinguished inflicted from non-inflicted traumatic brain injury. ewing-cobbs et al (1998) looked at forty children, all under six years of age, who had been hospitalized with evidence of a traumatic brain injury, and who did not have any history of traumatic brain injuries (1998, 300). before they could inspect these patients to find distinguishing characteristics, they needed to sort the patients in this population into two groups, those with inflicted traumatic brain injury, and those with non-inflicted traumatic brain injury. they discuss how they did this in their methods section: in cases of suspected child abuse, determination of whether an injury was inflicted or noninflicted was based on the assessment of the child protection committee at each hospital and harris county children’s protective services. similar to the algorithm devised by duhaime et al to detect probable inflicted injury, injuries incompatible with the stated method of injury (eg, bilateral subdural hematomas and retinal hemorrhages with a history of falling from the couch; multiple skull fractures, multiple intracranial hemorrhages, and bilateral cephalohematomas with a history of falling four feet) 4 fleck highlights that this definition was not applied uniformly to all cases, as it was only applied to cases in which the disease had spread beyond the genitals, to affect the body more generally: “the mercury idea really concerned the diagnosis only of so-called constitutional syphilis, that is, the stage of generalized disease. the primary stage, properly venereal because of it is localized in the genitals, remained untouched by that idea and was characterized by the idea of the carnal scourge” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 5). nevertheless, this change in definition illustrates the effect of changing active associations. nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 105 and unexplained injuries (eg, no history of trauma in conjunction with intracranial injuries and old skeletal fractures) were presumed to indicate assault. (ewing-cobbs et al, 1998, 301) so, in their own words, ewing-cobbs et al (1998) presumed that the presence of sdh and rh in the absence of a history of a serious traumatic event was strong evidence of assault. patients presenting with sdh and rh would only be considered as non-inflicted tbi if they also presented with a history of a serious traumatic event. the sort of traumatic event that ewing-cobbs et al (1998, 305) considered to be sufficiently serious to cause sdh and rh was a motor vehicle accident. falls from the couch, falls from four feet, and no history of a traumatic event were not considered serious enough to warrant the diagnosis of non-inflicted tbi. ewing-cobbs et al (1998) presumed that they already knew the sorts of events that could cause sdh and rh, and they used these presumptions to sort patients into diseased and non-diseased groups. in fleckian terms, the linkage between inflicted traumatic brain injury and the presence of sdh and rh in patients with no history of a serious traumatic event (such as a motor vehicle accident) is an active element of knowledge. the argument used by ewing-cobbs et al (1998) to distinguish inflicted tbi from non-inflicted tbi can be presented as a simple syllogism. referring to the patients who were sorted into the abused group as patients 1, 2, 3…etc., this argument can be written out formally as follows: argument 1 1. patients with sdh and rh in the absence of a history of a serious traumatic event have been abused. 2. patients 1, 2, 3…etc. have sdh and rh in the absence of a history of a serious traumatic event. therefore (by deduction) 3. patients 1, 2, 3…etc. have been abused. having sorted the patients from the population under investigation into abused and not abused groups, ewing-cobbs et al (1998) could then look and see which characteristics could be used to distinguish patients with abusive head trauma from those without abusive head trauma. they found that a number of physical, neurobehavioural, and developmental characteristics could be used in this way: characteristic features of inflicted tbi include acute computed tomography/magnetic resonance imaging findings of pre-existing brain injury, extraaxial hemorrhages, seizures, retinal hemorrhages, and significantly impaired cognitive function without prolonged impairment of consciousness. (ewingcobbs et al, 1998, 300) acknowledging that “extraaxial hemorrhages” (i.e. bleeding outside the brain but inside the skull) include sdh, we can see that ewing-cobbs et al (1998) concluded that sdh and rh can be used to distinguish inflicted tbi from non-inflicted tbi. they go on to clarify exactly how this can be done in the discussion section of their paper (1998, 305): although retinal hemorrhage was not a variable independently considered, the fact that 70% of the inflicted group and none of the children in the noninflicted group were noted to have retinal hemorrhages supports the selection criteria. subdural and subarachnoid hemorrhages, which occurred in both groups, did not independently indicate the presence or absence of assault. however, in noninflicted tbi [traumatic brain injury], subdural hematomas were most common in motor vehicle accidents and were not associated with either falls or crush injuries. (ewing-cobbs et al, 1998, 305) ewing-cobbs et al (1998) argue that because none of the children in the non-inflicted group had rh, the presence of rh should be taken as strong evidence of assault. they also argue that their results support the conclusion that the presence of sdh can be used as diagnostic for inflicted tbi, so long as patients involved in serious traumatic events (like motor vehicle accidents) are excluded. ewing-cobbs et al (1998) argue that this finding is a passive element of knowledge. ewing-cobbs et al’s (1998) argument to support the conclusion that sdh and rh can be used to characterize inflicted tbi can be presented as follows: nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 106 argument 2 1. patients 1, 2, 3…etc. have been abused. 2. only patients 1, 2, 3… have sdh and rh in the absence of a history of a serious traumatic incident. therefore (by simple enumerative induction) 3. patients with sdh and rh in the absence of a history of a serious traumatic event have been abused. ewing-cobbs et al (1998) first distinguish the patients in the population they study with inflicted tbi and non-inflicted tbi (argument 1), and then inspect these groups to see if they can find characteristics that can be used to distinguish patients with inflicted tbi from those with non-inflicted tbi (argument 2). thus, they use argument 1 and argument 2 in sequence to support their conclusion. it should be immediately apparent that there is a serious problem with the overall argument so produced. in argument 1, ewing-cobbs et al (1998) presume that the presence of sdh and rh in the absence of a serious traumatic event is strong evidence of assault, and in argument 2 they claim that they have observed that this is the case. the conclusion of argument 2 is the same as the first premise from argument 1 – the overall argument presented by ewing-cobbs et al (1998) is circular. what ewing-cobbs et al (1998) claimed as an empirical finding of their study is actually an assumption they made to carry out their study. they have assumed what they claim to have shown. ewing-cobbs et al (1998) is not the only study in the medical literature on the diagnosis of abusive head trauma that deploys circular arguments like this one. there are numerous examples of just this sort of circular argument being deployed in this literature (moran et al, 2012; högberg et al, 2016). the use of circular argumentation in this literature on the diagnosis of inflicted traumatic brain injury has not gone unnoticed. researchers drew attention to the problem of circular argumentation in this literature more than a decade ago (moran et al, 2012, 235-236). since then, however, dozens of papers on this topic have been produced that deploy circular arguments. according to one recent review “the primary defect is that virtually all the sbs/aht [shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma] literature is circular” (moran et al, 2012, 274). according to another review “circularity bias renders the diagnostic value of clinical triad findings and diagnostic algorithms very low” (högberg et al, 2016). the problem of circular argumentation is widely recognised in the medical literature on the diagnosis of inflicted tbi (vinchon et al, 2010; moran et al, 2012)5. an incorrect diagnosis can lead to the mismanagement of the patient, to the decision to remove a child from good parents, to the decision to leave a child with abusive parents, and to miscarriages of justice in murder trials. as the allegedly empirical conclusions of circular arguments are not informed by empirical observation, they have nothing to contribute to the question under investigation. arguments like the one deployed by ewing-cobbs et al (1998) do not inform the discussion about how to accurately diagnose child abuse. attention paid to these arguments by other doctors simply wastes time and effort, and distracts doctors from paying attention to other arguments that might actually inform the question at hand. even though the circular nature of the arguments presented in much of the research into the diagnosis of inflicted head injury has been identified, this research is still used to support conclusions about how to make a diagnosis of this condition (högberg et al, 2016). failure to take account of the circular nature of these arguments means that they can still be used to close down legitimate discussion about how to diagnose child abuse, and this is deeply concerning. given this, it is appropriate to think more closely about why these circular arguments are produced. 5 circular arguments are actually quite commonly deployed in medical literature on the diagnosis of many diseases. instances of circular arguments can be found in medical literature on rickets (slovis and chapman, 2008), fibromyalgia (yunus et al, 1981; wolfe et al, 1990), thyroid disease (gøtzsche, 2007, 80-81), and cushing’s disease (elamin et al, 2008). peter gøtzsche has identified that many studies of diagnostic accuracy exhibit circular logic, and argues that “it is important that the consumer of medical literature is not deceived when medical writers use circular arguments” (2007, 81, 84). this paper goes beyond this descriptive claim by exploring why such arguments are deployed, and suggesting that a more widespread appreciation for fleck’s work can help address this problem. nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 107 forgetting about the active element of knowledge is at the root of this problem the production of circular arguments can be described and explained in fleckian terms. as discussed in the particular case of ewing-cobbs et al (1998), there are two such stages to all such research. the goal of this sort of research is to compare groups of diseased and not-diseased patients, in order to identify the characteristics that distinguish these two groups of patients. however, not all of these distinguishing characteristics are associated with the diseased patients by empirical observations made during this study – they are not all part of the passive element of knowledge. before it is possible to inspect these two groups, it is first necessary to divide the population of patients into these two groups. this means that researchers must have some way to distinguish patients with and without disease before they carry out their study. the association of some distinguishing features with the diseased group of patients is not the result of observations made during the study, but rather are pre-conditions for the study to be carried out at all. these characteristics, that are used to sort patients into diseased and not diseased groups in the first place, are not part of the passive element of knowledge. rather they are part of the active element of knowledge. if researchers forget that some of the characteristics that distinguish diseased from not-diseased patients are pre-conditions for their work, and thus part of the active element of knowledge, they may then claim to have observed that these are distinguishing characteristics when they have done no such thing. this is what ewing-cobbs et al (1998) have done. as discussed above, the linkage between inflicted traumatic brain injury and the presence of sdh and rh in patients with no history of a serious traumatic event was an active element of knowledge in this study, which they later claim as a passive element of knowledge. the trouble is that these researchers seem to believe that all distinguishing characteristics of disease are identified by directly inspecting a population of patients. that is, they believe that all knowledge of disease is passive. fleck’s arguments that some knowledge must be active has not been widely accepted. so active associations get treated like passive ones. consequently, pre-conditions are treated as results, and circular arguments are produced. if fleck’s account of the requirement to adopt active associations before passive associations could be produced were more widely known and accepted, then the difficulties described above might be avoided. researchers, armed with knowledge of fleck’s epistemology, might be more inclined to ask ‘what is an active element of knowledge in this study?’, and thus might confuse the active with the passive less often. this raises the question of why it is that fleck’s discussion of the active and passive elements of knowledge is not more widely known and employed6. it is possible this it because fleck’s discussion of this topic has confused readers, as discussed in the introduction. a number of different readings of fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge have been made, and many of these either have relativist implications that should be unacceptable to practising medics, or fail to address the problem at hand. i now review several readings of this aspect of fleck’s epistemology with the medical problems discussed in this paper in mind. reception of the active and passive elements of knowledge fleck the relativist fleck is commonly read as an extreme sort of relativist, who argued that the facts of any matter are whatever researchers and wider society collectively agree that it is (harwood, 1986; shapin, 1986; van den belt and gremmen, 1990; wettersten, 1991; fagan, 2009, 279-280; seidel, 2011). such readings of fleck’s epistemology often appeal to an interpretation of his account of the active and passive element of knowledge. jonathan harwood, for example, gives this summary of the active and passive elements of knowledge: 6 discussion of the active and passive elements of knowledge is not entirely absent from medical literature. for instance, g.p pena (2011) has skilfully used this aspect of fleck’s epistemology to describe and reflect upon the development of knowledge of renal allograph pathology. even so, i argue here that there is much medical research that would benefit from paying closer attention to fleck’s work. nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 108 active connections are properties of the system under study which are assumed within a thoughtstyle. on the basis of these assumptions, other properties of the system appear obvious or inescapable, 'imposing' themselves upon the observer; these are what fleck terms passive connections. active connections have an arbitrary character; passive ones seem necessary. (harwood, 1986, 184) as an abstract summary of fleck’s account, this has much in common with the discussion of fleck’s views that i have presented. however, as harwood fleshes out his interpretation of fleck, important differences emerge. harwood dismisses this aspect of fleck’s epistemology as unoriginal and of limited value to scholars in the present day: possibly novel in their day, active and passive are little more than a sociological reformulation of the concepts 'subjective' and 'objective'. that is, active or subjective connections are characteristic of narrowly institutionalized (thus contentious) knowledge-claims. broadly institutionalized (thus unexceptionable) knowledge-claims embody passive or objective connections. (harwood, 1986, 184) notice that harwood here reduces the passive element of knowledge to that which is “broadly institutionalized”, and thus to that which is agreed upon by all. on this view, objectivity is reduced to universal agreement. the active elements of knowledge, by contrast, are supposedly different to the passive elements because they do not command universal agreement, are more controversial, and seem more subjective. harwood thus reads fleck as an extreme form of relativist, for whom knowledge is either obviously arbitrary or is reduced to that which is uncontroversially accepted by the collective. even “objective” knowledge, on this view, is fully determined by historical, social and cultural decisions about what groups of people believe to be the case. in a similar vein, sofia siwecka (2011, 38-39) has argued that fleck’s distinction between the active and the passive has to do with the perceived strength of the association between concepts. siwecka (2011, 39) says that the particularly strong connections are the passive ones, and have the status of facts, whereas the active connections are weaker, and are merely considered as hypotheses. she says that the weaker active associations are first to be made, and over time as more and more are made, some grow stronger and stronger. eventually the passive associations are so strong that they are “transmitted to posterity becoming “certain knowledge” no longer requiring scientific validation” (siwecka, 2011, 39). here, passive associations are treated as those that researchers do not (and never think to) challenge. these readings of fleck are problematic. as discussed above, it is true that the active element of knowledge sometimes has an arbitrary character (as was the case for the claim ‘the atomic weight of oxygen is 16’) (fleck, 1979 [1935], 83). nevertheless, i showed that fleck thought that as a general rule, it is the active element of knowledge, not the passive, that researchers see as beyond doubt (fleck, 1979 [1935], 141). it is the passive element of knowledge, not the active, that researchers see as the result of empirical observation. nevertheless, aspects of these readings do chime with fleck’s work; specifically siwecka’s suggestion that passive associations can be produced purely by the build-up of active associations over time. fleck did say that “as any poet knows, a web of fantasy spun for long enough always produces inevitable, spontaneous and formal connections” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 101). for fleck, any sufficiently complex work of fiction would produce passive associations like those found in science7. by drawing such a parallel between science and fiction fleck does slip into extreme relativism. john wettersten, however, has read fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge as fleck’s attempt to distance himself from such extreme forms of relativism: a central problem which arises for fleck's view is how science can be objective. he studies science as a sociological and anthropological phenomenon. but he also sees the need to avoid being carried too far by his approach into a merely relativist point of view. he rejects the view, however, that there are distinguishable subjective and objective aspects of science. he introduces instead the notion of 7 the main difference between science and myth, according to fleck, was that myth contained relatively fewer passive linkages: “myth differs from science in this respect only in style. science seeks to include in its system a maximum of those passive elements irrespective of inherent lucidity. myth contains only a few such passive elements, but they are artistically composed” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 95). nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 109 active and passive aspects. active aspects are those traits of a theoretical system which are agreed upon but not forced. we explain these aspects with sociological and anthropological laws. they include psychological, emotional, and social elements. the passive elements are those demanded by the framework in which one finds oneself in some society. (wettersten, 1991, 478) if this is indeed what fleck is doing, it provides little to no defence against the charge of extreme relativism, as wettersten himself argues (1991, 493). if this is fleck’s position, he has merely swapped an epistemology that reduces truth to whatever an individual researcher believes, for one that reduces truth to the necessary consequences of the beliefs of the collective (seidel, 2011, 236). in both cases, truth is fully determined by what people believe and by nothing else. relativist readings of fleck’s epistemology such as these have been very influential. many scholars have appealed to fleck’s work to support their own extreme relativist positions (shapin, 1986; engelhardt, 1996; cunningham, 2002). medical facts are not fully determined by what people individually or collectively believe. if they were, then the medical-legal diagnosis of child abuse would always be correct because a court believes that this is the case. it would be impossible for the court to make a misdiagnosis, and there would be no point doing research into what the characteristics of inflicted traumatic brain injury are. even if everybody (or nobody) believes that a particular medical-legal decision is correct, the consensus view may be mistaken. something other than consensus opinion must govern what the facts of any medical matter are. fortunately, fleck’s lapses into extreme forms of relativism are not representative of the bulk of his epistemological work. many scholars point to passages where fleck says explicitly that the facts of any matter are not fully determined by what researchers individually or collectively take them to be. these scholars emphasize that fleck himself rejected relativism, and often read fleck as a form of realist. fleck the realist fleck explicitly rejected the view that matters of fact are fully determined by the social, historical and cultural choices that determine the active element of knowledge. in these two passages fleck says clearly that what the facts are is not simply a matter of collective psychology: these last statements must not, however, be taken to mean that the wasserman reaction can be reconstructed in his objective entirety simply from historical factors along with those of individual and collective psychology. something inevitable, steadfast, and inexplicable by historical development is left out of such attempts. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 79) [t]here are always other connections which are also to be found in the content of knowledge that are not explicable in terms either of psychology (both individual and collective) or history. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 10) feeding off fleck’s view that “something inevitable, steadfast, and inexplicable by historical development” has a role in determining what the facts of any matter are, steven toulmin (1986) and ilana löwy (1988; 2004) have both argued that fleck’s relativism only applied to the active element of knowledge, and did not extend to the passive element of knowledge. “fleck did not believe that observations are radically theoryladen and he considered science capable of cumulative improvement” (löwy, 1988, 135). löwy does not explain what she means by “radically theory-laden” or by “cumulative improvement”, but does cite toulmin (1986) to substantiate this claim. toulmin (1986, 279, 281) takes a radically theory-laden fact to be one that is accepted as beyond dispute “because it expresses a conceptual relation actively built into the theories that shape the denkstil [thought-style] current in the professional thought community concerned”. this is a fair description of an active element of knowledge. if this is what löwy means by “radically theory-laden” facts, then she is quite correct to claim that fleck did not believe all facts were of this kind, as he argued that there were passive associations in addition to active ones. however, toulmin then argues that fleck saved himself from the absurdities of radical theoryladenness by arguing that some facts may be accepted as beyond dispute because they “express an empirical relationship that demands passive acceptance from all scientists working in that science nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 110 regardless of their current theoretical views” (toulmin, 1986, 279). this interpretation of fleck is incorrect. as we have seen, fleck argued that there was “no firm ground of facts” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 92). consequently, scientists were never simply passive when it came to the production of facts. “not a single statement can be formulated from passive links alone” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 49). fleck held that there were no facts of any kind that had to be accepted simply because of the way the world is. closer to the present day, löwy (2004, 438-439, 441) makes a similar claim again. löwy correctly identifies that, for fleck, certain elements of our knowledge arise spontaneously and oppose our will – we cannot have things any way we want. but, according to löwy, fleck held that “the intrinsic properties of the material world” act independently of any social, historical and cultural factors, to constrain the production of knowledge (2004, 439). she argues that knowledge of syphilis was shaped by the given nature of the human body and of the spirochete that actually causes the disease, quite independently of any social, cultural or historical constraints placed on our knowledge: in parallel, the entity syphilis was also shaped by the ‘passive resistance’ of the material world. there were and are many competing perceptions of the disease ‘syphilis’, but these perceptions are constrained by intrinsic properties of human beings and of the bacillus treponema pallidum. (löwy, 2004, 441) so for löwy, the fact that syphilis was caused by treponema pallidum placed an inevitable and ahistorical constraint on our knowledge of syphilis. löwy equates the passive elements of knowledge with the “hard residue of material reality” (2004, 439). löwy says that fleck held that scientific knowledge was a “mixture [my emphasis] of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements” (2004, 439). according to löwy, the active elements provide sociological forces that constrain knowledge. these are therefore historical in nature and change over time. the passive elements, by contrast, are ahistorical in nature and do not change over time (löwy, 2004, 439). this, again, deviates from fleck’s own position. for fleck, even the existence of this spirochete was not an inevitable or ahistorical fact. according to fleck, our historically contingent understanding of syphilis was not dependent on this spirochete. rather, fleck argued that our knowledge of this spirochete was dependent on our historically contingent understanding of syphilis: it has already been demonstrated here that spirochaeta pallida alone cannot define the disease. syphilis is not to be formulated as the “the disease caused by spirochaeta pallida.” on the contrary, spirochaeta pallida must be designated the “micro-organism related to syphilis”. any other definition of this microbe is hopeless, and further, because of the question of germ carriers, cannot serve to define the disease unambiguously. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 21) according to fleck, the passive associations only arise because certain active associations are made. “every act of cognition means that we can first of all determine which passive connections follow of necessity from a certain set of active assumptions” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 64). passive associations are produced by accepting certain active associations, which means that the passive associations will change as the active associations change. this is why fleck thought that “changes in thinking manifest themselves in changed fact” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 50). so if the active associations are historical, then so are the passive associations. active and passive associations are not distinct and autonomous elements that are ‘mixed’ or ‘tangled’ together in natural science, as löwy says they are (2004, 439). rather, their relationship is a constitutive one; the passive associations are produced as a result of adopting certain active associations. löwy (1988) also does not expand on how fleck’s work was supposed to be “cumulative”, but toulmin (1986) uses this term to mean “progressive improvement” (toulmin, 1986, 282-284). löwy (2004) does indeed seem to suggest that fleck’s held that scientific knowledge (despite many contingent twists and turns) was heading inevitably towards some ultimate truth. invoking fleck’s metaphor of a river on its way to the sea, löwy here argues that the inexorable pull of the physical properties of water and the force of gravity (representing the “intrinsic properties of the material world”) will inevitably lead all rivers on disparate courses (representing the knowledge of different historical actors) to the same final location – the sea (representing ultimate truth): nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 111 thus, each river has a unique trajectory defined by its specific geographic, geological and climatic conditions, but given the physical properties of water and the existence of the force of gravity, ‘all rivers end up in the sea’. (löwy, 2004, 439) i am afraid that löwy has misread fleck’s metaphor of rivers ending in the sea (löwy 2004, 439; fleck 1979 [1935], 78). for löwy, the physical characteristics of water and the existence of the force of gravity represent the “intrinsic properties of the material world” (2004, 439). but for fleck, “the field of gravity corresponds to the dominant and directing disposition, and the water to the work of the entire thought collective” (1979 [1935], 78). the disposition to which fleck was referring was the will of these researchers to develop a blood test for syphilis. the purpose of this metaphor was to illustrate how it was this will that directed research towards an ultimate destination, and not some pressure exerted by an autonomous “residue of material reality”. indeed, fleck used this metaphor to illustrate his view that there was no such thing as an ultimate truth for the “intrinsic properties of the material world” to guide researchers toward. “there is no such thing as the sea as such. the area at the lowest level, the area where the waters actually collect, is merely called the sea!” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 78). for fleck, there was no such thing as ultimate truth as such. what researchers called the truth was merely where their knowledge ended up after much thought-style directed research and struggling. in order to save him from “radical theory-ladenness” and extreme relativism, toulmin (1986) and löwy (1988; 2004) attribute to fleck a belief in brute facts and absolute truth which fleck explicitly rejected. in a similar vein, david stump has argued that the passive element of knowledge corresponds to the ‘world as it is in itself’: fleck claims that some elements of science are not creations of a thought collective, and he calls these the “passive element of knowledge”… therefore, fleck’s dependence on a passive element to account for the objectivity of scientific theory is no better than the view that correspondence with an inaccessible noumena makes our theories true. (stump, 1988, 305) if this were true it would make fleck’s epistemology unsuitable for addressing the problems encountered in medical practice described above. if the passive element of knowledge corresponds to knowledge of the ‘world as it is in itself’, then there would be no need to attend to the active element of knowledge that was adopted to produce it. as discussed above, it is the belief that facts about the characteristics of disease are not “creations of a thought collective” that leads to the production of circular arguments, as this belief leads researchers to forget the active element of knowledge in their work. fleck, however, argued that no element of knowledge corresponds to the ‘world as it is in itself’; and that the notion that we could find that our knowledge corresponds with the inaccessible noumena is incoherent (fleck, 1979 [1935], 28). “all insistence on the ‘essences and things’, like all search for the ‘thing in itself’, would not be natural science at all” (fleck, 1986, 56). fleck’s appeal to “something inevitable, steadfast, and inexplicable by historical development” in his account of the passive element of knowledge has led several scholars to argue that fleck’s views on the epistemic status of facts was self-contradictory. according to stump, “fleck wavers back and forth between relativistic language and objective language, but it is not possible for him to define the objective element of knowledge as a passive element because his own position is that it is impossible to separate passive and active elements of our knowledge” (stump, 1988, 305). harwood argues that it is contradictory of fleck to try to explain what researchers see and think by appealing to an active element of knowledge that “‘dictates’ and ‘coerces’ how and what a scientist sees and thinks”, whilst at the same time appealing to “constraints imposed by the real world” to do the same thing (harwood, 1986, 182). henk van den belt and bart gremmen have chastised fleck for arguing that knowledge is relative to the active element of knowledge whilst at the same time arguing that some of the researchers he studied were wrong to hold the beliefs they did, and argue that fleck makes a mockery of his relativist aspirations as he does so (1990, 467, 478). thomas schnelle argues that “against his own postulates, fleck, too, ultimately assigns an empirical reality the task of deciding, independently of the presuppositions of the thought-style, what is to be ascertained and recognized as a style-adequate solution, as a style-adequate passive linkage, and as a ‘fact’”, and therefore that “fleck must contradict himself” (1986, 253). despite these concerns, fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge is not self-contradictory. rather, it is a coherent and useful epistemology that finds a middle way between less appealing realist and relativist extremes. nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 112 the ‘middle way’ as discussed above, several scholars have argued that fleck’s work has a kantian flavour. it is useful to consider the fleck’s discussion of the active and passive elements of knowledge with the kantian metaphor of the judge and the witness in mind. according to kant: reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which alone concordant appearances can be admitted to count as laws of nature, and in the other hand experiments which it has devised according to these principles, must approach nature in order to be taught by it. it must not, however, do so in the manner of a pupil who agrees with everything the teacher says, but of an appointed judge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself has phrased. (kant, 2007 [1787], 16) in this metaphor, the ‘world as it is in itself’ is represented by the witness. the experiences of the witness are not directly available to the court. the witness does not simply volunteer testimony to the court. rather, the judge, representing researchers investigating the world, must ask the witness questions in order to produce testimony. therefore, the activity of the judge is necessary to produce testimony, which represent the results of empirical investigation. furthermore, how the judge frames the questions affects the testimony that is produced. the activity of the judge affects the answers provided by the witness. notice, however, that how the questions are framed does not fully determine the testimony produced. although the activity of the judge is necessary for the production of testimony, it is not sufficient for testimony to be produced. how the questions are framed is entirely for the judge to decide, but the testimony that is then produced is not. the judge may even be surprised by the answers the witness gives. even though the testimony is shaped by the judge’s choices about how to frame questions, the testimony still resists the judge’s will. it is helpful to think of the relationship of the active and passive elements of knowledge in this way. the active element of knowledge is equivalent to the judge’s decisions about how to frame questions, and the passive element of knowledge is equivalent to the testimony produced. it is only after researchers adopts active associations (such as the ‘atomic weight of oxygen is exactly 16’, and ‘all patients with venereal disease have the carnal scourge’) that it becomes possible to produce passive associations (such as ‘the atomic weight of hydrogen is 1.008’ and ‘mercury sometimes does not cure the carnal scourge but makes it even worse’). active associations are necessary for passive associations to be made, like the activity of the judge is necessary to produce testimony. as discussed in section 1, changes to the active associations adopted produces changes to the passive associations that then manifest; like changes to how the judge frames questions affects the testimony then produced. even so, the active associations adopted are also not sufficient to determine the passive associations that are produced. nothing about claiming that ‘the atomic weight of oxygen is exactly 16’ entails that the atomic weight of hydrogen must be 1.008. the atomic weight of hydrogen might be exactly 1, or 2, or 1.5. indeed, many researchers in the past expected that this value for hydrogen would be exactly 1, in accordance with prout’s hypothesis. nevertheless, once the atomic weight of hydrogen is stipulated as 16, the atomic weight of hydrogen does not obey the will of researchers and turns out to be 1.008. similarly, it might be the case that all patients with venereal disease are cured by treatment with mercury. stipulating that patients with venereal disease have the carnal scourge does not entail that this should not be the case. early modern medics may well have expected that mercury would cure these patients. regardless of the wishes of these medics, mercury turned out not to cure all cases of the carnal scourge. in a manner analogous to the kantian metaphor above, active associations are necessary but not sufficient for the production of passive associations. the kantian metaphor of the judge and the witness is not perfectly analogous to fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge. one important dis-analogy is that fleck’s account has nothing equivalent to the witness. the witness represents the unknowable ‘world as it is in itself’, and fleck rejected all talk of such a thing, and chastised kant for making use of such this notion (fleck, 1979 [1935], 28). happily, researchers do not need such a notion to fend off accusations of extreme relativism. following fleck, it is possible to see that once researchers adopt active associations, they can talk about things that are not up to them, without having to talk about the ‘world as it is in itself’. it is possible for researchers to find that their will is resisted, without having to worry about what is doing the resisting. nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 113 another important dis-analogy is that fleck did not believe active associations to be historically transcendent, as kant believed that synthetic a priori judgements were. as discussed in section 1, the active element of knowledge could change over time. this produces something similar to the conventionalist epistemology of henri poincaré, and several scholars have read fleck’s work in this way (giedymin, 1986, 186; schnelle 1986, 248-253; sady 2016). it is beyond the scope of this paper to make a detailed comparison between fleck and poincaré’s epistemologies, but in my view there are enough similarities8 to claim that this conventionalist reading of fleck is optimal, and is the ‘middle way’ view to which i have referred. despite the concerns of many scholars raised above, this conventionalist reading of fleck is not selfcontradictory. as the active element of knowledge is necessary for the production of the passive element, no matters of fact are independent of the activity and choices of researchers. nevertheless, as the active element of knowledge is not sufficient for the production of the passive element, the facts of any matter need not obey the will of researchers. there is no contradiction in saying that there is no truth apart from the decisions made by us as knowers and saying that what is true is not fully determined by what we as knowers wish was the case. conclusion i have argued that circular arguments found in the medical literature on child abuse result from researchers forgetting about the active element of knowledge in their work, and believing that all facts about the characteristics of disease are passive elements of knowledge. to explore why fleck’s arguments that facts are never made up of passive elements alone has not been taken up by medical practitioners, i have reviewed a number of different readings of his epistemology. i found that fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge has been read in several different ways, and has produced confusion amongst scholars. i have argued that extreme relativist and realist readings of fleck’s account are both unpalatable to a medical audience and less congenial to fleck’s work than a third ‘middle way’ view. on this view, the active element of knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient to produce the passive element of knowledge. as the active element is necessary for the production of facts, the facts of any matter are always relative to the active linkages made, and researchers always need to make sure they are aware of the preconditions they adopt in their work. as the active element is not sufficient to produce facts, what the facts of any mater are is not fully determined by the social, historical and cultural decisions that fully determine the active element of knowledge. the passive element of knowledge resists the researcher’s will. consequently, factual knowledge does not reduce to what researchers believe to be true, and the pitfalls of extreme forms of relativism are avoided. on this view, ewing-cobbs et al (1998) really did produce facts about what they take to be inflicted traumatic brain injury. for instance, they found that “seizures” and “significantly impaired cognitive function without prolonged impairment of consciousness” were passively associated with this condition. nevertheless, all parties need to remember that these facts could only be produced by adopting the active association between inflicted traumatic brain injury and sdh and rh. acknowledgements i am very grateful to the organizing committee for the international conference on ludwik fleck’s theory of thought styles and thought collectives – translations and receptions (wrocław 2016), particularly paweł jarnicki, for their work organizing the conference at which this paper was presented. i am grateful to the project science foundation for their financial support. 8 conventionalism is sometimes understood to be a view on which all scientific laws are arbitrarily chosen, but is not poincaré’s view. like fleck, poincaré argued that following the adoption of conventions (which function like the active element of knowledge) allowed researchers to have experiences that are not up to them: “this convention being given, if i am asked: is such a fact true? i shall always know what to answer, and my reply will be imposed upon me by the witness of my senses” (poincaré, 2001, 324). one important difference between fleck and poincaré is that poincaré appealed to crude facts that are forced on all observers in his epistemology, whereas fleck argued against the existence of such things. in my view this gives fleck’s epistemology an advantage over poincaré’s. nicholas r. binney – fleck’s ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge revisited 114 references cunningham, andrew. “identifying disease in the past, cutting the gordian knot” asclepio vol. 54. 2002, 13-34. elamin, mohamed; 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151-171. 36 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2 (2017) 36-53 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2017 — this is an open access article dossier pierre duhem duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin1 cássio costa laranjeiras2 abstract: the aim of this paper is to present duhem’s critical view of the dynamical development of mechanics according to two principles of his theory of the development of physics: the continuous and the rational development of physics. these two principles impose a formal conception of physics that aims at demarcating physics from the metaphysical view on the one hand and the pragmatist/conventionalist view on the other hand. duhem pursues an intermediary conception of physics, a representational system of empirical laws based upon formal principles. this formal conception of physics will adjust to his idea of scientific progress in the form of a sequence of representational systems as structures of increasing comprehensiveness of empirical laws, which leads him to defend a convergent structural realism pointing to an ideal physical theory. keywords: pierre duhem; mechanicism; theoretical physics; synthetical / analytical method; structural realism received: 07 april. reviewed: 31 may 2017. accepted: 12 june 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.05 _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction the aim of this paper is to present duhem’s critical view of the development of mechanics according to two principles of his dynamical theory of the development of physics: the continuous and the rational development of physics (duhem 1980, 188). these two principles impose a formal conception of physics that aims at demarcating physics from the metaphysical view which searches for causal explanation of physical phenomena, on the one hand and the pragmatist/conventionalist view, with its defense of the principle of undertermination of theories by data on the other hand (chiappin 1989, 131, 93; duhem 91, 330; poincaré 1901, vi). duhem pursues a formal conception of physics that he defines as a representational system of empirical laws based upon formal principles (duhem 1974, 19; 1902b, 5), a middle way between 1 josé r. n. chiappin is a professor of economics in the department of economics at the university of são paulo – fea-usp. adress: av. prof. luciano gualberto, 908 – butantã, são paulo – sp, 05.508-010, brazil. email: chiappin@usp.br 2 cássio costa laranjeiras is a professor of physics in the institute of physics at the university of brasilia – unb. adress: campus universitário darcy ribeiro asa norte, brasília-df, 70919-970, brazil. email: cassio@unb.br duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 37 these two conceptions (chiappin 1989, iv, 92-93, 121, 243). he constructs this formal conception in such a way that he ends up with an idea of scientific progress in the form of a sequence of representational systems as structures of increasing comprehensiveness of empirical laws, which leads him to defend a convergent structural realism toward an ideal physical theory (chiappin 1989, 198, 110-116, 198-210). duhem rejects a conception of physics that searches for causal explanation, which he deems metaphysical and whose origins, as he points out, lie in the emergent mechanicism of descartes’s rationalistic program. for duhem, mechanicism – understood as a kind of large-scale mechanism – was a strategy of scientists such as descartes and galileo to mathematize nature. despite rejecting the mechanistic approach to physics, duhem values the framework of the emergent rationalist program that contains it, together with its demand for the principle of unity and the formal or mathematical organization of science (duhem 1892, 170). however, his critical analysis of the mechanistic point of view of physics is more complex than it seems at first sight, since it envisages the dynamical development of mechanics according to two approaches, the synthetic and the analytical. each one of them has its own vices and virtues, according to duhem’s principles of the continuous and rational development of physics (duhem 1974, 270, 296; 1980, 188, chiappin 1989, 77, 80, 91). both principles are the coordinating principles of a proposal to construct a dynamical conception of physics made of a sequence of more encompassing theories that move systematically toward an ideal conception of physics which pretends to mirror the structural relations between the empirical laws (duhem 1893, 298, 368-369; 1917, 157; chiappin 1989, 198, 106-113, 243). duhem’s description of mechanical theory and the mechanistic program duhem’s critical analysis of the evolution of mechanics and of the conception of physics associated with it is, obviously, made from a historical point of view. besides allowing him to find a possible tendency in the development of physics, it also enables him to construct a tradition and a historical support for his own formal conception of physics. in his historical-critical analysis of mechanicism (chiappin 1989, 18-19), duhem provides the following general description of the nature of mechanical theory: let us seek to account exactly for the nature of what one calls a mechanical theory. in a mechanical theory one imposes [besides symbolization] on all physical magnitudes on which rely the laws that one has to tie with one another the condition that they be composed by means of the geometrical and mechanical elements of a certain fictitious system; one imposes on all hypotheses that they be the propositions [énoncés] of the dynamical properties of this system (duhem 1892, 154). this means in mechanical theory that: i) the physical concepts used in the empirical laws must be defined in terms of geometrical and mechanical properties of a material system (for example, particles in motion in descartes’s view, matter and repulsive/attractive forces in the mechanical-molecular tradition of laplace and poisson, the continuous medium of fresnel’s and maxwell’s ether); ii) there is an additional supposition that these mechanical concepts are restricted to mass, size, motion and/or force. duhem spells out this additional condition as follows: “when we propose to construct a mechanical theory, we impose upon ourselves another obligation which consists in putting, into these definitions and hypotheses, only a very restricted number of notions of a determined nature [mass, size, motion and/or force]” (duhem 1892, 156). these two conditions define the core of the physical content of mechanical theory. the basic mechanical concepts of mass, motion, size and/or force are mechanical properties of a mechanical system. the kinetic, or cartesian view, excludes force from the definition of mechanical explanation. it views change of motion as the result of collisions. the dynamical or newtonian view of mechanical theory includes force as a primitive concept. these constitute two general and competing programs to explain physical phenomena mechanically. the mechanistic program is characterized by additional principles: iii) commitment to a set of propositions (in the form of equations) by means of which the general features of physical phenomena are described (these propositions are the fundamental laws of mechanics); iv) commitment to the application of duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 38 the principle of logical unity in physics (duhem 1974, 91; chiappin 1989, 178, 240-241), which requires a single theoretical system to account for physical phenomena; v) commitment to make mechanical theory the unifying framework of physics, which means that all physical concepts, entities, hypotheses and laws of physical theories must be composed of these restricted mechanical concepts and the fundamental theoretical principles (duhem 1892, 155); vi) the assumption that physics is not mathematical unless it is first mechanical. duhem clearly states this methodological principle: “a branch of physics cannot be transformed into a mathematical theory unless it becomes a mechanical theory. for a century, this principle has guided the efforts of the physicist geometricians” (duhem 1901, 131). duhem disputes this principle which, for him, conflicts with the true principle that guides the construction of mathematical physics. he replaces it with what he understands to be the correct principle to make theoretical physics mathematical, the measurement theory; vii) an implicit commitment to physics as a rational system and method of constructing physical theory. this method, as noted above, requires the use of well-established concepts and postulates from physical theory and of rational arguments (in the form of mathematical deductions) to obtain empirical laws from its theoretical basis. the mechanical theory and its two versions: synthetic and analytic duhem’s analysis of mechanicism is organized around his criticism of two methods for applying mechanical theory to explain physical phenomena: the “synthetic method” and the “analytic method”. duhem states such an idea clearly when he says: the attempts made at explicating mechanically the physical phenomena that the universe presents fall into two categories. the attempts in the first category are carried out according to a method that can aptly be named the synthetic method […]; in the eyes of the majority of physicists, the synthetic method no longer seems capable of giving a mechanical and complete explication of natural phenomena; it is, then, the analytic method that one requires today for such an explication (duhem 1980, 95; 1905, 180-181). these are two different views of the mechanical method of constructing physical theories. duhem’s criticism of mechanicism is the criticism of these two methods of constructing mechanical theories. each of these mechanical methods of construction leads to different views of what mechanical explanation and theoretical physics mean and aim for. duhem critically examines the problems and difficulties affecting both approaches, evaluating them critically regarding their capacities to provide a general and unifying mechanical explanation of physics and to make the development of physics continuous and rational. further, they are evaluated on the basis of his own view of physical theory as a rational system, that is to say a system of physical laws represented by a few formal principles. the synthetic method and its two versions: the english school and the classical rationalism / continental school duhem argues, from the beginning, that the use of mechanical theories is not sufficient to distinguish between the english school and the continental school or the metaphysical view of physics. he writes: “this predilection for explanatory and mechanical theories is, of course, not a sufficient basis to distinguish english doctrines from the scientific traditions thriving in other countries” (duhem 1974, 72; chiappin 1989, 38-58). both schools follow the synthetic approach to the mechanistic program. however, they differ in their ways of interpreting what theoretical physics and mechanical explanation are, how to represent their conceptual bases, and how to connect the conceptual and the empirical bases. the sharp distinctions between these schools can also be traced to distinctions between the metaphysical/rationalist and the pragmatist/empiricist view of the mechanistic program. these two views of scientific knowledge strongly influenced the various ways of interpreting the synthetic approach to mechanical theory. undoubtedly, both views seek to explain physical phenomena according to the synthetic method. both seek to elaborate duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 39 definite, specific and detailed models of matter and motion to explain physical phenomena mechanically, the characteristic feature of the synthetic method. however, one can reconstruct the common core of these two versions of the synthetic method to explicate physical phenomena mechanically as described by duhem: in this method one begins by constructing a mechanism from all pieces; one says what are the bodies that compose it, what are their shapes, sizes and masses, and what forces act upon it, and from these data one draws the laws according to which the mechanism moves; then, by comparing these laws with the experimental laws it seeks to explain, one judges whether there is sufficient agreement between them (duhem 1980, 95). at the root of the synthetic method of mechanical theory to explain physical phenomena mechanically is an attempt to define specific and detailed mechanisms, or mechanical models based on definite hypotheses about the shape of atoms and molecules, their size and their arrangement. for each category of physical phenomena the synthetic method defines a mechanical explanation based upon a specific number of bodies with a specific arrangement of shapes and definite motions and mass. these arrangements are supposed to express the causal explanation of, or to imitate and simulate, physical phenomena, or, “in the words of english physicists, [to be] a model” (duhem 1980, 102). these mechanical models or mechanisms may further be made of dimensional and real elements, such as fluids or corpuscles with definite sizes, shapes and masses. when these models are made of plastic or wood, or drawn, they are called scale models. the use of real and concrete models is a trademark of the english school. although this synthetic approach is not the only means of applying mechanical theory, it prevailed over every other and is practiced by most of those working on mechanistic research programs. according to duhem, poincaré was one of its representatives and introduced the english school (pragmatism) in france (duhem 1974, 319, 328; chiappin 1989, 130-134; 136-150). as a result, most mechanical explanations are based on this method of constructing physical theory. the examples abound. duhem cites descartes’s theory of magnetic attractions and repulsions, descartes’s explanation of weight by vortex action, and kelvin’s gyrostatic ether (duhem 1980, 96). other instances are maxwell’s thermodynamical surfaces used to describe gibbs’s phase rules, descartes’s mechanical explanation of the properties of light, laplace’s physical theory, and, most outstanding, maxwell’s cellular constructions, with which he attempts to account for electromagnetic actions. maxwell’s description can be found in his memoir entitled “on physical lines of force” (maxwell 1952). this model simulates a mechanism put forward to explain (mechanically) electrostatic and electromagnetic effects. an understanding of the differences between these two views is central to understanding duhem’s view of a conception of physical theory as an intermediary or a middle way (tertium) between them. the continental school besides the characteristic features of the synthetic method, i.e. the use of a restricted number of mechanical concepts applied through the definite properties of a specific material system, the continental school (duhem 1893, 352; chiappin 1989, 40) requires that mechanical explanations “be subject to certain logical requirements” (duhem 1974, 78; 1893, 358). for example, all mechanical concepts and empirical laws must be organized into a single, rigid axiomatic system, made of well-established concepts and principles, and all empirical laws must be mathematically deduced within this axiomatic system. the continental school follows the rationalist tradition as to the nature of physical theory, meaning that physical theory is modeled on the ideal of the rational system of euclidean geometry. physical theory is a rigorous axiomatic system that logically unites its definitions and postulates with their testable consequences. duhem says, “for a frenchman or a german, a physical theory is essentially a logical system. perfectly rigorous deductions unite the hypotheses at the base of a theory to the consequences which are derivable from it and are to be compared with experimental laws” (duhem 1974, 78). the continental school requires the basic concepts of physical theory to be quantitative in order that algebraic language may be used. basic concepts are mechanical concepts because they are quantitative. mechanical theory is thus both a rational and algebraic system. the continental school also follows the duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 40 metaphysical view associated with this rationalist tradition, which defines the nature of physical theory as aiming at the causal explanation of physical phenomena. duhem describes how “the french geometers who composed the first theories of mathematical physics had a tendency to see theories as true explanations in the metaphysical sense. they assumed that they had reached the reality of things and the true causes of phenomena. this tendency begun by descartes was evident in the work of laplace and poisson, of fresnel, gauchy and ampère” (duhem 1893, 358). the metaphysical commitment of the continental school to the principle “of the identity of the real and the intelligible” (duhem 1974, 320) requires that basic mechanical concepts represent the real causes in nature. the content of physical theory is given by assuming that the primary concepts (mass, shape, motion and/or force) and principles which are composed of these concepts represent real mechanical properties of a material system and the laws of nature governing masses in motion. they assume that there are causal principles for all physical phenomena. all remaining physical properties must be reduced to these basic mechanical concepts. according to this view, physical theories are explanatory (duhem 1974, 80). as mentioned, it was descartes who developed the ontology and epistemology to legitimate this view and define methodologically the characteristic features of its physical theory and method of construction. both demands, rationalist and metaphysical, establish fundamental differences between the continental school’s view of physical theory and the english school’s view. the rationalist tradition of the continental school constructs physical theory according to rules of geometrically inspired principles such as abstraction, simplicity, coherence, and logical unity. these principles are also metaphysical principles, in that they are assumed to be properties in nature (as described by descartes) (duhem 1893, 352). among the rationalist virtues with which the continental school expects physical theory to comply, the logical unity of physical theory is foremost. this principle rejects any contradiction and incompatibility within as well as between theoretical systems. it requires that the laws be not contradictory, that they be independent and mutually consistent. this principle pervades all the different physical theories of the continental school. mechanical theory, for the continental school, is the unifying framework of physics, and most of its members make the mechanical theory of matter the means by which the mechanistic program seeks to unify the whole of physics. from descartes to poisson, the principle of logical unity takes different forms, depending on the details of the theory of matter, but it stands as an unquestionable category to shape physical theory. the principle of unification in descartes’s view is matter and motion and its set of fundamental mechanical principles. they are the basis for causal explanation for every physical phenomenon: gravity, light, magnetic attractions and repulsions (duhem 1980, 472-473). laplace grounds the principle of unity in his mechanical-molecular model of matter with central forces and newton’s vectorial mechanics. lagrange differs from laplace in that he rests the principle of logical unity not precisely on a theory of matter but rather on a system of generalized coordinates, generalized forces, the principle of virtual velocities (duhem 1905, 42) and d’alembert’s principle (duhem 1905, 62). duhem rejects the unification of physical theory by a theory of matter. he is committed to the goal of unification by means of mathematical properties: stability and equilibrium imposed by thermodynamics. duhem makes use of lagrange’s method, which is called energetic mechanics – his method to construct the energy of the system –, and makes the potential of the system its main concept. a theoretical physics developed according to lagrange’s method of potential and without a theory of matter is present in gibbs’s formulation of thermodynamics. the gibbsian view of thermodynamics is the model of unification according to duhem. for the continental school, the principle of logical unity is the leading principle for the construction of physical theory. in accordance with this principle, “for a mathematician of the school of laplace or ampère, it would be absurd to give two distinct theoretical explanations for the same law, and to maintain that these two explanations are equally valid” (duhem 1974, 81). the principle of logical unity is understood by the rationalist tradition as a logical principle whose violation is against the laws of reason and is therefore absurd. this principle demands that incompatibilities between theories/laws and concepts be eradicated from physical theory, and that all physical phenomena be deduced from the concepts and fundamental principles of mechanics. duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 41 the english school the nature and character of the english school’s mechanical explanation of physical phenomena (chiappin 1989,43) is spelled out by lord kelvin when he says that it seems to me that the true meaning of the question “what do we understand or not understand by a particular subject in physics?” is this: can we make a corresponding mechanical model? […] i am never satisfied as long as i have been unable to make a mechanical model for the object; if i can make a mechanical model, i understand; for as long as i cannot make a mechanical model, i do not understand (in duhem 1980, 102). therefore, model-building is the method of construction of physical theories, and physical theory is identified with the constructions of models. the synthetic application of mechanical theory in the english school’s view is influenced by the empiricist tradition stemming from bacon, locke, hume and newton. particularly, the experimentalist conception of physical theory is taken from newton’s optics. at the root of this experimental/empirical conception of physics is the methodological principle of the separability and testability of isolated hypotheses, of crucial experiments, and of the inductive method. this principle can also be associated with newton’s basic view of mechanics as applying to isolated particles. the fundamental laws of mechanics as stated by newton hold in the first instance for a single particle only (lanczos 1986, 4). the english school took from the empiricist tradition the determination to emphasize the empirical/practical aspects of physics over the theoretical. moreover, for the english school, empirical adequacy should be the relevant criterion to accept mechanical explanations over rationalist criteria. most of the english scientific community in the 19th century did not take formal and rationalist values as meaningful criteria to construct physical theory. logical unity and other rationalist virtues such as axiomatization, consistency and simplicity were considered of no great importance to elaborate a mechanical explanation of physical phenomena. for this school, as opposed to the continental school, a mechanical explanation is not given by a well-constructed system of propositions logically chained from its definitions and postulates to its testable consequences, but rather by means of a sequence of disparate, concrete and figurative models. the english school does not require rational agreement between the mechanical system and the empirical laws which it is supposed to explain. physical theory is identified with mechanical models made of concrete and real elements. the english school defends the methodological right to construct for each category of physical phenomena one or more mechanical models instead of a single mechanical model. underdetermination of models by data is a methodological resource to construct physical theories. maxwell and lord kelvin are outstanding representatives of this school, and their physical theories are a sequence of disparate models. duhem states: “for a physicist of the school of thomson or maxwell, there is no contradiction in the fact that the same law can be represented by two different models” (duhem 1974, 81; 1893, 81, 361). in other words, they replace the principle of logical unity with the principle of the underdetermination of theory by data. incompatibilities and contradictions between models are not violations of any logical principles, but instead they are methodological resources for the construction of mechanical explanations. the english school also does not demand rational agreement between the conceptual basis of mechanical theory and its empirical basis of empirical laws. this connection is made by mechanical models that simulate or show resemblances to these physical laws. the relevant criterion to accept mechanical models as a mechanical explanation is that of “resemblance” between the model and the physical phenomena thereby represented. empirical adequacy is interpreted as a pictorial way of simulating physical phenomena by models rather than a logical agreement between experimental laws and mechanical principles. the model-building method to construct physical theories is not concerned with logically rigorous hypothetical-deductive derivation of the empirical laws from the conceptual system of mechanics (duhem 1893, 353-354). thus, the fundamental differences between the rationalist-oriented continental school and the pragmatist/empiricist-oriented english school can be summed up as follows: the definition of the nature of duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 42 physical theory; the use of the principle of logical unity in physical theory; the method of the construction of physical theory; and the cognitive value of mechanical theory. the continental school follows the rational method while the english school uses the piecemeal method of model building. while for the continental school “it would be absurd to give two distinct explanations for the same law and to maintain that these two explanations can be true at the same time, for an english physicist there would be no contradiction in the fact that the same law can be figured out in two different manners by two different models” (duhem 1893, 360). the continental school applies the principle of logical unity while the english school applies the principle of the underdetermination of theory by data. in the wake of its rejection of the principle of logical unity, the english school demolishes another much-loved rationalist value, namely the notion of physical theory as a rational system. duhem says: “theory is, for [the english school], neither an explanation nor a rational classification of physical laws, but a model of these laws, a model built not to satisfy reason, but to please the imagination” (duhem 1974, 81;1893, 361). duhem stresses the fact that the model-building method is a non-rational method to construct physical theory, and that physical theories constructed in this manner are non-rational systems, unable to provide a rational classification of empirical laws. they must, therefore, be rejected. this is one of his harsh criticisms of the english school. “from there, these discrepancies, these incoherencies, these contradictions generated by english theories, that we tend to judge severely because we are looking for a rational system when the author only intends to give us a work of imagination” (duhem 1893, 361). duhem’s defense of the rational method of construction of physical theory is essential because it reflects the true nature of his conception; his rationalist commitment gives rise to a demarcation from the conventionalist/instrumentalist interpretation of physical theory. his rationalist commitment is what explains his commitment to applying the principle of logical unity in physical theory. further, it is his view of physical theory as a rational system that explains his criticism of the english school for manipulating theoretical systems as algebraic models. conventionalism and instrumentalism are committed to the principle of the underdetermination of physical theory by data. the continental school follows a metaphysical view of the nature of physical theory regarding its cognitive status, meaning that physical theory aims at explicating the real causes of physical phenomena. its main representatives, descartes, laplace and poisson, believe that mathematical physics provides real and causal mechanical explanations. two concepts of truth underlie this view: the theory of truth as correspondence, which is applied to the conceptual basis of mechanical systems, and the theory of truth as coherence, which guarantees that mathematical principles and logical principles lead from truth to truth. the theory of correspondence is the rationalist principle of “identity of the real and the intelligible” (duhem 1974, 320; 1893, 358). the english school rejects the application of both concepts of truth because they are incompatible with the underdetermination of models. the underdetermination of models does not seem methodologically compatible with the idea that the mechanical elements in the models can represent the mechanical cause of physical phenomena. the principle of underdetermination is inherently an anti-realist methodological rule. the model-building method methodologically expresses its purposes: physical theories are to be considered solely as convenient instruments for experimental research. according to duhem, the english school is concerned only with the utilitarian value of physical theory rather than with theoretical knowledge (duhem 1974, 319). the english school does not regard mechanical models as solutions for the problem of the identity of the real and the intelligible. according to duhem, mechanical models are used as solutions to the problem of providing convenient instruments for experimental research, and are means to act on nature rather than to know nature. the underdetermination principle is the primary anti-realist argument. consistent with its methodology, the english school assumes a pragmatist/empiricist view of the value of physical theory in which models have the status of a recipe, a practical and instrumental value. the pragmatist/empiricist view of the cognitive value of physical theory is reinforced by the fact that the metaphysical/aprioristic approach to the theory of matter which underlies mechanical theory suffered various theoretical as well as experimental setbacks. the english school also questions the idea that the experimental method is a means to decide the truth value of scientific propositions. it is a method to construct empirical laws and models resembling these laws. these models and laws are interpreted as guides to act on nature rather than means to know nature duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 43 (in its metaphysical sense). according to duhem, poincaré not only introduces the english school view in france, but further develops its epistemological and methodological assumptions (duhem 1974, 86-93, 149, 251, 319; chiappin 1989, 320, 130-134;). duhem’s goal is to avoid this conception of physical theory (duhem 1974, 149; chiappin 1989, 320). he must pursue this goal without committing himself to the metaphysical aspect of the rationalist view of physical theory. his proposal pursues a middle way between the metaphysical view and the english (pragmatist/conventionalist) views, retaining from the pragmatist/empiricist view its criticism of the causal explanation of physical phenomena. the problem for him is how to construct a view of the nature of physical theory which methodologically rejects the search for causes without becoming, at the same time, a pragmatical view. the english school’s assumption of the principle of underdetermination is a natural methodological resource against such an explanatory view of physical theory. duhem’s problem is to find a similar methodological resource which naturally rejects the causal view of physical theory (its realist component, the entities) without giving up the application of the principle of logical unity in physical theory, for logical unity is the core of duhem’s view of physical theory as a rational system and of his view of scientific growth as rational and continuous. the principle of logical unity presses the search for more and more comprehensive physical theories. therefore, despite the epistemological and methodological differences between these two views of the synthetic method of constructing physical theory – one associated with the metaphysical/rationalist and the other with the pragmatic/empiricist view –, duhem shows that neither can comply with the principle of the continuity of scientific development, nor with the aim of a unifying framework for the whole of physics (duhem 1917, 152). in particular, he shows that the model-building method is not a rational method of constructing physical theory, and, accordingly, that any physical theory constructed by this method is not rational. one can sum up his criticisms of the synthetic method by saying that this method does not make scientific progress continuous. a physicist, says duhem, “will see [the physical theories constructed by the mechanistic method] constantly being reborn, but constantly aborted; […] it will clearly appear to him that the physics of atomism, condemned to perpetual fresh starts, does not tend through continued progress to the ideal form of physical theory” (duhem 1974, 304). duhem also argues that it cannot comply with the principle of the logical unity of physics. he says that the attempt of the synthetic method to provide a unification of all empirical laws makes its explanation overburdened with arbitrary and bizarre combinations (duhem 1974, 304). the analytic method: description and problems according to duhem, the second attempt at explicating physical phenomena mechanically is carried out by the analytic approach (duhem 1980, 96; chiappin 1989, 57-80). this new attempt arose in the english school when the aforementioned difficulties began to emerge from the synthetic approach to mechanical theory. maxwell himself was disappointed with the results of his attempt at a mechanical explanation according to the synthetic approach. duhem says: “undoubtedly, therefore, maxwell found little satisfaction in the mechanism he had thought of, for he soon abandoned it to set out upon a completely different path toward the mechanical explication of electric phenomena” (duhem 1980, 68-69). thus duhem and even poincaré point out that the complicated and bizarre forms taken by the mechanical models are some of maxwell’s reasons for such a disappointment. poincaré says: “the strangeness and complication of the hypotheses that he had been compelled to make had led him to give them up” (poincaré 1901, ix). certainly poincaré does not care about the problems of the synthetic method in regard to the principle of logical unity and the principle of historical continuity because he is not methodologically committed to these principles. maxwell seeks to develop, in order to avoid the difficulties associated with the use of mechanical models, a mechanistic method that will provide a more abstract approach to constructing physical theory. by this time mechanics already had an abstract method to construct mechanical theories, namely the lagrangian/analytic mechanics. maxwell adopts analytic mechanics to explain physical phenomena, giving rise to a new view of mechanical explanations. the application of analytic mechanics to the construction of mechanical theories constitutes a new version of the mechanistic program. the core of these new mechanical explanations consist of mechanisms of masses and motions. duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 44 the epistemological and methodological consequences of this analytic method are far-reaching. one of them is that the arbitrariness and indeterminacy of these invisible mechanisms of hidden masses and motions (maxwell 1867, 50) make any empirical law susceptible to a mechanical explanation. in our view poincaré develops the appropriate epistemological and methodological details of this view of the nature of physical theory: a pragmatist/conventionalist view. duhem proposes to disenfranchise poincaré’s generalization of the consequences of his critical analysis of this method applied in mechanical theory to physics in general. this generalization would be legitimate if mechanical theory were the unifying framework for the whole of physics, or if it were based on purely mathematical terms. duhem questions poincaré’s view because it is based upon strategies appropriate to mechanical theories and not to theoretical physics such as mathematical physics. maxwell’s methodological viewpoint on the mechanistic program (like many of his contemporaries’) uncritically presupposes a generalized thesis about the relation between lagrange’s formulation of mechanics and the mechanical interpretation of physical phenomena. this thesis identifies the lagrangian method with the mechanical interpretation of physical phenomena, constituting the main methodological principle of the analytical approach to mechanical explanation. duhem begins his critical examination of the analytic approach to mechanical theory by questioning this identification, and in particular its sufficient condition. duhem separates the mathematical structure of lagrange’s method from its mechanical interpretation (chiappin 1989, 62-68). the mechanical interpretation is, for him, one of the many possible interpretations of the lagrangian system of equations and generalized coordinates. his criticism illuminates the generality of the mathematical formulation of lagrangian mechanics by pointing out that its applications go beyond the application in mechanical theory (for example, maxwell’s use of it to organize his electromagnetism theory). the axiomatization of thermodynamics by gibbs was based upon thermodynamical potential instead of carnot’s cycle. the model of this axiomatization of thermodynamics is the lagrangian method and constitutes duhem’s ideal of theoretical physics. the lagrangian method constitutes duhem’s ideal of mathematical structure for the organization of empirical laws. duhem is also particularly concerned with the unfalsifiable character of physical theories produced by the application of the analytical method, and with its strategy to avoid the falsifiability of physical theories (duhem 1980, 78-79; chiappin 1989, 74-80). this comes from the identification of lagrange’s method of mechanics (lagrange 1997) with the theory of matter (chiappin 1989, 64). unfalsifiable theories do not meet duhem’s view of scientific growth as rational and continuous. the key element of the analytical approach to mechanical explanation is analytic mechanics according to lagrange’s and hertz’s formulations. the lagrangian formulation of mechanics corresponds to the foundations of mechanics according to the dynamical current of mechanics (newton), while hertz’s formulation corresponds to the foundations of mechanics according to the kinetic current of mechanics (descartes). whatever its formulation, the analytic approach to the mechanistic program aims at establishing the possible conditions to explain a physical phenomenon mechanically, rather than effectively construct a mechanical explanation, as with the synthetic approach. this new approach seeks, instead of building up a mechanical model (like that of honeycomb or idle wheel particles proposed by maxwell to explain currents and fields) (duhem 1980, 68), to construct an algebraic equation for the kinetic energy (t) and potential energy (u) of the physical system. the lagrangian formula is defined as ut=l − . lagrange’s equation is given by 0 q' = d dl dt d dq dl       −      , where ( )'qq, describes its generalized coordinates. from this equation, one can mathematically derive through lagrange’s equations the empirical laws of physical phenomena discovered by the experimental method, and then search for mechanical interpretations or analogies. the mathematical equations and the transformation laws involved in the analytical approach to mechanics enable a strategy to defend a unified mechanical view of physics. maxwell himself explicitly makes this commitment to the application of the analytic approach to mechanics in his treatise on electricity and magnetism (maxwell 1954). there are now two new logical goals brought by the application of analytical mechanics to electromagnetism. first, to apply the analytic approach, which is concerned with measurements and mathematical relations concerning physical quantities; and second, to be committed to duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 45 the establishment of the connections and analogies between this analytic approach and the mechanical explanation of physical phenomena. poincaré synthesizes, in his analysis of maxwell’s electromagnetism, these conditions according to the analytical method to make physical phenomena susceptible to mechanical explanation. this is precisely a definition of the analytic approach to mechanicism: it is easy to understand now what maxwell’s fundamental idea is. to demonstrate the possibility of a mechanical explanation of electricity, we did not need to worry about finding the explanation itself, it was enough to know the expression of the two (t) and (u) functions, which are the two parts of the energy, to form with these two functions lagrange’s equations, and then compare these equations with the experimental laws (poincaré 1901, viii). there is a meaningful assumption underlying this entire discussion, namely the thesis of the identification between lagrangian representation and mechanical theory. this thesis is supposed to guarantee the existence of a mechanical explanation as soon as one constructs the lagrangian function of the system. thanks to this thesis, poincaré shows that the analytic approach to the mechanistic program brought into evidence this methodological truth: “if a phenomena has a complete mechanical explanation, it will have an infinity of others which give an equally good account for all the particularities revealed by experiment” (poincaré 1901, viii). this methodological conclusion contains the core of poincaré’s pragmatist/conventionalist view, the principle of the underdetermination of physical theory by data (pareto 1909, 31-36), which duhem’s theory of science strives to make illegitimate. so what one must understand by a mechanical explanation of physical phenomena is the possibility of constructing an independent system of equations made up of kinetic (t) energy and potential (u) energy and certain numbers of parameters (generalized coordinates). assuming that one can construct such equations, one can always, according to poincaré’s analysis of maxwell’s analytic method, determine masses (hidden or visible) and their generalized coordinates in such a way that the kinetic and potential energy of this system of masses is equal to that of the kinetic (t) and potential (u) energy appearing in lagrange’s equations (poincaré 1901, viii). from these conditions and from lagrange’s equation one draws the equations for the motion of the system. if these equations are identical with the empirical laws constructed by the experimental method, then, according to maxwell, “we shall have proved that electromagnetic phenomena are capable of a mechanical explication” (duhem 1980, 70). duhem questions that these conditions prove that a physical phenomenon is susceptible to a mechanical explication. all one has here is a mechanical interpretation or analogy. duhem’s analysis and objections to the analytic approach to mechanicism duhem begins his criticism of the analytic approach by questioning the identity between analytic mechanics and mechanical explanation. first, though, it should be recalled that, with this approach, attempts are made to avoid the aforementioned difficulties arising from the synthetic approach. those difficulties associated with the complicated and bizarre form of mechanical models (duhem 1980, 68-69; poincaré 1901, ix; chiappin 57-58) arise from the demand of making conjectures about, or simulating, the particular mechanisms underlying the physical phenomena being studied. nothing similar is done in the analytic approach: there is no demand to construct a mechanical model. the task is to construct the algebraic equations of the kinetic and potential energy of the system and to apply them to lagrange’s equations. the construction of these equations employs the measurable quantities of observable physical phenomena. the agreement between the empirical laws of physical phenomena discovered by the experimental method and the equations deduced (through lagrange’s equations) from the kinetic energy, potential energy, and virtual work constructed from these same measurable quantities is then assumed to guarantee a mechanical explanation for the phenomena. since these conditions are fulfilled, one can construct, in principle, a mechanical system of masses in motion with the same kinetic energy and potential energy of the physical phenomena studied. therefore, according to maxwell, a mechanical correspondence between the two sets of quantities involved is warranted, which is maxwell’s concept of the reduction of physical theories. this reduction is guaranteed by three assumptions: the thesis of equivalence, the duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 46 construction of lagrange’s equations, and the agreement between the constructed laws and the empirical laws. according to duhem, the significant mistake (confusion) here is the identification between the lagrangian method and mechanical interpretation (chiappin 1989, 61-79). underlying this criticism, one finds his view that theoretical physics is a mathematical structure with a physical interpretation. he understands lagrangian mechanics as an interpreted calculus (variational calculus), whose mathematical structure can be applied to different domains of physics. duhem questions the thesis of the equivalence between analytic mechanics and mechanical interpretation and its condition of sufficiency. the first major objection to the analytic approach to the mechanistic program is that the formulation of a physical problem in lagrangian mechanics is not a sufficient condition to guarantee its mechanical explanation (duhem 1980, 71). duhem agrees that it is a necessary condition, but disagrees that it is a sufficient condition. he questions the thesis that from this condition one can conclude with certainty that there exists a certain group of masses and forces, a certain mechanism, admitting such potential, and, above all, such kinetic energy (duhem 1980, 7). the proposed mechanical explanations were to be interpreted as illustrations, which, at most, imitate or simulate in their laws of motion the equations that are being discussed, and are not true mechanical explanations. duhem says: it seems imprudent to dismiss similar difficulties with a stroke of the pen. what has been found to be best, up to now, for clearing objections of this nature, is to imagine extremely simple mechanisms whose internal potential and kinetic energy offer, in their various particularities, a more or less direct analogy with the potential and kinetic energy that it is proposed to study; in a word, this is to construct models which imitate in their laws of motion the equations that are discussed. aided by the theory of monocyclic systems, boltzmann has illustrated the views of maxwell on the analogy between lagrange’s equations and the laws of electrodynamics within such models (duhem 1980, 72). duhem draws attention to the difference between a truly mechanical explanation, which would be the real causal explanation of the physical phenomena, and mechanical illustrations/models, which are mechanisms with the similar potential and kinetic energy of the system studied. further, we would like to point out that duhem’s view of the generality and extendibility of the lagrangian method underlies his criticism of the thesis of equivalence. duhem considers that the lagrangian method is a mathematical structure that can be applied to different domains of physical quantities and kinds of forces where the generalized system of coordinates receives different physical interpretations. mechanical interpretation would be only one particular interpretation. duhem himself applies lagrangian formalism to make thermodynamics an axiomatic system, without mechanically interpreting the phenomenon of heat. the conditions of the extendibility of the lagrangian method is the subject of his article “sur quelques extensions récentes de la statique et de la dynamique” (duhem 1901, 130-157) and is also his preoccupation in the second part of his book the evolution of mechanics (duhem 1980, 105-189; 1905). his conception of physical theory arises from his understanding of this generality of lagrangian mechanics. his view of the scientific development as pursuing more comprehensive abstract theories is based upon the transition from newton’s vectorial mechanics to lagrangian mechanics. this objection is not, however, the only objection that he raises against the mechanistic interpretation of the analytic approach. duhem points out a methodological problem in this method of constructing physical theory. the analytic method constructs unfalsifiable mechanistic theories, and leads the mechanistic method to a process of infinite regression. the analytic approach to the mechanistic method, which aims to make mechanical theory a unifying principle of physics, gives rise to the following question “can all physical laws be put into the form of lagrange’s equations?” (duhem 1980, 73). in other words, can the analytic approach to the mechanistic program provide the means to accomplish the aim of unifying the whole of physics? there are two answers to the above question. the first is pursued by some physicists, like poincaré, who state that “there exists a radical incompatibility between lagrange’s mechanics and the laws of physics” (duhem 1980, 73; poincaré 1892, duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 47 xviii). these physicists point out the difficulty in reducing the second law of thermodynamics (and all irreversible phenomena) to mechanics as evidence of this fact. they reason that if, on the one hand, an analysis of lagrange’s mechanics shows that “all motions controlled by the dynamics of d’alembert and lagrange are reversible motions” and if, on the other hand, the examples given by the experimental method and the facts show that “natural motions are not reversible” (duhem 1980, 75), then there is an evident incompatibility between the facts and the mechanical theory. what follows from this incompatibility? is it that one should stick to mechanical theory as the unifying framework of physics and attempt to modify its basic principles, such as d’alembert’s principle (duhem 1980, 75-76)? let us not go too fast here. according to duhem, a more detailed logical analysis of the analytic approach to mechanical theory, for example the one carried out by helmholtz’s analysis of the mechanical program, shows that there is no possible justification for such an incompatibility. based upon helmholtz’s analysis, duhem opposes the thesis of the incompatibility between the analytic approach to the mechanistic method of constructing physical theories and natural motions. according to duhem, to show that such incompatibility is only apparent from the viewpoint of the foundations of analytic mechanics is enough to admit the hypothesis of the atomistic nature of matter (duhem 1980, 78). as mentioned the arbitrariness and indeterminacy of these invisible mechanisms of hidden masses and motions (maxwell 1867, 50) make possible to construct a mechanical explanation for any empirical law. duhem says: “whatever may be the form of the mathematical laws to which experimental inference subjects physical phenomena, it is always permissible to pretend that these phenomena are the effects of motions, perceptible or hidden, subject to the dynamics of lagrange” (duhem 1980, 78). the indeterminacy and arbitrariness of the invisible mechanism of hidden masses in motion make theoretically possible the finding of mechanical explanations for any possible discrepancies with empirical facts (duhem 1980, 77-78). is this appeal to invisible mechanism repugnant to a physicist? not at all. it is exactly what physicists have been doing, and examples in physics are abundant. this is the case in the work of helmholtz, boltzmann, clausius, and maxwell (laranjeiras 2002; laranjeiras and chiappin 2006). helmholtz employed the mechanistic program according to the analytic method, where the hypothesis of a system of hidden masses in motion assumes the form of monocyclic systems, generated by lagrange’s equations, to build up mechanical illustrations, for instance of the second law of thermodynamics (laranjeiras and chiappin 2008). helmholtz’s work was the source for boltzmann, clausius, and gibbs. therefore, for duhem, physicists such as poincaré methodologically interpret incorrectly the incompatibility between mechanism and facts. there is no possible incompatibility between mechanism and experimental facts. the mechanistic method based on lagrange’s mechanics and on the indeterminacy and arbitrariness of the system of hidden masses in motion is not falsifiable in any way (duhem 1905, 182). this, for duhem, is the correct interpretation of the analytic approach to the mechanistic method. thus, he points out that the consequence of using this hypothesis will be the unfalsifiable character of mechanical theories constructed by the analytic approach. he seeks then to preserve the mathematical formulation of d’alembert’s principle. he argues that, from the algebraic viewpoint, modifications and generalizations of the equations of dynamics by introducing the term of first degree in the velocities are easy to notice (duhem 1980, 76). thus, duhem preserves the basic principles of lagrangian mechanics and redirects the difficulties and obstacles raised against the mechanistic program to its two presuppositions: the atomistic hypothesis of matter and its ultimate demand that physical concepts be reduced to a restricted number of primitive mechanical magnitudes such as mass, motion, shape and/or force (duhem 1903, 270). the goal of unifying the whole of physics (the principle of logical unity) by the analytic approach to the mechanistic program, with its restricted mechanical conceptual basis (mass, motion, forces), is attained at the cost of a large indeterminacy of its parameters of masses and motions. and the consequence of the large indeterminacy and arbitrariness of this system of hidden masses in motion is the unfalsifiability of mechanical theories. in the analytic approach, mass and motion are mere parameters in mathematical equations, without the realistic or figurative connotations they have in the synthetic approach. the synthetic approach to mechanical explanation involves specifications and determinations of the masses, motions, sizes and forces. why does duhem see the unfalsifiability of the mechanistic method as a problem and why is it a source for his criticism? is not this approach a legitimate heuristic approach as defended by poincaré? duhem does not think that the aim of theoretical physics is to promote the discovery of new laws. such is the task of experimental physics. duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 48 duhem pursues a rational explanation of the evolution of theoretical physics. from this viewpoint, he evaluates the methodological characteristics of the analytic approach to mechanistic theories. he does not think that hypotheses and methods that construct unfalsifiable physical theories make scientific growth rational and continuous. for him, rationality is controllability, and continuity means that the new theory encompasses everything already accounted for. duhem’s method of constructing physical theory with his rules for the formation of physical concepts establishes that the introduction of concepts in physics must be controlled by measurable conditions, and that mechanical models are to be expelled from physical theories. as we have seen, these systems of hidden masses in motion are totally indeterminate and arbitrary, since nothing limits the nature and number of these masses in motion; this makes mechanical theories unfalsifiable (duhem 1980, 78-79). consequently, physical theories constructed by a mechanistic method, according to hertz’s and lagrange’s mechanics, are not subject to the control of empirical facts. this means that the application of the empiricist principle of the testability of physical theory is made meaningless by the mechanistic method of constructing physical theory. for duhem, a rational method of constructing physical theory (chiappin 1989, 282-310) must optimize the empirical testability of physical theories. therefore, from duhem’s viewpoint, the ongoing polemic between lagrange’s formulation of classical mechanics, which takes force as a primitive concept representing a real cause, and hertz’s formulation, which rejects force as a primitive concept, does not make any difference with respect to his criticism of the mechanistic method. for him, both formulations generate unfalsifiable physical theories (duhem 1980, 97; 1905, 183). hence, the analytic approach and the atomistic hypothesis can always provide compatibility between a mechanical theory and facts making it unfalsifiable (duhem 1905, 182). this thesis, the compatibility between mechanical program and facts, means, for duhem, that a mechanistic program cannot effectively comply with the empiricist principle of empirical testability, or with its associated methodological principle. duhem defines this principle as follows: “in physics, one criterion alone allows the rejection as false of a judgment which does not imply a logical contradiction: the record of a flagrant disagreement between this judgment and the facts of experience” (duhem 1980, 97). the application of this principle which governs the empirical testability of physical theory in the test of mechanistic theories illuminates duhem’s conclusion that the proposition which states “all physical phenomena are explained mechanically” transcends the physical method. by physical method duhem understands the experimental method by which one discovers empirical laws, while the mechanistic method is a method to construct physical theories which explain or represent these laws. thus, duhem concludes that “it is impossible for anyone who holds to the processes of the experimental method to declare as true this proposition: ‘all physical phenomena are explained mechanically’. it is also impossible to declare it false. this proposition transcends the physical method” (duhem 1980, 97-98; 1905, 183-184). so, duhem’s analysis of the status of the mechanistic program has far-reaching methodological consequences for his conception of physical theory. one can be cited: that the decision about the mechanistic method of construction goes beyond the experimental method. duhem says: “if, in regard to this proposition [stating the transcendent character of the mechanistic method], one wishes to depart from a state of mind where every decision remains suspended, one will have to resort to arguments unknown to experimental method” (duhem 1980, 98). in summary, according to duhem, neither the metaphysical method – the foundationalist version (duhem 1980, 98) – nor the experimental method are able to decide the truth value of mechanistic theories. where can the answer come from? duhem suggests: “the degree of suitability of a method in fact is essentially a matter of personal appreciation; the particular turn of each thinker, the education received, the traditions immersed in, the customs of the environment in which he lives, all influence this appreciation to a high degree; these influences vary in the extreme from one physics to another” (duhem 1980, 99). it is difficult to avoid thinking that duhem is the source of popper’s assertion that conceptions of science are a methodological and conventional matter. the important aspect of this discussion about the analytic method of constructing mechanical theories is duhem’s awareness of the unfalsifiable character of this method, and that the decision to reject it goes beyond the experimental method (duhem 1974, 293-294; 1893, 366; chiappin 1989, 134). further, for duhem, the analytic approach to the mechanistic method of constructing physical theory is the source of its unfalsifiability. poincaré sticks to the mechanistic method to analyze physical theories and reinterprets the experimental method as unable to decide conclusively the truth value of scientific propositions. duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 49 duhem defends the position that the experimental method can reject (well-constructed) physical theories, and he turns down the use of methods and hypotheses that introduce indeterminacy and arbitrariness into physical theory (duhem 1980, 97). duhem defines a method of constructing physical theories which makes the experimental method effective in refuting theories (duhem 1974, 78; chiappin 1989, 287). duhem does not affirm that the unfalsifiability of physical theory is a characteristic of any method of constructing physical theory. for him, the experimental method cannot reject physical theories constructed by the mechanistic method. but it is not true that the experimental method cannot aid in the rejection of any theory. the refutability of physical theories depends on their method of construction. he defends the idea that we can control the process of constructing physical theories. and from the logical viewpoint, wellconstructed physical theories can be refuted (chiappin 1989, 62-80). if theories are not falsifiable, it is our own fault. it is essential, for duhem’s view of scientific progress, that the experimental method can refute and reject physical theories. this is also essential to construct physical theories that satisfy the principle of empirical testability. this is so because duhem is committed to the principle of continuity. from his arguments against mechanicism one can see, now, that duhem is strongly committed to a view of scientific growth as rational and continuous. therefore, the true methodological verdict of his historical-critical analysis of the analytic approach to the mechanistic program is that one cannot, due to its use of the atomistic hypothesis, scientifically decide whether to accept or reject it in a conclusive manner. (chiappin 1989, 7782) once it is accepted that the decision about the mechanistic program goes beyond the experimental method, one requires extra-empirical rules to legitimate this option. the notion of rational method for duhem acquires a meaning beyond mathematical consistency and experiment. it requires extra-empirical rules. duhem rejects poincaré’s as well as the english school’s pragmatical conception of physical theory (duhem 1974, 149; chiappin 1989, 51-57). he also rejects the metaphysical view of classical rationalism (chiappin 1989, 40-42). his strategy is to reject the metaphysical view, as well as the model-building view of the nature of physical theory, and to rescue the ideal (from classical rationalism) of physical theory as a rational system based upon a very small set of formal principles in the style of the principle of least action or the potential functions of thermodynamics. to conclude our appraisal of duhem’s position, for him the mechanistic program faces an unsolvable dilemma: if the mechanistic program wants to use the mechanical theory according to the synthetic method, then it must give up the principle of logical unity. consequently, the rejection of the mechanistic program is, ultimately, a methodological/epistemological decision and not a scientific one. if the mechanists want to use the mechanical theory according to the analytical method, containing the atomistic hypothesis of matter, rescuing thereby in principle its purpose of providing a unifying principle for the whole of physics, then they must give up the aim of providing a mechanical explanation proper, i.e. a picture or model of physical phenomena. duhem states this situation clearly: hence the analytic method, which alone seems capable of providing from the laws of physics a logically constructed mechanical explanation, seems incapable of satisfying the requirements of imaginative physicists, that is to say, of the very ones who required a mechanical interpretation of phenomena. if these physicists want, at any price, to picture the qualities of bodies in shapes suitable for geometric intuition, in shapes simple enough to be depicted in a table clearly understandable to the eyes and the imagination, they will have to renounce the hope of uniting all these representations into a coherent system, into a logically ordered science (duhem 1980, 101). duhem’s formal conception of theoretical physics and the principle of rational and continuous progress this section will outline duhem’s view of the rational and continuous progress of physical theory. as concluded before, for duhem neither the metaphysical view of physics nor the model-building method can comply with the principle of continuity. besides that, the model-building method cannot comply with the rational method, which rejects the resource to contradictory models in physics. duhem preserves the mathematical formalism of the analytic approach, namely the lagrangian formalism, and focuses his duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 50 blame for the problems of this method on the atomistic hypothesis of matter. he points out that the atomistic hypothesis gives rise to strategies which make physical theories unfalsifiable and thereby traps them in a process of infinite regression. for him, the unfalsifiable character of physical theories and the process of infinite regression are real obstacles to seeing scientific progress as rational and continuous. the continuous development of physical theory is shown, for duhem, by the development of abstract theories. abstract theories are mathematical structures (lagrangian, hamiltonian formalism) which form the mold to systematize and organize the empirical laws discovered by the experimental method. duhem clearly states his predisposition for the abstract aspect of physical theory as an element of continuity between physical theories. at the same time, he blames the use of atomistic theories of matter as unifying frameworks for the discontinuity of physical theory. he says: he [the physicist who is not content with knowing physics through the gossip of the moment] will see abstract theory, matured through patient labor, take possession of the new lands the experimenters have explored, organize these conquests, annex them to its old domains, and make a perfectly coordinated empire of their union. it will appear clearly to him that the physics of atomism, condemned to perpetual fresh starts, does not tend by continued progress to the ideal form of physical theory (duhem 1974, 304). thus, the continuity of scientific progress is accounted for by viewing the nature of physical theory as representational structures (chiappin 1989). the historical continuity of scientific development is shown by the increasing generalization and abstraction of these mathematical structures with which we organize our set of empirical laws. this view of the nature of physical theories operationalizes the idea of progress as the increasing comprehensiveness of physical theories, where the idea of increasing comprehensiveness accounts for the idea of continuity. the principle of continuity states that new theories contain the acquired knowledge and are systematized by the old theories. continuity, in duhem’s view, is identified with comprehensiveness. this view of progress as the increasing generalization and abstraction of physical theories, and therefore of increasing comprehensiveness, accounts for the continuity between descartes, galileo, and newton; and between newton and lagrange. further, this view accounts for the continuity between lagrange and energetics. to make this clearer: from descartes and galileo to newton we go from a set of disconnected general laws, such as inertial law, the law of fall, kepler’s laws, and the collision laws, to a more general and abstract structure forming a rigid axiomatic system of concepts and principles that encompass these laws. this axiomatic structure is vectorial mechanics, that accounts for all these laws, which means that it provides the unification of the terrestrial and celestial laws. vectorial mechanics is based upon the idea that bodies are composed of isolated mass points, two vectors, force and momentum, four laws, euclidean geometry, and the parallelogram rule. from newton to lagrange, we move from vectorial mechanics to a mechanics based upon energy, generalized coordinates, which is applied to a system of bodies instead of isolated mass points. from the lagrangian method to the energetic method, duhem wants to move from local motions (velocity) to general motions (e.g. chemical reactions). for duhem, the continuity of scientific progress between the mechanistic and energetic methods (new mechanics) is obtained by using, at least as an analogy, the lagrangian formalism to construct axiomatic thermodynamics. this task is undertaken by gibbs, by applying thermodynamics as the unifying framework for physics. thermodynamics, so constructed, provides the foundations of chemistry-physics, not mechanics. this successful unification gives rise to a promising program to implement thermodynamics as the new unifying framework. duhem interprets lagrangian formalism, with its principle of d’alembert and its principle of virtual work, as a powerful mathematical instrument to be applied in any physical domain without turning it into mechanical physics. the development toward the generalization and abstraction of the newtonian structure of mechanics into lagrangian mechanics is described in duhem’s book the evolution of mechanics (duhem 1980, 22-46). as a result of this generalization and abstraction, one gets rational mechanics as constructed by lagrange and to which bernoulli, d’alembert and euler contributed (duhem 1980, 23). this mechanics reduces all laws of equilibrium and motion to a single principle (the principle of virtual velocities) and to a single method of calculation (variational calculus). duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 51 the mathematical structure furnished by lagrangian formalism is quite simply formed of two scalar quantities: the “kinetic energy” and the “potential energy,” along with the lagrangian equations. further, the problem-solving theory embodied by this method is, in general, more comprehensive and simpler than the theory of vectorial mechanics. the relationship between its theoretical elements, potential function and kinetic energy, and the empirical laws discovered by the experimental method seems to be more cohesive than in vectorial mechanics. indeed, there is almost a routine, already described by poincaré, for solving problems in this analytic approach: the kinetic energy and potential function must be constructed in generalized coordinates, the lagrangian function l formed from them and substituted into the lagrangian equations in order to obtain the equations of motion. this routine furnishes duhem with the ideal of a rational method to construct physical theory (duhem 1892, 146; chiappin 1989, 110) there are two more features in this formalism that are of fundamental importance for duhem’s methodology. the first one, introduced by the lagrangian approach to mechanics, is that it focuses on the system of particles instead of an individual particle, as in newtonian mechanics (lanczos 1970, 4). the second one is that it can be entirely derived from a single principle, namely the principle of least action. we have here a truly unifying principle for all sciences to which the lagrangian formalism applies. these two features of the lagrangian formalism fit in well with duhem’s two major methodological elements, namely the d-thesis and the principle of logical unity (duhem 1974, 91; chiappin 1989, 178, 240). the next step was a new mathematical structure, whose essential scalar quantities are h, q and p, hamiltonian mechanics. this duhemian view of the continuous progress of theoretical physics by increasing the abstraction and generalization of mathematical structures receives substantial support from arnold’s book mathematical method of classical mechanics (arnold 1980; chiappin 1989, 86-87). arnold describes lagrangian and hamiltonian mechanics with set theory. he demonstrates the generality of these two mathematical structures and the relation of inclusion between them. in the first part of his book (arnold 1980, 1-52) he describes newtonian mechanics as studying the motion of a system of point masses in threedimensional euclidean space. in the next part (arnold 1980, 53-159) he discusses lagrangian mechanics, which is described as a mechanical system “given by a manifold (‘configuration space’) and a function on its tangent bundle (the ‘lagrangian function’)” (arnold 1980, 53). commenting on the relation of the lagrangian mechanical system and the newtonian mechanical system, he says that: “a newtonian potential system is a particular case of a lagrangian system (the configuration space in this case is euclidean, and the lagrangian function is the difference between the kinetic and potential energies)” (arnold 1980, 53). in the following part of his book (arnold 1980, 161-300) he discusses hamiltonian mechanics, explaining that a “hamiltonian mechanical system is given by an even-dimensional manifold (the ‘phase space’), a symplectic structure on it (the ‘poincaré integral invariant’) and a function on it (the ‘hamiltonian function’). every one-parameter group of symplectic diffeomorphism of the phase space preserving the hamiltonian function is associated to a first integral of the equations of motion” (arnold 1980, 161). with respect to the relation between them, he says: “lagrangian mechanics is contained in hamiltonian mechanics as a special case (the phase space in this case is the cotangent bundle of the configuration space, and the hamiltonian function is the legendre transform of the lagrangian function)” (arnold 1980, 161). if duhem could have known arnold’s book, he would have seen it as the true expression of the continuous progress of theoretical physics. we assume that arnold’s view of the axiomatic foundations of mechanics (chiappin 1989, 86-87), with its use of set theory, in terms of larger and more abstract mathematical structures, can be used to define duhem’s view of the progress of the order in which physical theory organizes empirical laws. however, there are increasing evidences for the role of the structures in the characterization of the physical phenomena, mainly, in statistical mechanics with the phase transition phenomena (chiappin 2005, 11-15; chiappin 1979, 134, 140, 169; pettini, franzosi and spinelli 2000; franzosi, pettini and spinelli 2014). this notion of progress corresponds to the epistemic component of duhem’s conception of physics. it has a value of knowledge. there is another view of scientific progress in duhem. this view is concerned with the subject-matter of physical theory and not with the mathematical structure which provides the mold for these laws. this other view defines progress as the accumulation of empirical laws with a special relation to the theory that resembles an algorithm. the development of physics can be understood as the search for a physical theory duhem’s critical analysis of mechanicism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical physics josé r. n. chiappin – cássio costa laranjeiras 52 which provides a method of establishing a tight connection between the mathematical structure of the theory and the empirical laws provided by the experimental method. the method of thermodynamical potential provided by gibbsian thermodynamics comes closer to this ideal of method, and duhem contributed to it with the famous duhem-gibbs relation. this view of progress corresponds to the practical component of his conception of physics. in summary, we have argued that a complete point of view of duhem’s continuous and rational development of physics can be condensed as his defense of a conception of physics according to which physics should be a representational system with very few formal principles coordinating the set of empirical laws (duhem 1974, 19; 1902b, 5) which works as an intermediary or a middle way between the metaphysical and a pragmatist/conventionalist conception of theoretical physics (chiappin 1989, iv, 92; duhem 1917, 157). he constructs this formal conception of physics in such a way that he ends up with an idea of scientific progress in the form of a sequence of representational systems as structures of increasing comprehensiveness of empirical laws (duhem 1974, 304, chiappin 1989, 86-87;). this leads him to defend a convergent structural realism toward an ideal physical theory (chiappin 1989, 198). duhem's conception of the ideal physical theory is a natural classification of laws (duhem 1974, 298; chiappin 1989, 106-114). this convergent structural realism allows him to demarcate his conception, on the one hand, from the conception of metaphysical foundationalism, associated with classical rationalism (mainly descartes), and, on the other hand, from the conception of pragmatism/conventionalism, associated with the english school (mainly poincaré). conclusions we have argued that a point of view of duhem’s continuous and rational development of physics requires a formal conception of physics that he defines as a representational system of empirical laws based upon formal principles (duhem 1974, 304; chiappin 1989, 260) this is a middle way between two conceptions to physics the metaphysical view and, on the other hand, the pragmatist/conventionalist view (chiappin 1989, 243-247). he constructs this formal conception of theoretical physics in such a way that he ends up with an idea of scientific progress in the form of a sequence of representational systems as structures of increasing comprehensiveness of empirical laws, which leads him to defend a convergent structural realism (chiappin 1989, 198) toward an ideal physical theory, a natural classification of empirical laws (duhem 1893, 368-369; 1902a, 206, 1974, 270). the combination of a historical-critical approach to the study of physics with a formal conception allows him to develop this kind of an intermediary strategy with the construction of a dynamical theory of theoretical physics. it is this dynamical theory that allows him to demarcate his conception, on the one hand, from the metaphysical conception, associated with classical rationalism (mainly descartes), and, on the other hand, from the conception of pragmatism/conventionalism, associated with the english school (mainly poincaré). references arnold, v.i. 1980. mathematical method of classical mechanics. new york: springer verlag. chiappin, josé r. n. 1989. duhem’s theory 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belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open-access journal from the editor pandemic: science as a light at the end of the tunnel mauro l. condé1 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ we have reached the ninth issue of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, and the world is still in the midst of the pandemic. fortunately, there is light at the end of the tunnel. different vaccines have been approved, and it was announced, starting today, as of december 14, 2020, the biggest mass vaccination campaign in the history of the united states of america. we hope that the rest of the world will be as lucky and get immunization as soon as possible, even though we know that the future comes unequally distributed at different times and in different places. and, if in some places the future never arrives, then it seems as though this cannot be the case, especially if one thinks that herd immunization is necessary for the whole world today, which has become completely interconnected. may we all have the same luck and be able to arrive quickly at a postpandemic future. of course, we have not yet evaluated in depth the negative and, ironically, positive aspects brought by the pandemic. slowly, one starts to understand what the new world or the “new normality” is. it is a fact, in different places of the world – although in an online way –, there has never been so much talk about science. not only about epidemiology, virology, medicines, vaccines, etc., but about science itself in general. with the countless academic lives, perhaps scientists and researchers from universities and different research institutions have never before been so connected and in interaction with each other. there were not only countless topics to cover related to science and the pandemic, but also to the very condition of science in the contemporary world, especially in the face of this wave of scientific denialism that we have encountered in recent years. i believe that amid so many terrible things, this scientific connection was a positive point that should remain. we have all been affected in different ways by the pandemic and the difficulties of scientific production have not been immune to this process. in this issue of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, in particular, not all of the articles initially approved and forwarded to the editorial process could be published, since, in the context of the pandemic, their authors faced problems that prevented them from delivering the final version. we hope to publish these other articles in the upcoming issues. however, out of respect to the other authors and readers, we will go on and release this issue of the journal. we hope that our authors and readers can appreciate this effort to maintain the periodicity of the journal. have a good read! 1 mauro l. condé [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br microsoft word 5pena-guzman layout 27 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 27-46 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán1 abstract: in the 1950s, george canguilhem became known in france as a vocal exponent of the philosophy of the concept, an approach to epistemology that treated science as the highest expression of human rationality and scientific concepts as the necessary preconditions for the manifestation of scientific truth. philosophers of the concept, canguilhem included, viewed concepts as the key to the study of science; and science, in turn, as the key to a substantive theory of reason. this article explains what concepts are for canguilhem, how they are extracted from the history of the sciences, and why they continue to matter for contemporary debates in the history and philosophy of science (hps). keywords: georges canguilhem, history and philosophy of science, historical epistemology, concepts, philosophy of the concept received: 29 december 2017. reviewed 13 april 2018. accepted: 24 april 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.05 _____________________________________________________________________________ one of history’s cruelest tendencies may be that it tends to bury its disciples faster and more unceremoniously than its adversaries. perhaps not without a profound sense of irony, history appears to forget those who remember it and to remember those who boast about having forgotten it. georges canguilhem’s legacy, sadly, illustrates this irony well.2 even though he was an almost perfect embodiment of what lopes, gonçalves, and salles (2015) call a “disciple of history” (seeing as he spent the better part of his life championing the value of history for the philosophy of science), his contributions to the philosophy of science seem to have been left behind by the callous march of time. while there has been renewed interest 1 david m. peña-guzmán is an assistant professor in the school of humanities and liberal studies at san francisco state university. address: 1600 holloway avenue, humanities building, room 409 – san francisco, ca 94132. e-mail: davidmpena@gmail.com 2 georges canguilhem (1904-1995) was a historian and philosopher of science who played an important role in the french education system in the middle of the twentieth. he was inspector general of secondary education from 1948 to 1955 (a position that allowed him to exert remarkable influence over the teaching of philosophy in france in the postwar period) and president of the committee d’agrégation in philosophy (a position that allowed him to influence the upper echelons of french thought). see talcott (2017) and schrift (2008). in this function, he influenced a number of famous figures associated with 1960s french thought, such as louis althusser, maurice merleau-ponty, and michel foucault. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 28 in canguilhem’s work in some corners of europe and the americas in the last decades, this micro-renaissance has been concentrated in paris and mostly limited to a small group of philosophers trained in continental philosophy. as pierre méthot has observed, “contributions assessing the influence of canguilhem’s philosophy both in france and overseas are almost non-existent” (méthot 2009, 39). all things considered, canguilhem’s body of work remains virtually unknown, especially among the very expert communities that would arguably benefit most from it: professional scientists, historians, and, of course, philosophers of science.3 one can make sense of this unhappy state of affairs in a number of ways. one can point, for example, to the interdisciplinary character of canguilhem’s work, which put him at odds with the very disciplines he sought to reconcile. his emphasis on the importance of the history of science pitted him against professional philosophers of science, who often abide by an ahistorical understanding of science. his incessant references to the history of western metaphysics and epistemology, from plato to hegel, made his work suspect in the eyes of professional scientists, who frequently see his writings as unnecessarily abstract and speculative, as ‘too philosophical’ to be useful to scientific practitioners. meanwhile, his belief in the objectivity and rationality of science stultified professional historians who, given the politics of their discipline, have historically defined ‘history’ as ‘political and military history’ and looked at scientific history with suspicion, if not disdain. for most of his life, canguilhem found himself trapped in the negative space between these disciplines: too historical for the philosophers, too philosophical for the scientists, and too scientistic for the historians. aside from this disciplinary maneuvering, many of canguilhem’s theoretical commitments cut against the zeitgeist, making him appear out of touch with the times. his belief in the autonomy of the life sciences typifies this mismatch between his thought and his broader intellectual milieu. from the 1920s to the 1970s, most philosophers of science viewed physics as a model science and felt confortable equating the ‘philosophy of science’ with the ‘philosophy of physics.’ 4 collectively, they believed that whatever is true of physics must necessarily be true (in one form or another) of all other sciences because physics is ‘the’ scientific endeavor par excellence. in their eyes, it was not man but physics that was the measure of all things. 5 in this physics-centric atmosphere, canguilhem’s demand that philosophers of 3 a number of experts have, however, stressed the relevance of canguilhem’s thought. they include jean-jacques salomon, kevin thompson, anton vydra, larry shiner, among others 4 the philosophy of biology split off from the philosophy of physics and became established as an autonomous a sub-branch of the philosophy of science in the 1980s. by this time, however, canguilhem’s most important works had already been published and would not be incorporated into the incipient ‘canon’ of this new field. 5 at the level of philosophical theory, this belief had a number of implications about the source of epistemic legitimacy in science. it meant, for instance, that a discursive field could be ‘scientific’ only to the extent that it approximated physics in the epistemologically relevant ways (object, method, lawfulness, etc.). it also meant that, at least on some interpretations, the truths of every science could be expressed in physical descriptions of varying degrees of complexity and that, therefore, the language of physics could be reasonably construed as the language of science. at the level of philosophical practice, however, this belief accustomed philosophers of science to philosophizing centrifugally (from the inside out) rather than centripetally (from the outside in). those who professed their faith the exceptional epistemological status of physics would often declare physics the ‘groundzero’ of science, furiously work on the aspects of physics they deemed thought-provoking, extract general principles from their inquiries, and then, without a moment’s hesitation, use these principles as yardsticks to assess the epistemic worth of the other sciences (biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, etc.) without ever seriously considering the possibility that the objects, methods, and laws of these other sciences may not revolve around, or ‘reduce’ to, those of physics and hence may require investigation on their own terms. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 29 science confront the life sciences without filtering them through the screen of physics was genuinely counter-cultural. this demand expressed the radical thesis that the life sciences are irreducible to the physical sciences, 6 a thesis that, if accepted, would have forced philosophers of science to see science, as proust once said, “with new eyes” – not as a universe with many worlds that all revolve around a clear center (physics), but as a universe with many worlds and no absolute center. without a doubt, canguilhem’s contemporaries would have viewed this thesis as a monstrous aberration, as an unwelcome departure from what was considered normal and acceptable for philosophers of science to do.7 fortunately, a number of developments since the 1980s have transformed the public face of the philosophy of science: first, the positivist picture of science (which was responsible for the glorification of physics and the marginalization of historical considerations from philosophical discourse) has, by and large, lost its original luster as postpositivist theories of varied orientations (marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, etc.) have gained steam; second, the philosophy of biology has emancipated itself from the philosophy of physics and established itself as a self-sufficient branch of the philosophy of science with its own apprehensions, puzzles, and mysteries; third, the history of science has asserted itself as something that even the most prominent philosophers of science cannot dismiss as nonchalantly as perhaps their predecessors would have; fourth and finally, an entire discourse of ‘interdisciplinarity’ has spread over the academy and encouraged the kind of disciplinary border-crossing for which canguilhem was reprimanded in his time. 8 these developments have altered the landscape in which philosophical discussions of science take place, and they have made the field of the philosophy of science more open to ideas it previously found intolerable, including ideas concerning the irreducibility of disciplines and the historicity of knowledge. by widening the overton window of philosophical discourse, moreover, these developments have made canguilhem’s writings (in another paradoxical turn of fate, no doubt) seem more ‘contemporary’ now than when they were first published, more applicable to our scientific culture that his. it is almost as if canguilhem wrote for a time to come – for a time that, as luck would have it, looks uncannily like the present. by delving into the foundations of canguilhem’s philosophy, this article sheds light on what made canguilhem’s works so radical in their time and now makes them so poignantly relevant to ours. the argument is divided into four sections. section one situates canguilhem’s philosophy historically and clarifies its relationship to logical positivism, the philosophical school of thought that single-handedly dictated the terms in which most twentieth century debates in the philosophy of science were couched. section two explains how canguilhem separated himself from the positivist school by making concepts the core preoccupation of the philosophy of science. concepts, for canguilhem, are normative categories that condition scientific perception, scientific discourse, and scientific thought. section two offers an account of canguilhem’s theory of conceptuality that turns on the six chief properties of 6 “today, one would have to be quite uninformed of the methodological tendencies of biologists […] to believe that anyone can honestly boast of having discovered, by physico-chemical methods, anything more than the physico-chemical content of phenomena, whose biological meaning escapes all techniques of reduction” (canguilhem 2008, 16). 7 another plausible explanation for the relative obscurity of canguilhem’s writings is simply that his work was quite simply overshadowed—for whatever reason—by the work of other french philosophers who gained international notoriety after wwii and became emblematic of the french spirit of ‘68, such as louis althusser, simone de beauvoir, maurice merleau-ponty, and michel foucault, among others. 8 in the 1940s and ‘50s, when canguilhem’s career was budding, this discourse did not exist and most intellectuals conceived of what we today would call interdisciplinarity principally in terms of privation, as a lack of intra-disciplinary mastery rather than as evidence of inter-disciplinary agility, as a sign of intellectual deficiency rather than proficiency. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 30 scientific concepts. then, section three investigates how these concepts, which hold the key to the canguilhemian philosophy, are extracted from the history of the sciences, which, according to canguilhem, involves a deliberate act of suspension whereby epistemologists momentarily suspend their philosophical convictions and beliefs. finally, section four reflects on the importance of overcoming what brenner (2015) calls “the cultural barrier” that still exists between the history and the philosophy of the sciences. overcoming this barrier, i argue, requires nothing short of the becoming-genealogical of the philosophy of science itself. historical background: the dominance of positivism in the twentieth century to appreciate canguilhem’s contribution to philosophy of science we need to understand the discourse he fought against. canguilhem’s most critical works were written between the 1940s and the 1970s, when logical positivism reigned supreme in the philosophy science on both sides of the atlantic. born in austria and germany in “the exuberant ‘modernism’ of the weimar period” (friedman 1999, xi), 9 logical positivism viewed itself as a corrective to german idealism. positivists worried that the german idealist tradition was too speculative to provide a sound basis for rigorous philosophical thinking, especially when it came to the empirical methods of the natural sciences. inspired by the positivist philosophy of august comte, logical positivists sought to render philosophy itself ‘positive’, i.e., they sought to model philosophical inquiry after scientific investigation by importing into philosophical discourse the language, methods, and standards of the positive sciences. “it is necessary for the philosopher,” says a. j. ayer in language, truth, and logic, “to become a scientist […] if he [sic] is to make any substantial contribution towards the growth of human knowledge” (ayer 1952, 153). central to the project of positivism was a linguistic conception of science. the heralds of the positivist creed viewed science as a body of natural-language sentences and maintained that philosophers could triumph in their search of a ‘theory of science’ – a theory that would capture the essence of science itself – by subjecting these natural-language sentences to logical and conceptual analysis using the tools of classical logic and the latest developments in the philosophy of language. for first-generation logical positivists, such as rudolf carnap, philosophers familiar with the content of contemporary science and trained in the methods of logical analysis could build a philosophical empire by capturing the logical essence of the first-order language of science in the second-order language of propositional logic. this search for a philosophical meta-language had two metaphilosophical implications that marked the philosophy of science for most of the twentieth century. first, it reduced the philosophy of science to a philosophy of language insofar as it convinced followers of the positivist tradition that all philosophically interesting problems related to science were, at their root, linguistic problems. the implication here was that philosophers could, in theory, solve any philosophical problems posed by science solely through conceptual clarification and logical correction. marjorie grene, a student of carnap at the university of chicago during the 1940s, has point out that debates among early logical positivists were so mired in linguistic concerns that they inevitably turned into linguistic squabbles, including squabbles about how to best formalize the natural-language sentences and speak about science without raising any linguistic objections. she writes: “i remember an adjuration by carnap: we must not say ‘this book is about africa,’ but ‘this book contained the word africa’” (grene 2000, 49). for the great masters of the vienna school and their trainees, the summum bonum of philosophical life was a combination of linguistic clarity and logical consistency. for them, 9 for a discussion of the politics of logical positivism, see galison (1990). canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 31 the philosophy of science should be clear and internally consistent because a philosophy that was not both was not a philosophy worthy of its name. this implicitly set up the philosophy of science as a ‘language game’ that was a strictly logical rather than historical in nature. on this view, logic is not a department of philosophy; rather, as a. j. ayer put it, “philosophy is a department of logic” (ayer 1952, 57). various scholars have observed that the linguistic concerns of logical positivism concealed a drastic philosophical ambition: to turn philosophy into the handmaiden of science. philosophers, positivists believed, had historically misunderstood the nature of their calling. from the ionian physiologoi 10 of the pre-socratic period to the german metaphysicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, philosophers (with a few exceptions) assumed that their job was to unravel the mysteries of nature and make truth claims about ultimate reality, even if those claims were ultimately unfalsifiable. in reality, this job belonged to the scientists whose empirical methods (a) yielded more reliable knowledge about nature than the transcendental methods of the philosophers, which yielded only wild speculation and (b) kept scientists ‘in check’ by limiting their claims to phenomenal rather than ultimate nature, which restricted the scope of what they could claim to what was in principle empirically falsifiable. but if philosophers were not to make pronouncements about ultimate reality, what were they to do? for positivists, the answer was simple. philosophers existed to lend a logical hand to scientists in the latter’s journey to gain positive knowledge of nature. the function of philosophy was to help science avoid logical contradictions and linguistic ambiguities. for this, however, philosophy had to give up metaphysics. this is why grene characterizes logical positivism as a rebellion against german metaphysics, “a rebellion against german (or germanic) tiefere bedeutungen [deep meanings].” german metaphysics, which was typified in the minds of the young positivist rebels by the systematic philosophy of g. w. f. hegel, suffered from two irremediable faults. first, it was speculative rather than empirical. it made truth-claims that could not be proven true or false by empirical means and thus were meaningless. second, it attributed cognitive content to form and style. it held that the form in which philosophical ideas were expressed and the style of that expression were themselves legitimate objects of philosophical investigation, which logical positivists flatly denied. although logical positivists zoomed in on the language of science, they adopted a onedimensional understanding of language. in truth and justification, jürgen habermas (2003), drawing on wilhelm von humboldt’s linguistics, identifies three functions of language: a cognitive function (forming thoughts and representing facts), an expressive function (conveying emotions and stirring feelings), and a communicative function (dialoguing with others in private or public settings). when i speak in a natural language, such as spanish or german, i can use the language to achieve different objectives. i can certainly use it to make a factual claim, to assert that something is either true or false. but i can also use it to create a bond with my interlocutor, to discover who my interlocutor is, explore who i am, express disagreement, or even deliberate about what we have in common. indeed, there is a whole philosophical tradition – running, according to habermas, from dilthey to heidegger – that views language not simply as a tool for representing facts about the external world but as the very element in which all aspects of human life and existence unfold and in which they are immersed. logical positivists, however, rejected this tradition and collapsed language solely to its cognitive function. while they viewed the language of science as the sole object of the philosophy of science, they did not believe this language served any purpose beyond acting as a mirror of nature, which is to say, beyond reflecting facts so we can make truth 10 the term given to pre-socratic thinkers such as thales, heraclitus, and anaxagoras, physiologoi (greek, φυσιολόγοι) meant “those who discourse on nature”. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 32 claims about the world. 11 they viewed their object as one-dimensional frame precisely because they conveniently dismissed as irrelevant the aspects of this object that most clearly resisted the advances of logical analysis. what could not be ‘logicized’ was, quite simply, written off as insignificant. here, the difference between positivists and idealists could not be starker. idealists had a more holistic understanding of language, including the language of science. for them, for example, form and style were not external ornaments devoid of philosophical significance or accouterments that philosophers could either take or leave without consequence. the form in which philosophical thoughts were expressed and the stylistic characteristics of that expression were themselves philosophical choices that contributed to the meaning of philosophical works, and maybe even entire philosophical systems. from the standpoint of at least some idealist philosophers, one could not understand the philosophy of plato without thinking about its dialogic form; neither could one understand the philosophy of nietzsche without tarrying with its aphoristic form. this is why when german idealists reflected on the writings of their predecessors, they reflected on the relationship between form and content. this is also why when they themselves put pen to paper, they invested so much time stylizing their own writing and giving it the right form, the form that could achieve the specific effects they were after – effects that were not always tied to the specifically cognitive function of language (as described by habermas).12 not surprisingly, one of the most common criticisms logical positivists hurled at idealists was that, aside from not being empirically-minded enough, they played with form and style so much that their writings crossed over into poetry and literature and thus ceased being properly ‘philosophical’. it is significant that, in theory, logical positivists could have achieved their revolutionary objectives by simply calling for philosophy to shed its idealist skin and trade metaphysical speculation for logical analysis. but as the revolution gained speed, the german and austrian rebels came to believe that abandoning speculative methods was not enough to purify philosophy from idealist contamination. for that, philosophy had to surrender all aspects of the idealist program that could be linked to its speculative excesses, including (i) idealism’s stylistic exorbitance, and (ii) idealism’s obsession with history, which positivists considered irrelevant for the philosophical study of science.13 even if stylistic adornments and historical excursions were not necessarily implicated in speculative depravity, the worry was that they were symptoms of it, if not causes. by the time logical positivism was in full swing in europe and north america in the 1950s, positivists had declared metaphysics dead. gone, they said, were the irreal worlds idealists loved speculating into existence. gone was the ridiculous idea that form and style are carriers of philosophical meaning. and gone were the days when philosophy was so mired in the past that it was incapable of confronting the present or anticipating the future. gone, in other words, were all the underhanded affiliates of metaphysics. and good riddance! metaphysics was dead, and logical positivists gladly claimed responsibility for the kill. 11 this explains their dogged insistence that the speculative impulses of philosophy be subordinated to what is scientifically known (or at least knowable), and that philosophical statements be as clear and precise as possible, maximally free of linguistic opacity and logical confusion (galison 1990, 734). 12 it is interesting that scholars of german idealism tend to come from english and comparative literature departments as frequently as from philosophy departments. the same cannot be said of logical positivism. 13 grene and depew explain the positivist approach as follows: “taking fundamental physics, or a caricature of it, as its model, it separated the process of discovery (which it ignored) from the context of justification. within the latter context, it aimed at a logical reconstruction of sciences, a science that rigorously followed a single hypothetico-deductive method, and that was to issue in the utopian structure of a unified science” (grene and depew 2004, 348). canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 33 this brings us back to canguilhem. grene has claimed that because of its denunciation of form and style and its abjuration of history, the positivist revolt against idealism bred “a singularly dry kind of literal-mindedness, detached from any broader, or deeper, intellectual tradition” (2000, 46). form and style, for the positivists, could only mystify; history could only obscure.14 against this background, canguilhem’s writings on the life sciences, with their unique style and unapologetic affinity for history, could only appear to positivist eyes as obscurantist mystifications, as archenemies of rigorous philosophical thinking. in spite of its obviously rationalist inclinations, grene says, positivist philosophers were convinced that canguilhem’s philosophy was a french celebration of the irrational, a mad bacchanalia of unreason. to them, “[canguilhem was] just another of those wild continental irrationalists, who, as my colleagues liked (still like?) to say, never produced a single argument” (2000, 50). not a single one. canguilhem’s works provoked this reaction because they grew out of an altogether different intellectual background. they grew out of a number of intellectual traditions, some native to france, some foreign to it.15 but above all, they grew out of the uniquely french tradition of ‘the philosophy of the concept’, which materialized in france in the early twentieth century. this tradition differed from its viennese counterpart in that it: (a) did not look down on the more personal, elegant and poetic style characteristic of the french (especially the french normalien) and (b) did not abscond from interest in history and deep meanings (tiefere bedeutungen) that motivated so many of the old germans. inspired by this tradition, canguilhem rushed toward everything that positivism regarded with horror. it rushed toward history insofar as it affirmed the history of the sciences as the ground from which the philosophy of science must draw its life and energy, and it rushed toward the tiefere bedeutungen of the germans, except that instead of defining them as ‘essences’ that are somehow sequestered in the depths of the philosopher’s own mind, it redefined them as ‘concepts’ that inhere in scientific history. as positivists rebelled against german idealism, canguilhem rebelled against their rebellion. yet, he never, for that reason, sided with idealism. he was an enemy of the enemies of idealism; and an enemy of idealism, too. for reasons i explore in below, he refused to shed philosophy’s germanic past, choosing instead to don it in his very own (and, yes, very french) way. positivists, of course, could only interpret this move on the part of canguilhem as capitulation. they interpreted his talk of ‘concepts’ as a relapse into metaphysics and as incongruent with the demands of the rising dogma. so, they kept him at bay. they refused to read him, let alone teach him. they refused even to engage him lest their engagement accidentally dignify him. they never understood that canguilhem’s philosophy of the concept put as much distance between him and idealists as it did between him and the positivists 14 the rejection of style was a consequence of positivism’s emphasis on logical analysis, which is not equipped to deal with aspects of language other than its apophantic function. the rejection of history, by contrast, was a function of positivism’s theory of meaning, which stipulated that only things that can be verified or falsified by experience have cognitive content. since the past cannot be re-lived or experienced, claims about it can never be either confirmed or falsified and are therefore entirely meaningless. so, without taking stock of the implications of this move, positivists relinquished all history, including the history of philosophy, the history of language, and the history of science. 15 numerous currents of french thought influenced canguilhem, including the idealism of émile boutroux, the positivism of auguste comte, the historicism of raymond aron, the post-positivism of gaston bachelard, the mathematism of jules vuillemin and jean cavaillès, not to mention the historiographical interventions of annales historians such as lucien febvre, march bloch, and fernand braudel. traditions that were imported into france but originally took root elsewhere in europe — such as the phenomenology of edmund husserl, the dialectical materialism of marx, freud’s theory of the unconscious, and even the logical positivism of the ‘vienna school’ — also shaped his approach to the history of science. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 34 themselves. they never realized, in other words, that they shared something essential with canguilhem. they shared idealism as enemy! the positivist program forced the philosophy of science into an exceedingly narrow frame in which the only thing that mattered was the logical investigation of the language of science, where the language of science was conceived in strictly ahistorical terms. this narrowness is the reason why canguilhem’s philosophy barely registered outside a limited french sphere. yet, it is also the reason why canguilhem rejected positivism with as much ferocity as positivism had rejected idealism – because he thought positivism set up nothing but pitfalls for understanding and theorizing science. an alternative to the positivist approach, canguilhem’s philosophy of the concept was designed precisely to avoid these pitfalls. the philosophy of the concept from the moment he entered the elite ecole normale supérieure in 1924 (“where his first writings were on the positivist august comte”) to the moment he retired from the sorbonne in 1971 (“where he developed a reputation as a terrifying examiner”), canguilhem’s main theoretical interest was the evolution of scientific knowledge (horton 1995, 316). like kant, he was fascinated by the categories that condition the production of synthetic judgments (i.e. judgments that give us knowledge about the external world). unlike the architectonic philosopher, however, he did not see these categories as unchanging terms that lie forever petrified in a transcendental table; rather, he saw them as historically contingent terms that scientists inherit from the past. he called these categories ‘concepts.’ at the most basic level, concepts are schemas of perception, discourse, and thought that affect how and what scientists see, say, and think. typically, they denote the entities and processes that make up the world of a particular science. the world of the mathematician, for example, is made up of ‘numbers’, ‘sets’, ‘functions’, ‘exponents’, and ‘logarithms’. the world of the chemist is filled with ‘elements’, ‘compounds’, ‘bonds’, ‘moles’, ‘intramolecular forces’, and so on. meanwhile, the world of the psychologist is a world of ‘impulses,’ ‘instincts’, ‘repressions’, ‘action potentials’, ‘cognitive modules’, ‘mental states’, and more. each of these worlds has its own reality because each operates according to its own concepts. each concept, in turn, captures something that counts as real – i.e., something that can be meaningfully talked about and plugged into scientific practices and inferences – in each of these worlds. canguilhemian concepts exhibit six important properties.16 first, they are theoretically polyvalent, meaning that their meaning depends on the specific scientific theory in which they appear. in the opening pages of la formation du concept de réflexe aux xviie et xviiie siècles, canguilhem makes a critical distinction between a ‘concept’ and a ‘theory.’17 a theory is an axiomatic deductive system with a number of lawful premises that, when combined with statements of facts, can furnish a properly scientific explanation. a concept, by contrast, is simply a term that captures an object that the scientific mind has imbued with a sense of reality and considers a possible candidate for scientific investigation. a concept can appear in a theory (say, as a term in one of its premises), but it is not itself a theory. a theory can incorporate a concept into its explanatory space, but it is not itself a concept. concepts denote. theories explain. it follows from this that a history of scientific concepts will differ from a history of scientific theories because a single concept can appear in more than one theory. canguilhem draws our attention to this by describing concepts as “theoretically 16 these are properties i compiled from reading canguilhem’s works, not properties that canguilhem himself itemizes in any particular place. 17 gutting calls this distinction “canguilhem’s most important methodological contribution” (gutting 2003 52) to the philosophy of science. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 35 polyvalent” (canguilhem 1955). for him, concepts do not hew to any one theoretical interpretation. 18 and since concepts are parts of theories but theories are not parts of concepts (since concepts do not have parts), the study of concepts is prior, logically, to the study of theories. one cannot make sense of a scientific theory before investigating the concepts it contains. “before we relate theories in terms of logical content and origin, we must ask how contemporaries interpreted the concepts of which those theories were composed,” he says (canguilhem 1994, 180). conceptually, concepts come first; theories, second. second, they are historical. let us consider only one of the many concepts whose histories canguilhem documented: the biological concept of life. today, we think of life in terms of dna. but this is, of course, a recent invention. in an entry for the encyclopædia universalis written between 1974 and 1975, canguilhem argues that there have been other conceptions of life in the history of western thought: i. the concept of life as animation that dominated antiquity and was most clearly expressed in aristotle’s de anima ii. the concept of life as mechanism that appeared in the seventeenth century, especially in the rationalist philosophy of descartes iii. the concept of life as organization that emerged sometime in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in the works of immanuel kant and later german romantics such as f.w.j. schelling. iv. the concept of life as information that was put into place by the emergence of cybernetics and modern genetics in the middle of the twentieth century. canguilhem’s point is not that there have been four unrelated conceptions of life in the occident. his point is that these four conceptions are linked by an assortment of historical and conceptual connections that together make them relevant for the present. his point, in other words, is that our concept of life, which we treat as objective and self-evident, did not drop out of the sky fully formed. it took form in time. it is historical in the sense that it changes over time, but also in the sense that it is, as he argues in knowledge of life, “constructed” (canguilhem 2008, 60). this historico-constructivist understanding of concepts led lecourt (1975) to argue that canguilhem’s philosophy of the concept “belongs in principle to […] ‘historical materialism,’” (lecourt 1975, 126) because canguilhem essentially recapitulates, in the arena of the philosophy of science, the critique marx leveled against hegel in the realm of epistemology (19). for canguilhem, as for marx, concepts are products of a particular kind of work – i.e. scientific work – that unfolds under determinate historical conditions. concepts are never found. they are formed. third, even though concepts are products of history and, as ian hacking says, “have memories”, they often suffer from amnesia and forget their own historicity. concepts often portray themselves – or are portrayed by those who use them – as contemporaries without history, much like brontë’s jane eyre or coetzee’s cruso. they present themselves, in other words, as ahistorical principles that have always been what they are today. sadly, this ruse fools only too many scientists and philosophers who, under its spell, see the meaning of a concept as delimited by present-day usage, by how scientists operationalize it in modern-day settings of feedback-controlled action. the view that the meaning of a concept depends solely on its insertion into present-day tactics, institutions, and discourses, explains the “contempt for history” we find even today among so many professional scientists and philosophers of science, who dismiss as epistemologically trivial everything but the most recent scientific theories and discoveries (canguilhem 1983, 155). 18 canguilhem dismisses as prejudicial the idea that concepts “can originate only within the framework of a theory” (canguilhem 1994, 179). canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 36 fourth, concepts are behaviorally dynamic. to be sure, no two concepts follow the same historical path. each concept’s history is singular and unique. still, there are at least four ‘trajectory-types’ that recur in the history of the sciences: stable, intermittent, branched, and curled.  concepts with a stable trajectory appear in a domain at a given moment, play a role in its discourse for a period of time, and subsequently fall out of epistemic grace, thus disappearing from scientific discourse altogether.  concepts with an intermittent trajectory are born in a particular domain, operate in it, and eventually disappear, but later re-appear in the same domain like a corpse that has come back to life.19  concepts with a branched trajectory are born in one domain but then leap to another. after their leap, they either lead two separate lives (one in each domain) or move to the adoptive domain after disappearing from their native one.  concepts with a curled trajectory do not re-appear after a period of absence. nor do they leap from one domain to another. they simply stay put in one domain but undergo such radical transformations over time that at some point they actually transmogrify into what appears to be their very own opposite. they go from ‘a’ to ‘not-a’.20 although these trajectories are only heuristics, they help us visualize the different ways in which concepts can move in and through time. they also emphasize the point that the evolution of concepts, much like that of biological systems, is a protean process that follows no predetermined path. there is no logic to scientific history and there is no ‘direction’ in which the history of any science is heading. as such, all attempts to detect laws of historical change in history are a dead end, and that there is no room in canguilhem’s philosophy of the concept for a philosophy of history. fifth, concepts are autopoietic (from the greek autos meaning ‘self’ and poiein meaning ‘to generate’ or ‘to produce’), meaning they are self-generative or autoreproductive. as concepts gain traction within an economy of thought, they enter into all kinds of relations with other concepts. sometimes these relations are ‘generative’ in the sense that they culminate in the creation of new concepts (méthot 2013, 119). like cells, concepts re-produce. omnis conceptu e conceptu. in “la constitution de la physiologie comme science,” for example, canguilhem argues that some of the concepts that helped secure physiology’s place as an autonomous discipline in the late nineteenth century came into being through the fusion of other concepts. the concept of the ‘internal regulator’ came from the generative combination of two other concepts: the concept of ‘inner milieu’ (that grew out of harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood) and the concept of ‘energy conservation’ (that was a cornerstone of early thermodynamics). in this sense, an internal regulator simply is an energy-conserving feature of the internal milieu. similarly, the concept of ‘conditioning’ that became the pillar of behaviorism in the twentieth century was born from the co-absorption of the concepts of ‘reflex’ and ‘localization’, each of which has a 19 the concept of ‘preformation’ largely dropped out of use in biological discourse by the early nineteenth century. it suddenly returned in the late nineteenth century with developments in cell theory, especially the discovery of chromosomal formations in the cell nucleus (morus and bowler 2010). 20 émile bréhier points to eugène dupréel’s notion of the “anti-concept” to stress this point. anticoncepts are concepts that negate previous iterations of themselves. an example is the concept of ‘negative mass’, which evolved directly from the concept of mass yet is fundamentally opposed to it. the concept of negative mass has zero of the substantialist commitments of the classical concept of mass (bréhier 1964). canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 37 history of its own (we shall return to the history of the reflex in section three). a conditioned response simply is a localized reflex. 21 these examples demonstrate that the playful movement of concepts in the discursive space of a science can generate new concepts that can then re-organize in minor or major ways the space of that same science. indeed, when discussing the history of bacteriology, canguilhem makes the stronger claim that the capacity to generate new concepts “confirms” the scientific status of a domain. it is almost as if a domain becomes ‘scientific’ only when its concepts start multiplying, which is to say, the moment it “makes unanticipated discoveries and […] incorporates new concepts” (canguilhem 1994, 152). sixth and finally, concepts are capable of multi-modal signification. they can mean (i.e. convey meaning) in more than one way. most commonly, concepts mean by denoting specific objects. they help scientists pick out, or refer to, particular objects across dissimilar contexts. but denotation is only the most common mechanism of signification. concepts also convey meaning by association, resemblance, or suggestion. imagine that at a certain point in time concept ‘a’ gets associated with concepts ‘b’ and ‘c’ (say, because they co-appear in a popular theory). if the association is strong, it may be difficult for the scientific mind to dissociate these concepts at a later time, even after one or more of them are no longer part of the conceptual arsenal of the relevant science. in these cases, scientists may verbally invoke ‘a’, but what they really invoked is the associated cluster ‘a-b-c’ as a whole.22 similarly, concept ‘a’ may resemble concept ‘b’ (say, because they are phonetically or grammatically similar). if they become indistinguishable, the scientific mind will oscillate unconsciously between them even if they denote different things. finally, concepts also mean by suggestion. of the different mechanisms of conceptual signification, suggestion is the most difficult one to grasp because suggestions are context-dependent, non-literal, and elusive, and because philosophers of language have systematically neglected the suggestive function of language.23 still, concepts may explicitly declare one thing but suggest another, and what they suggest can be, epistemologically speaking, as momentous as what they declare.24 21canguilhem uses this understanding of the concept of ‘conditioning’, for example, to argue that pavlov may have more in common with distant thinkers who worked on the theory of reflex and the conservation of energy than with many of his contemporaries. these examples suggest that conceptual innovation in science is not the work of ‘genius’ but the almost inevitable consequence of the ‘play’ of concepts in a wider economy of thought (canguilhem 1983, 226-73). 22 this is canguilhem’s reading of the concept of the normal and the normative. these terms have been paired for so long in the history of the life sciences (especially medicine) that scientist often fail to recognize the critical difference between them, assuming that what deviates from the normal (conceived as a statistical average) is also abnormal (conceived in terms of a value judgment) (canguilhem 1991). it is also canguilhem’s reading of the concept of the cell, which has historically been difficult to disambiguate from the concept of ‘the individual’. “the history of the concept of the cell is inseparable from the history of the concept of the individual. this has already allowed us to maintain that social and affective values hover above the development of cell theory” (canguilhem 2008, 42). 23 the suggestive function of language has been systematically neglected in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of science, perhaps because it is impossible to impute a suggestion to any of the manifest ingredients of a speech act or perhaps because it is hard to differentiate suggestion from other modes of cover signification (such as hinting, innuendo, insinuation, and implication). while some philosophers of language have begun theorizing about linguistic implicature, the philosophical tradition in which suggestion has been most regularly debated is indian philosophy, which recognizes numerous varieties of suggestion. see kunjunni (1977), chari (1977), and keating (2016). 24 concepts rooted in metaphors often operate in this way. consider darwin’s concept of ‘the struggle for existence’, which became a key component of his theory of evolution via natural selection in 1859. explicitly, the concept simply stated that some organisms inevitably perish before reproducing and thus fail to pass on their traits to the next generation. implicitly, however, this concept (which was canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 38 these properties – theoretical polyvalence, historicity, forgetfulness, behavioral dynamism, autopoiesis, and multi-modal signification – give us an outline of the theory of conceptuality that underpins canguilhem’s philosophy, even if he never formulated this theory explicitly in any of his works. this theory allowed canguilhem to bypass the ahistorical and logical philosophy of the positivists and reclaim the tiefere bedeutungen of the germans without thereby resuming the idealist project of metaphysics. recall that the two core ideas that define canguilhem’s philosophy are: (a) that epistemologists are more likely to make headway in the study of science if they focus on studying the concepts that govern scientific perception, discourse, and thought rather than the syntax of scientific language (carnap 1938), the morphology of the scientific method (popper 2005), or the social determinants of scientific practice (bloor 1984), and (b) that the best way to probe what henning schmidgen calls “the life of [scientific] concepts”25 is historically, by looking at moments of genesis, patterns of change, and evolutionary arches; by asking when they were born, why they mutated, how they evolved, and whether or not they still have a presence in modern scientific practice. these ideas led canguilhem to the philosophical conclusion that there is no straight road from philosophy to epistemology. to become epistemological, philosophy must take a detour through the history of the sciences. as we shall see in the next section, however, this detour cannot succeed unless philosophers suspend their philosophical convictions before embarking on it, unless their leave some cherished possessions behind. canguilhem’s method and suspended judgment as a disciple of history, canguilhem always stressed that concepts can only be studied historically, through rigorous archival research.26 yet, an aspect of his method that has not received attention in the literature is his worry about the risks of historical research. historical research is not fundamentally good or bad, but it is fundamentally risky. one of its dangers is that it can fool researchers into thinking they have found what they have in fact fabricated, that they have reached a new destination when they never even left their point of departure. more specifically, canguilhem worried about projection. he worried that researchers might have no way of knowing whether the concepts they “see” in the history of science are really concepts that emerge from this history or concepts the researchers have projected onto it. to avoid this problem, canguilhem concluded, researchers should undergo a unique form of self-analysis before (and during) archival research whereby they reflect on their own preconceptions, biases, and assumptions, identify them, and then actively suspend them. in this section, i look at two concrete historical cases that highlight the dangers of not suspending judgment when constructing historical narratives: (i) henri-marie ducrotay de taken from political economy) led natural scientists to view nature as a hobbesian war of all against all. this led natural scientists to think of the ‘struggle’ in question almost exclusively as a struggle among organisms (rather than between them and their environment), which prevented them from considering the possibility that animals may cooperate in nature in order to survive the elements. the metaphor of the struggle for existence closed the door on discussions of altruism and affected the direction of biological and ethological research for much of the twentieth century. see gould (1988). 25 canguilhem once joked that his interest in concepts may earn him a reputation as a “conceptualist fossil” (1988, x). for a discussion of the canguilhemian theory of concepts, see schmidgen (2014). 26 in knowledge of life, canguilhem cites the work of paul langevin, who speaks of the value of the history of science for scientific pedagogy. according to langevin, a close attention to historical sources is likely to give science students a better image of what scientific practice is all about than an ahistorical education that merely teaches contemporary knowledge in a vacuum. a historical methodological will teach students that the scientists whose theories we now categorically reject were acutely aware of the limits and shortcomings of their theoretical propositions, and it will educate them about the dangers of dogmatically attaching oneself to the theories that one has been reared into simply because we feel certain that those theories are true (canguilhem 2008, 27). canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 39 blainville and françois-louis-michel maupied’s 1847 histoire de sciences de l'organisation et de leurs progrès comme base de la philosophie and (ii) emil du bois-reymond’s 1858 history of reflex. canguilhem critiques both works for failing to bracket second-order judgments and argues that this failure prevents them from tapping into the conceptual dimension of the history of science that alone can give history epistemological relevance. in a 1979 article published in revue d’histoire des sciences under the title “l’histoire des sciences de l’organisation de blainville et l’abbé maupied,” canguilhem chastises blainville and maupied for failing to shake off second-order judgments in their interpretation of french scientific history in their 1847 book, histoire de sciences: de l’organisation et de leurs progrès comme base de la philosophie. pieced together from lectures blainville delivered at the sorbonne between 1839 and 1841 and presented as a survey of the evolution of the organic sciences in europe from antiquity to napoleon, this text claims to prove: the scientific character of scripture and the linear and progressive character of scientific history. and it claims to prove this based solely on the historical record. but canguilhem argues that, in reality, blainville and maupied assume these conclusions from the start. prior to any investigation of the history of french science, blainville and maupied were already convinced that all knowledge originates in divine revelation and that all nomological knowledge of nature is procured by reading the mind of god through his works.27 as enlightenment thinkers, they also believed history follows a rectilinear and progressive trajectory and that the history of science best illustrates this linearity. these convictions pre-determined the outcome of their investigation and explain some of the more puzzling features of their book, such as its countless references to aristotle. if the reader of the histoire gets the uncanny feeling that every other sentence ends with a bizarre reference to aristotle, this is because the authors embrace a progressivist philosophy of history according to which all later historical events are embryonically contained in earlier ones. for blainville and maupied, “descartes, bacon and all the others [...] are merely the logical consequence, the elaboration, of aristotle” (canguilhem 1991, 59) – the one philosopher among the gentiles. 28 they saw no meaningful difference between the teleological worldview of aristotle and the mechanistic one of descartes. their belief that history forms an unbroken line of progress primed them to see continuity where there is discontinuity, to assert similitude where it makes more sense to assert difference. blainville and maupied also applied a questionable ‘principle of selection’ to their subject matter. because they believed in the necessary compatibility of science and scripture and in the linearity of all history, they include in their historical narrative only evidence that coheres with their philosophical beliefs while exclusing any events that, as they themselves put it, “[did not] push science in the right direction” (canguilhem 1991, 61). the notion that there is a ‘right direction’ in history is, of course, a philosophical judgment about the nature of history that precedes the investigation and impacts what, for the authors, counts as historical evidence. toby appel has observed that blainville and maupied deliberately selected out of their analysis everything that undermined their principle aim, which was “to 27 blainville, in the “introduction,” writes: “i conceived and carried out my histoire de l'organisation as a possible foundation for philosophy, while at the same time demonstrating that philosophy is one and the same thing as the christian religion, which is so to speak only an a priori, revealed to man by god himself when the state of society required it” (quoted in canguilhem 1991, 60). some have speculated, however, that this religious orientation was intensified by the edits of maupied, who was a priest. 28 the periodic references to aristotle are themselves revealing since blainville and maupied present aristotle as the first philosopher to have truly understood that knowledge is a ‘reading’ of god’s works rather than a ‘creation’ of the human mind (as stipulated by the catechism of the dioceses of paris). in tracing modern scientific developments back to the aristotelian philosophy, the authors simultaneously ‘prove’ their thesis of historical continuity and lend ‘support’ to their belief that all knowledge comes from revelation. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 40 support catholicism with biology” (1987, 287). as such, the histoire relies on a principle of selection that combines a theory of knowledge rooted in judeo-christian hermeneutics with a run-of-the-mill, enlightenment-style adoration of progress for progress’s sake that render it epistemologically suspect.29 another example of what can go wrong when scholars working on the history of the sciences fail to suspend prior beliefs is emil du bois-reymond’s 1858 history of the reflex, which canguilhem’s la formation du concept de réflexe aux xviie et xviiie siècles directly rebuts. du bois-reymond’s 1858 thesis is straightforward: the concept of the reflex, which appeared in the discourse of physiology in the nineteenth century, originated in the mechanical writings of rené descartes, especially the passions of the soul, and not in the vitalist writings of either the english doctor thomas willis (a professor of natural philosophy at oxford) or the czech-austrian physiologist georg prochaska (a professor of anatomy at the university of prague). as canguilhem says: “[du bois-reymond] refers to descartes the honor of having ingeniously anticipated, in matters of the reflex, the word and the concept” (canguilhem 1955, 139). yet, according to canguilhem, this narrative is doused in philosophical valorizations, including a dogmatic commitment to the supremacy of the mechanistic philosophy and an unswerving devotion to german nationalism. well before he spilled a single drop of ink on the history of the reflex, du bois-reymond had spilled many defending the value of mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena and discrediting all strands of nonmechanistic thought, especially the vitalist school comprised by georg stahl, xavier bichat, and arthur schopenhauer, among others. there is a real sense, then, in which du boisreymond was fated to consign to the history of mechanistic thought the origins of concept of the reflex not because this is what the historical record shows but because he was already convinced that the concept of reflex is thoroughly mechanistic and that the mechanistic philosophy is the archetype, if not the very locus, of all epistemic legitimacy. rather than tracing the history of the concept of the reflex wherever it led, the 1858 history names as the founder of the concept of the reflex the man who fathered and emblemized the mechanistic paradigm so as to condemn as “guilty of metaphysical sin” the school of naturphilosophie to which vitalists like prochaska, and before him willis, belonged (1955, 140). “it was not so much for reasons of pure physiology as for reasons of philosophy,” canguilhem concludes, “that descartes was anointed a great physiologist and illustrious precursor” (canguilhem 1988, 56). in exalting descartes and “putting down” willis and prochaska, du bois-reymond made more than a philosophical point about the right way to think about natural phenomena (canguilhem 1955, 140). he also made a political point about the ascendancy of german culture and the supremacy of german science. while du bois-reymond honors descartes (a frenchman) as the founder of the concept of reflex, he presents the german physiologist johannes müller – whose experiments on reflex-reactions helped disseminate a mechanistic theory of life in germany in the mid-to-late nineteenth century – as the european heir to the cartesian empire. for du bois-reymond, müller was a german descartes. the 1858 history, therefore, is really a story about the rise of germany’s scientific kultur and a testament to “the nationalist supremacy of a ‘strong’ [german] science over the science of a dominated nationality embodied in this case by prochaska” (lecourt 1975, 177). it is also an intellectual autobiography of sorts. du bois-reymond himself succeeded müller as chair of physiology at the university of berlin in 1858 – the same year his history of the reflex was published. it is no 29 after reading blainville and maupied’s work, august comte protested that their work offered “only an irrational succession of biographic and bibliographic notices” (pickering 1993, 492). it didn’t pay attention to the aspects of scientific history that might actually interest practitioners and historians of science. it lacks, for example, any attempt to explain “the connection between biological theories and discoveries” (ibid). canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 41 surprise that in it, du bois-reymond draws a direct line between himself and müller (the father of modern philosophy who, by then, was a household name in german science), and between himself, müller, and descartes (the father of the mechanistic philosophy du boisreymond himself worshipped). at once metaphysical treatise, nationalist manifesto, and intellectual autobiography, the 1858 history of the reflex is a hodgepodge of valorizations masquerading as history. of course, the real danger of second-order philosophical judgments is not that they yield self-aggrandizing histories awash with petty nationalism and glib philosophizing. their real danger is that they can take command of the research process and make it functionally impossible for researches to see any ‘forms’ or ‘patterns’ in history other than the ideological arabesques that we project onto it. if left unchecked, these judgments infiltrate historical research and jam it from within. once this happens, we are more likely to miss important links, hints, and traces that might prove essential for understanding the historical origins or trajectory of a particular scientific concept. it is in relation to this concern that we must interpret a work such as la formation du concept de réflexe aux xviie et xviiie siècles, where canguilhem sets out to ‘set the record straight’ by showing that an altogether different understanding of the history the reflex is possible when we hold second-order judgments in abeyance. la formation offers an alternative account of the history of the reflex to the one du bois-reymond puts on the map by arguing that descartes did not invent the reflex concept. willis and prochaska did. it was the vitalist writings of willis and prochaska (who conceived of life as light) and not in rationalist works of descartes (who conceived of life as mechanism) that rendered the reflex concept thinkable for the first time in scientific history. by using light as a model and metaphor for life, willis and prochaska envisioned certain bodily movements that do not seem to be under the control of an organism’s executive function as ‘reflections’ that bounce off the nervous-motoric system like light off the surface of a white wall. in thinking of bodily movements in this way – i.e. as autonomous reflections – these vitalist thinkers invented the concept of the reflex and paved the way for its introduction into physiological discourse. the fact that descartes, as du bois-reymond observes, made a passing reference to ‘reflected spirits’ in the passions of the soul is irrelevant since the concept of the reflex that was incorporated into physiology starting in the 1850s had much more in common with the vitalist notion articulated by willis than with the mechanistic one formulated by descartes. descartes’s theory, for example, posited that all reflexes involve a ‘pathway’ that leads from sensory stimulus to motoric reaction through the brain. by contrast, willis’s theory de-centralized reflexes by suggesting that their ‘pathways’ are localized and do not pass through brain at all. this second conception was closer, epistemologically, to the concept of the reflex that was eventually woven into the conceptual fabric of physiology in the late 1800s as most physiologists defined reflexes as behaviors that are not under executive control, i.e., as behaviors not mediated by the brain.30 in an impressive turnabout of du bois-reymond’s thesis, canguilhem shows that the origins of the modern concept of the reflex are found precisely in the tradition of 30 descartes’s theory explained reflexes vis-à-vis a mechanistic theory of strings and pulleys modeled after harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood, whereas willis’s explained reflexes vis-à-vis a vitalist theory of combustion. gary gutting writes: “willis explain bodily proceses in terms of the chemistry of combustion and a vitalistic notion of the animal soul. his accounts were therefore far removed from the cartesian mechanism that seems the natural locus of reflex movement. nonetheless, willis was led, as descartes was not, to the two central elements of the concept of the reflex. first, he clearly distinguished the cerebellum, as the center of involuntary movement, from the cerebrum (or brain proper), as the center of rational thought and voluntary action. this effected the crucial decentering of reflex movement. second, he conceived of reflex movement as a genuinely symmetrical process of back-and-forth motion by the animal spirits, explicitly employing the term motus reflexus in analogy to the reflection of light” (gutting 1989, 36-7). canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 42 naturphilosophie that du bois-reymond denigrates. no doubt, du bois-reymond is right that the passions of the soul contain the word ‘reflex,’ but he is wrong to claim that this work is also the birthplace of the concept expressed by this word. it is only in the thinking and writings of willis and prochaska, and their disciples, that we find the word and concept the side-by-side. “concerning the reflex, we find in willis, the thing, the word, and the notion” (canguilhem 1955, 68). what led du bois-reymond astray was his top-down approach to the history of the sciences, which produced a history from pre-existing beliefs when it should have formed beliefs from a pre-existing history. du bois-reymond’s failure was a failure of suspension. although canguilhem never claimed that it would be possible for him – or any other epistemologist, for that matter – to reach a pure and objective understanding of the history of the sciences, he believed it was paramount for practitioners to bracket philosophical and theoretical prejudices. history writing may not be a science. but neither should it be a freefor-all in which all claims are equal. there are better and worse explanations, there are histories we can embrace as elucidating and histories we can dismiss as misguided or mistaken. indeed, this is what cristina chimisso calls the “negative part” of historical epistemology, the side that enables epistemologists to evaluate and possibly reject historical explanations that are either unsubstantiated or injudicious. we see this negative part at work clearly in canguilhem’s history of the reflect, which “establish[es] that certain continuities were delusions created by [problematic] reading of past texts” (chimisso 2003, 312). the mere presence of this negative dimension suggests that, far from being a rash celebration of irrationalism, canguilhem’s philosophy of the concept is committed to norms of evidence and objectivity in history writing. becoming-genealogical: on the cultural barrier between philosophy and history canguilhem devoted his life to interrogating the concepts that breathe life into science. and he was firm in his conviction that these concepts are not, as the early logical positivists maintained, merely “abstractions from our use of words” (glock 2008, 42). they are historical schemas that condition what epistemic agents can perceive, say, think, and know in scientific spaces. one of the most drastic implications of this historicist position is that philosophers who fail to engage the history of the sciences simply fail to engage the concepts that animate scientific rationality and, consequently, fail to do epistemology. to avoid this failure, philosophers must develop a historical conscience and come to see the philosophy of science not as a department of logic, as a. j. ayer wished, but as a department of genealogy. but what does it take for the philosophy of science to become genealogical? merely recruiting a handful of historians who dabble in philosophy or a handful of philosophers who dabble in history will not suffice. this transformation will require something more drastic and, also, more exciting: the birth of an altogether new character, “the epistemologist”, who is fluent in the languages of historians, scientists, and philosophers but is not identical to any one of them. a synthesis of these other figures, the epistemologist will have expertise in the history of science (like the historian), in present-day scientific knowledge (like the scientist), and in the history of epistemology and metaphysics (like the philosopher); but, because of her unique perspective, she will also pose questions and venture answers that neither of these other figures can – questions and answers that may occasionally call into question the mission and self-understanding of these other figures and their respective disciplines. for this new character to emerge, however, the material conditions under which the philosophy of science unfolds need to change and the “cultural barrier” (brenner 2015) that currently keeps the analytic philosophy of science and the history of science apart must be dismantled. this barrier has ravaged the history of these disciplines and produced a situation canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 43 in which philosophy and history cannot see their interests reflected in those of one another and consequently cannot imagine a shared future. while the recent emergence of the field of ‘hps’ (the history and philosophy of science) has indeed chipped away at this barrier, the situation has not substantively changed. today, the history of science is still conducted almost exclusively by a small cohort of historians who happen to be interested in the scientific past but who have no real interest in the epistemological difficulties raised by the contents of scientific history. the philosophy of science, on the other hand, still falls within the ambit of analytically trained philosophers who, as thomas uebel claims, “profess to care little for history” (2010, 13). in this environment, it is not uncommon for professional historians to decry philosophical theory as aloof and for philosophers to dismiss the history of science as nothing but the “cold-case squad” of the philosophy of science (french and saatsi 2014, 363). converting the philosophy of science into a subdivision of genealogy, then, requires re-educating the philosophy and the history of science about the power of each other’s tutelage and the value of studying concepts genealogically, i.e., in terms of the epistemic functions they have served in scientific settings at different points in time. queloz (2017) notes that analytic philosophers of science steer clear of genealogical investigations because such investigations are thought to lack normative power. studies of origins might be interesting and educational, the argument goes, but they are irrelevant to “the space of reasons” because origins are not justificatory. queloz counters, however, that genealogies can justify conceptual practices. it is just that mainstream philosophers of science have misunderstood how they do so. genealogies do not justify contemporary conceptual practices by identifying a point of origin and imputing normative power to it. rather, they do so by identifying a point of origin and then tracing the various reasons epistemic agents had for continuing to embrace said practices, even when there were viable alternatives. by both showing that the choice to continue a practice was rational given local conditions and also that our present-day commitment to such practice is the direct result of these choices, a genealogy can lay bare the normative dimensions that connect past and present and thus offer us a justification of the present rooted in the past. this, i argue, is how canguilhem’s histories should be understood, i.e., as genealogies whose objective is not simply to describe the evolution of scientific concepts but also to justify the epistemic value of concepts that continue to play a role in contemporary science. his histories are “normative histories” that judge (chimisso 2013). genealogies, however, do more than recognize the normative potential of history. especially in the wake of nietzsche and foucault, genealogies recognize history as what de certeau (1994) calls a “polemological space,” i.e., a space in which a number of strategies and tactics constantly collide with one another. genealogy, as foucault observes in the opening sentence of “nietzsche, genealogy, history,” “operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments” (foucault 1984, 76). it recognizes that its object – be it christian moralism (as in the case of nietzsche) or the experience of madness (as in the case of foucault) – is constructed in an environment that is permeated by power relations in which a large number of actors, discourses, disciplines, and institutions are involved. in the case of science, foucault says, genealogy recognizes that science is not a value-neutral activity that is magically immune to power relations and ideology. genealogy understands that scientific knowledge and scientific practice involve human actors, with all their human limitations, contradictions, and flaws; it understands that “the precision of scientific methods arose from the passion of scholars, their reciprocal hatred, their fanatical and unending discussions, and their spirit of competition – the personal conflicts that slowly forged the weapons of reason” (foucault 1984, 78). foucault learned this lesson from his teacher, canguilhem. that science can be justified with the aid of genealogy does not mean science is not drenched in the social, cultural, and political strife that envelops it. under a genealogical model, if anything, this strife is essential to the process of justification since it is in the whirlwind of social, cultural, and political life that concepts vie for epistemic legitimacy and canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 44 recognition, since it is in the midst of strife that concepts rise or fall, succeed or fail. this is why canguilhem suggested as early as the 1940s that the philosophy of science needs to engage not only the history of science, but also the history of ideas more generally – because the history of ideas gives the epistemologist access into that broader milieu in which scientific knowledge is constructed and operationalized. as he states in a key passage from the normal and the pathological: “the history of ideas cannot be superimposed perforce on the history of science. but as scientists lead their lives as men in an environment and social setting that is not exclusively scientific, the history of science cannot neglect the history of ideas” (canguilhem 1991, 46). unfortunately, we are yet to grasp the full significance of canguilhem’s genealogical approach for contemporary debates in the philosophy of science, including debates about realism and anti-realism,31 about the relationship between science and ideology, and about the link between the descriptive and normative dimensions of genealogical thought.32 this, as i argued above, is because the philosophy of science continues to be trapped in an echo chamber of its own creation. to break out of this chamber, we (philosophers of science) need to work on enriching “our panoply of methods” (brenner 2015) and on curbing philosophical desire. by this, i mean that we can no longer lose ourselves in the dream of crafting a universal theory of science that conclusively captures the essence of all science, the soul of scientificity itself. this desire for totality, which can easily be subjected to psychoanalytic investigation, motived early defenders of logical positivism and, not without a sense of irony, brought them into the company of the german idealists they so deeply and intensely abhorred. like idealists, positivists fetishized totality, even if the totality they yearned for took the form of a comprehensive theory of science rather than a complete philosophical system. canguilhem rejected this fetishistic approach to science because he rejected the desire that nourishes it. on his view, science does not yield to totalities because science is not one. it is not one domain, one practice, one language, or one method. science is ever plural and ever diverse. science is many. it is many practices across many domains, each of which champions a shifting assortment of norms, vernaculars, and methods without a common blueprint or archetype. in affirming this plurality and diversity, canguilhem invited us to recognize that only a regional approach that encourages investigations of individual concepts and their local developments can live up to the name “epistemology.” references appel, toby. 1987. the cuvier-geoffroy debate: french biology in the decades before darwin. oxford: oxford university press. ayer, a. j. 1952. language, truth, and logic. new york: dover publications. bloor, david. 1984. the strengths of the strong programme. pp. 75-94 in scientific rationality: the sociological turn, ed. james robert brown. springer science & business media. 31 a broad question that continues to intrigue philosophers of science is whether the objects that our scientific theories are about — atoms, genes, species, etc. — are metaphysically real or only heuristics that help us formulate research questions and intelligently navigate the world. as noted above, canguilhem argues that concepts are “constructed”. yet, he believes concepts are constructed nonarbitrarily by scientists operating under settings of feedback-controlled action where the freedom to construct is limited by the theoretical and technical armature of the field. 32 interestingly, most post-positivist philosophers of science of the twentieth century never read works by french epistemologists. “a survey of the works of kuhn, lakatos, feyerabend, and hilary putnam reveals a paucity of references to historical epistemology, and these are often superficial or derogatory. post-positivists never engaged in 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companion to the philosophy of science. a & c black. friedman, michael. 1999. reconsidering logical positivism. cambridge university press. galison, peter. 1990. aufbau/bauhaus: logical positivism and architectural modernism. critical inquiry 16 (4): 709-752. gould, stephen jay. 1988. kropotkin was no crackpot. natural history 7 (97): 12-21. grene, marjorie and david depew. the philosophy of biology: an episodic history. cambridge university press, 2004. grene, marjorie. 2000. the philosophy of science of georges canguilhem: a transatlantic view. revue d’histoire des sciences 53 (1): 47-63. gutting, gary. 2003. thomas kuhn and french philosophy of science, pp. 45-64 in thomas kuhn, ed. thomas nickles. cambridge university press. gutting, gary. 1989. michel foucault’s archaeology of scientific reason: science and the history of reason. cambridge university press. habermas, jürgen. 2003. truth and justification. mit press. horton, richard. 1995. georges canguilhem: philosopher of disease. journal of the royal society of medicine 88 (6): 316-9. keating, malcolm. 2016. the literal-nonliteral distinction in classical indian philosophy, in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/literal-nonliteral-india. kunjunni, raja. 1977. indian theories of meaning. madras: adyar. lecourt, dominique. 1975. marxism and epistemology: bachelard, canguilhem and foucault. london: nlb. canguilhem’s concepts david m. peña-guzmán 46 lopes, myriam, marcos gonçalves, and thiago salles. 2015. a genealogy of the work of collector: the document and its image. digital heritage, vol. 2. ieee. méthot, pierre-olivier. 2009. french epistemology overseas: analysing the influence of georges canguilhem in québec. humana. mente – journal of philosophical studies 9: 39-59. méthot, pierre-olivier. 2013. on the genealogy of concepts and experimental practices: rethinking georges canguilhem’s historical epistemology. studies in history and philosophy of science part a 44 (1): 112-123. pickering, mary. 1993. auguste comte: an intellectual biography, vol. 1. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. popper, karl. 2005. the logic of scientific discovery. new york, london: routledge. schmidgen, henning. 2014. the life of concepts. history and philosophy of the life sciences 36 (2): 232-253. schrift, alan. 2008. the effects of the agrégation de philosophie on twentieth-century french philosophy. journal of the history of philosophy 46 (3): 449-473. talcott, samuel. 2017. the education of philosophy: from canguilhem and the teaching of philosophy to foucault’s discipline and punish. philosophy today 61 (3): 503-521. uebel, thomas. 2010. some remarks on current history of analytical philosophy of science, pp. 13-29 in the present situation in the philosophy of science. vol. 1, ed. friedrich stadler. springer science & business media. microsoft word 5ambrosetti layout 18 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 18-33 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2018 – this is an open access article idtc dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti1 abstract: the paper studies the medieval tradition of the 9th century al-khwarizmi’s handbook on algebra compared with its latin translation by gerard of cremona (made in spain, around 1170), later translated in italian vernacular by an anonymous florentine abacus master, during the 14th century. this long journey along five centuries and three countries deals accurately with the mathematical contents; by means of analysis of explicit and implied elements in the three works, we also focus on the different historical backgrounds, the social condition of the authors, the cultural, mindset-related and religious obstacles they had to take into consideration, while disseminating these calculation techniques, and, finally, their teaching style. keywords: algebra; al-khwarizmi; translations; education; teaching style received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 9 september 2018. accepted: 27 september 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ______________________________________________________________________ introduction in this paper, we will outline a part of the history of the 9th century al-khwarizmi’s handbook on algebra, a milestone of the discipline. as a first step, we will expose the content of the book focusing both on its innovative content and on the historical context it was composed in. then we will consider its latin translation by gerard of cremona, which was made in spain, around 1170, that is in a completely different cultural environment. finally, we will study a translation of gerard’s version into italian vernacular, made by an anonymous florentine abacus master, during the 14th century, again in a dissimilar historical background. the goal of the work is to highlight the influence of the context on their respective teaching styles, given a substantially identical content. 1 nadia ambrosetti [0000-0003-1903-123x] is an adjunct professor in the dipartimento di studi internazionali, giuridici e storico-politici at the università degli studi. address: via conservatorio 7 – 20122 milano, italy. e-mail: nadia.ambrosetti@unimi.it “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 19 al-khwarizmi’s handbook at the beginning of the ninth century ad, in baghdad the caliph al-mansur turned an existing library into an academy, called bayt al-hikma (house of wisdom), where renown scholars of many disciplines were granted access to a huge number of scientific works, mainly translated from greek. they also contributed to the cultural life of the court and of the reign. among them, the outstanding scientist al-khwarizmi, a native of khoresmia, wrote a handbook on algebra2 (kitab al-hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabalah, namely compendious book on calculation by completion and balancing), which, for the great ease of application, would be largely successful, both in the arabic-speaking middle east and in the arabic-european mediterranean area. in the preface, the author, after a long praise (basmala) in exaltation of god and of the prophet muhammad, explains that the men of culture born in other times and in peoples who exist no more, have constantly dedicated themselves to writing books on various aspects of the science and different branches of knowledge, both thinking of posterity and of a reward appropriate to their ability, and trusting to obtain reward, wealth and fame, and to respect the language of truth in front of which the endured effort disappears, to unveil the secrets of science and what it secretly holds. there is a man who came first to discover what had not been discovered before him and he has left it to posterity; a man who has yet explained what his predecessors had left inaccessible, to clarify the method study or pave the way or bring it closer; a man who finally discovered an error in certain books, and then gathered what was missing, criticized by maintaining a good opinion of the author, without arrogance towards him or pride for his work. (al-khwarizmi, 2007, 92-94)3 thanks to the al-mamun patron, passionate of culture, al-khwarizmi explains that he felt encouraged to compose a brief work on the calculation with [the rules of] completion and reduction; has wanted it to contain what is acute in arithmetic and what is most noble, what necessarily to men serves in cases of inheritance, legacies, divisions, processes and trades and in all mutual relations, or in cases involving the land measurement, channel excavation, geometric calculations, and other content relevant to the calculation and its types [...]. (al-khwarizmi, 2007, 94) the essential purpose of al-khwarizmi is then to draw up a manual useful for solving the problems of everyday life and this is evident also by observing the magnificent speech style used by the author. this handbook can be considered the foundation of modern algebra (rashed 2007), as it offers a complete method for solving equations of first and second degree, thanks to the operations of al-jabr (moving a term from one to the other side of the equation, by adding a term of opposite sign to both sides) and al-muqabalah (algebraic sum of like terms). the method requires, as a first step, that the equation is reduced, by means of the two operations above, to one of the following six cases (let a, b, c be real and positive): 2 al-khwarizmi’s works are many more and deal with arithmetic (hisab al-hindi), astronomy (zij, astronomical tables), geography, and history. the first two spread largely in mediaeval europe. 3 passages here are taken from the al-khwarizmi critical edition edited by roshdie rashed with the original text written in arabic as well as the translation into french. in this article, passages are in author’s english translation. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 20 1. ax2 = bx 2. ax2 = c 3. bx = c 4. ax2 + bx = c 5. ax2 + c = bx 6. bx + c = ax2 for whose solution the algorithms4 are provided. as we can see, the method is valid in general and allows the resolution of classes of problems, exemplified by similar equations. as for the style, al-khwarizmi algebra is completely rhetorical: he does not make use of symbols and the explanations of the various steps are long and redundant. the whole work structure is the following: 1. basmala 2. primitive terms 3. the three simple cases (equations with two terms) 4. the three composed cases (equations with three terms) 5. demonstration of the rules 6. operations 7. the 6 problems 8. other 34 problems 9. the rule of three 10. measures 11. heritages 12. legacies the content is heavily unbalanced on the side of the practical application: the last two chapters hold most of the treatise and include a very detailed casuistry of possible problems of inheritance and their solutions. gerard of cremona’s latin translation the transfer of this method to the european mathematical knowledge is proved not only by the three latin translations made in spain between the 12th and the 13th century (hughes 1982, 1986) by robert of chester (1145), gerard of cremona (round 1170), and guglielmo de lunis (1250), but also by the penetration of the method in the everyday teaching in mediterranean abacus schools. leonardo fibonacci from pisa studied in one of them: in 1202, in his liber abaci, he presented (though in latin) the summa of arabic arithmetic-algebraic knowledge to the benefit of european merchants. born around 1114 in cremona, where he made his first studies, gerard moved around 1140 to toledo, to learn arabic and in search of ptolemy’s almagest. his presence in spain is documented since 1144 and he died there in 1187 (björnbo 1905). his production is very extensive: between 70 and 80 books, including at least 12 on astronomy, 17 treatises on mathematics and optics, natural philosophy and 24 medical texts. gerard’s fluency in latin and his competence in the various fields were such that he was able to convey in latin not 4 the word algorithm derives from al-khwarizmi’s name transliteration into latin alphabet, possibly contaminated by the radix of “arithmetica”. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 21 only the exact meaning but also the nuances of the arabic text, according to some sources (negri lodrini 1994). the treatise is divided into 8 chapters with an appendix, with the following content: 1. introduction: presentation of the numbering system in base 10 and of the algebraic terms 2. six cases of equations with solved examples a. simple equations i. ax2= bx ii. ax2= c iii. bx = c b. composed equations i. ax2 + bx = c ii. ax2 + c = bx iii. bx + c = ax2 3. geometric demonstrations for each composed equation 4. chapter on multiplication 5. chapter on sum and difference 6. chapter of problems (six problems solved) 7. twelve more problems resolved, starting with the six cases of equations 8. “rule of three” with three problems solved appendix: 21 solved problems of increasing length and difficulty the long section about practical applications, present in al-khwarizmi’s is here totally missing. vernacular translations in the following centuries, vernacular languages began to spread and the merchants’ training in mathematics brought this discipline very far from the out-of-date boetian tradition which had dominated the landscape of the exact sciences in the middle ages; these two facts determined the need for vernacular handbooks, in order to easily disseminate these techniques, which in the meanwhile were further developed by other arabic-speaking mathematicians, such as abu kamil (ix century) and al-karaji (x century), or by europeans, like fibonacci and many others (katz 2016). this is the case of the tractatus algorismi by jacopo da firenze, dating 1327, of the liber abaci by paolo gherardi (early fourteenth century) (van egmond 1978), or of the practica di mercatura by francesco di balduccio pegolotti in the mid-fourteenth century or again the trattato d’algebra by benedetto da firenze, in the second half of the fourteenth century (ulivi 2002a): all works in which we can clearly see hints of contamination between the abacus literature and the original arabic texts (franci and toti rigatelli 1985, ulivi 2002b, høyrup 2006, heeffer 2008a, høyrup 2008). more than one scholar, during the fourteenth century, tried to go back to the source of this technique, translating from latin the algebraic handbook by al-khwarizmi: hence the translations (both in florentine vernacular) of guglielmo de lunis’ version (rome, vatican library, ms. urb lat. 291), already studied by franci (franci 2003) and hissette (hissette “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 22 2003), and of gerard of cremona’s (florence, bnc, fond. prin. ii.iii.198); this last one is the subject of the present work. the florence manuscript history as shown at f. 165v, in 1595, the manuscript was owned by the florentine nobleman pietro dini, born in florence in the second half of the sixteenth century. pietro showed an interest both in sciences (formighetti 1991) and in humanities, as he belonged to the accademia della crusca with the pseudonym of pasciuto (well-fed man) and he was consul at the accademia fiorentina. in his considerable collection of manuscripts, collected over his entire life, he included, in addition to this manuscript, at least ms. fond. prin. ii.ix.114, containing a copy of the trattato d’algebra by benedetto da firenze. during his career as a prelate, begun thanks to the protection of his maternal uncle cardinal ottavio bandini, he had the opportunity to personally meet galileo in 1611 and in the quirinal gardens he witnessed some demonstrations about sunspots. as shown by an intense but short correspondence, dating between february and may of the year 1615, his sincere interest in science, which had urged him to become a friend of galileo, led him to defend the scientist against the dominicans’ accusations (especially nicola lorini’s ones) and to do his best for his friend, even turning to cardinal inquisitor bellarmino. pietro dini, however, always recommended to the pisan scientist to be extremely cautious in dealing with the clergy, more than ever about subjects like faith and bible exegesis. at dini’s suggestion to reduce the copernican theory to mathematical-astronomical hypotheses without any physical validity (the aim was to avoid consequences), galileo showed himself politely intransigent: this last fact marked the cooling of relations between the two (abetti 1945, banfi 1961, geymonat 1969). after the death of its first known owner, the manuscript passed to the dini family, until its acquisition by the magliabechiana library in 1819, when the library, which would later become the national library of florence, was increasing especially with italian and european works about sciences (mannelli goggioli 1996, pirolo and truci 1996, mannelli goggioli 2000). in particular, the national (or principal) fund was partly constituted and enriched, at the beginning of the 19th century, with manuscripts from the old magliabechiana section and then, until 1905, with manuscripts from the libraries of suppressed monasteries; some more manuscripts were purchased or donated. content the ms. consists of eight parts (mazzatinti 1899, van egmond 1980, boncompagni 1862-3): (1) ff. 3r-59v: anonymous, libro d’insegnare arismetricha, 1390, (2) ff. 60r-65r, anonymous, raccolta di problemi d’abaco, 1425, 65v-85v: vacua, (3) ff. 86r-107v5: anonymous, liber de algiebra ealmuchabila, 1390, ff. 108r-112v: vacua, (4) ff. 113r-118v: leonardo pisano, practica geometriae, 1390, ff. 119r-123v: vacua, (5) ff. 124r-125v: m.p.i. (?), ispermenti di geometria, 1350, ff. 126r-129v: vacua, (6) ff. 130r-135v: m.p.i. (?), calendar, 1390, ff. 136r-146v: vacua, (7) 147r158v: anonymous (but sacrobosco), tractato della spera, 1380, (8) ff. 159r-165r/a: anonymous, chiose sopra la spera predetta, 1380, ff. 165r/b-165v: anonymous, sydus venit saturnalia (poem in 14 tercets with astronomical content). the contents of the texts are all intrinsically connected with the world of abacus schools because the works of arithmetic, algebra and geometry (all translated into the vernacular) reveal a didactic aim, proved by the presence of exercises and problems. texts are accompanied by explanatory drawings: in the text about arithmetic, there are 5 also ff. 94r-95r are vacua “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 23 representations of counting fingers, of a barrel, and other geometric sketches; geometric figures related to the demonstrations of the three composed rules and hints in the margin, in order to indicate the text of treated problems, are present in the part about algebra. the algebra translation (3), here attributed to a currently anonymous florentine master, holds, as a matter of fact, only ff. 86r-105v and is followed (ff. 106r-107v) by a brief appendix in which the rules for resolution set out above are summarized, to form a sort of booklet, for quick references. contrastive analysis of the three works the content the text of the florentine master’s handbook is acephalic, as it is made evident by the presence in the incipit of the anaphoric “di fuori questi tre modi”,6 referring to the first three cases (the so-called simple cases) of the arabic treatise. therefore, we cannot make considerations about the presence of the introductory praise to god (in arabic basmala) and its translation into vernacular. the same applies to the part about the three simple cases and about three of the six problems used by al-khwarizmi and replicated faithfully by gerard of cremona, as examples of an application of the canonical rules. a subsequent gap pertains some problems, which differ completely from both the latin text and, a fortiori, from the arabic, reflecting the high degree of freedom in the production of examples and exercises in the abacus schools. therefore, to establish a direct comparison of the three versions (arabic, latin and florentine), it is useful to summarize the contents in table 1.7 chapter al-khwarizmi gerard of cremona florentine master basmala    blank primitive terms    blank the three simple cases    blank the three composed cases    demonstration of the rules    operations    the 6 problems    partially blank other problems  34  12  10 the rule of three  3 examples  3 examples  11 examples appendix   21 problems 17 problems measures    heritages    legacies    table 1 6 besides these three ways. 7 as we can see, the appendix is a part of the treaty not present in al-khwarizmi’s work; it was introduced by gerard, when he found that different copies of the arabic text contained different sets of exercises. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 24 despite the presence of gaps, it is clear that the florentine master follows verbatim the text of the latin translation, at least up to the problems, where he draws on types and examples of an already formed abacus tradition, mainly thanks to the work of fibonacci. his adherence to the source text is also confirmed by the language: the syntax and the lexicon are so punctually based on gerard’s version that illegible sentences, in wateror mechanically damaged pages, can be easily reconstructed by comparison with the corresponding latin passage. it is extremely remarkable to highlight that in the chapter about the rule of three,8 gerard takes the same numerical data as his source, though with small variations; the florentine master, who omits the theoretical part, still uses the same numerical data, but builds and sets the three problems (“sum to be divided among men” and “price variation related to amount variation”) in the merchants’ world; he also adds 8 more problems that do not appear neither in the original arabic text nor in the latin translation. as mentioned above, the florentine master reserves a certain degree of freedom just for the practical part, that is the text of the problems, which sometimes includes tips, comments or explanations, all missing in the latin model. to compare the set of problems in the three authors, we must remember that both gerard and, consequently, the master, on the one hand, appreciably reduce (from 34 to 10-12) the number of problems, but, on the other hand, add a rich appendix, which fills the gap almost completely up. the full list of the three sets of problems, represented by the corresponding equations, is given here in table 2. problem # in the arabic text solving equation position in latin text position in florentine text 1 (10 − 𝑥)𝑥 = 21 1 1 2 (10 − 𝑥) −𝑥 = 40 2 4 3 (10 − 𝑥 ) + 𝑥 + (10 − 𝑥) − 𝑥 = 54 3 2 4 10 − 𝑥 𝑥 + 𝑥 10 − 𝑥 = 2 + 1 6 4 3 5 5𝑥 2(10 − 𝑥) + 5𝑥 = 50 5 5 6 (10 − 𝑥) = 81𝑥 6-a19 6 7 𝑛𝑥 + (10 − 𝑛)𝑦 = |10 − 2𝑛| + |𝑥 − 𝑦| 𝑛 ∈ ℕ 8 𝑥 𝑥 + 2 = 1 2 7 7 9 10𝑥 = (10 − 𝑥) a2 a1 8 known also as golden rule, the rule of three is a method to solve proportions where three terms are known. 9 letter a indicates that the problem is in the appendix. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 25 10 𝑥(10 − 𝑥) 10 − 2𝑥 = 5 + 1 4 8 8 11 2 3 ∙ 𝑥 5 = 𝑥 7 a3 a2 12 3 4 ∙ 𝑥 5 = 4 5 𝑥 13 4𝑥 = 20 a4 a3 14 𝑥 3 = 10 a5 15 4𝑥 = 𝑥 3 a6 a4 16 𝑥 𝑥 = 3𝑥 a7 a5 17 4𝑥 ∙ 3𝑥 = 𝑥 + 44 a8 a6 18 4𝑥 ∙ 5𝑥 = 2𝑥 + 36 9 9 19 𝑥 ∙ 4𝑥 = 3𝑥 + 50 a9 a7 20 𝑥 + 20 = 12𝑥 a10 a8 21 𝑥 − 𝑥 3 + 3 = 𝑥 10 10 22 𝑥 3 ∙ 𝑥 4 = 𝑥 a11 a9 23 𝑥 3 + 1 𝑥 4 + 2 = 𝑥 + 13 a12 a10 24 1 + 1 2 1 + 𝑥 = 2𝑥 11 11 25 𝑥 − 1 3 𝑥 − 1 4 𝑥 − 4 = 𝑥 + 12 a13 a11 26 𝑥 ∙ 2 3 𝑥 = 5 a14 a17 27 𝑥 𝑥 + 2 = 1 2 15 7 28 1 𝑥 − 1 𝑥 + 1 = 1 6 12 12 29 2 3 𝑥 = 5 a14 a17 “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 26 30 𝑥 ∙ 3𝑥 = 5𝑥 a16 a12 31 𝑥 − 1 3 𝑥 3𝑥 = 𝑥 a17 a13 32 𝑥 − 4𝑥 3 = 4𝑥 a18 a14 33 𝑥 − 𝑥 + 𝑥 = 2 a19 a15 34 (𝑥 − 3𝑥) = 𝑥 a20 a16 table 2 the epistemological foundations a comparison among the three works from an epistemological point of view (ferrari and speranza 1994) raises some interesting considerations. al-khwarizmi’s handbook opens with the so-called basmala, a sort of preface, which contains, after the praise to god, the dedication to his patron, the caliph, and an indication of the work purpose and of the recipients. by examining the basmala and the text, al-khwarizmi’s work seems characterized by the patterns of change of paradigm (kitcher 1984):  awareness of the method novelty and of the paradigm change: “there is a man10 who came first to discover what had not been discovered before him and left it as a legacy to posterity”.  question-answering: he introduces new solutions (algorithms and problem standardization) to respond to questions that are insoluble with already known techniques;  generalization: he provides answers to classes of problems and not just to single instances, as is evident from the equations classification.  rigorization: demonstration of individual passages is introduced.  systematization: introduction and systematic use of a specific technical vocabulary, as presented here in table 3. arabic term mathematical meaning literal meaning mal square of the unknown money sum jidr shay unknown root thing adad (mufrad) dirhem known term number (simple) coins al-jabr shift of a term from an equation member to the other completion al-muqabalah algebraic sum of terms having the same degree opposition 10 the author refers to himself. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 27 al-hatt normalization to 1 of the coefficient of the square of the unknown deposit al-radd normalization to 1 of the coefficient of the square of the unknown (if > 1) return al-ikmal normalization to 1 of the coefficient of the square of the unknown (if between 0 and 1) perfection asamm irrational number deaf table 3 other features however emerge:  care in validating the method by means of geometrical demonstrations, to obtain the consent of the other scientists: he defines himself as “a man who has yet explained what his predecessors had left inaccessible to clarify the method of study or to pave the way or bring access; a man (finally) who discovered an error in some books, and then brought together what was missing, criticized by maintaining a good opinion of the author, without arrogance toward him or pride in his own work”;  importance of the applicative aspects, represented by a set of examples of increasing difficulty, according to explicitly mentioned practical purposes: “i wanted [the work] to contain [...] what people need in cases of inheritance, legacies, divisions, processes and trades and in all dealings with each other or in cases involving the measurement of land, the digging of canals, geometrical computation, and other content relevant to the calculation and its various kinds”;  independence from the front face lesson, despite al-khwarizmi’s speech style, obtained with an abundance of examples and explanations redundancy. the latin version by gerard, being a translation and therefore a restatement of the work contents, shows a substantial but not strict fidelity to the model; he preserves:  awareness of the novelty of the proposed content and its importance to the western scientific world;  independence from the front face lesson;  largely, the technical vocabulary: al-jabr e al-muqabalah are transliterated; on the contrary, mal (census), jidr (radix), adad mufrad (numerus simplex), dirhem (dragma), al-radd (reducere), al-ikmal (reintegrare), asamm (surdus) are translated;  geometric demonstrations for the three composed cases, confirming the ongoing need to persuade readers of the method validity.11 11 four centuries later, this strict link between the two sciences is still underlined; see pedro nuñez, libro de algebra en arithmetica y geometria (1567), fols. 270–270v. “vemos algumas vezes, no poder vn gran mathematico resoluer vna question por medios geometricos, y resolverla por algebra, siendo la misma algebra sacada de la geometria, que es cosa de admiracion” (we see that, in some cases, a great mathematician cannot solve a question by means of geometry, but he succeeds by means of algebra, the same algebra being taken from geometry, which is a thing of wonder). “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 28 the latin translation, however, differs under other respects: it shows, as seen above, a set of numerical examples, that are not the same as its source, probably due to interferences in the arabic text tradition, handed down in several versions (in alio tamen haec repperi libro interposita suprascriptis, gerard writes, while adding the appendix to the main text); it also implements a de-localization of the parts that seem too closely linked to islamic culture: the most significant example is the nearly complete disappearance of the praise to god, roughly summarized in “post laudem dei et ipsius exaltationem”; finally, it shows a relocalization, in the spanish merchants’ world, of the problems related to the rule of three (capitulum convencionum negociatorum), of which gerard retains the same numerical data, but changes the setting. noteworthy is the case of the first problem, where the word cafficium (measure of capacity used in medieval spain) appears. the translation into florentine vernacular also differs radically from gerard’s text (and consequently from the arabic), for two reasons: the first one is the presence of such a strong pedagogic vocation, that the manuscript could be considered a true handbook used in the classroom by the teacher, probably an abacus master, and the second one is its indisputable contamination with abacus literature, flourished in parallel with the tradition of gerard’s text and closely associated with the liber abaci by leonardo fibonacci (heeffer 2008b). besides a greater emphasis on calculation, the presence on the margins of the text not only of geometric designs, which already characterized arabic and latin specimens but also references (a kind of hash) to the rule enunciation from the problem text, is remarkable. problems are also easy to find in the page, thanks to the presence, always on the fringes, of tables (similar to matrices), which summarize question data.12 one remarkable instance of the pedagogic vocation appears just between the text of the ninth problem and its solution: the master points out that it is preferable for the student to search the value of the square and not of the unknown, when it is necessary to simplify calculations, by avoiding irrational numbers (“e però in questa questione si.tti vuole amonire algiebra e dartj a intendere che taluolta dej ponere lo numero una cosa e taluolta dej ponere uno censo e però, in questa quistione ched è ora, che.ttu ponghi lo tuo numero uno censo, inperò che.ttu non puoj ponere cosa.13”). such an explicit suggestion is not present, either in al-khwarizmi’s or in gerard’s text, even though both of them apply the rule in the same problem. in its content, the manuscript shows an increasing (from 3 to at least 11) number of problems whose setting is a market: in the first two issues numerical data is the same as gerard’s, who in turn had taken them over from al-khwarizmi; they, however, belong to the category of problems of the “sum to be divided among men”, typical of abacistic tradition; the third issue has a very simple text, containing references to the florentine metrology (6 libbre e 4 once vengono 22 soldi e 4; quanto vengono 16 libbre?14); from the fourth issue on, the florence-centric point of view, of which the text wrote, emerges without hesitation: the currency is almost always the florin (goldthwaite and mandich 1994, travaini 2003), the standard unit of length measure is the florentine canna.15 the latest examples still belong to the merchants’ world: two cases of wool and cloth barter (see chapter viii of the liber abaci), complicated by a deferred payment; the teacher, as in liber abaci, recommended, for professional ethics, to perform calculations scrupulously 12 they are also present in liber abaci’s manuscripts. 13 “and in this question, algebra advises and suggests you sometimes let the [searched] number equal to the unknown and sometimes to the square; thus, in the present question, let your [searched] number be equal to the square, as you cannot let it be equal to the unknown”. 14 “6 pounds and 3 onces cost 22 soldi and 4; how much do 16 pounds cost?” 15 the master shows how to convert it into pisan, senese, and perugian canna; in liber abaci, chap. viii, leonardo fibonacci teaches how to convert pisan canna into sicilian, genoese, provençal, syrian, and constantinopolitan canna, using the palm as the unit of measurement for the comparison. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 29 “acciò che niuno non sia inghanato”.16 finally, two problems on money lending and three about contracts (4 masters who outsource a job, but have different working rhythms, and a contractor who needs a well, but does not have the whole required sum). the solutions are given in a very detailed and redundant way in the 11 commercial problems. in those from the latin text, the master is far more moderate of suggestions: for example, concerning problem a11 (corresponding to #25 in al-jabr and to a13 in gerard’s translation), the master avoids solving the problem in detail, rather like his models, and simply says “e restaura lo più per lo più e.llo meno per lo meno, sì com’io tòe mostrato e troueraj lo numero 24”17. with contemporary notation, the two solutions are given in figure 1: figure 1 linguistic and expressive codes beyond the inevitable differences due to the employment of three different languages, from the lexical point of view, we can, however, remark something noteworthy (ferrari 2004, franci 1996b, 2007, north 1995). 16 “so that none (=neither the seller nor the buyer) is deceived”. 17 “and balance plus with plus and minus with minus, as i showed you, and you’ll find the number 24”. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 30 the use of natural language is common to all the three handbooks, both for content presentation and as a support language for theoretical considerations, and finally for anaphoric references to already treated rules or problems. the use of both a textual and graphical language, such as geometry, is also a constant: in the arabic tradition up to fibonacci’s work, certainly known to the author of the florentine manuscript, especially euclidean geometry had become functional to the demonstration of algebraic procedures. for what pertains technical lexicon, al-khwarizmi, while recovering from arabic tradition, uses it in a systematic and consistent way, while gerard adapts it (as seen, partly) to the latin language and the master, working in an already established tradition, translates literally (algebra ealmuchabila, censo, radice/cosa, numero/dramma; restaurare). the last interesting issue of the florentine master’s handbook is the presence of a latin “explicit”, as if he wanted to ennoble what we might call a bibliographic quotation. the pragmatics of mathematics communication since the three handbooks have peculiar features, it appears to be interesting to investigate the differences among the pedagogic styles of the teachers (putnam 1993, spagnolo 1998, speranza 1989). although we have neither the same technical means as nowadays (such as podcast or video) nor written sources related to these authors (i.e. students’ testimony), we can still carry out a study, being confident both in the fact that the teaching-learning relationship is a system, whose dynamics are well-known, and also in the fact that the rules and the medieval way of training have been already studied (franci 1988, 1996a). therefore, from the historical study of the teaching style of the three authors and from a contrastive analysis of the treaties, we can say that different teaching contexts clearly emerge (swetz 1995). in 9th century baghdad, al-khwarizmi, obviously faces an epistemological obstacle: as explicitly said in the basmala, he works against prior knowledge, he wants to destroy badly made knowledge, he innovates more than before to empower his audience, and for this purpose he uses a strictly didactic style, and a detailed and meticulous exposition of algorithms, even at the cost of being redundant and repetitive. he writes for practical goals, to endow all literates with basic knowledge of the calculation; otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to understand his lessons and to make good use of their content. in toledo, nearly three centuries later, gerard faces epigenetic obstacles: he has to prevent not only religious objections (as a matter of fact, he omits any direct reference to islam) but also what we could call “noise” in the transmission and in the translation of the text; his source has been delivered to him in multiple handwritten copies, which differ a lot from each other;18 the translation of the text from arabic into latin raises then to gerard the problem of being both faithful to the original and contemporaneously understandable for an audience, who is different from his predecessor’s one. gerard appears primarily like a bridge between the work of islamic mathematicians and a socially high and cultured audience (they must know latin), with basic notions of computing with arabic numerals, curious to increase their knowledge; his teaching style is still very didactic and redundant. finally, in 14th century florence, when the use of arabic mathematics is an everyday fact, the master faces educational obstacles; in abacus schools, where algebra was the last topic of study, reserved only to interested and promising students, he introduces techniques for efficient solutions of trade problems. he can freely adapt the source to his needs, 18 a striking example of this “noise” could be the inconsistent disposition of the questions in the manuscripts consulted by the translator; gerard solves this problem by adding an appendix. “farai sicome tòe amaestrato” (you will perform, as i taught you): notes about medieval didactics of algebra nadia ambrosetti 31 entering references in-line (#) and in the margin and the abbreviation m19 standing for multiply. as seen in the discussion, the solution of problems is sometimes drastically simplified: the florentine author did not need the complete algorithm explanation, because he perfectly mastered the field and he expected his students to remember what he had taught in his previous lessons. conclusion though the three works share the same content, they differ largely for the audience and the context. in 9th century, al-khwarizmi needed to spread a new mathematical approach, and innovative computational techniques, among savants (possibly living at the caliph’s court), whose culture and life were strictly imbued with the study of the quran. he taught cultured adults how to use algebra to solve very complicated problems raised by the application of the islamic inheritance laws to real estates or to personal properties. his work can be compared with a remote training course, with theoretical lessons integrated by step-by-step tutorials on a large number of specific questions. in the 12th century, when gerard decided to introduce in europe a significant part of the arabic mathematical knowledge, he had to purge it from any religious content or reference. his ideal audience was made up by european cultured adults who needed algebra to increase their mathematical knowledge. his work can still be compared with a remote training course, with theoretical lessons, integrated by step-by-step tutorials on a far more limited amount of questions, partly taken from a generic merchants’ life. finally, the florentine author’s work represents an update of al-khwarizmi’s handbook. his audience was composed by young talented students attending in presence the final course at an abacus school in one of the capitals of european trade. so, he had to adapt the content to his classes, in order to foster their skills in commercial mathematics. therefore, he simplified or omitted passages, and added problems set in the italian trade context (e.g. equivalences of local linear measures, like the “channa fiorentina” and the “channa senese”; 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della matematica in occidente, edited by enrico giusti and raffaella petti. pisa: polistampa. van egmond, warren. 1978. “the earliest vernacular treatment of algebra: the libro di ragioni of paolo gerardi”. physis 20:155-189. van egmond, warren. 1980. practical mathematics in the italian renaissance: a catalog of italian abbacus manuscripts and printed books to 1600. firenze: editoriale parenti. microsoft word 2 reichenberger vergara 3 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 3-5 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2019 – this is an open access article special issue – women in sciences: historiography of science and history of science – on the work of women in sciences and philosophy introduction andrea reichenberger1 moema vergara2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _______________________________________________________________________ women’s participation in the advancement of science and the discussions of philosophical issues have a long history. in fact, their participation in the production of knowledge is as old as mankind itself, or in order to avoid the generic use of “man” and to use gender-neutral language, it would better to say that it is as old as humanity itself. in 1690, gilles ménage published the first-ever history of women philosophers, historia mulierum philosopharum (history of women philosophers), which provides an account of 65 female philosophers from the past 2,500 years. the paris intellectual, ménage, advocated for the appointment of women to the académie française, arguing that their contribution had greatly enriched science and philosophy. nearly 100 years later, in 1775, christian august wichmann wrote the german encyclopedia entitled geschichte berühmter frauenzimmer (history of famous women). despite such remarkable exceptions, women usually remained unnoticed in the historiography of philosophy and science. nowadays, there is a growing awareness of the importance of academic studies concerning women’s contributions in the humanities and sciences. this is demonstrated by the numerous research projects and emerging funding priorities in universities worldwide. the reason for this positive development is, in a few words, gender equality. which is defined as a fundamental right, an internationally agreed upon sustainable development goal, and an essential feature of stable and transparent democracies. the historiography of science, which analyzes scientific knowledge production in its many social implications as well as its epistemological and educational presuppositions, plays an important role here and bears a significant responsibility. it is of utmost importance that we practice what we preach, i.e., that we include women’s contributions to the problem 1 andrea reichenberger [orcid: 0000-0001-5007-935x] is a postdoctoral researcher at the faculty of arts and humanities: institute of philosophy at paderborn university, germany. address: technologiepark 21, room: tp21.2.31, 33100 paderborn, germany. e-mail: andrea.reichenberger@upb.de. 2 moema vergara [orcid: 0000-0003-1837-082x] is a senior researcher at the museu de astronomia e ciências afins – mast – rio de janeiro, brazil. she is also a professor in the graduate program in history at the federal university of the state of rio de janeiro – unirio, and in the graduate program in teaching, philosophy and history of sciences at the federal university of bahia – ufba. address: rua general bruce, 586 – são cristovão 20921-030 – rio de janeiro – r.j., brazil. e-mail: moema@mast.br women in sciences: introduction andrea reichenberger – moema vergara 4 oriented and systematic discourse of the current historiography of science and science education. learning from history does not guarantee that we can solve contemporary problems and open questions, but this knowledge can contribute to a better understanding and approach to these problems and issues. “only those who know the past can understand the present and shape the future”. this sentence, attributed to the social democrat august bebel, carries with it a special, modified meaning against the background of the promotion of women and gender equality: “only those who are able to rethink the past can shape the future”. we have learned that without a well-established science education, science has no future. we should learn and understand that without a well-established integration of women in the historiography of science, the promotion of women in science has no future. what we need are not only gender-sensitive studies and quantitative-statistical evaluations of women’s under-representation in research and teaching practice, but also the approaches that have the potential to reform and diversify our picture and image of science. in the second half of the twentieth century, the feminist movement was fundamental to the entry of feminist studies into the academy. it opened a new field of study that was complex and interdisciplinary and which, among other things, made a revision of the marxist historiography that saw the main motor of history as a class struggle and furthermore, made women invisible in the historical narrative. feminist criticism and its attack on patriarchalism have made society rethink concepts, such as man, truth and science as rigid categories that are committed to progress and always focused on the common good. it was within the context of women’s studies that gender studies emerged, especially around the 1970s, which in turn was strongly influenced by anthropology. therefore, the main point was made by the critique of essentialism, to the extent that (insofar as) simone de beauvoir said, “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (de beauvoir 1952 [1949], 249). the feminist movement became increasingly involved in the dynamics of theories, in the change of scientific categories and in the great intellectual revolutions. at the same time, kuhn’s 1962 seminal work, the structure of scientific revolutions, has become a modern classic. for many people, this book became part of the scathing criticism of the status quo by placing the demand for a paradigm shift in the social and political agenda, whether in the role of women in society, economic development, technology, ideology or the writing of history. in retrospect, it might appear as an irony of history that this book, written by a man, and its central concept of a paradigm shift became legendary, while margaret masterman’s criticism of kuhn’s vague and inconsistent use of the concept “paradigm” has been forgotten as much as the contributions of women to this discourse. according to gender studies, male and female categories are socially produced and relational. in order to advance in social studies, it is important to understand women and men in other categories such as social class, race/ethnicity, and religion, among others. since there is no universal man, there is no universal woman either. we have learned from feminist studies that gender identities are cultural and are manifested not only in our bodies, but in language, philosophy, and worldview. nevertheless, we still live in a world marked by gender differences in terms of access to employment opportunities and wages. discrimination in the political sphere has shifted from the struggle for the right to vote to greater political representation. furthermore, the public still identifies scientific activity with men in white coats, so in this sense, the struggle is still going on and the envisaged inclusion of women into the historiography of science is only marginally achieved. this special issue aims to contribute to a historiographical reflection on the history of women in science as a “transversal” reading. it consists of two contributions to individual female figures, namely to helena antipoff (by regina campos and erika lourenço) and sofia alexandrovna yanovskaya (by dimitris kilakos). moreover, we have two studies providing a general overview of the state of research regarding the impact of women in computer women in sciences: introduction andrea reichenberger – moema vergara 5 science history (by karina mochetti) and in the history of modern logic (by karin beiküfner and andrea reichenberger). last but not least, sandra benítez herrera and patrícia figueiró spinelli offer a report on a school teaching project which demonstrates that the historiography of women in sciences is a valuable resource that can be used in all educational levels as well as museums. the contributed papers reaffirm that a lot of work still needs to be done. they are rather excerpts of a work in progress than a systematic overall presentation. we are grateful to mauro condé, who initiated this special issue and assisted and advised us with patience and precision. references beauvoir, simone de. 1952 [1949]. the second sex. translated by howard madison parshley. new york: alfred a. knopf. kuhn, thomas. 1970 [1962]. the structure of scientific revolution. chicago: the university of chicago press. mastermann, margareth. 1970. the nature of a paradigm. in lakatos, i.; musgrave, a. (eds.) criticism and the growth of knowledge. cambridge: cambridge university press. ménage, gilles. 1690. historia mulierum philosopharum. apud anissonios, joan. posuel, & claudium rigaud. wichmann, christian august. 1775. geschichte berühmter frauenzimmer. leipzig: böhme. microsoft word 12oliveira fonseca segantini layout 146 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 146-156 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2018 – this is an open access journal article writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira1 marina a. fonseca2 verona campos segantini 3 abstract: this article presents a methodology to teach about the nature of sciences and their histories through the construction of controversial dialogs in order to promote reflective and engaging practices among undergraduate and graduate students. this proposal seeks to establish the study’s guidelines and organize the distribution of tasks in groups to draft scripts of dialogs that bring relevant information and that produce antagonistic positions on controversial socioscientific issues. this information will later be recorded in short home videos of 5 to 10 minutes each, which will then be shown and discussed in the classroom. finally, this article highlights some limitations of this methodology, primarily in the way it has been used in this study. by contrast, the advantages of its use are pinpointed as a didactic strategy that serves to stimulate historical research and critical thinking regarding the nature of science and its sociotechnical relations. keywords: historical controversies; video production; argumentation: history and philosophy of science; teaching sciences received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 9 october 2018. accepted: 2 november 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.11 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ______________________________________________________________________ introduction the importance of including history and philosophy of science and promoting reflections on the nature of science (nos) in science education is already widely recognized. though there 1 bernardo jefferson de oliveira [orcid: 0000-0002-9528-9147] is a professor at the federal university of minas gerais – faculty of education. address: av. antônio carlos, 6627, belo horizonte – brazil. 31 270-901. e-mail: pos.fae.bernardo.oliveira@gmail.com 2 marina a. fonseca [orcid: 0000-0002-3550-3172] is a professor at the federal university of minas gerais – faculty of education. address: av. antônio carlos, 6627, belo horizonte – brazil. 31 270-901. email: marina.assis@gmail.com 3 verona campos segantini [orcid: 0000-0003-4059-2744] is a professor at the federal university of minas gerais – faculty of fine arts. address: av. antônio carlos, 6627, belo horizonte – brazil. 31 270901. e-mail: veronasegantini@yahoo.com.br writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 147 are differences among the main issues detected by different scholars, there is a consensus that the promotion of a critical view of science would be the best means through which to confront the problems. thus, the promotion of a critical view of science has been sought at different levels of science education, including at the level of teacher education, for better cognitive, social, moral, and political development (abd-el-khalick and lederman 2000; cachapuz et al. 2005; martínez 2014; karisan and zeidler 2017). however, the scarcity of teaching methods that promote reflective and engaging practices have also been identified: situations that allow us to experience the methodological limitations of historical reconstructions, as well as the difficulties of producing them in an interesting way, with understandable and intriguing narrative reconstructions. therefore, this article presents a methodology to teach about the nature of sciences and their histories through the construction of controversial dialogs. this study consists of a strategy to engage the general public, especially undergraduate and graduate students, in discussing controversial topics as a way to experience the nature of science and historical episodes related to the constitution of scientific culture. justifications controversies are nothing new, neither as teaching strategies nor in the methodology of historical or sociological investigation. even in medieval education, the disputatio was adopted as a method of teaching and learning. to the contrary of lectio, which implied a passive attitude, the disputatio awakened the students’ intellectual activity. but what appeared in this tradition was a formal method of debate to discover truths in philosophy and theology, with set rules that demanded dependence on the written tradition and the full understanding of each argument by both parties. something more fluid and less strict has been taking place in recent decades in schools in many countries, with simulated juries and judgments of historical cases, used as a didactic strategy to teach history, with the division into sides and attributions created for defense and accusation, in such a way as to promote the students’ study and participation in the classroom. controversy has also been used for decades in the history and sociology of science. some focus on internal disputes between fields and scientific perspectives with other forms of non-scientific knowledge, while others develop social, economic, political, and cultural reactions to projects and scientific institutions or technological systems, etc. as a methodology of historical investigation, controversy has been applied to better understand the context and wide range of interests in play. perhaps the most well-known case in the contemporary historiography of science is the dispute between robert boyle and thomas hobbes over air pump experiments, depicted by shapin and schaffer (1985). this history became a landmark in science historiography, as it showed how the broader political climate could shape the outcome of a controversy, while simultaneously helping to institutionalize the laboratory experiment as a new means of fact-making. however, many historians of science had already explored the concept of controversy regarding copernicanism, the vacuum, evolutionism, and the priority of recognizing authorship/patent in inventions and theories. also within the sociology of science is a long history of studying different types of controversy and different approaches to analyzing them. collins and pinch (1998) developed an empirical method for studying the sociology of scientific knowledge, using contemporary cases as a method through which to study scientific controversies, which appears to be particularly impacting. through scenes of selected events, they illustrated how scientific findings exhibited “interpretative flexibility”, in turn revealing how facts can be interpreted in radically different ways by the parties in the controversy. writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 148 as pinch (2015) observed, it is during such moments that the often invisible processes of science become more visible and thus more available to analysis. by studying a scientific controversy, or moments of contestation, one learns something about the underlying dynamics of science and its relations with a broader society. for instance, during a controversy, the normally hidden social dimensions of science (including its gender biases) may become more explicit. “sites of contestation are places to facilitate the investigation of, for instance, the metaphors, assumptions, and political struggles embedded within science”. (pinch 2015, 282) as dascal defends, “controversies are an excellent strategy when placed against the background of the familiar descriptivist and normativist positions that have dominated the history and philosophy of science” (dascal 1998, 147). in addition to the methodology of research and didactic strategy, controversies are also used by both disseminators of the science of the editorial market as a way to call the attention of the general public and, perhaps, involve them in taking a stance/position. as in the science wars, revolving around the affair sokal,4 or in the controversy surrounding the celebration of pasteur,5 mutual allegations and accusations of scientific shams call attention and dig trenches concerning the scientific principles and assumptions. the proposal that we present here stems from museum experiences, and can thus be found in the realm of scientific diffusion to the general public in informal educational environments, but that has been reformulated for university courses. a recent literature review on socioscientific issues (ssi) and progressive scientific literacy demonstrated that the ssi provides an ideal context in which to improve the understanding of students and teachers about the nature of science (zeidler 2014). since they took on greater visibility in the early 2000’s, ssi has been strengthened as a curricular aspect of the teaching of science by aligning themselves with a view of scientific literacy that is more linked to contexts, more focused on students, and seeks a greater social engagement. thus, science educators (khishfe 2012; khishfe and lederman 2006; sadler et al. 2004; walker and zeidler 2007; zeidler et al. 2002) have sought to explore scientific aspects of the relationship between nos and ssi in their research, addressing the nos components within the context of issues with great repercussion, such as global warming, genetically modified foods, animal rights, among others. for this reason, be it in formal or informal contexts, ssi have been used as a fundamental means through which to develop functional scientific literacy and has been empirically investigated and linked to particular outcomes, including: promoting developmental changes in reflective judgment, moving students towards more informed views of the nature of science, increasing moral sensitivity and empathy, revealing and reconstructing alternative perceptions of science, facilitating moral reasoning, among others. this strategy that we present here seeks objectives that are common to those set forth by ssi. according to that mentioned above, it was initially developed for museum exhibitions. as environments of controversial discussions, ssi appeared in two exhibitions: (1) different characters expressing divergent perspectives are shown on different tv screens, trying to convince the audience and simulating a provocative debate. the tvs (4 to 6) are connected with raspberry-pi cards that synchronize the interventions and contention. the first debate 4 in his analysis of the context of sokal affair, hilgartner (1997) argued that the intellectual impact of the successful sokal hoax cannot be attributed to its quality as a “demonstration” but rather to journalistic hyperbole. 5 gerald geison’s book, the private science of louis pasteur, generated great controversy in journals. according to the historical re-reading, the legendary figure of the history of science lied about his research, stole ideas from a competitor, and was deceitful in ways that would now be regarded as scientific misconduct if not fraud. thus, there was a serious reaction against this work in the political debate about the myths of science and its detractors. writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 149 was on childbirth, developed for the exhibition “senses of birth”6; (2) the second was a debate, also controversial, about knowledge needed for the exhibition of “theater of truth”, involving 4 characters: a philosopher, a scientist, a political activist, and a student. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocqkb_2fqtw). as the debate about the childbirth was part of a public health campaign to reduce unnecessary c-sections and promote normal childbirth, there was a predominant stance in the discussion. although antagonistic views were brought into the scene, with good formulations of the perspective under debate, the confrontation had a side that had to “be won”. the video attempted to bring the spectator, with counterpoints and surprises, to this conclusion. by contrast, in the “theater of truth”, there is a symmetry among the characters’ views that, even with divergent and conflicting perspectives, tends to lead the spectator to the paradoxical agreement with all of the opponents. that is, each character/perspective exposes convincing reasons, making it difficult to think about the issue without recognizing its complexity and the validity of different perspectives. in real life, public debates rarely allow one to candidly expose (without the need to defend or the concern not to offend the interlocutors) contrasting worldviews or highlight differences, as occurs in these skits. this device, through which we have developed the methodology presented here, allows for the joining of views that are rarely seen side by side. this is because the chosen characters can represent quite different universes, which would rarely act (dialog) in public disputes. but heated debates, in which those involved expose their divergences and dispute the consent of those present, make the debate even more captivating. thus, in the debate concerning the knowledge referred to above, when the young person questions: “what purpose does knowledge serve?”, insinuating that it has no purpose in real life, another character answers: “for the individual to stop being stupid”. such an answer, which could cause friction in real life, generates only surprise in a theatrical representation, which can explore the tension that it causes in the spectators. moreover, the inclusion of characters that express the view of common sense and give voice to the misunderstandings and resistance, which are not normally recognized or placed at the same level within a debate, provide the identification and transference of many spectators. methodological proposal for use in the classroom inspired by those experiences done with actors, this study sought to develop a methodology of science teaching that has been used over the last two years in undergraduate and graduate courses of “history of the popularization of science”, “practice of teaching biology”, and “science in museums” at the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg). the methodology begins with the presentation of videos that had already been produced and that serve as examples of controversies in theatrical skits. the class is then divided into groups of students who choose a scientific controversy from a menu presented by the teacher. in addition to the themes, the teachers also suggest research materials to further the students’ knowledge in the chosen theme, especially films that can be useful in the design of the controversies and perspectives of different actors, uses, and implications 6 www.sentidosdonascer.org. as the discussion in the exhibition is done in 6 screens, we made an adaptation to the computer screen conjugating the interventions of the characters, that can be seen in the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icnpyhg9cxw. writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 150 of certain technologies and scientific theories, as well as platform games of sociotechnical controversies, accessible at https://playdecide.eu/.7 the students are then advised to share their individual studies on the theme with their colleagues in the group, making summaries of the films they watched, of the related texts, life experiences, impressions, and other references. they are also advised to clearly define the controversy in the form of a question for which multiple answers are possible and to define the characters that will represent the chosen divergent perspectives. one suggestion for the initial drafting of the script is for each one to take on the role of a character to record an audio, improving the dialog that they will return to in order to improve upon it at a later moment. the audio serves as a framework of the dialog to be transcribed. the script must be developed in written form, as this will help to balance the input and arguments of the characters, marking interjections and counter-arguments. every other week, each group of students presents a version of the script, which is continuously re-elaborated after class discussion, paying attention to argumentative strategies and the configuration of the characters. thus, in addition to promoting teamwork, groups of students are encouraged to select and rework arguments. after adjustments, each group records a short 5 to 10-minute home video that expresses the arguments of their characters as naturally as possible, simulating a sequence of counter-arguments. although the speeches are concatenated and oppose each other, they should be directed toward the spectator, as if in a debate among political candidates. the dialog should contain relevant information and antagonistic positions on a controversial socioscientific issue, and above all be geared toward inspiring public debate. these are the criteria by which the works will be assessed in the end. the collective presentations at the end of the course make it possible to achieve a collective assessment and, most importantly, the discussion of historical aspects and scientific representation of science when addressing the theme. below is a summary table with the methodology presented in three distinct steps: step activities details sensitivity and further development present an example of the product (script or video) to the working groups or guide with general instructions. introduce the controversial themes and provide support materials (films, chapters, articles, videos, controversial games). define the period within the schedule of the course for further development of the group members about the theme. present the guide with model and instructions about the format: script of 4 to 6 pages; time estimated for videos of 3 to 5 minutes; four characters discussing a previously defined controversial question. when possible, present an example of the work developed by another group. full films; bibliographic materials recommended for the themes chosen by the groups; controversial games from the playdecide platform. 7 playdecide is an online platform that enables users to create, adapt and translate games. this site is supported by a european network of science centers and museums and works as an observatory of the tendencies of the public’s view of science. writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 151 drafting of scripts socialization of the individual studies between the group members (reports of films watched, related chapters, and other materials) definition of the issue at hand of the four characters. improvisation of the conversation and log in audio format. drafting of the dialog script. discussions performed onsite or by platform with distance activities (documents in drive or ict resources). use of cell phones or audio recorders. instruct the students, transcribe the dialogs, and analyze them in order to identify arguments presented spontaneously, and improve upon them based on research of different positions on the subject. socialization of the dialog staging and recording of the video. exhibition of the video or dramatic reading in the classroom. staging and recording of the video. video exhibition or dramatic reading in the classroom. cell phones or video cameras. image projection; computer; camera (if the video is recording in the classroom, with the support of the teacher and classmates). use cell phones or video cameras for record. the video can be recorded in the classroom with the support of the teacher and colleagues. editing and finalizing the final product. projection of the results for the class and final discussion. the produced videos can be made available on a youtube channel, as we did at our university.8 of course, these videos require high-quality editing, such as recordings done in a studio, the direction of the actors, as well as sound and imagery editing, in order to be appreciated by the general public. but there is no doubt that this process serves as an educational process for these students, not only in terms of critical reflection, but also in the exercise of transposing and sharing of public representations and arguments. discussion although they were planned to address historical controversies, many videos ended up focusing on more current sociotechnical issues, such as the transmission of hiv, genetic diagnosis as a form of eugenics, environmental responsibility with global warming, medication for mental illnesses, using history on a secondary plane, basically to locate the origins of disputes related to current representations. in these cases, after the presentation of the videos, the problems of historiographic presentism are discussed and contrasted with the importance of raising different interpretations. in fact, this tendency can be seen as a limitation if we observe from a historiographic perspective; therefore, the discussion about presentism and anachronisms is quite relevant in the history of science courses. nevertheless, if we are not stuck to one of these specific disciplines, the use of history to discuss current cases will be considered positive. this is what seems to occur in more interdisciplinary environments, such as in science studies or in some 8 https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucnj3i4knr73wq569ji9capw writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 152 research agendas, such as ihpst.9 in these fields, the sacrifice of some demands from historiography due to the transposing to current cases or to the realm of scientific policies are well-received. we believe that one such contribution to the debates is the clear definition of the background issue, offering their different concrete implications as answer options. the platform games, like playdecide, which we used as examples of the preparation of scripts, are headed in this direction. in all thematic cases available on that platform, there is a core question and four answers with concrete ramifications for public policies. one key example experience of ours came from the theme “the functioning of the brain”. the game from playdecide, entitled “improvements of the brain”, aroused great interest in the question of the relationship between the functioning of the brain with its interaction with drugs. even if the game is focused on the possibility of improving one’s cognitive functions, it provokes the discussion on the question of the possibility of the use of drugs to control cognition, both to give greater potential to the functioning of the brain, as well as to resolve cognitive problems. in this manner, the groups can focus on different aspects, with more or less evident connections. in our experience, one of the groups explored current and future challenges regarding the improvement of cognitive functions, while another group focused on the use of drugs to resolve cognitive problems. this last group was offered a suggestion to further develop the question of their own diagnosis of mental health diseases. as is well-known, this deals with a question that is commonly experienced in the current school reality, with heavy medication prescribed for children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and which is highly controversial, especially in the field of education. so that the students can treat these themes, the films hysteria (2011) and augustine (2012) were suggested, as these films take distinct approaches to the context of the definition of specific social behavior, which characterizes this disease. these suggestions were given to aid in the comprehension of the context and of the definition of the disease itself as an aspect related to the social expectations and the behavioral patterns of some groups, in relation to specific subjects. below is a transcript of part of the dialog drafted by the group on the theme. the context is that of a dialog that takes place about the proposal of the possible medication of a student (jorge) that the school suspects of having adhd, whose diagnosis produced divergent opinions among doctors. the characters are a doctor, the principal, the teacher, and the student’s father. father: i think this diagnosis of hyperactivity is a bit strange, since the previous exams didn’t show anything. doctor: this disease is normally cured quickly with the use of appropriate medication. teacher: i think it might simply be a question of the child’s adaptation to the school environment, after all, he’s only 7 years old. principal: cases of hyperactivity have become more and more common in school and the medications have shown great results. teacher: medicating the child seems to be a sound decision, but it has consequences for the children’s lives that are not well disseminated, like the addiction to the medication, in addition to the risk of a wrong diagnosis. i am totally against medicating jorge, especially since it is too early. 9 international history, philosophy, and science teaching group. http://ihpst.net/ writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 153 specialist: forgive me, but i don’t think the teacher has the competence to give her opinion on this subject. the medication will be of utmost importance, as it can benefit him, not only temporarily, but also by bringing positive results, such as a greater facility to deal with obstacles, consequently improving his school relationships and performance. teacher: i may not have medical competence, but i interact with jorge, i studied and talked to specialists about the subject. hyperactivity is a very rare disease. this diagnosis may be more linked to the fact of having to answer to a social demand, as was the case of hysteria, where the women who didn’t fit into the standard of the day were diagnosed with hysteria. much like in that society, our society is marked by behavioral standards that are seen as ideal and normal. what we should be discussing in this meeting is the manner in which we organize teaching, not about jorge’s medication! in this case, the advantage of using the historical perspective to treat a controversial question becomes evident, since a historical distancing and the succession of events and interpretations about hysteria, considering the temporal distance, helps to denaturalize and comprehend elements of biopower present in the construction of a wide range of diseases. but the opposite also occurs: the comprehension of questions involved in contemporary sociotechnical controversies can, through the perception of the complexity of the factors, favor interests, a critical view of the classical narratives of the history of sciences in the construction of historical reconstructions about sciences. another dialog developed by the students in which the historical perspective informs and contributes is the case of the obligation of certain vaccines. the groups created a dialog in the context of a public health seminar in which they would be debating rumors that the vaccine against dengue would be mandatory. the characters include two specialists, one against and one in favor, and two students, also with differing positions about the obligation of vaccines. student 1: i know people that have had collateral effects against various other vaccines. specialist 2: isn’t it better to have some collateral effects and be protected against a disease that can lead to death? i believe that sanctions are necessary to raise the awareness of the population. if we cite the case of yellow fever, it was only eradicated because of its obligation. dengue has spread into an epidemic, like happened in the times of yellow fever, exactly in rio de janeiro some years ago. student 1: you cite the example of yellow fever, but the idea of obligation in that time was to take care of the image of the country and not public health. rio de janeiro, which was the “showcase” of brazil, ended up being a complete disaster because of yellow fever. even today, rio continues to be the showcase of brazil and dengue has called the world’s attention because of this. specialist 1: we have to discuss this affirmation that medicines and vaccines will save humanity from diseases. this war of man against virus and bacteria seemed to be near its end when the first antibiotics were introduced, for example. the same modernity that carries the scientific advances also produces an effect that is as harmful as it is well-known, which is the assault on the environment. writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 154 specialist 2: indeed, history reveals that the largest outbreaks of diseases always arose from a scenario of imbalance. but will we let the diseases spread, even with the conditions to control and even eradicate them? the theme of vaccines has been raised in a number of countries and appears in many of them as anti-vaccine movements, which lead to heated debates in different segments. the controversy revolves around the obligation as opposed to possible collateral effects. the reference to the case of the vaccine revolt in brazil,10 bringing the historical dimension to the current debate, favors the comprehension of the overlapping among the cultural, social and political, and scientific-technological dimensions. one differential of the teaching methodology that we presented in relation to that of collins is in the creative process of the types of arguments. by encouraging the exercise of forming conflicting perspectives, involving the potential artistic abilities of the students (be it in the performance of the characters, be it in the edition of the images) for the production of a video that, in the end, will be shared, the process has proven to be a fun and quite involving challenge. one of the limitations that we identified in this methodology is the large investment in the time necessary to be developed. since the presentation of the proposal (which needs to be understood and accepted), to the need to delve deeper into the chosen themes (be they of their scientific content or of the perceptions from different groups about the dispute), culminating in the presentation of the products (which can also raise discussions), approximately 20 class/hours are spent. therefore, this is not about a methodology that can be immediately applied, but rather a set of actions that demand investment in onsite time spent in the discipline, especially as it is an activity that is developed in groups and that requires follow-up on the part of the teacher. the other limitation of this methodology is the possibility of frustrating expectations of students as regards the reach of a consensual synthesis or closure of the questions. thus, it is important to remember that this objective methodology brings about reflections, awakens one’s interest in the theme, and raises debates that do not reach complete answers. this can leave a feeling of being unfinished, exactly due to the lack of a construction of consensus surrounding a controversial question. a finalization does not consist of a winning solution. differently from proposals like the exposure of “senses of birth”, which had the aim of influencing people’s opinion against unnecessary c-sections, in this methodology, we seek the equanimity of arguments with the possibility that a spectator may be “convinced” by any of the stances. this experience, even though it may seem disappointing, is intellectually relevant, as the discussions are perceived by the participants as making some sort of cognitive or epistemic contribution: they clarify the problem, they permit one to identify conceptual or methodological divergences or difficulties, and they reorient the research effort. final considerations educational activities that concentrate only on scientific products, ignoring the use of science in questions about the real world and disregarding how these scientific ideals are socioculturally framed, developed, and implemented, end up reinforcing distorted images of science. 10 the vaccine revolt was a popular revolt that occurred in rio between november 10th and 16th, 1904. provoked by the compulsory vaccination campaign against smallpox, lot of violent conflicts took place among the poor and the authorities. writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 155 in this sense, making controversies explicit contributes to the perception that the scientific facts are always negotiated and that this negotiation is not confined to the scientific community. much to the contrary, this approach also includes various modes and other social actors related to the process of the public appropriation of science. attention to the contextual aspects of science or to their controversial nature can make the learning process more significant, yet still focus classes on information, reference to readings, that are normally unable to captivate the students. we, therefore, have the added challenge, which is no small task, to try to develop activities that are challenging, that can explore the fun and more inspiring side of studies. acknowledgments this work was supported by funding from the national council of technological and scientific development (cnpq) of brazil, and the research funding agency of the state of minas gerais – brazil (fapemig). references abd-el-khalick, fouad and lederman, norman. 2000. improving science teachers’ conceptions of nature of science: a critical review of the literature. international journal of science education 22 (7): 665-701. bandelli, andrea and konijn, elly. 2011. an experimental approach to strengthen the role of science centers in the governance of science. in: the routledge companion to museum ethics. edited by marstine, janet c, 164-173. london: routledge. cachapuz, antónio; gil-perez, daniel; carvalho, anna maria pessoa de; praia, joão; vilches, amparo. 2005. a necessária renovação do ensino das ciências. são paulo: cortez. collins, harry and trevor pinch. 1998. the golem. what you should know about science. cambridge; cambridge universtiy press. dascal, marcelo. 1998. the study of controversies and the theory and history of science. science in context 11 (2):147-154. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0269889700002957 hilgartner, stephen. 1997. the sokal affair in context. science, technology & human values 22 (4): 506–522. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f016224399702200404 hochman, gilberto. 2009. priority, invisibility and eradication: the history of smallpox and the brazilian public health agenda. medical history 53 (2): 229-252. https://doi.org/10.1017/s002572730000020x karisan, dilek and zeidler, dana. 2017. contextualization of nature of science within the socioscientific issues framework: a review of research. international journal of education in mathematics, science and technology 5 (2): 139-152. http://dx.doi.org/10.18404/ijemst.270186 khishfe, rola. 2012. nature of science and decision-making. international journal of science education 34 (1): 67-100. khishfe, rola and lederman, norman. 2006. teaching nature of science within a controversial topic: integrated versus nonintegrated. journal of research in science teaching 43 (4): 395-418. levinson, ralph. 2006. towards a theoretical framework for teaching controversial socio scientific issues. international journal of science education 28(10): 1201-1224. martínez, leonardo. 2014. cuestiones sociocientíficas en la formación de profesores de ciencias: aportes y desafíos. tecné, episteme y didaxis: ted, (36): 77-94. retrieved october 29, 2018. pinch, trevor. 2015. scientific controversies. in: international encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, edited by james wright, 281-286. elsevier ltd. writing, acting and engaging in socioscientific controversies as a way to learn about the nature of sciences bernardo j. oliveira marina a. fonseca verona campos segantini 156 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.85043-6 pinch, trevor and leuenberger, christine. studying scientific controversy from the sts perspective [accessed oct 01 2018]. sadler, troy; chambers, william; and zeidler, dana. 2004. student conceptualizations of the nature of science in response to a socioscientific issue. international journal of science education 26(4): 387-409. shapin, steven and simon schaffer. 1985. leviathan and the air-pump: hobbes, boyle and the experimental life. princeton: princeton university press. tauber, alfred. 1999.i. is biology a political science? bioscience 49 (6), 479 486. walker, kimberly and zeidler, dana. 2007. promoting discourse about socioscientific issues through scaffolded inquiry. international journal of science education 29 (11), 1387-1410. zeidler, dana; walker, kimberly; ackett, wayne, simmons, michael. 2002. tangled up in views: beliefs in the nature of science and responses to socioscientific dilemmas. science education 86: 343–367. zeidler, dana. 2014. socioscientific issues as a curriculum emphasis: theory, research and practice. in: handbook of research on science education, volume ii, edited by norman lederman and sandra abell, 697-726. new york: routledge. microsoft word gurgel hartz layout 3 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (8): 3-5 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2020 – this is an open access journal special issue – historiography of physics guest editors’ introduction ivã gurgel,1 thiago hartz 2 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i8.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ scientists are often interested in the history of their own fields. physicists are no exception. when did the apple fall on newton’s head? what did galileo mumble after his absolution? did einstein write a letter to franklin d. roosevelt? who invented the calculus, newton or leibniz? how did archimedes solve the problem of king hiero’s crown? these are questions that every physicist already heard. the standard answers, usually provided in classrooms as part of their cultural education, are anecdotes, chronologies, or verdicts about priority disputes. from those stories comes a sense of belonging to a community, and the young apprentice’s identification with the heroes that embodied the values of that community. scientists also often write about the history of their own fields. some classical examples are jean le rond d’alembert’s entries in the encyclopédie, joseph priestley’s book about electricity, the éloges historiques of bernard de fontenelle, isaac newton’s biography by jean-baptiste biot, pierre duhem’s several historical books, and john desmond bernal’s science in history. each of these narratives was written with a purpose in mind. to organize the human knowledge, to educate the new generation, to praise the deceased scientists, to support a specific worldview, to better characterize the meaning of the scientific enterprise, and to show the deep connections between science and society. as thomas kuhn famously asserted in 1962, in the opening words of his book the structure of scientific revolutions, “history, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdotes or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed” (kuhn 2012 [1962], 1). kuhn was aware that historical narratives have always been a driving force behind all changes in the image of science and, in particular, of physics. in the 20th century, as the history of science became an independent professional discipline, many new historiographical projects were put forward. they sought to better understand the distinctive aspects of science – its methods, values, and paradigms – and its dynamics – continuities, discontinuities, obstacles, and revolutions. until the 1960s, the emphasis was on the renaissance period and the scientific revolution. but since then, mainly 1 ivã gurgel [orcid: 0000-0003-4968-6907] is an assistant professor in the institute of physics at the university of são paulo – usp. address: rua do matão, 1371 – cidade universitária, são paulo – sp 05508-090 – brazil. e-mail: gurgel@usp.br 2 thiago hartz [orcid: 0000-0002-4911-5584] is an assistant professor in the institute of mathematics at the federal university of rio de janeiro – ufrj. address: av. athos da silveira ramos 149, centro de tecnologia, bloco c – cidade universitária, rio de janeiro – rj 21941-909 – brazil. e-mail: hartz@im.ufrj.br guest editors’ introduction ivã gurgel; thiago hartz 4 because of the archive for the history of quantum physics and the einstein papers project, historians of physics began to write also about more recent periods. the science studies movement, from the 1980s, and the cultural approach to physics, which emerged in particular in the late 1990s, brought to the field useful sociological and anthropological concepts. the current image of physics is a consequence of those works. historians of physics no longer seem to believe in notions such as progress and sudden revolutions. science is no longer a monolithic project. the emphasis has been, in the last twenty years, on scientific communities, practices, subcultures, representations, values, controversies, strategies, constraints, trading zones, and instrumentations. this special issue discusses the historiography of physics, emphasizing how different approaches to the history of physics produce different images of physics. the fifteen authors – who wrote this introduction, six articles, and one interview – come from different backgrounds, including physics, history, philosophy, and sociology. their historiographical perspectives are diversified and represent some of the main current trends in the historiography of physics. we expect that this special issue will interest historians of physics, and also historians of other sciences, researchers working on the contextual approaches to science education, and historically-minded physicists. * * * since the early 20th century, historians and philosophers of science have discussed whether the mathematization of nature was a central feature of the scientific revolution in the 17th century. ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira and cibelle celestino silva present a careful review of that discussion in their article the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis. they explain the perspectives of edmund husserl, alexandre koyré, eduard dijksterhuis, and edwin burtt. they also discuss the reception of the “mathematization thesis” in the historiographical traditions developed by thomas kuhn and richard westfall. at the end of the article, they address the works of some more recent authors such as gary hatfield, lorraine daston, steven shapin, yves gingras, and sophie roux. in the article power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics, fábio freitas, olival freire jr., and iolanda faria present a case study in the history of quantum mechanics, namely, the discussion between niels bohr and hugh everett, whose phd advisor was john wheeler. bohr was one of the founding fathers of quantum theory and did not accept everett’s interpretation of the theory. using concepts from pierre bourdieu’s sociology, the article convincingly argues that everett sought to increase his scientific capital to defend his interpretations of quantum theory, but his “subversion strategy” was not effective. in the article the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field, ivã gurgel and graciella watanabe begin presenting some traditional debates in the historiography and epistemology of science – such as the internalism-externalism and rationalism-relativism oppositions – in order to discuss the relationship between knowledge and context. in the first part of the article, they review the philosophical treatment concerning the problem of the historicity of science. in the second part, the authors present what they call “bourdieu’s sociological epistemology”, highlighting the concept of scientific field autonomy and defending its importance for studies in the history of physics. matt waldschlagel, in the article the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics, reviews the famous dispute between gottfried w. leibniz and samuel clarke about the existence of absolute space and time. from that case study and following don garrett’s characterization of the four aims that historians of philosophy might have, the author suggests that the history of philosophy may provide historians of physics guest editors’ introduction ivã gurgel; thiago hartz 5 with invaluable inspiration. historians of physics should not only interpret and contextualize works of physicists, they should also aspire to evaluate and apply those works in contemporary research, as historians of philosophy do. in boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics, cássio c. laranjeiras, jojomar lucena, and josé r. n. chiappin reconstruct ludwig boltzmann’s research program. they claim that to understand the turning point in boltzmann’s work circa 1872, one must pay attention to what they call “heuristics of representation”. according to them, the shift from a kinetic to a statistical approach is a change of representation within the very same conceptual framework. the relation between physics and philosophy is also the subject of the article by eduardo simões entitled wittgenstein: physics and philosophy. the author argues that the standard literature about the tractatus logico-philosophicus – one of the most important works of wittgenstein – has ignored the important influence that heinrich hertz’s book the principles of mechanics exerted on wittgenstein. the proper acknowledgment of that influence sheds new light on three aspects of the tractatus, namely, the ontological formalism of objects, the picture theory of language, and the image of science. the special issue also brings an interview with antonio augusto passos videira, a professor of philosophy at the state university of rio de janeiro (uerj). having a large research experience in the area of this special issue, videira presents his perspectives on the research in the history and philosophy of science and, in particular, of physics. he discusses the relationship between epistemology and physics in ludwig boltzmann’s work, a theme about which he has been thinking for approximately thirty years. he also discusses possible forms of collaboration between scientists and philosophers, and the current challenges in the historiography of brazilian science. reference kuhn, thomas. 2012 [1962]. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: university of chicago press. microsoft word matteoli layout 70 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (7): 70-84 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access article article galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli1 abstract: this paper retraces the history of one of the founding thesis of the modern historiography of science (galileo’s platonism thesis), starting from its first appearance in the context of the neo-kantian school of marburg up to its final assessment in the works of koyré. following these debates provides us with a privileged point of view to observe the emergence of the concept of scientific revolution, which reached its current popular form in koyré’s galileo studies. keywords: galileo; plato; cassirer; koyré; scientific revolution received: 27 june 2019. reviewed: 13 october 2019. accepted: 17 november 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i7.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ the neo-kantian origins of the gp thesis in 1994 a voluminous book called the scientific revolution was published. its author, hendrik floris cohen, aimed to reconstruct the genesis, development and institutionalization of the historiography of science during the xx century, filling a significant gap in this area of scholarly research. the hypothesis that structured his narrative was already evident from the title: what brought together on common intellectual ground philosophers, scientists, historians and sociologists (plus various combinations of those figures, still quite frequent at that time) had been the reflection on the almost ideal typical key-concept of scientific revolution: efforts to arrive at a historical understanding of the birth of modem science speeded up considerably between 1924 and c. 1950, as a result of two closely related events. one was the rise and subsequent rapid spread of the concept of the “scientific revolution” as an analytical tool expressly forged for grasping the essence of the emergence of modem science. the other was the history of science turning into a 1 giorgio matteoli [orcid: 0000-0002-7778-9519] is a ph.d. candidate in the northwestern italian philosophy consortium (fino) at the university of turin. address: via sant’ottavio, 20, 10124 torino to. italy. e-mail: gmatteoli1@gmail.com galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 71 professional academic discipline—a process that, coincident with fresh academic opportunities to be sure, crystallized largely out of the new concept of the scientific revolution. (cohen 1994, 1-2) before this expression reached common use after the second world war, the question of the origins of modern science had to go through a long phase of gestation, in which the problem to settle seemed to be dealing with the justification of the continuity and the rationality of the scientific enterprise through its historical development. thomas kuhn once referred to this period before the war in terms of a “historiographical revolution” in the way of thinking science and its past, thanks to the work of philosophers and historians such as ernst cassirer, annaliese maier, edwin burtt and alexandre koyré (kuhn 1970a, 69). the revolution consisted in the fact that for the first time historians seriously started to question the origins of that four hundred years practice we call “modern science”, going back to the primary sources without renouncing to a philosophical reflection on its cultural and epochal meaning. unfortunately, though, these authors are praised more than they are really studied. taking a closer look, we can see that the concept of scientific revolution emerged and crystallized in the context of a precise debate and philosophical reflection on the platonic character of galilean science; and this story – the emergence of the concept of scientific revolution from the galileo’s platonism thesis debates – is what we briefly want to retrace in the following pages. at the beginning of the xx century, the continuist thesis (i.e. the idea that knowledge progresses through time continuously and cumulatively, without significant ruptures, shifts or losses of cognitive material) was quite widespread thanks to the works of pierre duhem, a dedicated historian of science and physicist. he claimed that modern experimental science, and in particular galileo’s theory of movement, had no revolutionary meaning whatsoever since its essential features were already present in the impetus theory, dating back to the doctores parisienses jean buridan, nicole d’oresme and albert of saxony. duhem’s radical thesis contributed, on the one hand, to raise a broad interest towards medieval and renaissance science, until then barely studied or ignored tout court as pre-scientific. on the other hand, it pushed many epistemologists and historians to consider the hypothesis that scientific progress could imply some degree of discontinuity, though in a different sense than it was conceived by enlightenment and positivist thinkers in the xviii and xix century, as a mere struggle between scientific truth and religious or mystical superstition. the neo-kantian marburg school is a good example, among many others, of the effort to support and justify a certain refined version of the continuist thesis. the problem of the so-called logic of science had been a central concern of the neo-kantian research program since the first writings of hermann cohen and paul natorp; but it is especially interesting to follow the intellectual path of ernst cassirer in that context, since it shows the progressive questioning of the radical continuist thesis in the history of science, up until when he eventually came to use the term “revolution” (probably inspired by koyré) at the end of the thirties. most importantly, it is in the marburg school that the galileo’s platonism thesis was first formulated by natorp, in an article called galileo as philosopher (1882). for natorp, galileo was the true founder of the modern idea of law, meant as a mathematical necessary connection between phenomena. but it is only with cassirer, who took inspiration from his teacher, that galileo’s platonism thesis was refined and systematized in the wider framework of the history of science. according to cassirer, in fact, the historical figure that stands almost as a prism at the beginning of modernity, conveying all the many philosophical and scientific tendencies of the previous epochs in the bright beam of modern science is galileo galilei: “had galileo died as a child the evolution of modern thought would have been retarded for decades and would almost certainly have differed in many fundamental aspects” (cassirer 1942a, 5). all the main exponents of modern philosophical and scientific idealism had later galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 72 worked in the wake of his functional redefinition of scientific knowledge. it is the case of descartes, spinoza, gassendi, hobbes, leibniz and kant, who explicitly acknowledged this fact in the preface to the second edition of his critique of pure reason. it is evident then that to follow the progressive evolution of cassirer’s interpretation of galilean science in the forty years that go from the publication of the problem of knowledge (1906/7) to the nourished group of articles on galileo written during the forties allows us to reach a privileged point of view on what has been called the “neo-kantian tradition in the history of scientific thought” (cohen 1994, 168; friedman 2010; ferrari 2018). in the first volume of the problem of knowledge cassirer interpreted the whole history of science not only as a progressive shift from a substantial to a functional conception of knowledge but also as an endless alternation of various guises of “aristotelianisms” and “platonisms”. the most important step in this process was taken by galileo, the true founder of modernity, with his peculiar reinterpretation of the philosophy of plato (cassirer 1910-1911, 316). cassirer calls this feature of galilean science “physical platonism”, and it praises it for the fact that it was able to go beyond plato on one essential point: the ideality of the mathematical part of knowledge was now integrated with the empirical and experimental side, the kantian bathos der erfahrung so dear to marburg neo-kantians: the platonic ideal of knowledge is valid for galileo as well: it can be an object for science what constantly keeps its unity. but if this idea for plato was fully confirmed only in mathematics, now we turn directly and with more precision to physical objects. it is easy to understand this evolution if we consider the way in which galileo came to his concept of nature. he doesn’t connect in an exterior unity a manifold of facts and observations, but he delimits and determines in a rigorous way the materials of experience according to geometrical criteria. to nature, in the proper scientific sense of the term, only belong true and necessary things, i.e. those that cannot be otherwise. (cassirer 1910-1911, 324-325) galileo and plato share a fundamental idea: they both understand the laws of nature not as something that is immediately given to us or capable of being concretely shown, but as ideal laws that can never be fully verified in the changing realm of nature. nevertheless, for galileo, this does not jeopardize their validity and objectivity: the fact that in nature we never encounter a body that falls indefinitely in the void does not make the principle of inertia less valid. the epochality of galilean science (prepared by kepler’s and leonardo da vinci’s insights to be sure) had mainly to do with the creation of a new concept of experience, a renewed notion of the relation between the subject of knowledge and its object, nature. this new conception emerged in contrast with both the old aristotelian idea of science and the renaissance philosophia naturalis, still too “superstitious” and bound to the doctrice of “occult forces”, so that it could not reach the rigorous abstraction of mathematical analysis. according to galileo even kepler was still too close to the mystical thought of these renaissance currents, although he was the first one to discover and apply through functional reasoning the new concept of “law”, starting to fill the platonic gap between the physical explanation of real causes and the hypothetico-deductive representation of mathematics (cassirer 1910-1911, 317-318, 356). only with galileo did mathematical science of nature acquire its true modern form. already in this early stage of cassirer’s intellectual production the development of science is conceived as a complex process, neither fully continuous nor discontinuous, but always exhibiting different levels of continuity and discontinuity (cf. gigliotti 2006). galileo’s case is taken as a perfect example of this phenomenon. in the problem of knowledge cassirer uses four hundred pages (before coming to galileo’s chapter on the birth of modern science) to show how tight the bonds that linked galileo to his historical context were. however, to galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 73 retrace the genesis of galileo’s thought does not amount to fully account for the importance of his contribution to the history of science. what is truly unprecedented in galilean science is precisely the platonic redefinition of the ratio between the ideal and the empirical side of knowledge, which allows galileo to bring to completion the conceptualization of the idea of “physical law”, i.e. the functional mathematical relationship that isolates in the rhapsodic and chaotic flux of empirical variations the form of such variations: galileo’s system, being entirely based on the interpenetration of experience and reasoning, finally overcomes the ancient struggle between “empiricism” and “rationalism”, now revealed as vague and unfruitful. another problem is posed now, and much deeper, i.e. if one should start with things or with relations, from the existence or the forms of concatenation. against the substantialistic conception of the world, a new one rises, which has its roots in the concept of function. it is clear now that it is not possible to understand the history of modern philosophy in its development without considering its relationship with exact science. (cassirer 19101911, 402) the problem of knowledge had mainly focused on those aspects of galileo’s work that were strictly scientific; with the individual and the cosmos in renaissance philosophy (1927) the cassirerian interpretation of the origins of modern science came to a much more nuanced, refined and articulated form (also thanks to his decennial collaboration with the kulturwissenschaftliche bibliothek warburg in hamburg) integrating the reflection on galilean science in the wider framework of renaissance culture. moreover, on a more theoretical side, during the twenties cassirer had been working on his philosophy of symbolic forms. modern science was then conceived as one of the many symbolic forms that can give form to reality: its birth is not thought as a linear historical passage from the prevalence of one symbolic form, mythical or religious, to the scientific one. on the contrary, the individual and the cosmos presents the outset of modernity in complex terms, as a progressive redefinition in the manifold of cultural forms that see science, art, religion and philosophy working in a mutual and collaborative joint effort. according to cassirer, in the “struggle” to separate “what is ‘necessary’ from what is ‘accidental’, what works according to laws from what is arbitrary and imaginative”, the purely intellectual and scientific motives were not the only nor the most important ones: “the logic of mathematics goes hand in hand with the theory of art. […] mathematics and art now agree upon the same fundamental requirement: the requirement of ‘form’” (cassirer 2000, 152). galileo did not renounce to renaissance ideals: today we tend to consider him only as a great physicist, but in doing so we separate research areas that at his time were conceived as bound in a “indissoluble unit” (cassirer 2000, 153). likewise, the question of continuity is reconsidered: the continuity of this process does not imply that the systematic succession of thoughts is represented and reflected by a temporal succession. we are not dealing with a continuous temporal “progress” that leads in a straight line to some specific goal. not only do the old and new proceed together for long periods of time, but both continually merge with each other. one can, therefore, speak of “development” only in the sense that the individual thoughts, precisely through this process of merging and separating, gradually distinguish themselves from each other more sharply and emerge in definite, typical configurations. these typical configurations make clear to us the immanent forward movement of thought, which by no means necessarily corresponds to its temporal and empirical course. (cassirer 2000, 102) galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 74 cassirer takes a step beyond duhem, an author he studied well and appreciated for his epistemological studies. despite duhem’s “careful and detailed analysis” on the importance of the work of the late nominalists for modern statics and dynamics, for cassirer, the “systematic meaning” of the latter was “overestimated”. oresme and buridan surely opened the way to modern science, weakening the authority of aristotle; but they never truly built a new constructive theory of nature (cassirer 1942b, 315).2 on the one hand, cassirer keeps stressing the importance of the rational continuity that critical analysis retraces in the history of science; on the other hand, he explicitly acknowledges the non-linearity and only partial cumulativity of the process of knowledge, in which we constantly encounter mistakes, impasses, false starts and consistent losses of information. nevertheless, thanks to the universality of its logical functions, reason can always make an effort to retrace or construe trend lines, persistent problems, immanent teleologies that somehow guarantee continuity through time. the salvare apparentia motto should not be intended instrumentally, as duhem did, but transcendentally (ferrari 2012, 117). continuity and discontinuity both belong to the history of science according to cassirer. continuity is maintained regardless of the changes which can occur – but new bold hypotheses can question part of the previous set of belief, and they can even give rise to revolutions. the change is not interpreted in a substantial sense, but functionally: in a kantian epistemological guise, it is our knowledge that is reorganized in this process, not the object we study. or, with pascal: qu’on ne me dise pas que je n’ai rien dit de nouveau, la disposition de matières est nouvelle. cassirer kept studying these themes until the very end of his life, especially during his american exile in the forties (cassirer 1937; cassirer 1940; cassirer 1942a; cassirer 1943; cassirer 1946). there are no substantial differences with the problem of knowledge and the individual and the cosmos, except for a more accentuated emphasis on the idea of scientific revolution; but these articles are highly interesting nonetheless, because they show cassirer’s attempt to get involved in the newly formed international community of professional historians of science, publishing on important journals (the journal of the history of ideas, scientia) or dialoguing with established scholars (george sarton, john randall, alexandre koyré) through summaries and reviews about what he considered to be his most important contribution to this field: his studies on galileo’s platonism. the concept and the problem of truth in galileo (1937) offers a brief recognition of the “images of the galilean revolution” in the centuries following the xvii. during his life, galileo was known especially for his astronomical studies: the discovery of jupiter’s satellites, the observation of venus’ phases, the rings of saturn and the milky way. only after the dialogue had been widely received by the european intellectual community galileo started being considered as an advocate of the copernican doctrine. in the following century, the century of hobbes, leibniz, d’alembert, lagrange and up until the xix century, galileo became the great pioneer and theoretical founder of dynamics: “if galileo managed to found dynamics, it is because he searched for it by a completely different way. his works on physics are the result […] of his new concept and ideal of truth” (cassirer 1937, 57-59). for cassirer, as will be for koyré, galileo is a philosopher before being a scientist: to found his dynamics, he first had to put forth a new logic. and even if he never formulated a systematic theory of knowledge, the philosophical meaning of his new concept of truth would have had a widespread resonance beyond the limits of the scientific domain, reaching all the fields of modern culture, like the philosophy of religion of herbert of cherbury and the philosophy of right that hugo grotius founded (cassirer 1937, 64-65). mathematical mysticism and mathematical science of nature (1940) offers cassirer’s ultimate reflection on the concept of scientific revolution. he claims that the “new ideal of 2 on cassirer and duhem cf. (ferrari 1995; seidengart 1995). galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 75 ‘exactness’” represented by the new mathematical science of nature could not emerge without a true “‘leap’ of thought”: the history of human knowledge always presents some epochs – which belong to the most significant and important ones – in which knowledge does not really seem to enlarge its extension, but it rather appears to modify its content and its meaning. instead of a simple quantitative growth, we witness a sudden qualitative “change”; instead of an evolution we experiment an unexpected revolution (cassirer 1940, 249). this does not mean that all the bridges with previous epochs of knowledge are burnt: “there can never be anything for us that is absolutely immediate. as historians of the mind, we can never point our finger on the exact spot where the old disappears, making room for the new. every historical demarcation is and remains arbitrary if it is meant in this sense” (cassirer 1940, 249). even though the historical development never really suspends its continuity, there are historical figures such as galileo (or michelangelo, dante, newton, kant) that emerge from the “heraclitean flux of things” and modify the course of events in a peculiar and unprecedented way (cassirer 1940, 251). cassirer’s mixture of continuism and discontinuism can be defined, so to speak, as soritical: we easily understand the extremes of the historical spectrum, so that it is not hard to understand in which sense a man of the xii century and one of the xix belong to entirely different epochs; but we can never identify with precision the exact moment in which, for example, the middle ages end and the renaissance starts. cassirer also goes back to the problem of galileo’s platonism, contrasting one of the first attempts to criticize this idea – eduard strong’s procedures and metaphysics (strong 1936). strong tried to scale back the role of platonism and in general the importance of the purely theoretical aspects in the birth of modern science, highlighting the more immanent, technical and concrete features of it. in 1940, cassirer could already rely on the studies of koyré to substantiate his hypothesis, and he presented it more straightforwardly in galileo’s platonism, published posthumously in 1946 for the george sarton’s festschrift. can galileo be considered a platonist? “this question is often posed and warmly discussed in the most recent literature. but we are far from reaching a universally shared solution” (cassirer 1946, 355). when historians of science discuss the birth of modern science – cassirer goes on – platonism should not become a slogan. more than 2000 years divide us from the historical plato, and in the meantime the term “platonic” has gained a strong polysemy. if we do not make clear what it means, we risk giving rise to pointless ambiguities and idle disputes. there can be a skeptical platonism – the platonism of the late academy – and a mystical platonism such as plotinus’ and the neo-platonist schools’; […] a religious platonism (saint augustine) and a logical platonism (scotus eriugena, the medieval realists); […] the platonism of marsilio ficino, malebranche and the cambridge platonists; […] a romantic platonism in schelling’s dialogue bruno and in his oration on arts and nature. as a matter of fact, all these doctrines are not only divergent but, in many ways, openly contrasting. and even if we could find a common denominator among the skeptical, the mystical, the christian and the romantic platonism, this would not help us solve our problem. galileo’s platonism, if it exists, has nothing to do with all these other types; it belongs to a whole different world. (cassirer 1946, 355) galileo’s platonism does not resemble any of the previous kinds of platonism, and cannot be offhandedly identified with a mere “mathematicism”: “his was not a metaphysical platonism, but a physical one”, and in this feature resides its radical and even revolutionary novelty, for it was plato himself to establish the total incommensurability, the chorismos galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 76 between the sensible and the intelligible world. galileo’s theory and practice of science overcame this difficulty, establishing the concrete possibility of describing the sensible world through necessary demonstrations, and in so doing reach truths that were certain. but according to cassirer galilean science is ultimately platonic, since it shares with plato the belief in the importance of the hypothetical-deductive method (cassirer 1946, 357, 366-367). after cassirer, before koyré the correlation between galilean science and the philosophy of plato had been established for the first time in the context of the neo-kantian school of marburg. but before dealing with koyré’s version of the gp thesis, which happened to become the standard version, we should remind that other scholars worked on the path started by the neo-kantians, after cassirer and before koyré – even though they did not become quite as popular. as koyré acknowledges in the opening passage of his galileo studies, the influence of plato on galileo’s thought and on the structure of some of his works had been noticed by a german translator of the dialogue concerning the two chief world systems, emil strauss, at the end of the xix century (galilei 1891, xlix). moreover, a great source of inspiration for koyré’s treatment of the gp thesis and in general of the scientific revolution was edwin arthur burtt’s book the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science, published in 1924. the main thesis which burtt put forth was that it is impossible to separate the metaphysical and religious sub-structure of modern science from its strictly “scientific” outcomes. and that was true not only for known neo-platonists such as copernicus and kepler but also for authors like galileo, newton and descartes (burtt 1924, 25-35). so burtt recognized that “the neo-platonic background of the mathematical and astronomical development of the times has strongly penetrated the mind of the italian scientist [galileo] as in the case of so many lesser figures” (burtt 1924, 82); but he failed to distinguish (as koyré would later do, following brunschvicg 1912, 67-70) between at least two kinds of platonic traditions, namely, a “mystical-speculative” one and a “mathematical-scientific” one. for koyré, as we will see, galileo was totally foreign to the first, which was typically a feature of the neoplatonic florentine academy.3 while burtt’s and koyré’s accounts are very similar (apart from the differences we just mentioned) leonardo olschki’s geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen literatur (and especially the third volume, galilei und seine zeit) stands out for his originality when confronted with the others. the main goal of this monumental book – in many ways similar to cassirer’s erkenntnisproblem, to which it is openly inspired – was “to experience how the development of the sciences stands in relation to the linguistic development, and what relationships exist between the sciences and literature” (olschki 1927, i, 4). olschki was trained as a philologist, and he employed his expertise in this field to discover the cultural preconditions of scientific development; to discover the interactions between language and thought for mutual enrichment and perfection; to find the relationships between scientific and literary forms of representation, and to point the way that allows us to penetrate into the most mysterious and intimate atmosphere in which recent scientific aspirations have come to maturity and final expression. (olschki 1927, i, 6) 3 the distinction between the different kind of platonisms during the renaissance and the earlymodern age is a difficult theme; eugenio garin (garin 1973, 196; garin 2008, 312) criticized koyré’s distinction, claiming that the difference between the two traditions is less sharp than it could seem; on the other hand, paolo casini (casini 1987, 97) agreed with koyré. a discussion of this theme can be found in shea 1972, 74ff and baroncini 1978. galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 77 what olschki aimed to achieve by the examination of the terminology, the style and the form of literary representation of each technical and scientific writer was “to show in its context the development by which the alogic elements of scientific thought and representation – psychological, aesthetic, moral and metaphysical – are gradually eliminated in favour of unambiguous objectivity” (olschki 1927, i, 8). just like for cassirer, burtt and koyré, also for olschki the most important feature of this great change in european culture was linked to the new significance and centrality attributed to mathematics in natural research. the protagonist of this shift was once again galileo, “the first true modern experimental scientist”, who brought about the emergence of a new scientific method through an “idealization of the experienced and the concrete”, which amounted to a “platonic method of contemplating nature, which to this day, in this particular application, perhaps without one being aware of it, has retained its validity in the whole of experimental physics” (olschki 1927, iii, 164-165). olschki’s overall interpretation of the birth of modern science then belongs to the discontinuist party, for he conceives his study as “a history of the renewal (erneuerung) of scientific thought and of the scientific dialectic within the framework of european cultural history” (olschki 1927, i, 6). however, his account of the causes of the scientific revolution reveals a less intellectualistic stance than the ones we encounter in the other authors examined, especially when it comes to galileo. olschki’s view was more akin to that of ernst mach (1883) and edgar zilsel (2003) on that matter, and it has recently been reconsidered, coming back into fashion (cf. valleriani 2010). the new scientific spirit has its origins in the work of “artisans and engineers”; it “begins with the applied sciences and the empirical sciences in order to find its own way to pure scientific abstractions beyond the limits of practical necessities” (olschki 1927, i, 6). this conception completely reversed the causeeffect order of explanation that koyré would have given of the scientific revolution. and that is why koyré criticized olschki in his galileo studies (koyré 1939, 213) regardless of his favourable review of the book a decade earlier (koyré 1930). koyré and the gp thesis the way in which koyré formulated his own version of galileo’s platonism thesis towards the end of the thirties is the most known and significant result of his studies in the history of science. even though in the last decades it has been deeply reevaluated and criticized, it is impossible to ignore the outstanding impulse it has given, either as a conceptual framework (banfi 1949, kuhn 1957, kuhn 1970a, shea 1972, galluzzi 1973, torrini 1993, hankins 2000) or as a controversial target (geymonat 1957, randall 1961, girill 1970, drake 1970, wallace 1981, høyrup 1990, machamer 1998, dollo 2003) not only to galilean studies in particular, but also to the overall shape and structure that the history of science as a discipline has taken during the last century. most importantly, the platonic interpretation of galilean science had one major consequence for the twentieth century’s historiography of science, as hendrik floris cohen acknowledged (cohen 1994, 2). namely, this thesis worked as a kind of intellectual presupposition or even as a true condition of possibility for some momentous ways of reappraising the birth of modern science in terms of discontinuity and rupture with ancient and medieval science (above all, that of thomas kuhn) which eventually brought to the largescale dissemination of the concept of scientific revolution to describe the complex set of events that occurred more or less between the publication of copernicus’ de revolutionibus in 1543 and the intellectual aftermaths of newton’s principia mathematica in the years following its publication in 1687. to be sure, the concept of revolution had already been used during the xviii and xix centuries to describe certain groundbreaking episodes that occurred galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 78 in some particular sciences (cohen 1976, cohen 1987). but it is only with koyré that the expression “scientific revolution” was widely used for the first time, obtaining the current meaning and fame. for koyré, the gp thesis and the discontinuity thesis, i.e. the idea that the birth of modern science has to be understood in terms of a revolutionary process (rather than an evolutionary or continuous one) were strictly intertwined. there is a strong philosophical presupposition that supports this interpretation, which could already be found in cassirer’s works: the idea that “describing the clash between platonism and aristotelianism in all the width and depth of its conceptual contrasts would amount to making the history of modern thought” (cassirer 1910-11, 80). in fact, if we conceive the ancient and medieval science as predominantly aristotelian, then to consider the birth of modern science as a “return to plato” or a “revanche” of platonism ought to imply that we interpret this passage as a process which brings along a certain degree of discontinuity (koyré 1939, 266, 269, 273-81). moreover, it is koyré himself who framed the question in these terms. for example, in a long review of alistair crombie’s book on grosseteste he stated that the problem of the origins of modern science and its relationship with medieval science is still a quaestio disputata. both the partisans of continuous evolution and those of a revolution are steady in their positions and seem uncapable of convincing one another. and this, i think, happens not because they disagree on facts, but because they disagree on the very essence of modern science and, consequently, on the relative importance of certain fundamental characteristics of it. what one party interprets as a difference of degree, the other sees as a difference of nature. (koyré 1956, 61) there is no doubt that koyré belongs to the discontinuist party. he interprets the scientific revolution as a complex phenomenon, a profound intellectual and philosophical transformation that consists of different moments and characteristics: the mathematization of reality; a conception of space and time as infinite objects; a theoretical experimentalism; the shift from a world of “more or less” to a “universe of precision”. but all these aspects can be reduced to two, according to koyré: we believe that the intellectual attitude of classical science can be characterized by two intertwined aspects: the geometrization of space and the destruction of the cosmos, i.e. the disappearance from science of every consideration based on this concept and the substitution of the abstract space of euclidean geometry to the concrete space of pre-galilean physics. (koyré 1939, 15) these attributes, stated for the first time in his galileo studies, will remain essentially unvaried every time koyré will return on this theme in his following works. the “destruction of the cosmos” is the “destruction of the idea of a hierarchically-ordered finite worldstructure”, in favour of an “open, indefinite and even infinite universe, united and governed by the same universal laws” in which “all things are on the same level of being” (koyré 1943, 403). the two processes are linked because the geometrization of space necessarily leads to the destruction of the old cosmos. for example, in a homogeneous space such as the one of euclidean geometry, it is impossible to think the separation (central for the pre-galilean science) of terrestrial and celestial space. but according to koyré the scientific revolution is first and foremost a “philosophical revolution” (koyré 1957, 2); and the philosophy in question is that of plato, although it appears to have acquired a very peculiar guise in authors such as copernicus, bruno, descartes, torricelli, newton and of course galileo, the true symbol and pioneer of this new way of thought. the main feature of galileo’s platonism is what koyré calls “mathematicism”. the role of mathematics in natural research was the vexata quaestio that divided platonists and galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 79 aristotelianists already at galileo’s time (koyré 1943b, 347). one of galileo’s colleagues and friends, jacopo mazzoni, once reminded that “the supreme question was to know if one had to be a platonist or an aristotelianist” (koyré 2016, 98). how to choose between the two philosophies? we can see it clearly: for the philosophical and scientific conscience of the time […] if one proclaims the superior value of mathematics, if, moreover, one attributes to it a real value and a dominant position in and for physics, then one is a platonist; if, on the contrary, one sees mathematics as an “abstract” science, and as a consequence it gives it a lesser value among the sciences – physics and metaphysics – that deal with reality, if, in particular, one claims to ground physics directly on experience, attributing to mathematics only a handmaid position, then one is an aristotelian. (koyré 1939, 279) galileo could not ignore this opposition. when he was a student in pisa, he followed the courses of francesco buonamici, who explicitly taught that “the quaestio of the role and nature of mathematics is the watershed between aristotle and plato”. we know from our historical perspective which side galileo (and the whole modern science with him) chose to follow, making “the advent of classical science – even if we ignore it – a return to plato” (koyré 1939, 279). to be sure, for a strict platonist, it would be absurd to apply mathematics to the physical world since ideal and sensible objects are entirely incommensurable in that view.4 but this is precisely what galileo’s revolution brought about. as cassirer remarked, “if galileo’s platonism exists, it does not have much in common with any previous “platonism”; it belongs to an entirely different world” (cassirer 1946, 355). another reason provided by koyré in favour of the gp thesis has to do with the literary form of galileo’s works, and especially with the dialogue concerning the two chief world systems. koyré suggests that galileo took inspiration from the platonic dialogues, and not from the dialogue-form in general, which was quite popular at the time. it is known that for plato the choice of rendering his philosophy in a dialogical form was linked to his theory of knowledge, i.e. the innatism related to the theory of reminiscence. according to koyré, galileo shared this broad epistemological view in the domain of mathematical ideas: it has not been sufficiently stressed that for galileo the fundamental ideas of science (the mathematical ideas) are all innate ideas. this term, to be sure, cannot be found in his works: but the whole structure of the dialogue, conceived as a conscient imitation of a platonic dialogue; salviati’s application of the socratic method; and the great stress posed on the impossibility of teaching what someone does not already know are – or should be – widely sufficient. (koyré 1937, 44) the literary form of the dialogue, the “platonic innuendos, disseminated all along with the book”, the incipit that lingers on a pseudo-platonic cosmological myth, the allusions to the socratic method – all these clues aim to tell us: “beware! in the epochal struggle which opposes the two great philosophies, we stand for plato” (koyré 1939, 213). this is clear, for example, when salviati recalls the “experience” of the fall of a body from the mast of a ship, i.e. the example of the actualization, through the application of the socratic method, of a piece of knowledge that was until that moment “unconscious”: salviati: without experiment, i am sure that the effect will happen as i tell you, because it must happen that way; and i might add that you yourself also know that it 4 this objection has been raised by girill 1970, 502-505. galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 80 cannot happen otherwise, no matter how you may pretend not to know it – or give that impression. but i am so handy at picking people’s brains that i shall make you confess this in spite of yourself. (galilei 1967, 145) before turning to experience – koyré explains – a man already knows the truth, so that “experience is useless because before any experience we are already in possession the knowledge we are seeking for” (koyré 1943b, 346). however, sometimes it could happen that we do not know that we already know something – as so frequently happens to simplicio in the course of the book. in that case, it is sufficient for us to remember, stimulated by the proper questions: the proof that [good physics is done a priori] is in the fact that […] simplicio himself does not need to resort to experience to acknowledge the truth. […] he knows the truth, without thereby realizing that he does; so for him it is not necessary to learn it (which would be completely impossible); it is sufficient posing the right questions to him, to show him (and us) that we already know it. (koyré 1939, 227) moreover, it is galileo himself (through the mouth of simplicio) that underlines his closeness to platonism in a famous passage: simplicio: i have frequently studied your manner of arguing, which gives me the impression that you lean toward plato’s opinion that nostrum scire sit quoddam reminisci. so please remove all question for me by telling me your idea of this. salviati: how i feel about plato’s opinion i can indicate to you by means of words and also by deeds. in my previous arguments, i have more than once explained myself with deeds. i shall pursue the same method in the matter at hand, which may then serve as an example, making it easier for you to comprehend my ideas about the acquisition of knowledge. (galilei 1967, 190-191) the example that follows, to which salviati is referring to, is the classic counterexample to the aristotelian theory of motion (projectiles motion); simplicio, like the slave in plato’s meno, will come to understand the truth by reasoning, guided by salviati’s questions. so, galileo did much more than just pledge himself a partisan of platonic epistemology; his findings “had demonstrated the truth of platonism with facts” (koyré 1939, 287-288). here lies the meaning of the “theoreticist” koyrean interpretation of galilean experimentalism: the thought-experiment comes first and constitutes the foundation of the real experiment – not inductively, but completely a priori (cf. detel 1979, de caro 1992, de caro 1996). if experiences are not guided by reason’s mathematical reflection, they represent an obstacle instead of a proof on the path towards the truth (ferrarin 2014, 91; clavelin 1968, 432; rossi 1972, 103-128). this is a strong argument in favour of galileo’s platonism: progressing ex suppositione, through hypotheses that are geometrically constructed a priori, galileo’s reasoning remains valid even in the case in which experience does not meet the expectations, as galileo once remarked in a letter to the mathematician carcavy. archimedes’ demonstrations on the nature of spirals would still be true even if in there were no objects moving in that way; the laws of dynamics would hold even if we could never observe objects falling through the void with the same speed (5 june 1637, in galileo 1890-1909, xvii, 89-93). at any rate, during the forties and the fifties (with new inspiration coming from his late newtonian studies) koyré progressively scaled back his thesis of the “revolution without experience”, giving a more nuanced interpretation of the philosophical influences at the origins of modern science, adding a reflection on archimedianism and democriteanism to the picture. “good physics is done a priori. but it must beware, as i already said, of the temptation galileo, plato and the scientific revolution: the origins of galileo’s platonism thesis in the historiography of science giorgio matteoli 81 of falling into indefinite concretization, and it should not let imagination replace theory”, which in turn always has to be “in touch with real experience” (koyré 1973, 271). regardless of whether the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics (as koyré suggested) or it is read as such (cassirer), or whether it is ordered, copied, interpreted, intuited in that way, it is still worthy of reflection that the problem of experimentation, if we can say so, has an evident symbolic dimension. this is how we can explain the vehemence of some controversies regarding who is generally considered the founding father of modern physics. every historian and every epistemologist care to emphasize what the “galileo case” shows and confirm of their own conception of “science”, of “reason”, of “experience”. […] there are multiple traditions in the history of the sciences. and each one of them promotes their own epistemology. galileo being a particularly important “ancestor”, the struggles often lit up violently. therefore, depending on the case, galileo becomes a platonist, a kantian, an experimentalist, a positivist […]. (thuillier 1988, 193, 2040) concluding remarks we have shown how, before kuhn’s reappraisal and popularization, the concept of scientific revolution had its contemporary origins in a cluster of debates concerning both a) the philosophical problem of the degree of continuity (or discontinuity) retraceable in the historical development of knowledge and b) the question of the platonic character of galilean science. the first problem had a long history to be sure, but it regained a particular urgency at the end of the xix century. it was also one of the main points of the philosophical agenda of the neo-kantian school of marburg, where paul natorp put forth (arguably for the first time) the galileo’s platonism thesis. in this context, ernst cassirer resumed this idea and he gave it a pivotal role in most of his works in the history of science, notably the problem of knowledge and the individual and the cosmos in renaissance philosophy. it is well known that the gp thesis would have been 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it, therefore, repudiates the existence of nonmaterial entelechies. however, this marks a shift compared with the arguments against vitalism developed by logical empiricists, who were indifferent to metaphysical issues and were only concerned with logical and empirical matters in the sciences. logical empiricists rejected the concept of the entelechy (vitalism), because vital laws confirmed by biological phenomena were unavailable; in contrast, they accepted the concept of the atom (materialism), since it constituted physical laws and was therefore associated with verifiable results in modern physics. keywords: vitalism; materialism (or physicalism); logical empiricism; entelechy; atom received: 27 june 2019. reviewed: 13 october 2019. accepted: 17 november 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i7.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _______________________________________________________________________ introduction: the metaphysical refutation of vitalism today most biologists and philosophers understand vitalism as a heretical doctrine in the history of biology, originally proposed by hans driesch in the early twentieth century. 2 according to driesch’s doctrine of vitalism, biological organisms are governed by nonmaterial vital agents termed entelechies (driesch 1929; churchill 1969; allen 2008). now the received view consents to an almost universal rejection of vitalism. for current biologists and philosophers, vitalism is no longer a viable option because it violates their materialist belief. for instance, to defend organicism scott gilbert and sahotra sarkar first characterize materialism as the default ontological option for the philosophy of biology. then for these two authors, vitalism is heretical because it advances a “non-materialist claim” confirming 1 bohang chen [orcid: 0000-0001-7507-4854] is a phd candidate in the department of philosophy and moral sciences at ghent university. address: blandijnberg 2, 9000 ghent – belgium. email: bohang.chen@ugent.be 2 but this by no means suggests that driesch’s doctrine was the only doctrine of vitalism in the history of biology. since the late eighteenth century, a great many doctrines have been labelled as doctrines of vitalism (hein 1968; benton 1974; normandin and wolfe (eds.) 2013; wolfe 2011, 2014, 2017). revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 26 the existence of some specific “life force,” thereby going against the “ontologically materialistic philosophy”, which “provides the basis for contemporary natural science” (gilbert and sarkar 2000, 1). next gilbert and sarkar term their own organicist position material holism, which consents to metaphysical materialism, or in their own words, “ontological materialism.” today the two terms, “metaphysics” and “ontology,” are often used interchangeably, and in those cases, both are concerned with the basic, fundamental, ultimate or essential categories of the metaphysical reality.3 for gilbert and sarkar, the default materialist position endorses a belief in the constitutional priority of microphysical entities over biological objects. as a matter of fact, most biologists and philosophers, following gilbert and sarkar, take it for granted that from a metaphysical point of view a biological object is nothing but, and therefore ontologically reducible to, a set of fundamental physical entities and their interactions. for instance, the evolutionary biologist ernest mayr claims that modern biologists do not oppose “constitutive reduction”, which suggests that “all organic processes can ultimately be reduced to or explained by physico-chemical processes” (mayr 1988, 10-11). this position is termed “ontological reduction” by ingo brigandt and alan love (2017), in the entry “reductionism in biology” from the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. for them, ontological reductionism claims that “each particular biological system (e.g. an organism) is constituted by nothing but molecules and their interactions” (2). moreover, they affirm that ontological reductionism is “a default stance nowadays among philosophers and biologists…” (3) yet to be more accurate, currently, a similar but more popular stance among philosophers is physicalism (stoljar 2010, 2015). various formulations of physicalism exist in either a priori or a posteriori forms (banks 2014). but for most philosophers of biology, physicalism is still a metaphysical position incompatible with vitalism. for instance, according to alex rosenberg, physicalism suggests that “there are no nonphysical events, states, or processes, and so biological events, states, and processes are ‘nothing but’ physical ones” (2006, 25). peter godfrey-smith makes the physicalism-vitalism dichotomy more explicit. in his philosophy of biology textbook, godfrey-smith claims that vitalism is at odds with the physicalist interpretation of life (godfrey-smith 2014, 10). more recently brigandt and love also ascertain us that vitalism has been denied by physicalism (brigandt and love 2017, 3). ontological materialism, constitutive or ontological reductionism, physicalism and various other metaphysical positions, although their contents differ in detail, all tend to impose a priori restraints onto the ultimate constituents of the metaphysical reality. in consequence, most of them appear to legitimize a metaphysical rejection of vitalism. the controversy over materialism (or physicalism) and vitalism seems closed today, attested by brigandt and love, who write that “vitalism (...) is largely of historical interest” (brigandt and love 2017, 3). in the history of science, indeed, one significant moment for vitalism was the early twentieth century, when logical empiricists attacked the vitalism of hans driesch and contributed to its final overthrow. along with some biologists, logical empiricists argued that the concept of the entelechy had no place in scientific biology. yet logical empiricists were also famous for their rejection of metaphysics, so it seems unlikely that logical empiricists refuted driesch’s vitalism out of metaphysical concerns. indeed, a closer examination shows that the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism were at odds with the received view held by current biologists and philosophers. in this article, my aim is to give an interpretation of the criticisms of vitalism offered by logical empiricists. first, 3 this is not to deny that these two terms are also used in different senses. for instance, some philosophers, under the name of “ontology,” deal with questions about categories developed in empirical sciences (e.g., wimsatt 1994). these questions have more scientific relevance and are irrelevant to metaphysical concerns over “the basic, fundamental, ultimate or essential categories”. see hook (1953) for a fine distinction. revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 27 i show that materialism formulated in metaphysical terms was not within the concern of logical empiricists in dealing with vitalism, and logical empiricists dismissed metaphysical materialism as raising meaningless pseudo-questions about a questionable metaphysical reality. second, from the logical empiricist point of view, even though vitalism advanced nonmaterial agents like entelechies, it could not be refuted simply for its going against metaphysical materialism. instead, logical empiricists rejected vitalism for its lack of precise law formulations and its inability to generate determinate experimental results. in order to better articulate the logical empiricist standpoint, i give an analytic comparison between a representative materialistic concept, that is, the atom, and the vitalistic concept of the entelechy, on the basis of some writings from logical empiricists. in the end, i clarify the doctrine of physicalism developed by logical empiricists. i claim that the physicalism of logical empiricists was hypothetical and empirical in character. unlike the physicalism understood in the philosophy of biology today, the physicalism of logical empiricists was no metaphysical position, and it could not enforce a refutation of vitalism. logical empiricism against metaphysical materialism the received view today issues a metaphysical rejection of vitalism. now vitalism is no longer a viable option, since biologists and philosophers conceive of several materialist metaphysical positions, from ontological reductionism to a priori physicalism, as already having captured the ultimate constituents of the metaphysical reality. this evaluation of vitalism, however, goes sharply against the non-metaphysical ethos of logical empiricism. my focus in this section is then to characterize the logical empiricist attitude towards metaphysics, especially metaphysical versions of materialism. it is well known that logical empiricists were hostile to every form of metaphysics. thus, there is no doubt that logical empiricists would reject vitalism if it made statements about the so-called essences of the biological reality. however, very importantly, the antimetaphysical attitude of logical empiricists will be misunderstood, if we neglect their equally forceful opposition to metaphysical doctrines of materialism. commenting on the philosophy of science in the early twentieth century, rosenberg sees this point clearly: in the heyday of empiricism, mechanism or materialism was treated as a metaphysical doctrine no less otiose than vitalism and organicism. no empiricist who embraced the thesis of the unity of science took the claim as one about the metaphysical assimilation of biological to the physical, for this thesis was treated as just as empty of empirical content as its vitalistic denial. (rosenberg 1985, 22) rudolf carnap, perhaps the most well-known logical empiricist in mainstream analytic philosophy, later in his intellectual autobiography suggested that throughout his career he was indifferent to metaphysical materialism. in carnap’s own words, “the ontological theses of the traditional doctrines of (…) materialism remained for me entirely out of consideration” (carnap 1963, 18), and in fact he treated “the theses of phenomenalism, materialism, realism and so son in their traditional forms as pseudo theses” (carnap 1963, 50). for carnap, materialism was chiefly of two variants in the nineteenth century, the dialectic materialism held by marxist philosophers and the mechanism which assumed that phenomena and laws in nature are reducible to those in mechanics. of the former, carnap commented that “the dialectic in its marxist form” should be rejected “no less than the hegelian dialectic” (carnap 1963, 24).4 4 the logical empiricist reading of german idealist philosophers might not be entirely fair. even though it was not inadequate to brand philosophers like hegel and schelling as metaphysicians, logical empiricists failed to note that both hegel and schelling were quite learned men and built their revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 28 other logical empiricists paid greater attention to the doctrine of mechanism. for instance, herbert feigl, a central participant in the logical empiricist movement, expressed his discontent with this misconception commonly held by humanists against science: “science is still identified with an absurd mechanistic reductionism” (feigl 1953, 8). frank, another major logical empiricist, traced one important historical background for the rise of logical empiricism as “the failure of mechanistic science” (frank 1949b, 4). for frank, “two characteristic beliefs of nineteenth-century science broke down during its last decades; these were the belief that all phenomena in nature can be reduced to the laws of mechanics (...)” (frank 1949b, 4) frank repeated this story throughout his life (frank 1949a, 1987). further, in his interpretation of the great physicist ernst mach, frank endorsed mach’s attitude against metaphysical materialism of the mechanistic form. according to frank, mach essentially “separated the conception of scientific explanation from mechanical explanation” and through this separation he “saved the scientific world picture from going down along with the mechanistic picture” (frank 1949b, 6). in mach’s mind, mechanistic reductionism was a “pure illusion”, because mechanical phenomena “chosen as the basis of explanation are by themselves no more understandable than the phenomena that are to be explained” (frank 1949b, 6). the american logical empiricist ernest nagel offered another case against materialist metaphysics, in a debate with the physicist arthur eddington. in his 1929 the nature of the physical world, eddington contributed a philosophical reflection on modern physics and provided his famous (or infamous) tale of two tables. for eddington, there was “an ordinary table” as “a commonplace object” in everyday human experience, and there was also “a scientific table” which was “mostly emptiness” but with “numerous electric charges rushing about with great speed” (eddington 1929, x). further, according to edington, modern physics assured that the “scientific table is the only one which is really there” and the ordinary table was merely a “strange compound of external nature, mental imagery and inherited prejudice.” (eddington 1929, xii) in eddington’s viewpoint, modern physics identified the metaphysical reality as consisting of small physical particles and “mostly emptiness”, as a result, science could dismiss commonsense experience as a sheer illusion. however, nagel sneered at eddington’s formulation and treated it as a typical misreading of modern physics, for its misuse of concepts and categories from the different context of commonsense experience. for nagel, the concepts used by eddington, such as “mostly emptiness” were “defined or specified in just those contexts in which it is appropriate to predicate” the ordinary table, and they had “no assigned meanings” in modern physics and were thus meaningless when used to characterize the so-called scientific table (nagel 1941, 313). above all, eddington’s metaphysical tale of two tables annihilated the reality of commonsense experience, and, according to nagel, would not be taken seriously in the logical empiricist conception of knowledge (1940, 438). for logical empiricists, in the words of frank, “matter and atom” were merely auxiliary concepts of natural sciences (or even only modern physics), the metaphysical move to read them into “everything in the world” was a grave mistake to be avoided in an adequate philosophy of science (frank 1949b, 74). the logical empiricist conception of the atom a current example in modern physics, already mentioned above by frank and nagel, will help better illuminate the logical empiricist attitude toward materialism. though philosophers today seem to have disagreements on the most adequate formulation of materialism and physicalism (stoljar 2015; ellenzweig and zammito (eds.) 2017), the dominant version shared by scientists is still atomism. in current science education offered to laymen and science philosophical systems upon contemporary scientific knowledge. for this, see friedman (2010). revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 29 students, atomism is generally conveyed as a body of indisputable truths about the basic constituents of the metaphysical reality. in this way, the scientific concept of the atom, consolidated in the nineteenth century through the great achievements in statistical mechanics and atomic physics, receives an interpretation intuitively intelligible to commonsense experience. according to most scientists, even though at the super atomic levels nature has many different layers, from the ontological point of view entities at these layers are nothing but numerous atoms in certain spatial configurations. for biologists, in particular, biological organisms are mere aggregates of invisibly small atoms of different chemical elements. now regarding vitalism, the exclusive right to serve as the basic units of the reality, claimed by the atoms, rules out possibility of the existence of vital agents peculiar to biology. this metaphysical opposition between atomism and vitalism is vividly demonstrated by the philosopher of biology david hull, “both scientists and philosophers take ontological reductionism for granted. vitalism is dead. organisms are ‘nothing but’ atoms, and that is that” (hull 1981, 282). seen from the case of hull, i suggest, the atomistic version of metaphysical materialism is implicitly presupposed in general science education. sometimes even branded as the scientific worldview, metaphysical materialism asserts that all objects at the super atomic levels are “composed” of invisibly small atoms.5 it is certainly comfortable to treat an atom as an invisibly small entity, and further a biological object as composed of large amounts of atoms. this well accommodates commonsense experience wherein a string of beads is composed of visibly small beads. however, nothing was more alien to logical empiricists than digesting atomism through analogies in commonsense experience. moritz schlick depicted the everyday version of atomism as stemming from the pictorial worldview of the microcosm. under the pictorial worldview, the microcosm was invisible because entities within it were spatially too small. but for schlick, “…a pictorial model of electrical and magnetic processes…[has] long since been finally abandoned”, and “the inadequacy [of the pictorial model of the atom] is even more clearly brought home to us by the modern quantum theory which shows that even in respect of spatio-temporal conditions, the model must fail” (schlick 1949, 16). the pictorial worldview was implicitly associated with the belief that the complex (e.g., macro objects) must be constituted out of the simples (e.g. atoms). but for nagel, this belief is “either a tautology or a sheer dogma; and the dogma appears to me to have been generated by viewing as ‘ultimate constituents’ of a subject-matter phases of it which have isolated through the use of a particular method relevant in a particular context of inquiry” (nagel 1936, 15). so according to nagel, the concept of the atom must be understood in modern physics and its associated mode of inquiry. it became questionable or even meaningless when taken out of its proper context. to better illustrate the logical empiricist conception of the atom, it is useful to go back to their intellectual predecessor, mach. mach was famous (or infamous) for his distrust of atomism. for mach, the atom was no more than a “constructed mental symbol” to represent “a complex of sensuous elements” (mach 1897, 152). in other words, the atom “must remain a tool for representing phenomena” (mach 1898, 207), and it “would be a mere empty word for one in whom it did not awaken a large group of well-ordered sense-impressions” (mach 5 some very helpful comments on previous drafts of this article have pointed out that scientists in their everyday practice may not care about these metaphysical claims of materialism and atomism, and even if they do, they give a false interpretation of their sciences. i agree with these comments, but they do not contradict the fact that most scientists hold the belief that atoms exclusively constitute the metaphysical reality. my point is rather that although this belief is irrelevant to scientific practice and is even very unsound upon a critical analysis (which will be done in a future article from the standpoint of transcendental philosophy, starting from the kantian category of community or wholesparts relation), it does underpin many bold formulations of materialism and physicalism. revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 30 1898, 202-3). to those who were inclined to take atoms as the ultimate blocks of the metaphysical reality, mach raised a question from psychology, “(…) how is it possible to explain feeling by the motions of the atoms of the brain?” (mach 1898, 208). mach appeared to hold an instrumentalist view of atomism (but this is dubious, see brush 1968; banks 2014), and based on mach’s doctrine frank made essential improvements. yet to start, frank understood mach’s concern, and he agreed with mach that the concept of the atom was useless in psychology and cognitive science (frank 1949b, 70). but frank quickly moved beyond mach by insisting that “the usefulness of the atomic theories in this limited realm (physics) is certainly indisputable” (frank 1949b, 70). according to frank, mach underestimated the role of mathematics in consolidating the concept of the atom. as frank pointed out, the atom concept was valid in modern physics since it participated in “a structural system having exact logical coherence with the world of facts” (frank 1949b, 44). but like mach, frank did not give a metaphysical reading of atomism. for frank, the validity of the atom concept partly lied in its “form” which involved a set of mathematical equations, and this was quite unlike the claim from materialist metaphysics, in which the atom stands as crude “matter” in the metaphysical reality. more importantly, according to logical empiricists, the atom concept could only be understood within scientific development. following frank, nagel gave this point a subtler illustration from the historical perspective (for a history of atomism, see chalmers 2009). for nagel, the “forms” associated with the atom concept accumulated after dalton revived the atomic theory of matter in chemistry. however, this accumulation of knowledge could not be used to support the view that physicists were making progress “in our knowledge concerning a fixed set of submicroscopic objects” (nagel 1979a, 370). quite similar to thomas kuhn (kuhn 1962), nagel suggested that this was because: each [atomic] theory in a certain series of theoretical constructions having a number of broad assumptions in common-postulated (or “defined”) distinctive kinds of submicroscopic components for macroscopic objects, with distinctive “natures” for the components in each case. (nagel 1979a, 370)6 accordingly, nagel concluded that the atoms of democritus, the atoms of dalton, and the atoms of modern physics were quite different physical particles, and it was illegitimate to regard these theories as unfolding the truths about a metaphysical reality of atoms. logical empiricists were generally more concerned with contemporary scientific theories. then when it came to the early twentieth century, for them the atom was certainly no longer democritus’ invisible entity, the theory of which was rather speculative; nor was it dalton’s chemical unit, which only had limited use in chemistry. according to schlick, the atom in modern physics could be the elastic spherical entity employed in the kinetic theory of gases (schlick 1949, 98), the point center in the dynamic theory of matter (schlick 1949, 102), and the electro-dynamic system in the electrical theory (schlick 1949, 113-9).7 in each 6 nagel’s remark clearly reminds us of kuhn’s idea of incommensurability. friedman articulates this idea in terms of the relativized kantian conception of constitutive a priori (friedman 2010, 712). so, concerning the history of atomic theory, we might suggest that different conceptions of the atom are incommensurable with each other because each constitutes its own a priori laws about the physical structures of matter. 7 because of these statements, the majority of logical empiricists such as schlick, carnap and frank, along with mach, have long been treated as instrumentalists (chakravartty 2015), in contrast to a minority of realists including feigl (1936, 1950) and hans reichenbach (1938). but recent discussions on this point suggests that the traditional interpretation is problematic and misses the real force of logical empiricism (parrini 1994; salmon 1994; psillos 2011; friedman 2011, 2012; neuber 2014). i endorse the view that logical empiricists took the realist-instrumentalist controversy to be, at best a problem of “modes of speech” (nagel 1979a, 152), at worst a metaphysical “pseudo-problem” (feigl 1979, revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 31 theory, the atom concept was associated with respective physical laws affirmed by experimental phenomena. the essential difference between the logical empiricist conception of the atom and that of metaphysical materialism might be better shown in frank’s radical interpretation of heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. according to metaphysical materialists, atoms stand out there as basic blocks of matter, each with its own exact position and velocity. then on the basis of the uncertainty principle, materialists suggest that we are unable to decide simultaneously on the position and the velocity of an atom. but in sharp contrast, frank suggested that “concepts like position and velocity of a particle can be used only under certain experimental conditions, while the formulas of physics only give directions for bringing such observations into relation with one another” (frank 1949b, 178). for frank, quantum mechanics did not postulate any “new mysterious objects like ‘particles without a definite position’” (frank 1949b, 179): quantum physics says only that with certain experimental arrangements concepts like “particles with a definite position” or “particles with a definite velocity” can be defined. in other words, the physical processes that occur with these experimental arrangements can be predicted through statements in which one refers to “a particle with a definite position” or “a particle with a definite velocity,” but there is no arrangement for which one can predict processes through statements involving “a particle with a definite position and velocity.” this, however, does not mean that there are particles of which, because of the defectiveness of our apparatus or because of malicious natural laws, we cannot measure all the characteristics (position and velocity); it means rather that such combinations of words as “a particle with coordinates x, y, z, and velocity components vx, vy, vz” must not be introduced into the language of physics. if we were to say that the things corresponding to such combinations of words nevertheless exist as absolute, but unknowable, things, we should be going over into pure metaphysics and destroying every bond with experience (…). (frank 1949b, 182) according to frank, in quantum mechanics an atom could not be reified into an extended but invisible entity standing out there, waiting for any complete description. instead, its empirical existence rested on the validity of physical laws and observational results in a certain experimental context.8 the last sentence captures the essence of the logical empiricist criterion of a valid scientific concept. for logical empiricists, on the one hand, the concept invoked law formulations; on the other hand, verifiable experimental results should be derivable from the laws and theories in which the concept participated. the atom was associated with both and therefore it was beyond any doubt a warranted concept in modern physics. i have made the effort to articulate the logical empiricist conception of the atom. indeed, the way in which logical empiricists treated the concept of the atom already implied their attitude toward vitalism. again in the words of rosenberg who has seen this issue clearly: “the justification for eliminating or embracing such notions as driesch’s entelechy is xxviii). take atomism as an example. for logical empiricists, the atom was empirically (rather than metaphysically) as real as the table, but the table was as instrumental as the atom. moreover, to understand atomism in modern physics, according to logical empiricists, the genuine task was to clarify the logical structure of statements about atomism, rather than to contend whether atoms were real or not (friedman 2006). 8 but admittedly frank’s radical suggestion about the uncertainty principle was not universally accepted among logical empiricists. for instance, carnap remarked that “such a radical change is inadvisable” (carnap 1966, 289). yet this disagreement on the specific point in quantum mechanics did not affect their universal agreement on the nature of the atom in modern physics. revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 32 no different in kind (than) that employed to assess claims about the existence of electrons, magnets, or virions” (rosenberg 1985, 8). suppose that a logical empiricist in the early twentieth century were invited to assess the validity of the two concepts, the atom in physics and the entelechy in biology. then if he started from commonsense experience, the invisible atom and the imperceptible entelechy were equally unavailable to direct observations. one could therefore not claim based on sense experience, either that a physical object was composed of invisible atoms, or that a biological organism was under the control of an entelechy. yet at that time both concepts were integrated into, or at least appeared in contemporary scientific theories, which made statements far beyond commonsense experience. then in order to give an adequate assessment of the atom and the entelechy, the logical empiricist must examine their respective roles in scientific theories. as is shown above, the atom concept proved sound since it could be associated with physical laws and some experimental results in modern physics. thus, like the concept of the atom, the validity of the entelechy was to be evaluated against the background of contemporary biology, and to be assessed in terms of its ability to explain biological phenomena. this was exactly the attitude of logical empiricists. they never rejected driesch’s vitalism on the grounds that it was a metaphysical heresy, and they agreed with driesch that the concept should be judged on scientific grounds alone. consequently, the logical empiricist rejection of vitalism is based on subtler concerns.9 the logical empiricist critique of vitalism it is a historical fact that logical empiricists criticized driesch’s doctrine of the entelechy and various other theories of vitalism. according to the previous interpretation, the criticisms of vitalism from logical empiricists were not, however, based on a commitment to metaphysical materialism. for logical empiricists, driesch was not a metaphysician advancing heretical doctrines. carnap later in his life praised driesch and commented that “he was quite different from most philosophers in germany in that he really wanted to develop a scientific philosophy” (carnap 1966, 14). the most systematic critique of driesch’s neo-vitalism within the logical empiricist context was developed by frank. but overall frank understood well that driesch’s vitalism was based on empirical arguments. he claimed: “the introduction of the magnitude e, in accord with driesch, certainly means going beyond the frame of physical laws, but in no way an abandonment of the ground of empirical science, nor an introduction of anthropomorphic, soul-like elements” (frank 1998, 111). in this claim, frank correctly pointed out that driesch’s introduction of the entelechy (the vital factor e), resulted from his concerns over the difficulties of mechanistic explanations in embryology. indeed, driesch began his biologist career as a disciple of the school of developmental mechanics exemplified by wilhelm roux. roux’s research program endorsed mechanistic explanations and remained suspicious of vitalistic doctrines. yet in 1891, driesch succeeded in separating the first two blastomeres of sea urchin eggs and showed that each half was capable of developing into an adult organism. driesch’s experimental results contradicted those of roux, who had advanced the mosaic theory of development suggesting that each half of the blastomere represented a determinate part of the adult organism. greatly puzzled by these results, driesch later concluded that a few embryological phenomena could not be fully explained in mechanistic concepts (churchill 1969; allen 2008). in 1907, driesch was invited to give the gifford lectures in aberdeen, scotland. based 9 the biologist c.h. waddington shared this concern. facing another distinguished biologist francis crick’s attack on vitalism (crick 1966, 99), he questioned: “is a quark included? and if biologists should find it necessary to postulate an entity as odd as a quark, would that be vitalistic or not?” (waddington 1967, 203). revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 33 on these lectures he published science and philosophy of the organism (1929), a comprehensive illustration of his doctrine of vitalism. in driesch’s deepened proofs for vitalism, he contended that mechanistic explanations failed to adequately deal with the complexity of embryological processes. for driesch, the morphogenetic system was a harmonious-equipotential unit and a number of developmental phenomena were unintelligible if biologists only took mechanical variables (the sizes of the embryo, internal and external conditions, formative and directive stimuli, chemical compounds, etc.) into consideration. disappointed at mechanistic explanations, driesch concluded that a vital factor e, namely, entelechy, must be responsible for the generation of these peculiar phenomena. for logical empiricists, driesch was correct, and it was a truism, that mechanistic explanations were largely unavailable in most areas of biology. though it was certainly necessary to further pursue such explanations, frank detected a danger that materialism and mechanism in some cases were degenerating into empty words. for this he even felt the need to issue a limited defense of vitalism: to be sure, driesch shows that we can assume for the living processes a specific state variable, not that we must. for it is not possible to foresee every trick that one might invent in the fiction of hidden combinations of inorganic state variables. in favor of vitalism, i should like to remark that, just as i cannot force someone who regards heat as a specific state variable to consider it as a motion of particles, so i cannot force the adherents of entelechy to replace it by fictitious state variables. (frank 1941, 26-27) for frank, the introduction of fictitious inorganic state variables was not acceptable. indeed, it was just these similar concerns that pushed frank to reject vitalism. frank developed thorough criticisms of driesch’s doctrine of the entelechy in his 1932 das kausalgesetz und seine grenzen (frank 1998, 95-136; also see frank 1970). in this book, after raising criticisms of various details, frank concluded that driesch failed to justify his conclusion. to start, despite his early sympathy with driesch’s approach, frank argued that the introduction of the entelechy was far from necessary. for frank, although numerous phenomena in biology remained unexplained in terms of some contemporary physicochemical theories, driesch in his reasoning had not considered every possibility; moreover, driesch also failed to show that for these biological phenomena mechanistic explanations would always remain unavailable in future. after that frank contributed a more general critique of vitalism and its related concepts, which in my view better reflected the ethos of logical empiricism. importantly, frank saw no essential difference between biological explanations through finalism, purpose, plan, and entelechy, and they were rejected for exactly the same reason. the essential defect of these explanations was never related to any metaphysical commitments, but to their poor scientific merits. for instance, frank claimed that “the mere assumption of the ‘existence of a plan’ is meaningless” (frank 1998, 98), and “in the case of living organisms (…) the mere claim of ‘aiming at a purpose’ is meaningless” (frank 1998, 102). in brief, the introduction of concepts like purpose, plan and entelechy, “does not help us toward any deeper understanding” (frank 1998, 97). if these concepts were to have any real scientific merits, according to frank, biologists must give laws that indicated determinate consequences associated with these concepts. for instance, driesch must further explicate the concept of the entelechy, through identifying “a detailed rule from which it could be deduced how much can be taken away from an ovum in the process of cell division without destroying the growth of a whole organism” (frank 1998, 98). further, “a general connection between the stages of division and the possibility of a regeneration of the whole” must be found (frank 1998, 98). for vitalists who assumed “the existence of a plan”, frank wrote, “if somebody could clearly revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 34 explain the plan that nature pursues with respect to the evolution of organisms, the claim that the history of evolution is purposeful would be of a scientific character; for then the future could be predicted from it” (frank 1998, 99). unfortunately, “nobody can foresee future development from the hypothesis of compliance with a plan, since nobody knows the plan” (frank 1998, 99). the conceptual defect was better shown through a comparison between finalism (the use of “purpose”) in physics and biology. frank suggested that in some sense physics also used finalist explanations: for example if we say about heavy bodies only that they strive towards the center of the earth, or that nature pursues a purpose of assembling all heavy bodies at the center of the earth, that there is a tendency to produce an arrangement in which all heavy bodies group themselves around the center as a big ball and it happens that bodies are stopped in their path only by external causes, then with all this we say something about the processes of motion of heavy bodies that is not directly incorrect. (frank 1998, 98) why was the finalist language accepted by physics? this was because, according to frank, physicists were able to answer the following questions: “under what circumstances a heavy body is stopped on its way to the center, how such an obstacle can deflect it, and how its motion takes place in detail. however, such rules of balance and the motion of bodies can be found in the science of mechanics” (frank 1998, 98). for frank, physics did not reject finalist language, but the superiority of finalism in physics over that in biology lied in its much stronger explanatory power. this was achieved through the formulations of physical laws such as the laws of gravitation. as frank pointed out, “we need only glance at the history of physics and chemistry to see that progress always goes hand in hand with the replacement of teleological, anthropomorphic notions by mathematical laws” (frank 1998, 84). indeed, finalism in physics had long been purged of its anthropomorphic-animistic meaning, while finalism in biology by and large retained it. to put it more explicitly, the end, the plan, and the purpose of the heavy bodies striving towards the center of the earth were accurately known to physicists through laws in physics, but the end, the plan, and the purpose of the embryological development was only asserted, but never really articulated by vitalistic biologists. frank compared biology with not only physics but also with theology. surprising to many philosophers and scientists today, frank did not dismiss as nonsense the hypothesis that some natural phenomena were created through god’s miraculous power, and sometimes he even ironically suggested that its formulation as superior to that of biological vitalism (frank 1998, 94). but for frank, the use of miracles in explanation could make sense only if one could demonstrate how god carried out the miracles. one must give laws governing the production of miracles and thus illuminated how god did his work. further, as frank consistently maintained, one could not negatively justify the use of miracle or the entelechy by appealing to the gaps left by mechanistic explanations (as driesch and many theologians had done). instead, these concepts were only justifiable by giving positive law statements (frank 1998, 82). through the comparisons above, the defects of biological vitalism and driesch’s entelechy should be fully exposed. the entelechy failed to have its own laws giving determinate and testable results. a similar line of argument was developed by two other logical empiricists, carl hempel and carnap. in hempel’s case, he agreed with frank that driesch was not advancing any mysterious metaphysics. driesch’s theory of vitalism should be rejected, not because it assumed the existence of mysterious agents. the concept of the field in physics was equally unavailable to sense experience (hempel and oppenheim 1948). however, the crucial difference was that the concept of the field was associated with general laws governing its effects on physical bodies and was, therefore, able to generate testable revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 35 hypotheses. in contrast, the concept of the entelechy in biology could do neither, and the entelechy was simply “inaccessible to empirical test and thus devoid of empirical meaning” (hempel and oppenheim 1948, 330). carnap once conducted a debate with driesch. driesch justified his use of the entelechy by claiming that physicists employed the concept of magnetism. nonetheless, carnap quickly pointed out that driesch’s entelechy seemed to “lack something” (carnap 1966, 14). as carnap emphasized, the crucial difference was that physicists after introducing magnetism had further offered laws of magnetism. the laws might be formulated in quantitative terms, like “maxwell equations that describe magnetic fields” (carnap 1966, 15). the laws also could remain at the qualitative level, and “if you magnetize a needle and suspend it by the middle so that it swings freely, one end will point north” (carnap 1966, 15). by contrast, the entelechy did not constitute any natural laws and thus failed to offer any determinate and testable empirical consequences. in sum, frank, hempel and carnap reached a logical empiricist consensus consisting of two claims concerning vitalism. the first is that driesch’s vitalism was not guilty of any heretical metaphysical claims. the second is that the concept of the entelechy had few scientific merits, since it failed to give precise vital laws explaining biological phenomena and therefore had no clear empirical reference. the physicalism of logical empiricists “physicalism” is a term popularized by logical empiricists in the 1930s. now sometimes branded as an updated form of materialism, physicalism in philosophy of biology offers the new ground for rejecting vitalism. for some philosophers (godfrey-smith 2014, 10; brigandt and love 2017), physicalism and vitalism contradict each other and only one choice is possible. however, as i have shown above, logical empiricists would not endorse such a refutation of vitalism conducted at the metaphysical level. the physicalism of logical empiricists, as a matter of fact, had a meaning different from that understood in the current philosophy of biology. in the following, i show that the physicalism of logical empiricists was only a working hypothesis, and this hypothesis could not by itself exclude other hypotheses about vitalism.10 indeed, the physicalism of logical empiricists was close in spirit to a posterior physicalism, a position that has become increasingly popular in recent years (banks 2014). the physicalism understood in the philosophy of biology today still ensures a metaphysical rejection of vitalism. by sharp contrast, the physicalism of logical empiricists was hypothetical and empirical in character, although sometimes blurred by too polemic tones. for instance, first, hempel explicitly claimed that the physicalism of logical empiricism was only a working maxim, and it remained detached from traditional materialist metaphysics. for hempel, “the reducibility of the laws of the non-physical sciences to those of physics is an open question…the issue cannot be settled on a priori grounds or with philosophical methods alone; it calls for further scientific research” (hempel 1951, 321). physicalism was proposed as a “heuristic maxim” for scientific research (hempel 1951, 321). clearly, in hempel’s eyes, physicalism only suggested a research direction in close relationship with empirical sciences, and it was devoid of metaphysical meanings (also see hempel 1969). second, the physicalism of logical empiricists was also empirical in character. this in general means that unlike physicalists defending physicalism as a set of metaphysical truths, logical empiricists were clear about the limitation of their physicalist project. they never claimed that physics had already unified other non-physical sciences. for example, feigl in his 10 logical empiricists would not be surprised that their physicalism is misunderstood today. for instance, feigl noted that “it was easy again for metaphysically-minded opponents to misconstrue this position [physicalism] as a variant of ontological materialism” (feigl 1981a, 289). revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 36 treatise on physicalism and the unity of science claimed that physicalism was “by no means as sufficiently established by the progress of research to date” (feigl 1981b, 302). even carnap’s more passionate the unity of science admitted that “biological research in its present form is not adequate to answer the question” whether “the natural laws which suffice to explain all inorganic phenomena can also be a sufficient explanation in the region of the organic” (carnap 1934, 68), and it could only be answered “in the course of the future development of empirical research” (carnap 1934, 68). yet admittedly, it is also true that some logical empiricists often indicated a strong dogmatic tendency, which blurred the hypothetical and empirical character of their physicalist project. for instance, in some rather polemic essays for physicalism, otto neurath did not show any interest in logical analysis, instead, he was more inclined to condemn nonmaterialistic concepts, from driesch’s entelechy to hegel’s spirit, as meaningless metaphysics. for instance, against vitalism, neurath wrote, “in the field of biology, the physicalists reject ‘vitalism’ insofar as it maintains that non space-time entities become ‘effective.’” (neurath 1931, 621). unlike frank, hempel and carnap, neurath never gave a close analysis of the concept of the entelechy. but even so, overall neurath was still clear of the empirical nature of his project. though today neurath’s physicalism is branded as “empiricism without empirical research” (cat 2014), like other logical empiricists he emphasized that his physicalism went “without metaphysics” (neurath 1983, 58), and it was a task to be accomplished. on how to be a genuine empiricist nagel might be a good example. nagel not only pointed out the contemporary limitation of physicalism but even remained suspicious of its future. in his philosophical reflections about biology, nagel understood the scientific situation as that “it is no less evident that the techniques of observation and experimentation in biology are in general different from those current in the physical sciences” (nagel 1979, 399-400). evidence also shows that nagel was suspicious of the possibility of reducing biology to physics in the future, even though he did not deny this possibility. for nagel, “the task facing such a proposed reduction is admittedly a most difficult one; and it undoubtedly impresses many students as one which, if not utterly hopeless, is at present not worth pursuing” (nagel 1979, 435). more importantly, nagel developed an open mind toward alternative approaches. commenting perhaps on the philosopher of biology joseph woodger’s anti-physicalist approach to clarifying concepts and laws in biology, nagel wrote, “(…) there is a genuine alternative in biology to both vitalism and mechanism-namely, the development of systems of explanation that employ concepts and assert relations neither defined in nor derived from the physical sciences” (nagel 1979, 431). finally, the physicalism of logical empiricists could be better understood by referring again to the concept of the atom. recall hull’s claim, “organisms are ‘nothing but’ atoms…and that is that” (hull 1981, 282). in contrast, frank depicted the contemporary status of biological research as follows: “the exact physical observation of the atoms of a living body is [still] compatible with the known empirical laws for the behavior of living bodies and with the physical hypothesis about their atomic structures” (frank 1949b, 169-70). frank avoided being dogmatic. he acknowledged that once empirical evidence demonstrating the incompatibility between the vital laws of a living body and the physical laws of its atomic structures had been submitted, it would be scientific to claim that the living body had vital laws of its own.11 as frank summarized, the possibility of such “a vitalist presentation of natural phenomena…should not be denied” (frank 1998, 117). 11 in feigl’s words, “[alfred] whitehead’s suggestion that the behavior of electrons within living organisms may be fundamentally different from that in inorganic compounds can of course not be refuted a priori” (feigl 1981b, 317). revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 37 conclusion logical empiricists rejected the concept of the entelechy because vital laws were not available in biology. for logical empiricists, moreover, it was meaningless to reject vitalism by presupposing materialist metaphysics, and the possibility of future vital laws could not be denied, at least in principle. on the contrary, they accepted the concept of the atom, because it could be associated with physical laws and verifiable experimental results. but logical empiricists declined to view the validity of the concept of the atom as supporting metaphysical materialism (or physicalism). further, i believe that an adequate understanding of the logical empiricist criticism of vitalism has deeper implications for the contemporary philosophy of biology. consider, for instance, organicism, which claims to offer a promising middle road between (reductive) materialism and vitalism (gilbert and sarkar 2000). yet if we accept the logical empiricist criticism of vitalism, organicism turns out to be dubious as well. first, the judgment that organicism as material holism is superior to vitalism loses its ground because it is no longer legitimate to refute vitalism by presupposing materialist metaphysics. second, organicism in its current form stresses the importance of treating biological organisms as holistic organizations, but this is nothing more than a truism. this organicist concern equally applies to complex physico-chemical organizations, and in present biology, there is no contradiction in treating biological organisms as merely complex physico-chemical organizations. as a result, unlike vitalism which has advanced the entelechy as a bio-specific concept, current organicism fails to capture the genuine specificity of biological organisms. third, if follows that, in order to be bio-specific, organicism must be able to show how biological organization is different from the merely complex physico-chemical organization. one way here is to offer laws specific to biological organization (x is a biological organization if and only if these laws apply to x). yet if these laws were available, it would then be difficult to distinguish them from vital laws vitalists are supposed to provide. even more interestingly, the rationale of the logical empiricist criticism of vitalism also applies to some concepts popular in reductive materialism as to concepts like genetic program and genetic information, it is often the case that biologists use them as if physiological, developmental and even evolutionary mechanisms have already been laid out in the physical structures of genes. admittedly, these concepts appear to have certain material bases in genes and are thus materialism-friendly. however, a logical empiricist evaluation of these concepts cares little about whether they are materialism-friendly or not. regarding concepts like program and information, further, the result of such an evaluation is not optimal. as frank already alluded above – in the comparison between “fictitious [inorganic] state variable” and the entelechy, (frank 1941, 26-7; also see mainx 1970, 629) –, these concepts are currently just as defective as the entelechy, if they are used as causative agents which only nominally “unify” various biological mechanisms. these concepts are defective, since, unfortunately, in most cases, the determinate relations between these concepts and respective mechanisms are merely asserted, rather than precisely established as laws with experimental support. acknowledgement special thanks are expressed to phillip sloan, charles wolfe, john symons, katherine brading, and thomas stapleford for their helpful comments. revisiting the logical empiricist criticisms of vitalism bohang chen 38 funding sources the work is supported by china scholarship council [no. 201608040017], bijzonder onderzoeksfonds [01sc1018] and the national social science fund of china [14zdb171] references allen, g. e. 2008. rebel with two causes: hans driesch. in rebels, mavericks, and heretics in biology, edited by o. harman and m. r. dietrich, 37-64. new haven: yale university press. banks, e. c. 2014. the realistic empiricism of mach, james, and russell: neutral monism reconceived. cambridge: cambridge university press. benton, e. 1974. vitalism in nineteenth-century scientific thought: a typology and reassessment. studies in history and philosophy of science part a 5: 17-48. brigandt, i. and love, a. 2017. reductionism in biology. available in: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reduction-biology/ consulted april 20, 2017. brush, s. g. 1968. mach and atomism. synthese, (18): 192-215. carnap, r. 1934. the unity of science (m. black, trans.). london: kegan paul, trench, trubner & co. ltd. carnap, r. 1963. intellectual autobiography. in the philosophy of rudolf carnap, edited by p. a. schilpp, 3-84. la salle: open court. carnap, r. 1966. philosophical foundations of physics (m. gardner, trans.). new york: basic books. cat, jordi. 2014. otto neurath. available in: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neurath/ consulted nov 28, 2015 chakravartty, a. 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varieties of vital materialism. in the new politics of materialism. history, philosophy, science, edited by s. ellenzweig and j. h. zammito, 44-65. london and new york: routledge. microsoft word abrahão layout obituary: anna carolina krebs pereira regner luiz abrahão 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (9): 1-7 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2020 – this is an open access journal obituary “my work is my hobby”: an obituary of brazilian philosopher anna carolina krebs pereira regner (1947-2020) luiz abrahão1 http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i9.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “the future of humankind is unknown. we will become what we make of ourselves” prof. anna regner anna carolina krebs pereira regner was born in porto alegre, brazil, on 3 january 1947. as the first-born child of joaquim de araújo, an agricultural engineer, and yedda, a history teacher, regner completed her primary and secondary education at instituto de educação general flores da cunha in porto alegre. having married lúcio ignácio regner, an engineer and retired professor from the mathematics institute of universidade federal do rio grande do sul (ufrgs), anna regner was only 19 when she gave birth to her first daughter luciana. “while my friends were having a night on the tiles and listening to the rolling stones, i was already taking care of a child” (quadros and wolfart 2008), she commented. regner had two daughters who became medical doctors and a son who became an advertising professional. regner became interested in philosophy in her early teens, having read karl jasper at the age of 15, developing an aptitude for existential philosophy. she began her college education in philosophy at ufrgs in 1970 when her first daughter was just beginning kindergarten. her second daughter, andrea, was born just before her graduation in 1975. “in order to be able to read an edition of kant’s critique of pure reason i had, i would carry 1 luiz abrahão [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7294-8576] is a professor at the federal center of technology and education of minas gerais – cefet/mg. address: av. amazonas, 5253 – sala 314, nova suíça, belo horizonte, mg, brazil. cep: 30421-169. e-mail: luizpaideia@hotmail.com anna regner belo horizonte, brazil. february 20, 2009 obituary: anna carolina krebs pereira regner luiz abrahão 2 andrea and give her a pen so that she could amuse herself drawing on the text” (quadros and wolfart 2008), she remembered. regner’s first exposure to philosophy of science came about when she was made teaching assistant of a course, namely, “the evolution of scientific thinking”. she eventually took a temporary teaching position to teach this course at ufrgs soon after her graduation. it was a watershed moment for her, seeing that she would take history and philosophy of science, thereafter, as her main field of inquiry in philosophy. afterwards, between 1976-77, she pursued her master’s in philosophy at pontifícia universidade católica do rio grande do sul (pucrs). she was also admitted as a professor at ufrgs in 1977. she taught courses on modern philosophy, theory of knowledge, history and philosophy of science, and contemporary philosophy. regner prepared herself for pursuing a ph.d. in the usa. however, just as she learned she had been admitted to a graduate program in philosophy at the university of california, berkeley, regner also found out she was pregnant of her son lúcio. in fact, she almost turned down the opportunity, if it was not for her husband. he encouraged her to move to the usa anyway together with a maid to help her. “it was a very hard time since we had to travel so often”, she remembered. “during this period, we had to make eleven trips within only three and a half years. my daughters, a little more grown-up, missed so much their father” (quadros and wolfart 2008). regner studied philosophy of science at uc berkeley between 1980-83. it was right around the time when another controversy between evolutionism and creationism had been put in motion in california. therefore, the brazilian philosopher was attracted to investigate these phenomena she dubbed the “cellars of rationality” (rosa 2005, 12). accordingly, she studied deeply the theory of evolution ending setting up what would be the topic of her research, namely, the thought of charles darwin. philosopher paul feyerabend was to become her advisor at uc berkeley and, thereafter, one of the most important influences on her intellectual trajectory. i went to berkeley with the aim of studying under feyerabend. having read the first version of against method (the spanish edition) in 1976, i had been struck by his ideas and became very motivated by this reading. as i was admitted to the graduate program at uc berkeley, and having been awarded a capes scholarship, in 1980, i moved to berkeley with my children and with the support of my husband who, albeit could not remain there with us all along, could visit us every now and then. feyerabend was a very vivid person, dynamic, despite his disability, very caring for the students, witty, and almost insolent with his ironic comments about the institution and some colleagues. he was the most well-organized professor i ever had, his classes, having the largest audience, were carefully structured. we were free to choose the topics of the seminars, but feyerabend demanded a commitment from the students, providing materials in advance for our colleagues. he was strict in regards to how to lead the presentations and discussions. if there was anything that was not clear, feyerabend would interrupt the presentation and surprise everyone in the room with his relevant counter-examples. i attended his courses on the philosophy of science and theory of knowledge, usually given to enormous audiences, as well as to his seminars for a smaller number of students. among these seminars, i participated in a seminar on aristoteles, having been assigned to give a presentation on the movement of the celestial bodies. however, there is no doubt that it was the experience of having individual topics of study under feyerabend that impressed me the most. i suggested studying darwin’s on the origin of species. he accepted it under the gracious condition that he would learn it from me as his focus was primarily on physics and astronomy. it was out of these studies that came out a long paper that eventually obituary: anna carolina krebs pereira regner luiz abrahão 3 would be turned into my ph.d. dissertation. he was always very thoughtful to every point we discussed and his comments turn out to be very useful to me until today. he would tell me, for instance, that if i wanted to find something afresh, speaking in terms of epistemology, i should look for it before the 19th century. (rosa 2005, 12-13) photocopy of the cover of anna regner’s personal copy of against method (3rd edition), by paul feyerabend in fact, it was the author of against method who not only supervised regner throughout her writing of this “long paper” which would become her ph.d. dissertation as well as he graded it an a+. however, she did not graduate in the usa. she returned to brazil as soon as she finished her coursework at uc berkeley, recovering her teaching activities at ufrgs, and, after validating at unicamp in são paulo the credits from her coursework at uc berkeley, began to write her ph.d. dissertation. it was over 1,000-page-long at the time. however, due to an institutional issue which impeded her to defend an investigation of the epistemology of “on the origin of species” at the graduate program in logic and philosophy of science at ufrgs, she ended up defending her ph.d. dissertation at the faculty of education at the same institution in 1995. “as i had been working by my own on the dissertation for so long, besides working on several different fronts at the same time, it thus took me that long to conclude it” (quadros and wolfart 2008), as she recalled it in hindsight. it required an interdisciplinary ph.d. dissertation committee to evaluate her thick work, entitled “the teleological nature of the darwinian principle of natural selection: an articulation between epistemology and metaphysics in on the origin of species”. obituary: anna carolina krebs pereira regner luiz abrahão 4 regner worked at saint mary’s college of california as a fulbright scholar-in-residence until 1996 where she taught the courses “philosophy of science: how and why to do it”, “darwin’s voyage on the beagle”, “the role of metaphor in science”, and “the explanatory power of the darwinian principle of natural selection”. regner expressed the importance of teaching in english to make her ideas clearer. she returned to the usa as a visiting scholar in the program in history and philosophy of science of stanford university in 2001 under the supervision of timothy lenoir. she had back then attended a course by lenoir on the darwinian revolution. having been awarded a capes scholarship, regner visiting research at stanford aimed at reconstructing the darwinian arguments on the origin of species. she was looking for the concept of “rationality” behind the rhetorical arguments of the british naturalist. however, due to health problems, she had to interrupt the collaboration with her supervisor at stanford. unexpectedly, regner had a heart attack that made her suspend her visiting research at stanford. “i was there by myself and had a heart attack. i had to interrupt my research. my husband came to the usa to take me back home. as soon as we landed at the airport, we headed straight away to the institute of cardiology. i then underwent coronary bypass surgery” quadros and wolfart 2008. regner retired from ufrgs in 2002. about a year later, she took a position as a full professor at the centro de ciências humanas of universidade do vale do rio dos sinos (unisinos). it was there that she began her research project, “reconstructing the argumentation of on the origin of species: a study of the strategies of scientific rationality (language and praxis in the constitution of science)”. to put it in a nutshell, regner investigated the cognitive role played by the resource of metaphor in science as a process and product of the framing of scientific knowledge, having as an example the darwinian theory of natural selection. for her, to assign explanatory power and foundational capacity to metaphors meant to tackle the traditional rationalist dichotomy between logic and rhetoric. in this vein, the brazilian philosopher kept loyal to that feyerabendian understanding, i. e., that progress in knowledge often involves the use of “irrational” procedures, namely, procedures that are not “argumentative” in any way (against method, 1993, 3rd. ed. chap. 1, pp. 15-16). accordingly, anna regner included argumentation theory in the list of her teaching activities at unisinos. she also became a member of the research group filosofia e história da ciência of instituto latino-americano de estudos avançados (ileaufrgs) in 2013. regner spearheaded a number of research groups in history and philosophy of science in brazil as well as abroad. two of them should be included and pointed out in any list, namely, associação brasileira de filosofia e história da biologia (abfhib) and associação brasileira de história da ciência (sbhc). in addition, one of the most important of her initiatives was her participation in the foundation of the associação de filosofia e história das ciências do cone sul (afhic). afhic has ever since been instrumental in consolidating interchanges among researchers philosophers, scientists, historians and sociologists of science in neighboring countries of south brazil. history and philosophy of science in the south cone (lorenzano, p., martins, l. a.-c. p., a. c. regner (eds.). london: college publications, 2013) is the work that better epitomizes the importance of this initiative. as for editorial work, regner was responsible for founding the journal episteme: filosofia e história das ciências em revista in 1996. she also worked as chief editor of the collection “filosofia e ciência” of unisinos press as well as on the editorial board of a number of journals in brazil and abroad. last but not least, regner promoted, both as organizer as well as coordinator, a number of scientific events, resulting in important publications, such as a filosofia e a ciência redesenham horizontes (anna carolina regner e luiz rohden. – são leopoldo, editora unisinos, 2005.) and ecos de darwin (adriano naves de brito, anna carolina k. p. regner. – são leopoldo, rs: ed. unisinos, 2012). obituary: anna carolina krebs pereira regner luiz abrahão 5 regner’s works, covering a wide range of subjects, were published in several different languages. i would like to highlight here only few books, book chapters, and papers. (a) on the philosophical aspects of the darwinian theory and the life sciences – (1) charles darwin, notas de viagem: a tessitura social no pensamento de um naturalista (porto alegre: est/grafosul, 1988. v. 1. 92 p.), (2) o conceito de natureza em a origem das espécies (história, ciência e saúde – manguinhos, rio de janeiro, brasil, v. viii, n. 3, p. 689-712, 2001.), (3) “the correspondence of charles darwin 1864, vol. 12” (in: hsps, vol.33, part 2, p. 406. historical studies for the physical and biological sciences, u.c. berkeley (california), v. 33, n. part 2, p. 406-406, 2003.), (4) “the correspondence of charles darwin, volume 13: 1865. supplement 1822-1864” (historical studies for the physical and biological sciences, u. c. berkeley (eua), v. 34, p. 400, 2004.); and (5) ciências da vida: estudos filosóficos e históricos (campinas: afhic, 2006). (b) on the scientific rationality and the philosophy of paul feyerabend – (1) “feyerabend/lakatos: adeus à razão ou construção de uma nova racionalidade? (in: portocarrero, vera (org.). filosofia, história e sociologia das ciências 1: abordagens contemporâneas. rio de janeiro, 1994, v. 1, p. 103-131.); (2) “feyerabend e o pluralismo metodológico” (caderno catarinense de ensino de física, florianópolis, v. 13, n.3, p. 231-247, 1996.); and (3) “uma nova racionalidade para a ciência?” (in: boaventura de sousa santos. (org.). conhecimento prudente para uma vida decente. são paulo, 2004, p. 291-324.). the interface between rhetoric, argumentation theory and scientific rationality was a significant epistemological concern in these and other works by regner. a systematic reconstruction of the body of work by this important brazilian philosopher is an endeavor yet to be done. i met prof. anna regner in person around 2004. i had previously read with great interest her papers on paul feyerabend’s philosophy before we begin a fruitful email exchange. as a result of this exchange, regner was invited for the composition of my master’s thesis committee in philosophy, entitled “paul feyerabend’s incommensurability thesis” (2009). i keep up to this day the notes of her inquiring on the occasion of my master’s thesis defense. it was also due to this collaboration with her that i ended up publishing in 2014 a selection of papers by paul hoyningen-huene on thomas kuhn and paul feyerabend translated into portuguese and published by unisinos press. i met her afterwards at several conferences. she invited me in 2014 to participate in a roundtable discussion on feyerabend’s philosophy at the xiv simpósio internacional ihu – revoluções tecnocientíficas, culturas, indivíduos e sociedades. it was on this occasion that we realized we had another interest in common: dogs. regner was especially cheerful when talking about her three dogs, two labradors and one border collie dog (not quite a purebred border collie, as she used to quip). she was also fond of gardening and became fascinated with plants over time. we met again when i defended my doctoral thesis, “paul feyerabend’s global pluralism”, in 2015. i showed her on the occasion a cd, stories from paolino’s tapes, with audio recordings of feyerabend singing operas and citing poems. regner was definitely an enthusiastic popularizer of feyerabend’s philosophy in brazil. the number of readers of feyerabend in brazil influenced, directly or indirectly, by regner is massive. we all learned with her that feyerabend was a dynamic thinker whose philosophy invited to overcome old-fashioned dichotomies (such as rationality/ irrationality). regner passed away on january 31, 2020. regner’s contribution, always with great enthusiasm, in congresses, seminars, and other academic events worldwide used to be captivating for every participant. she was a professor, a writer, and a researcher, but, above all, a brazilian philosopher held in high regard by her peers across, unfortunately, a maledominated academic field, for her competence and capabilities. having been raised in a catholic family, she did not accept that human beings are the result of an especial act of divine creation, but, nevertheless, she beseeched for tolerance. she did not live long enough to witness the mismanagement of the current federal brazilian administration in dealing with obituary: anna carolina krebs pereira regner luiz abrahão 6 the covid pandemic. however, she did leave us, by means of her oeuvre, a lesson about how to deal with denialism and religious fundamentalism, namely, by advancing more rhetorical skills, and less argumentative discussions. anna regner, patrícia kauark-leite and renan springer de freitas. belo horizonte, brazil. february 20, 2009 mauro l. condé and luiz abrahão (above); osvaldo pessoa-jr., anna regner and patrícia kauark-leite (below). belo horizonte, brazil, july 15, 2015 acknowledgments i thank prof. gustavo rodrigues rocha for his comments and translation of this obituary paper. obituary: anna carolina krebs pereira regner luiz abrahão 7 references araújo, aldo mellender de. anna carolina krebs pereira regner, transcendendo os limites da filosofia: recordações. boletim de história e filosofia da biologia, 8 (2), jun. 2014. online version: <http://abfhib.org/boletim/boletim-hfb-14-n1-mar-2020.html#secao3>. accessed in 04/oct/2020. brito, adriano naves de and anna carolina. 2012. ecos de darwin. são leopoldo: ed. unisinos. caldeira, ana maria de andrade. 2020. nota de falecimento: anna carolina krebs pereira regner (1947-2020). boletim de história e filosofia da biologia 8 (2). online version: <http://abfhib.org/boletim/boletim-hfb-14-n1-mar-2020.html#secao1>. accessed in 04/oct/2020. quadros, bruna e wolfart, graziela. 2008. anna carolina krebs pereira regner (entrevista). ihu online. (257). online version: <http://www.ihuonline.unisinos.br/artigo/1788-ihu-reporter-60>. accessed in 04/oct/2020. martins, roberto de andrade. 2020. um depoimento pessoal sobre a professora anna carolina krebs pereira regner (1947-2020). boletim de história e filosofia da biologia 8 (2). online version: <http://abfhib.org/boletim/boletim-hfb-14-n1-mar-2020.html#secao2>. accessed in 04/oct/2020. regner, anna carolina and rohden, luiz. 2005. a filosofia e a ciência redesenham horizontes. são leopoldo: editora unisinos. regner, anna carolina. 1988. charles darwin, notas de viagem: a tessitura social no pensamento de um naturalista. porto alegre: est/grafosul. regner, anna carolina. 2001. o conceito de natureza em a origem das espécies. história, ciência e saúde – manguinhos 8 (3): 689-712. regner, anna carolina. 2003. the correspondence of charles darwin 1864, vol. 12. historical studies for the physical and biological sciences 33 (2): 406. regner, anna carolina. 2004. the correspondence of charles darwin, volume 13: 1865. supplement 1822-1864. historical studies for the physical and biological sciences (34): 400. regner, anna carolina. 2006. ciências da vida: estudos filosóficos e históricos. campinas: afhic. regner, anna carolina. 1994. feyerabend/lakatos: adeus à razão ou construção de uma nova racionalidade? in: portocarrero, vera (org.). filosofia, história e sociologia das ciências 1: abordagens contemporâneas. rio de janeiro. fiocruz. regner, anna carolina. 1996. feyerabend e o pluralismo metodológico. caderno catarinense de ensino de física 13 (3): 231-247. regner, anna carolina. 2004. uma nova racionalidade para a ciência? in: boaventura de sousa santos. (org.). conhecimento prudente para uma vida decente. são paulo, p. 291-324. rosa, russel terezinha dutra da. 2005. conversando com anna carolina regner. episteme (19): 9-20. microsoft word 4 campos lourenã§o layout 15 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 15-34 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2019 – this is an open access article special issue – women in sciences: historiography of science and history of science on the work of women in sciences and philosophy helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos1 erika lourenço2 abstract helena antipoff was one of the pioneers in the constitution of the fields of knowledge of educational psychology and special education in brazil. born in russia, antipoff received her education in paris and geneva. researches in the history of education and of psychology have revealed the innovative character of antipoff’s work as a researcher, as a professor and as a founder of different educational institutions in brazil, with a focus on educational and psychological care for children with disabilities or at social risk. her career is characterized by a sound scientific approach combined with a deep commitment to the right of children and youth to education and care. these directions can be associated with her scientific training in the sciences of education in a time of social turbulence and school reform, when many women became professionals in the field of education, trying to combine family, work and militant activity. keywords: helena antipoff; history of psychology; educational psychology; psychology of the exceptional; special education; women in science; women in the sciences of education received: 2 july 2018. reviewed 14 march 2019. accepted: 20 may 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction helena antipoff (1892-1974), a russian psychologist and educator, settled in brazil from 1929, played a role of great relevance in the establishment of areas of study and research in psychology and education in the country. she was educated in saint petersburg,3 paris, and 1 regina helena de freitas campos [orcid: 0000-0001-6228-7076] is a professor at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais) – faculty of education. address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: regihfc@terra.com.br 2 erika lourenço [orcid: 0000-0002-2681-3021] is a professor at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais) – department of psychology. address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: erikalourenco.mail@gmail.com 3 the name of the city of saint petersburg, in western russia, changed to petrograd (1914-1924) and later to leningrad (1924-1991). with the end of the communist regime, it reverted to the old name (le helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 16 geneva, and worked in institutions for the shelter and education of abandoned children, in a social-risk situation, in revolutionary russia between 1917 and 1924. subsequently, she was an assistant professor at the university of geneva (1927-1929), and in 1929, because of this work, she was invited to direct one of the first laboratories of pedagogical psychology established in brazil, linked to the teachers’ college in belo horizonte, capital of the state of minas gerais. in this position, in the following years, she participated actively in the movement to renovate the public school system of minas gerais and in the formation of educators and psychologists. she acted as professor, researcher and creator of educational institutions such as the pestalozzi societies of minas gerais and brazil, the educational complex of the rosário farm, in ibirité, minas gerais, and several other initiatives for the education of children with disabilities, and in the preparation of professors and specialists for special education, rural education and public education in general. in the psychology laboratory of the teachers’ college, the research carried out by antipoff and her students had the objective of describing the psychological and psychosocial characteristics of belo horizonte schoolchildren. the focus of the investigation were children’s ideals and interests, their cognitive and socio-affective development, and their life in the family and at school. the idea was that the knowledge of the child and the adolescent was necessary to best orientate educators in the educational process. this was inspired by the ideas of educational renovation defended by the doctor and psychologist édouard claparède (1879-1940), and his colleagues, the founders of the jean-jacques rousseau institute, a college of preparation in educational sciences founded in geneva, in 1912. the institutions whose creation was initiated and orientated by the russian educator in the years 1930-1940 – the pestalozzi society of minas gerais, and the pestalozzi society of brazil – , had the objective of caring for children and adolescents with deficiencies, particularly of those that presented deficiencies or problems of mental health, utilizing innovative methodologies, in harmony with the most advanced scientific discoveries of the time. in 1939, antipoff inaugurated the chair of psychology in the recently established faculty of philosophy, sciences and letters of the university of minas gerais, initiating her work of preparing educators at university level (alvim, 1954; haddad, 1988). in this position, she contributed to the university education of some of the members of the first generation of brazilian psychologists and helped to initiate the movement for the legal regulation of the profession in brazil.4 she also continued to expand the applications of psychology to education, as a psychologist herself and also through her students, who came to learn with her from diverse brazilian states, and also from other countries in latin america. new methods were taught in the education of children with disabilities or in the preparation of teachers for the public schools, both in rural and urban areas. in 1972, she became an emeritus professor at the faculty of education of the federal university of minas gerais for her outstanding contribution to the theory and practice of psychology and education and to the preparation of new generations. her work was characterised by a solid theoretical foundation, obtained in the studies in educational sciences that she did in europe, and by a concern in applying the knowledge in the resolution of the practical problems encountered in the process of institutionalisation of the public health and educational systems in brazil. her sensitivity to local culture helped her transcend frontiers and promote the development of institutions focused on the realization of the fundamental human rights of needy populations in a situation of social-risk, petit larousse illustré 2002, 1655). in this article, we shall use the original and current denomination of saint petersburg. 4 the movement for the legal regulation of the profession of psychologist and the establishment of university courses for the training of psychologists in brazil was initiated by educators, psychiatrists and other professional in the beginning of the 1950s and was successful with the approval of law 4119 in august 27, 1962. (brasil, 1962) helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 17 contributing to make her an outstanding leader in popular education, in special education, and in rural education in brazil (campos, 2010, 2012; lourenço, 2000) in this text, we shall accompany her professional trajectory using her own reports and those of the people who were closest to her, such as her son, the psychologist daniel antipoff (1919-2005), her husband, the russian writer viktor iretsky (1882-1936), and her friend and master from geneva, édouard claparède. we shall try to comprehend her courageous decisions in this web of personal and professional relationships where she made her way. we utilize as sources for the narrative the correspondence and writings published by the personalities in this fascinating story, affected by the extraordinary political events of the 20th century. among them, we single out the biography written by her son, the correspondence conducted with édouard claparède between 1915 and 1940, carefully organized and edited by martine ruchat of the university of geneva, and the correspondence between her and her husband viktor irestky during the years 1920-1930, recently found in moscow.5 (antipoff, d. 1975; ruchat 2010; iretsky to antipoff, h. unpublished manuscripts). also important are studies about the antipoff’s life and works in france, russia and switzerland during the difficult years of war and revolution in the early 20th century. (campos, 2010; ruchat, 2012; masolikova & sorokina, 2018) helena antipoff`s biography reveals important aspects in the experience of women who, like her, sought to combine family tasks with professional obligations throughout the 20th century, and who were also militants in the movements for educational reform, trying to make education more humanized and concerned with the rights of the children. the social and cultural transformations provoked by the accelerated industrialization and urbanization that occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries led many women to participate increasingly in the productive processes and to assume progressively the tasks of caring for and educating children and young people in the large mass education systems that were set up in several countries. institutions destined for the education of the very young, and primary and secondary education sprang up in the large cities and industrial areas, promoting the development of new methods and educational processes. in the middle of the population movements, the wars and revolutions, the progressive construction of the area of sciences in education and of a new education movement were also being organized (éducation nouvelle, in the francophone tradition, new education, in the anglo-saxon, reformpädagogik in the germanic countries). this multifaceted movement was born out of these new educational experiences that were being disseminated, transforming the ways of educating and promoting cultural standardization, as well as the listening and institutional care of children and young people. in recent years, much research has been done on the ideas that circulated worldwide from these educational innovations, and on the participation of women in their preparation (hameline, helmchen and oelkers 1992; haengelli-jenni 2012, 2015; droux and hoffstetter 2015; gutierrez, besse and prost 2012). studying the participation of women in the new education fellowship, founded in calais in 1921 by a group of educators and scientists of education interested in promoting educational renovation and peace through education, haengelli-jenni observed that belonging to the feminist movements and political networks and movements for the protection of childhood was a constant among them. it was through these networks and movements that the new pedagogical ideas were disseminated at the national and international levels (haengelli-jenni, 2015). in antipoff’s trajectory, we can see the tensions and the effects of these movements and transformations in the life and intellectual production of a woman who participated actively in building the new educational movement and the educational sciences, in europe 5 the authors wish to thank the historian marina sorokina and the psychologist natasha masolikova, of the solzenitcyn institute for studies on the russian diaspora, in moscow, for the precious information on the life of helena antipoff and viktor iretsky in russia and berlin, as well as for access to the correspondence between them during the years 1920-1930. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 18 and brazil, and who contributed to its dissemination and consolidation. in this article, we intend to provide evidence of the impact of this participation on her personal and professional life, and how her professional career was being moulded by these movements. as haengelli-jenni observed concerning the participants of the new education fellowship in the interwar period, helena antipoff also combined scientific activity with political militancy for educational reform in her work and by the attention to the rights of children and young people. they stress especially in antipoff’s case the adhesion to science as a means of adapting to diverse environments and cultures, utilising scientific language as a lingua franca in the different countries in which she acted professionally, making of the sciences of education a passport for the building of a productive and successful career. education in europe helena antipoff was born in grodno, in russia, in 1892. her father was a general in the russian army, and her mother was from a military family. they lived in saint petersburg until 1909. in this city, an important cultural and intellectual centre of the tsarist empire, helena was educated at an elite college, learning to play the piano and to speak french, german and english. while she attended the teacher’s college, she was a witness to the value then attributed to scientific activity by the russian elites. in 1904, the scientist ivan pavlov received the nobel prize for physiology for his work on conditioned reflexes; the saint petersburg psychoneurological institute was founded in 1907. the intense cultural life of the city awakened an interest in science, music and literature. at the same time, the young woman was witness to the social conflicts and political struggles that swept russia at the start of the 20th century – struggles against the absolute power of the tsar, and in favour of installing a constitutional monarchy in the country, with a division of powers between the tsar and parliament (antipoff, d. 1975). the atmosphere of political and social insecurity and the signals that a revolutionary movement was about to break out in russia led the antipoff family to move to paris, in 1909. the general stayed in saint petersburg, and sofia antipova, the mother, took the three daughters to france. while sofia gave private classes in the russian language, in her own apartment in the paris montparnasse district, helena decided to continue her studies at the university of paris, the famous sorbonne. after a period of some months in england working as a young lady’s governess, and afterward in an institution for children with neurological difficulties and emotional problems, she commenced her studies in medicine at the university of paris soon becoming attracted to psychology, while attending the seminars of the collège de france.6 antipoff has recognized the influence of the seminars in her background, especially those of henri bergson (1859-1941), because of their phenomenological approach to human consciousness, and pierre janet (1859-1947) because of their functional approach in psychology. other strong influences on antipoff’s education in france came from her participation in the research undertaken by alfred binet (1857-1911) and théodore simon (1873-1961) with the intelligence tests, invented at the time in the sorbonne psychological laboratory itself, which was directed by binet. these were fully tested in the laboratory on school-age children of an elementary school located in the rue grange-aux-belles, in paris, the first pedagogical and psychological laboratory established in france. by means of the tests, binet and simon went deeper into the study of the causes of school failure in primary schools in paris to recommend forms of treatment and education for children considered 6 the collège de france, founded by françois i in 1530, is a teaching and research institution where the courses are public, with no examinations or the granting of diplomas. these courses, ministered by specialists and researchers of advanced level, are considered as complements to the higher education ministered in the faculties (le petit larousse illustré 2002, 1252). helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 19 retarded, complying with a request from the french ministry of education. it was to evaluate the cognitive capacity of children that the two built the first scale for the measurement of intelligence, in 1905. the scale consisted of a set of questions, graded by age, so that for each age there corresponded a set of typical replies. the tests were reviewed in 1908 and 1911 when the concept of mental age was included for the first time (binet 1920; nicolas 2013). antipoff was an intern in the laboratory of the rue grange-aux-belles in 1912, under the direction of simon (binet having died a few months previously) and participated in the standardization of the scales for the parisian school population. during the apprenticeship, she became familiar with the techniques for the validation of tests of mental level, with the statistical analysis of the different items of the scale, and with the study of the relationship between verbal development and motor skills. at this time, this laboratory attracted researchers from various parts of the world, interested in studies on intelligence. there antipoff was introduced to the swiss doctor and psychiatrist édouard claparède, professor at the university of geneva, where he founded the jean-jacques rousseau institute, for “introducing students to the use of scientific methods necessary for the advance of child psychology and instruction techniques”, collaborating in the development of educational sciences (claparède 1931, 267). claparède went to paris to recruit students for studies at the rousseau institute and antipoff was invited to be part of the swiss group. her son, daniel, describes the meeting of the then student of medicine in paris with the professor who she was later to call “mon patron”, my master, throughout her life: one afternoon, a neurologist, professor at the university of geneva, came to visit the laboratory. he was trying to organize an institute of the “educational sciences” in that city. he had already visited belgium and other countries, to recruit professors and students. seeing the work of those “emeritus interns”, who did not receive7 any remuneration, after months of activity, invites two of them: aline giroud and helena antipoff herself. (...) it is thanks to this casual meeting that simon’s intern got to know the eminent swiss psychologist édouard claparède. (antipoff, d. 1975, 40) the contact with claparède was crucial for the development of antipoff’s scientific and humanistic view of the relationship between intelligence and education. accepting the invitation, she left for geneva and decided to make herself an educator, having received her diploma from the rousseau institute. she embraced the principles of functional education recommended by claparède, who affirmed that the educational process should take the interests of the children as the basis for their activities in school. in this approach, the purpose of education would be the development of intelligence and creativity. it was supposed that intelligence would be developed as the students had the opportunity to manipulate the environment and to seek active solutions for the problems raised by them over the educational process. from this perspective, denominated currently constructivist, education, instead of depending on mental skills already existing in children, would become the process itself of building the skills. the methods of functional education and of the genevan “active school” were developed at the maison des petits, an experimental school linked to the rousseau institute, where antipoff acted as one of the first professors under the supervision of claparède (hameline 1996; ruchat 2010). the political situation on the european continent, at this time, however, was very complicated. the first world war, which had started in 1914, continued to provoke conflict and immense losses. the war had affected russia, where in addition to the struggle against germany, was also suffering from internal movements of the struggle against the tsarist regime. in receiving the news that her father, the general vladimir antipoff, had been gravely 7 in this case “perceive” means to receive payment. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 20 wounded in her native country, in 1916, the educator decided to absent herself from geneva and, after briefly passing through paris, said goodbye to her mother and sisters and returned to russia to see her father. after finding him and taking care of his recovery, she sent him to sinferopol, in the crimea, a small town with a pleasant climate on the black sea, where he continued to convalesce in the house of relatives.8 helena then returned to saint petersburg, where she started work in an institution for orphaned or abandoned children who had lost their families in the disorganization in the country following the war and the internal conflicts, and were living on the city streets. to shelter them, the government organized hostels and educational centres (antipoff, h. 1924, 1931). in the medical-pedagogical post of petersburg the task of the psychologist consisted in identifying and examining the children sheltering in the orphanage, and planning their reeducation. in these exams the binet-simon tests were used, with which she was already familiar, and also the lazurski technique for studying children’s personalities, called “natural experimentation” because it included the observation of children in their natural environment, to avoid the artificial situation of the laboratory or the tests. it was due to these studies that antipoff started the preparation of the concept of “civilized intelligence” to describe the intelligence measured by the tests, a concept that she was to develop later on in her work in brazil. the fact is that, although the performance of the abandoned children in the intelligence tests, or those in a street situation, was lower than that of children in normal conditions of life, it was possible to observe, in practice, their “incredible capacity to deal with the concrete problems of life”, as she stated several years later, in relation to the research carried out in brazil. thus, the limited results obtained in the tests could be better explained, according to the educator, by problems deriving from the instability of their conditions of life, by the lack of a family life and troubles in schooling, that is, by questions of a social and cultural origin (antipoff, h. 1931). thus, the educator started to operate a synthesis between the psychology learned in paris and geneva and the socio-cultural perspective then being developed in soviet russia. the time she spent in her native land, however, was very troubled. in 1917 the communist revolution occurred producing great social and political upheaval. daniel antipoff describes the situation thus: october 1917 is the date of the insurrection of the masses and the russian revolution. it is the end of the tsarist regime that for centuries had dominated russia. it is also the date of great violence and horror on the part of the wronged and starving plebeians. russia will still take many months to raise itself from the chaos and complete disorganization; years will be needed before the old regime can accept the impositions of the communists; long periods will be needed for the supporters of the new regime to make themselves respected in their new goals. (antipoff, d. 1975, 70) moreover, it was precisely at this time that helena antipoff became a mother, thus assuming responsibility for a child in this uncertain and turbulent condition in the country. in 1918 she had joined the writer and journalist viktor iretsky, whom she had met in petersburg, when he had visited the institution where she worked. from this union, in march 1919, their only son, daniel, was born. the first years of the boy’s life seem to have been difficult, food was scarce, he suffered greatly from rickets and was sick. a peasant woman, tatiana vassilevna, who had lost an also sick son, ended up saving daniel, suckling him at his mother’s request. when the wet nurse no longer had any milk, viktor and helena decided to live with the son and a helper, olga, in 8 her son daniel antipoff divulged this version of antipoff’s return to russia. up to the present the version has not been entirely corroborated by russian sources, according to information received by the author from the historian marina sorokina. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 21 an abandoned house in the country, in the neighbourhood of petersburg, obtaining food with fishers and smallholders in the region. helena continued her work for some time at the medical-pedagogical post in petersburg. viktor iretsky was quite a well-known journalist, one of the founders of the writers’ house in petersburg, founded in 1918 as a syndicate of writers and intellectuals to represent them in their relationships with the revolutionary power. at the end of the civil war that followed the communist revolution, in 1921, and with the bolshevik victory, the house started to be seen as an ideological opposition to the government. the authorities decided that all opponents of the new regime should exile themselves and, to oblige them to leave the country, a group of intellectuals (including iretsky) was arrested on 4 september 1922, and sent into exile in berlin, in germany. antipoff even protested against the exile of her husband, in a letter to the head of the secret police in petersburg, but this manifestation only resulted in putting off iretsky’s journey for a month, and he left russia in fact on 15 december 1922.9 with the exile of her husband, helena had accepted an invitation to work in another medical-pedagogical institution located in the city of viatka, in russia. at the end of 1924, however, the husband sent some money to pay for the journey of the wife and son daniel to germany. she then definitively left russia, with an authorization signed by netchaiev, professor of pedagogical psychology at the university of petersburg, on the pretext of visiting centres of education for abandoned children in germany. antipoff never returned to russia. however, during the years of the revolution, she had aggregated this extraordinary experience of applying the knowledge of psychology in institutions of social education to her intellectual makeup that would profoundly mark her work in the future, especially her work in brazil, as we shall see. from exile in geneva to the invitation to lecture in brazil (1925-1929) in berlin, antipoff tried to resume the contact with claparède, by correspondence, sending news of her experience in the soviet union, of the situation of psychology and education in the country, after the revolution, and asking him about the possibility of returning to geneva to complete her studies, under the orientation of the master. she explains her work in russia to her former professor thus: the two years i worked under your direction allowed me later, returning to my native country, to join several russian establishments, for the psychological study of children. in spite of the revolution, the hunger and the general disorder that have characterized recent years in russia, the institutions of pedagogical research are functioning satisfactorily and have garnered rich empirical material. for my part, i was able to study, in different laboratories in saint petersburg and viatka, during the last five years, more than a thousand children, mainly orphans, that the government has put in homes for normal and abnormal children. the children were submitted to different psychological examinations and treated by various methods of pedagogical investigation. (antipoff, h. to claparède 18.10.1924; cited by ruchat 2010, 4) in the letters sent to the genevan psychologist, antipoff adopts a position of neutrality in relation to the bolsheviks. she observes that her work in the soviet union possessed a humanitarian as well as a scientific character, and sends news on the work of psychological observation of children and adolescents utilizing the method of “natural experimentation” 9 information supplied to the author by the historian marina sorokina. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 22 elaborated by the russian psychologist alexandre lazursky, celebrated in russia for his research of individual and characterological psychology. about the method, antipoff explains: this method, situated between pure observation and the psychological experimentation of the laboratory, possesses the advantages of one and the other without the defects, which are the imprecision and the part played by chance, on the one hand, and the artificial milieu as well as the artificial problems, on the other. this method, far from disappearing with the death of its author, currently encounters wide application in russian laboratories of individual and child psychology. in addition, the researches of lazursky have been very useful for school programmes, as almost all the teaching material has been analysed from the point of view of the psychological functions that each of them exercises in the child. (antipoff, h. to claparède 18.10.1924; cited by ruchat 2010, 5) after the description of the experience in russia and the situation of an exiled person with no work in germany, helena proposes to claparède the publication of articles of her authorship on soviet psychology and education. claparède replies positively to the proposals of his former pupil, and she is elated with the news received from geneva: i cannot tell you how happy i was to receive your news in such a beautiful letter. reading it in the post office i couldn’t stop myself giving little jumps of joy besides my five-year-old son. my son, seeing me do this, started to do the same. the people (present there) i believe must have been asking themselves if we had not gone mad. i thank you from the bottom of my heart for the help you have offered me. (antipoff, h. to claparède 8.11.1924; cited by ruchat 2010, 7) effectively the professor had invited helena to return to geneva as his assistant, commenting on how she had always demonstrated great enthusiasm for university activities. the student accepts the invitation, and comments about her situation in berlin and her professional plans: in berlin, i did not put down very deep roots. i collaborate in the direction of a russian kindergarten, and put a lot of energy into this, the school is good, but the pedagogical work itself interests me much less than what you are proposing for me – because it is happiness itself to be able to be in the institute again and work near you, under your direction. (antipoff, h. to claparède 19.9.1925; cited by ruchat 2010, 15) about her husband and son, she states: my husband will separate from us with much regret, but, in the end, will give me his blessing. life in berlin is becoming daily more difficult and expensive. regarding my little daniel, he will come with me to switzerland, naturally. at the moment, he is six and a half. i shall ask you, my dear sir, should my journey become reality, that you recommend a new school not far from geneva where he could be accepted as a boarder (should my means permit it). so that, free from all domestic concerns i shall be able to concentrate my whole time and effort on one thing only – my work at the institute! (antipoff, h. to claparède 19.9.1925; cited by ruchat 2010, 16) one sees, therefore, that antipoff accepts with satisfaction the invitation to become the pedagogical assistant of claparède. she calculates that the work in geneva will allow her to grow professionally more than in berlin, as well as to give daniel a more advanced education, helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 23 from the pedagogical point of view. this school that she wishes for her son should follow the “new school” orientation. thus, soon after she manages to exchange her russian passport for a nansen10 passport, granted by the league of nations. but the difficulties are great for obtaining an entry visa into switzerland, where the authorities fear the entry of foreigners who would end up by settling there permanently. only on 21 november 1925 does claparède receive a communication from the swiss police department charged with foreigners conceding the visa for his future assistant, the concession being conditioned to the immediate presentation of the return visa to germany and the guarantee deposit of 2,000 swiss francs. on receiving the news, antipoff is disappointed and almost gives up the idea of the journey, advising claparède in the following terms: unfortunately, the bolsheviks took everything we had and neither i nor my husband will be capable of depositing the gigantic amount that is required of us. i asked a staff member (of the embassy) if he thought it was possible to reduce the guarantee or even suppress it altogether. he replied very seriously that the berne resolutions were incontestable. (antipoff, h. to claparède 26.11.1925; cited by ruchat 2010, 22) the professor also tried to convince the swiss authorities to remove the requirement of the guarantee, without success. he then wrote to the police department in charge of foreigners, making himself responsible for the payment. in a long letter, he guaranteed the honour of his former pupil and explained the difficulty of finding swiss candidates for the post of assistant to the psychology laboratory offered to antipoff, because of the low salary. and he concluded saying that the invitation to a foreigner was justified because, in those circumstances, her qualifications recommended her to the university of geneva. thus, antipoff finally succeeds in transferring to geneva in january 1926, remaining there until 1929. claparède helped her to find a person who could put her up and take care of her son while she was working in the laboratory, a russian woman living in geneva, madame baranoff. the idea of daniel boarding in a “new” school, outside the city, was put off for later. during this new stay in geneva, antipoff lectured psychology and collaborated in the laboratory, carrying out research on the development of intelligence, the relationship between the higher mental processes and motor skills and the development of moral judgment in children. at the time, her articles, published in the archives de psychologie, (a scientific journal published by claparède), and the intermédiaire des éducateurs, (a journal published by the rousseau institute, aimed at educators), were characterized by a concern with the study of children in their natural environment. an attempt was made to know their forms of interaction with the environment, physical as well as socio-cultural, and on the development of motor skills. the emphasis on the relation between psychomotricity and intellectual development seems to be part of the inheritance of the soviet period, because russian thinking at this time accorded considerable value to the association between manual and intellectual work. later, in brazil, antipoff was to comment that the human being “thinks with his hands”, showing the need to educate children and adolescents by supplying them with opportunities to exercise their motor skills in the pedagogical workshops of the pestalozzi society (campos 2010; borges 2015). at the end of the 1920s, the jean jacques rousseau institute was already known worldwide. claparède’s book called the psychology of the child and experimental pedagogy (claparède, 1926) had been translated into several languages and geneva was already a centre known for its studies on child psychology and its active methods in education (hofstetter, 2010). so that when the government of the state of minas gerais, in brazil, decided to create a teachers’ college for the preparation of specialists and educational 10 the nansen passport was an international document conceded to stateless persons, allowing them to travel between countries (ruchat 2010, 15). helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 24 managers in belo horizonte, the state capital, a mission was sent to geneva, at the end of 1928. its purpose was to invite specialists in psychology and education to lecture brazilian educators in the new institution. helena antipoff decided to accept the offer of a two-year contract in belo horizonte, starting in august 1929. the decision, however, was not easy. claparède did not agree readily to the journey and offered her the possibility of collaborating in setting up a branch of the rousseau institute in cairo, egypt. antipoff was thrown off balance by this. egypt would allow her to take her son, where he could continue his studies in a french school, but the commitment had already been assumed with the government of minas gerais. she was not thinking of taking her son to brazil, and therefore sent the boy to an experimental school that had been started by a colleague in the rousseau institute, marguerite soubeyran, in dieulefit, in the south of france – the school came to be called beauvallon. the project of having daniel boarding in a “new” school was starting to be realized (delpal, 2016). on the other hand, the brazilian salary would allow her, in addition to helping with the payments of soubeyran’s school, to also send help to her mother and sister in paris. all this was explained to the “patron”, by letter, as claparède was in cairo, setting up the new institute. another motive that seems to have influenced the decision to accept the invitation of the minas gerais government and undertake a journey to a far-off and unknown country was the plan to acquire a new homeland for the family. her husband, still exiled in berlin, wrote to her suggesting that she try to take out brazilian citizenship quickly. according to viktor, the threat of another war was already taking shape in europe and he would not like his son daniel to become a french citizen, as he would run the risk of being called up to the front (iretsky to antipoff, h. 14.6.1929 (?), 15.01.1930).11 antipoff herself commented, in a letter to her husband, soon after her arrival in brazil, that she was thinking of buying a small farm in which he would be occupied. unfortunately, this plan did not materialise, probably due to viktor’s health problems, and he died in 1936. thus, after some days on holiday with her family, helena antipoff undertook alone the long journey to brazil, arriving there on 6 august 1929. in the port of santos she was received by the psychologist, also of russian origin, leon walther,12 and by professor manuel bergström lourenço filho, and his assistant noemi rudolfer. after visiting the psychology laboratory directed by lourenço filho in the são paulo model teachers’ college and other educational institutions in the brazilian metropolis, she resumed her journey to belo horizonte. there she was received by one of the parties responsible for the teaching reform that was then being undertaken, professor mário casassanta, general inspector of public education, and by the director of the teachers’ college, amélia de castro monteiro. she then took up her activities at the front of the psychology laboratory of the teachers’ college of belo horizonte, the installation of which had started with the arrival of other foreign specialists, such as théodore simon, in 1928, and léon walther, in 1929. after several renewals of the contract, throughout the 1930s, and a brief passage through the ministry of health, in rio de janeiro, as director of the national department of the child, in the 1940s, antipoff decided to stay definitively in brazil, and in 1952 took out brazilian citizenship (antipoff, d. 1975). 11 the authors would like to thank marina sorokina and natália masolikova for sending the letters of iretsky to antipoff and antipoff to iretsky. they were found in a file in moscow’s national archives by these researchers. in the first, the date is not clear. however, as the text requests antipoff to send a telegram from rio, and she arrived in rio on 6 august 1929, it can be deduced that the letter was written in 1929. 12 léon walther (1890-1963), russian, licentiate in letters from the university of saint petersburg and in law from the university of geneva, specialized in work psychology and professional orientation, and, through the indication of antipoff, rendered services to the government of minas gerais for three months, during the first semester of 1929. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 25 her work as a psychologist and educator in brazil (1929-1974) in the first letter she sent to claparède after arriving in brazil, antipoff recounts her first impressions of the country and of the city: the beauty of the city, appropriately called “belo horizonte” (meaning ‘beautiful skyline’, because of the mountains that surround it), inhabited by people who were a little suspicious on the first contact, the expectation of political problems that were looming – the revolution of 1930. about this, she commented to the master: the state of minas gerais is particularly agitated because its president13 is the head of a liberal alliance; together with another two states, they are against 19 others in brazil. there is therefore little chance that the liberal alliance will be the winner. the new government can turn the politics of the country on its head, compared to what it is today, and then it will be goodbye to all foreign missions and perhaps goodbye also to the contracts signed by the former government. (antipoff, h. to claparède 15.9.1929; cited by ruchat 2010, 52) insecure about the future of brazil and far from her son, she describes in the following section, the students of the teachers’ college where she was to lecture: 150 women and young people from minas were taken from their homes and the schools where they taught by government decree, and made to come to belo horizonte to attend the teacher’s college. mothers were not spared and were separated from their children. the course lasts two years with only one month of holidays, when they can return to their homes, in the interior of the country. in the school they receive teaching in psychology, the methodology of their mother tongue, arithmetic, natural sciences, drawing, modelling and physical education. (antipoff, h. to claparède 15.9.1929; cited by ruchat 2010, 52) however, antipoff appears to be charmed with the young women, whom later she was to call her “bees”. it was they who would gather the data (as the bees gather the pollen to produce honey) to be worked on in the psychology laboratory, with the objective of understanding the child in minas gerais better and thus being able to orientate schools regarding their education: our students are, in their majority, charming and extremely beautiful. i think that it is in brazil that one finds the most beautiful women in the world. beautiful and gracious, but also intelligent, with a quick understanding. they are good mothers, faithful wives and very good educators, in the family, or the schools. in the primary schools only the women teach; the men, at least in minas, do not. (antipoff, h. to claparède 15.9.1929; cited by ruchat 2010, 52) the teacher’s college had been set up by the government of minas gerais in 1928, as part of a wide-ranging reform of education undertaken in the state to facilitate access to it, improve the preparation of the teachers of elementary level and rationalize the academic and administrative processes. this reform was associated with other educational reforms promoted in several brazilian states during the 1920s, with similar objectives. the contribution of psychologists for setting up the new policies was highly valued. using the information obtained in the literature circulated about the new education movements in 13 the governor of the state, at the time, was called ‘president’. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 26 europe and of progressive education, in america, the leaders of the new school movement, in brazil, recommended the use of tests for measuring intelligence – the famous intellectual quotient (iq) tests. this had the purpose of organizing the “homogeneous” classes at the primary level and improving the selection of students for secondary and higher level by basing it on their intellectual capacities. in addition, the changes realized in the educational system reinforced the importance of having a new well-prepared generation, in terms of academic and civic skills, to fill positions of leadership in a society undergoing a process of modernization and urbanization (o’neill 1975; wirth 1977). in minas gerais, the educational reform of 1927, among other initiatives, proposed the significant expansion of the number of teachers’ schools for the preparation of educators and the establishment of the teachers college for the preparation of personnel qualified for planning and managing the educational system. the discipline “educational psychology” was instituted as part of the regular curriculum of teachers schools, and, in the teachers’ college, the laboratory of psychology was established. helena antipoff was contracted to lecture psychology and pedagogy, and to direct the laboratory, where the research would be carried out on the psychological and psychosocial characteristics of local children, helping the schools in the organization of the homogeneous classes, through the research and standardisation of iq tests (peixoto, 1981; cirino and miranda, 2015). in taking over the classes at the teacher’s college, and the direction of the laboratory, the educator soon commenced a programme of research on the ideals and interests of the local children. she had the idea of organizing a museum of the child, with data on the physical and psychosocial development of the smaller inhabitants of the city, relevant for parents and educators. about these first activities, she expressed herself thus to claparède: my ‘pet scheme’ – the museum of the child – seems to have interested the public and the powers that be, and i believe that it is going to become a reality. we have just carried out an inquiry about the ideals and interests with nearly a thousand children of belo horizonte. this is truly a psychological and social tool, revealing at a glance the mentality of the people. these inquiries carried out systematically every 20 years will demonstrate well the march of culture. this march will not always be progressive; there will be more or less durable halts and retreats, i believe (antipoff, h. to claparède 9.12.1929; cited by ruchat 2010, 63) effectively, the first report of the inquiry into the ideals and interests of students of the fourth primary grade was quickly published (antipoff, h. 1930). in this survey, both the influence of the genevan “active school” and the historical-cultural soviet approach can be seen. antipoff was concerned in investigating the thoughts of the children that the schools in minas gerais should adapt themselves to. the small questionnaire replied to by the students of the local public schools focused on the preferred tasks at home and school, preferred toys and books, adult models and plans for the future. the results were compared with those obtained in other countries and reveal the influence of the social and cultural environment on the children’s formation. antipoff observed that the ideas and interests of the brazilian children seemed less diversified than those of their foreign counterparts. the author interpreted these results considering that the students who replied to the questionnaire came, in large part, from a modest social milieu, in which family life was the predominant experience in their lives. she also observed the influence of schooling on these results: brazilian children had fewer daily hours of classes than european and north american children. how could the school enrich and diversify the students’ experiences? in her opinion, the intimate tendencies of the children could only develop in a sufficiently diversified environment, in which “various types of children will encounter the destiny adequate for their nature” (antipoff, h. 1930, 42). helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 27 these basic premises were to guide her subsequent work in brazil: on the one hand, the concern with the impact of the social environment on the modelling of the cognitive and psychosocial characteristics of the children; on the other, the idea that the schools could promote the development of the intellectual, physical and socio-affective capacities of the children. continuing with the laboratory research, she studied the curve of the mental development of the local children and adolescents through the application of instruments such as the binet-simon scale, the goodenough draw-a-person test, and others. the objectives of these studies were: 1) to investigate the mental development of school-age children, by age group; 2) to compare the mental development of brazilian school-age children with the results obtained in other countries; 3) to investigate how the mental development can vary because of the influence of the socio-cultural environment. in these investigations, the impact of society and culture on the development of cognitive skills was examined more deeply, a theme that increasingly was to influence her work in brazil. based on the definitions of intelligence proposed by binet and especially by claparède, as “the capacity to resolve new problems by thinking” (claparède 1933, 3), antipoff observed that the intelligence tests dealt only imperfectly with the skills of comprehension and invention implicit in such a definition. in her opinion, the results of the mental tests should be considered, more modestly, has an evaluation of the general level of mental development of a given population. this could include the skills of concentrated attention, observation, logical reasoning, and a certain “fluidity of thought”. but this was only part of the problem. the other important question was to know if this intelligence could be considered natural, that is, dependent only on the innate dispositions and age for its development. for antipoff, intelligence was a combination of innate dispositions, intellectual as well as of character, and of the environment in which the subject was educated, thus including the conditions of life and culture, and the experience itself of the child in school. according to this reasoning, antipoff worked out her definition for the capacities measured by intelligence tests: for her, they would be the mental skills polished by the action of society and culture, which she denominated “civilized intelligence”. in this definition, she recalled her experience with abandoned children in russia, as well as the observation of street children in brazil. she had observed that these children, although presenting lower scores when submitted to intelligence measuring scales, could not be considered less endowed. of course, they lacked a certain capacity for concentrating their voluntary attention, on the one hand, and on the other, to achieve a state of abstraction that made possible conceptual thinking. however, in the particular domain, stimulated by an immediate interest, and by spontaneous attention, they were successful in working out complex strategies of survival in adverse conditions. the investigation of the mental development of the school-age children in belo horizonte allowed an empirical check of the precision of the antipoff concept of “civilized intelligence”. results of tests applied to the school children in belo horizonte demonstrated that, on average, the performance of the local children was inferior to european or north american subjects of the same age group. they also suggested quite a strong association between the socio-economic conditions and performance in the tests. to confirm this correlation, the average iq scores were compared for each school, which led to the conclusion that the “classification of each school corresponded approximately to the level of economic and social wellbeing of the district in which the school was located” (antipoff, h. 1931, 191). as a conclusion, antipoff observed that the iq tests should be utilized with care in the evaluation of the general level of children’s mental development, but they could be considered a reasonable instrument for evaluating the level of the social and economic wellbeing of a determined population. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 28 in addition to the studies of mental development, the educator proposed a series of studies that she denominated “escolológicos”.14 she commented that, among the educational sciences, one dedicated to the study of the school as an educational institution was lacking, in all its complexity: building, organization of the work, management, teaching methods, characteristics of teachers and students, the flow of activities, results of the teaching. she explained this new initiative to claparède in the following way: with the second year students, we are undertaking a magistral pedagogical study in the schools. each pair of students has under its responsibility a complete study of a school class. the monograph of a class (...) should comprehend the global and detailed study of the whole life within this class, conceived as a society whose conduct is determined by all the physical and psychical conditions possible: this study, comprehends the study of the school building, the furniture, all the hygienic and material conditions; all the influences that emanate from the master, from the regime and the school method; the interactions between the children, the survey of the types of children – what is done from the individual study of each one (physical, social, psychological study) (antipoff, h. to claparède 21.2.1930; cited by ruchat 2010, 71) in that year 35 monographs of classes were prepared, each one with 40 children. regarding the expected results of the initiative, antipoff commented: a study such as this will provide them (the students) with real pedagogical competence, and counter the frightening dilettantism, the lack of consciousness, the unserious work which prevail in the school. (...) several problems can be studied for the final work of our students. they will only have to extract, from the immense material collected, the documents relevant to the study of the particular problems. it will be a small tribute to science, because i hope that the efforts of our 70 intelligent and diligent students will know how to extract a tiny amount of scientific synthesis. could i be mistaken? (antipoff, h. to claparède 21.2.1930; cited by ruchat 2010, 71) still a little sceptical regarding the results to be obtained from all the work she was planning, antipoff was optimistic. however with the possibilities opened up for her. she observed, in a letter to her husband written at the time: (...) minas – one of the most beautiful brazilian states, picturesque and rich. the beauty of the landscape, the mountains, the vegetation or steppe and distant horizons – incredible – and for me, personally, it can compensate for the nostalgia of the separation from my son, and the lack of the cultural life of europe. (antipoff, h. to iretsky 3.11.1929) she also comments on the work that she is doing, with a particular interest in the study of cultural differences in thinking and in the psychological development of the children: now, exploring the mental development of the local children, to obtain interesting data, (i’m thinking) of comparing them with what we know about europeans and north americans (children). after all, out tests, do not (inform) so much about the natural mental talent as about the degree of civilization in which the child is developing and maturing. naturally, in the case of super-endowed children or those with birth defects, it is conceivable that it does not depend so much on the environment. but the average person is a mirror of the environment. (...) to know the conditions of 14 translator’s note. an invented word, roughly “scholological”. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 29 civilization in brazil, belo horizonte or even paris (helps) you to have the correct data for determining what is necessary for the children (...) all this is, of course, obvious, but the task of science is to situate a banal piece of knowledge within some simple laws, whose combination allows one to forecast a series of more complex phenomena with considerable precision. (antipoff, h. to iretsky 15.1.1931) she does, however, feel the lack of her son’s presence very much, and decides to bring him on holiday to brazil. she expresses herself about this plan to her husband: being separated from dônia15 is seriously affecting me. not figuratively, but my heart really aches (...). if i can’t see him at the end of this first year of separation, i’m going to throw the contract (away) and return to europe. the following would be more reasonable: dônia would come here during his summer holidays. in the school, i have two weeks of holiday – when i will be able to see him and we could be together, and then, for him not to be sad with me in belo horizonte, i could take him to the stavrovietski16 place in caeté (where, by the way, he could study russian). the schedule of talks would leave me free on saturday. i would have to go to caeté on the friday night and return on monday morning – its 2 hours by car from belo horizonte. two and a half days a week, we will be together. he could stay here in july, august, september and the start of october, and when the classes start up again, he would return to europe to complete his primary education. these three months in the most agreeable climate, dry and cold in brazil, he would not find that strange. if there are no friends to accompany him on the ship – he can be put in villefranche, in the care of the ship’s captain, the same “julio césar”.17 in rio, i should be there to meet him after his 11-day voyage. i am writing to you about my plan now to know your opinion. (antipoff, h. to iretsky 21 february 1930) the boy really did come to brazil in 1931, and thus his mother could continue her work in the teachers’ college. daniel reports what happened in the following years, after the return to france: for eight more years mother and son were separated by the ocean, each one expressing him/herself in a different language, french for the son and portuguese for the mother. during these eight years, helena was to return to europe on two occasions, until the only son settled definitively in brazil in 1938, on the eve of the second world war (antipoff, d. 1975, 126). in 1938 daniel left paris because of the coming war (world war ii, 1939-1945) and joined her mother in belo horizonte, at the age of 19 years old. he got his university diplomas in agronomy at the university of viçosa (in the city of viçosa, near belo horizonte) and in philosophy at the university of minas gerais. he worked in education and psychology, and became one of the first educators to be recognized as a psychologist in brazil, after the profession’s regulation in 1962. after a successful career as a clinical and educational psychologist, he passed away in 2005 (campos, 2001, 50-53). 15 dônia is the son, daniel’s nickname. 16 the couple anatole and nina stravovietski, russian immigrants who lived on a rural property in the region of caeté, mg, were friends of helena antipoff. 17 júlio césar was the name of the ship in which she herself had sailed to brazil. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 30 exceptional children starting in 1932, antipoff involved herself in initiatives destined to help and resolve the problems of children who were intellectually retarded or not adapted, which she proposed to call “exceptional” to avoid the negative associations of the word “abnormal”. together with a group of clerics, intellectuals, professors and philanthropists, she founded the pestalozzi society of belo horizonte, the name of the organization inspired by the celebrated swiss educator, to collaborate in the education of “exceptional” and socially disadvantaged children. in 1933, the pestalozzi society established medical-pedagogical consultancy offices for the examination and orientation of these children. starting in 1935, the offices were expanded and, with the support of the state government, became the pestalozzi institute, receiving children with disability or mental/psycho-social problems (sociedade pestalozzi 1934, 129; lourenço, 2000; borges, 2015). the treatment of the children’s problems was carried out in special classes established in the institute, the children were grouped according to their iq. the definition of the concept of exceptionalness, adopted by antipoff, included, in addition to organic problems, also the abnormality socially produced by a school system whose requirements were beyond the possibilities of many children. above all, antipoff did not consider abnormality a definitive and irreparable defect. for her, the majority of children who presented some mental abnormality were educable and could be successful. in addition, for antipoff, the concept of mental abnormality included other disorders in addition to limited intelligence, for example, disorders of personality due to problems in the primary socialization of children. the psychologist was conscious that families with economic difficulties were far from offering ideal conditions for the development of their children. research undertaken at the time showed high rates of alcoholism and violence in the interior of families. so that the low results presented in the iq tests could be considered a symptom of a complex of social and family problems experienced by the “exceptional” children. the proposals of the team from the pestalozzi society had the objective of supporting these children and adolescents in their trajectory through school and life. at the end of the 1930s decade, and have decided to stay in brazil, antipoff promoted the creation, by the pestalozzi society, of a model rural school for retarded and abandoned children on land near the small town of ibirité, near belo horizonte. in her opinion, this school would be the place for the demonstration of practical forms of dealing with “exceptional” children. according to the guidelines issued by the international bureau of new schools, from 1919, the rosário farm-school was inspired by the methods of the “active school” for the education of exceptional children in a rural environment (antipoff, h. 1946, 1952, 1956, 1966). the farm-school can be considered antipoff’s most important work. in the rosário, she attempted to proportion the ideal environment for the education of all the children and adolescents, exceptional or normal. the school became a living experiment, during the years 1950 and 1960, including in its activities those related to the preparation of teachers for the rural schools. as a majority of brazilians lived in the interior, (where a large part of the “exceptional” children came from who failed in the urban primary schools), the educator thought that more advanced cultural standards should be introduced into the rural areas. this would allow people to take advantage of the benefits of civilization and at the same time live off the produce of the land and contribute to ameliorating the extreme poverty of the rural workers. for these reasons, antipoff saw education as a source of democratization. citing the geneva declaration of the rights of children issued by the league of nations in 1924, she thought that a school should not proportion to its students a limited consciousness of their rights of citizenship. on the contrary, citizenship was seen as one of the important helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 31 consequences resulting from better development of intellectual and psycho-social capacities of children and adolescents (antipoff, h. and rezende 1934). dissatisfied with her experience of wars and revolutions in europe, antipoff struggled for social harmony, which would be achieved if each one was given the opportunity to develop his/her vocation. in this development, education would have a central role. believing in education as a process with a scientific basis, antipoff followed her master claparède: the sciences of education should accumulate knowledge, little by little, to help in the development of children in a harmonious, free and cooperative environment. all through her life, antipoff maintained this faith in science, as well as the vision that individuals become useful for society to the degree to which it is allowed them to develop their vocations. in this sense, a school system would be democratic to the extent that the students were supported and encouraged to develop their capacities. mental tests could be useful instruments in the deeper knowledge of the possibilities of each individual. however, they were only a start, the first step for the planning of development. the success of children in education was, therefore, the responsibility of the schools, and not of isolated individuals. a variety of instruction methods, originating in the proposals of the “active school”, should be put into practice for schools to be able to fulfil their civilizing role. conclusions helena antipoff is considered a pioneer in the psychology of development and education in brazil for her work as a researcher, university professor and creator of institutions. as a researcher, she established one of the first laboratories of psychology in the country, leading a consistent programme of investigations on brazilian children and adolescents, an experience almost unique in brazil at the time. in this laboratory, a contribution was made to the scientific preparation of a whole generation of professors and specialists in education with a lasting influence on brazilian education in general, and of special education in particular. as a professor, she initiated the preparation of psychologists of university level in the state of minas gerais and contributed to the movement that led to the regulation of the profession in brazil, in 1962. as a creator of institutions, she contributed to setting up a model for the wide-ranging system of institutions dedicated to the education of people with special needs, today represented by the various pestalozzi societies and associations of parents and friends of exceptional children spread all over the country, with a methodology based on tolerance and respect for differences. her main legacy was and is in the hands and minds of her many students and disciples who spread through the institutions of higher learning and special education in brazil. as a modest and unpretentious person, she received the many honours bestowed on her for her work with detachment, attempting to transfer the prestige to her followers and collaborators. as a psychologist, helena antipoff combined the two attitudes considered by many to be irreconcilable: the scientific rigor of the researcher, and the richness and sensitivity of a clinical approach. this mixture led her to value science as a guide to well-informed action, aimed at benefiting humanity. having left her native land, russia, and learned respect for human rights during her education in geneva, she adopted many brazilian students, children and adolescents, as part of her family, devoting to them her competence, energy, dynamism and professional knowledge. her commitment to the ideas of democracy was expressed in the belief that education should be a right of every human being, and that helping others was a form of obtaining human understanding and happiness. in her educational work with exceptional children, she made the following recommendation to the educators: helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 32 extol the truly democratic attitudes, where personal responsibility is joined to a consciousness of collective responsibility making the whole work appear a product of each one and of everyone at the same time. (...) prove that every human creature has value and all men can contribute, each with his own talent, to the progress of humanity. show also that the human value is not limited only to intellectual aspects, but that other factors, like moral gifts, effort, humility, altruistic feelings, which we so often find in so-called exceptional children, constitute an appreciable social treasure in times (...) where egoism, greed for gain and the exploitation of the weak by the strong prevail. the pestalozzi work thus appears as a work of justice and compensation for the ills that increasingly filter into social life. (centro de documentação e pesquisa helena antipoff 1992, 307) references antipoff, daniel. 1975. helena antipoff: sua vida, sua obra. (helena antipoff, her life and work) rio de janeiro: josé olympio editora. antipoff, helena. 1924. l’expérience russe. l’éducation sociale des enfants. (russian experience in children’s social education) semaine littéraire, geneva, 32 (1615): 592 594. antipoff, helena. 1930. ideais e interesses das crianças de belo horizonte e algumas sugestões pedagógicas. (ideals and interests of belo horizonte children and some pedagogical suggestions) boletim 6, belo horizonte, secretaria do interior do estado de minas gerais. 46 p. antipoff, helena. 1931. o desenvolvimento mental das crianças de belo horizonte. (the mental development of belo horizonte children) boletim 7, belo horizonte, secretaria de educação e saúde pública. 75 p. antipoff, helena and rezende, naytres. 1934. ortopedia mental nas classes especiais. (mental orthopedics in special classes) boletim 14, belo horizonte, secretaria de educação e saúde pública. antipoff, helena. 1946. a função social da assistência aos excepcionais. (the social role of the assistance to exceptional children) neurobiologia 9 (4). antipoff, helena. 1956. educação dos excepcionais. (education of exceptionals) revista brasileira de estudos pedagógicos 25 (31): 222-227. antipoff, helena. 1966. educação dos excepcionais e sua integração na comunidade rural. (education of exceptionals and their integration to the rural community) boletim da sociedade pestalozzi do brasil (31): 7-18. binet, alfred. 1920. les idées modernes sur les enfants. (modern ideas about children) paris: flammarion. borges, adriana araújo pereira. 2015. de anormais a excepcionais: história de um conceito e de práticas inovadoras em educação especial. (from abnormals to exceptionals: the history of a concept and of innovative practices in special education) curitiba: crv. brasil. lei nº 4.119, de 28 de julho de 1962. available on http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/1950-1969/l4119.htm. access may 13, 2019. campos, regina helena de freitas. 2001. dicionário biográfico da psicologia no brasil – pioneiros. 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(educação do excepcionalv.3). cirino, sérgio dias & miranda, rodrigo lopes. 2015. the role of a laboratory of experimental psychology in the brazilian education renewal of the 1930s. history of psychology (online), (18): 69-77. claparède, édouard. 1931. l’éducation fonctionnelle. (functional education) neuchâtel: délachaux et niestlé. claparède, édouard. 1933. génèse de l’hypothèse . (the genesis of the hypothesis) archives de psychologie 24: 1-155. claparède, édouard. 1926. psychologie de l’enfant et pédagogie expérimentale. (psychology of the child and experimental pedagogy) genève: kundig. delpal, b. 2016. l’album de beauvallon: fondation et periode historique de l’école (1929-1945). (the album of beauvallon: foundation and historical period of the school) dieulefit, rhônealpes: un comptoir d’édition. droux, joëlle and hofstetter, rita. 2015. globalisation des mondes de l’éducation: circulations, connexions, réfractions – xixe-xxe siècles. (globalisation of the worlds of education: circulations, connections, refractions – xixth-xxth centuries) rennes: presses universitaires de rennes. gutierrez, laurent, besse, laurent and prost, antoine, eds. 2012. réformer l’école: l’apport de l’éducation nouvelle. (reforming schools: the proposal of the new education movement) grenoble: presses universitaires de grenoble. haddad, maria de lourdes amaral. faculdade de filosofia de minas gerais: raízes da idéia de universidade na umg. 1988. masters’ thesis (education). belo horizonte: faculdade de educação (school of education), universidade federal de minas gerais (federal university of minas gerais. haengelli-jenni, b. 2015. le rôle des femmes de la ligue internationale pour l’éducation nouvelle dans la circulation des savoirs pédagogiques (1920-1940). (the role of women in the international league for new education in the circulation of pedagogical knowledge) in: globalisation des mondes de l’éducation: circulations, connexions, réfractions – xixe-xxe siècles, edited by joëlle droux and rita hofstetter, 75-95. rennes: presses universitaires de rennes. haengelli-jenni, b. 2012. l’éducation nouvelle: débats autor de définitions conceptuelles et identitaires. (new education: debates on conceptual and identity definitions). in réformer l’école: l’apport de l’éducation nouvelle, edited by laurent gutierrez, laurent besse and antoine prost, 19-30. grenoble: presses universitaires de grenoble. hameline, daniel. 1966. aux origines de la maison des petits. (the origins of the children’s house) in : une école où les enfants veulent ce qu’ils font: la maison des petits hier et aujourd’hui (a school where children want what they do : the children’s house yesterday and today), edited by c. perregaux, f. rieben and c. magnin, 17-62. lausanne: lep – loisirs et pédagogie. hameline, daniel, helmchen, jürgen and oelkers, jürgen.1992. l’éducation nouvelle et les enjeux de son histoire. (new education and the issues of its history) actes du colloque international des archives institut jean-jacques rousseau. bern: peter lang. hofstetter, rita. 2010. genève: creuset des sciences de l’éducation. (geneva: a crucible for the sciences of education) genève: librairie droz. lourenço, erika. 2000. educação inclusiva: uma contribuição da história da psicologia. (inclusive education: a contribution from the history of psychology) psicologia: ciência e profissão 20 (1): 24-29. masolikova, n. yu.; sorokina, m. yu. the russian apostle of brazil: helena antipoff (1892-1974). moscow: dom russkogo zarubezhia, 2018. 96 p. helena antipoff: science as a passport for a woman’s career between europe and latin america regina helena de freitas campos – erika lourenço 34 nicolas, s., andrieu, b., croizet, j.-c., sanitioso, r. b., and burman, j. t. 2013. sick? or slow? on the origins of intelligence as a psychological object. intelligence, 41(5), 699-711. o’neill, charles francis. 1975. the search for order and progress: brazilian mass education 19151935. phd dissertation. univeristy of texas at austin. peixoto, ana maria casassanta. 1981. a reforma educacional francisco campos. (the francisco campos school reform). masters’ thesis. belo horizonte: faculdade de educação da ufmg. ruchat, martine, ed. 2010 édouard claparède hélène antipoff – correspondance (1914-1940). firenze: leo olschki ed. ruchat, martine. 2012. a escola de psicologia de genebra em belo horizonte: um estudo por meio da correspondência entre edouard claparède e hélène antipoff (1915-1940). (the genevan school of psychology in belo horizonte: a study through the correspondence édouard claparède and helene antipoff (1915-1940). revista brasileira de história da educação 8 (12): 181-205. available in http://periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/rbhe/article/view/38583/20114. access 01/30/2019. sociedade pestalozzi. 1934. ata da assembléia geral de março de 1934. (proceedings of the general assembly of march 1934) boletim 16, belo horizonte, secretaria de educação e saúde pública. wirth, john d. 1977. minas gerais in the brazilian federation (1889-1937). stanford: stanford university press. unpublished sources alvim, antonio camilo de faria. [letter] 1954 jul.04, belo horizonte [for] helena antipoff, ibirité. archives of the centro de documentação e pesquisa helena antipoff, universidade federal de minas gerais, belo horizonte, minas gerais, brazil. antipoff, helena.1952. missão rural para a fazenda do rosário ibirité, mg. (a rural mission for the rosario farm – ibirité, minas gerais). archives of the memorial helena antipoff, fundação helena antipoff, ibirité, brazil. antipoff, helena. 1929-1931. letters to viktor iretsky of 3.11.1929, 21.2.1930, 15.01.1931. rgali. f. 2227. op. 1. d. 121. l. 61; rgali. f. 2227. op. 1. d. 121.l. 80-82; rgali. f. 2227. op. 1. d. 121. l. 67-71. iretsky, viktor. 1929-1930. letters to helena antipoff of 14.6.1929 (?) e 15.01.1930. copies sent by marina sorokina, alexandre solzenitcyn centre of studies of the russian diaspora (russia abroad), moscow, russia. microsoft word 3delaporte layout the birth of the clinic and the sources of archaeological history françois delaporte 8 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 4 (2018) 8-13 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org © the author 2018 – this is an open access article dossier georges canguilhem the birth of the clinic and the sources of archaeological history1 françois delaporte2 abstract: the year 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of a classic of the historiography of sciences, michel foucault’s the birth of the clinic: an archaeology of medical gaze. in different parts of the world, events were organized to reflect on this important work. the article argues that if one cannot draw a direct line linking the work of the leading historiansphilosophers of the twentieth-century sciences in france to michel foucault’s archaeological study of the clinic, we must recognize that the author of the birth of the clinic has taken up from these historians-philosophers the methodological and conceptual tools that made it possible to study the history of science and knowledge in a new way. keywords: historiography of medicine; french epistemology; michel foucault; gaston bachelard; alexandre koyré; georges canguilhem received: 10 november 2017. reviewed 30 january 2018. accepted: 28 february 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.03 _____________________________________________________________________________ michel foucault has painted a masterful picture of french style in the history of sciences: the history of sciences avails itself of one of the themes which was introduced almost surreptitiously into late eighteenth-century philosophy: for the first time rational thought was put into question not only as to its nature, its foundation, its powers and its rights, but also as to its history and its geography; as to its immediate past and its present reality; as to its time and its place. this is the question which mendelssohn and then kant tried to answer in 1784 in the berlinische monatsschrift: “was ist aufklärung?” (what is enlightenment?). these two texts inaugurated a “philosophical journalism” which, along with university teaching, was one of the major forms of the institutional implantation of philosophy in the nineteenth century […] they also opened philosophy up to a whole historico-critical dimension. and this work always involves two objectives 1this article is based on the closing lecture held at the commemorative event of the 50th anniversary of michel foucault’s the birth of the clinic at the université paris decartes, on june 1, 2013. the event was organized by the école normale supérieure and the université paris descartes. 2françois delaporte is an emeritus professor at the university of picardy jules vernes – upjv, france. address: 14, rue sylvius – amiens – 80000 – france. e-mail: francois.delaporte1@orange.fr the birth of the clinic and the sources of archaeological history françois delaporte 9 which in fact, cannot be dissociated and which incessantly echo one another: on the one hand, to look for the moment (in its chronology, its constituent elements, its historical conditions) when the west first asserted the autonomy and sovereignty of its own rationality […] on the other hand, to analyze the “present” moment […] and, in terms of what was the history of this reason as well as of what can be its present balance, to look for that relation which must be established with this founding act: rediscovery, taking up a forgotten direction, completion or rupture, return to an earlier moment, etc. in france it is the history of sciences which has above all served to support the philosophical question of the enlightenment: after all, the positivism of comte and his successors was one way of us once again taking up the questioning by mendelssohn and kant on the scale of a general history of societies. knowledge and belief; the scientific form of knowledge and the religious contents of representation; or the transition from the pre-scientific to scientific, the constitution of a rational way of knowing on the basis of traditional experience; the appearance, in the midst of a history of ideas and beliefs, of a type of history suitable to scientific knowledge; the origin and threshold of rationality – it is under this form, through positivism […] that the question of the enlightenment was brought into france […] if i have insisted on these points, it is to show that for a century and a half the history of science in france carried philosophical stakes within itself which are easily recognized. works such as those of koyré, bachelard or canguilhem could indeed have had as their centers of reference precise, “regional”, logically well-defined domains in the history of sciences, but they have functioned as important centers of philosophical elaboration to the extent that, under different facets, they set into play this question of the enlightenment which is essential to contemporary philosophy (foucault, 1978, ix-x; foucault, 1994, 431-432). 1georges canguilhem had already drawn attention to the strength of auguste comte’s philosophy, as his incursions into the field of the history of biology are remarkable. this philosopher is undoubtedly one of the first to show how much the science of the living is indebted to the researches of barthez, bichat, meckel and lamarck. reading some of the lessons of the cours de philosophie positive is enough to show the relevance of his analysis and the virtuosity with which comte rises to a level where “he conceives the history of this science as a critical history, that is, not only ordered to the present, but judged by him” (canguilhem 1968, 63). but what about the history of medicine? comte’s biological philosophy also imposed his features on it. charles robin and emile littré are the authors of the dictionary of medicine which replaces, from 1873, the editions of the dictionary of nysten. another direction of research on which comte’s philosophy has also weighed is the development of lexicographical studies, translations and critical editions of the medical texts of hippocrates and galen. besides littré, we must mention the name of his disciple, charles daremberg, who gave a free course in the history of medicine at the college de france from 1864 to 1867. his courses are at the origin of his history of medical sciences in two volumes which appears in 1870. a new endeavor, bold, if we believe the author who does not fail to report “that never had such a course been done, not only in paris, but in france” (daremberg 1870, vii) (see braunstein 2005, 367-387). soon, however, the history of medicine declines. the first reason is institutional. pierre laffitte, who held the chair of the history of sciences at the collège de france, hardly innovated and paul tannery was blocked from the chair left vacant by laffitte. the second reason is decisive. by identifying the positive stage with a definitive state of the human mind, the disciples of positivism have ceased to be interested in history. “all this explains why, in france, the first and the last historian of medicine is one and the same man, daremberg” (canguilhem 1972). the birth of the clinic and the sources of archaeological history françois delaporte 10 the german-american school took over. from the end of the nineteenth century, and during the first decades of the next century, it took center stage. in 1906, the medievalist karl sudhoff (1853-1938) founded the institute for the history of medicine at the university of leipzig. in 1925, henry sigerist (1891-1955) succeeded him. but the fate of the history of medicine is linked to the rise of nazism. from the 1930s, german historians threatened by the regime left germany. at the invitation of william osler, henry sigerist and owsei temkin join johns hopkins university. in 1940, erwin h. ackerknecht emigrated and joined the university of wisconsin in madison. at the instigation of sigerist, historical studies emphasize the social, economic and material conditions of collective pathological phenomena. the works of charles rosenberg, georges rosen and richard henry shryock illustrate this sociological orientation in the history of medicine (see sinding 2004, 573b-578b). in 1938, the very year in which the institute of the history of medicine in leipzig was called the karl sudhoff institute, gaston bachelard published la formation de l’esprit scientifique: contribution à une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective. on one side, the 14 volumes of paraselse’s medical works, edited by sudhoff; on the other, only one surprising page from bachelard’s book. for the french epistemologist, who wants to show the prescientific mentality at work, the history of medicine appeared as a discipline of excellence [discipline de choix]. a scientific mind can only be disoriented by sydenham’s reading. bachelard quotes the physician chambon de montaux, who in his traité de la fièvre maligne simple et des fièvres compliquées de malignité (montaux 1787, 68) divulges the doctrine of the englishman: “these warm and spirituous particles acquire a great action by their meeting”; they tend to create substances that look like them: “it is thus that fire creates fire, and a liquid corrupted by a malignant depravity carries the infection in the rest of the fluids”. this thought is revealing “of a deviation from the scientific mind”. will it be objected that such a theory of specific malignancy announces the discoveries of microbiology? such anticipation would be tantamount to forgetting that a phenomenology of first coming is the mark of a pre-scientific mind. everything else is the approach of the scientific mind: “microbiology develops, on the contrary, by differentiation, isolating in some way the modes of the hidden principle. it is by a long technique that microbiology finds the specific microbe that allows it to perfect the specific diagnosis” (bachelard, 1965, 109). at first sight, la formation de l’esprit scientifique marks a return to comte. to explain the general attitudes successively developed concerning the interpretation of phenomena, bachelard reactivates the law of the three stages. the first period, which represents the prescientific stage, goes from antiquity to the renaissance and ends in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. we recognize the theological, or fictitious, stage of the positivist philosopher who sought, in the child’s thought, a term of comparison likely to suit this first stage. bachelard also made the pre-scientific stage a stage of mind characterized by his most immediate interests. “the worldly or puerile soul, animated by naive curiosity, struck with astonishment at the slightest instrumented phenomenon, playing physics to amuse oneself” (bachelard 1965, 9). but we must not be deceived; under this phenomenon of repetition, we must see a break with the historico-critical order adopted by comte and his disciples. it was necessary to put an end to the dogmatic line of positivism, which ushered in the transition to the scientific stage, the most perfect expression of progress. canguilhem said that the history of medicine in france begins and ends with charles daremberg. well, it starts again with bachelard. subject to specifying that it resurfaced in the most surprising way that can be imagined. indeed, the recurring history has made the appearance of a strange world possible, and until then unnoticed. pointing out the negatives of science, bachelard unwittingly pointed out another history of medical thought. it will be objected, with good reason, that bachelard shares with comte the desire to present a scale of the evolution of the scientific mind. but to the opposition of the theological and positive stages he substitutes that of the pre-scientific and scientific stages, even of the outmoded and sanctioned. from there, he brought to light those productions of the pre-scientific mind that were so quick to substantiate so many metaphorical qualities. let us remember the essential: the history of the birth of the clinic and the sources of archaeological history françois delaporte 11 medicine makes its entrance in the company of monsters. epistemology identifies the disorders of thought to the failures of life. in rationalisme appliqué, it is a question of “the monstrosity that proliferates in the field of false explanations of vulgar knowledge” (bachelard 1949, 148). in la formation de l’esprit scientifique, bachelard announced immediately: “we will expose in bulk our museum of horrors” (bachelard 1938, 21).3 2alexandre koyré was not interested in the verbal and psychological obstacles that bachelard described in la formation de l’esprit scientifique. he does not believe in a history that would be a collection of monsters or a bunch of mistakes. it is not that koyré rejects the recurring method; on the contrary, he uses it but by regulating the lighting differently that it allows it to bear on the past. of course, this setting depends on the position of the observer. from the point of view of today’s thinking, it is normal that in the eyes of the one who turns towards the past “ancient theories appear as incomprehensible, ridiculous and deformed monsters”. by going back in time “he meets them, at the moment of their death, aged, parched, sclerotic”. completely different is the position of koyré who settles, not in a physics laboratory, but in a classroom, where the laws of motion are taught to the children. these laws seem so clear and so natural to us that one would think they have always been known. but it is not so; these laws presuppose the invention of a frame of thought that is all the more likely to be neglected because the discoveries it makes possible seem self-evident. before finding these simple, evident laws, galileo and descartes had to construct the very frame that would make these discoveries possible; “they had, to begin with, to reform our intellect itself; give it a series of new concepts; to develop a new idea of nature, a new conception of science, in other words, a new philosophy” (koyré 1966, 178-179).4 it is in this new theoretical horizon that we must situate ourselves, not to say the truth, but to be “in the true” [dans le vrai]. for all the real experiences of galileo leading to a measurement, and to a number, were understood as false by his contemporaries: “and yet, says koyré, it is galileo who is in the true” (koyré 1966, 154-155).5 by mathematizing physics, he lays the foundation for the new dynamics. correlatively, koyré suggests that aristotelian physics is understood as the space of a qualitative physics that switches “in the false”? [dans le faux]. not only do the galilean studies offer the model of a recurring history, but the task that the historian of sciences is exalting: “by reworking and re-following the evolution of science, he grasps the theories of the past at birth and lives with them the creative impulse of thought” (koyré 1971, 258). 3it is known that le normal et le pathologique (1943) is not a study of the history of medicine. but canguilhem is close to koyré when he recalls that with the mathematization of physics, the movement of matter ceases to come under the power of life. and that, conversely, with bichat biology is founded on the power of life. that is, on the opposition between the natural, which is the term of a finality, and the pathological: “the progress of physical knowledge has consisted, with galileo and descartes, in considering all movements as natural, that is, in conformity with the laws of nature, and that the progress of biological knowledge consists of unifying the laws of natural life and pathological life” (canguilhem 1966, 78-79). canguilhem is still close to koyré when he apprehends a concept of the past at its birth and lives, with its elaboration, the creative impulse of thought. this is at least what emerges from his study la formation du concept de réflexe au xviie et xviiie siècle (1955). for willis invents the 3canguilhem was not mistaken: “is the history of science only the museum of the errors of human reason?” (canguilhem 1989, 43). 4an english language version of this text had been previously published in 1943. (see koyré 1943, 333348). 5a note states that the text, “la loi de la chute des corps. descartes et galilée”, was first published in annales de l’université de paris, (1936, 11e année), in 1937 dans la revue philosophique de la france et de l’etranger (1er semestre 1937, n° 123) and in 1939, by hermann, in the collection of actualités scientifiques et industrielles. the birth of the clinic and the sources of archaeological history françois delaporte 12 word and concept of reflex movement in the context of a more imaginary than experimental theory of nerve impulses. it would not be wrong to say that canguilhem has moved the benchmarks of the ages of scientific thought according to the bachelardian calendar. indeed, there may be, in terms of physiology, a history of science that “is not exclusively the paleontology of a vanished scientific spirit, [and] who tries to resuscitate in their original vitality the elements of what the same author calls the sanctioned history” (canguilhem 1955, 166). but about the monstrosity, canguilhem moves away from bachelard and koyré. to be precise, it should be said that he is insensitive to metaphors. it is not he who would see in the monstrosity a reference likely to devalue the pre-scientific thought. it is not he who would see, in an old theory, any resemblance to the monstrous appearance of a decrepit old man. this reserve vis-à-vis of the images is the negative counterpart of an element that is both positive and very real: monstrosity comes from teratology; what is normal at a given moment becomes, by its persistence, abnormal at the next moment. back then, in the true sense of the word: “monstrosity is the fixation of the development of an organ at a stage exceeded by others. it is the survival of a transient embryonic form. for a given species organism, today’s monstrosity is the normal state of the day before yesterday” (canguilhem 1962, 179).6 ignorance of the methodological axioms that have been applied by bachelard, koyré and canguilhem block access to the birth of the clinic. admittedly, foucault took care to specify that his analysis was not a study of the history of sciences. but the technical and conceptual tools implemented in an archaeology of the medical gaze are imported from the field of the history of sciences. first, foucault found in bachelard the concept of an “epistemological break”. but to be attentive to the identification of epistemological thresholds, foucault does not accept the division between the scientific and the prescientific. the confrontation of the texts of the medical doctors pierre pomme and antoine laurent bayle bears direct witness. from the point of view of bachelardian epistemology, the text of pomme could be apprehended as an epistemological obstacle. by contrast, bayle’s text could be read as an objective description. it’s the least we can say, foucault moves away from bachelard: “there was no ‘psychoanalysis’ of medical knowledge, or more or less spontaneous rupture of imaginary investments, ‘positive’ medicine is not one that has made an ‘object’ choice that is finally focused on objectivity itself” (foucault 1972, vi).7 there is more; foucault’s approach is symmetrical and inverses that of bachelard. on the one hand, he orders a historical narrative from before to after, and not from after to before. hence the description of the passage from the medicine of the species to the first rational discourse on the disease. on the other, he walks against the current of the path from the concrete to the abstract. in the eighteenth century, johann-friedrich meckel, who treats the pathology of the encephalon, uses the scales. at the beginning of the nineteenth century, bayle described the encephalic lesions of general paralysis. then, foucault found in koyré an art of periodization that avoids any anachronism. the period he is interested in is the one that invented the first rational discourse on the disease and it matters little that this invention goes through scientifically false propositions. finally, from canguilhem’s reading, foucault retained: “that we could, we should, make the history of science as a coherent and transformable whole of theoretical models and conceptual instruments” (foucault 1972, 7374). or, this methodological axiom applies to the study of epistemological transformations. does a set subject to rules of internal cohesion not designate a normative system with respect to which a deviation can be said to be monstrous? 6this text has been published in (canguilhem 1962, 29-43). the examination of this concept already appears in the (canguilhem 1966 [1943], 81-88). 7on this point, see “foreword to the english edition”: “this unconscious is always the negative side of science [...] i would like, in turn, to uncover a positive unconscious knowledge: a level that escapes the consciousness of the researcher and yet is part of the scientific discourse, instead of he challenges its validity and seeks to diminish its scientific nature” (foucault, 1970, xi; 1994, 9). the birth of the clinic and the sources of archaeological history françois delaporte 13 in the preface to the english edition of his book les mots et les choses, foucault deplored the fact that in france some limited “commentators” persist in affixing to him the label of “structuralist”. “i have failed to print in their narrow mind that i have not used any of the methods, concepts, or keywords that characterize structural analysis” (foucault 1970, xiv; 1994, 13). foucault could have said that he failed in printing in their minds, the idea that he put forward, in his own way, the methods, the concepts and the key words that characterize the history of sciences. would he have been better understood? references bachelard, gaston. 1938. la formation de l’esprit scientifique. paris, vrin. bachelard, gaston. 1965 [1938]. la formation de l’esprit scientifique. paris: vrin. bachelard, gaston. 1949. le rationalisme appliqué. paris: vrin. braunstein, jean-françois. 2005. “daremberg et les débuts de l’histoire de la médecine en france”, revue d’histoire des sciences 58 (2): 367-387. canguilhem, georges. “auguste comte”. in canguilhem, georges. 1968. etudes d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1972. la médecine et son histoire, entretien avec françois proust. tonus 521. canguilhem, georges 1966 [1943]. le normal et le pathologique. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1955. la formation du concept de réflexe au xviie et xviiie siècle. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1965 [1952]. “la monstruosité et le monstrueux”. in canguilhem, georges. connaissance de la vie. paris: vrin. canguilhem, georges. 1962. “la monstruosité et le monstrueux”. diogène 40: 29-43. canguilhem, georges. 1965 [1952]. “la théorie cellulaire”. in georges canguilhem. connaissance de la vie. paris: vrin. daremberg, charles. 1870. histoire des sciences médicales. paris: j.-b. ballière. foucault, michel 1972 [1963]. la naissance de la clinique : une archéologie du regard médicale. paris: puf. foucault, michel. 1970 the order of things. (translated by durant-bogaret). london: tavistock. foucault, michel. 1994. dits et écrits 1954-1988, t. ii 1970-1975. paris : gallimard. koyré, alexandre. 1966. “galilée et la révolution scientifique du xviie siècle”. in koyré, alexandre. études d’histoire de la pensée scientifique. paris: puf. koyré, alexandre. 1943. “galileo and the scientific revolution of the xviith century”. philosophical review 333-348. koyré, alexandre. 1966. “la loi de la chute des corps. descartes et galilée”. in koyré, alexandre. études galiléeennes. paris: puf. koyré, alexandre. 1966. études galiléeennes. paris: puf. koyré, alexandre. 1971. “de l’influence des conceptions philosophiques sur l’évolution des théories scientifiques”. in koyré, alexandre. études d’histoire de la pensée philosophique. paris: gallimard. montaux, chambon de. 1787. traité de la fièvre maligne simple et des fièvres compliquées de malignité. t. 1. paris. sinding, christiane. 2004. “histoire de l’histoire de la médecine”. in dictionnaire de la pensée médicale. edited by dominique lecourt. paris: puf. microsoft word souto layout 134 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (8): 134-147 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open access article article considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto1 abstract: this paper aims to reconstruct some steps of the emergence and consolidation of the socalled french style in the history of sciences, from the perspective of georges canguilhem, one of its main exponents. it begins with a brief characterization of this style, then seeks the moments in canguilhem’s work in which he defines the more significant contributions of certain authors to the development of this style. first, fontenelle’s critique of cartesian thought; after comte and claude bernard, passing by montpellier school and paris school of medicine, until finally reaching the decisive contribution of bachelard. keywords: french style; historical epistemology; history of sciences; life sciences received: 2 february 2020. reviewed: 16 april 2020. accepted: 29 may 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.11 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ let it be permitted to see, in such a philosophical conception of the history of sciences, the source of what was and what should remain, in our view, the originality of french style in the history of sciences. georges canguilhem (2002 [1958], 63) a brief characterization of french style in the history of sciences some of the authors associated with the so-called french style in the history of sciences made themselves refer one to another, prioritizing the characteristics that would be common to them. in an attempt to distinguish it from other styles in epistemology, like the analytical or the sociological, a recent historian of science and philosophy such as jean-françois braunstein sought to feature some of these characteristics. according to him, the originality concerning the french epistemology is that it “starts from a reflection on the sciences, this reflection is historical, this history is critical, and this history is also a history of rationality” (braunstein 2002, 3). starting from a reflection on the sciences means to refuse, in advance, that epistemology should be a theory of knowledge, i.e., that it should postulate an external method to science, oblivious, by being external, from the inner historical becoming that 1 caio souto [orcid: 0000-0001-5736-2262] is a professor of philosophy at the state university of amapá (ueap). address: av. pres. vargas, 650 – central, macapá ap, 68900-070 – brazil. e-mail: caiosouto@gmail.com considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 135 135 constitutes certain discipline as a science. by the way, in order to perceive the scientific method as the permanent transformation that it genuinely is, it is necessary to follow the development of some specific science, it is necessary to be contemporary to it. hence, as bachelard sentenced, it is necessary to practice this science. in doing so, the scholar of certain science will accompany and reconstruct its history, asking itself about the conditions for the emergence of the scientific discoveries referred to this science at the moment when they happened, not being satisfied with later justifications. this inevitably raises the problem of the objectivity of scientific knowledge, which can only be reconstructed reflexively or critically. this reflection will end up forcing the attribution of a certain value to the knowledge production process, according to the current perspective referred to the science that this scholar is practicing. this retrospective gaze cast by the current status of science on its own paths displaces the requirement for factual objectivity in the recomposition of the history of sciences in favor of a recurrence attributing a new meaning to the past. the recurrence transforms what could be a mere accumulation of curiosities or meaningless anecdotes in an epistemology: a critical knowledge about a present and constituted science that gives meaning and value to the paths of this science. in the end, it is hoped that this critical history can serve as an index of rationality itself, even if it is to criticize its criteria and scientific bases, as in the case of foucault’s archeo-genealogy.2 another aspect that singularizes the french style is that, although it is developed according to specific regionalities (e.g., set theory in mathematics, einsteinian physics or quantum chemistry, cell theory or embryology), sciences always appear as a privileged place for the development of reason itself. it is no relativism to say that each science develops a method concerning its own object. on the contrary, it would be betraying the development of any science attributing, from the outside, a common unity or rules that do not come from inner epistemological requirements. this does not exclude, however, that there is a role for philosophical questioning, and this may differ more or less in each author considered: a reflective or critical role that does not intend to rival the discourse of science because it does not intend to pronounce truths.3 canguilhem seems to have been the last survivor of the old generation of french epistemologists who practiced this style. after he died in 1995, the interest in his thinking and the historical epistemology he represented significantly decrease, a fact for which j.-f. braunstein (2016, 161-162) presents at least two reasons: 1) the appropriation by the althusserians (d. lecourt, p. macherey, é. balibar),4 who wanted to find elements in his work for the constitution of historical materialism as science, which ended up submitting his reception to this domain; 2) the import, in france, of the analytical method in philosophy of science, which occupied the space previously belonged by authors who practiced a french 2 in luca paltrinieri’s (2012) comment on foucault, for example, very attentive to the recent transformations in the philosophical and epistemological fields, the canguilhemian “epistemological history” appears associated with foucault’s archeo-genealogy as a tool to analyze the emergence of the concept of population, in its relation to the “probabilistic style” approached by ian hacking (1975). we can find another example in vera portocarrero (2009). 3 we can think about the debate organized by dina dreyfus (1965) involving canguilhem, hyppolite, foucault, alain badiou and paul ricoeur. this debate begins with a sentence in which canguilhem states that there are no philosophical truths, but only scientific truths. this would in no way deflate the tasks of philosophy, one of which being to evaluate scientific thinking and its truth-building process. 4 the brazilian edition of the normal and the pathological, for example, brings afterword the pioneering study by p. macherey, with a presentation by althusser, originally published in a 1964 edition of the magazine “la pensée”, in which a systematic analysis of his thinking is carried out. there is an effort to say that canguilhem’s historical epistemology would have a “properly dialectical or materialistic way of proceeding” (macherey 1964, 253). considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 136 136 historical style.5 however, in recent years, an interest in canguilhem has flourished again, inside and outside france, which is evidenced by the increase in theses and articles dedicated to his thought.6 let us mention, in brazil, the life sciences: from canguilhem to foucault (2009), by vera portocarrero, the circuit of affects (2015), by vladimir safatle, and canguilhem and the genesis of the possible (2018), by tiago santos almeida, which could contribute to a greater diffusion of canguilhem’s thought in my country. my doctoral thesis, in turn, proposes a historical-critical approach to canguilhem’s thinking, seeking to go through the stages in which his work was constituted by applying some of the reading tools provided by this historical style. it is interesting to note that canguilhem did not start his work as a historian of sciences. he became a historian of sciences under very specific conditions, which i tried to reconstruct, showing how some of the philosophical and epistemological problems that characterize this author’s work arose. such problems could arise, either from his own research, either from external happenings: political events, epistemological revolutions in the life sciences that canguilhem started to practice also under specific conditions (as the discovery of dna hereditary structure, in 1953, who renewed the studies in genetics), or new philosophical advances brought by younger thinkers (e.g., foucault, althusser, dagognet or delaporte). under the influence of the old generation represented by canguilhem, there were also attempts outside france to reopen scientific thinking to historical investigations. since the middle of the 20th century, in fact, this french style had already received a reception in countries like germany, italy and the usa. as an example, we can think about the debate held between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century on continuism and discontinuism involving duhem and koyré, which had its sequence in the usa with t. kuhn, i. b. cohen, among others.7 more recently, an author associated with the stanford school, such as ian hacking, who defines his epistemology as an “interventionist nominalism” (hacking 1983), claims the bachelardian heritage (which is not done, however, without producing a mutation in it), as when it presents the concept of “probabilistic revolution” (hacking 1987): more than a scientific revolution stricto sensu, it would be defined by hacking as the moment of the emergence of a new style of thinking, because “probabilism” will modify the framework of different sciences and “discursive practices” (concept closer to foucault) that take place in the field of knowledge, such as physics, chemistry, biology, in addition to social thinking, medicine and public health.8 arnold davidson, in turn, developed the theme of the emergence of a style of thinking from the notion of sexuality (davidson 2001). and when some of these authors started teaching in france, this style was given a new lease of life, constituting a new school of historical epistemology (braunstein 2012). it is clear, however, that this new generation is closer to the 5 it is worth noting, in this regard, the attempt by jacques bouveresse (2011, 7-66), expressed in the general preface to canguilhem’s œuvres complètes, wanting to bring historical epistemology closer to the anglo-saxon epistemological tradition, such as that of russell and wittgenstein. we believe that this attempt cannot be sustained, and bouveresse himself acknowledges that canguilhem was not very sympathetic to this approach. 6 this was facilitated by the progressive publication, since 2011, of his œuvres complètes, allowing access to the general public of texts with little circulation, especially those referring to the period before the 1940s. for it, the availability of his manuscripts in loco was also a great contribution. 7 for the scope of the concept of the scientific revolution in the english-speaking world, see: cohen (1985, 1987), butterfiled (1968 [1957]), hall (1954) and hacking (1981). for a non-revolutionary perspective of science, among those who prefer a gradual or “incremental” cumulative history, see: crombie (1953) (koyré has debated this book in 1956 in the article “the origins of modern science: a new interpretation”, republished in history of scientific thought studies), duhem (1896, 1905), millikan, (1918) and toulmin (1972). 8 this is the subject of another of his books (hacking 1975). on the notion of style in hacking, see: hacking (1992, 1994) and sciortino (2017). considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 137 137 history of sciences than to an epistemology of the history of sciences. as a reaction to a thought about science that subtracts internal procedural from conceptual production and reduces it to categorical analysis, this return to history produced a new shift. there are certainly other styles in epistemology. and perhaps the best definition of what epistemology itself is, it is that of ludwik fleck, when applied to itself: “the science of thought styles”.9 in this sense, also other authors tried to designate or to describe the thought styles produced in human history.10 regarding the specific term “historical epistemology”, to which the french style is rightly assimilated, it seems to have gained the dimension that we know today from the publication of the work of d. lecourt (1978 [1969]), entitled l’épistémologie historique de gaston bachelard, who was guided and prefaced by g. canguilhem.11 d. lecourt (1974) was also the first to introduce foucault to the heritage of this style, in subsequent work. as for canguilhem, it is true that the occurrence of the term “historical epistemology” would only occur for the first time in his work in 1963, as c. limoges noted: “it is not frequently used in canguilhem (four occurrences only in a set of published writings) and this use is generic, applying for example to both thomas kuhn and bachelard” (limoges 2015, 40). it is also true that canguilhem seems to have preferred the term “epistemological history” instead of “historical epistemology”; which would make a difference to bachelard. another important feature of this style, which is not present, however, in all authors who are linked to it, but which appears strongly in canguilhem, is its inflection on the domain of life sciences. this feature refers us to auguste comte, who ended up his work by conceiving as the most important task of philosophy to contribute to the establishment of social therapy, by using the results of science (braunstein 1998). since his memorial of graduation at the école normale supérieur – la théorie de l’ordre et du progress chez comte (1926) –, canguilhem had already focused on comte’s work. throughout all of canguilhem’s work, interest in comte has never diminished, despite growing distrust of the political results of his thinking. in the texts in which he discusses the characteristics of the french style in epistemology, canguilhem attributes to comte the quality of founder of that style, on having given history a preponderant role in the constitution of scientific rationality. its importance 9 fleck ended up one of his articles with the following wording: “science of sciences is a separate science based on observation and experiment, on historical and sociological investigations. it takes part in the science of styles of thinking” (fleck 1986 [1946], 127). we can remember here that the “science of style”, the stylistic, has concerns similar to this one, which would lead us to a separate study. gilles-gaston granger, for example, has attempted to carry out a general stylistic that could be applied not only to hard sciences but also to human sciences. in this sense, he defined style of thinking as a certain relation between form and content that is characteristic of work as “a modality of integration of the individual in a concrete process that is work” (granger 1968, 5). leo spitzer, in turn, an author trained in philology, who went through linguistics and semantics before culminating in stylistics, has seen this discipline as a way of giving life to studies in pure linguistics. in linguistic studies, stylistics has had its field consolidated since the middle of the 20th century. the stylistics applied to literary history also allows reaching other aspects of social history, as spitzer exemplifies: “what the study of rabelaisian language showed, a literary analysis could confirm: it could not be otherwise, because language is only the external crystallization of an inner form, or to use another metaphor: the blood of poetic creation is everywhere the same, whether we approach it at the level of ‘language’ or ‘ideas’, ‘narrative’ or ‘composition’”(spitzer 1970 [1948], 60). the french translation of this text is by m. foucault. 10 a. c. crombie (1994), for example, in a very well-documented work, described several styles of scientific and artistic thinking that have followed each other historically in the west, according to an incrementalist approach. 11 lecourt (2008, 51f) states that the title was suggested by canguilhem. braunstein (2012, 35) notes that this expression had already been used by abel rey, who had also said, long before foucault, that he practiced an “archeology of scientific ideas”. the term gained greater international notoriety with the publication of the german volume by rheinberger (2010 [2007]), soon translated into english. considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 138 138 lies in the effort to produce a synthesis – which would eventually fail – between different lineages of french and european thought: on the one hand, a lineage of medical thought; on the other, the legacy of the enlightenment. comte would be the one who would first have tried to integrate these two legacies into a historical philosophy of science, which would make him, in canguilhem’s point of view, “the first and most eminent of our masters in the history of sciences” (canguilhem 2002 [1958], 63). the emergence of the french style: from fontenelle to comte we find, in canguilhem’s work, moments when he reconstructs some segments of these lineages, going back to a more or less distant past. at a commemorative conference, for example, he showed how an author like fontenelle (1657–1757) has his importance measured in contrast to two other authors among which his work would be found: descartes and comte. canguilhem wanted to demonstrate how fontenelle had produced a modulation in the first that would anticipate some of the innovations that would only gain its full dimension in the second. thus, on the one hand, there would be a certain cartesian heritage in fontenelle, which could be seen in the “intellectual rigor”, in the “contempt for the current syllogistic logic”, in the “method” and the “exercise of reason” (canguilhem 2002 [1957], 54). but such an inheritance would not concern so much the “specific mathematical requirements”, but “a certain style of thinking” (canguilhem 2002 [1957], 54). consistently with descartes, but without properly following his mathematical method, fontenelle will try to overcome it, historicizing the cartesian conquest of truth. canguilhem wonders, however, if this historicization would not be abusive because of the limits that descartes had established to knowledge. he then replies: fontenelle had the great merit of realizing a completely different meaning to the cartesian revolution. […] fontenelle, then, saw that cartesian philosophy, when it killed tradition, that is, the unreflected continuity of the past and the present, founded, at the same time, in reason, the possibility of history, that is, the awareness of a sense of human becoming. (canguilhem 2002 [1957], 55) thus, fontenelle’s work would have united two things: boldness and historical optimism. boldness would be to make the achievements of scientific knowledge derived from historical experience. this would risk making them unpredictable in their progress, which would no longer be founded on the secure foundations on which descartes had established it. however, such boldness would be linked to a historical optimism that is characteristic of enlightenment, as well as to a refusal to submit reason to an authority other than that of the subject who seeks to be guided according to his own reasons. this optimism is what would have allowed admitting “historical progress of the conditions of affirmation of the true” (canguilhem 2002 [1957], 51). and it was this alliance between boldness and optimism that, organized according to an effort of systematicity, found in fontenelle, if not exactly a precursor of a. comte, at least a work convergent to that of the one who will later found, according to canguilhem, the french style in epistemology and history of sciences: it can be seen that fontenelle announces, under some relations, the theory of auguste comte on the correspondence of the law of the three states of spirit in the individual and the human species, as well as on the definitive character of the scientific or positive age. (canguilhem 2002 [1957], 56) considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 139 139 comte, in turn, will radicalize this battle against mathematics, even if he were a professional mathematician and only an amateur in biological matters. thus, he will live in his own profession the discontent that made fontenelle also deviate from the cartesian method, replacing cartesian dualism with another one, whose concepts have different genealogies, those of material environment and vital organism: “the dualism of matter and life”, says canguilhem, “is the positivist equivalent of the metaphysical dualism of extension and thought” (canguilhem 2002 [1958], 67). and his ambitious theoretical attempt will consist of uniting, in a principle of balance, these two concepts, in which an immense struggle is recognized, as says comte himself, between the “living nature” and the “whole of the inorganic world” (comte apud canguilhem 2002 [1958] 73-74). evidently, this attempt to unite two hybrids concepts did not have an absolute origin in the founder of positivism: they are traces of a more distant heritage that he synthesizes and reformulates, and his originality consists precisely in this reformulation. the idea that life is an incessant struggle against death, according to canguilhem, is inherited from the montpellier school of medicine12 and, through it, from bichat, author of the maxim that “life is the totality of those set of functions which resist death”:13 “comte is as intuitively convinced as bichat that life is a struggle against death [...], that bichat of whom he always speaks as he does not speak of any other” (canguilhem 2002 [1958], 74). thus, having inherited this vitalist conception, comte would be faced with the enormous difficulty of synthesizing it, in a unique theory, with a conception of physical environment inherited from mechanics and based on the principle of energy conservation (first law of thermodynamics). in biological matters, this predominance of the environment over organisms was represented by lamarck, and comte tried to search the montpellier school for arguments to refute lamarckism. as canguilhem continues, it is “from barthez that comte takes the grounds for his firmest reservations […] against lamarckism. the organism, both in terms of formation and operation, cannot be fully determined by the environment” (canguilhem 2002 [1961], 79). and by trying to be consistent with this refusal to a fixist conception of environment, comte broke with the cartesian conception of extension. however, when trying to resolve this tension between two opposing and antagonistic forces, one converging towards order (the environment), the other towards progress (the living organism), comte was forced to assume them as implicated in a unique process, namely, in totality. and as he did not manage, despite all his efforts, to break this antinomy between environment and organism, comte ended up tipping, finally, to the primacy of order over progress, or of the environment over the organism. this would culminate, in his last great work, in the postulation of a kind of regulatory body external to humanity, a high priest who will guide positive religion. thus, comte’s work, which started from a scientific system on nature, will end in a religion of humanity. canguilhem will notice how this tendency towards the mechanical and physical-mathematical conceptions of the environment, against which comte always fought without being able to overcome them, 12 the montpellier school, with differences concerning each author, generally defended a vitalist conception of the organism, as an alternative to animism and mechanism. it had as main representatives: théophille de bordeu (1722-1776), paul-joseph barthez (1734-1806) and henry ducrotay de blainville (1777-1850). 13 this statement by xavier bichat (1771-1802) is found in recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort (1799-1800) and it is abundantly quoted by canguilhem, who once summed up its importance: “bichat’s essential contribution for modern anatomy consists of the generalization of a theory expounded by philippe pinel (1745-1826) in his nosographie philosophique (1798), for whom the pathology must be founded not on the topographic situation of the organs, but on the structure of the membranes, either that is, the tissues that make up the organs, whatever their situation in the organism” (canguilhem 2018 [1970], 271). it should also be noted how bichat’s vitalist philosophy could have influenced schopenhauer, and, through him, nietzsche and freud, among others (canguilhem 2018 [1970], 269-274). considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 140 140 ended up making positivism a politically conservative philosophy. this is because, despite efforts to escape a static conception of life and nature, comte remained still stuck in a fixative model of human nature and life: “if comte is a mathematician due to his education, he is a biologist by the second culture and by decision, if not by destination. but the biology to which comte refers is preformist and not transformist” (canguilhem 2002 [1964], 98). without neglecting the consequences of this very moving failure in which comte’s philosophy culminated, canguilhem will also recognize his merit of having founded the french style in history of sciences, which proposes to unite a historical perspective of sciences with a biological conception of knowledge. in canguilhem’s eyes, subsequent attempts to establish sociology, based on comte, as a science seems to be much more condemnable. durkheim, in this sense, is a bad disciple of comte, because he takes to the limit the overdetermination of the environment (now named a social environment) over individual conducts. definitively abandoning the biological domain to enter the social domain, durkheim quickly erased all difficulties that comte still found in overcoming the antinomy between environment and organism. in addition to durkheimian heritage, canguilhem will trace another one, also rooted in comte, to which he will seek to join, reacting with that biological traces also present in positivism. this will bring canguilhem to claude bernard, considered by him as the first physiologist-philosopher: i intend to try to bring out the deep dimension of a scientific work whose style, original contribution and the lesson that can be drawn from it cannot fail, today, by comparison with the style and approaches of science that has kept the same name, reducing his ambitions, to give rise to a shock at the change of scenery, a restlessness for the difference. (canguilhem 2018 [1967], 144) the contribution of claude bernard: “a physiological copernican revolution” some mutations that claude bernard imposed on french medical thought that comte was heir are quite significant, concerning both a radicalization of the recognition of the irreducibility of the living being and the postulation of an experimental method in biological matter. canguilhem will frequently report on his thesis in physiology – recherche sur une nouvelle fonction du foie considéré comme organe producteur de matière sucrée chez l’homme et chez les animaux (1853) – that had earned him the celebrity for discovering the glycogenic function of the liver and, thus, have been able to demonstrate experimentally that organism, by creating internal secretions, establishes an environment for itself (the “inner environment”14). such discovery will make possible the appearance, a few decades later, of a medical-physiological specialty, endocrinology (1909), about the importance of which canguilhem (2002 [1959]) will discuss in another of his articles. but what makes this discovery so fundamental is that with the creation of this concept of “inner environment”, claude bernard was finally able to reverse the relation between environment and organism, the point where comte still hesitated. this brought about what canguilhem will call the true copernican revolution, more important than kant’s, which was still limited to the metaphysical duality between subject and object. with such an inversion between organism and environment, says canguilhem, claude bernard had demonstrated “to contradictors, to backward systematics of ontology” that the principles admitted by the scientist “also found, as inevitable appearances, the phenomena on which they seek to base their objections” (canguilhem 2002 [1965], 139). therefore, by inverting the orbital center of physiology to “inner environment”, claude bernard reconfigured the problems that comte’s positivism 14 “without the idea of internal secretion, there is no idea of the interior, and without the idea of the interior, there is no autonomy of physiology as a science” (canguilhem 2002 [1968], 148). considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 141 141 had faced, without being able to solve them. it will no longer be the external environment that will regulate the organism. it is the organism itself that will be defined according to selfregulation that it provides in relation to the environment. besides, in a second essential work by claude bernard, in which canguilhem also focuses – introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale (1865) –, the principles of the experimental method in biology were established (canguilhem 2002 [1965], 129), and such work can be considered, for the life sciences, as bergson said, which was descartes’ discourse on the method to natural sciences. unlike comte, the conclusions of claude bernard are “taken from a lifetime of biological experimentation, from which the celebrated introduction methodically encodes practice” (canguilhem 1984 [1943], 32). as is characteristic of this historical style that canguilhem himself practices, we will find in the set of his work other references that allow us to affirm the lineages and affiliations that would culminate in claude bernard. evidently, this also does not exclude his originality in having reformulated the terms of problems that already appeared in some of his predecessors. this is the case of claude bernard’s master, françois magendie,15 to whom the need for an experimental medicine discipline is due. but, while magendie longed to create an empirical method to aid the development of scientific medicine, claude bernard will institute a methodological system, a kind of “science a priori” founded on his new revolutionary conception according to which an organism can only be understood from the viewpoint of its interior regulation. if magendie’s method would make the apprehension of experimental facts possible, what claude bernard effectively made possible was epistemological facts, i.e., inherent facts in a cohesive and systemic theory that guides and coordinates the apprehension of empiria, a theory that can only be established a priori.16 thus, in addition to finally having inverted the orbital center from the environment to organism, which will constitute the foundation of physiology as a science, claude bernard can also have its importance measured by the establishment of a method related to this new field of studies that he discovered. at this point, canguilhem marks a distinction between two levels of scientific analysis to which correspond the two claude bernard’s books that we have just mentioned: the first would still be considered a first level (application of a method); while the second would be another level (reflection on the method). this second-level reflection would be enough to make claude bernard, from a physiologist stricto sensu, a philosopherphysiologist: as a philosopher-physiologist, it is necessary to understand the physiologist who, at a given moment in a science that is already underway and on the right path, is very explicitly aware of the fact that science is above all a method of study and research, and that is given by task, expression and untransferable personal duty to give this method a foundation. […] as in the 19th century, the question of the foundations of mathematics was the task of mathematicians themselves, in physiology it is a physiologist who was responsible for the foundation of his science (canguilhem 2018 [1967], 145). 15 françois magendie (1783-1855) belonged to the école de médecine de paris since 1807, occupying the chair of medicine at the collège de france between 1830 and 1855. regarding his thought, in opposition to the vitalism of the montpellier school, canguilhem said that he “reacted strongly against the idea of a biological order separate from the physical-chemical order, against the belief in the existence of irreducible vital properties” (canguilhem 2015 [1957], 763). 16 in another essay, canguilhem acknowledged to claude bernard the merit of having demonstrated how experimentation in itself does not constitute a science like the biology, saying: “the problem in biology, we would say, is not to use experimental concepts, but to constitute experimentally authentically concepts, biological factors” (canguilhem 2009 [1951], 21). considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 142 142 these two new features introduced by claude bernard would lead, according to canguilhem, to the postulation of four methodological precautions specific to the biological approach: 1) specificity: according to this precaution, each animal would have its specificity, and “no acquisition of an experimental character […] can be generalized without express reservations” (canguilhem, 2009 [1951], 27); this would apply both to the different varieties among themselves, from species to species, as well as from animal to human. 2) individualization: each species would have, in each individual, differences that would only be homogenized to the extent that a particular theory is adopted, and that theory must be recognized as concerning the scientific needs of a living being, in particular, the human living:17 “so as in physics, the apparently naive use of an instrument like the magnifying glass implies adherence to a theory ”(canguilhem 2009 [1951], 28-29). 3) totality: “in an organism, the same organs are almost always multipurpose, on the other hand, all phenomena are integrated” (canguilhem 2009 [1951], 29). 4) irreversibility: “throughout life, the organism evolves irreversibly, so that most of its components are provided, if we keep them separate, with potentialities that are not revealed in the conditions of the normal existence of the whole” (canguilhem 2009 [1951], 30). therefore, we can see that the importance of claude bernard, for canguilhem, lies above all in having completed the physiological copernican revolution, changing the relationship between organism and environment already instituted, in some way, by auguste comte. however, there would still be other consequences to be drawn from this radical transformation. by defining the experimental method to be used in physiology, claude bernard also ended up immobilizing it. another step, concerning this method, will be taken, always according to canguilhem, by gaston bachelard. bachelard and the requirement of a permanent epistemological revolution however, if it is true, on the one hand, that canguilhem will never fail to recognize the essential importance of bernardian methodology, he will also recognize its limits. it is because for having made a kind of a priori deduction of the principles of his methodology, claude bernard ended up immobilizing them. it would then be up to him to continue his innovations and the style of thinking initiated by comte, which was both historical and biological-therapeutic, to give movement to his method as well. this is precisely what canguilhem will look for in bachelard, although his epistemology bears on matter sciences, and not about life sciences. it is in bachelard that canguilhem will recognize as explicitly put the methodological task in according to which it is necessary to give up general principles to be able to understand the need to accompany pari passu the development of the specific science from which epistemology is intended: to comte, who speaks of a good system of mental habits, bachelard replies: “scientific methods... are not the summary of habits acquired in the long practice of science”. to claude bernard, who declares: “it is not enough to want to do experiments to do them; you need to know what you want to do, and you need to avoid making mistakes amid this complexity of studies: then you need to fix the method, and it’s my chance”, bachelard replies: “the spirit must bow to the conditions of knowledge. it must create in itself a structure corresponding to the structure of knowledge. it must mobilize 17 later, in the same essay, the author says: “now, the experimental method – as the etymology of the word method indicates – is also a kind of path traced by the biologist in the world of the porcupine, frog, drosophila, paramecium and streptococcus” (canguilhem 2009 [1951], 39). considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 143 143 around articulations that correspond to the dialectics of knowledge”. let’s fix, says one, let’s mobilize, says the other. (canguilhem 2002 [1966], 167) in saying this, bachelard postulates a “demand for a permanent epistemological revolution whose claude bernard’s work and thought”, according to canguilhem, “do not contain any index” (canguilhem 2002 [1966], 169). thus, canguilhem sees a limit to the immense enterprise to which claude bernard joined his name. for, if we must recognize his merit of having achieved the physiological revolution, the method he wanted to institute from it prevented a permanent revolution, fixing itself in the state in which that first revolution took place. this occurred, according to canguilhem, because both comte and claude bernard ran into similar impasses because they had, behind their epistemologies, instituted political theories which they did not want – or were not able to – overcome. therefore, in both, we will find theories that identify normal and pathological physiological states, one for its fixist conception of the environment as an external regulator of the organism, the other for its fixist conception of the method. such will be the analyzes of canguilhem’s thesis in medicine le normal et le pathologique (1943), the results of which he will return in his last texts when defining the theories of comte and claude bernard as “scientific ideologies”. that is why canguilhem understands the revolution operated by claude bernard – essential for the life sciences to become autonomous – as referring only to the order of biology, having not been extended, by him, to the “order of biological epistemology” (canguilhem 2002 [1966], 170). thereby, if we are to recognize the merit of having demonstrated the difference between a mere experimental fact and an authentically biological or physiological fact, canguilhem observes that bachelard went further than claude bernard did, by joining the developments intrinsic to the sciences with those of epistemology that it must accompany them, which implies give rhythm to epistemology – to speak like bachelard. and canguilhem will one day try to apply, in the domain that was that of comte and claude bernard (that of biological sciences), tools gathered from bachelardian epistemology. from that meeting, an attempt will be made to create an epistemological thought referring to biology that is also “non-bernardian” (canguilhem 2002 [1966], 170). for if bachelard did not build an epistemology of life sciences,18 claude bernard, in turn, no matter how much he sought autonomy in the biological domain, still maintained, as far as the method is concerned, a non-revolutionary posture, that is, a static or fixist posture: “as if the discovery of own laws was without influence over the concept of a general law of laws” (canguilhem 2002 [1966], 170). and in an interview at the end of his life, canguilhem also confirmed his rebuke of a method in epistemology that recognized himself as abstract or general, by saying: “the method is a function of its object. as the object changes, the method cannot be imported in any way. it is necessary to invent, at the same time, the delimitation of the object and how it will be approached” (canguilhem 2018 [1984], 1004).19 what will be 18 in the encyclopedic entry “vie” [life], published by canguilhem in 1973, there is an entire section dedicated to bachelard about the obstacles to scientific knowledge of life. there, canguilhem points out that there was, in a way, a dimension related to a reflection on life in bachelard, although he only raised it, but that could be found in his work lautréamont: “in insight of genius, bachelard, although he did not give place in his writings to biological philosophy, discovered in les chants de maldoror that the primary obstacle to the intelligence of the biological object consists: the desire for metamorphosis” (canguilhem 2018 [1973], 586). in addition to this “psychoanalytic obstacle”, there would be yet another order of “obstacles of technical interest”, the overcoming of which could be exemplified with the invention of microscopes, and their correlation with the discoveries of louis pasteur. 19 at the same occasion, the interviewers (jean-pierre chretien-goni and christian lazzeri) said that karl popper’s book the logic of scientific research presented a generalized logical view of the scientific method, valid for any and every science without distinction; and canguilhem does not deny this considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 144 144 censored to claude bernard, therefore, is not going to the end in the task that he himself recognized to the life sciences in claiming an effectively autonomous domain, i.e., indifferent from all types of external immobility. the day will come when georges canguilhem will recognize this task as his own. this may make him the author who took it further, and who best coordinated, these two contributions that characterize french style in epistemology and history of sciences – the historical and the biological ones – in order to investigate the conditions of practical possibility of a doctrine of the health of life. however, this was not the result of a philosophical intuition that would manifest or develop during the author’s thinking, nor was it the result of external constraints. finally, let us reiterate that the two main characteristics attributed by georges canguilhem to the french style in epistemology are: a medical inflection to scientific studies; a certain relationship with the history of science. it is not by chance that his own work begins with a reading made by auguste comte,20 considered by him as the main master in the history of sciences in france. in addition, we observe how canguilhem has traced, himself, an affiliation between certain authors of the tradition of medical thought in france, until arriving at auguste comte and claude bernard. we can also notice great originality on the part of this reading by canguilhem about his own tradition attributed to gaston bachelard, and an implication of his epistemology on a scientific domain that was not exactly his own. this is also, therefore, a certain originality of georges canguilhem in the way he narrated what was the history of the development of the french style in epistemology, which nowadays already goes through countless other paths inside and outside france. conclusion in this paper, we discussed some aspects of the construction of the so-called french style in the history of science from the perspective of one of its greatest exponents, georges canguilhem. we started from a brief characterization of this style, then we placed it in a medical tradition that goes back from the montpellier school to bichat, the latter which was enthusiastically read by auguste comte. we also addressed the historicization that fontenelle did to an author like descartes, who was also a source for comte. then, we approached the fundamental copernican physiological revolution promoted by claude bernard and the contribution of gaston bachelard with the idea of a permanent epistemological revolution. such was how georges canguilhem remade this path of the constitution of the so-called french style in epistemology, which he himself would practice in his inflection to the medical and biological domain. references bouveresse, jacques. 2011. “préface aux œuvres complètes de georges canguilhem”. in: canguilhem, georges. 2011. œuvres complètes, vol. 1: écrits philosophiques et politiques, 1926-1939. paris: vrin, pp. 7-66. braunstein, jean-françois. 1998. “canguilhem, comte et le positivisme”. in: braunstein, jeanfrançois; bing, françois; roudinesco, elisabeth (org.) actualité de georges canguilhem: consideration. historical epistemology, in turn, would always have science itself as a starting point (never philosophy or epistemology), since it is from science that the methods concerning a specific object can be attributed, according to its specificity, denouncing as contrary to the sciences themselves the postulation of a universally valid method or an a priori method. 20 canguilhem’s conclusion memorial at the école normale supérieure, defended in 1926 under the guidance of célestin bouglé, was entitled “théorie de l’ordre et du progrès chez comte”. unpublished, it is available for local consultation at caphés (centre d´archives en philosophie, histoire et édition des sciences, located at 29, rue d´ulm, 75005, paris), under the quota gc. 6.1, fl. 35. considerations about the origins of the french style in the history of sciences caio souto 145 145 le normal et le pathologique. actes du xe colloque de la société internationale d’histoire de la psychiatrie. le plessis-robinson: synthélabo, pp. 95-120. braunstein, jean-françois. 2002. “bachelard, canguilhem, foucault: le ‘style français’ en épistémologie”. in: wagner, p. 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historiography of science (8): 108-124 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open access journal interview: antonio augusto passos videira1 antonio augusto passos videira, born in princeton (new jersey, usa), is a philosopher and historian of science with an emphasis in physics and astronomy. he received his doctorate from the paris diderot university (paris 7) with the dissertation atomisme epistémologique et pluralisme théorique dans la pensée de boltzmann. he is a full professor at the rio de janeiro state university, and professor at the teaching and history of mathematics program at the federal university of rio de janeiro (ufrj), and collaborating researcher at the brazilian center for physics research as well as a guest professor at the institute of biophysics (ufrj). he worked as a professor for the graduate program in the history of the sciences, and health at the casa de oswaldo cruz/oswaldo cruz foundation. he was a researcher at the national observatory (rio de janeiro) from 1994 to 1999. he works in the following fields: philosophy of nature, philosophy of science, history of physics and astronomy, scientific biographies, and popularization of science. he is a member of the center for philosophical and humanistic studies of the faculty of philosophy and sciences (braga, portugal), and of the center for philosophy of sciences of the university of lisbon. he has a research productivity scholarship granted by national council for scientific and technological development (cnpq). he was editor of the brazilian journal of history of science. interviewed by ivã gurgel2 heráclio tavares3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.09 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ______________________________________________________________________ ivã gurgel (ig) and heráclio tavares (ht): in your undergraduate studies, you studied physics and philosophy. likewise, your graduate studies and teaching career are in the area of philosophy with an emphasis in the philosophy of science. tell us a little about this path in 1 antonio augusto passos videira [orcid: 0000-0003-4369-9221] is a professor of philosophy in the department of philosophy at the rio de janeiro state university – uerj and a researcher at the brazilian center for research in physics – cbpf. address: rua são francisco xavier, 524 – sala 9027b, maracanã – rio de janeiro, 20-550-013 – brazil. e-mail: guto@cbpf.br 2 ivã gurgel [orcid: 0000-0003-4968-6907] is a professor in the institute of physics at the university of são paulo – usp. address: rua do matão, 1371 – cidade universitária, são paulo – sp 05508-090 – brazil. e-mail: gurgel@usp.br 3 heráclio tavares [orcid: 0000-0001-6907-5957] is a visiting scholar in the institute of physics at the university of são paulo – usp. address: rua do matão, 1371 – cidade universitária, são paulo – sp 05508-090 – brazil. e-mail: heraclio.tavares@gmail.com interview: antonio augusto passos videira 109 which science was already present from the beginning. how were your choices made? antonio augusto passos videira: first of all, as a very young boy, from about the age of 10, i had wanted to be a scientist. i started with oceanography, then moved on to archaeology and finally reached astronomy. this was largely through reading introductory astronomy books, and because i took introductory courses in astronomy at the planetarium in rio de janeiro. talking to my father, at that time i was about 14 years old, he told me that the best thing to do would be to study astrophysics, and in order to study astrophysics, he recommended that i study physics. so, around the age of 15, i decided to study physics, and i kept pursuing this interest my entire time at high school. i took the university entrance exams for physics successfully at the federal university of rio de janeiro (ufrj). however, i had already started studying philosophy before entering college. from the age of 14, i began to read philosophy books, like aristotle’s the sophistic topics, plato’s republic, kant’s critique of pure reason, marcuse’s reason and revolution, among other authors. i didn’t understand much of what i read. they were solitary readings that i didn’t discuss with anyone, yet these readings left a deep impression on me. in large part, these studies were motivated by the desire, the will, or even the need that many teenagers feel when they try to understand the world in which they live. i had certain, shall we say, “existential crises” in which i was quite dissatisfied with the world that i lived in. social inequalities, environmental issues, political differences between countries, all of these concerned me, and i tried to understand the world at that time through philosophical readings. so, when i went to college for physics, i had already a certain inclination to philosophy. what does this inclination mean? it means a willingness to understand things in the deepest possible way. arriving at the physics course, i obviously encountered the so-called physics 1 course, where the most important notions of classical physics are presented, as in the case of newtonian mechanics, kinematics, and dynamics. and in this study, i certainly came across the meaning of force, which caused me to ask a series of questions, because i wanted to understand what force was. i was trying to understand that through physics classes, and i couldn’t. physics courses are very focused on solving exercises. it’s like a course focused on the operationalization to teach how to operate in mathematical terms through formulas and mathematical equations, as well as the basic concepts of physics, among which is force. there was no room for reflection about the significance and meaning of the concept of force. this began to make me feel tense, uncomfortable, and even a certain amount of insufficiency of content. i felt that the physics course didn’t meet my needs. even so, i continued for two years, but my dissatisfaction was always increasing as i progressed through that undergraduate course. still as a physics student, i decided to go to the philosophy department, which is in the largo de são francisco in downtown rio de janeiro. i knew the discipline called philosophy of science was taught there, so i enrolled, and, to my surprise, many of the questions i asked myself were discussed, though not answered, in this course of philosophy of science. i was delighted with this course, which was taught by professor alberto oliva. i decided then, at the age of 19 – which was in 1983 – to study philosophy, and so i changed majors. i still tried to continue with the physics course. i took the university entrance exam for physics at the state university of rio de janeiro interview: antonio augusto passos videira 110 (uerj) again. it was not possible to have two majors at ufrj, where i studied physics, so i moved to uerj where i started the physics course, which if my memory serves me correctly, in 1985. nevertheless, the physics course at uerj followed the same pattern, so to speak, it was organized in the same way as the ufrj course, as most courses in brazil at that time were. it was very focused on teaching how to solve textbooks problems. the same dissatisfaction came back, and i abandoned the physics course at uerj. i continued in philosophy, where i later graduated in 1986. i have always resented not having finished the physics course, because my basis of understanding in physics is not enough for me to discuss certain topics, especially those of contemporary physics, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and its applications – such as nuclear physics, particle physics and others. so my choices were made mainly because of my desire to try to understand things in the deepest possible way as well as to understand the meaning of physics concepts, ideas and theories in physics. unfortunately, at the time, the physics course didn’t provide that. the scientific initiation was also very practical, in the sense that it didn’t allow for conceptual discussions, and it was geared a great deal towards learning certain techniques in physics, whether theoretical or experimental techniques. it was a painful journey. my choices caused some personal problems, but they weren’t huge because i had felt satisfied with what philosophy could provide me with. i wasn’t entirely satisfied, but as is well known…philosophy allows for conceptual discussions. and these questions can be formulated freely, as can attempts to get answers to these big questions. it is good to say that in the first year that i enrolled in the philosophy degree, in 1984, i also did two disciplines, fundamentals of physics 1 and fundamentals of physics 2, with professor alexandre sérgio da rocha, who is a physicist of the institute of physics that was assigned to the philosophy department. these two disciplines reinforced my decision to dedicate myself to philosophy, to the philosophy of science, with its characteristic of trying to understand the fundamental concepts of physics. for example, the concept of inertia was also a concept that gave me a lot of headaches. professor alexandre was a very important person in my training during my undergraduate work. with him, i did an introductory scientific research into trying to understand the concept of time, and i learned a lot from him. thus, it was a somewhat random journey, as happens most of the time, and in this journey, i was lucky to find in philosophy some support from people and the environment that allowed me to discuss my concerns, though, of course, within the limits imposed by my knowledge and also the fact that philosophers, for the most part, don’t have much of a specific understanding of physics. so, it was the training that i would say was reasonable, even if not completely satisfactory in terms of obtaining the necessary knowledge to have an in-depth discussion on the fundamentals of physics. ig and ht: much of your intellectual production also revolves around the history of science, especially the history of the physical sciences. how do you understand the interactions between history and philosophy of science? antonio augusto passos videira: it’s good to begin by saying that my interest in the history of science was also partly generated, so to speak, by the readings i had done as a high school student, when i was between 15 and 17 years old at the time, and so this was before i had entered college. however, i must also mention that being the son interview: antonio augusto passos videira 111 of a physicist, having lived with important people in brazilian physics, such as jayme tiomno, josé leite lopes, elisa frota pessoa, jorge andré swieca, erasmo ferreira, and sarah de castro barbosa, and always hearing my father talk about plínio sussekind da rocha, of whom he had been a student and personal friend, as well as being friends with other physicists, such as the couple ernesto and amélia hamburger in são paulo. i had also wanted to study physics and was interested in knowing who these people were. besides, it is good to say that i, in a certain way, suffered personally from, let’s say, some of the effects caused by the 1964 coup in brazil, and then by the institutional act number 5 (ai-5)4 and its persecution. my father, as tiomno’s assistant, was a friend of plínio, who had been [mário] schenberg’s assistant in são paulo, which is where we were between 1967 and 1968. and my father was a friend of them all, so it was natural that i heard about the personal, political and professional difficulties that these people had suffered. so, i was also quite interested in learning about the development of physics in brazil, or even of science in brazil. on the one hand, my interest in the history of science stems from my desire to better understand science, but on the other hand, from my personal circumstance of being close to many proponents of brazilian physics as well as to practically all of those who had suffered with the persecution under the ai-5. even so, when i did my doctorate in france, which i started in germany and then later moved to france when i arrived in paris in 1989. the group that i joined, had as one of its leaders, michel paty, who ended up being my doctorate advisor. it was in that group that the history of science was greatly encouraged. it was an effort to establish a fair and balanced relationship between the two areas, philosophy and history of science. i took advantage of this opportunity and soon realized that the philosophy of science – which already, at that time, was beginning to become a very technical area – has two major aspects: one resulting from the influence it had received from the anglo-saxon analytical philosophy and the other from the need to understand current physical theories, and that furthermore, these two areas often do not dialogue with each other. the philosophy of science has also turned out to be something sterile for me. i thought that many of the issues were artificial. from one point of view, they were issues that concerned the individual agendas formulated by philosophers. on the other hand, as well, more technical discussions – concerning relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum theory of fields, among other areas of physics – had an intention that i considered positive, and were trying to contribute to the resolution of scientific problems, but to me, they often seemed to get lost in technical discussions with many technical details that i didn’t understand. perhaps it was because of my ignorance, my technical insufficiency, and it didn’t seem to tackle the core problem of the issue. so, history had also found a place in my life somewhat, because, as i’d said, the philosophers’ agendas, from my perspective, didn’t seem to be the most adequate way to understand what science was. well, and it’s also good to say that, during my undergraduate studies, i read kuhn and feyerabend, and i was very impressed by the fact that they naturally resorted to the history of science. that is, for them, it was necessary to understand the development of science in order to understand what science was. from then on, i started to fall back on, whenever possible, to the history of science to try to understand science. 4 institutional act number five (ai-5) was the fifth of seventeen great decrees issued by the military dictatorship in brazil in the 1960s and 1970s. it was the most radical of all institutional acts and was issued by president artur da costa e silva on december 13, 1968. interview: antonio augusto passos videira 112 of course, i also read lakatos. for him, both – history and philosophy – are like the two sides of the same coin. they need to talk to each other so that the questions concerning the nature of science can be properly answered, because science transforms itself, and it transforms itself in a way, often radical, as it happened in the 20th century, particularly in physics, where there was a tremendous difficulty from which, from this transformation undergone by physics, to arrive a single answer. that is, the development of science is done in a plural form, and this pluralism seems to me to be better described by the history of science than by the philosophy of science, even though, depending on the perspective adopted in the philosophy of science, this pluralism, which seems intrinsic to science, is often confused with relativism. which in most cases is seen as something that shouldn’t be admitted. relativism would be like an inadmissible stance when it comes to understanding science. so i would say that the history of science helps us to realize that, when we want to understand what science is, namely, to answer the question: “what is science and what is its nature?” the best way to answer this question is by perceiving, understanding and describing the processes by which science has been done, has been transformed. moreover, the current forms acquired by science during its development process aren’t definitive. this idea that it’s not definitive is often better worked out by history than by the philosophy of science. i would say that science takes many forms. an appropriate diversity is intrinsic to it, which is better described by history than by philosophy. this diversity seems, in my opinion, to make the history of science an inescapable element when it comes to understanding the nature of science. ig and ht: in your phd thesis, you studied ludwig boltzmann’s science and epistemological thinking. how did you come to this subject of study and what were the main “lessons” obtained from the research? do you consider boltzmann’s case similar to that of other “scientists-philosophers”? antonio augusto passos videira: i came to boltzmann a bit by chance. as a philosophy undergraduate student in brazil in 1985, i attended a seminar on wittgenstein’s tractatus logico-philosophicus given by professor raul landim, who’s an authority on wittgenstein’s work. i was very impressed with the book; it was a very remarkable book in my formation. at that time, by chance, i read a paper by an american author, andrew wilson, in which he discussed the influences of hertz and boltzmann on ludwig wittgenstein. that’s when i first heard about boltzmann and hertz. and perhaps it was one of the first times as well that i came across philosophical thoughts produced by professional scientists with the prestige of those two. when i went to germany for my phd in 1988, during the first semester in heidelberg, i attended another seminar on the tractatus, and had decided as a working subject that i had to return to this discussion of the influence of hertz on wittgenstein as well as boltzmann’s influence on wittgenstein. then, at that time, i read boltzmann, which i had not done before, and i was very impressed with boltzmann’s ideas. several items caught my attention. first and foremost, there was the depth of the ideas, while alternatively, there was a frankness, and openness with which boltzmann discussed certain problems. boltzmann had a way of presenting the questions that seemed very interesting to me, because they conveyed the vivacity and energy of science. science was seen by interview: antonio augusto passos videira 113 boltzmann as a living thing. he didn’t try to turn it into a dead, finished, definitive and tidy structure. that caught my attention. when i went from germany to france at the end of 1989, i had to choose a dissertation topic for my doctoral research. what i had done in germany was no good for me. since my advisor, michel paty, was already supervising a doctoral dissertation on boltzmann, i thought that boltzmann would be a good choice. i had already read boltzmann; i was interested in his thinking and i decided to delve deeper into these ideas. above all, i thought that boltzmann was an interesting author because he discussed a central concept in physics, and also something very important in chemistry, which was the concept of the atom. this was how i decided to analyze the concept of the atom in boltzmann’s work and see how it related to a thesis very dear to boltzmann, which was the theoretical pluralism. that is, the same natural phenomenon could be described in different and even contradictory ways by models, and by different physical theories. i decided to try to understand if there was any relation between atomism and pluralism. i also found interesting that boltzmann defended that notions in physics, in particular that of the atom changed their meaning over time. so, it seemed to me that boltzmann could be an interesting case of discussion in favor of pluralism. i had already adopted this posture and this philosophical attitude at that time, and i would like to be able to reinforce the need for us to be pluralists in science by studying boltzmann through my phd dissertation. as to whether boltzmann can be considered a similar case to other scientistsphilosophers, this is not a very trivial question. i would say yes and no. no – i’ll start with the negative part of the answer – because boltzmann, as i said before, was a person who was incredibly open and frank when presenting and defending his ideas. boltzmann was a passionate person. he didn’t hide that passion when he wrote about science nor when he philosophically analyzed the content and structure of theories, models, and ideas in physics. this openness seemed quite interesting to me because boltzmann realized that perhaps the answers are given by science through philosophy as well. they could never be definitive. they might carry with themselves, in an intrinsic way, a certain ambiguity, incompleteness, and inability to be formulated in a completely convincing way. it’s as if this impossibility of offering a fully satisfactory answer were part of science itself, and the scientist should live with this situation which, in one sense, could cause on him a certain discomfort, a certain sadness since he would not be able to carry out his work fully. yet, this openness, this insufficiency, this impossibility would also, when perceived in another way, encourage him to seek out more convincing, less unsatisfactory, less uncertain answers. so, i think that boltzmann, in that respect, seems to me to be quite different from other authors. if we compare boltzmann to hertz, poincaré, or ostwald, he is less categorical and less incisive than these authors. he also resembles these physicistsphilosophers in that he discussed scientific theories, and the results of physics in a very profound way. in this respect, he resembles other scientists-philosophers to the extent that he realizes that for science, particularly in physics, to reach certain stability, it is necessary to resort to a philosophical discussion. that is, physics and philosophy are intertwined and entangled in such a way that it is often difficult to understand who is who, what physics is and what philosophy is. i found that very interesting. nonetheless, it’s also important to say something about boltzmann, who i've only come to understand clearly a few years after i had finished my phd dissertation, about interview: antonio augusto passos videira 114 two to three years later. i had finished the dissertation in 1992, so by 1994 or 1995, it seemed to me that boltzmann also wanted to give a dimension or recognize that there was an existential dimension in science. when i say existential, i’m saying that scientific activity concerning the way of being all human beings, as well as how human beings are in the world. in other words, it seeks to understand about nature and what is natural for human beings. that said, unlike many authors in his day, boltzmann laid it out explicitly and with passion. as i said before he was a passionate person, and that seemed to me to be very interesting and very meaningful. like other ways of being, science is a way of being in the world. this might make us think that there shouldn’t be an intrinsic difference between science, art, philosophy, and politics, and this also seemed very interesting to me, because it’d make us think of a certain oneness within humanity that was lost, or rather, explicitly abandoned when the modern period started. when modernity appears, it seems to me that there was a rupture between knowledge and existence, and boltzmann wanted to overcome that rupture. although he was not very clear on that, i think the way he spoke made it seem as though he was trying to recover the union between knowledge and existence. for example, i think that this idea of boltzmann was later recovered by heisenberg, who clearly wrote about this in the book called, reality and its order. he sought to recover this reality, which would have been abandoned, and many authors, many scientists, criticized the search he had carried out in trying to recover the unity between knowledge and existence. ig and ht: throughout your career, you have always maintained close contact with scientists in the so-called hard area of science, especially physicists, by being a collaborating researcher at the brazilian center for physics research (cbpf). what is the role of these partnerships in your career and intellectual production? antonio augusto passos videira: in fact, i have always searched for and tried to be in close contact, as much as was possible, with scientists. in a way, because i was raised among physicists and scientists, i feel very comfortable among them. i feel very close and identify with the scientists. it’s as though my way of being in the world was very close to the one that scientists have. however, my relationship with scientists is not only because i have been at the cbpf since i returned from my phd in 1992. at that time, i was invited by a friend of mine who then worked at the national observatory, a portuguese physicist, josé pizarro de sande lemos. he had been my father’s graduate student, and had invited me to give a seminar at the national observatory (no) about my doctoral thesis. i gave that seminar in 1993, and some people who were present had really enjoyed what i had talked about, and, as i was already interested in creating an area of history of science and philosophy of science at the observatory. at that time, they invited me to work there with a recent doctoral scholarship from the national council for scientific and technological development (cnpq). i was accepted, got the scholarship, and went to the observatory in 1994. i stayed there for five years, mostly supported by the cnpq and the ministry of science and technology at first with a post-doctoral fellowship and later with an institutional training program fellowship. i had an interest in trying not only to contribute to the formation of brazilian astronomers by offering an understanding of history and philosophy of science, but also by trying to somehow enter into a discussion about some science topics with them. i wanted to have discussions with scientists, and recover that previous interest of mine to discuss the foundations of science. interview: antonio augusto passos videira 115 on the other hand, there was an interest in understanding the development of astronomy in brazil. so, the idea of doing the history of science in brazil, and the development of science as it happened in the country was reinforced. even in this sense, there was a request from researchers at the national observatory for this to happen. so, i ended up dedicating myself to the history of astronomy in brazil. as far as the cbpf was concerned, my presence was initially, because i was invited by moysés nussensveig, to organize the austrian physicist guido beck’s archive. he had passed away years before, so he had left his papers and documents at cbpf. beck had wanted the cbpf to be the guardian of his papers and to organize an archive for them. moysés nussensveig invited me to do this, and i accepted, also right after i got back from my doctorate. so, soon after i returned, i ended up getting involved with the history of science in brazil, particularly the history of physics and astronomy, due to my institutional work at both the cbpf and the observatory. unfortunately, i wasn’t able to do more rigorous research in the area of foundations of science. there was an important exception that brought me a great deal of joy, which was the fact that i met the physicist, marcelo byrro ribeiro, at the observatory. today he is a professor at the physics institute at ufrj. at the cafeteria, having conversations with marcelo about boltzmann’s ideas, he liked the idea of pluralism and invited me to work together with him on the following problem: could these ideas of pluralism be applied to cosmology? we did some work on this subject in the second half of the 1990s trying to understand some of the difficulties experienced by cosmology. specifically, the fact that frequently the ideas of models in cosmology weren’t well received. there was a kind of mainstream in cosmology that prevented certain ideas, considered as heterodox, from being discussed. there was even difficulty in publishing these ideas. feeling bothered by this, marcelo decided that boltzmann’s pluralism could be a kind of a remedy to avoid the orthodoxy in cosmology, which was not only counterproductive, but it also didn’t concern the very nature of science. so we did some work discussing the nature of cosmology as a science, thinking on whether it could be considered a science like the others. this discussion was very interesting, and perhaps the best and only example of my attempt to be in close touch with scientists to discuss topics of their own science, and of their own practice. this attempt of mine to maintain a close relationship with professionals in the area of hard science was not only in physics and astronomy. in the mid-1990s, i met a biologist, charbel niño el-hani, who was already working in education, teaching science and philosophy of science. he’s a professor at the institute of biology at the federal university of bahia (ufba), and we discussed issues related to certain fundamental concepts of biology, such as the concept of function. we also published a paper in this area in a spanish journal of history of science, and our collaboration didn’t go further, mainly because i felt even more insecure about my knowledge of biology, which was considerably smaller than my knowledge of physics. but also i must mention this collaboration with charbel, because i’d always like to keep a dialogue, and partnership with scientists. this desire to do so remains to this day. my interaction with scientists is also because i’d like to convince them that philosophy and history of science are important for their own practice, for their formation. and when i say practice, i think that many of the issues they discuss would be better discussed if they knew philosophy and history of science, and applied that knowledge to their questions. on the other hand, there’s a sociological and political dimension that i think should also be taken into consideration. interview: antonio augusto passos videira 116 i often think that the arguments that scientists try to use in favor of their positions, demands, and needs, especially concerning funding, are answers with insufficient arguments, because they have a somewhat poor conception, insufficient to their own practice, of what science is. i think that philosophy, history and sociology of science help to improve the discussion by making the arguments stronger and better. in particular, i think a lot about what scientists, in general, consider to be a given. the questions are the following: why do we have to do science? why is it important to support science? is science only important because it helps to improve the quality of human life? i don’t think so. as i said when i commented on the boltzmann case, it seems to me that science also has an enormous existential dimension. doing science is like… it’s like opting for a certain way of being in the world. it’s like an option for a certain kind of life. this existential dimension needs – even more nowadays – to be known and discussed, even by scientists themselves. ig and ht: based on the assumption that philosophy and history of science are home to researchers with essentially different backgrounds (scientists from very diverse fields, such as historians and philosophers), we sometimes wonder who is “authorized” to practice them. how do you see this question about the legitimacy of writing philosophy and the history of science? what do you think should be done so that existing partnerships can be expanded, and the field strengthened in brazil? antonio augusto passos videira: on the question of the legitimacy of the writing of philosophy and history of science, i take a rather liberal position – liberal not in the economic or political sense of the term – because, strictly speaking, i think that anyone can talk about science, as long as they have a university education, and, in particular, an academic training dedicated to the sciences. i think that scientists, regardless of their areas of education, can talk about their own practice, although, as i had mentioned earlier, many times this happens, but what they talk about, the way they talk and what they describe as their practice seems to be insufficient, because they do not have a background in philosophy and history of science. thus, their information sounds naïve, insufficient, and even poor. even so, i recognize that they have legitimacy because they are practitioners of science – their legitimacy comes from the fact that they are institutionally sanctioned for it. the fact of being in a scientific institution authorizes that person to talk about science, regardless of the quality of the response. evidently, when a person knows the history and philosophy of science, they can improve their response in a way that seems extremely important to me, because their response becomes more meaningful. it’s a response that considers the nuances, difficulties, which is more cautious, and all this needs to be affirmed and reiterated. i don’t despise or disregard the descriptions that scientists make. on the contrary, i try to incorporate the descriptions and definitions that scientists themselves make of their practices and the theories they formulate, test, and so on. concerning what can be done in brazil so that partnerships can be broadened, and the field of philosophy and history of science can be strengthened in the country, it is important to break internal resistance on both sides. when i say both sides, i mean the sides of scientists and the sides of historians and philosophers. i think everyone has to recognize that reflecting on science should be a collective activity. not one voice is more authoritative than another one when talking about the nature of science. if the practice of science is collective, then the practice of history and philosophy interview: antonio augusto passos videira 117 should be as well. philosophers and historians in brazil still carry a certain rancor of thinking that reflections on philosophy, on history, and that the practice of philosophy and history is separate. that is not so. in philosophy and history, we are always in dialogue, whether with a close colleague or with dead colleagues. when we read descartes, kant, crombie, koyré, whoever they are, even if these people are dead and have been so for a long time, we are arguing with them. that discussion is a living discussion. using a well-known and current idea, they are always alive. to be a classic is not to be dead, it’s to be alive. all this reinforces the idea that scientific answers need to be built collectively. what’s important is that scientists – and the greatest difficulty lies in them, for they are often arrogant, and think that the sciences, especially the natural sciences, are more important than the human sciences – recognize the history and philosophy of science as part of their own scientific knowledge. in other words, without history and philosophy of science – or even sociology, which could generate much discussion – physics does not fit in. we cannot discuss physics without discussing it from a historical and even sociological perspective. in order to give stability to the answer, so that it can have internal coherence – since it’s never definitively solved – it’s necessary to make use of the philosophy and history of science. therefore, this dialogue needs to be encouraged. as for the question, “how do we extend that?” that’s a difficult question. there doesn’t seem to be a set of rules and regulations that could be used for this expansion. contrary to popular belief, this needs to be built. the rules are being made during the game and so they can change during the game. which is often difficult, creating some instability, even emotional, but we need to accept that risk. the rules of the game will be built while we are playing. it’ll depend a lot on certain local circumstances, which will be determining what rules will be formulated, chosen, for that particular game. i think it’s better to adopt a cautious attitude and say that the best thing is that physicists, mathematicians, astronomers, biologists, among others, realize that there’s an inherent instability in their sciences that can never be completely extinguished, but it can be transformed into certain stability. for this to occur, for this stability to emerge and become something effective, it’s necessary to refer to philosophy, history and sociology, and for this to happen, it’s necessary to consult those people who have greater intimacy with history and philosophy of science. of course, this intimacy could emerge more naturally if scientists, during their formative period, received more information on history and philosophy of science, that is to say, more disciplines in this area should be encouraged. the students of sciences should be encouraged to attend seminars, courses and congresses in history, philosophy and sociology of science. however, being able to establish a set of rules determined beforehand, i find that difficult. ig and ht: your production in history of science reflects your interest and concern with the history of science in brazil. what are the challenges of writing about science in brazil for you? antonio augusto passos videira: in a previous question, i referred to my own biography, when i said that i’m a son of a physicist, i lived with important physicists, and i grew up among them. in part, my curiosity about the history of brazilian science, or the development of science in brazil, is explained through my personal circumstance. evidently, as time went by, this concern of mine was reinforced by the interview: antonio augusto passos videira 118 fact that i’ve worked at the national observatory, and by working at cbpf. many times in corridor conversations, drinking coffee, and unpretentious conversations, i was asked about certain events regarding the development of physics in brazil. there is, therefore, a natural demand on the part of scientists concerning the development of their own science. of course, this natural curiosity partly corresponds to a need to understand what they are, and to comprehend the working conditions they have at the moment they ask the question. that is to say, i also sought to be useful to these communities of physicists and astronomers by trying to answer the questions they asked. in the case of the national observatory (no), it was a relatively underrated institution until a few years ago. astronomy in brazil was a small area. it grew a great deal from the 1990s until now. when i went to the no, few institutions did astronomy in brazil. there was little access to larger astronomical instruments. the big observatories were in other countries. everything started, or at least got an institutional impulse, exactly by this time i started to work at the no. in the case of the no, there was a certain resentment that the researchers had concerning the fact that the no wasn’t given the recognition it was due by the brazilian scientific community, in particular, by the astronomy community. so, when i went to study the history of the no, i tried to show that the no had a prolific and difficult history with many failures. for a long time, it harvested more failures than successes. i tried to understand why. i tried to show that, in part, this was not just a characteristic of the no. those failures existed in the communities that were part of the science. of course, in a country like ours, maybe due to certain political realities, certain social and cultural characteristics of our country, those negative circumstances, which produced the failures, were stronger. however, i tried to show that, even so, the no had a rich and interesting history and could be useful to help us to understand how the science could be advanced. in other words, how the science could be “sold” to the governments to get more support. the attempts that henrique morize made in the first decades of the last century tried to show to the federal government that it was important to study astronomy and meteorology, as well as establish the hour service division, as it was called at that time. all this made me realize that morize was an extremely complex and sophisticated person from the perspective of his knowledge of the nature of science and its institutional dimension. undoubtedly, the no had inserted in history, although it’s risky to say this, what lessons could be used to advocate for science in brazil, particularly the so-called pure science, which was one of the goals morize set as a scientist as well as a defender of the cause of pure science. besides, being able to contribute to pure science to receive the necessary support for it, and promote an effective and real existence in the country, which he did. with regard to the challenges of writing about science in brazil, these challenges relate in part to a shortcoming in our libraries. this is a shortcoming that’s still being overcome concerning the archives that are needed to make the history of science – the archives of scientists as well as the institutional archives. when i started to work in the history of science in the 1990s, there were few institutions dedicated to the preservation of archives. this concern wasn’t widespread. there were people in rio, at the museum of astronomy and related science – mast. there were people in são paulo, such as amélia império hamburger at the physics institute, and in the history department of usp with maria amélia dantes and shozo motoyama, who realized the interview: antonio augusto passos videira 119 need to preserve the archives and primary documents absolutely necessary for the history of science to be a reality in brazil, and to meet the criteria and quality standards created in other countries. however, as i said, this difficulty has been overcome. today, there are many archives scattered in countless brazilian institutions that already allow good work to be done. another difficulty is that historians majored just in history often have no scientific background. the history that’s made in brazil is still very social, and institutional. it’s a history focused on understanding the development of scientific institutions in brazil, which were the locus from which science became a reality in brazil. this can be difficult, as historians lack, in some cases, the scientific knowledge to be able to delve a little more into the sciences themselves. some exceptions are interesting and important ones; but i won’t mention names here, so as not to be unfair to those i don’t mention. however, i will say that it would be interesting for the history of science to receive students, especially in history, philosophy and sociology with a scientific background – built according to their needs. in other words, those young people who show an interest in the history of science should be encouraged, already at the undergraduate level, to seek a complementary formation. for that, our curricula should be reformed; they should be a little more open. our curricula are very closed. i resented it when i studied physics. the physics course was very old-fashioned. it had many prerequisites with many prior requirements. that was discouraging in the end. often it was as if you entered in a road where there were no side roads, and with less possibilities of going somewhere else. an exploration that could be random – and that should be obvious within a university, since the university should’ve provided some free transit through all the areas didn’t exist, and it still doesn’t exist today. university education is very professional. designed to train people with a certain level of intelligence that are capable of doing some activities within some professions in society. this isn’t good for science and especially not good for the history of science. the historian of science must be a person with knowledge of different areas. i often tell my students that the historian of science needs to be a learned person. culture is not acquired by following a curriculum plan. so, the challenges are huge. i wouldn’t say that the challenges are intrinsic just to brazil. i think these challenges have existed elsewhere. i’d say that the main requirement for us is to make the history of science a priority that would be able to give more freedom to those who want to study the history of science. i mean, we should trust these people and guide them in a way that may seem naive and puerile – “go there, take that course. read that book. take that seminar. see if you can find what you want there.” something will always come out of it. a person will learn something, acquire it and carry with them. i think it’s hard to have a teaching program for the history of science that meets all the demands. there needs to be an openness and freedom, that is, a certain incompleteness. ig and ht: your research also places the production of scientific biographies as a relevant theme. what is the role of this type of textual production and what precautions should we take with it? antonio augusto passos videira: my interest in biographies is quite widespread. everyone is curious – which can be morbid – about the lives of other people, even more, so people who were considered important for humanity. people want to know how einstein lived, and about beethoven, bach, pixinguinha, gandhi, among others. on the one hand, there is a certain curiosity. yet, as far as science is concerned, i think interview: antonio augusto passos videira 120 that these biographies were written all the same so that scientists would be considered exemplary people, who had fulfilled all the necessary requirements for their projects to be considered beneficial for mankind. the biographies, at the same time, were hagiographic, especially in the 19th century. scientists needed to be model people. this, as much as it is criticized today – and there are reasons for this criticism – has a definite basic concern. with the specialization increasing since the nineteenth century, scientists began to not only play a preponderant role in society, but to also have difficulties in interacting with other scientists. at first, i want to call attention to the fact that the specialization of science made it extremely complex for an ordinary person, even if this person had received some university-level training. it was often difficult to understand what a scientist did. what were the results of his practice. so, one of the ways found by people who were dedicated to science, who fought for science, was trying to show what scientists did through their biographies. yet, it’s also good to say that there was the problem of a moral formation of scientists. that is, how to make those, who, during their training, received a set of extremely specialized skills, realize that this knowledge could and should be taken beyond the boundaries of science. the scientist should receive training, and that’s why i’m calling it moral training, which would allow him to realize that he had to look beyond the boundaries of science. biographies often served to show this. for example, when they stated that scientists were good parents, good husbands, that they cared about the fate of other people who were not scientists, that is, that scientists also looked at other human beings who were not scientists, and all that made science part of or could be part of the society. that was very important, and it’s still very important. for a long time, the biography was an instrument cultivated by scientists to show that they integrated into the societies in which they were living and working. i think that is an important point. the power of the biography to this day stems from that. it’s as if, to put it bluntly, scientists are human beings like others, and this allows us to see this relationship of scientists belonging to the society in which he is acting, and in which he lives. from another angle, when you study a person’s life, especially if you live in the same place as that person, certainly not at the same time anymore, but in the same place, you can also use the biography to see how science has developed in that country. i wrote a biography about morize, and my concern was to understand what strategies morize formulated, proposed and applied to try to make science receive more support from the federal government. and, as i said before, particularly for the so-called pure science, that he considered essential for the development of science and society. morize saw science as a fundamental element for the country to be considered civilized. this is a very 19th-century idea. later throughout the 20th century, the idea of civilization lost a lot of power. i think it’s an idea that should be recovered today, which would be the subject of another conversation, but the biography often allows us to perceive the goals and strategies that scientists set for themselves. besides, we can also change the notion of biography. the biography can and should be focused on a single individual, a single human being. however, we don’t need to think that the biography should only talk about that individual, glorifying him. we can use this individual’s professional trajectory to enlighten his time, and through this enlightenment, for example, understand the relationships he had with other scientists, institutions and also with society. i’ll give you an example. i’m currently starting work on a biography on guido beck. he interview: antonio augusto passos videira 121 was a man who lived in ten different countries, worked in many cities throughout his professional life, which began in the year he received his phd in 1925, and lasted until he died in 1988. throughout this period, which covers two-thirds of the 20th century, beck, as i said, lived in several places. in many of those places, he was absolutely essential because he was the introducer of certain theories. he was the diffuser and pioneer of certain criteria that he considered necessary for the scientific practice to be, as he said, “healthy, fruitful and lasting”. thus, i intend to show in beck’s biography that he was not only an introducer but, conversely, he chose the epistemic and nonepistemic values that he sought to transmit to the people with whom he lived, in particular his students. that’ll allow me to look at those places. for example, in odessa, lyon, porto, cordoba, and rio de janeiro itself, and how beck acted in these places. and when i study and try to understand how he behaved in these places, i will try to understand these places. when i try to understand these places, i will see other people and other situations. in other words, using an image, i’m going to use beck as a flashlight, and through him, illuminate other places that could be obscured, therefore invisible. he as an extremely powerful person for that – not just because he was such a great physicist – but more significantly because he was convinced of what his role was. this conviction in his mission, so to speak, is important because it allows me to look at these places and illuminate them so that i can see these places better. beck may be more powerful than others precisely because of his ability to illuminate these places. i think that’s a relevant point because the biography allows me to perceive a collectivity, not just the individuality. the care that must be taken is the care that is known; we should not praise biographers for making them better scientists than they were or for trying to correct mistakes that they had made. on the contrary, their mistakes, problems, and failures are also instructive. they’re also part of life. i think a scientific biography is ultimately about life, about a person, about a community, in a certain place and at a certain time. that’s the great power of a biography. ig and ht: in the cbpf, you organized and made accessible a collection of documents that belonged to guido beck, who taught in brazil and argentina in the middle of the 20th century. considering the massive production of objects of memory and the neglect to preserve these vestiges of our past, how do you see the relationship between scientific memory and the history of science in brazil today? antonio augusto passos videira: this seems to me to be a somewhat complicated question, insofar as, to answer it, it seems to be necessary to try, instead, to conceptualize, define and characterize what i understand about scientific memory. i understand scientific memory or this massive production of memory objects as the production of primary documents, that is to say, documents that are produced during the scientific practice itself. it includes, for example, texts, statements, interviews of scientists about their own activities, their results and their view of science, while they lived and practiced it. as i said before, i think that the production of scientific memory namely, the reports, and testimonies produced by scientists concerning their own practice should be taken into consideration. i think that history should be critical and attentive to these statements. it shouldn’t use them naively, as though scientists had the last word about their own practice, which was often not the case. we aren’t the best analysts of ourselves. so scientists aren’t the most capable individuals to understand what they do and what they are. however, we need to respect them, because scientists are often educated, well-trained, experienced, open mind and critical people. so, we also can’t interview: antonio augusto passos videira 122 disregard or previously adopt an attitude of carelessness regarding what they say about themselves. thus, scientific memory needs to be respected. nevertheless, i think that we actually have a very big problem with the fact that, although the situation has improved, there is still a certain carelessness regarding the preservation of documents necessary to do the history of science. this neglect is mainly translated by the insufficiency of financial, human, material and institutional resources for these materials to be preserved. there are many documents to be preserved, and there are different types: paper, etc. the support that materializes this production and this memory are the most varied; photographs, films, which are also materials of different types. all this makes it necessary to have a very large institutional complexity and human resources so that this scientific memory is not lost and, not being lost. what’s more, it can be used by professionals of history, sociology and philosophy of science. this is a point that actually contributes to a situation that transcends the boundaries, whether of history and philosophy of science or of science itself, and concerns the country as a whole. i don’t think we value ourselves enough. it seems to me that brazil, and what is perhaps the main characteristic of an underdeveloped country, we don’t value ourselves enough. we don’t value what was done here, so to speak. it seems that we are always looking out for models, for inspiration, to correct our defects. we’re people who consider ourselves insufficient. that’s very bad. basically, this neglect is because we aren’t able to realize that there are different ways of doing science and different ways of achieving academics and science excellence. i have the impression that, in a way, this neglect is explained by the fact that we don’t have a project of what we want to be. we don’t know what we want to be because we aren’t satisfied with what we are today. so, i’m saying all this to justify the fact that it appears that this neglect stems from a situation that is political and existential. that’s the point. we’re always negatively criticizing ourselves, even more so today. the number of people who want to leave brazil, and who have already left brazil, because brazil is experiencing this, is very complicated. ig and ht: what is the role of history and philosophy of science in public debate? antonio augusto passos videira: i believe this query has a direct relationship with the previous question. i finished my previous answer by saying that i think negligence is paramount because we aren’t satisfied with what we are, how we live, and what we have already done. this is because we lack a national project on how this brazilian community should be organized – what it should produce, to whom it should produce, and how this product should be distributed. it’s a political problem, as i had mentioned before. the main role that the history of science has today is to discuss this; the reasons why we are dissatisfied with it. i think that science could do this, due to the relevance it has in the world. based on this relevance that has been going on for many decades, the science produced in brazil can show that we’re better than we think we are. i don’t mean that we are the best, but to use an expression by nelson rodrigues, i think that science can help us to overcome our “mongrel complex”. that would be quite interesting; to demonstrate that we are capable and competent to do things – to do them well, and to do them in a way that pleases us and that gives us joy. i think that’s important and essential in these days. the history and philosophy of science, when done realistically by showing our failures and our successes as well as the silly things that we have already committed and are committing today, can show in interesting, complex and meaningful ways how we’re able to overcome those obstacles. obstacles that interview: antonio augusto passos videira 123 always make us criticize, belittle and underestimate ourselves. it would be interesting for the historians of science in brazil, and also the sociologists of science to try show their work more often to the public via papers, interviews, and material distributed through the internet and in exhibitions. i myself, for some years, organized some exhibitions that gave me a lot of satisfaction, but they didn’t circulate a lot, because there wasn’t much of a possibility for that. at that time, the internet wasn’t as it is today. there weren’t so many social networks like today, but i tried to have exhibitions aimed at a university public in which i showed how science was present in brazil, even before the creation of the first faculty of philosophy in the 1930s. i tried to demonstrate that science was already a reality in the so-called colonial brazil, and in that, i accompanied other colleagues of mine, historians of science, by showing how there were positive results: how there was positive transformation, how science tried to integrate itself in nation projects, how it tried to help understand what brazil was, what the specificity of brazil was, and what the positive and negative characteristics of what we call “brazil” and “brazilian” were. yes, history and the philosophy of science have a very large contribution, because they help us to understand our history in such a way that it contributes to the constitution, formulation and organization of an identity, that is, of a specificity, which is ours. to put it another way, i think we aren’t capable of formulating a brazilian identity properly and coherently without resorting to science. if we think broadly about the sciences, and not only about the natural sciences, but also about the human sciences, we can easily see that sociologists, historians, anthropologists and economists, among others, in brazil, have sought to understand brazil. brazil is a problem for the sciences themselves. in contrast, natural scientists, even before the foundation of the first colleges of philosophy and brazilian universities, tried to contribute to the understanding of brazil. that is, what we call brazil, this structure and this current setting, which can only be understood if we appeal to the sciences, the natural or social sciences. ig and ht: in a recent publication, you bring the notion of “scientific nationalism”. what does this notion consist of and how does it help to think about the history of science in brazil? would it be possible, from this notion, to be able to think about the role of science in brazilian society at this time? antonio augusto passos videira: i thought or conceived this notion of “scientific nationalism” working with heráclio tavares. we were discussing the collaboration between brazil and japan during his phd project, trying to understand the contributions of césar lattes and josé leite lopes, as well as other brazilian physicists. we identified that these scientists were nationalists, in the sense they wanted to improve the general country’s condition. they thought that brazil should have a strong, vigorous, active and flourishing science to develop itself, which should be made by brazilians and foreigners who lived here and who wanted to work and collaborate together. i had already discussed this idea before, in a work i’ve done at the beginning of the 21st century. i tried to show that this category of nationalism was present in the scientific practice of scientists, not only lattes, and leite, but also in the work of tiomno, schenberg and others. with this category, i wanted to demonstrate how the strategies they thought about and tried to apply to the country as well as the idea of development needing to be thought of as inclusive, and not only as a scientific and economic interview: antonio augusto passos videira 124 development, but also as a social and cultural development. it had an important part in this notion of nationalism, because it would help us to understand the practice of science made here in the country. all the concern with teaching, not only at university, but also at the high school level, which has always been a defining characteristic of physicists – if one thinks that this notion would help us to try to better understand this practice that has been performed here. practicing science in brazil has always been something that was explicitly thought about, not only with the objective of understanding nature, but also to utilize this knowledge related to nature in order to improve the living conditions of the brazilian population. this was a dominant tone in scientific practice then. i hope this is enough as a definition and characterization of what i think scientific nationalism is. i believe this notion reiterates and seeks to clarify, as well as helps us think about the history of science in brazil. i assume it helps us to think, for example, what the conception of society and government were, as well as what the social relationships that these scientists had, implicitly and explicitly, were in a sophisticated or naive way. whatever nation-building project that these people had in mind, it doesn’t matter. the category of scientific nationalism allows us to think about how the scientist sees his own world, his insertion in society, and the other, whether he be another scientist or a layperson. naturally, this notion allows us since it stems from scientists’ own words and actions – to identify how scientists see their surroundings. so this is an essential contribution. how would it be possible, from this notion, to think about the role of science in the current period? as i had said earlier, science in brazil is very important, not only because it will help us to solve problems that afflict society and the brazilian population – in terms of health, food, environmental preservation, but as a fundamental characteristic that is this new category of scientific nationalism, which can help us try to understand brazil’s identity. the question of what brazil is has been answered within the domain of social scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and historians – that is, with this category of scientific nationalism, which allows us to look at the so-called natural scientists as well as ask what these natural scientists understood when they spoke of brazil. we can ask the natural scientists: “what do you think brazil is?” through this category, we can try to understand the answers they have given to this question. it is as if the category of scientific nationalism allowed us to understand the answers that weren’t formulated often, or were formulated in a fragmented manner to the question: “what is brazil?” this is an important question for us – brazil suffers greatly from the misunderstanding of what it is. this category, which is neither the best nor the only one, can help us to try to resolve satisfactorily this question which bothers us, and which is a very heavy question: “what are we?” as well as “what can we aspire to be?” microsoft word almeida layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-3 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal obituary dominique lecourt (february 5th, 1944 – may 1st, 2022) tiago santos almeida1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3678-3161] received: may 21, 2022. reviewed: may 27, 2022. accepted: may 28, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.10 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ dominique lecourt, a french philosopher and historian of sciences and medicine, passed away on may 1st at 78. lecourt, an emeritus professor at the université paris cité, france, leaves a body of work as voluminous as it is impactful, which formed generations of researchers and guaranteed him, during his lifetime, a prestigious place in the history of contemporary french philosophy. those who, like us, readers and collaborators of transversal, are dedicated to the historiography of the sciences know that it is impossible to understand the history of historical epistemology, its definition as an intellectual affiliation, its circulation and reception outside france without referring to dominique lecourt’s work. in the mid-1960s, lecourt was a student of louis althusser. the author of pour marx (1965) was close to georges canguilhem and had defended his master’s thesis on hegel under the guidance of gaston bachelard. althusser borrowed the notions of “rupture” and “epistemological break” from bachelard to legitimize his “scientific” reading of marx’s work. althusser insisted that his students should be familiar with the work of the author of le nouvel esprit scientifique. however, not being able to direct master’s dissertations at the école normale supérieure, he recommended that lecourt look for canguilhem at the sorbonne, with whom he began working in 1967. lecourt became internationally recognized after the publication, in 1969, of his master’s thesis entitled l’épistémologie historique de gaston bachelard, which had a preface by canguilhem and was quickly translated into several languages. at the age of 25, it fell to lecourt to introduce the term historical epistemology to the non-french-speaking world. his small book added historical epistemology to the context of debates in history and philosophy of science that revolved around the texts of authors such as karl popper, thomas kuhn, imre lakatos, and paul feyerabend. following that publication and its translations, lecourt was frequently called upon to explain the french proposal for interaction between history and philosophy of science, which he initially understood as a good disciple of althusser. in 1971, he published “la historia epistemologica de georges canguilhem” as a preface to the argentine translation of le normal et le pathologique. lecourt’s text, also translated into other languages, was decisive in establishing the bachelard-canguilhem affiliation in the historiography of sciences. “gaston bachelard’s epistemology was historical; georges canguilhem’s history of sciences is epistemological. two ways of announcing the revolutionary unity that both institute between epistemology and history of science” (lecourt 1971, xi). 1 tiago almeida is a professor in the history department at the university of brasilia – unb. address: campus darcy ribeiro, icc norte. cep: 70.910-900 brasília-df, brazil. e-mail: tiago.almeida@unb.br obituary: dominique lecourt tiago almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 also, in this preface, lecourt explains that he aims to clarify for spanish-speaking readers what, from a distance, might seem a “paradox”, the encounter between the history of sciences and the theoretical concerns of the “marxist-leninist philosophers grouped around louis althusser”. this text marks the beginning of particular history in latin america that must be written as an adventure. the definitions of scientific knowledge and practices proposed by bachelard and canguilhem have since then been accepted by many marxistoriented researchers who took part quite directly in the struggle against dictatorial regimes on this continent. “as if the question of the foundation of rationality could not be dissociated from the interrogation of the actual conditions of its existence”, to recover a classic formulation of foucault (2000, 357). it was especially noticeable in the reform of social medicine and in the construction of the field of collective health in the south american continent, where canguilhem’s work circulated with more intensity. following that first book, lecourt published other important works on french epistemology and historiography of science, notably: bachelard, épistémologie, textes choisis (1971), pour une critique de l'épistémologie. bachelard, canguilhem, foucault (1972) and bachelard, le jour et la nuit (1974). it was in the process of publishing the latter that he heard an essential piece of advice from canguilhem: “from then on, no longer to write about the work of others, but rather to produce my works about which i would have the good fortune or misfortune that others would write. this brief remark has remained engraved in my memory. it took me more than thirty years to transgress this prohibition” (lecourt 2008, 107). this advice shows the birth of an authorial work dedicated to themes that remain incredibly and even frighteningly current, dealing with ideological aspects (no longer determined by althusser’s lessons) of the relationship between science and technology in western societies. lecourt’s authorial works extends from the famous lyssenko affair, which he addressed in lyssenko, histoire réelle d’une “science prolétarienne” (1976), through scientific thinking clouded by the spiritual darkness of creationism, in l’amérique entre la bible et darwin (1992), to technophobia and our collective and subjective mode of relating to the future and progress, as in contre la peur (1982), humain post-humain (2003) and l'âge de la peur: science, éthique et société (2009). lecourt’s work is also characterized by a humanizing and civilizing conception of science, which was that of bachelard. lecourt held important public positions in education and science and remained engaged in disseminating knowledge. he was the founder of the institut diderot, the collège international de philosophie and the centre georges canguilhem, and director of important collections at the puf, such as the “nouvelle encyclopédie diderot” and the “science, histoire et société”, as well as others aimed at the general public, such as “questions de science”, by hachette. it is also worth mentioning his encyclopedic vocation, which led him to coordinate the publication of the encyclopédie des sciences (1998), the dictionnaire d'histoire et philosophie des sciences (1999), and the dictionnaire de la pensée médicale (2004). we can say that very few works have helped, literally crossing oceans, to carry an ethos, define a movement of ideas, and consolidate a mode of reading that is as much of the texts as the position of their objects in the world. it is undoubtedly dominique lecourt’s case. as we have seen in the various demonstrations in france since the first week of may, his loss is felt by many who were able to closely follow his intellectual work and political actions, which were not always so easy to distinguish. but it is also greatly regretted by those who, from very-very far away, without ever knowing him except through his books, learned valuable and lasting lessons from him. obituary: dominique lecourt tiago almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 references lecourt, dominique. 1971. “la historia epistemologica de georges canguilhem”. in: canguilhem, georges. lo normal y lo patológico. buenos aires: siglo xxi. lecourt, dominique. 2008. georges canguilhem. paris: puf – (que sais-je?). foucault, michel. 2000. “a vida: a experiência e a ciência”. in: foucault, michel. arqueologia das ciências e história dos sistemas de pensamento. manoel barros da motta (org.). tradução de elisa monteiro. rio de janeiro: forense universitária, 2000. – (ditos e escritos; ii). microsoft word conde layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-4 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) from the editor mauro l. condé1 [http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4156-2926] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.14 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ as we know, philosophical and scientific ideas and thoughts circulate around the world. however, of course, the context of reception of these ideas is not necessarily the same as it is in the soil where they were created. receptions are reflected from other contexts and usually meet other demands, creating other actions, technological deployments, and products. historiographical reflection on science is no different. ideas on the history and philosophy of science that emerged in europe, especially from the first half of the 20th century, arrived in south america and generated new reflections and productions based on local realities. in an effort to establish itself in the southern continent of america and seek its institutionalization in these lands, it was necessary to find tools that could help the historical and philosophical understanding of the young science. this special issue of transversal addresses this movement of the historiography of science on south american soil – argentina, brazil, and uruguay. throughout the 20th century, comparatively, we can see the many “family resemblances” in the development of reflections on the history and philosophy of science in these countries, even as we perceive the differences, singularities, and nuances of each one. the historiography of science is directly linked to scientific production and is an extension of it. thus, the historiography of science is part of scientific culture. therefore, like the owl of minerva in hegel’s claim, the historiography of science takes flight at dusk, after the rise of science. in other words, as the scientific community became present in these countries, a historical and philosophical reflection on what science is and what it means to produce science in south america also became necessary. in the articles of this special issue, we can see how the historiography of science developed in these countries with the (local, national, and international) circulation of ideas and people, the editorial production (articles and books), and the development of disciplines and departments devoted to the history of science and philosophy of science. finally, in this special issue, we can glimpse the essential aspects of the arising community of 1 mauro l. condé is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br transversal from the editor transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 historians and philosophers of science in these countries and observe how the writing of the history of science has developed there. as a whole, the articles in this issue demonstrate that the reception of historiographical ideas about science coming from other places without local reflection and production makes no sense. for an adequate reception, such ideas need a context of reflection and production through agents, institutions and projects that re-read these ideas or, from the dialogue with them, create new conceptions that meet local purposes. therefore, mere reception and reproduction establish only loose ideas. it is an exercise of erudition without transformation of reality. in fact, in the reception of the historiography of science, it is necessary to dialogue with ideas from various places of the world to create new and singular ideas for a particular location. and, above all, to transform this local environment in which these ideas are reflected. we can see this difference between ideas that were fruitful and ideas that became innocuous when comparing the historiographical reception of science in brazil between the 19th and 20th centuries. the incipient scientific community of 19th century brazil could not adequately absorb historiographical reflections on science.2 there seems to have been no adequate reception, even if some efforts were made in this direction. in the 20th century, the situation was completely different. we can perceive not only the reception and reflection of the historiography of science but also its effective contribution to the transformation of the local reality. as an example of the brazilian situation in the 19th century, the work of pedro américo (1843-1905) is a significant demonstration of this lack of space for the reception of historiographical ideas. pedro américo is a great painter who depicted brazilian politics and culture in the second half of the 19th century. what few people know, even in brazil, is that pedro américo had diverse interests in different fields such as science and politics – he was even a congressman during the drafting of the brazilian constitution of 1889. in the scientific field, he studied science in europe. he graduated in social sciences at the sorbonne in paris and wrote and defended his doctoral thesis in natural sciences at the university of brussels, where he taught. curiously, his doctoral dissertation was on history and philosophy of science themes, and titled la science et les systèmes: questions d’histoire et philosophie naturelle [science and systems: issues in natural history and philosophy]. his thesis was published as a book in 1868.3 at the beginning of the book, pedro américo regrets that a good part of those reflections could not apply to brazil because we lived in a very different scientific reality. according to him, in europe, “the moral and intellectual situation differs greatly from ours”, and his contemporary brazilian readers would find the book “under many aspects, something empty and meaningless” (américo [1868] 1999, 3). at that time, his ideas on history and philosophy of science had no space for reception in brazil due to the lack of an adequate scientific culture that would make it possible to discuss them, even if only to refute them. the thesis ended up allowing him to become a professor of art at the imperial academy (renamed school of fine arts after the republic) in rio de janeiro. thus, the theme developed 2 the demarcation about the beginning of science in brazil is controversial, and it is not the objective to address it in detail at this time. however, when and where science started in brazil depends on what we understand as scientific activity. to establish this milestone, we can consider the first isolated scientific initiatives to the first scientific institutions already in the 19th century empire of brazil (dantes 2001; carvalho 1978). in the 20th century brazil republic, we will find different scientific institutions dedicated to research, funding agencies, and the universities as an essential training locus for science (stepan 1976; schwartzman 1979). 3 in 1999, the federal university of paraíba – ufpb translated and published pedro américo’s book, a ciência e os sistemas: questões de história e filosofia natural (américo, [1868] 1999). transversal from the editor transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 in his book was lost in time. unfortunately, it took nearly a hundred years for américo to have appropriate readers of his thesis in brazil. just as other brazilian scientists in the 19th century did not develop scientific activities when they returned from europe to brazil,4 pedro américo also did not find adequate soil to germinate his ideas about the history and philosophy of science. although there were already some scientific endeavors developing in brazil of the 19th century, there was not a developed scientific culture as an adequate scientific locus for the reception of these ideas just yet. in other words, we did not have a sufficiently consolidated scientific culture that, besides taking its first steps in science, could think transversally about its historical and philosophical aspects. the number of institutions dedicated to sciences in brazil increased throughout the 20th century.5 this institutional process will also enable the reception of ideas in the historiography of science that could be learned, questioned, rethought about, and eventually adapted to solve local problems. with effect, this scientific maturity will occur throughout the 20th century on brazilian lands and will be accentuated in the second half of this century. consequently, this scientific culture will enable a community interested in reflecting on the historical and philosophical aspects of science and, in particular, on the science produced here. in other words, if, throughout the 20th century, brazilian science was consolidating itself, together with it were the development of conditions to, more than producing sciences, think transversally about this production. as tiago almeida illustrates in one of the articles of this special issue of transversal, in the 1970s and 1980s, one of the largest public health systems in the world, the unified health system (sistema único de saúde – sus), was created in brazil in close dialogue with bachelard and canguilhem’s historical epistemology. authors, such as sérgio arouca and cecilia donnangelo, were representatives of collective health builders, and had partially accepted the idea of science’s historicity as a key to solving problems with the collective healthcare system in brazil (almeida 2021, 1). this movement is an example of a rich and healthy circulation of ideas in the historiography of science: reception, reflection, and effective production. this issue thus has some aspects that are important to highlight. first, it seeks to understand how ideas of the historiography of science were received in south america, contributing to the reflection, and writing of the history of science in these countries. secondly, for the reader interested in this set of articles, it provides a comparative idea between these countries and how the development of the history and philosophy of science took place here. finally, this special issue, together with the preceding “colloquium on the historiography of science in south america”, which was held in october 2021, seeks more significant interaction among researchers in these countries. i am very grateful to the authors who accepted the call for participation in the colloquium and sent their contributions to this special issue. i am also very thankful to the other authors who sent contributions to this dossier, even though they did not participate in the colloquium. 4 perhaps the most emblematic case was josé bonifácio de andrada e silva (1763-1838), an outstanding brazilian naturalist recognized in europe. he dedicated himself entirely to politics and played an important role in brazil’s independence when he had returned. 5especially in the second half of the 20th century, “scientific culture” was effectively established in brazil. this interpretation considers that “scientific culture” means more than producing science with the various apparatuses and institutions linked to it. it also considers the impacts and unfolding of science in society, including historical and philosophical reflections on scientific knowledge. for our interests in this special issue, the historical transversal reflection on science in brazil has in azevedo (1943, 1956) one of its first approaches. mainly from the 1970s and 1980s, numerous works appear, for example, (ferri and motoyama 1979-1981), and there is an enormous development of the community of historians of science in brazil, especially after the foundation of the brazilian society for the history of science (sbhc) in 1983. transversal from the editor transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 references almeida, tiago, 2021. historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. (11): 1-10. américo, pedro. 1999, [1868] a ciência e os sistemas: questões de história e filosofia natural. joão pessoa: editora da universidade federal da paraíba. azevedo, fernando de. 1943. a cultura brasileira: introdução ao estudo da cultura no brasil. rio de janeiro: instituto brasileiro de geografia e estatística (ibge), comissão censitária nacional. azevedo, fernando de (org.). 1956. as ciências no brasil. são paulo, edições melhoramentos. 2v. carvalho, josé murilo de. 1978. a escola de minas de ouro preto: o peso da glória. rio de janeiro: finep/cia editora nacional. dantes, maria amélia mascarenhas. 2001. espaços da ciência no brasil: 1800-1930. rio de janeiro. editora fiocruz. ferri, mario guimarães and motoyama, shozo. 1979-1981. história das ciências no brasil. são paulo: edusp; e.p.u. 3 vols. schwartzman, simon. 1979. a formação da comunidade científica no brasil. rio de janeiro, finep. stepan, nancy leys, 1976. gênese e evolução da ciência brasileira: oswaldo cruz e a política de investigação científica e médica. rio de janeiro: artenova / fundação oswaldo cruz. microsoft word magalhaes layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-4 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal obituary shozo motoyama (1940-2021): a life in the history of science and technology gildo magalhães 1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6005-2185] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.10 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ shozo motoyama was the son of japanese immigrants established in the interior of são paulo state, brazil, which was then undergoing a rapid economic expansion and had received a large number of settlers from all over the world. his father, a professor of mathematics, instilled in him a taste for the natural sciences, which led him to take a degree in physics at the university of são paulo (usp), which he concluded in 1967. initially, he thought of specializing in astrophysics, but at the time of his doctorate (concluded in 1971), he had completely changed his mind, and his dissertation was about the logic of research in galileo. his ph.d. counselor was the historian eurípedes simões de paula, a long-time director of usp’s faculty of philosophy, sciences and letters. this earned him the invitation, along with his colleague physicist, maria amélia dantes, to join the department of history at the newly re-organized faculty of philosophy, letters and human sciences. from this time, he organized a course on the history of science by inviting several scientists with interest in the history of their respective fields, which was transformed into one of the first publications in brazil dealing with this subject (motoyama 1974). one of his early concerns, already expressed in this publication, was with the public image of science, which emphasized either the almost miraculous capacity to cure mankind’s evils, and thus earning and deserving eternal praise, or the opposite trend, blaming science for mechanization, pollution, war weapons, breaking the ecological equilibrium, thereby deserving despise and contempt. the misunderstanding results from scientific illiteracy, which prevented people from grasping the nature of science. in his words, this illiteracy is present at all levels. even the scientist is no exception to the rule… the laymen are not to blame for this state of things… history of science acquires within 1 gildo magalhães is a full professor in the department of history – faculty of philosophy, letters and human sciences, director of the center for the history of science, university of são paulo, member of the center of philosophy of science, university of lisbon. the author earned his ph. d. under shozo motoyama in 1994. address: email: gildomsantos@hotmail.com obituary: prof. shozo motoyama transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 this panorama unquestionable importance… the historical analysis provides the elements for understanding science as culture, or else, as an active factor for the technical production. (motoyama 1974, 13) at this time, motoyama was very much influenced by the generation of american historians of science which included prominent names such as john randall jr., alistair crombie, and edward grant. another major guidance came from the japanese physicist mituo taketani (1911-2000), whom he met both in japan (where he conducted a postdoctorate in 1975), and in brazil. taketani was a prestigious physicist, a student and coworker of nobel prize hideki yukawa, (who proposed the meson theory), and he was a strong advocate for the communist party, which prompted him to publish a hegelian-marxist philosophy of science known as the three-stage theory. in his understanding, to put it very briefly, science starts from a phenomenal stage, which is dedicated to the description of natural phenomena known through experience. in the second, substantial stage, science asks what sort of substance may compose and structure such experimental findings. then in the third stage, the question becomes what is the essence of the phenomenon and the substance. this synthesis at the essential stage goes on to a similar new cycle of three stages, continually repeated at higher levels of understanding. motoyama did much to have taketani’s works translated into portuguese, although one could say that at the same time he was also an admirer of thomas kuhn’s and karl popper’s models of science. early in his teaching career, motoyama became a tenured professor in 1976 at the university of são paulo, after which he began to pioneer postgraduate courses in the history of science. there had been isolated initiatives there and at a few other universities in this field, but institutionally it was the first time that a line of research entirely dedicated to the history of science and technology emerged in brazil. thus began the formation of a number of masters and doctors, including well-known names such as ruy gama, olival freire jr., carlos maia, francisco assis de queiroz, and many others. in 1990 he became the first full professor in the history of science, an unprecedented title not only at the university of são paulo, but also in brazilian terms. he had an unexpected opportunity, and succeeded in coordinating a new and temporary center for the history of science and technology in brazil, with support from unesco (1980-1983), in addition to receiving several grants from the são paulo state research foundation (fapesp). due to his ease in establishing contacts with researchers from different lines of thought, motoyama was an essential person for the foundation in são paulo, at the end of 1983, of the sbhc (brazilian society for the history of science), of which he was secretary for several years. afterwards in his academic career, he was happy to receive an invitation to create at the university of são paulo a permanent center for the history of science (chc) in 1988, which soon became an aggregating center for distinguished professors who were interested in the subject, such as the engineer milton vargas and the architect júlio katinsky, among several others, coming from various units in the campus. motoyama directed the chc until his retirement in 2009. it is also worth mentioning the close ties he established with the brazilian institute of philosophy (ibf), through jurist and philosopher miguel reale. due to his oriental ancestry, he was invited and served for several years as director of the historical museum of japanese immigration in brazil, located in the liberdade district in são paulo, a neighborhood of japanese descendants. he became a member of the são paulo academy of history in 2004, and also of the historical and geographical institute of são paulo in 2005. motoyama’s bibliographic production was intensified after he shared the joint coordination with mário ferri of the three-volume work, história das ciências no brasil (“history of sciences in brazil”, 1979-1981), which took as a model that of the earlier publication as ciências no brasil (“sciences in brazil”, organized by fernando de azevedo). in obituary: prof. shozo motoyama transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 addition to this, several researches carried out at the chc were the core of another book he organized, tecnologia e industrialização no brasil: uma perspectiva histórica (technology and industrialization in brazil: a historical perspective,1994). in this work he laid one of the cornerstones of his commitment to the historical study of brazilian science and technology. he had frequently observed that there were already several valuable books discussing the brazilian industrialization, but little attention had been paid to the role of science and technology as variables for the general economic development in the country, and industrialization in particular. the dynamics of the interchange between technological phenomena and the structure of industrialization was waiting for scholars to be analyzed (motoyama 1994, 20-21). an earlier written statement of 1993 (published only in 2008) reflects how motoyama’s concern with a recognition of national scientific and technological advancement could be the central leitmotiv for a brazilian history of science: thus, for conducting research that is socially and culturally significant it is not enough to publish international papers, completing here and there dissertations already developed elsewhere… what is interesting is the research immersed in its social and economic reality… to efficiently move in this jungle of variables which pertain to the historical process, this strategic vision based on history is fundamental. (motoyama 2008, 243-244) after the book mentioned above there followed o almirante e o novo prometeu: álvaro alberto e a c&t (“the admiral and the new prometheus: álvaro alberto and s&t”, 1996, together with joão carlos vitor garcia) and a series of many institutional and commemorative histories organized by him, including escola politécnica – 110 anos construindo o futuro (“polytechnic school – 110 years building the future”, 1994), educação técnica e tecnológica em questão: 25 anos do ceeteps uma história vivida (“technical and technological education in question: 25 years of ceeteps – a living history”, 1995), kokei uehara reflexões sobre a engenharia e a educação para uma tecnologia voltada para o bemestar social (“kokei uehara reflections on engineering and education towards a technology focused on social welfare”, 1998), fapesp: uma história de política cientifica e tecnológica (“fapesp: a history of scientific and technological policy”, 1999 ) and para uma história da fapesp – marcos documentais (“towards a history of fapesp – documentary hallmarks”, with amélia hamburger and marilda nagamini, 1999) cidadania e cultura brasileira – homenagem a miguel reale (“citizenship and brazilian culture – homage to miguel reale”, 2001), 50 anos do cnpq – contados pelos seus presidentes (“50 years of cnpq – told by its presidents”, 2002), uma associação para a tecnologia brasileira (“an association for brazilian technology”, 2005), usp 70 anos imagens de uma história (“usp 70 years images of a history”, 2006), fuvest 30 anos (“fuvest 30 years”, 2007, with marilda nagamini), seade. uma história exemplar (“seade. an exemplary history”, 2007), memorial da américa latina 21 anos (“latin american memorial 21 years”, 2010), engenharia mecânica na escola politécnica da usp e suas contribuições para a sociedade (“mechanical engineering at polytechnic school at usp and its contributions to society”, 2014, with marilda nagamini), fapesp 50 anos meio século de ciência (“fapesp 50 years half a century of science”, 2015), a presença japonesa na américa latina (“the japanese presence in latin america”, 2016), do conflito à integração – uma história da imigração japonesa (“from conflict to integration – a history of japanese immigration”, 2017). the younger generations of history students have had contact with motoyama's thought through his last academic work, the comprehensive synthesis he organized, prelúdio para uma história. ciência e tecnologia no brasil (“prelude to a history. science and technology in brazil”, 2004), covering a panorama extending for almost five centuries. even obituary: prof. shozo motoyama transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 considering how much more mature the country had become in the 30 years after he first introduced the theme, he again observed that it is not easy to understand the relationship of s&t and society. but one thing is certain: it is unnecessary to undertake exhaustive analyses to show … the insufficiency of research in the country to have a place among the international leaders of this period. … it is not enough to have a few enlightened and illuminating ones. it is fundamental to have a scientific and technological culture permeating the whole society … we have already shown … how two cultural variables – immediacy and rhetorical pragmatism – were deadly for the evolution of s&t in our land. (motoyama 2004, 4243) shozo motoyama said goodbye to us 21 days after his 81st anniversary, in a characteristic way of his personality: calmly, while sleeping. references motoyama, shozo (org.). 1974. história da ciência, perspectiva científica. revista de história, xlvi (nº especial). motoyama, shozo (org.). 1994. tecnologia e industrialização no brasil. uma perspectiva histórica. são paulo: e. unesp. motoyama, shozo (org.). 2004. prelúdio para uma história. ciência e tecnologia no brasil. são paulo: edusp/fapesp. motoyama, shozo. 2008. “o chc e seus desafios”. khronos (1): 243-249. microsoft word gurgel watanabe layout 41 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 41-58 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2020 – this is an open access journal special issue – historiography of physics the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel1 graciella watanabe2 abstract: does science depend on its historical context? does understanding science as a social construction demand us to abandon rationalist perspectives of knowledge? based on these issues, this article aims to discuss epistemological questions concerning the problem of the historicity of sciences. in first part, we analyze how different philosophical systems conceptualize this problem and point out to tensions that emerge when one tries to reconcile a rationalist with a historicist perspective of knowledge. then, we discuss the sociological epistemology of pierre bourdieu arguing that the field autonomy is a key concept to understand what the author denominates the “social conditions of the progress of reason”. finally, we present criteria to delimit the most relevant contexts in a case study on the history of science. keywords: pierre bourdieu; scientific field; epistemology; historiography of science received: 15 april 2020. reviewed: 18 may 2020. accepted: 10 june 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ______________________________________________________________________ introduction whenever science is affirmed as a historical construction, it is assumed that this is a precise and non-controversial definition. the defense of the historicity of science and its social character is opposed to positivist and empiricist views, denying science as a cumulative process of objective statements about the world. constructivist views of the sciences comprehend that “scientific knowledge is a human creation, made with available material and cultural resources, rather than simply the revelation of a natural order that is pre-given and independent of human action” (golinski 2005 [1998], 6). however, to assert that sciences happen within the historical time, bearing the marks of the places where they are produced, that they are diverse and are not reducible to a method exercised by a genius, is 1 ivã gurgel [orcid: 0000-0003-4968-6907] is a professor in the institute of physics at the university of são paulo – usp. address: rua do matão, 1371 – cidade universitária, são paulo – sp 05508-090 – brazil. e-mail: gurgel@usp.br 2 graciella watanabe [orcid: 0000-0001-6710-0194] is a professor in the centre of natural and human sciences at the federal university of abc. address: avenida dos estados, 5001 – santa terezinha, santo andré, sp 09210580 – brasil. e-mail: graciella.watanabe@ufabc.edu.br the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 42 related to the claim that the “truth (in any precise philosophical sense) is not a product of science” (shapin 2010, 5). one may consider beneficial avoiding scientificist postures and to think science as regarding all of its human restraints – individuals and collectives. nonetheless, epistemological questions whose focus is the validity of the scientific knowledge may be raised. does abandon the “truth” mean to renounce the differentiations regarding the limit of validity of knowledge? is there something that qualifies the truths in the sciences and distinguishes them from other cultural manifestations? does historicize science comprise it as resembling all other practices inserted in human history? thereby, considering science as a historical and social construction does not cease a debate, but, on the contrary, urge for questions to be answered. borrowing a term that gained identity in the work of françois hartog (2015 [2004]), queries related to the previous ones involve inquiring what are the possible regimes of historicity admitted by each one of the different areas that composes the sciences. it is necessary to question if there is a unique dynamics that allow us to understand the changes within time. this implies doubting both the possibility of having a single way to interpret how the macrosocial changes occur (that is, the patterns that guide the “great flow of history”), as well as the existence of unitary theoretical matrices for specific social microcosms. we can ask ourselves if the history of sciences always develops by the same general standards. would it be possible to make an abstraction exercise concerning concrete situations – namely, that took place in history, relativizing the characteristic and social positions of the involved characters – in which one could verify the most general way that sciences are constituted in time? to think about how science is inserted in history is also a reflection about the necessary condition for the production of knowledge and its limits of validity. would specific social environments, which are constituted in history, admit their own rationality scheme? discussions of historiography involve philosophical questions, and one finds unavoidable not to transit between both fields. as pointed out by mauro condé: historiography of science (...) places itself among history and philosophy of science, as it is never a mere photograph of the different manners of how science was written by historians, but invariably presupposes an epistemological conception behind its models, goals, limitations, possibilities, etc. (2017, 19) this article aims to discuss intrinsic epistemological questions to the problem of the historicity of sciences. in particular, we seek to analyse the validity of correlating historicist views of sciences with relativist perspectives. does understanding science as a socialhistorical construction demand us to abandon rationalist perspectives of knowledge? as a complement to this question, we shall discuss some views of how the relationship between science and its context is given. to what extent does science depend on its social-historical context? clearly, we do not hope to exhaust such questions. in the same way, we do not intend to deny the importance of contributions made to them in the last few years. contextualizing this own work, it is important to mention that sciences are going through a singular moment. despite the existence of anti-science movements throughout different epochs, their political strength has never been so strong (thompson and smulewicz-zucker 2018; bensaudevincent 2003 [1999]). this compels us to think about how to bring forth a speech about sciences that at the same time do not mask and hide their nature, but also that do not relativize them to the point of withdrawing its social role. in the next section, we revisit some philosophers of knowledge in order to reconceptualize further addressed issues. through the analysis of how such philosophers considered the historicity of science, we will seek to identify tensions that emerge when one the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 43 tries to reconcile a rationalist understanding with a historicist perspective of knowledge. then, we make a brief plunge in the work of pierre bourdieu in order to characterize, from his epistemology and sociology, what the author denominates the social conditions of the progress of reason (1975). finally, we resume the historiographical debate to ponder how bourdieu’s work helps us to think researches in the history of the sciences. in particular, we discuss how to delimitate the most relevant contexts in a case study on the history of science. the validity of knowledge and the problem of historicity of science the thinking about how science is constituted in time is not something new. as much as the answers that several thinkers had presented over time do not contemplate problems that are currently imposed, the examination of their works helps us to think about ways that lead us to face them; either by updating their projects or by consciously denying them. it is common to present positivism as a non-historical philosophy. however, in the work of auguste comte (1798-1857), in particular, in his course of positive philosophy, published between 1830 and 1842, we can find a project concerned with the history of knowledge. the starting point of his positive philosophy is the study of the “progressive march of the human spirit, considered in his literary ensemble, given that it is only possible to properly know any concept through its history” (2020 [1842], 60). one of the foundations of comte’s philosophy is his law of three stages, in which, “each of our main conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, goes through three different theoretical states successively: the theological or fictitious stage, the metaphysical or abstract stage, and the scientific or positive stage” (2020 [1842], 61). the latter, in contraposition to the formers, is accomplished by renouncing the attempt of characterizing the innermost causes of the phenomena. it seeks, through reasoning and observation, the discovery of “the invariant relations of succession and similitude” (2020 [1842], 62). comte marks the beginning of positive science in the works of francis bacon, rené descartes, and galileo galilei, the same period established as the beginning of modern science. he recognizes the “impossibility to strictly determine the origin of this revolution” (2020 [1842], 73), but balances that in these authors a project to develop the true knowledge is evident. for a certain knowledge reaching its positive stage, its development would follow the guiding principles of this philosophy, with no further epistemological reviews. comte also questions whether all categories of phenomena had already been subjected to a positive understanding. in his judgement, the study of social phenomena would be lacking, leading the author to propose a social physics. what reigns in comte’s work is a progressive view of the history of science. the stages of knowledge would evolve naturally, as much from the point of view of one’s thinking, as from the point of view of a collective society. here, history refers to the necessary antecedents to reach a certain maturity, with no room to think about the historicity of science in terms of its contextual elements. in other words, knowledge would not carry characters that demonstrate its link with the social forms of organization of an epoch. what interests comte is to characterize the progress of knowledge so that it serves as a model for the evolution of societies. the opposite path, that is, the characterization of social conditions for the progress of knowledge is absent in his work. the vector of science to society is imposed. philosophical movements from the 2oth century, close to comte’s positivism, go through similar paths. hans reichenbach (1891-1953), who became known for the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification (reichenbach 1938), elaborates a narrative in which science is viewed as the accumulation of observations and experimental results that would allow the construction of theories increasingly abstract. by discussing the the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 44 historical process of the construction of space and time concepts, the author comments that both have “little connection with economical needs; always dealing with abstract things, far from our daily life, without direct influence on our everyday activities” (reichenbach 1980 [1942], 11). reaffirming his logical empiricism, reichenbach situates in michelson-morley experiment the origin of the special theory of relativity (reichenbach 1980 [1942]). it is not about denying the relevance of experiments in the sciences but to comprehend its meaning on an epistemology. empirical-positivists traditions narrow the knowledge to the observable and measurable by considering them as objectives. nonetheless, different authors, of which we highlight norwood hanson (1958), argue about the inseparability between observation and interpretation. current studies still stress that the meaning of an outcome of an experiment goes through the process of peer negotiation. as pointed out by peter galison, “experimental physics cannot be rewritten as a logical fantasy in which all theorizing is forbidden until ‘facts’ clinch the argument. nor can experimentation be parodied as if it were no more grounded in reason than negotiations over the price of a street fair antique” (2018 [1987], 277). hence, it is not appropriate to attribute to an experiment itself the validity of knowledge. it is necessary to understand how this validity constitutes itself and builds the place of legitimacy in the speeches and actions of agents who play specific roles in the production of knowledge. throughout the 2oth century, many epistemologies will oppose themselves not only to positivism but also to different foundationalists philosophical systems. what is broader in this movement is the attempt to build an epistemology that would not establish a prior set of norms for knowledge. thereby, authors come to value history as a basis to comprehend knowledge. gaston bachelard (1884-1962) elaborates an epistemology in which knowledge is analyzed depending on the individual, that is, in his work knowledge and thought are inseparable. one of the questions that pervade his work is the one about the conditions of possibility of knowledge, forcing us to question the scientific (spirit) mindset. bachelard develops a philosophy where science is the result of a process on which thinking itself needs to be constantly surpassed. the production of knowledge by a determined way of thinking is exhausted with time, becoming an obstacle to new ideas (bachelard 1993 [1938]). thus, the development of science would not be reduced to a cumulative process of new concepts, theories, etc; it would be founded over a continuous practice of a same philosophical programme, as pursued by the positivists. the scientific knowledge would come from epistemological breaks, from a process of denying previous knowledge (bachelard 2012 [1940]). if comte considered science as the culmination of a process, from which an epistemological pattern would remain constant, bachelard historicizes scientific knowledge differently, by placing the inherently human thought in focus. however, bachelard’s reduction of the individual to its cognitive dimension is criticized, for example, by marxist philosophers (lecourt 1975) who see lacking of historicizing in his approach. the reason progresses according to the internal problems of science, without it being characterized by the context or the social dynamics in which it is inserted. bachelard’s epistemology is composed of texts in which the history of science is under analysis. after having written his main works in 1951, the philosopher gives a conference at the palais de la decouvert, in paris, in which he reflects on the writing of history. entitled the present of the history of sciences, the author considers the relationship between the present and the study of the past. aware of being against the current thinking among historians, bachelard says that the historian must judge the past. to understand the history of the sciences is to explain the value of each new thought for its development. in his own words: the history of sciences is essentially a judged history, judged on the details of its plot, with a meaning that must be permanently tuned by the values of truth. the history of the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 45 sciences cannot simply be a history of records. the minutes of the academies naturally contain numerous documents for the history of sciences. but these minutes do not really constitute a history of sciences. the historian of sciences must draw, from them, lines of progress. (2010 [1951], 209) the development of science is given through the progress of reason. despite that, bachelard does not look for an ultimate definition of rationality, given its constant changing and, consequently, historical nature. its evolution is associated with the problems on which it is applied, avoiding it from relapsing in empty and idealistic reasoning (bachelard, 1966 [1949]). nevertheless, its rational materialism does not go beyond the dimension of the individual, which makes reason its immanent capacity. thus, there is no foundation of knowledge that is at the social level of the sciences. in summary, the history of science in bachelard’s work is a history of how the rational thinking has changed when facing problems whose solutions would demand to go beyond the first impressions we may have about the world. in the third quarter of the 20th century, the problem of the scientific change and the possibilities of a model for scientific development became central themes in the epistemological debate. in this context, one finds thomas kuhn and his the structure of scientific revolutions (2012 [1962]). the normal science is the research firmly based on one or more past scientific achievements (2012 [1962], 19). in it, scientists generate knowledge from the same theoretical remarks, experimental procedures, data interpretation systems, etc. aspects often less conscious on a scientist’s mind are also shared, as the epistemological assumptions guiding their work. when a paradigm starts to present many anomalies – problems it is unable to solve – a revolutionary process begins. the same is completed when a new paradigm begins to hold in the scientific community. thus, kuhn’s historical epistemology is also based on ruptures in the process of knowing. still, his view differs from that of bachelard since the former does not look at science focusing on thought. one of kuhn’s key aspects, which influenced subsequent generations, was to discuss science from its collective character, that is, from the scientific community. kuhn does not quite elaborate a theory of history, leaving open questions raised from his epistemology. on the one hand, the emphasis given on the scientific community means that the epistemology developed in the structure does not reveal the importance of contextual aspects in science, that is, which bring elements external to the sciences. on the other hand, this same focus is associated with relativist assumptions, particularly as the author claims the immeasurability of paradigms and their non-progressive character. therefore, scientific change is guided by a social process that is not necessarily restricted to epistemic values. one of the main epistemological confrontations on the problem of the scientific change was realized by imre lakatos (1922-1974). a rationalist philosopher inspired in karl popper’s work, lakatos seeks to elaborate an interpretation of history where scientific revolutions are seen as rational progress of the sciences. his main concern is precisely to avoid relativist theses which might lead to an understanding of the scientific change as a process in which members of the scientific community are converted to a new way of thinking. lakatos’s concerns led him to develop the methodology of scientific research programmes. these can be characterized by their hardcore, which cannot be falsifiable and “is conventionally accepted” (lakatos, 1980a [1970], 46). it is complemented by the protective belt that forms a positive heuristics “consisting in a partially articulated set of suggestions, or cues, on how to change and develop the refutable variants of the research programme, and how to modify and sophisticate the refutable protective belt” (1980a [1970], 51). if the adjustments on the belt broaden the theory and accommodate new the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 46 experimental data, the research programme can be considered progressive. still, if “its theoretical growth is delayed” (1980a [1970], 77), in other words, the explanation of new facts demands ad hoc hypotheses, then the programme has degenerated. within such perspective, a scientist’s adhesion to a research programme becomes something based on a rational criterion, opting for the most progressive one, with the greatest scientific legitimacy at that moment. one of the greatest difficulties in lakatos’ epistemology is determining the dimensions, including historical ones, of research programmes. if we think about a “longue durée” history, we can define science as a vast research programme. in this case, it would never be abandoned, as it would be constantly in progress. if, as opposed to that, we opt for a micro-history, an anomaly can be already interpreted as a decline symbol, that is, the programme is degenerating and must be forsaken. what would then be the intermediate historical dimension allowing a fair evaluation? lakatos partially answer this question in his essay history of science and its rational reconstructions (1980 [1971]). lakatos comprehends that science develops under the most diverse contextual influences; however, it is possible to separate between internal history from the external one. the former is attentive to (1) the successes and failures of the research programmes that were important for long periods of time; (2) to their progressive and degenerative changes; (3) to their rivalries and (4) to the slow emergence of the victory of one programme over the other. the external history would be composed by the non-rational factors that may (or may not) have influenced the development of science. the history of science is always richer than its rational reconstruction. but rational reconstruction or internal history is primary, external history only secondary since the most important problems of external history are defined by internal history. external history either provides a non-rational explanation of the speed, locality, selectiveness, etc., of historic events as interpreted in terms of internal history; or, when history differs from its rational reconstruction, it provides an empirical explanation of why it differs. but the rational aspect of scientific growth is fully accounted for by one’s logic of scientific discovery. (lakatos 1980a [1971], 118) the separation, as done by lakatos, puts back, in a new way, the problem of demarcation in the history of sciences. the appraisal of the scientificity of knowledge or the judgement of the rationality of a decision is accomplished from a historical perspective, that is, in relation to the development in the time of a research programme. it is necessary to “draw a line” in history, separating the internal from the external, ascribing secondary importance to the later. lakatos’ work is relevant for setting in the collective and historical plane the exercise of reason. nevertheless, this is done for the price of decontextualizing science, making abstract the scientific practice. internalism and externalism are two historiographical approaches that marked the debates on the history of sciences in the middle of the 20th century, especially in relation to the debates about the emergence of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries. the main representative of internalism is alexandre koyré (1892 1964), a historian with a philosophical training who follows the tradition of french rationalism. science consists of the production of rational theories about the world, following the galilean understanding which comprehends that the “book of nature” is written in a mathematical language. for koyré, the mathematical rationality is not just an epistemological characteristic of the physical sciences, but also its foundation and what legitimizes them (koyré 1985 [1966]). similarly to bachelard’s understanding, koyré’s history of science is the history of scientific thought. the narratives produced by the author seek to reveal, as much as possible, the reasoning behind the production of the ideas that founded mechanics and gravitation. the explanation of its emergence is limited to the philosophical assumptions that underpin the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 47 scientific thinking. factors linked to the social changes that occurred in the renaissance would be secondary to the understanding of the origins of modern science. externalism brings together authors from different times. in his work, the social and economic roots of newton’s ‘principia’ (1931), boris hessen (1893-1936) presents a marxist reading of history of science, in which the work of the english scientist would be due to the structural changes that led to the advent of capitalism. some years later, edgar zilsel (1891 1944) elaborates the thesis that will carry his name. modern science is the result of economic changes associated with the origins of capitalism and the technologies and practical knowledge involved in the material production process. this context, associated with the increasing population of cities and their new modes of organization, “enabled the junction between the theoretical knowledge of the philosophical tradition and the practical one, of artisans and artisan-engineers, hence establishing modern science” (condé 2017, 32). the externalist view is, sometimes, still related to the marxist philosophy. underneath it prevails the critique that the modes of economic production deterministically impose themselves on the plan of the cultural productions. however, in the second half of the 20th century, works concerned with the influence of external factors were developed based on other theoretical foundations. by analyzing them in a quite broad manner, one verifies a marked presence of the cultural studies, and these authors can be grouped into what has come to be known as science studies. this area gathers studies with very different philosophical characteristics, but which are grouped by sharing some similar principles. the science studies can be considered an “anti-philosophical system”, or even an “antiepistemology”. this does not mean that its studies do not address philosophical and epistemological questions. its research seeks to avoid essentialist perspectives on science, as the latter would establish a unifying answer to queries about what science is. for example, it refuses to elaborate models for scientific development, which to some extent end up having normative pretenses, as did kuhn and lakatos (pestre 2006). this withdrawal from the philosophical tradition is the result of an attempt to understand in detail the conditions of the scientific practice, in order to reveal all the human dimensions involved. accordingly, the focus of analysis is no longer theories, models, and scientific concepts, but its practice, the science in action, as defined by bruno latour (2005 [1987]). the sciences seen as a practice involves valuing the most different dimensions of knowledge production. therefore, the study of a historical episode may involve the theoretical and experimental procedures employed in the construction of knowledge; the material culture involved, that is, the nature of the instruments used and their own manufacturing processes; the forms of publication and reading, taking into account the processes of circulation of ideas and the disputes, litigations and controversies involved in their validation; the cultural and ideological determinations of the scientific practice; the institutions, their modes of organization and their funding; the policies that govern the field and determine its forms of dispute; among others. to sum up: the studies on science and science practices that have made history in the last decades have denaturalized the object “science”, they have de-essentialized it, de-idealized it. it is postulated that there is no evidence that the science object exists identical to itself over time, that its identity is unproblematic. (pestre 2006, 6) one of the most influential works in the sciences studies is knowledge and social imagery, by david bloor. this work founded the so-called strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge, which claims the place of the analysis of knowledge until then occupied primarily by epistemology. distancing from the definition of knowledge as a justified true belief, “the sociologist will be concerned with beliefs which are taken for granted or institutionalised, or invested with authority by groups of people” (bloor 1991 [1976], 5). the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 48 bloor elaborates four tenets that should govern the explanations about knowledge. “it would be causal, that is, concerned with the conditions which bring about belief or states of knowledge (...); impartial with respect to truth and falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure (...); symmetrical (...) the same types of cause would explain, say, true and false beliefs; (...) [and] reflexive. in principle, its patterns of explanation would have to be applicable to sociology itself” (1991, [1976], 7). with the strong programme, bloor hopes to achieve a radical historicization of knowledge. the social context would not only affect the institutional daily life and the ways of organizing science; the cognitive content itself should be explained by it. the epistemological characteristics of knowledge would be explained by the constraints of an epoch. what bachelard called judged history should also be avoided, as the scientific achievements of an epoch should not be judged by current epistemological evaluations. this is particularly important because many episodes show that what we could consider as right or wrong occur simultaneously in the same practice by the same agent. explicitly disrupting with lakatos, bloor rejects the possibility of drawing a line separating internal and external history. thus, research in history must be able to show that the same influences that led the scientist to make a mistake must explain his successes. bloor’s work is not an isolated example of a project for understanding science. the strong programme was influenced by several types of research, especially in the history of sciences, and influenced many others. besides, other proposals appeared at the same time and in later periods, such as bruno latour’s actor-network theory. however, at the same time that constructivist perspectives, developed since the 1970s, allowed to humanize and put science in context, they raised questions that remain open. for the current work, two issues are central. the first consists of the relationship between historicity and relativism. does understanding science as a social construction imply adopting a relativist position? in other words, does presenting science with its human restraints make it necessary to abstain from epistemological questions that qualify knowledge? the most common positions have responded positively to such questions. this position has played an important role in the last decades for having allowed, as previously mentioned, to denaturalize, desentialize and deidealize the sciences. however, they left open epistemological issues that are important when one considers the role of sciences in democratic societies. secondly, it is necessary to question what are the dynamics that drive the history of sciences. that is, is it possible to ponder the different influences present in scientific practice? these questions reflect the first inquiry raised by peter galison in his “ten problems in history and philosophy of science”. by retaking the “intellectual civil war” (2008, 112) between internalism and externalism, and reviewing it for our times, the author comments on two main ways of considering the context of a work in its analysis. would the context be the intellectual production of authors around the analyzed work, as philosophers prefer, or rather, as historians indicate, the “non-textual” factors, that is, political, institutional, industrial or ideological? what kind of thing is a candidate for context? further: is a contextual explanation as strong as a causal account (…)? is a contextual explanation as weak as saying that the surround offers “resources” taken up by the scientists we are studying? (…) in short: what is context, and how does a contextual explanation work? (2008, 113) the same work, character, or collective scientific practice is immersed in different contexts. the scientific context is delimited by agents who work with similar theoretical and methodological assumptions, who develop practices of the same nature, and who collaborate or compete with each other. there is a common microcosm that unites different actors. one can also think of a broader intellectual environment, where there are mutual the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 49 influences among scientists from different areas, but also between scientists and artists, or, for example, the inspirations of a physicist that occurred when reading a philosophical work. this context can be extended to a wider and ethereal cultural plan, in which the context is formed by social imagery as well as social behaviours. in addition to these, it is possible to think about the macro contexts, which involve different organizations and social hierarchies, different forms of government and political agents and, finally, modes of production and circulation of goods. then, the following questions arise: are these different contexts – scientific, intellectual, cultural, social, political, and economic – present in the scientific practice likewise? as already mentioned, questions like these do not wear out at work. nevertheless, it is possible to point paths from the analysis of the work of different authors. in the next section, we aim at treating those from the perspective of pierre bourdieu’s relational sociology. an author with philosophical training, he became a sociologist in practice but never waiving concerns regarding the foundations of knowledge. the search to explore this dimension in his work is still overlooked, which makes it relevant to reposition it in relation to the question here presented. pierre bourdieu’s sociological epistemology in 1975, bourdieu publishes the article “la spécificité du champ scientifique et les conditions sociales du progrès de la raison”, which is reprinted one year later with few modifications and a reduced title, “le champ scientifique”. in these papers, we already find the complete project of what we may call his sociological epistemology of science,3 which would be detailed in his posterior works (1991, 2001), in particular in his last course at the collège france, published in the book entitled science de la science et la réflexivité (2004). his works are part of the movement to renew the sociology of science, although it builds up a research agenda that seeks distinct and critical paths regarding his contemporaries. according to bourdieu. science, in relation to other fields of intellectual production, is the one who most claimed the distinction between internal and external. the internalist analysis “views the scientific practice as a pure activity completely independent of any economic or social determination; in contrast, external analysis views science as a direct reflection of economic and social structures” (bourdieu 1991, 4). overcoming this polarization involves thinking about how reason is historically constituted, since it would avoid both the absolutist realism, which considers that science represents reality as it is (or provides the closest representation of it), and the historicist relativism, which takes science as a conventional social construction, “reflecting the objective structures and the typical beliefs of a particular social universe” (bourdieu 1991, 4). the epistemological project requires a different approach from the one favoured by philosophers, which focuses on the analysis of the internal coherence of knowledge. at the same time, we need a new sociology of science that focuses on the analysis of the social conditions allowing the development of knowledge with specific features. bourdieu produced analyses on different fields and his work may be defined as relational sociology. according to vandenberghe (1999), it is an attempt to convert bachelard’s applied rationalism of the natural sciences to the human sciences. the author presented it as a theory of practice whose goal would be to overcome false oppositions in the social sciences, embodied by the objectivism-subjectivism antagonism (lentacker 2010). the habitus, field and capital are the key concepts of bourdieu’s sociology (tampakis 2016). 3 with this denomination, we highlight that bourdieu’s works, as they seek to characterize and analyse the validity of the scientific knowledge, constitute an epistemology. at the same time, the author locates its foundations in the social conditions of its production. the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 50 bourdieu’s field theory seeks to comprehend the dynamics governing the social microcosms which are not reducible to the objective aspects of the functioning of the social space. in this context, understanding science means to understand how this field works explicitly and implicitly, and how its rules lead to the creation of specific symbolic productions. in particular, one must understand the elaboration of scientific truths, these “social products relatively independent of their social conditions of production” (bourdieu 1976, 88). thus, it is necessary to unveil the rules of the social game of science in order to specify how this dynamics allows the production of a specific truth. bourdieu’s interest is to provide the basis for a truly historical approach to the constitution of the scientific field (gingras, 2009, 283). the scientific field is a separate world, apart, where a most specific social logic is at work, affirming itself more and more to the degree that symbolic power imposes themselves that are irreducible to those that are currently in the political field as well as to those instituted in the legal or theological field. (…) the scientific field is a field of forces whose structure is defined by the continuous distribution of the specific capital possessed, at the given moment, by various agents or institutions operative in the field. it is also a field of struggles or a space of competition where agents or institutions who work at valorizing their own capital – by means of strategies of accumulation imposed by the competition and appropriate for determining the preservation or transformation of the structure confront one another. (bourdieu 1991, 6-7) analyzes of the scientific field reveal a complex social game formed by struggles for the scientific authority and search of the symbolic recognition of peers who, in turn, rule and limit participants through specific practices and knowledge. therefore, those who are able to deal with the problems considered as real in their fields are accepted in the game of sciences. the scientific habitus is initially acquired by exposure to the modus operandi of science present in pre-determined social spaces, such as schools. these ways of thinking, perceiving and acting are consolidated by experiencing different places where science takes place, such as laboratories, seminar rooms, public congresses, etc. therefore, one acquires corporeal and sensitive pre-dispositions for the practice of science. every agent will accumulate, throughout its historical trajectory, capitals of different nature (social, cultural, etc), which will lead him to acquire a position in the scientific field. the higher the position in the field, the grater the possibilities for intervention in the “rules of the game”. bourdieu (1991, 1976) insists on the inseparability between what is scientific and what is social, but recognizes two components in the scientific capitals. one would be the symbolic recognition of scientific authority (pure scientific capital) and the other would be the recognition of social authority (political or temporal scientific capital) (bourdieu, 1991; 2004; 2019 [1998]). the first involves the recognition by its “peer-competitors” of a distinct competence in solving legitimate problems of the field. this is done, for example, in publications in prestigious journals. the second, a less representative component of the autonomy of the field, may be exemplified through management positions in different institutions or actions in the public sphere. these agents who are in privileged positions have great power in defining what is and what is not scientific, which implies intervening in the very own rules of the game of science. a determining factor in the bourdieusian theory, that aims to constitute a counterpoint to robert merton’s idea of “scientific community”, refers to the autonomy of the field and its conditions of entry. for bourdieu (2004) the mertonian idea of community needs to be surpassed, thus, “to speak of a field is to break with the idea that scientists form a unified, even homogeneous group” (bourdieu, 2004, 52). scientists do not follow the same scientific ethos but dispute the rules that regulate the production of knowledge. for the author, the the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 51 mertonian idea of a scientific community would lead to the understanding that entering the field and playing its game would not have any kind of criteria regulated through the recognition of its peers. this view would lead to mask all types of scientific practices and struggles based on an opposition process between consensus and conflict (lombardo, sabetta 2018). the permanent struggles in the field allow it to acquire a structure to the dynamics of operation that makes the actions within it highly regulated. you cannot “win” a dispute by acting in a way that has not been previously validated. the sciences only recognize what is produced by means of their criteria of validity, making it an autonomous microcosm in relation to the other sectors of society. autonomy is not a given, but a historical conquest, endlessly having to be undertaken anew. this is easily forgotten in the case of the natural sciences, because their autonomy is inscribed both in the objectivity of the structures of the field and also in scientists’ minds, in the form of theories and methods, incorporated and returned to the practical state. (bourdieu 2004, 47) the autonomy in the field of physical sciences appears, in particular, through a historical process that mobilizes the very way in which scientists built their theories. evermore committed to the mathematical logic and with the interpretation given to the data obtained by technically sophisticated experiments, they preclude those outside the field to opine on scientific problems, as they are deprived of the symbolic resources (cognitive predispositions) necessary to the exercise of the scientific authority. these are the specificities that transformed the field of science, which ceased to be heteronymous, as in the copernicogalilean period when it was strongly influenced by the catholic church. first, competence: this means not only mastery of existing knowledge, of the resources accumulated in the field (mathematics in particular), but also the fact of having incorporated all the theoretical-experimental (that is to say, cognitive and material) resources resulting from previous research, transforming them into a practical sense of the game, converting them into reflexes. (bourdieu 2004, 51) this process leads to a complex acquisition of capital which defines the positions and practices (habitus) that place and legitimate the taking of positions and influence of the field of science. the scientific capital is a symbolic one, whose long-term goal is to promote the visibility of those who own it, that is, the weight of their symbolic capital in the power game (bourdieu 2016). this type of capital is legitimated by the knowledge and recognition by peers, exclusively validated by the scientific field. the weight of this symbolic capital varies according to the distinctive value of the contributions and originalities that each scientist acquires and that can only be recognized and validated by his peers in the scientific field (bourdieu 2004). therefore, the relationship between capital and field is characterized by the way these instruments of symbolic recognition and validation act in the relationship web between agents that define, in a more straightforward manner, the positions in the scientific hierarchy. the more a field is autonomous, the more the capital is unevenly distributed, ensuring that those operating in positions with greater scientific prestige are also those who accumulate more capital which, in turn, generate profits in the field of forces. it follows that the more autonomous a field is, the more the hierarchy according to the distribution of scientific capital is differentiated, event to the extent of taking an opposite form to that of the hierarchy by temporal capital (…) judgements of scientific works are contaminated by knowledge of the position of the authors in the social hierarchies (and the more heteronomous the field is, the more this is the case). thus, cole and cole show that, among physicists, frequency of citation depends on the the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 52 university to which a scientist is attached, and it is known that a researcher’s symbolic capital, and therefore the reception of his work, depends in part on the symbolic capital of his laboratory. (bourdieu 2004, 57) the scientists themselves are who defines such struggles, in the face of conflicts and interests in the field, due to their high autonomy in the natural sciences. for this reason, participation in this field can only be evaluated and legitimated by peers, and, consequently, analyzed by the possession of a capital acquired historically in the trajectory of this field that is constituted in the long-term learning of methods, techniques, habitus and thoughts which define the specialized knowledge of those who own it. the scientist does not present himself only as a scientist, but also as the representation of the field in its objectified universe of the relationships that regulate the productions and their agents (bourdieu, 2004). unlike some social studies of science, bourdieu’s sociological epistemology is not limited to recognizing that the “scientific fact is won, constructed, observed” (bourdieu, 2004, 72), but understands the scientific knowledge as the result of a regulated process, established among social agents (scientists) in relation to the object in question (scientific knowledge) (bourdieu, 2004). there will always be a validation process of knowledge that cannot be treated only between the scientist and the object, but between scientists, their peers and the object. recognizing this trend of the scientific process thus requires rethinking the state of the field, the choices, and the role that each agent plays in the scientific field and their ability to mobilize it (bourdieu, 2019 [1998]). the memory and historicity of science can be represented either in the order of the symbolic or in the culture objectified in books, articles, documents, instruments, laboratories. both produce a certain historical action by scientists that aim at representing laws and theories – which transcend the history and the individual experiences imposed in the trajectories of the social agents – that were developed through “the space of possibles (and of impossibles) that confronts any competent researcher” (bourdieu, 1991, 12). bourdieu’s sociology can be characterized as a theory of practice, in which one seeks to understand how agents act in the field. thus, the scientist is someone who works in the scientific field, and his actions are modulated and guided by what he can obtain in this social microcosm. just like in a chess game, the scientist’s thinking operates in such a way as to anticipate which actions are able to bring the best outcomes. this explains the tendency of researchers to focus on problems considered to be of great importance by agents with a “high degree of legitimacy” (bourdieu 1976, 90). by establishing dialogue with the work of thomas kuhn, bourdieu will point out that an autonomous scientific field establishes, moreover, the problems that may be considered revolutionary. even if they disrupt, in different aspects, with the science established up to that moment, the need for them to be submitted to the criteria of the legitimacy of the field makes revolutions limited to their possibilities of transformation. science itself provides the “institutional conditions for rupture” (bourdieu, 1976, 98). a decisive change occurs when censorship of those social drives that are not scientifically sublimated has been progressively incorporated in the structure of the field and in the mechanisms that control entry in it, and also, most importantly, when it has been implanted in specific resources that are more and more completely objectified in formalized (notably mathematical) procedures. under these circumstances, a revolution against established science is carried out with the help of an institution that provides the instruments of rupture with that establishment: the field thus becomes the site of a permanent revolution, but one that is increasingly stripped of political effects. (bourdieu 1991, 18) the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 53 pierre bourdieu’s position, when analyzing the scientific field, is opposed to the studies of david bloor and robert merton. if, on the one hand, it deviates from the structuralfunctionalist studies of robert merton, whose scientific community, its norms and values are aimed at the first end, which is scientific development (merton 1988), on the other, it also criticizes the strong programme for its vision with a strong appeal to the cognitive context and little emphasis on the scientific one. for the author, the criticism to the structural-functionalism is based on the idea that the recognition acquired in and by the scientific community cannot be reduced to an effort of social practices to reinforce, or to fight for, an imposition to a certain theory, but in the constitution of a symbolic capital that does not consist only of individual recognition, but in the relationship between the position of the laboratory and the scientist in the scientific field (bourdieu, 2012). likewise, the mertonian approach does not refer to the way scientific conflicts are resolved. although, for merton, the mathew effect4 could be an important constitution for improving the idea of recognition in the scientific community, as part of the “economic” practices of scientists, it does little help when it is recognized that the position in the social structure of those who have the knowledge, the theory or scientific data end up being decisive in the process of struggles for scientific authority (bourdieu 2004). on the other hand, the ways in which he understands the limits of the strong programme are centered in the critique of the interactionist views that comprise the relationships between agents as the principle of the scientists’ actions. they ignore the structure of objective relationships that are historically established and, thus, prior to agents themselves, who become constituted by it. the scientific field, therefore, would be that place where the specific knowledge becomes fundamental for the aggregation of new players to play the social game of science, which limits the actions and the ways in which interactions can be part of many cultural and political interests, at the same time that they need to have the scientific rationality as the basis for structuring the relationships between these agents. but the limits of his work result from the fact that he remains enclosed within an interactions vision which seeks the principle of agents actions in the interactions between them and ignores the structures (or objective relationships) and the dispositions (generally correlated with the position occupied within these structures) that are the real principle of actions and, among other things, of the interactions themselves (which may be the mediation between structures and action. (bourdieu 2004, 20) given the complexity of thinking about such practices, associated with the contemporary science studies, bourdieu (2004) questions the logic of the scientific field, and how to deal with increasingly complex and expensive laboratories, which are only sustained through collective work (bourdieu 2004). such inference also seeks to build a direct relationship between the technical objects and the power they are supposed to have in the production of knowledge. if the scientist is the scientific field, represented by the cognitive structure that is homologous to the structure of the field and the expectations inscribed in that field (bourdieu 2004), it is worth questioning how it would be to consider the logic between field, goals and agent. in that sense, an important part of this articulated process of thought, to respond to pierre bourdieu’s research agenda on the social conditions of the progress of reason, that does not seem to have ended yet. 4 mathew effect consists in a “cumulative advantage directs our attention to the ways in which initial comparative advantage of trained capacity, structural location, and available resources make for successive increments of advantage such that the gaps between the haves and the have-nots in science (as in other domains of social life) wide until dampened by countervailing processes” (merton 1988, 606). the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 54 bourdieu and the writing of the history of science bourdieu proposes a research agenda that allows the double truth of the sociologist’s work – and, for the questions addressed by this work, of the historian’s – whose methodological value is made in its reflexivity (bourdieu 2004; 1991; 1975; 1997). critical to different epistemologists and historians of science, he recognizes the difficulties in doing the “science of science” (bourdieu 2004). in an attempt to build a proposal of reading the world of science and, in a more general manner, of a society that is not static, the author seeks to depart from the structure-action dichotomy of social agents. the sociologist produces a relation between social space, power place and thought-action-practice that operate jointly to elaborate the understanding of the world and the positions taken by the agents in the social game (of the natural sciences). therefore, the habitus takes action in the field through the mobilization, acquisition and capital value that each agent has in the social game under analysis (vandenberghe 1999). starting from these central concepts (yet many others, such as the illusion and the transubstantiation, are still necessary) is possible to recognize that, in his theory, nothing can be thought, act and built in the absence of a complex game of meanings and practices that are imbricated by the social field in which those who play the game are placed. bourdieu’s interest in the scientific field has always sought to weight both sides of the balance between the heteronomy and autonomy of the sciences. his interests in the natural sciences were marked by gaston bachelard’s epistemology as a consequence of his training at the sorbonne with georges canguilhem (gattinara 2018). the challenge of comprehending the scientificity of physics as an articulated autonomy process of the field, which he imposed to himself, has rendered him reflections capable of helping the understanding of social aspects of the production of the social sciences. to bourdieu, the mathematical thinking had an important role for the autonomy of the physics’ microcosm, whose scientists sought, throughout the history of their knowledge, a scientific authority that had influenced the struggles within the field, protecting it from interferences and external interests. this lesson has been learned in face of the impacts the catholic church had in the copernican and galilean studies, and that today are strongly ressurging in the studies of quantum physics and genetics (supiot 2014). analyses of the development of the field enable the understanding of what is recognized as a problem and what is accessible by the intellectual conditions that define what is a true problem. this positioning in the place at which the scientist acts requires playing the game whose academic rules, strongly guided by the scientific authority, will never be deprived of value in face of the position occupied by the one who produces the knowledge. to move away from common sense to produce the scientific knowledge, it would require, then, an epistemological vigilance along the lines defended by gaston bachelard. in a way, such a proposal explores the limits of the scientist of nature in seeking to understand his/her own social practice, that is, the limits of scientists in making “science of sciences”. the autonomy of the field is what best represents bourdieu’s contribution to the study (social or historical) of sciences, as it is a primary piece to comprehend that the social game of physics is a game with rules, based on a process of acquiring scientific authority (strict or social) (bourdieu 1991), that cannot be coerced by the speech of servitude to the economic or political world. in its turn, this interpretation is not naïve, but canny when the author imposes the limits of the field to the scientific knowledge. it recognizes that the produced knowledge is not exclusively an epistemological construct, but an interested social practice, whose knowledge and recognition by the peers have a strong influence by the social position of those who speak or the laboratories from where they speak. although the scientific authority has an expiration date, the field guarantees to its holder a substantial period of the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 55 time between a failure and the resumption of the scientific authority, almost always less impacting to those who have it at the expense of those who pursue it. the scientific field changes over time. at the same time that previous achievements configure the distribution of the capitals at a given time, new ways of validating knowledge may be admitted. bourdieu understands that priority disputes are often based on the search for the legitimacy of a certain way of doing science. hence, these are at the same time “scientific debates about the meaning of what is discovered and epistemological discussions on the nature of the scientific practice” (bourdieu 1991, 13). the main struggles in the scientific field are epistemological, involving the criteria that validate the knowledge. thus, as much as the most diverse motivations may lead scientists to engage in disputes, in practice science requires that the actions and speeches carried out focus on gaining the recognition of peer-competitors. although the field involves agents in unequal positions, the reason is constituted by the establishment of clear rules which allow the judgement of their work. thus, it is in history that we find the reason for the advances of a reason that is thoroughly historical and yet irreducible to history. scientific reason realizes itself only when it is inscribed, not in the ethical norms of a practical reason or the technical rules of a scientific methodology, but in the social mechanisms of an apparently anarchic competition between strategies armed with instruments of action and of thought capable of regulating the very conditions of their use as well as in the durable dispositions inculcated by the school and reinforced by the very functioning of the field. (…) against all those who see no possibility of “grounding/founding” reason other than ascribing it to a transhistorical “human nature” independent of social conditionings, we must admit that reason realizes itself in history only to the degree that it inscribes itself in the objective mechanisms of a regulated competition capable of compelling interested claims to monopoly to convert free to say anything at all imprison themselves, provided that they say nothing about anything essential or that they say it in such a form that nothing will escape from the closed circle of the initiated. (bourdieu 1991, 21-22). different sciences, practiced at different times, have a variety of degrees of autonomy. as previously mentioned, copernican astronomy, developed in a scientific field that was still heteronomous, has been constituting, in its historical trajectory, certain degrees of autonomy until the present day, in which admission to the field does not require highly specialized knowledge. studies on thermal physics in heat engines during the industrial revolution were of equal interest to artisans, engineers, industrialists, and those who would later be called physicists. in this context, this branch of knowledge is not restricted to a field that is already properly formed, with its well-established social rules. after james c. maxwell and ludwig boltzmann, many of the problems related to heat and temperature came to be understood as problems of statistical mechanics, restricting them to the specialized knowledge of physics. in the same period, we see a reverse process, the electrodynamics being born with andré-marie ampère, with a work of selected interest from the men of scientific academies, little by little becoming the property of engineers and industrialists who will promote the second industrial revolution. when we study a historical episode and ask ourselves how its historical-social context has influenced it, the answer to this question goes through assessing how much this episode involves themes and social agents that are part of a specific field. in cases where the field is heteronymous, the production of knowledge will be under the direct influence of external interests, both economic and worldviews based on assumptions that refer us to the most diverse cultures. however, when studying a case inserted in a very limited way to the production of an autonomous field, the “external” influences act indirectly, often playing a secondary role in the episode. the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; graciella watanabe 56 conclusion science is a historical construction. at the beginning of this article, we tried to problematize this statement, indicating that within it an epistemological tension between rationalist and relativistic views of the scientific knowledge is present. thus, the challenge raised was to trace paths that would allow reflecting on the possibilities of overcoming this tension, discussing its implications for the writing of the history of sciences. the most different epistemologies have tried, over time, to deal with the problem of the historicity of sciences. positivist perspectives, in their legitimate project that sought to constrain – perhaps excessively – what scientific knowledge would be, ended up limiting the history of sciences to the progress of observation-based theorizing. thus, it would be the story of the triumph of an epistemology. bachelard conceives reason in such a way to distinguish it from logic by attributing to its historicity. in his view, science goes through epistemological ruptures and, during this process, new rationality is built. it is interesting to note that the plurality of reason occurs because it applies to the world in search of answers to the questions asked. however, bachelard reduces the history of sciences to the achievements of the human thought, which rectifies its errors. in the third quarter of the 20th century, the historical progress of science becomes central to epistemology. kuhn’s work allows us to emphasize science as the making of a community, but the notions that allow us to see it in this perspective keep us away from rationalist projects. this question is retaken by lakatos, who develops the methodology of research programmes by seeking to establish a model in which the decision between rival programmes obeys a rational criterion, choosing the progressive programme. however, the ways in which scientific practices are historically constituted are hidden in his model. the author ends up dealing with this problem by separating the history of science into an internal and an external part. the science studies and the new historiography of science that is born at the same time reveals the entire contingency of sciences. in a kind of anti-epistemology, science is studied as a situated practice, in which all human restraints are present. the demarcation problem is abandoned, and, with that, the sciences are matched with other cultural manifestations. however, scientific knowledge no longer has a specific social role, which leads us to political issues, including the possibility of having democratic societies. bourdieu presents his “science of science” as a way to understand the social conditions of the progress of reason (1975). the social rules that limit the modes of action of agents in the scientific field are different from other social spaces. they are historically constituted through struggles that seek to give legitimacy to the knowledge, and to those who produce it. scientific disputes are epistemological quarrels in which the validity of knowledge is in question. thus, the result of each struggle, far beyond a “winner”, is the refinement of the rules to be followed in the production of knowledge. the autonomy of sciences is the result of a specialization process in which the field itself defines the legitimate problems to be addressed, and the valid procedures for solving them. this process of “internalizing” the field – in the sense of independence from external factors (political, economic, theological, etc.) – occurs because the agents of the field internalize its structures, acquiring their own scientific habitus. thus, the cognitive and the social are merged in the elaboration of rational knowledge. references bachelard, gaston. 2012 [1940]. la philosophie du non. paris: vrin. bachelard, gaston. 2010 [1951]. l’épistemologie. paris: puf. bachelard, gaston. 1993 [1938]. la formation de l’esprit scientifique. paris: vrin. the writing of the history of science from the notion of scientific field ivã gurgel; 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ces deux propositions contradictoires: “la terre tourne” et “la terre ne tourne pas” ne sont donc pas cinématiquement plus vraies l’une que l’autre. affirmer l’une en niant l’autre, au sens cinématique, ce serait admettre l’existence de l’espace absolu. mais si l’une nous révèle des rapports vrais que l’autre nous dissimule, on pourra néanmoins la regarder comme physiquement plus vraie que l’autre, puisqu’elle a un contenu plus riche. or à cet égard aucun doute n’est possible. voilà le mouvement diurne apparent des étoiles, et le mouvement diurne des autres 1 roberto mantovani [orcid:0000-0003-3644-6605] is an assistant professor in the department of pure and applied sciences (dispea), physics laboratory: urbino museum of science and technology, university of urbino carlo bo. address: collegio raffaello, piazza della repubblica 13, 61029 urbino (pu), italy. e-mail: roberto.mantovani@uniurb.it before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 59 corps célestes, et d’autre part l’aplatissement de la terre, la rotation du pendule de foucault, la giration des cyclones, les vents alizés, que sais-je encore? pour le ptoléméien, tous ces phénomènes n’ont entre eux aucun lien; pour le copernicien, ils sont engendrés par une même cause. en disant, la terre tourne, j’affirme que tous ces phénomènes ont un rapport intime, et cela est vrai, et cela reste vrai bien qu’il n’y ait pas et qu’il ne puisse y avoir d’espace absolu. (poincaré 1905, 297-298)2 as well stated by poincaré in this passage, the copernican theory proved to be superior to the ptolemaic one because it was able to provide “rapports … physiquement plus vraie” (reports ... physically more real). in particular, the recognition of a common causal link among the several phenomena concerning the question of the earth’s rotation was at the bottom of its progressive historical success, even if its path was neither easy nor short. also, the concepts of motion and “absolute space” gradually underwent a reassessment. aristarchus of samos’s heliocentric theory (310-230 a. c.) introduced the relativity of motion in relation to fixed stars. archimedes, in arenarius, relied on the earth’s motion of aristarchus’s theory to deduce the diameter of the sphere of fixed stars from the absence of stellar parallaxes. according to this logic, he considered the earth’s motion not “absolute” with respect to an empty space but referred to the privileged system of the fixed stars. during the hellenistic age, other ideas used the relativity of motion. overlooking heraclides ponticus, euclid, in proposition 51 of his optics, had already observed that some “appearances” depended on the relative motion between the observer and the observed object. lucretius, in de rerum natura, had described the relative motion of a ship with reference to the mainland. however, the beginning of the aristotelian-type ptolemaic astronomy and its theory of stationary earth marked a clear breach with the past. one of its most dramatic consequences was the loss of the idea of the relativity of motion and consequently the loss of the heuristic function that most of all the concept of “system of reference” was slowly acquiring. we will have to wait for galileo’s relativity of motion for this topic to resurface again. galileo’s considerations it was during galileo’s time that the debate on the earth’s rotation took shape, most of all in relation to the verification and confutation of the copernican system. galileo was among the first to indicate the indirect cause of the earth’s rotation in a natural phenomenon. as a matter of fact, galileo, though incorrectly, tried to explain the phenomenon of the tidal forward and backward flow through the earth’s rotation and its revolution around the sun. this idea, already in a letter3 dated 8 january 1616, sent by galileo to cardinal orsino, will later be reconsidered and defined by galileo as irrefutable in the dialogue concerning the two chief world systems of 1632 (day four). several times in this work (see especially day two), galileo 2 no, there is no absolute space; these two contradictory propositions: “the earth turns round” and “the earth does not turn round” are, therefore, neither of them more true than the other. to affirm one while denying the other, in the kinematic sense, would be to admit the existence of absolute space. but if the one reveals true relations that the other hides from us, we can nevertheless regard it as physically more true than the other, since it has a richer content. now in this regard, no doubt is possible. behold the apparent diurnal motion of the stars, and the diurnal motion of the other heavenly bodies, and besides, the flattening of the earth, the rotation of the foucault’s pendulum, the gyration of cyclones, the trade-winds, what not else? for the ptolemaist all these phenomena have no bond between them; for the copernican they are produced by the one same cause. in saying, the earth turns round, i affirm that all these phenomena have an intimate relation, and that is true, and that remains true, although there is not and can not be absolute space. (poincaré 1907 [1905], 141) 3 this letter was entitled “discourse on the flow and reflow of the sea”. see (galilei, 1895). before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 60 also deals with the falling objects in relation to the controversy on the earth’s rotation. the peripatetics’ theory was that if the earth rotated then the falling bodies, without initial velocity, would deviate towards the west from the vertical. but that could not be observed. experience showed that a stone falling from a tower moved “perpendicularly and not obliquely” as in the case of a constantly moving earth. galileo skilfully demolishes this empirical thesis, adds transverse motion – due to the earth’s rotation – to the vertical one without, however, managing to describe a parabolic motion. he also explains that we do not perceive transverse velocity simply because we move in the same system of reference (the famous thought experiment of the “large ship”). he, therefore, proves that the falling objects cannot be considered as a proof against a moving earth. much vaguer was, on the contrary, his standing on the measure of a deviation of the body towards the east, which galileo thinks it is possible to observe, but only for great distances. in this regard, he describes an ideal experiment (a ball falling from the moon to earth) neither providing a rigorous illustration nor suggesting a probative experiment. (galileo 1632, second day, salviati, 220-221, 228-229). other contributions from the xvii century in the first half of the xvii century, other scientists tried different ways to demonstrate the earth’s rotation. in a letter of 1643 pierre gassendi (1592-1655) reports the daily attempts made by alexandre calignon de peyrins (1589-1656) to detect small deviations from the vertical of some perpendicular threads of different lengths. also ineffective were the attempts of shots towards the zenith with artillery cannons meant to show the westbound movement of the cannon balls when falling to the ground. the most famous were the ones made, following descartes’s suggestions, by father marin mersenne (1588-1648) and by the ingénieur du roi et intendant des fortifications pierre petit (1598-1667), in the surroundings of paris in the late spring of 1638. in the second half of the xvii century, worthy of remark were viviani’s (1661) experiments on the motion of pendulums in florence, the italian controversy on the trajectory of a falling object in “absolute space” (gregory 1668, 693-698) whose protagonists were on one hand the galilean giovanni alfonso borrelli (1608-1679) and stefano degli angeli (1623-1697) and, on the other, the jesuit giambattista riccioli (1598-1671), and, most of all, the exchange of letters (1679-1680) between isaac newton and robert hooke on the falling bodies. fig. 1 mersenne (left) and petit use a vertical cannon to prove the earth rotation (varignon 1690) before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 61 viviani’s experiment the academics of experiment produced experiments on the earth’s rotation but did not publish them and probably did not even fully understand their meaning and scientific importance. substantial evidence can be found in a handwritten note by the secretary of the academy, vincenzo viviani (1622-1703), dated 1661, where there is the description of the plane rotation of some pendulums together with an explicative picture showing the counterclockwise rotation of the plane. next to the picture, there were these words: “we observed that all the pendulums from one thread deviate from the first vertical, and always in the same direction, i.e. according to the lines ab, cd, ef, etc. from right to left of the back parts, etc.” this note was discovered by vincenzo antinori in florence in 1851, soon after the famous experiment of foucault’s pendulum in paris. antinori (1792-1865), who was at the time director of the imperial royal museum of physics and natural history of florence, announced the discovery in a letter addressed to the astronomer françois arago (1786-1853), continuous secretary of the académie des sciences of paris. the same letter was then published in the comptes rendus de l’académie des sciences (antinori 1851b, 635-636), inside the instalment of the announcement of the official discovery of foucault’s pendulum rotation. the news of antinori’s claim was delivered with great prominence in italy, feeding a patriotic feeling among pre-unification scientists and a sense of vengeance by the italian science towards foreign discoveries. fig. 2 unpublished note written by viviani and reported for the first time by antinori in the florentine newspaper “lo statuto” (antinori 1851a, 2) newton, hooke and the deviation towards the east of falling bodies the anti-copernican riccioli, in his monumental astronomical work almagestum novum of 1651, had already produced a great number of experiments on falling bodies (graney, 2012). one of these experiments,4 taken as a proof of the immobility of the earth and devised to discredit an opinion of galilei’s, was the object of much debate with angeli and borrelli. most of all, it had the merit of highlighting the deviation towards the east of freely falling bodies from the vertical of the shooting point (borgato, 2011). this debate was accurately reported and published in the philosophical transactions of 1668 by the scottish mathematician and astronomer james gregory (1638-1675), a member of the royal society. it may have been thanks to this report that newton had the idea of proposing the royal society, through hooke, a check of the deviation towards the east of the freely falling bodies from a great height. as already mentioned, before newton this experiment, because of its poor results, had been discussed and used by the anti-copernicans more to question the earth’s rotation 4 the experiment specifically dealt with the intensity variation of the impact to the ground of a falling body according to its height fall. before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 62 than to highlight it. for the first time, newton reverses this trend and presents it as a direct mechanical evidence of the earth’s rotation. the occasion for that was an answer newton gave the secretary of the royal society, robert hooke (1635-1703), to some questions about celestial mechanics. in that letter, dated november 1679, newton expressed the idea of checking the daily earth’s rotation with a precise experimental test (ball 1893, 141-144). he maintained that if you let a body fall from a great height, it will fall to the east from the vertical at the starting point. according to newton, this movement derived from the fact that, at the moment it fell from a given height, the object had a tangential velocity given by the earth’s rotation greater than the one it had when it reached the foot of the vertical. with a simple calculation, the lateral movement was obtained by multiplying the fall time by the difference between the two velocities. this first simplified model provided a move towards the east which was overestimated because it overlooked the curvature of the earth and other important parameters. but it had the advantage of highlighting the correct prediction that the falling object would have touched the ground in a point further east from the vertical. oddly, newton added “a fancy of my own” – an ideal experiment – to this real experiment. he imagined that, if the body could have kept on running beyond its ground zero, that is the interior of the earth, it would have reached the core of the earth along a spiral trajectory. newton’s letter was read and discussed on december 4, 1679, during a meeting at the royal society, where the experiment of the falling objects was very well received. on december 9, 1679, hooke wrote an answer to both of newton’s questions. according to his calculations, the object would not fall to the centre of the earth; moreover, the trajectory was more like an ellipse than a spiral.5 in relation to the question of the freely falling body, hooke observed that the fall “will not be exactly east of the perpendicular but south east and indeed more to the south than the east” (turnbull 1960, vol. ii, 306). to support his idea in the following days he realised some outdoor trials and, in a letter dated january 6, 1680, he said to newton: “i must acquaint you that i have (with as much care as i could) made 3 trials of the experiment of the falling body, in every of which the ball fell towards the south-east of the perpendicular, and that very considerably, the least being above a quarter of an inch [about 0,65 mm], but because they were not all the same i know not which was true” (ball 1893, 148). on january 16, to attenuate the effects of the interference of air currents, hooke made two new indoor trials whose results were, according to him, satisfying (robinson, adams 1935, 435). indeed, hooke wrote to newton, in a letter of january 17, 1680: “i am now persuaded the experiment is very certain, and that it will prove a demonstration of the diurnal motion of the earth as you have very happily intimated” (ball 1893, 149) and some days later, hooke6 reaffirmed in his diary: “diurnal motion of earth established” (robinson, adams 1935, 436). it is interesting to underline that hooke, even though he did not provide meaningful experimental data, was the first who introduced the idea of the southern deviation in the experiment of freely falling bodies.7 the authority of newton and hooke produced a solid reputation for the experiment of the falling objects, which was repeated several times until foucault’s days and was considered one of the main direct mechanical evidence of the earth’s rotation. 5 this well-known debate basically was about the famous inverse-square law; few years later, it brought to the publishing of “principia” but also to hooke accusing newton of plagiarism. see (westfall 1989, 399-404). 6 to be thorough, we must remember that, in 1764, hooke had published “an attempt to prove the motion of the earth from observations” where, besides presenting his personal “system of the world”, he had tried to demonstrate the motion of the earth in the space through measures of stellar parallaxes. 7 this move derives essentially from that part of the centrifugal force of the earth’s rotation oriented according to the local meridian, towards the geographical south. this part, calculated by gauss and laplace at the beginning of the xix century, became the greater as the more pronounced the fall height was and smaller the latitude of the place of the experiment (see note n. 15). before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 63 the geophysical proofs from the xviii century after hooke’s experiment, we will have to wait for the end of the xviii century for another meaningful experimental test like that in italy. meanwhile, in the xviii century, new indirect geophysical evidence of the earth’s rotation became available. among these, we remember how gravitational acceleration decreases from the poles to the equator and the study of the shape of the earth. the scientific journeys had the merit of highlighting the variation of gravity due to latitude. by getting information from one of these travels,8 newton pointed out that pendulum oscillations were slower close to the equator than those at the poles and, in the first edition of “principia” (1687), he decided that the reason why the earth is flattened at the poles9 is due to the centrifugal force of the earth’s rotation whose strength decreased as latitude increased. this conclusion created controversy in the continent. the “querelle” on the shape of the earth burst in france between cartesians and newtonians. in 1732 pierrelouis moreau de maupertuis (1698-1759) supported newton’s opinion that the earth, because of its own motion, should have been a spheroid flattened at its poles (fig.3). two famous geodesic missions, organized by the académie royale des sciences, one near the equator in peru (1735), the other near the arctic circle, in lapland (1736), largely proved newton’s theory – supported by maupertius – right: the arc of the meridian measured in lapland was longer than the one in peru. therefore, thanks to the introduction of new measuring methods, notably the dynamic method (pendulum oscillations) and the geometric method (measuring the arcs of a meridian), the scientific community was able to produce two important experimental proofs of the earth’s rotation. anyway, they were still indirect proofs. fig. 3 maupertuis shows the crushing of the earth with his left hand (engraving by j. daul wellcome) 8 it is the french scientist jan richer’s journey to the island of cayenne, near the equator. during his stay on the island, in the years 1672 – 1673, he observed that his pendulum clock, previously set in paris, went slower. 9 newton came to this conclusion also thanks to some astronomical observations by john flamsteed and jean-dominique cassini on the flattening of jupiter at its poles (greenberg 1987, 357). before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 64 the falling objects in italy 1790-1795 at the end of the xviii century, the “direct” experiment proposed by newton in 1679 was reconsidered. a group of italian mathematicians and astronomers devised and repeated the experiment of the deviation of freely falling bodies from great height in several italian cities. it originated an intense scientific debate that also produced the first simplified theoretical models of the phenomenon. the experiment which triggered the debate and the following other experiments was realized by the physicist and religious giambattista guglielmini (1760-1817) from bologna; at first, it was designed for st. peter’s basilica in rome (1789) and then actually re-designed and implemented between 1790 and 1792 in bologna, at the asinelli tower. guglielmini measured the eastward and southward deflections of small lead balls freely falling inside the tower for 78.3 metres. the results of the experiment, from the vertical identified by the plumb line, provided an easterly mean deviation of 18.894 mm and a southerly mean deviation of 11,894 mm (guglielmini 1792, 82). new accurate experiments followed in other italian cities: in rome (calandrelli, tower of the observatory of the roman college, 1790-1791); in novara (teresio michelotti, bell tower of saint gaudenzio); in turin (félix de saint martin de la motte, basilica of superga, 1791) and finally in bergamo (tadini, basilica of santa maria maggiore and bell tower of the franciscan convent, 1794-1795). during this short but intense period of experiments, hypotheses and theoretical models proceeded on successive approximations, thanks also to new mathematical and experimental techniques. active participants in the debate were sebastiano canterzani (1734-1818) from bologna, mathematician and teacher of guglielmini, teodoro bonati (1724-1820), professor of mechanics and hydraulics at the university of ferrara, the brothers teresio (1762-1819) and ignazio (1764-1846) michelotti from turin, both hydraulic and mechanical engineers, girolamo saladini (1735-1813), mathematician and professor of calculus at the university of bologna, giuseppe calandrelli (1749-1827), astronomer at the observatory of the roman college in rome and abbot gianantonio tadini (1754-1830), professor of physics at the marian college of bergamo. with this experiment, we can state that, as a whole, towards the end of the xviii century, in italy, a good number of theoretical studies, supported by intense experimental activity, weaved together in a virtuous circle. the theoretical analyses, at first rather incomplete and incorrect, more and more considered several parameters of the experiment, such as the spherical and spheroidal shape of the earth, the eastward and southward deviations (the latter, in particular, thanks to saladini’s works), the uniform and central gravitational field, the resistance of the medium both for vertical falling and the eastward, the theoretical model of fall through a vacuum, the deviation of plumb line, the centrifugal force. to remove the initial vibrations they improved the mechanical device dropping the falling objects, and the mathematical methods were perfected, too: tadini, for instance, instead of geometrical analysis, used differential calculus for his calculations and, though with some theoretical mistakes, reached “the same identical result of laplace, probably also thanks to an odd compensation of mistakes”10 (borgato 2007, 521). laplace, gauss and the mathematization of falling objects in the last years of the xviii century, theoretical ideas and the results of the experiments carried out in italy were resumed and discussed in europe, most of all in france and 10 tadini had come to the conclusion that, despite the action of a small component of the resistance of the air orthogonal to the plumb line, the southward deflection would have been null both in a vacuum and in the air. this conclusion will be validated by laplace in 1803. to be noted that guglielmini had instead considered the southward deviation null in a vacuum but not in the air because of the determining role of the resistance of the air, according to him (giannini 2015, 326). before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 65 germany, thanks to the mediations of the french astronomer jérôme lalande (1732-1807) and of the german physicist and mathematician benzenberg (1777-1846), professor of astronomy and physics in düsseldorf. in france, the debate generated important theoretical results, thanks to pierre simon laplace (1749-1827). by applying the analytical method, since 1796, he had already formulated the correct mathematical theory of the falling objects. however, his results were published later on: first in a basic paper of 1803 (laplace 1803) where he exclusively dealt with the vertical fall of objects, and then, with no substantial changes, in a chapter of his famous work traité de mécanique céleste (laplace 1805), where he dealt with the more general problem of projectile motion11. in the same years, in germany, benzemberg, encouraged by the news form lichtenberg about guglielmini’s experiment, repeated the same experiment first in 1802 in hamburg, inside the bell tower of st. michael church, and then two years later in a shaft of an abandoned coal mine 12 at schlebusch, near leverkusen in germany. in hamburg, with an available height of 76.3 metres, benzemberg found average deflections towards the east and the south respectively of 9 mm and 3.4 mm; at schlebusch, with an available 84.4-metre-deep mineshaft, the average eastward deflection was 8.5 mm, while the southward was null (cajori, 1901, 853). benzemberg transmitted the experimental data of the first experiment to the astronomer wilhelm olbers (1758-1840), who showed them to carl friedrich gauss (1777-1855) who became involved in this way in the theoretical study of falling objects. so, almost at the same time, a young gauss and a more mature laplace happened to work on the same topic. 13 though with different approaches, they both came, with slight differences, to the correct mathematical interpretation of the phenomenon. their theoretical contributions, before foucault’s experience, were fundamental to formulate the general theory of falling objects and to make newton’s old experience more convincing. these two mathematical approaches deserve some more thought. laplace and gauss worked at elaborating three differential equations of motion and used some approximations. 14 these equations, conveniently integrated and developed in a series, provided the equations of motion respectively of the vertical fall, the eastward deflection and the southward one. in his calculations, laplace used the geographical colatitude; gauss, on the other hand, relied on the geographical latitude. the two scientists studied the motion of falling objects with respect to two reference systems: the first fixed in (absolute) space and the second (relative) moving, that is integral with the earth. the use of this second system allowed them both to come across two apparent forces, one of which, unknown at the time, proved to be responsible for the eastward deflection of falling objects. it was the well-known coriolis force,15 dependent on the angular velocity ω of the rotating frame and on the falling object’s velocity, whose official discovery is generally dated back to 1832-1835, that is more than thirty years later, in relation to the french mathematician, physicist and engineer coriolis’s technical-practical studies (the rotating machines). ignoring the resistance of the air, the theoretical analyses of the two great 11 reading laplace’s work today is not easy. he would use cartesian coordinates but neither vectors nor explanatory images. 12 with this experiment, benzemberg was the first to use the depth of a mine instead of the height of towers or bell towers. the aim was to reduce the experimental disturbances from air currents. 13 benzemberg sent his own experimental data to laplace, too. it was not the first time that laplace and gauss matched against each other. in january 1801 the italian astronomer piazzi discovered a new planetoid ceres ferdinandea but could not calculate its orbit. with the few available astronomical data, gauss managed to calculate its orbit whereas laplace declared it was not possible. 14 for instance: the gravity acceleration considered constant and independent from the height; the resistance of the air proportional to the square of the linear fall velocity. 15 the mathematical term related to this force appears first in a work by laplace (laplace, 1803) and, a year later, in a publication by benzemberg where, in a chapter, gauss’s calculation is reported (gauss 1804, gauss werke 1867). before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 66 mathematicians provided essentially the same result as regards the eastward deflection of falling objects,16 that is a movement in the amount of two-thirds of guglielmini’s theoretical value. instead, as regards the southward deflection, in vacuum, while developing the formula series, laplace ignored the quadratic terms of the angular velocity and concluded that the southward deflection had to be considered null (laplace 1803, 113). gauss, conversely, chose to approximate the formula at the quadratic term of the angular velocity and found a deflection towards the equator extremely small, but finite. 17 therefore, benzenberg’s experiments gave results in accordance with the theory of laplace and gauss only for the eastward deflection. the data of the southward deflection were instead contradictory, and still today this kind of deflection raises more than a doubt.18 even more accurate experiments in the deflection of falling bodies were carried out, in 1831, by the german chemist and physicist ferdinand reich (1799-1882) in a mineshaft in freiberg, in saxony, taking advantage of a remarkable depth, 158.5 metres, and a fall almost twice the one used by benzemberg. reich used some very resistant metal or metal-alloy balls19 with a diameter of 4 cm. to remove humidity and currents of air, which disturbed the fall motion of the balls, reich built a long wooden tube with a rectangular section. after six series of experiments and a good 106 tests of free fall, reich managed to have an average southward deflection of 4.374 mm and, most of all, an average eastward deflection of the balls of about 28.396 mm, a value which was very close to the theoretically calculated value of 27.5 mm. these experiences were accurately described by the german scientist the following year (reich, 1832). in their own kind, they were the last and more accurate experiences carried out in the xix century.20 from ballistics to foucault’s pendulum despite the progressive improvements of measurements and experimental conditions21 the 16 more precisely, the easterly deviation was 𝑑 = 𝜔𝑔𝑡 cos 𝜑 = 𝜔ℎ cos 𝜑 where ω is the earth’s angular velocity (7,292 ·10-5 rad/s, i.e., 2π divided by the sidereal day: 23h 56m 4s); φ is the geographical latitude; g is the acceleration of gravity and h is the height from which the object falls. two years later, in his traité de mécanique céleste (laplace, 1805) laplace dealt with the same topic considering the air resistance part. 17 the southerly deviation value found by gauss was 𝑑 = g 𝜔 𝑡 sin 𝜑 cos 𝜑 (gauss, 1804, 370). 18 the value of the southward deviation, from guglielmini on, has always recorded measures in conflict with the theory. in 1902, the physicist hall studied this deviation at the harvard physics laboratory: he dropped small bronze spheres from a height of 23 metres. the measure gave a result 500 times the gauss result. further experimental tests and several sophisticated theoretical explicative models were developed, at the beginning of the xx century, by johann georg hagen (1912), magnus le comte de sparre (1905), maurice fouché (1905), william h. roever (1911-1912), r. s. woodward (1913), alfred denizot (1913) and lorand roland eötvös (1906-1909). as underlined by tiersten and soodak “now, almost a century later, the situation remains unresolved” (tiersten, soodak, 2000, 130). 19 the materials were lead, tin and ivory; the alloys, on the other hand, were made by tin, bismuth and lead. when these spheres dropped, if they did not have the perfect coincidence between the barycentre and the sphere’s geometric centre, they could rotate and generate a rolling friction with the air. this effect, that could distort the deviation, apparently was not considered by reich. 20 after reich, many other experiments were performed, of little importance, focussed mainly on the study of falling bodies towards the south. among these experiences we must remember the one carried out in 1848 by william westcott rundell (1792-1874), secretary of the royal cornwall polytechnic institution, in a mine in cornwall 400 metre deep. 21 for instance, reich used some expedients for the initial dropping of the spheres. one of these used the principle of s’ gravesande ring. the spheres were heated in hot water, then dried and put on a circular copper ring with a slight conic shape inside. when the spheres had cooled down, they contracted and freely dropped along the inside of the wooden tube. this method, as ingenious as it before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 67 experiments on falling objects did not provide definite evidence of the earth’s rotation. several experimental criticalities complicated the measurements. among these, the lack of a sure control of the currents of air during the fall, the precise determination of the vertical from great heights, the irregularities of form and density of the bodies, the vibratory motion of the bodies at the beginning of the fall. furthermore, the measured values were too small and generated uncertainties, especially at the landing points, whose spatial distributions often showed too large a dispersion to be meaningful. lastly, the lack of a good theory of propagation of error did not permit the statistical elaboration of the data deriving from those measurements. these problems made the experiment of falling objects inconsistent with theoretical expectations. meanwhile, other indirect evidence of the earth’s rotation came up. the improvements of the artillery long-range gunshots imposed the mathematical study of the trajectory of a projectile in relation not only to the resistance of the air but also to the motion of the earth’s rotation. the problem was dealt with between 1837 and 1838 by the french mathematician siméon-denis poisson (1781-1840). the results of these studies showed that, because of the earth’s rotation, the projectiles underwent a perceivable deviation towards the right in the northern hemisphere and towards the left in the southern. oddly, poisson’s study on the motion of projectiles contained also a short mathematical note aimed at connecting the earth’s rotation to the kinematic motion of a pendulum. the time had come to undertake new experimental ways with the purpose of proving the earth’s rotation. many experimenters’ attention fell on the pendulum, first in its static form, the plumb line,22 then in its dynamic version, the pendular motion. poisson’s mathematical note did not elude the physicist jean bernard léon foucault (1819-1868) who may have used it to design his famous experiment which highlighted the rotation of the plane of a swinging pendulum. the experiment was resoundingly carried out at the panthéon in paris on 31 march 1851 and then successfully repeated in many other french and european cities. scientists welcomed this experiment and considered it as a new, direct and convincing evidence of the rotation of the earth. suddenly and rapidly all the past experiments fell into oblivion. final conclusion the historical events related to the proofs of the earth’s rotation were important right from the start, both in the events leading up to the affirmation of the copernican system, and in the development of some concepts typical of the kinematic and dynamic theories of motion. these proofs had a strong impact in the progressive perfecting of important topics in the study of mechanics, such as the relative motion and the use of reference systems. the phenomenon of the eastward deflection of a falling body was considered, up to foucault’s days, the most important experience validating the earth’s rotation. anyway, this procedure eventually turned out to be essentially heuristic. the experiments carried out in italy at the end of the xviii century stimulated, in france and germany, important theoretical considerations that eventually led to the correct calculation of the eastward and southward deflection of freely falling bodies. on the experimental side, the phenomenon showed several complications that made the final results very uncertain. one of the major discrepancies between theory and experiment concerned the southward deflection which, because of its extremely small value and the many external disturbing effects, could not actually be observed. all of this produced wide debate and little certainty about the proof of was, was not free of systematic errors and other critical observations of the experimental kind, for example, the presence of small lateral impulses at the moment of the fall. 22 the idea was to measure the movement of a plumb line due to the non-inertial effect of the earth’s rotation. one of the most interesting experiments was the one designed by the french physicist guyot in 1836 at the paris pantheon. guyot used a 57-metre-long plumb line and, with an optical method, verified that the line moved 4.33 mm from its vertical. before foucault: the proofs of the earth’s rotation roberto mantovani 68 the earth’s rotation. some new mechanical evidences were then researched. the shift from a state of rest of very long plumb lines and the perceivable deviation from their trajectory of artillery long-range gunshots gave the illusion of highlighting the non-inertial effects due to the earth’s rotation. but, once again, these effects were too small to give some certainty. it was necessary to identify a pendular system which, manually activated, might have the characteristic of keeping its oscillating motion for some time or in a persistent way. this dynamic condition would have allowed the system to accumulate, in time, and show the effects of the apparent forces due to the earth’s rotation. foucault was actually the first to identify, in the oscillations of a long string pendulum, the presence of an additional precession motion of the oscillation plane. it is worth noticing that nowadays modern physics textbooks explain this precession in terms of coriolis force: they implicitly suggest a historical connection between this force and the 1851 experiment, but historical facts do not seem to confirm such a connection. the principles of the so-called “force centrifuge composée”, enunciated between 1832 and 1835 by gaspard-gustave de coriolis (1792-1843), did not inspire the pendulum experiment at all, perhaps because foucault was not aware of them. after all, he was no mathematician and always preferred an intense technical and experimental activity to theoretical principles. his undeniable skills in “observing the phenomenon” pushed him to design an experiment which had its most effective force of persuasion in the evidence of observation. references antinori, vincenzo. 1851a. moto del pendolo applicato alla rotazione della terra. lo statuto, iii, 68, mercoledì 23 aprile: 2. antinori, vincenzo. 1851b. anciennes observations faites par les members de l’académie del cimento sur la marche du pendula. lettre de m antinori, directeur du musée de physique et d’histoire naturelle de florence, à m. arago. comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’académie des sciences 32: 635-636. ball, walter william rouse. 1893. an essay on newton’s “principia”. london: macmillan and co. and new york. borgato, maria teresa. 2007. tra teoria ed esperimenti: la deviazione dei gravi e 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courcier, 294-305. poincaré, henri. 1905. la valeur de la science. paris: e. flammarion éditeur. poincaré, henri. 1907. the value of science. authorized translation with an introduction by george bruce halsted, ph. d., f.r.a.s. with a special prefatory essay. new york: the science press. reich, ferdinand. 1832. fallversuche über die umdrehung der erde angestellt auf hohe oberbergamtliche anordnung in dem drei brüderschachte bei freiberg und herausgegeben von f. reich, professor der physic an der k. s. bergakademie. freiberg: verlag von j. g. engelhardt. robinson henry w. and adams walter. 1935. the diary of robert hooke 1672-1680. london: taylor & francis. soodak, harry and tiersten, martin s. 2000. dropped objects and other motions relative to the noninertial earth. american journal of physics, 68 (2): 129-142. turnbull, herbert westren (ed.). 1960. the correspondence of isaac newton, 1676-1687, vol. 2. cambridge: cambridge university press. varignon, pierre. 1690. nouvelles conjéctures sur la pesanteur. paris: chez claude jombert. westfall, richard s. 1989. newton, vol. 1, edited by a. serafini. torino: g. einaudi. microsoft word ferreira silva layout 6 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 6-25 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2020 – this is an open access journal special issue – historiography of physics the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira1 cibelle celestino silva2 abstract: in this paper, we present an analysis of the evolution of the history of science as a discipline focusing on the role of the mathematization of nature as a historiographical perspective. our study is centered in the mathematization thesis, which considers the rise of a mathematical approach of nature in the 17th century as being the most relevant event for scientific development. we begin discussing edmund husserl whose work, despite being mainly philosophical, is relevant for having affected the emergence of the narrative of the mathematization of nature and due to its influence on alexandre koyré. next, we explore koyré, dijksterhuis, and burtt’s works, the historians from the 20th century responsible for the elaboration of the main narratives about the scientific revolution that put the mathematization of science as the protagonist of the new science. then, we examine the reframing of the mathematization thesis with the narrative of two traditions developed by thomas s. kuhn and richard westfall, in which the mathematization of nature shares space with other developments taken as equally relevant. we conclude presenting contemporary critical perspectives on the mathematization thesis and its capacity for synthesizing scientific development. keywords: historiography; scientific revolution; mathematization of physics; koyré; dijksterhuis; burtt received: 15 april 2020. reviewed: 29 may 2020. accepted: 10 june 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction one of the most well-known episodes of the history of science is the so-called scientific revolution. different historians and philosophers have distinct views on the subject. moreover, as a historiographical category, it has a history of its own. in the 18th century, ___________________ 1 ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira [orcid: 0000-0001-7928-6707] is a graduate student in physics in the institute of physics at the university of são paulo – usp. address: av. trabalhador são-carlense, 400 – são carlos, sp, brazil – 13560-970. e-mail: ciro.ferreira@usp.br 2 cibelle celestino silva [orcid: 0000-0003-3021-3915] is a professor in the institute of physics at the university of são paulo – usp. address: av. trabalhador são-carlense, 400 – são carlos, sp, brazil – 13560-970. e-mail: cibelle@ifsc.usp.br the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 7 scientists as fontenelle, lavoisier, clairaut, d’alembert, and diderot had already used the term “revolutionary” concerning scientific works, even if sporadically (nickles 2017; cohen, i. 1985, 4). however, it is in the 20th century that the idea of the scientific revolution was integrated into historical narratives. the works of eduard jan dijksterhuis and edwin arthur burtt, both published in 1924, incorporated the idea of a discontinuous transition in scientific development. however, the term scientific revolution was coined only in 1935 by alexandre koyré (1892–1964) in three essays, lately gathered in his book études galiléennes. historians of science diverge on their understanding of the duration, definition, and even on the revolutionary character of the so-called scientific revolution.3 for instance, butterfield (1965, 7-8) considers it as a foundational event of science, and a breaking point in human history. while kuhn (2012, 4, 156) and feyerabend (1993, 165-166) add the notion of incommensurability to the narrative. the idea of rupture from an aristotelian natural philosophy towards modern science is a stable factor in the majority of narratives of the scientific revolution. one of the main ingredients of such breakdown is the “mathematization thesis,” also called “mathematization of nature,” a term attributed to koyré (cohen, 2016, 143-148). the thesis claims that no other episode in the history of western science has been as consequential as the rise of the mathematical approach to the natural world, both in terms of its impact on the development of science during the scientific revolution but also in regard to the debates that it has generated among scholars who have striven to understand the history and nature of science. (gorham and waters 2016, 1) galileo galilei (1564–1642) is often portrayed as a precursor of the use of mathematics in the explanation of natural phenomena, breaking with a long aristotelian tradition, which supposedly had rejected it. however, some contemporary authors problematize such a disruptive view on epistemological and sociological grounds. for instance, they consider that the mathematization impulse came more from the expansion of aristotelian mixed mathematics than from the works of galileo and his contemporaries (schuster 2017, 48-65; gingras 2001, 383). besides, galileo’s work cannot be seen as definitive in the establishment of a consensus about the mathematical approach to natural phenomena, because there was significant resistance to this approach at least until the reception of newton’s principia (gingras 2001). although with different meanings, roles and emphasis, the mathematization thesis appears in the works of some important historians as koyré, dijksterhuis, and burtt. in the present paper, we focus on their work due to their status as precursors of a contextual history of science (cohen 1994, 88; 2016, 148), and for their consideration of the use of mathematics as a criterion of differentiation between the new science and the old scholastic philosophy.4 we discuss the mathematization thesis as a historiographical category to analyze the studies of nature in the period of the scientific revolution. it is important to emphasize that the issues discussed here are contingent to the studies of mechanics in the 17th century, and would be different if our object of analysis were, for example, the history of the mathematization of electrical phenomena in the 18th and 19th centuries. ___________________ 3 some continuist historians, as duhem, randall, crombie and peter dear, point to the dependence of the “revolutionary thinkers” on older works and traditions (nickles 2017). 4 it does not mean that they were the first to recognize the mathematization of nature as an important feature of the new science. during the 18th and the 19th centuries, philosophers and historians were already discussing the relations between mathematics and science, such as mach (1903) and the thinkers from the neo-kantian school of marburg (heis 2018) that influenced both koyré and husserl. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 8 we begin analyzing husserl’s thought because of his importance to the mathematization thesis, his influence over koyré and his centrality to the emergence of the narrative of the mathematization of nature (roux 2010, 319). next, we explore the works by koyré, dijksterhuis, and burtt that consider the mathematization of nature as a central aspect of the scientific revolution. then we discuss the resignification of the thesis by thomas s. kuhn and richard westfall, who believed that the mathematization of nature has to be taken as equally relevant as other aspects in the historiography of the scientific revolution.5 we conclude presenting critical perspectives to the mathematization thesis and its capacity to synthesize scientific development. edmund husserl: the idealization of nature edmund husserl (1859–1938) is one of the authors responsible for the elaboration of the narrative of the science birth as a rupture with the qualitative view adopted by the scholastic philosophers. husserl, in his book the crisis of european science and transcendental phenomenology (1936), explores the mathematization of science, aiming at understanding its philosophical meaning and assumptions. the main goal of his work is to understand what he considers a crisis in the foundations of science at the beginning of the 20th century (carr 1970, xvi), linked to a broader crisis of the european civilization and philosophy. such a crisis was characterized by the demand that science ought to be based on rigorously objective grounds, which reduced the scope of legitimate research questions (husserl 1970, 5-7). the material prosperity produced by the so-called positive sciences impelled humans to neglect issues of value as the meaning of life, which according to husserl are decisive to genuine humanity: “merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people” (husserl 1970, 6). husserl adopts a “historic-teleological” analysis to seek in the past the roots that lead to the crisis (husserl 1970, 3). taking galileo as an example, he philosophically reconstructs the process of the mathematization of nature. husserl claims that the mathematization of nature was done through the process of idealization,6 understood as a landmark of modern science. the author considers it a milestone because it represents a rupture with the old way of grounding knowledge about nature in the accumulation of immediate observations (husserl 1970, 23). according to garrison (1986, 330-1), husserl’s idealization occurs in two stages: idealization1 and idealization2. the first is an ascending movement from the material world of sensations to the world of abstractions. idealization1 gives rise to the conceptualization of the abstract geometric objects. in the world of our perceptions, we have access to “proto-geometric” objects with irregular shapes that we perceive in a hazy way due to the imprecision of our senses. with successive measures, we are capable of softening those defects, arriving at more regular shapes. approximate objects are enough for practical purposes, such as land-surveying and architecture. nevertheless, for analytical purposes, it is necessary to construct perfect geometrical objects by extrapolation of the original series of measurements, arriving at ideal objects. the process of idealization2 follows the inverse path. while the first departs from the world of perceptions to construct ideal objects, the second, that assumes the first, uses abstract objects as ‘guides’ to inquire about the world of perception, and substitute our diffuse judgments of the objects by more precise ___________________ 5 john henry (2002) is another important historian of science that considers the mathematization of nature as central in the development of science. 6 from more on the process of idealization in husserl, see garrison (1986, 333-5). the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 9 ones.7 husserl considers galileo as a platonic-pythagorean thinker8 (gandt 2004, 70-74; palmerino 2016, 30), and criticizes him for believing that geometry could be applied to nature without further considerations. to the german philosopher, galileo failed to reflect on “how the free, imaginative variation of this world and its shapes results only in possible empirically intuitable shapes and not in exact shapes [...]” (husserl 1970, 49). to husserl, even when we direct our attention to the shapes of the objects, we do not experience an ideal geometric body, but one with the “effective content of the experience”. even if we transform the sensible shapes by the imagination, we always obtain other sensible forms that can only be thought in terms of gradations of straightness, flatness, circularity, but not in absolute terms of perfect geometric shapes9 (husserl 1970, 25). in short, husserl blames galileo for doing a “surreptitious substitution of the mathematically substructed world of idealities for the only real world, the one that is actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experienceable” (husserl 1970, 48-49). husserl’s goal is not to make a historical interpretation, but a reconstruction to serve a philosophical reflection aiming the comprehension of the meaning of mathematization in the context of the “new science”. he intends to establish the “unavoidable necessity of a transcendental-phenomenological reorientation of philosophy” (husserl 1970, 3). he focuses his analysis on galileo because, in his understanding, it is in the galilean physics that the mathematization of natural entities appears entirely developed for the first time.10 however, husserl points out that it would be necessary a more careful historical analysis to ascertain the dependencies of galileo on his predecessors (husserl 1970, 57).11 still, husserl’s interpretation brings to the foreground one of the key points explored in this paper, which is the implicit substitution of the objects of the world by mathematical idealities. as the philosopher himself points out, the substitution seems so obvious and trivial to scientific practice that it is rarely problematized, contextualized, or justified (husserl 1970, 24). besides that, edmund husserl occupies a relevant historical place in the development of the history of the mathematization of science due to his influence over prominent historians, such as alexandre koyré. the mathematization thesis alexandre koyré: from a heterogeneous to a homogeneous space alexandre koyré went to göttingen, germany, to study in 1908. there he took classes with hermann minkowski (1864–1909), david hilbert (1862–1943), and edmund husserl, initially studying fundamental problems of mathematics. his conception of mathematics is based on a mathematical realism, of a platonic and cartesian type, being deeply influenced by husserl (gandt 2004, 97-104; condé 2017, 35). this kind of mathematical realism had a significant ___________________ 7 this procedure comprises only mathematically describable aspects, as shape and position, excluding subjective ones as color and smell. for soffer (1990, 68), the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is the cornerstone of the ontology of the new science in husserl’s reconstruction. 8 husserl is not the first one to characterize galileo as platonic. this is a thesis advocated at least since 1882 by paul natorp in galileo as philosopher. for a history of the thesis, see matteoli (2019). 9 husserl’s stance on this matter can be criticized by pointing out that galileo considered the imperfection of real bodies and phenomena was not a hindrance to the thesis that the world is essentially mathematical, given that mathematical entities can be equally complex and imperfect (palmerino 2016, 39-41). 10 see durt (2012) for a discussion on husserl’s genealogy of the mathematization of nature. 11 gandt (2004, 72) points out that husserl erroneously attributes to galileo contributions by kepler, descartes, huygens, boyle and newton. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 10 influence over his reading of galileo and his historiography (gandt 2004, 97-104). for instance, this influence can be noted when koyré claims that modern science excludes the study of humans from its scope by replacing the qualitative world of sensory perceptions by an objective and quantitative one, a typically husserlian thesis (gandt 2004, 99). husserl’s influences12 can also be noted on the fact that he defended that the mathematization of nature is not just a fundamental point in the establishment of modern science; it is also an epistemological attitude distinct from the aristotelian philosophy. therefore, in the context of the present paper, we ask what is the place of the mathematization of nature, so dear to husserl, in koyré’s historiography? an important one, but not the central, being subordinated to notions such as inertia and galileo’s concept of motion and inserted in the transition from a finite and orderly cosmos to an infinite universe and homogeneous space.13 for koyré, the identification of space with geometrical space is crucial for the development of the concept of inertia. in the aristotelian physics, space is not homogeneous, having particular points and zones (such as natural place and sublunary and superlunary zones), and motion is a particular phenomenon in the broader category of change (that includes, for instance, the growth of trees). in contrast, galileo (still according to koyré) considers motion as a translation from one point of a homogeneous and geometrical space to another. besides the body’s position, nothing more changes while it is moving, which implies that its state can only be recognized if compared to other bodies. as a consequence, motion is considered ontologically identical to rest. that makes the aristotelian notion of distinct points in space superfluous, once motion ceases to be a transitory phenomenon with a goal and becomes a state (koyré 1943a, 336-9). for the french-russian historian, thought experiments are part of mathematical reasoning and test the very consistencies of theories. he emphasizes the subordination of experiments to an a priori mathematical reasoning on galilean physics. natural laws are previously established by logical and mathematical deduction. in koyré’s interpretation, galileo would only perform experiments once mathematics had already established the conclusion: thus necesse determines esse.14 good physics is made a priori. theory precedes fact. experience is useless because before any experience we are already in possession of the knowledge we are seeking for. fundamental laws of motion (and of rest), laws that determine the spatio-temporal behavior of material bodies, are laws of a mathematical nature. of the same nature as those which govern relations and laws of figures and numbers. we find and discover them not in nature, but in ourselves, in our mind, in our memory, as plato long ago has taught us. (koyré 1943a, 347) in the well-known passage of the dialogue concerning the two chief world systems about the relativity of motion, galileo says that when one releases a rock from the top of a mast of a ship in movement, the stone will fall in a rectilinear trajectory, hitting the mast’s base. simplicio asks salviati whether he had performed the experiment to reach this conclusion. salviati answers, “without experiment, i am sure that the effect will happen as i tell you, because it must happen that way” (galilei 1967, 145). ___________________ 12 the influences of husserl on koyré are an object of debate in the literature. see schuhmann (1987) for a critic of this influence and an exposition of the relationship between the two; and parker for a defense of this influence. parker (2017, 246-247, 266-247) also claims that koyré’s work should be seen as a contribution to phenomenalism. 13 for more on this topic, see koyré (1943a), and cohen (1994, 75). 14 respectively “necessity” and “existence” in latin. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 11 koyré mentions that in the 16th century, it was commonplace to consider that the main issue distinguishing aristotle and plato was the role attributed to mathematics on the study of nature (koyré 1943b, 420-1). koyré quotes the explicit discussion in galileo’s dialogues about mathematical studies of nature. according to koyré, sagredo had advocated a platonic position and convinced the aristotelian simplicio to change his mind. koyré portrays galileo’s motivation on the inquiry about the free fall of bodies in the dispute between aristotle and plato. by arguing that motion is also subject to mathematical representation, galileo dismisses the aristotelian position that nature does not conform to mathematical precision (koyré 1943b). in his historiography, koyré attributes a central role to the mathematization of 17th century science, with particular emphasis on the mathematical realism, arguing for the priority of theory over the experiment. koyré still proposes a ‘root’ to the new mathematical thinking, which would be the platonic idealism, contrasting with the aristotelian thought of the scholastics. in constructing his narrative, koyré uses husserl’s ideas, by emphasizing the shifting to an a priori mathematical thought, and by putting galileo on the focus of the narrative. however, while husserl practically identifies the rise of modern science with galileo’s work, koyré adds nuances to the story.15 nevertheless, koyré is not the only historian to place mathematics in the center of the scientific revolution. eduard jan dijksterhuis (1892-1965) and edwin arthur burtt (1892– 1989): share the mathematization thesis with koyré, but with distinct focus and interpretations. eduard jan dijksterhuis: mathematics in the mechanization of the worldview and the hypothetico-deductive method eduard jan dijksterhuis dedicated a substantial part of his professional life to teaching mathematics and sciences in secondary school. only on a late stage of his life, in 1953, he assumed a recently created chair on the history of science at utrecht university, netherlands. in his studies as a historian, dijksterhuis shared koyré’s views about the centrality of mathematics to the development of modern science. however, their views have differences that illustrate the nuances of the mathematization thesis. dijksterhuis synthesizes his perspective on the topic in the paper designed for grasping quantities (1955).16 he considers that the fecundity of the relation between mathematics and physics should cause “wonder” because it is not evident that mathematics, a free creation of the human mind, is related to science, which deals with a reality indifferent to the human action (dijksterhuis 1990, 115). according to him, if we feel indifferent to this, it is because our scholar education naturalized this relation. for dijksterhuis, the comprehension of the relations between mathematics and physics through history is constrained to the understanding of the mechanistic view of the world17 and the construction of the hypothetico-deductive method (dijksterhuis 1990, 118). ___________________ 15 koyré mentions, for instance, other thinkers that tried to solve the aristotelian objections to the earth’s movement. he also points out that galileo never assumed a definitive position concerning the infinity of the universe, restraining himself to deny its limitation by a physical sphere of fixed stars (koyré 2006, 88). see also parker (2017, 267,270) for distinctions between koyré and husserl. 16 originally published in dutch under the latin title ad quanta intelligenda condita in reference to kepler’s expression. here we use h. f. cohen’s english translation of 1990. 17 see feldhay (1994) for a criticism of the bias that the commitment with this theme imposes on dijksterhuis’ narrative. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 12 in the book the mechanization of the world picture (1961),18 the dutch author adopts a historical perspective to analyze the emergence of mechanicism; the roles that mathematics plays in modern science, and what differentiates the ancient applied mathematics from, for example, galileo’s and newton’s mathematical mechanics. dijksterhuis considers the mechanization of the world-picture as responsible for the most significant and comprehensive changes in science and society. he believes that the adequate definition of said view is the one that demands an explanation of the phenomena in newtonian terms, which are different from ‘mechanic’ as understood in analogy to machines. a mathematized mechanics does not mean the mere use of mathematical expressions and words, which could be replaced by a common language, but the ontological sense of mechanical concepts and laws being mathematical (dijksterhuis 1961, 499). therefore, the centrality of the mathematization is hidden by the use of the term mechanization in the book’s title. cohen claims that the mathematization of the world-picture would be a more appropriate title for dijksterhuis’ book (cohen 2016, 146). dijksterhuis’ narrative is organized around the development and implementation of the hypothetico-deductive method, highlighting the complementarity and hierarchy of mathematics and experimentation. experiments are designed after the formulation of mathematical hypotheses, deductions, and predictions (dijksterhuis 1961, 70-1). the roles of mathematics in what he calls hypothetico-deductive method are to describe a set of empirical data, express a hypothesis that explains the data, and to work as a tool for deducting new possible observations (dijksterhuis 1990, 117). dijksterhuis uses the method as a historiographical category to analyze the development of scientific practice, pointing out when certain stages are or are not followed. for instance,19 dijksterhuis highlights the mathematical character of on the equilibrium of planes by archimedes. the starting point of its demonstrative structure are axioms considered self-evident or observable by analogy with what we see through our sense, followed by mathematical idealizations of material objects and mathematical deductions with physical conclusions. confirmatory experiments are unnecessary, i.e., the last stage of the hypothetico-deductive method is not fulfilled (dijksterhuis 1990, 115-118). ancient astronomy is a distinct case because the movement of celestial bodies cannot be noticed exclusively by sensory perceptions. therefore, the starting point of inquiry must take into account sets of quantitative data besides the axioms. the formulation of the hypothesis is constrained by “a priori assumptions which rested on religious, aesthetic, or scientific grounds” (dijksterhuis 1990, 116). as an example, dijksterhuis mentions the “platonic axiom”, which states that the movement of celestial bodies is circular and uniform. ptolemy had used this axiom to describe the sun’s movements and to predict its future positions (dijksterhuis 1990, 116). it is crucial to notice that dijksterhuis do not consider the use of the hypotheticodeductive method as the only relevant feature to explain scientific development. dijksterhuis views scientific results acquired until the 16th century as “tiny”, even despite the contributions of, for instance, claudio galen (129-217) and robert grosseteste (1168–1252) (dijksterhuis 1990, 118).20 for dijksterhuis, the development of mechanics (that he considered the prototype of classical physics) advanced only when thinkers, influenced by archimedes, ___________________ 18 originally published in dutch in 1950 under the title mechanisering van het wereldbeeld. here we use c. dikshoorn 1961 translation. 19 for a more detailed analysis of the mentioned examples, see (dijksterhuis 1961, 1990). 20 he considers this ‘delay’ on the capacity of the method to generate results as an open issue in history, whose analysis hinges on several factors. among them, he mentions the underestimation of the difficulties of natural inquiry by the greeks (who used hypothesis without proper empirical confirmation), the qualitative character of the broadly accepted aristotelian physics and the difficulty of the creation of an experimental method, among others (dijksterhuis 1990, 119). the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 13 disengaged themselves from aristotelian orthodoxy. for instance, he finds simon stevin’s (1548–1620) research on statics and hydrostatic as connected with archimedes’ theories (dijksterhuis 1990, 120). dijksterhuis takes galileo as a central figure in his historiography. for him, “with perfect acuity, galileo establishes once and for all the scientific method for the study of inorganic matter” (dijksterhuis 1961, 339). he takes galileo’s work on free fall as an epitome of the mechanization of the world-picture and the establishment of the hypotheticodeductive method. while aristotelian physics is concerned with the causes of phenomena, galileo was concerned with description. he searched for motions that could describe the natural events satisfactorily, relegating the search for the causes to other philosophers. the particular concern to the proper description of the phenomena shows the hypothetical character of galileo’s work. dijksterhuis also points out that experimentation in the italian philosopher’s work always had a confirmatory function, as suggested by the hypotheticodeductive method.21 about the galilean theory of motion, dijksterhuis states: once theoretical mechanics had inferred its axioms from the study of the natural phenomena of rest and motion [...], it turned from physical science to mathematics. radically idealizing the phenomena by the elimination of all disturbing influences and schematizing everything with equal thoroughness by means of simplifying abstraction [...], mechanics developed into an autonomous science, quite remote from physical reality. (dijksterhuis 1961, 346) this is a crucial point on dijksterhuis’ narrative, which considers the detachment of mechanics from natural phenomena a critical step in the development of the mechanical (mathematical) world picture. according to dijksterhuis, isaac newton’s (1643–1727) studies on gravity contributed to improving the hypothetico-deductive method. the mathematical laws that accurately describe the free fall and the orbits of the planets follow from the same hypothesis (dijksterhuis 1990, 123-124). due to the success of newton’s theory and the difficulty of explaining the action at a distance in corpuscular terms, he abolished the requirement that hypotheses should “lend themselves in any case to a visual picture” (dijksterhuis 1990, 123), being enough that they are useful to deduct the most significant amount of observable phenomena. dijksterhuis concludes: thus the expansion of the mathematical-empirical method22 accomplished by newton was of a principal nature and significance in that the aim of a scientific theory could now be defined as providing a mathematical description of the course of a natural phenomenon, under the naturally added clause that the description must give rise to empirically verifiable consequences. (dijksterhuis 1990, 124) with the development of mathematical sciences, the relation between mathematics and nature resurges, according to dijksterhuis, as a continuity of the medieval problem of universals, which questioned the connection between idea and physical reality. the platonic stance of universalia ante rem [universals before objects] is now understood as considering the world as an imperfect realization of mathematical ideals from the world of thought. the ___________________ 21 nevertheless, dijkstehuis recognizes that some confirmatory experiments for galileo’s previsions were realized posteriorly (dijksterhuis 1990, 120). cohen (1994, 71-72) criticizes this point on dijksterhuis’ argument, because historical data shows that galileo made more heuristic experiments than dijksterhuis credited him. 22 other term for hypothetico-deductive method used by dijksterhuis. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 14 aristotelian universalia in re (universals in objects) conceives mathematical idealization as an abstraction from physical reality. finally, the nominalist view, universalia post rem (universals after objects), understands mathematics as a useful tool to obtain approximate knowledge of reality. edwin arthur burtt: metaphysical consequences of mathematization historical studies on the mathematization of science gained an air of robustness and strength in the 1920s, after the publication of dijksterhuis and edwin arthur burtt books, both in 1924. in this year, burtt presented his ph.d. thesis, the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science: a historical and critical essay,23 at columbia university, the center of american pragmatism. burtt had a significant influence on his coetaneous, for instance, koyré changed the focus of his studies from the history of religion to history of science after reading burtt’s book24 (villemaire 2002, 3-4, 49). according to lorraine daston (1991, 523-4) and diane villemaire (2002, 49), burtt uses the term ‘metaphysics’ denoting the assumptions that ground a scientist’s work and usually are not explicit nor analyzed critically.25 the metaphysical foundations is shaped by the conflict with the positivists26 whose main idea is that “it is possible to acquire truths about things without presupposing any theory of their ultimate nature [...]” (burtt 1954, 227). the metaphysical foundations can also be taken as a seed of the approach later advocated by kuhn (1977) and westfall (1971), who consider the existence of two traditions in the historiography of the scientific revolution. burtt recognizes the presence of a parallel current of studies on natural philosophy exemplified by william gilbert (1544–1603), william harvey (1578–1657), and robert boyle (1627–1691). their empiricist approach contrasts with a kind of mathematical reductionism, exemplified by galileo. burtt (1954, 329) often reiterates the inevitability of the metaphysics because while trying to avoid it, we just end up adopting a hidden, uncritical metaphysics. he directs his attention to what he considers the main problem of modern philosophy – whether we can reach trustful knowledge, and how we do it. for the medieval philosophers, humans not only occupy the central physical place in the world, but also the world was made for us and, therefore, our ability to understand it was accepted a priori. burtt’s goal is to enable the development of a new metaphysics that is compatible with modern science and simultaneously ensures a central place for humans (burtt 1954, 304; villemaire 2002, 52). according to burtt, modern philosophers failed to accomplish this task. burtt speculates that this failure is due to an uncritical adoption of the categories of modern science that deeply contrasts with the old ones. it does not mean that modern philosophers blindly accepted newton’s categories, but none of them has subjected the whole of them to critical reflection (burtt 1954, 35). the categories of substance, accident, causality, essence and idea, matter and form, potentiality and actuality are replaced by force, motion, laws, changes of mass in space and time. therefore, in order to understand how this drastic change happened, it was necessary to investigate the origins of philosophical thought between 1500 and 1700. burtt’s investigation is distinct from koyré and dijksterhuis’, who were interested ___________________ 23 see moriarty (1994) for an interpretation of burtt’s works as a whole, and chatzigeorgiou (2020) for a survey of the interpretations of burtt’s work. 24 among other historians influenced by burtt are thomas kuhn and robin george collingwood (18891943). 25 definition posteriorly criticized by the historian lorraine daston (1991). 26 ‘positivists’ can denote a diverse group of thinkers but, according to daston, burtt refers to the ones from the 1890s, exemplified by ernest mach. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 15 in constructing a historical overview of scientific ideas in the 17th century, while burtt is involved with its philosophical consequences (cohen 1994, 92). for him, the modern worldview structured by isaac newton influenced philosophers and the learned audience in general for being responsible for the creation of a new set of knowledge for the european intellectuality “such that all problems must have been viewed afresh because they were seen against it” (burtt 1954 32).27 therefore, the metaphysical foundations aims at a historical analysis of the origins of newton’s philosophical assumptions. burtt begins with the question: why copernicus and kepler did compromise themselves with the defense of the heliocentric model against our sensory perception of the stillness of the earth and a well-established natural philosophy? according to him, the answer lies in mathematics. for copernicus and kepler, the heliocentric model was more straightforward and more harmonic than the geocentric. simpler because it reduced the number of necessary epicycles to explain the phenomena from eighty to thirtyfour;28 more harmonic because it represented the movements of all celestial bodies as concentric circles around the sun, except the moon (burtt 1954, 36-39). nonetheless, the question of why they prioritized the mathematical arguments over the philosophical and empirical ones remains. he discusses the rise of the pythagorean and platonic thought29 that asserts the mathematical nature of reality (burtt 1954, 40-41, 207-209). burtt considers kepler’s understanding of cause as a mathematical harmony between diverse phenomena. it is a mathematical reformulation of the aristotelian formal cause. kepler appropriated the notion of primary and secondary categories from the ancient atomists and skeptics who states that the world presented to our senses is not an ultimate reality, but an expression of it (burtt 1954, 64). burtt also puts galileo in the spotlight, whose mathematical approach of movement is encouraged by the copernican model. in this model, there is homogeneity between earth and the skies, suggesting the possibility of a mathematical approach to earthly phenomena, given the validity of mathematical methods of movement of celestial bodies. it makes galileo, according to burtt, the first to consider the possibility of a complete and precise description of the movement of earthly bodies (burtt 1954, 112). burtt’s interest is to understand the metaphysical implications of the mathematical approach in the study of free fall. one of them is the change of emphasis on the question of why the bodies fall to how they fall. in his studies of free fall, galileo used different categories than aristotle had used. they were not explicitly formulated but can be inferred from how galileo used them in his studies. mainly, the notions of space and time acquired new meanings in the new metaphysics (burtt 1954, 91-8). burtt, as the previously mentioned authors, explores the galilean mathematical apriorism, showing how some parts of galileo’s writings may suggest extreme interpretations. among them, galileo stated that experiments are a way to convince, not a necessary part of the new science. however, burtt gradually dilutes the boldness of this kind of statement. he shows that they do not express a complete disconnection of galileo from experience and observation; according to burtt, galileo meant that it is possible, with few ___________________ 27 burtt saw newton as an outstanding scientist but, as philosopher “he was uncritical, sketchy, inconsistent, even second-rate” (burtt 1954, 208). still, the newtonian metaphysics ended up being implicitly accept because of its success (burtt 1954, 230). 28 burtt is inaccurate in this point. ptolemy's system, after georg von peuerbach’s (1423–1461) reformulation, used forty circles, while the most sophisticated version of copernicus’ system in the de revolutionibus used forty eight (martins 2003, 82). 29 daston (1991) criticizes burtt’s emphasis on this point, arguing that it is not a satisfactory explanation because not all thinkers explored in burtt’s work as responsible for the ascension of the mathematical view of the world were platonic. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 16 experiments, to extract the mathematical essence of phenomena. following such essence, it is possible to deduce valid conclusions to all similar instances, even when they are not subject to observation. burtt summarizes galileo’s method in three stages: intuition or resolution starting with phenomena to extract an underlying mathematical structure; demonstration making generalizations and deductions of new properties following the intuited structure from the previous step; and experimentation to verify the deductions (burtt 1954, 81). according to burtt, the core of the metaphysics of modern science is the “ascription of ultimate reality and causal efficacy to the world of mathematics, which is identified with the realm of material bodies moving in space and time” (burtt 1954, 303). the explanatory categories of science are defined according to the possibility of its mathematical expression. he also notes that over the scientific revolution, natural philosophers started to avoid metaphysical issues, except when they could be used to legitimize the mathematical conquest of the world (burtt 1954, 306). thus, for burtt, as for koyré and dijksterhuis, the mathematization of the physical world plays a central role in the narrative about the scientific revolution. cohen (1994, 88-89) and villemaire (2002, 187) advocate that the relevance of the metaphysical foundations was not fully recognized, and both authors consider the book as the first contextual historical approach to the development of science in a discontinuous way. that may be due to the hostile context of the time when the book was published. it was a usual practice of the american philosophers of the 1930s to keep surveillance over philosophical groups that acknowledged the possibility of attaining trustful knowledge beyond logical and empirically. the metaphysical foundations was considered as a door to a less formal style of thinking. another factor that illustrates the hostility to burtt’s approach to the history of physics was the significant influence of the historian george sarton (1884– 1956), founder of the history of science society, who considered the philosophy of science as useless to the advance of scientific knowledge (villemaire 2002, 190). it is noteworthy that burtt had prepared the grounds for the kuhnian historiography that broke with sarton’s tradition, and the next period would be more friendly to burtt’s style of historiography. synthesizing the mathematization thesis as a historiographical category the limits of the mathematization thesis are not clear due to its malleability as a historiographical category. they will become more evident in the next sections where we expose the dilution and criticism of the program. here we synthesize the main differences among the three historical works analyzed to illustrate the flexibility of the thesis. koyré and dijksterhuis contrast in terms of the main narrative of their works. for koyré, mathematization allows the substitution of the conception of a limited cosmos by an infinite universe. dijksterhuis considers the process of mathematization as tightly entangled to the origin of a mechanical world picture, identifiable with the birth of science. however, the most critical difference between both authors lies in their views on the epistemic roles of mathematics. koyré assumes a galilean vision of mathematics as the language of nature. a result of this view is that the elaboration of a mathematical theory about natural phenomena can lead to, at least potentially, unveiling its reality. in contrast, dijksterhuis considers mathematics as descriptive since it establishes quantitative relations between different entities, without mentioning their essences. for dijksterhuis, mathematization corresponds to one stage of the scientific method that should be complemented by experiments, while koyré considers experiments less relevant. burtt’s approach diverges from koyré and dijksterhuis’ in its primary goal. while koyré and dijksterhuis intend to comprehend the birth of modern science, burtt focuses on the the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 17 underlying philosophy that substantiates modern science and its ulterior impact on humans’ self-image. since the three historians are distinguished for their contribution to the establishment of the mathematization thesis as central to the scientific revolution, one can ask why koyré is the most famous name? cohen (2016) points out some reasons. he first considers dijksterhuis’ linguistic isolation, whose first book, val en worp, published in the same year as burtt’s metaphysical foundations (1924), was written in dutch. dijksterhuis’ the mechanization of the world picture was also initially published in dutch, being translated into english only in 1961, an inadequate translation, according to cohen (2016, 151). besides, dijksterhuis worked mainly as a teacher and oriented his public lectures in the netherlands mostly to a lay audience. burtt also was not very committed to promoting his agenda due to his modest personality. on the other hand, koyré’s success in propagating his thesis is a combination of his character with a cosmopolitan personality. over his career, he transited between germany, egypt, france, and the united states and was also more devoted to advocating the mathematization thesis in the context of the scientific revolution (cohen 2016, 150-152). the mathematization thesis attracted attention due to its efficiency in establishing a cohesive narrative that brought together prominent characters such as galileo, descartes, kepler, and newton in a coherent narrative. at the same time that the focus on mathematization made the narrative attractive, it also made it fragile. since the 1950s, its status started to be ‘diluted’ by herbert butterfield (1900–1979), marie boas hall (1919– 2009), and alfred rupert hall (1920–1979). the first extends the scientific revolution’s scope to the period between 1300 and 1800, including the impetus dynamic and the late revolution in chemistry consummated by lavoisier, thus comprising periods and events in which mathematics could not be seen as central. nevertheless, butterfield still considers the existence of a ‘central’ scientific revolution (similar to the scientific revolution described in the mathematization thesis) inside this broader period. marie hall and alfred r. hall characterize the origin of modern science by the prevalence of rational conceptions and methods, contrasted with those of magic, mysticism, and superstitions, with mathematics being one element among others that contributed to the birth of the new science (cohen 2016). it is no wonder that the mathematization thesis was subjected to criticism. after all, it minimizes the contributions of empirical natural philosophers such as bacon, harvey, boyle, and hooke to the scientific revolution; it neglects fields of knowledge that were mathematized later, as medicine and chemistry; without saying that it disregards the social context in which the birth of the new science took place. in the 1970s, thomas kuhn proposed a historiographical approach that considers a broader range of events as relevant without neglecting the developments attained by the historians of the mathematization thesis. thomas kuhn and the two traditions thomas kuhn, in the 1976 paper “mathematical versus experimental traditions in the development of physical science”, presents an alternative interpretation that copes with some of the weaknesses of the mathematization thesis without sacrificing its potential of syntheses. he starts with the question: is science a single cohesive body of knowledge with a shared history, or is it an assembly of independent disciplines with distinct histories? (kuhn 1977, 31). the approach, which considers mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and geology a cohesive body of knowledge called science, usually focuses on the intellectual, ideological, and institutional context in which science flourished, neglecting the conceptual the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 18 evolution of the individual disciplines. however, kuhn considers that the development of institutions, values, methods, and scientific worldviews do not exhaust the study of scientific development (kuhn 1977, 33). those who consider science as a collection of independent disciplines are immune to this criticism due to their focus on technical content. nevertheless, they can be criticized for reconstructing the limits between these disciplines in an anachronistic manner. recognizing at same time science’s unity and disciplinary particularities, kuhn proposes the existence of two parallel traditions, the classical mathematical sciences and the baconian sciences. they differ in institutional structure, interaction between their disciplines, tendencies of practitioners of one subject to contribute to another, and shared intellectual and material prerequisites for their practices. the classical sciences include astronomy, statics (including hydrostatic), optics, mathematics, and harmony. according to kuhn, it is the only field of knowledge that can eventually be recognized as physical sciences that progressed unequivocally since antiquity, considering the accumulation of concrete and permanent knowledge as a measure of progress. the study of movement around the 14th century can be included in the classical sciences due to the scholastic developments that detached it from the problem of broad qualitative changes, as it was conceptualized in the aristotelian philosophy. the two main features that unite the six disciplines are their predominantly mathematical nature and relatively a priori character.30 kuhn considers the baconian sciences in contrast to the experimental practices of the ancients. according to him, experiments used to be performed to reinforce a previously known result or to offer an answer to a question posed by an already existing physical theory. besides, several ancient experiments were mental, being difficult for the historian to establish the ones that were performed and those that were not. in contrast, the experiments made by baconians such as gilbert, boyle, and hooke aimed to investigate and discover and were more valued than theory. they seek to verify how nature behaves in previously unknown circumstances, even under artificial conditions that existed only in laboratories-experiments that bacon described as “twisting the lion’s tail”. (kuhn 1977, 4344). some of the baconians were influenced by atomist or corpuscular theories and metaphysical conceptions. however, the gap between theory and experiment was deep. therefore, the primary goal of experiments was to make an inventory of empirical facts that eventually could ground a coherent body of theoretical work. in addition, baconian experimentation was characterized by the use of sophisticated instruments, as barometers, telescopes, microscopes, air pumps, thermometers, among others. in this scenario, one can ask whether classical mathematical sciences were influenced by baconian experiments. kuhn answers no, at least on the conceptual level. even when experiments were performed, they usually confirmed previously known results, being sophisticated versions of ancient ones or the embodiment of old questions. even when experiments revealed new phenomena related to the disciplines of classical sciences, it took a long time until they were incorporated into theory; for instance, in the case of optics, experiments of polarization, diffraction, and interference (kuhn 1977, 45-6). kuhn justifies the separation between disciplinary traditions based, among other factors, on bacon’s attitude towards mathematics. bacon considered mathematics and its ‘quasi deductive’ structure of classical sciences as untrustworthy. in bringing attention to the importance of the experimental tradition, parallel to the classical sciences, kuhn dilutes the ___________________ 30 despite the fact that ancient mathematical science acknowledged empirical observations, they are considered a priori because they were independent of more complex and experiment-dependent observations. following simple observations, theories could be elaborated deductively using mathematical concepts (kuhn 1977, 35-6). the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 19 role of mathematics relative to the supporters of the mathematization thesis, while maintaining a protagonism to the mathematical current: if, therefore, one thinks of the scientific revolution as a revolution of ideas, it is the changes in these traditional, quasi-mathematical fields which one must seek to understand. although other vitally important things also happened to the sciences during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (the scientific revolution was not merely a revolution in thought), they prove to be of a different and, to some extent, independent sort. (kuhn 1977, 41) this point is reinforced by kuhn’s statement about the underdevelopment of the baconian sciences in the 17th and 18th centuries. he considers them as underdeveloped because they were unable to produce consistent theories that gave rise to accurate predictions (kuhn 1977, 47). consequently, kuhn agrees with koyré when he considers the theoretical reconceptualization of motion as more relevant than the development of experimentation: after all due qualification, some of it badly needed, alexandre koyré and herbert butterfield will prove to have been right. the transformation of the classical sciences during the scientific revolution is more accurately ascribed to new ways of looking at old phenomena than to a series of unanticipated experimental discoveries. (kuhn 1977, 46) in the book, the construction of modern science: mechanism and mechanics (1971), richard westfall (1924–1996) presents a similar interpretation but using different categories and assuming their interaction. adopting koyré’s view that platonic and democritian currents were the constitutive elements of the new science, westfall considers that they interacted in the 17th century in a quarrelsome manner. despite the rejection of the qualitative descriptions of nature by the mechanical philosophy, the demand for a mechanical explanation for the phenomena was an obstacle to the complete mathematization of nature (cohen 1994, 138-9). for westfall, the culmination of the scientific revolution happens with newton’s work that unified both currents. the approach of the two currents did not have continuity due to several factors. among them, the progressive establishment of social studies of science causing a departure from the history of ideas towards sociological historiographical approaches; the growth on the number of professional historians; the decrease of scientists in the practice of the history of science; and the origin of continuist views that linked the 17th thinkers’ conceptions with philosophers from the middle ages, minimizing the revolutionary character of science and, hence, of the mathematization as a division criteria between the ancient and the modern sciences. critics of the mathematization thesis after the dilution of the relevance of the mathematization thesis in the historiography, new critics to it were weaved. the philosopher gary hatfield (1951 ) criticizes the philosophical roots of mathematization exposed by koyré and burtt. he questions the existence of a platonic-pythagorean metaphysical basis shared by the main actors of the scientific revolution, claiming that their philosophical bases were different, having only a broadly shared attitude towards the relationship between mathematics and nature amounts to a simple statement that mathematical modes of description are useful in the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 20 the investigation of nature, a proposition that hardly qualifies as pythagorean and neoplatonic or as metaphysical. (hatfield 1990, 94) hatfield sustains that koyré and burtt’s interpretation blurs galileo’s philosophical contribution, which was to understand “how one can seek to establish the appropriateness of one type of approach to natural science over its competitors without first establishing a metaphysical framework as foundation and support” (hatfield 1990, 118). despite the possibility of identifying platonic and aristotelian influences in galileo, hatfield claims that he justified the value of the mathematical approach by its large number of well succeed examples, and not by philosophical bases. he explicitly criticizes some justifications used by koyré to support the weight of the platonic influence over galileo as the doctrine of reminiscence in the dialogue concerning the two chief world systems. hatfield advocates that salviati was ironic. he also points out that the mentions to plato in the dialogue always occurred in simplicio’s and sagredo’s lines, but never in salviati’s ones (hatfield 1990, 120-5). lorraine daston (1951 ) criticizes burtt’s analysis by pointing out that he disregarded the intellectual context that had allowed him to explain the origin of the metaphysical conceptions of the main characters. according to daston, the setting provided by burtt is “incidental, biographical, and pointedly nonrational”. she partially attributes this negligence to a [...] lingering psychologism admixed with positivist prejudices: presuppositions can be accepted or rejected only on faith, and thus predispositions (private, ineffable, idiosyncratic) are paramount. in part, it is due to an implicit view of history, or at least of the history of philosophy, as having the forward momentum of a hurtling locomotive; ideas develop along certain lines because they must do so. (daston 1991, 524). daston considers the relationship of necessity amid the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and the mathematization of science traced by burtt as fragile. according to her, this is due to burtt’s underestimation of the different interpretations of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and to his inappropriate assumption that mechanistic philosophy implies mathematization. this makes him inattentive to works that incorporate the mechanical philosophy and the distinction between primary and secondary categories but do not implement mathematization, as descartes’ principia and a substantial part of boyle’s work (daston 1991, 526-7). steven shapin (1943 ) criticizes the mathematization thesis on the sociological level. he considers mathematics as a language unable to foster the formation of the community of practitioners of experimental sciences that flourished in the 17th century. his goal is not to oppose philosophical arguments to the social value of mathematics, but to show that they are intertwined. the use of mathematics as a language to convey scientific statements was criticized for its supposed lack of intelligibility, except within a restricted community. intelligibility, in its turn, was a precious value in the period. boyle, for instance, considered it as a virtue that justified the adoption of the mechanical philosophy over the scholastic. moreover, intelligibility was necessary for the formation of a broad community capable of evaluating scientific statements, which boyle considered a requisite for the establishment of a true physics (shapin 1994). yves gingras (1954 ) criticizes koyré stating that the mathematization of nature was a progressive extension of the ancient mixed mathematics instead of a cultural boost caused by neoplatonic influences. nevertheless, the core of his critic resides in showing the collateral effects caused by the mathematization, made invisible by the habit of the historians to pay excessive attention to the ‘winners.’ according to him, this habit erroneously conveys the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 21 the idea that, after newton’s principia, the applicability of mathematics to nature became obvious and ceased to be opposed (gingras 2001). gingras structures his criticism based on epistemological, ontological, and social arguments. the epistemological changes consisted of the modification of what was understood by explanation. the success of the newtonian mathematical approach to gravitation influenced an increasing number of natural philosophers to take the newtonian mathematical description of motion as its explanation, dispensing the need for mechanical causes. the ontological consequence was that science starts to deal more with the relation of objects and less with its substance or nature. gingras points out maxwell’s commentary in a letter to j.a. fleming in which he states, “the progress of science was indicated by our making our terms mean less and less”. he meant that physicists ceased to talk about categories as electric fluid and caloric and started to refer generically to electricity and heat, without saying what those substances are (gingras 2001, 404). in the social dimension, gingras points out that the mathematization of physics restricted the participants in science because knowing mathematics became an acceptance criterion for being a member of the scientific community. recently, sophie roux’s (1965 ) proposed a complexification of the very notion of the mathematization of nature. she questions if the use of mathematics can make a clean cut between aristotelian and classical quantitative physics. she points out that despite aristotle’s statement that mathematics is only capable of capturing superficial properties of the objects, there were several aristotelian currents of thought during the renaissance that were compatible with the introduction of mathematics in natural philosophy (roux 2010). she also points out the fact that the different forms of mathematizing nature varies according to the kind of mathematics used (algebra, geometry, calculus…) and according to the several facets of mathematical practice. concerning the first distinction, she mentions how the euclidean theory of proportions both guided and frustrated the galilean analysis of motion, and how this analysis would be profoundly changed when transcribed to the language of calculus. these remarks may lead to the conclusion that the grand narrative about mathematization of nature has to be enriched with the dense spectrum of various mathematical practices. and, indeed, leaving behind the idealities that husserl and koyré waved at and replacing them with real practices such as manipulating numbers, extracting roots, representing perspective in pictures, compounding proportions, arranging numbers in tables, following rules and algorithmic procedures, linking propositions together, visualizing magnitudes in geometric diagrams, solving problems, measuring fields with specific instruments, drawing curves, making deductions and plotting the routes of ships, was a significant and much needed change of scenery. (roux 2010, 328). these various criticisms put into question the generalizations explicitly made or assumed by the mathematization thesis and its authors. we advocate that the mathematization of nature in the 17th century cannot be easily traced back to platonic or aristotelian philosophical roots, as indicated by hatfiled’s (1990) analysis of galileo. also, the extensive use of mathematics had some side-effects unrecognized by the highly idealized narrative of the mathematization thesis, such as those pointed by shapin (1994) and gingras (2001). the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 22 final remarks historians of the science of the beginning of the 20th century considered as the founders of the mathematization thesis introduced the notion that the most notorious event on the establishment of modern science was the expansion of the mathematical approach to nature in the 17th century. in their narratives, mathematization is the main criterion that separates the medieval scholastic philosophy from the science of the moderns, in a discontinuous rupture. for koyré (1943a), the use of mathematics was essential in the formulation of fundamental laws of modern science, such as inertia and indispensable for the transition from a notion of a closed world towards an infinite universe. for dijksterhuis, the use of mathematics is indicative of scientific progress in at least two ways. first, as a landmark of a new worldview, the mechanical world picture, according to which the natural phenomena are explained in mechanical terms (in the sense of a mathematical discipline) (dijksterhuis 1961). second, as an indicator of a supposedly methodological evolution (dijksterhuis 1990). burtt (1954) has a distinct goal from previously mentioned historians; his attention is predominantly devoted to the impacts of the mathematization of nature in the metaphysics of modern science, and how it entailed a diminishment of humans’ position in the universe. in the second half of the 20th century, the mathematization thesis is diluted in works such as those of butterfield, mary hall, and alfred r. hall. they expand the period of the scientific revolution, including events in which mathematization had no fundamental role (cohen 2016). in the 1970s, kuhn (1977) and westfall (1971) revise the relevance of mathematization in narratives of the scientific development by considering two traditions of scientific progress, mathematics being essential only to one of them. since the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st, the protagonism of the mathematization thesis in historical narratives has been severely criticized. according to the critics, despite the indisputable role of mathematics in contemporary science, its use in the natural sciences was not always considered natural and unproblematic. shapin (1994) and gingras (2001), for instance, show how natural philosophers such as boyle and faraday criticized the social impact of the excessive use of mathematics. gingras also points out other consequences of mathematization on epistemological and ontological levels: the changes in the meanings of explanation and the emphasis of mathematical structures over substance. beyond the criticism previously presented in this paper, we can mention some narratives of the origin and development of science that take radically different principles than those of the mathematization thesis. for instance, boris hessen (1893–1936) relates the content of newton’s scientific work with the economic demands of its time (hessen 2009) and robert merton (1910–2003) considers the fast development of the scientific activity of the 18th century as a product of puritan values. currently, the notion that modern science emerged from a discontinuous break with the scholastic philosophy in the 17th century characterized predominantly by the broad application of mathematics to nature is untenable. the works of several actors as bacon, boyle, and hooke do not fit this description, neither fields as medicine and chemistry. nevertheless, if we remain aware of its exaggerations, complexities and subtleties brought up by contemporary critics, mathematization can still be a fruitful approach to writing the history of science. as an example, we mention hendrik floris cohen’s (1946 ) book how modern science came into the world (2010), that extends the idea of two traditions introduced by kuhn and westfall to construct a historical narrative that incorporates mathematization as a critical constituent of the scientific development together with other features. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis ciro thadeu tomazella ferreira; cibelle celestino silva 23 acknowledgments this study was partially funded by the national council for scientific and technological development (cnpq), with a scholarship and the research grant # 312748/2018-3. we thank the reviewers for their attentive comments that improved the manuscript. references burtt, edwin. 1954. the metaphysical foundations of modern science. new york: doubleday anchor book. butterfield, herbert. 1965. the origins of modern science 1300-1800. new york: the free press. carr, d. 1970. translator’s introduction. in: husserl, edmund. the crisis of european sciences and transcendental phenomenology. evanston: northwestern university press. chatzigeorgiou, konstantinos. 2020. how the mind-world problem shaped the history of science: a historiographical analysis of edwin arthur burtt’s the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science. studies in history and philosophy of science, part i. forthcoming – https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2020.05.002 cohen, hendrik. 1994. the scientific revolution: a historiographical inquiry. chicago: the university of chicago press. cohen, hendrik. 2010. how modern science came into the world: four civilizations, one 17th century breakthrough. amsterdam: amsterdam university press. cohen, hendrik. 2016. the ‘mathematization of nature’: the making of a concept, and how it has fared in later years. in: historiography of mathematics in the 19th and 20th centuries, edited by volker remmert, martina schneider, sørensen kragh, 143-160 birkhäuser. cohen, ierome bernard. 1985. revolution in science. 1ª. ed. cambridge, massachussets and london: the belknap press of harvard university press. condé, mauro. 2017. “um papel para a história”: o problema da historicidade da ciência. editora ufpr, 2017 daston, lorraine. 1991. history of science in an elegiac mode: e. a. burtt’s metaphysical foundations of modern physical science revisited. isis (82): 522-531. dijksterhuis, eduard. 1924. val en worp: een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der mechanica van aristoteles tot newton. groningen: noordhoff. dijksterhuis, eduard. 1961. the mechanization of the world-picture. translated by c. dikshoorn. 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2002. e. a. burtt, historian and philosopher: a study of the author of the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science. springer. westfall, richard. 1971.the construction of modern science: mechanisms and mechanics. london: the cambridge university press. microsoft word editor layout from the editor 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-2 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal from the editor special issue wittgenstein and the sciences: history and philosophy of science and science education throwing away the ladder of tradition after we have climbed up it: or must we imagine wittgenstein’s philosophy for its own sake? mauro l. condé1 still under the terrible impacts of the pandemic, we have reached the tenth issue of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. in this edition, we could honor ludwig wittgenstein, the man who was not only one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century but, with no fear of being mistaken, one of the greatest philosophers of all time. the 100th anniversary of the publication of wittgenstein’s first book, the tractatus logico-philosophicus, was our inspiration for the proposal of this special issue. however, most of the articles presented here do not deal specifically with the first philosophy of the austrian philosopher but mainly with the later wittgenstein’s work and its possibilities to analyze sciences. wittgenstein’s work reaches its centenary, but this obviously does not mean that we have already had the possibility of understanding it completely. an affirmation that becomes more dramatic, when considering the second phase of his thought, not only for being more recent but, above all, for presenting a disconcerting philosophical innovation, thus confronting more than two thousand years of philosophy. therefore, more than a work of reference, wittgenstein’s thought constantly offers us new possibilities with each new look that we cast upon it. indeed, this gives us the dimension of the author’s greatness, even though being aware of this greatness does not guarantee a complete understanding of his work. in this direction, kambartel (1989, 148) has already pointed out that one day we will effectively understand wittgenstein’s work and then know why we already value it so much. perhaps, one of the great difficulties in understanding the innovative wittgensteinian philosophy, especially the later wittgenstein, is precisely in our lack of references to frame it. without these parameters, we create the habit of thinking about his philosophy by comparisons with the philosophical tradition. so, in these 1 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br from the editor 2 comparisons, we first say what wittgenstein’s philosophy is not, and then after – and perhaps this part is the most dangerous in our exegesis of his work – we relate it to what it seems to be to us. as if inspired by our author, we look for the “family resemblances” between wittgensteinian thought and traditional philosophy. this comparison may not be the most fruitful path, although it has been necessary. thus, perhaps, it is high time to abandon such comparisons of wittgenstein’s thought with tradition and take it up fully without these comparative isms. in other words, to use an analogy found at the end of the tractatus, perhaps we should abandon the ladder which brought us to this level and think of wittgenstein’s work on its own. a task which may be easier for the new generation. in writing this editorial in a somewhat provocative tone to all of us readers of wittgenstein, finally, indeed the main reason for these editorial lines, i leave here my immense gratitude to the authors who welcomed the call for papers and have sent their contributions. without them, this special issue would not exist. reference kambartel, f. 1989. wittgensteins späte philosophie: zur vollendung von kants kritik der wissenschaftlichen aufklärung. in philosophie der humanen welt. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. microsoft word 7crapanzano layout 49 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 49-65 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2018 – this is an open access article idtc dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano1 abstract: in the 1980s naive physics almost suddenly became a field of research for physicists interested in teaching and experimental psychologists. such research, however, was limited to accurately recording the bizarre aristotelian responses of “layman” struggling with simple physics issues. another research on this topic is that one of phenomenological origin: starting from the studies of the psychologist of perception paolo bozzi (since 1958) naive physics had entered the laboratory, and he was the first to find that the physical knowledges of the adult individuals were “aristotelian”. bozzi took advantage of these results in order to hypothesize a substantial diversity and independence of the sensory system with respect to the cognitiverational one. other interesting perspectives were considered by piaget, who in the 1980s, confirming the spontaneous aristotelism of children, provided a still prolific epistemological direction of such investigations: finding an explanatory mechanism that projects on the level of science construction that one of individual cognitive development. keywords: naive physics; epistemology; history of science; psychology of perception; impetus received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 10 september 2018. accepted: 27 september 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _______________________________________________________________________ the “followers” of impetus between the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s the interest in questions related to learning science in general and, more specifically, of mechanics were born – but perhaps it would be more appropriate to say they were “reborn”, for reasons that we will see later. surprisingly, what determined a lasting interest on this specific topic, was from the start the fact that by 1 francesco crapanzano [orcid: 0000-0003-2844-0246] is a postdoctoral researcher in history of scientific thought at the university of messina, department cospecs – address: via concezione, 10 – 98121 messina, italy. e-mail: francesco.crapanzano@unime.it “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 50 submitting simple questions of physics to a sample of individuals (different in number, age and training), the answers obtained had always a high percentage of errors and, moreover, these errors suggested a spontaneous adhesion to aristotelian principles of mechanics, not galilean or newtonian. the first result (relating to the period mentioned above) obtained by research in cognitive psychology, showed very briefly what said above framing it as “layman physics” (shanon 1976); but the studies that were most successful and which introduced a guideline for cognitive psychologists are undoubtedly those of mccloskey (mccloskey 1980; mccloskey, caramazza and green 1983; mccloskey, washburn and felch 1983; kaiser, proffitt and mccloskey 1985) and, among physicists, those ones of andrea disessa (disessa 1982). we consider, in particular, the most comprehensive one (mccloskey 1983), in preprint in 1980: mccloskey first of all stated that “everyday life provides people with countless opportunities for observing and interacting with objects in motion” (mccloskey 1983, 299) and, therefore, his research aimed “at determining what sorts of knowledge in fact acquired through experience with moving objects” (mccloskey 1983, 299). the sample of forty-eight people subjected to non-quantitative problems on the behavior of moving objects belonged to three categories (all students at john hopkins university in baltimore): 1) students who had never attended a physics course (neither in college nor at high school); 2) students who had studied physics at the high school but not at the college; 3) students who had completed at least one physics course at the college. these people underwent a drawing in which a ball was released at a certain speed from the end of a hollow metal spiral tube; they were asked to draw the trajectory. “somewhat surprisingly, a substantial proportion of subjects gave incorrect answers to the problems. for the spiral tube problem, 51% of the thought of the ball would follow a curved path after emerging from the tube” (mccloskey 1983, 302), instead, “the correct answer [...] is that after the ball leaves the tube it will move into the straight line in the direction of its instantaneous velocity at the moment it exits the tube [because] newton’s first law states that in the absence of a net applied force an object in motion will travel in a straight line” (mccloskey 1983, 301). another focal point of the investigation was to draw the trajectory of a metal ball dropped by an airplane at constant speed and altitude. the correct answer is that the ball will fall in a parabolic arc, since the horizontal component of gravity is zero, while the ball has got only a horizontal velocity as long as it is in the plane. “nineteen subjects, or 40%, drew forward arcs that looked more or less parabolic [...]. thirteen percent of the subjects thought that the ball would fall in a straight diagonal line, while another 11% mentioned that the ball would move backwards when released. however, the most common incorrect response, which was made by 36% of the subjects, was the ball would fall straight down” (mccloskey 1983, 303-4).2 among the first relevant results, there is the one that “the same sorts of errors are made by the subjects in all three groups” (mccloskey 1983, 305) or those errors are distributed equally among the three categories of people examined, without significant differences between those who possessed notions of physics and who did not. before making some considerations about the “type” of error, which in our opinion are salient (i.e. epistemological and relative to history of scientific thought), we briefly recall another study, that one conducted by the physicist disessa (later he became a teacher of “education” at berkeley) of mit, in the first half of the 1980s, on a sample of elementary school students (disessa 1982). he used a calculator (a computer) showing on its monitor the evolution of the motion of a “geometric turtle” (dynaturtle) based on the application of variable force in the direction (disessa 1982, 37-40). apart from a more precise setting up of the experiment obtained thanks to the use of the computer instead of the paper-and-pencil 2 for the specific experiments results see mccloskey, caramazza and green 1980. “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 51 methodology and of the sample limited to a specific age group (children),3 “one might characterize early stages of an aristotelian theory of physics with a newtonian reality” (disessa 1982, 41).4 two different physics are used to solve the problem concerned: one attributed by the author to an abstract scheme (newtonian), the other (aristotelian) related to the piagetian sense-motor scheme (“more like piagetian action schemes”, disessa 1982, 59); this reading of the results, not lacking of some suggestion, leaves an important question open: “why do students come to dynaturtle with deep aristotelian misconceptions?” (disessa 1982, 63), that is, why aristotle’s mechanics emerges with arrogance in the explanations after more than 2000 years? answering is not easy at all, especially for those who, like disessa, were thinking of another problem: “the depth of our understanding of the student’s knowledge state and our cleverness in engaging its subtleties may then determine the ultimate success or failure of our teaching efforts” (disessa 1982, 64-5). about what mccloskey, he, tenaciously, decided to carry out, on a sample of thirteen university students, a further research by the interview method in order to clarify the principles or the physical theories underlying the answers given above, i.e. he was looking for a naive theory of motion, speedily found; in fact, “11 subjects held the same basic theory [...] which we will refer to as a naive impetus theory” (mccloskey 1983, 306), that is a medieval theory of clear aristotelian inspiration “which draws a qualitative distinction between a state of rest (absence of impetus) and a state of motion (presence of impetus)” and therefore “is inconsistent with the principles of classical physics” (mccloskey 1983, 306).5 the impetus, invented by philoponus in the sixth century and revised by buridan in the fourteenth century, is not a mould of the aristotelian mechanics: in this one, just in order to emphasize one of the most important differences, movement is always caused by an external force applied, but this has been contradicted by buridan. and the “modern students believe that objects are kept in motion by internal and not external forces. thus, the students’ naive conception of motion is most similar not to the aristotelian theory, but the later impetus theory” (mccloskey 1983, 318). mccloskey, like most of those interested in this subject during the same period, cannot and does not want to deepen the results of his research in a “speculative” direction; he does not go beyond a brief parallelism between medieval science and naive physics, functional to describing and completing his results. however, there is no need to criticize him because it is one of the first serious and thoroughly documented work on this matter; and one can still understand a certain “naively” behavioral drift when he recalled that “it may be useful [...] for physics instructors to discuss with their students their naive beliefs, carefully pointing out what is wrong with these beliefs, and how they differ from the view of classical physics”, this to make students return to the ranks of the correct vision, in fact, “in this way, students may be induced to give up the impetus theory and accept the newtonian perspective” (mccloskey 1983, 319).6 3 in fact, disessa states: “we have not attempted to expand developmental links from the children’s topics into the adults’” (disessa 1982, 49). in order to indicate a substantial similarity of results with biggest subjects, disessa leans on others’ studies; see disessa 1982, 56-7. 4 at this moment i cannot carry out exhaustively the experiment, which conclusions i am interested in. for the necessary indications of what represents a newtonian or aristotelian motion in the specific context, see disessa 1982, 41-2, 53-5. 5 of course, mccloskey explains in a more articulate way the incompatibility between the “aristotelian” physics of impetus and newtonian physics, even if, in this phase, he does not underline how the theory of impetus was born in the middle ages precisely in order to explain some issues of the aristotelian physics. see mccloskey 1983, 306-11; clagett 1961, 505-64. 6 also in kaiser, proffitt and mccloskey 1985 we find the idea that these errors derive “from the applications of an erroneous belief about natural motions” or from wrong perceptual experiences, “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 52 reviewing quickly other researches gradually carried out, we remember wandersee 1985, in whom we find very interesting and suggestive questions about the possible interdisciplinary dialogue between didactics and history of science, but without this disciplinary interaction going beyond a help that the second offers to “science educators” in order to guide students “along an instructional sequence that may aid development of a more reasonable understanding of the phenomena or principles” (wandersee 1985, 581). nancy nersessian first supposes a structural connection between the history of science and intuitive explanations of motion. merits and limitations of her research, in my opinion, lie all in the same choice: to find an “inferential structure that generates medieval explanations” (nersessian and resnick 1989, 412) and to suppose that there is an identical one underlying the intuitive explanations (see also nersessian 1989). this basic idea, better articulated, was reiterated hoping for the birth of a “cognitive history of science”, which however is vitiated, according to me, by the substantially reductionist way of considering cognitive science and by the consequent use of history in an ancillary mode (see nersessian 1995). in 1991 colin gauld showed that he had understood the parallelism between the ideas of students struggling with physics problems and some important advances in the history of science (see gauld 1991); even if the question dealt with the common cognitive mechanisms, it was unfinished with regard to the hypotheses useful for designing new didactic paths. donley and ashcraft, on the other hand, were responsible for verifying the correctness and improving the methodology used in other researches (for example those of mccloskey) without essentially reaching different results (see donley and ashcraft 1992). the long article by stella vosniadou and william brewer (vosniadou and brewer 1992) shows an extension of previous research (mccloskey) into domain of observational astronomy in which we find models and theories about the shape of the earth decidedly outdated. the sufficiently large sample of children, the accuracy in designing and conducting the experiments, the detailed presentation offered, the wide bibliography taken into account, do not show, however, stimulating considerations; on the epistemological level, they do not go beyond the attribution of the difficulties encountered by the subjects to a form of naive physics: “these [wrong] presuppositions appear to be a part of a more general theory of naive physics which filters children’s interpretations of the physical world and constrains their mental models of the earth” (vosniadou and brewer 1992, 578). in 2004, a contribution by bertamini, spooner and hecht was published confirming the results already known with rigorously conducted new experiences (this time in optics). the authors admit, once and for all, that “furthemore, physical expertise does not always improve naive understanding” (bertamini, spooner and hecht 2004, 29), but they are not interested in epistemological problems and even less in interdisciplinarity: their aim is to highlight the strictly scientific implications of these errors in the visual field and in the interpretation of raw data. the research by bianchi and savardi recovers the previous results and, after a quick look at the debate on the origins of naive physical notions (seen significantly as “errors”), supposes that they “are in any case shaped by what the people see” (bianchi and savardi 2014, 10), or they are ultimately imputable to perceptual inaccuracies. if perception scholars are relatively neutral in the face of the data and do not go too far in designing epistemological scenarios, cognitive psychologists try to deepen the question by solving it in ways that are affected in various means by the classic cognitive paradigm, reductionist in suggesting the origin of errors in the deepest recesses of our mind. and that they represent “cognitive limitations [that] may constrain the subject’s ability to integrate all relevant factors in the problem” (kaiser, proffitt and mccloskey 1985, 539). “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 53 this is the case of a relatively recent research in which emphasis is placed on the idea that naive physics is a kind of wrong representation with respect to reality, due not to bad perceptions but rather to a superficial way of operating of our mind in certain circumstances, in fact: “it is combination of extrapolation based on experience, followed by induction of some heuristic to explain why a particular answer has been given, that we believe has led to the notion of a naive physics” (mclaren i., wood and r. mclaren 2013, 1013), so naive physics would be just “an attempt to make sense” following the presentation of certain scenarios. a different case is, in my opinion, the article by smith and casati of 1994. in it the issues of naive physics are faced from a philosophical and psychological perspective, with the very interesting result of highlighting the “unappreciated link between early gestalt psychology on the one hand and contemporary developments in philosophy and in artificial intelligence research on the other” (smith and casati 1994, 227). starting from mach and avenarius, passing through the gestaltists köhler, lipmann and bogen, the scholar of perception gibson, the italian psychologists of phenomenological-gestaltist derivation benussi and bozzi, the authors outline a series of research fields of the naive physics, still object of reflections and research (especially artificial intelligence, ontology). however, we should not omit that the perspective carried on by smith and casati is of analytic origin (that is, of analytic philosophy) and this often results into a generic schematicity in which we perceive the lack of argumentation and of narration in the face of issues consciously considered very important. however, it is not the case to blame anyone, especially those who, like smith and casati, had the merit of connecting research traditions that are very different and almost always unrelated to each other; no one before them, for example, had taken seriously into consideration psychologists like kanizsa and bozzi “demonstrating the existence of a sui generis organization of the perceptual world” (smith 1995, 290). naive physics we think it is interesting to reflect on the research of paolo bozzi for several reasons that gradually will come to light. in the meantime, we recognize that if there is a misunderstood father of naive physics, this is just bozzi: since 1958-59, 18 years earlier than shanon’s article (see shanon 1976), he had found in the laboratory the presence of aristotelians notions in the reading made by the individuals of the pendular motion and the one on inclined planes (bozzi 1993, 29-67). then, when for some years the subject had become fashionable (in the early 1980s), a letter arrived from baltimore, written by professor caramazza, mccloskey’s collaborator [...]. his letter was very friendly and polite; he had heard that in the past i had dedicated myself to problems that had to do with the persistence of aristotle in the raw physical conceptions of people; and he asked me for the publications that i might have written on the subject. this letter made me very proud; i photocopied my old works [...] and sent a registered package to baltimore with everything inside. i never received an answer, nor an acknowledgment, as they say. the parcel, surely, arrived in baltimore, but it “dissolved” in a very deep silence, and i had no more news of professor caramazza, nor i saw his works in that area of research. mysteries of the academic world (bozzi 1990, 341). in fact, as told by bozzi, mccloskey and caramazza – today very well-known and eminent academics – directed their interests towards neuroscience, contributing to the birth “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 54 of cognitive neuropsychology and neurolinguistics; the fact, relevant for us, remains, of the priority given to the studies of bozzi on the naive physics. not only, it is the now dead professor from gorizia to indicate how the words ‘naive physics’ recur for the first time with a specific sense of perception in a german book of psychology (lipman and bogen 1923);7 but, obviously, it is not the only recognition of the priority of research and theories that makes important the reading of bozzi or his intellectual honesty that leads him to answer for what in the meantime others had produced (see bozzi 1990, 23-65), and not even his undeniable literary charm that he gives generously, managing to enter even in the arid field of the experiment. paolo bozzi planned and carried out innovative laboratory research, but above all he was able to construct a theoretical meta-level in which to frame the results and this level is exquisitely ontological and epistemological, because it establishes and tries to find the reasons for naive physics. in order to verify what it was said above, it is useful to analyze bozzi’s early works in this sense: the one on the pendulums (bozzi 1958) and the other on the inclined planes (bozzi 1959), integrating the story with what he recalled several years later (bozzi 1990). the first laboratory experience provides for ascertaining, through the observation of a specially constructed pendulum, whether oscillations at various frequencies are perceived as “normal”, slow or fast with respect to a hypothetical pendulum free to oscillate; secondly, understanding which factors (different from the only one that affects the pendulum motion, i.e. the length of the pendulum) influence the responses of the subjects. i abstain from proposing again the experimental part in detail (bozzi 1958, 39-48), on which i believe we can trust, in order to analyzing the results; in fact, it emerges that “the structural laws of the phenomenal pendular movement are quite far from those that regulate the same movement on the physical plane” (bozzi 1958, 48), they possess an evident aristotelian connotation that persists despite the repetition of experience and, above all, regardless of the notions of physics possessed. but bozzi, instead of simply acknowledging the fact, hypothesizes that certain “errors of theorization” found in the history of science find an explanation precisely in the “immediate evidence of the facts” (bozzi 1958, 29); in other words, ancient and modern science have been, respectively, inspired by immediate experience and contrasted the phenomenal evidence. indeed, the distinction between “right”, “fast” and “slow” – suggested by the experimenter, and simply accepted by the respondents – used to describe the frequency of the pendulum motion, easily reveals the similarity of the distinction that from aristotle to galileo “was never questioned by physicists” (bozzi 1958, 37), that one between “compulsories” and “naturals” movements. indeed aristotle writes: “all movement is either compulsory or according to nature, and if there is compulsory movement there must also be natural (for compulsory movement is contrary to nature, and movement contrary to nature is posterior to that according to nature, so that if each of the natural bodies has not a natural movement, none of the other movements can exist)” (aristotle 1995, 1, physics, iv, 215a);8 and bozzi reflects on how it is true that this distinction is also based on the need for logical coherence of aristotelian physics, but the persistence of these “errors” – both in physics and in common sense – “becomes more understandable if we consider it [to be] very [spontaneous], precisely 7 in fact, even if “the volume includes, above all, studies carried out on children and animals (and it widely uses the research of w. köhler about the anthropoid monkeys) [and] the intentions of the authors are mainly applicative and pedagogical [,] it is written on the assumption that the appropriate use of physical objects by animals and man presupposes a naive physics (largely not conceptualized or even unconscious) and it develops interesting analyzes of the thought processes involved in such practices” (bozzi 1990, 28n). 8 see also aristotle 1995, 1, physics, v, 230, 29a-31a. “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 55 because it reflects our way of seeing reality” (bozzi 1958, 37). it is in opposition to this way of seeing reality or, if one prefers, against the evidence of the aristotelian common sense against for which galileo fights; he does so by opposing his system at an ontological, rather than epistemological,9 level, thus redefining the relationship with experience before implementing a “new method”. in this regard, i consider very incisive the observations made by bozzi who speaks about a quite paradoxical apparent agreement between aristotle and galileo; both seem to agree about the principles of a proper scientific investigation: about the faithful observation of the facts, the systematic nature, the generalization starting from particular cases (the single case cannot be “science”) and the pre-eminence of facts with respect to the theory, “at least as matter of principle” (bozzi 1958, 30). as a partial confirmation of this, he recalls how galileo, in the esercitazioni filosofiche di antonio rocco, firmly affirms that: “if aristotle lived in our age, he would change his mind: whether his argue was based on the senses or on the experiment, now he would perceive the opposite of what he believed, and he would undoubtedly also conclude the opposite, that is, the skies are corruptible”10 (galileo 1633, 617). this agreement, as we can see, is superficial because the opposition is evident on several occasions and firstly they both radically diverge on the way of understanding the facts of the experience: aristotle would be in favor of the common sense, galileo is, because of his strong limits, in favor of scientific reason; the former gives evidence of an observation much “naïve” than the latter and, correlatively, the degree of abstraction in the mechanics of the latter is of a higher level. bozzi’s research had not the purpose to analyze the differences between aristotelian and galilean science; what interested him was an important feature of the reasoning of the stagirite, the one that, despite the theory, makes the “you see so-and-so” (bozzi 1958, 31) prevail; and therefore he wanted to highlight how in galileo the attempt was in the opposite direction: “sterilizing” reality from naive experience to achieve a “scientific” knowledge. the case of the harmonic pendulum motion confirms this hypothesis; in fact, through his experiments, galileo understood that the only factor able to influence the frequency of the pendulum oscillations was its length. not the mass, not the weight nor any thrust can delay or accelerate the motion of the pendulum, the oscillations are isochronous for any amplitude of arc (with much approximation, so much that in physics we speak of isochronism of small oscillations); this, however, seems contrary to the common sense, so much that guidobaldo del monte, first teacher and then colleague and friend of galileo, had expressed to the great pisan some perplexities in this regard, as we can realize in the long letter of reply (1602, november, 29) in which galileo began by apologizing for the insistence with which he wished to “convince you of the truth of the proposition on motions in equal times in the fourth part of a circle; because it has always seemed to me extraordinary, today even more so, that you consider it impossible”11 (galileo 1900, 101). something similar happens in the discorsi, when, in response to an experience repeated several times with pendulums of different material (lead and cork) and equal length, salviati, the narrator, seems amazed at the result, that is at the isochronism for small oscillations: “repeating there goings and comings a good hundred 9 about this see koyré 1978. it is clear that, in the continuation of the argument, the interpretative ways of bozzi diverge sharply from those of koyré, starting from the role of experience in aristotle physics, seen by the great french historian as contrary to common sense. 10 “se aristotile fusse all’età nostra, mutarebbe opinione: sia che il suo filosofare ha per base la cognizione sensitiva o esperimentale, la quale ora gli mostrasse l’opposito di quel che egli stimava, senza dubbio anch’ei l’opposito concluderia, cioè che i cieli fussero corrutibili”. 11 “persuaderle vera la proposizione de i moti fatti in tempi uguali nella medesima quarta del cerchio; perché essendomi parsa sempre mirabile, hora viepiù mi pare, che da v. s. ill.ma vien reputata come impossibile”. “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 56 times by themselves, they sensibly showed that the heavy one kept time with the light one so well that not in a hundred oscillation, nor in a thousand, does it get ahead in time even by a moment, but the two travel with equal space” (galileo 1989, 87). even sagredo is amazed in front of the movement of the lamps hanging from the high ceilings of the churches, because increasing the amplitude of oscillations, time was the same, and he says, “i certainly do not believe that i would ever have discovered this, which still seems to me to have in it something of the impossible” (galileo 1989, 99). obviously, when we perceive amazement through the words of salviati, sagredo and simplicio, it is – according to bozzi – always galileo to show it, the scientist divided between theories elaborated with accurate measurements and the one with the naive look (see bozzi, 1990, 278-280) who has made possible “the sketch – visible by looking backlit its mechanics and in general its science – of a new science, of a naive physics, dealing with the experience of the external world suitable for all” (bozzi 1990, 286);12 the great pisan scientist did not sweep aside the secondary qualities (what one immediately “sees”), but he scrupulously recorded them in his writings in order to replace them with “blocks of knowledge operationally and mathematically guaranteed” (bozzi 1990, 286 ). the situations described by galileo made bozzi consider their double interest: for the history of scientific thought, as they prove the difficulty of overcoming prejudices wellestablished in scientific conceptions, and for the psychologist of perception, because they indicate a world “immediately” distinguished by specific perceptual structures, often in contrast with the physical-mathematical data of reality (bozzi 1993, 32-3). in this second sense, several years later, bozzi considered as purpose of his research finding “an aesthetic of the pendular motion. in the sense of kant (perception) and in the current sense, or in the sense of kandisky” (bozzi 1990, 268). to corroborate his hypothesis, the professor of gorizia planned a new experiment that strictly carried on the previous one because it replicated what was required to the sample on the pendulum motion in front of balls left rolling on inclined planes. i remember that galileo had accomplished – according to viviani – numerous throws of bodies of different material from different heights: and then, to the dismay of all the philosophers, very many conclusions of aristotle were by him [galileo] proved false through experiments and solid demonstrations and discourses, conclusions which up to then had been held for absolutely clear and indubitable; as, among others, that the velocity of moving bodies of the same material, of unequal weight, moving through the same medium, did not mutually preserve the proportion of their weight as taught by aristotle, but all moved at the same speed; demonstrating this with repeated experiments from the height of the campanile of pisa in the presence of the other teachers and philosophers, and the whole assembly of students (viviani 1717, 606. trans. cooper 1935, 26). in fact, considering the controvertibility of the fact already at that time and the precision by which galileo described the experiences, it would have been better to repeat a gravity experiment in a phenomenological key, but, in view of the difficulties in its planning (launches from considerable heights with fall times too short to be carefully observed), bozzi 12 on the other hand, bozzi made no secret, later, of appreciating galileo who had written ““we see” […] “we note”, that someone shows something to another, and he cannot [...] interpret those sentences if not proposing to [himself] an immersion in those same observations concretely updated and introduced to [his] senses” (bozzi 1990, 287). “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 57 appropriately worked around the problem by opting for motion along the inclined planes, “a particular case of the fall” (bozzi 1959, 53). also in this second research the sample of people was questioned about which motion appeared “normal” and whether it was subjectively “fast” or “slow”, trying to understand the reasons. omitting the details of the execution of experiment, the results of this experiment allow [...] to state that the movement of an object along a sloped plane, in order to be phenomenally a good downward movement [neither too fast nor slow, therefore without an external intervention], it must be a movement at the beginning accelerated, until a certain speed is reached, and from that moment onwards it must be uniform. (bozzi 1959, 60-1). this result is a clear indication of the presence of a pre-galilean dynamics; in fact, aristotle says “…thus the weightless body will move the same distance as the heavy in the same time. but this is impossible. hence, since the motion of weightless body will cover a greater distance than any that is suggested, it will continue infinitely” (aristotle 1995, 1, on the heavens, iii, 301b, 12-16). and simplicio, the galilean character, said more precisely: “there can be no doubt that a given moveable in a given medium has an established speed determined by nature, which cannot be increased except by conferring on it some new impetus, nor diminished save by some impediment that retard it” (galileo 1989, 66).the “resistance” of these aristotelian notions, generally revealed in the researches on naive physics, is not only present in our time, but also appeared in the age of galileo; although these were well-established ideas from a cultural point of view, nothing prevents us from understanding in simplicius’ words an authentic movement of annoyance towards those who were to some extent crumbling the world of common sense, for example when he stated: “i shall never believe that even in the void – if indeed motion could take place there – a lock of wool would be moved as fast as a piece of lead” (galileo 1989, 76). between the aristotelian “seeing” of simplicius and the galilean experimentation there are deep differences of an ontological and epistemological nature which from time to time emerge in an evident way; like when salviati “seriously doubt that aristotle ever tested whether it is true that two stones, one ten time as heavy as the other, both released at the same instant to fall from a height, say, of one hundred braccia, differed so much in their speed that upon the arrival of the larger stone upon the ground, the other would be found to have descended no more than ten braccia” (galileo 1989, 66); by “tested” he meant a type of experimentation or scientific approach clearly different from the aristotelian one; in fact simplicio answered: “but it is seen from his words that he appears to have tested this, for he says “we see the heavier…” now this “we see” suggests that he had made the experiment” (galileo 1989, 66). at this point, we can consider what naive physics is for bozzi, aware of the fact that the answer will be more articulated than that given by classical cognitivists; in fact, according to him there are two complementary areas that contribute to compose this new discipline: on the one hand the naive physics is a system of beliefs, obsolete but much more coherent than commonly believed, around the properties of inanimate objects present in the world of our experience; on the other hand, it is a system of relationships, largely still to be explored, which connects those beliefs to one another and to the way we perceive the events of the external world, to the appearance of the physical properties of things (bozzi 1990, 28). “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 58 and undoubtedly the perceptual system is not a transmitter of stimuli, a passive receptor of the world designed by physics, rather “it is a complex instrumentation for navigating in life” (bozzi 1990, 29), that is to say it is a necessary condition for maintaining the biodynamics balance of the body. with this we have reached the limit of the latest generation cognitivism, the one that binds biology and knowledge, life and cognition; but the ideas of paolo bozzi, as we have mentioned above, fall badly under predefined boxes: they are interdisciplinary, “eccentric”, of analytical inspiration and, ultimately, they lie outside classical cognitivism. finally, if naive physics (or “naive physics of a phenomenological type”) is “a theory of physical properties of the world directly ascertained, distinct from the “phenomenological” physics of physicists, but almost certainly linked to that one on the historical and genetic level” (bozzi 1990, 190), it can certainly be useful to consider how much piaget independently elaborated, in the last years of his life, around the psychogenesis of physical notions in relation to the history of science (piaget and garcía 1989). piaget: the children and early science although it would be very interesting to do so, the piagetian research cannot be followed here in detail.13 its results represent the preconditions for what i will try to show, that is the results on the epistemological level and on historiography of science. actually, this argumentative sequence is the same that comes out of the entire work of piaget, in fact in his latest work, written with the physicist rolando garcía and published posthumously, the parallelism between the thought of the child confronted with elementary phenomena of mechanics and ancient and medieval science is explicitly treated; a subject whose “epistemological scope” has not been well understood by both psychologists and historians of science. (see piaget and garcía 1989, 31-2). the narrative order, this time, is reversed: it starts, in fact, from an essential overview of the aristotelian theories of motion, not without a lucid analysis, very useful for us, as in the case of the role of observation by aristotle in the study of movement: it would be direct, rather simple observations, limited by the process we shall call “pseudonecessity”. for example, the only movements he recognizes are rectilinear or circular, hence his absurd conclusions concerning the paths of projectiles. his epistemic positions are thus impaired from the outset, because a lack of experimental data. in contrast, the facts (rightly or wrongly considered such) and the concepts used to express them are related within a system of an impeccable logic (piaget and garcía 1989, 33). in this way piaget behaves in a different perspective in many ways opposed to that of bozzi: we are not in the presence of naive observations poured into physics whose imperative force resides precisely in being perceptible by anyone, but of a set of facts superbly reunited in the system whose impeccable logic determined a long lasting success (see piaget and garcía 1989, 33 and 58); confirming this sensation, he later wrote: “aristotle’s physics does not take as a starting point the study of certain particular types of motion; instead it proceeds from certain general metaphysical principles. aristotle does not analyze how bodies descend in free fall (galileo would do so two thousand years later). he begins 13 see, among the other studies, piaget 1975, 305-336; piaget 1996, 107-242, 395-437. “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 59 with a general observation: the fact that bodies fall. then, he tries to infer how they fall, by means of rigorous reasoning based on metaphysical principles” (piaget and garcía 1989, 44; see also 58). the ambiguity of these statements involves the same aristotle, who is denied the attribute of observational empirical scientist much to the advantage of a metaphysical rationalism which is however implemented by a “general observation” (my italics); there would be much to say about the concept of “metaphysics”, while it is clear and acceptable the fact that aristotle elaborated a dynamics, while galileo approached, not without difficulty, kinematics. according to piaget, the doctrine of aristotle on motion has some fundamental characteristics; first of all the distinction between natural and compulsory motion, the second is contrary to nature and is always subordinated to the first in the sense that “if any of the natural bodies has not a natural movement, none of the other movements can exist” (aristotle 1995, 1, physics, iv, 215a). the natural motion, then, causes the body to move in the direction of its natural place and, once reached it, it stops until a cause of displacement (compulsory) occurs; the natural movement is generated by an internal “motor”, the other always by an external agent, it is however “impossible to move anything either from oneself to something else or from something else to oneself without being in contact with it: it is evident, therefore, that in all locomotion there is nothing between moved and mover” (aristotle 1995, 1, physics, vii, 244, 14a-1b). “all motion needs an environment in which the mobile can move about” (piaget and garcía 1989, 39), because aristotle cannot explain otherwise the fact that any body, once launched, continues its motion without any direct contact with the initial cause of the movement; in other words, the movement always requires a direct contact with the engine and if the stone thrown by our hand continues to move after the launch is because the motion is transmitted from one motor to another, from our hand to the air that is in continuous contact with the projectile (see aristotle 1995, 1, physics, viii, 266-267, 28b-16a). consequently, the absolute vacuum and the continuity of transmission cannot exist. still, the natural motion can only be of two types: rectilinear and circular; the second is perfect because “the circle is a complete thing. this cannot be said of any straight line: – not of an infinite line; it would have a limit and an end: nor of any finite line; for in every case there is something beyond it, since any finite line can be extended” (aristotle 1995, 1, on the heavens, i, 269, 19a-21a). aristotelian theories on motion were criticized since the 6th century a.d. by the john philoponus; he believed, in particular, that the transmission of movement by a means – specifically air – was to be excluded because the antiperistasis was improbable: how can air be pushed forward by the bullet, go back and push it in turn? if air is the cause of the motion, where is the absolute necessity of a first agent, for example of the hand, in the economy of motion? – philoponus asked himself – (see piaget and garcía 1989, 45-6). if the observations of the alexandrian philosopher were substantially ignored throughout the middle ages, they unconsciously were at the core of the debate in the 13th century with buridan and the socalled school of impetus. “aristotle provides the conceptual framework serving as a frame of reference for all reflection concerning science [, indicates] what kind of question one should ask about motion [and establishes] the kind of “explanation” to look for, having introduced the idea of explaining nature in rational fashion by logical demonstration based on accepted premises (which, in themselves, could not be demonstrated, however)” (piaget and garcía 1989, 47); though the scholastic tradition (ockham, grosseteste, roger bacon, wittelo etc.) represents a considerable advance with respect of aristotle’s methodology, the overcoming of his epistemological positions is only partial, “his physics remains the only coherent system for trying to explain the universe and its phenomena” (piaget and garcía 1989, 49). with buridan and nicole oresme the criticism is undoubtedly more pressing; above all the former gives a “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 60 series of counterexamples based on experience which retract the aristotelian theories on motion and give rise to impetus, that is to a force that is impressed by the motor and stored in the body until extinction. it continues to push the projectile in the impressed direction, it will be directly proportional to the speed of the motor and the weight of the body (see piaget and garcía 1989, 50); air no longer plays any active role in the movement, limiting itself to generating only “resistance” on the surface of bodies and the impetus also explains the acceleration that a body in free fall shows during the descent (later oresme, disciple of buridan, clearly made a distinction between the acquisition of aristotelian heaviness and impetuosity. see piaget and garcía 1989, 52-3). the ideas of aristotle, even if partially amended by buridan, were considered the model of scientific thought at least up to galileo; the stagirite, according to piaget, used a great logical rigor starting from necessary premises however unprovable. this type of reasoning was put in correspondence with a precise initial phase of the development of the child’s intelligence, the one dominated by the pseudo-necessities and pseudo-impossibilities, and it is a result, in the specific case of the history of mechanics, not of imposing perceptions – as bozzi suggested – but of cognitive limits and of a social context in which there is a “world view [influenced by] religious conceptions” (piaget and garcía 1989, 58). another essential passage in the history of mechanics was certainly the introduction of the measure, which marked, from an epistemological point of view, the passage from attributes to relations. if the idea of perfection and incorruptibility had permeated the skies of aristotle, making them quite different from the earth, galileo notes as scrupulously as possible distances and times, and newton will find in the law of gravitation the synthesis between the celestial and terrestrial world. the transition from attributes to relations is not a prerogative of a certain age: piaget traces it “in all the important revolution in the field of mechanics” (piaget and garcía 1989, 60), from einstein to bohr. it “involves nothing less than the substitution of relations of almost “tangible” properties by an abstract system” (piaget and garcía 1989, 61). the parallelism between what is shown by scientific historiography and the development of physical notions in the child is clear, according to piaget; aristotle had elaborated the theory of the two motors (one external and the other internal to the body) to explain the motion and many people consider it necessary for a body to move on an internal motor and a continuous contact with the external movement. for example, “very young children [...] may believe that the wind is produced by trees (which sway by themselves), by waves that rise, or by clouds which spontaneously move ahead. this naturally favours the formation of the antiperistatic schema” (piaget and garcía 1989, 67-8). in a second phase we assist to a loss of importance of the internal motor (even if it does not disappear) to the advantage of a single driving force. it finds a psychogenetic correspondence in the “disappearance of the internal motor; at this point, a certain number of powers are bestowed on the external movement” (piaget and garcía 1989, 69) not yet differentiated. the third phase, in which the rush or impetus is caused by the force that produces the motion, and it is a necessary middle term between force and trajectory (as in the medieval reform of buridan and oresme) represents the prelude to the fourth and last in which impetus is substituted by acceleration, this happens with the birth of classical mechanics. here the child gradually discovers, thanks to an effort of quantification and to the maturation of abstraction capacity, that the variation of speed and not the ‘rush’ generates the movement (see piaget and garcía 1989, 67-74). an example can be useful in understanding the stages above considered, that “is that where the transmission of motion is seen as mediated by immobile elements” (piaget and garcía 1989, 69): “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 61 a marble hits a block and initiates movement in another marble on the other side of and contiguous block, or it may hit the first of a row of marbles only the last of which will be set in motion. in stage 1, subject still appeal to an internal motor: the marble hits the block, which remains immobile; but the marble on the other side starts by itself by a kind of contagion and by its own force. in stage 3, subjects say that the active marble, because of its force, give an impetus which passes “across” the intermediate elements and provokes the passive marble into motion. but in stage 2, the internal motor is eliminated, but the intermediate impetus is not yet differentiated and the active marble is seen as the source of some “global action” […]. while the impetus was seen as the cause of motion and velocity during stage 3, the relation is now inverted. the impetus is now [stage 4] regarded as resulting from velocity or, more precisely, as being one aspect of it. this then tends toward the notion of acceleration. thus, as soon as subjects witness the mediated transmission, there are some 11-12 years-old who say “it’s because of the speed, and because there is more and more speed, because the marbles (in the row) transmit it to each other, there is more impetus”. [and more,] “the force is transmitted from one marble to the other” (piaget and garcía 1989, 6972). further examples taken from the piagetian experimentation on the subject can be found in piaget 1930. final remarks: aristotle the revenant this paper has not the purpose of analyzing affinities and differences between the interesting proposals of bozzi and piaget; however, i would like to recuperate some epistemological issues that may arise from what has been analyzed up to now. the history of science emerges in all the researches here evaluated, but in a very different way: the cognitivist psychologists had the merit of bringing at the core of the debate an issue so far passed quietly, but limiting themselves to “recording” that the aristotelian theories of motion were always present in the explanations of the examined people; therefore, they generally14 did not make any organic connection with the history of science except from using it in reference to the results. in paolo bozzi, instead, there is an explicit, conscious and recurrent use of the history of science, even if subordinated to the onto-epistemological aspect. but it is with piaget (who takes up an idea expressed in dijksterhuis 1959, 182-4) that the history of science “constitutes not only the memory of science, but also its epistemological laboratory” (piaget and garcía 1989, 55). in other words, piaget connects the evolution of scientific thought to the psychogenetic one of the child, not using history as an element of the “context of discovery”, not as a “catalogue” of experiments. in light of what we have considered up to this point, i recall that according to piaget, the persistence of aristotelian ideas on motion has traditionally been attributed to a lack of observation; in other words, the historians of science – at least for the most part – saw in the observation and experimentation of galileo and newton the main character of classical physics, the turning point through which it developed. he, however, posing himself on a different level, wrote: “we shall defend the thesis that the difference between the ancient and the modern science is no way lies in a willingness or unwillingness to resort to empirical 14 an exception, in this sense, is represented by nersessian 1995 who, however, decisively takes a direction different from the history of classical science, trying to outline a new one for the future. “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 62 observation, nor in the use of or abstinence from deductive methods. the explanation has to be sought elsewhere” (piaget and garcía 1989, 45). the gestaltist bozzi, to whom we owe the first studies on naive physics, draws from his research a new realism and a new “aesthetic” in which the cognitive aspect is never prior, but rather the sensorial one; a lens through which he reads the history of science in an epistemologically opposite way as for piaget. the latter, in fact, firmly believes that first a minimum of cognitive skills are formed (rooted, in turn, in biological functioning) and then knowledge is built; according to bozzi we have a perceptual system with a certain functioning and scientific knowledge is built in contrast to what we see or touch: what comes to us from the senses is the reality of which we immediately have a naive physics. bozzi, moreover, does not seem to see any evolution of the perceptual system in the long term (human beings have perceived, and they always will perceive in the same way), his perspective is synchronic (“here” and “now”) in which one can study the statements of science as the result of the imposition of a cognitive supra-structure on the phenomenological. according to piaget the roots of knowledge are in the logical (and biological) field; according to him any theory about children on reality – from the most trivial to the most sophisticated – went through the construction of a “methodology derived only from [...] logical reasoning rather than experimental expertise or pre-existing theoretical knowledge” (piaget and garcía 1989, 83). more clearly, he states that any empiricism is unsustainable because “there is no such thing as “pure” perception or experience. the “reading” of experience requires the application of cognitive instruments – which make it a reading – as well as the attribution of relationships between objects – which furnish the causal links between events” (piaget and garcía 1989, 247). in general, then, it is the invention of new problems that makes new methods apply to the physical reading of reality, or better: the scientific method “was subordinated to the world view and the nature of the problems raised” (piaget and garcía 1989, 185) and not vice versa;15 this is why the historical or historiographical dimension, the reconstruction of the conceptual frameworks of an era or of a culture, are essential not only for the understanding of physics, but also for its “internal” epistemology in that they present evolutionary mechanisms similar to those of cognitive process of individuals. i still remind that according to the swiss psychologist-epistemologist, “the history of mechanics (from aristotle to newton) could be described as a history managed by the process of eliminating pseudo-necessities” (piaget and garcía 1989, 59). moreover, this process, from a psychogenetic point of view, consists in a progressive construction of schemes through “empirical” and “reflective” abstraction, increasingly sophisticated and logically coherent schemes in which at each level, certain previous constructions remain in acceptance while other new constructions are elaborated. this is true both for the child and for the quantum physicist. what is characteristic of the process is that at each new level, there is a return to the “level of experience”. each new level is equipped with new interpretative schemata, which enrich the original notions used in the construction of that level (piaget and garcía 1989, 204). in my view, the piagetian epistemological perspective appears to be the richest, both in terms of content and in terms of analysis. in fact, piaget and garcía present a wide 15 see also piaget and garcía 1989, 80-3. this idea is not new, piaget notes it by a quote as it had been noted very well alistair crombie (crombie 1995, 291). “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 63 historical-epistemological reconstruction not only of mechanics – the subject discussed here – but also of algebra and geometry; a reconstruction generally more articulated than that one we find in bozzi, who, although he was as good as them in analyzing the specific question of motion in the light of aristotle and galileo, reaches ontological conclusions – and only secondarily epistemological – considering the perceived reality valid respect to every possible cognitive “adulteration”. but if there is a connection between the approaches and studies examined so far, it is undoubtedly represented by aristotle and his physics: cognitivist psychologists, physicists interested in teaching, the phenomenologist bozzi and the epistemologist piaget all agree that children, young people, students and the layman, questioned on basic mechanical issues, show typical solutions of aristotelian physics (in its original version or in the medieval version of buridan and oresme); and all, or almost all, seem to agree that these answers are, within certain limits, separate from the studies carried out and the notions possessed. definitely, it is true that in most experimental studies there is no mention of possible origins of this strange thing or they give rather banal answers (perhaps because they are considered “deviant” errors from a scientific point of view); bozzi is an exception because he provides an answer that may seem disorienting (senses provide us with a model of phenomena, prior to any intellectual knowledge), but he is original and stimulating; piaget explains the experimental findings within genetic psychology (as the result of an incomplete construction of cognitive schemes or appropriate logical tools) and identifies an important epistemological parallelism between the stages of psychological development of children and some phases of scientific thought as they appear in the history of science. in light of this, waiting for further research to tell us what the “right” direction is (strictly experimental or phenomenological or epistemological etc., or some mix of the previous ones), we can start working on one thing: investigating, explaining or clarifying naive physics could be useful for all those interested in science teaching, to design a more effective teaching method that does not aim to correct the “distortion” of the data, but instead leverages the presumed “errors” and scientific historiography to construct explanatory models of classical mechanics (galilean and newtonian) and of physics in general. in fact, you learn more from mistakes than successes, learn more from the “master of those we know” and not, directly, from quantum mechanics. references aristotle. 1995. the complete works [1984]. 1-2. edited by jonathan barnes. princeton, nj: princeton university press. bianchi, ivana and ugo savardi. 2014. grounding naive physics and optics in perception. baltic international yearbook of cognition, logic and communication. perception and concepts 9: 1-15. bertamini, marco, alice spooner and heiko hecht. 2004. the representation of naive knowledge about physics. in multidisciplinary approaches to visual representations and interpretations, edited by g. malcom, 27-36. amsterdam: elsevier. bozzi, paolo. 1958. analisi fenomenologica del moto pendolare armonico. rivista di psicologia lii (4); then published in bozzi 1993, 29-49. bozzi, paolo. 1959. le condizioni del movimento “naturale” lungo i piani inclinati. rivista di psicologia liii (4); then published in bozzi 1993, 51-67. bozzi, paolo. 1990. fisica ingenua. studi di psicologia della percezione. milano: garzanti. bozzi, paolo. 1993. experimenta in visu. ricerche sulla percezione. milano: guerini e associati. “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 64 clagett, marshall. 1961. the science of mechanics in the middle ages [1959]. madison: university of wisconsin press. cooper, lane. 1935. aristotle, galileo, and the tower of pisa. ithaca – new york: cornell university press. crombie, alistair c. 1995. the history of science. from augustine to galileo [1953, 1959]. new york: dover. dijksterhuis, eduard j. 1959. the origins of classical mechanics from aristotle to newton. in critical problems in the history of science, edited by m. clagett, 163-184. madison, milwaukee and london: university of wisconsin press. disessa, andrea a. 1982. unlearning aristotelian physics: a study of knowledge-based learning. cognitive science (6): 37-75. donley, rick d. and mark. h. ashcraft. 1992. the methodology of testing naive beliefs in the physics classroom. memory & cognition 20 (4): 381-391. galilei, galileo. 1633. esercitazioni filosofiche di antonio rocco. venezia: baba. in galileo 1897, 569-750. galilei, galileo. 1897. edizione nazionale delle opere di galileo galilei. vii. edited by a. favaro. firenze: barbèra. galilei, galileo. 1900. edizione nazionale delle opere di galileo galilei. x. edited by a. favaro. firenze: barbèra. galilei, galileo. 1907. edizione nazionale delle opere di galileo galilei. xix. edited by a. favaro. firenze: barbèra. galilei, galileo. 1989. two new sciences [1632]. edited by s. drake. toronto: wall & emerson. gauld, colin. 1991. history of science, individual development and science teaching. research in science education 21: 133-140. kaiser, mary k., dennis r. proffitt and michael mccloskey. 1985. the development of beliefs about falling objects. perception & psychophysics 38 (6): 533-539. koyré, alexandre. 1978. galileo studies [1939]. trans. by john mepham. hassocks, uk: the harvester press. lipmann, otto and hellmuth bogen. 1923. naïve physik. theoretische und experimentelle untersuchungen über die fähigkeit zu intelligentem handeln. leipzig: ambrosius barth. mccloskey, michael, alfonso caramazza and bert green. 1980. curvilinear motion in the absence of external forces: naive beliefs about the motion of objects. science 210 (4474): 1139-1141. mccloskey, michael, allyson washburn and linda felch. 1983. intuitive physics: the straight down belief and its origin. journal of experimental psychology: learning, memory, and cognition 9 (4): 636-649. mccloskey, michael. 1983. naive theories of motion. in mental models, edited by d. gentner and a.l. stevens, 299-324. new york – london: taylor & francis. mclaren, ian, katie wood and rossy mclaren. 2013. naive physics – the wrong theory? in proceedings of the annual meeting of the cognitive science society, 35: 1008-1013. nersessian, nancy j. 1989. conceptual change in science and in science education. synthese 80: 163-183. nersessian, nancy j. 1995. opening the black box: cognitive science and history of science. osiris 10: 194-211. nersessian, nancy j. and lauren b. resnick. 1989. comparing historical and intuitive explanations of motion: does “naive physics” have a structure? in proceedings of the twelfth cognitive science society, 412-417. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum. piaget, jean. 1930. the child’s conception of physical causality [1927]. london: kegan paul, trench and trubner & co. ltd. “strange trajectories”: naive physics, epistemology and history of science francesco crapanzano 65 piaget, jean. 1975. i meccanismi percettivi [1961]. transl. by l. zanuttini. firenze: giunti barbèra. piaget, jean. 1996. la costruzione del reale nel bambino [1967]. transl. by g. gorla. firenze: la nuova italia. piaget, jean and rolando garcía. 1989. psychogenesis and the history of science [1983], trans. by h. feider. new york: columbia university press. shanon, benny. 1976. aristotelianism, newtonianism and the physics of the layman. perception 5 (2): 241-243. smith, barry and roberto casati. 1994. naive physics: an essay in ontology. philosophical psychology 7 (2): 227-247. smith, barry. 1995. the structures of the common-sense world. in acta philosophica fennica 58: 290-317. viviani v., racconto istorico della vita di galileo [1717]. in galileo 1907, 597-632. vosniadou, stella and william f. brewer. 1992. mental models of the earth: a study of conceptual change in childhood. cognitive psychology 24: 535-585. wandersee, james h. 1985. can the history of science help science educators anticipate students’ misconceptions? journal of research in science teaching 23 (7): 581-597. microsoft word goulart layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-5 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal book review osterhage, wolfgang. johannes kepler: the order of things. springer biographies. springer international publishing, 2020. 132p. isbn 978-3-030-46858-3/ e-book. 54,99 usd. luana paula goulart de menezes1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8833-9759] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.12 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ placing order amid chaos is a fascinating proposition. in some episodes in history, the goal of organizing and attributing meaning to phenomena and, in this way, meeting the human desire to understand the world was treated seriously. among the most famous names who glimpsed and pursued this purpose is johannes kepler (1571-1630). the book entitled johannes kepler: the order of things seeks to present this perspective. the author of this book, wolfgang osterhage, situates the events in kepler’s life and his immense effort to find an order underlying all things. in this sense, the book, which belongs to the springer biographies series, is not only a biography; osterhage intends to use kepler’s life and achievements as a kind of catalyst for humanity’s effort to find order in environmental and cosmic events. regarding the book’s structure, we begin by observing its subtitle, bringing a sense of déjà vu. the order of things is the title of one of michel foucault’s (1926-1984) books. the author comments on this but draws attention to it: while foucault claims that science creates abstract concepts that are generally debatable and does not focus on describing objective insights, kepler seeks reality, with no room for relativism (osterhage 2020, 4-5). however, it is important to keep in mind that even if kepler seeks an absolute statement, in which the description of reality coincides with the truth, we cannot forget that the path he took was not based on random guesses. his stance is that of someone who seeks criticism and is willing to change his mind. for example, in support of galileo galilei (1564-1642), kepler comments: “yet let no one assume that by my readiness to agree with galileo i propose to deprive others of their right to disagree with him. [...]. i have done so with a conviction of their truth and with a serious purpose. yet i swear to reject them without reservation, as soon as any betterinformed person points out an error to me by a sound method” (kepler and rosen 1965, 7). after introducing the book’s purpose in chapter 1, osterhage describes in chapter 2 – in what he calls a kind of prologue – some details about kepler’s tendencies in the search for harmony in the world. osterhage speculates that when the man looked at visible things above his head, the question may have arisen how we could understand phenomena of space and time. according to him, for centuries, before effectively understanding the behavior of the stars, scholars were content to describe the things they observed. initially, this was 1 luana paula goulart de menezes is a phd candidate in science and mathematics education program at the state university of maringá – uem (brazil). address: av. colombo, 5790 zona 7, maringá pr, brazil, 87020-900. e-mail: lluanagoulart@gmail.com luana paula goulart de menezes – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 kepler’s sole goal: to contemplate the beauty of harmony as such, without directing their efforts to understand the underlying causes, unless these were to be found in god’s plan. in the search for order, one element becomes essential: simplicity. for osterhage, simplicity implies a search for commensurability, finding relationships between whole numbers in the explanations of planetary orbits. such a task of understanding cosmic harmonies included in kepler the music of the spheres of the pythagoreans. while there may be a repulsion to such ideas, osterhage reminds us that there are harmonies in the cosmos, such as the rotations of moons around their host planet. in addition to the issues around understanding nature objectively, osterhage also seeks to point out other elements that motivate the pursuit of order. for example, he lists aesthetics, homeostasis, gestalt, mythology, communication, power, benefits, and values (osterhage 2020, 7-14). each of these items is discussed in the book and seems to be an enlightening attempt to present the theme in a broader context, highlighting a human character in understanding the world. in the following chapters (from the 3rd to the 9th), the author describes kepler’s life and work. among his peers, he writes that kepler was a contemporary of tycho brahe (15461601). in uraniborg, tycho collected astronomical data of great precision, which later and with kepler’s intense work, culminated in the famous rudolphin tables. another well-known contemporary was galilei, already mentioned here. both shared ideas in common, such as the fact that they believed in the copernican hypothesis. still, as osterhage presents well, even though kepler and galileo were exposed to the same cataclysms, we can notice different impacts since the situation in italy was different from that of central europe. about the scholar in focus in the book, osterhage presents a lot of information: kepler was born on december 27, 1571, in weil der stadt (town of weil). historically, this epoch consists of the transition from the renaissance’s end and the humanist period’s end to the baroque. his life was not easy at all; he went through periods of witch-hunting, his mother was accused of being a witch, and, in addition, several religious wars had a profound effect on the astronomer’s life. according to osterhage, kepler was baptized a catholic but brought up as a protestant. however, the information about baptism seems doubtful to us. max caspar – one of kepler’s most renowned biographers, presents a series of circumstances that did not show any conviction related to the religion of his baptism. thus, we are unsure whether it was a catholic clergyman or, more likely, a protestant preacher who performed the sacrament (caspar and hellman 1993, 33). beyond occasional information, the author, in a compelling way, uses plato’s parable of the cave to illustrate the problem of the keplerian quest to understand the world behind the world, that is, to understand its harmony. the famous dialogue between socrates and glaucus ends with the assumption that one of their prisoners would return to the cave and reveal the truth about the real world. as is to be assumed, the prisoners who remained in the cave would not believe the reality behind the shadows they saw: the prisoner who returned would be in danger of being killed. in osterhage’s opinion, although this is not exactly what happened to kepler, he was the person who decided to discover the secret workings of the world, while many seemed to see, like the prisoners, only shadows or reflections of the real world. perhaps we can go a little further, for even though he was not at risk of death, kepler encountered much opposition, as did the returning prisoner. this applied from when he supported copernicus. about himself, he writes: “no matter how far i have advanced, i have been strongly opposed everywhere” (baumgardt 1951, 53). besides having had a complicated background of wars and oppositions, kepler lived in a family that was not kind. his mother had a controversial personality, a cranky person, and his father was a military man. moreover, kepler’s health was fragile: he was afflicted by many diseases. without a doubt, he was not a boy who would have a future as a military man or a luana paula goulart de menezes – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 peasant. for him, fate had in store a hard work with other objectives. nevertheless, in his childhood, we can find events that give hints about his future endeavor: at the age of six, he observed a comet with his mother and, at the age of nine, a lunar eclipse. this information is narrated by osterhage in more detail, along with kepler’s school journey until he reached the renowned university of tübingen. in the context of ideas, it is expected that various scholars influenced kepler, and many of his ideas are found in later researchers. from this perspective, osterhage seeks to dialogue with past and future lines of thought concerning kepler. in later research, he provides a lay reader with a good overview of recent efforts in the field of physics. here it is worth noting that osterhage has a phd in physics and another in information science. in the past, osterhage looks for good notions for understanding kepler’s context. he points to some ideas from the pythagoras of samos (c. 570-c. 495 bc). kepler encountered two significant subjects in pythagorism: music theory and regular polyhedral. and also, from nicholas of cusa (1401-1464), kepler was impressed by geometric mysticism. closer to the present, we find, for example, david bohm (1917-1992). for him, there is a reason why we do not understand the phenomena treated by physics and about things and events in our world of experience. this reason is that we do not recognize that they are part of a kind of totality or a kind of whole determined by a sphere of higher dimension and implicit order. this idea, osterhage writes, is found in kepler, even though he had no notion of quantum physics. returning to kepler’s ways, we can read in osterhage’s book about michael maestlin (1550-1631), a professor who was of fundamental importance in kepler’s life. there is also an account of kepler’s departure from the university of tübingen to graz (austria), where kepler taught and wrote his first book, mysterium cosmographicum. there is also information available about his first marriage (with barbara müller), his work with predictions in the field of astrology, and the counter-reformation in graz. osterhage points out that kepler learned about copernicus’ ideas from maestlin. one of the questions that intrigued him was the planetary distances. and at that time, only six planets were known: mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, and saturn. kepler tried several numerical combinations, but a solution was only proposed in 1766 by johann titius and published by johann bode in 1772. the proposal consists of a mathematical formula 𝑅 = 4 + 3 ∙ 2 . the 𝑛 is the natural number of the planet sequence, starting with venus (𝑛 = 0); the result 𝑅 is the average radius of a planet’s orbit around the sun. still, we must pay attention that “the result is not the absolute value, but a value relative to the earth’s” (osterhage 2020, 35). osterhage points out that the formula gives good results, except for mercury and neptune. however, a comment is worth making here: when 𝑛 → −∞ we have a good approximation for the distance in ua from the planet mercury (𝑅 = 4, dividing by 10, we find 0.4 ua, the actual value is about 0.39 ua). the biggest mistake in comparing the real values is neptune and pluto's cases. and, of course, pluto is no longer considered a planet. we also add the formula that predicts the existence of the asteroid belt, which is located the dwarf planet called ceres. unfortunately, there is no physical explanation of the formula, and for this reason, it was discarded and considered only a numerical resource. osterhage remarks, however, it has recently been taken up “to analyze extra-solar planetary systems” (osterhage 2020, 35). on mysterium cosmographicum, the author describes the keplerian model with the regular solids and interspersed spheres. osterhage comments that the cube, tetrahedron, and dodecahedron were known to the pythagoreans. the discovery of the octahedron and icosahedron is attributed to theaetetus (c. 417-c. 369 bc). solids have also been related to the element theory: earth for the cube, air for the octahedron, fire for the tetrahedron, water for the icosahedron, and ether for the dodecahedron. luana paula goulart de menezes – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 kepler even sent his first book to galilei, who later requested more copies. kepler took this opportunity to send a letter to galilei and encouraged him to expose and defend the copernican model in addition to the copies. tycho brahe also received a copy. the latter was impressed with kepler’s ingenuity, and even though he had some disagreements, he invited him to work together. with religious conflicts gaining strength, kepler had to consider the invitation seriously. the relationship between the two was not always easy. still, it was of paramount importance in the history of science, as we see the union of accurate data and a creative mind. the result is the great book astronomia nova, which contains the first two well-known laws of planetary motion. harmonices mundi, another important work by kepler, is also remembered in osterhage’s book. according to the author, most of the work is on music, and the geometrical part is a repetition of mysterium. the chords are derived from the minimum and maximum velocities in the elliptical paths of the planets, and the music of the spheres is replaced by non-audible acoustic harmony. in this work, we find the third law of planetary motion. osterhage writes that nowadays, it seems that hardly anyone pays attention to kepler’s assumptions of harmonices anymore. however, he points out that there is a relationship between physics and music, and even more than 400 years after kepler, there are still studies on mathematics and statistics in this art. although we do not specify here, a reader of the book will find important events in kepler’s life, such as the places he lived (prague, linz, ulm, his stay at sagan) and his death in regensburg. some details about people connected to kepler, his second marriage with susanna reuttinger, and some data about children. however, some information needs to be checked. for example,the death of kepler’s first wife was probably from “hungarian spotted typhus” (caspar 1993, 207), a disease brought by austrian troops and not smallpox as written in the book. an important observation is that in osterhage’s book, it is possible to learn about other works of kepler, besides the works we have mentioned, such as his studies on optics and chronologies. however, we need to mention that a reader of the book will not find an indepth study of kepler’s works but rather some of his general ideas. in chapter 10, osterhage presents many recent discussions, revisiting the order of things. he takes up the fact that kepler believed that he had deciphered god’s harmonic design. he describes that kepler’s universe is closed, neglects the rest of the world beyond, and considers the referential in the fixed stars. another condition for the functioning of kepler’s system is the assumption of absolute time and absolute space. newton was convinced of this and even tried to provide proof with a thought experiment using a bucket. the arguments used were refuted by george berkeley (1685-1753) and later by ernst mach (1838-1916), who argued that newton neglected the influence of all other matter in the universe. in osterhage’s reading, there was not much left of kepler’s legacy, the harmony of the cosmos was destroyed in the first half of the 20th century, but much of the motivation to find order in things remained. at this point, the author quotes a passage by john a. wheeler, “someday a door will surely open and expose the glittering central mechanism of the world in its beauty and simplicity”. in this sense, the hope is that the pieces scattered throughout the world would be joined together in a harmonious construction. much of the status of recent physics can be read in the book. the author cites four fundamental forces identified in nature: gravitation, electromagnetism, weak interaction, and strong interaction. he presents the current status of atomic, nuclear, particle, and other physics, and what has not been achieved to date: “the unification of the four known forces in nature” and “the synthesis of quantum theory and the theory of relativity” (osterhage 2020, 101). among the unsolved problems and mysteries in the realm of speculation, the luana paula goulart de menezes – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 author provides some examples: string theory, cosmological constant and dark matter, toe (the theory of everything), unifying all interactions, and the big crunch. it seems that the search for a unified theory continues. stephen hawking (1942-2018) proclaimed that we would succeed in about ten years or, at the latest, in twenty years. after that time, he said that the projected twenty years were beginning. however, according to osterhage, even hawking started with not believing in the possibility of a toe. it is due to gödel’s incompleteness theorem, according to which no part of a system establishes a conclusion about the whole. although kepler did not seek a theory of everything from hawking’s perspective, he was one of the people who approached topics and problems in various ways, with music, geometry, theology, and mysticism. in nowadays, with the fields becoming more and more specialized, it is hard to imagine a scientist who can unify theories. for osterhage, perhaps only john nash (1928-2015) can be an example of someone who came close to kepler. nash was able to connect various topics in problem-solving, such as “economic science, game theory, and strategy, and at the same time created byproducts with consequences for the description of space-time” (osterhage 2020, 110). the book’s concluding chapter presents kepler’s legacy and the possibility of finding someone who can put an order to things – perhaps a utopia. in conclusion, according to us, the best biography book remains kepler by max caspar because caspar searched many events in kepler’s life in a way that is not as synthesized as osterhage’s biography. in addition, there are some omissions in the book, such as the friendship between kepler and david fabricius (1564-1617). furthermore, there are few lines from kepler himself. for those who seek the book with academic interest, something that can be negative is the fact that some of the references in the direct quotations are omitted. however, overall, it still seems to be an attractive proposition. among the positive aspects of osterhage’s proposal is the dynamism in science regarding ideas and finding an order. the way the author combines elements from kepler’s life in contrast with later scholars is an interesting perspective and one that can generate good reflections on how ideas and goals are discussed, taken up, refined, or eliminated in the complex development of science over time. the language is accessible, and from this point of view, it is a good book as far as the dissemination of knowledge is concerned, especially for bringing many discussions of recent physics. at the end of the book, we also find a list of kepler’s complete works and a timeline. references baumgardt, c. 1951. johannes kepler: life and letters. new york: philosophical library. caspar, m.; hellman, c. d. 1993. kepler. new york: dover publications. kepler, j.; e. rosen. 1965. kepler’s conversation with galileo’s sidereal messenger. sources of science. new york and london: johnson reprint corporation. microsoft word barra layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-12 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2021 – this is an open-access journal interview: eduardo salles de o. barra1 born in juiz de fora, mg (brazil) in 1964, eduardo salles de o. barra is a philosopher of science, and a professor at the federal university of paraná (ufpr), where he was a former dean of undergraduate and professional education and director of the human sciences sector. he graduated from the federal university of juiz de fora, mg and received his msc degree and his doctorate in philosophy from the university of são paulo (usp). he is also the coordinator and one of the primary founders of the paraná school of history and philosophy of science and technology. eduardo salles de o. barra’s interests and research focus on history and philosophy of science, education, and teaching of philosophy. his principal works are on the philosophy of sciences as well as authors, such as newton, kant, and kuhn. interviewed by: veronica ferreira bahr calazans2 and mauro l. condé3 in april 2021 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ veronica ferreira bahr calazans (vfbc) and mauro l. condé (mlc): you graduated in philosophy. likewise, your phd and teaching career are in philosophy, emphasizing the philosophy of science. tell us a little about this path in which philosophy was present since at the beginning. how did your interest in philosophy come about? specifically, how did you become interested in the history and philosophy of science? how were your choices made? eduardo salles de o. barra: my choice for philosophy was a somewhat unexpected result. i did not have the privilege of taking a philosophy course during high school. during the last years of the military regime (1979-1981), i went to high school, which was still far away from the educational reforms that brought philosophy and sociology to high school. my high school education was in an extraordinary technical school called instituto de laticínios cândido tostes, in juiz de fora, mg. this school allowed me 1 eduardo salles de o. barra [orcid: 0000-0001-8979-5281] is a professor in the department of philosophy at the federal university of paraná ufpr. address: rua dr. faivre, 405 – 6º andar – ed. d. pedro ii – curitiba – pr, brazil – cep 80060-140. e-mail: barra@ufpr.br 2 veronica ferreira bahr calazans [orcid: 0000-0001-8274-5935] is a professor at the federal university of technology – paraná – utfpr. address: av. sete de setembro, 3165 – curitiba – pr. 80.230-901, brazil. e-mail: calazansveronica@gmail.com 3 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 2 to have contact with several natural sciences courses at a very advanced level. we had, for example, regular classes in laboratories, where our teachers also conducted research in close connection with the dairy and food industries’ productive chain. parallel to this excellent scientific education, we had intense artistic and cultural activities with lots of music, dance, and theater. this activity invariably had to unfold in politics, reflecting the opening movement initiated during the last military government of general joão batista figueiredo. it was the fascination for this authentic parallel curriculum that made me, after the first professional internships in the last year of the course, renounce my career as a dairy products technician and continue my academic education at the university, but in an area totally different from the natural sciences and technology. i was absolutely fascinated by the human sciences, which i had discovered through random readings and, above all, long conversations with many of my classmates who had similar interests. i had no idea whether i would go into history, sociology, or philosophy. but i knew that i would be much more fulfilled in any of them than in the dairy industry’s everyday life. my choice fell on philosophy because of my education’s second characteristic, which was perhaps even more decisive than my formal schooling years. i was born in a catholic family, and from a noticeably young age, religious life was immensely fascinating for me. at the end of the 1970s, the emergence of liberation theology and the social movements inspired by it were an epiphany for me. at that time, i met the dominican friars and was fascinated by the idea of becoming one of them. despite my immense admiration for the dominicans – especially the legendary friar mateus rocha, who was rector of the university of brasilia (unb) for a short period before the military coup of 1964 – my religious vocation didn’t resist the charms of the first months at the university. it was love at first sight, for i didn’t really know what the course i had chosen was all about. i had chosen philosophy because i was considering joining the dominican order as soon as i could transfer to são paulo. however, when i found out that i didn’t have enough vocation for that, i was totally in love with the university. i kept on studying philosophy, attracted not by what i had learned in classes but by the great cultural and political agitation that the university was going through at that moment, during the first half of the 1980s. i did my undergraduate studies at the federal university of juiz de fora (ufjf). the philosophy department at ufjf was basically made up of professors who were priests or had trained in religious institutions. professors with doctorates were exceedingly rare. most of them had received their degrees at gama filho university in rio de janeiro. the department maintained an intense exchange with that university, so much so that, in those years, i was able to follow the public examination in which ricardo velez rodrigues4 was approved. as i said before, ufjf was experiencing intense cultural and political agitation, and i wasn’t immune to it. i soon became involved with the student movement and other social movements with political ramifications in the university, aligning myself with the workers’ party (pt) militants and the so-called catholic left. for me, therefore, it was a paradox to exercise left-wing militancy and attend the classes of certain professors considered and thought to be conservative and reactionary. even more paradoxical, however, was the path that finally led me to the philosophy of science. when i was in the penultimate period of my degree, i received an invitation 4ricardo velez rodrigues was one of three ministers of education under the president jair bolsonaro’s government. interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 3 from a didactics professor to give a seminar on the philosophy of science to a group of researchers in science education (predominantly physics). the subject they wanted to discuss was interdisciplinarity. there was no one at ufjf at that time who dominated this subject. it was also widespread for students to conduct the few research seminars held there because, as i had said, most of the faculty had no degrees other than undergraduate; masters and doctors were rare. after much hesitation, i accepted the professor’s invitation, mainly because i could count on the help of a former student of ufjf, who at the time was doing his master’s degree at the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg). the former student in question was alfredo pereira júnior, now a professor at the state paulista university, botucatu (unesp-botucatu). alfredo was in charge of the denser part of the seminar’s central theme, while it fell to me to make a more general presentation on the philosophy of science. the authors we chose for this seminar were gaston bachelard and thomas kuhn. i had never heard of the latter, nor did i know where to begin to study his ideas. in his first course at ufjf, in the subject cosmology, ricardo velez rodrigues included the structure of scientific revolutions in his bibliography. as we were only three students enrolled in his course, he was willing to lend us the books from the reading list. the reading of the structure of scientific revolutions was what made me stay in philosophy and project the continuation of my academic training in the philosophy of science. it was a first reading that i had ever done or would ever do. amidst the countless examples used by kuhn – the same examples that today i see scaring most of my students away from the philosophy of science – i could find several points of contact with my natural sciences background during the technical course. the references to experiments, measuring instruments, data collection, etc., were nothing foreign to me and provided me with a key to the speculative universe of the philosophy of science, for which i immediately fell in love with. three years after this first contact with thomas kuhn’s ideas, i left for são paulo to position as a philosophy teacher in the state public school system. i had the conviction that, parallel to my duties at school, i would enroll in a master’s program in the philosophy of science. the master’s program only took place three years after my first visit to são paulo. although it was not precisely a kuhnian question, my research’s theme had only become relevant in the post-kuhnian context in which we were then living in the philosophy of science of the early 1990s. vfbc and mlc: how do you understand the interactions between history and the philosophy of science? eduardo salles de o. barra: those who, like me, enter the philosophy of science through philosophy have a natural predisposition to welcome, without any difficulty, the lakatosian motto of mutual dependence between history and the philosophy of science. philosophical formation and, above all, the support of philosophical problems have an unavoidable reference to the past and tradition, in such a way that the history of philosophy – even for those who distrust hegelian and structuralist attempts to promote it to the condition of “first philosophy” – is permanently present on the horizon of any incursion into philosophy. it’s no different in the philosophy of science. thus, it didn’t require any tour de force to accommodate the history of science to the investigative and speculative practices of the philosophy of science. however, i don’t consider that the mutual dependence between history and philosophy of science is absolutely symmetrical. by its very nature, philosophy must be more imperative to the historian of science than history would be to the philosopher of science. this is by no means a defense of an aprioristic philosophy of science as practiced by the analytic interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 4 philosophy tradition of the 1950s, but rather that the “naturalization” requirement of the philosophy of science – with which i fully agree – can be met by other empirical disciplines distinct from the history of science, such as cognitive psychology, the sociology of knowledge, etc. as for the historian of science not being able to practice his craft without a minimal foray into the problems of the philosophy of science, i think no one has defined it better than larry laudan, in his progress and its problems, “scientists rarely leave a full account of how they came to make their discoveries; even when they do, such accounts are often unreliable, because constructed long after the fact. the task confronting the historian is often that of conjecturally recreating lines of argument and influence which lay behind the conclusions which a scientist explicitly propounds. this task of reconstruction is utterly impossible unless the historian has a very subtle sense of what kinds of arguments would be plausible in a given situation. thus here, as with narration and explanation, the historian’s task requires that he possesses a theory (implicitly or explicitly) about rational belief and rational action.” (laudan 1977, 167) vfbc and mlc: in your doctoral dissertation, you studied newton and kant. how did you come to this study topic, and what were the main “lessons” gained from the investigation? eduardo salles de o. barra: this dissertation’s inspiration came to me from reading one of the essays collected in karl popper’s conjectures and refutations (1962). he speculates on the scientific motivations of kantian transcendental philosophy. when i read this study, i was still very much impacted by reading kuhn and his attempt to bring together the history and philosophy of science. the problem addressed by popper seemed to me ideal for carrying out an investigation methodologically inspired by kuhn. at the time i formulated this project, i was already an assistant professor at the state university of londrina (uel). i attended a lato sensu5 graduation course at the pontifical catholic university of minas gerais (puc-minas) where i was a student of ivã domingues, whose o grau zero do conhecimento (1991) also greatly influenced my preliminary studies admission to a stricto sensu graduation program. this admission finally occurred in 1990, with a project about newton and kant’s nexus, as i had initially conceived it. it was a subject that fits very well with the tradition of the history of philosophy studies at the philosophy department of the university of são paulo (usp). even more, with the research of my master’s advisor, pablo mariconda, who had recently published a translation of galieu’s discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno à due nuove scienze and had gathered around him a very expressive and talented group of young researchers in the field of history of science. i am very grateful to pablo for many reasons. one of them was precisely because he made me see that my project was not feasible in the master’s program – even though at that time, master’s degrees were much longer than they are today. i should postpone my project’s full realization by initially dedicating myself only to newton’s study since no work in brazil could guide me in selecting themes, sources, and historiographical traditions relevant to newtonian studies. so i did it. at the end of 1994, i defended my master’s thesis on the origins of the newtonian theory of gravitation presented in the principia (1687). at the end of my master’s degree, i returned to my classes at uel. there, i collaborated to create a graduate course in history and philosophy of science, in partnership with my colleague marcos rodrigues da silva, and a research group on 5 in brazil, graduate studies are divided into two types of postgraduate studies – latu sensu (a short period course of specialization) and stricto sensu (phd and master’s degree). interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 5 science teaching, invited by sérgio arruda and carlos eduardo laburu, both from the physics department. i entered the doctoral program only three years after completing my master’s degree. although much more mature, my research theme had remained practically unchanged: the nexus between newton and kant. with the newtonian strand already quite advanced, it was then up to me to go through the readings and develop the kantian strand analyses. between newton and kant, other philosophers were as or more decisive than newton for kantian philosophy’s critical and doctrinal outlines. i then dedicated myself to leibniz and hume’s readings, leaving aside german-speaking philosophers’ tradition (wolff, lambert, baumgarten). under the guidance of caetano plastino, my doctoral dissertation was defended in 2001 under the title: from newton to kant – the method and metaphysics of natural science. among the “lessons” that one could point to from this work, i highlight the attempt to bring together the history of philosophy and the history of science, which practically drove my entire education throughout the 1990s. this connection was still rare among us at that time. there were not many people doing systematic and professional studies on this interface between philosophy and science from a historical perspective. the reception of daniel garber’s works among descartes researchers was still very nascent. the same was true of michel friedman’s works among kant scholars. these authors were my main inspirations for what i had accomplished in those years, besides larry laudan and his proposal for a history of the philosophy of science. i am very excited to see today a growing interest in historical studies exploring the many real and virtual dialogues between science and philosophy, which help to enrich our view of the past of these fields and revise their respective identities. vfbc and mlc: in terms of history and philosophy of science, your interest, among other topics and authors, turned to kuhn. professor cupani pointed out that kuhn has become a new kind of classic. could we still expect a renewal of epistemology from kuhn’s works or has the interest in his philosophy become merely historical? eduardo salles de o. barra: my research is testimony that cupani’s diagnosis is correct. i believe that interest in the history of science would be much weaker without the surprising results that kuhn was able to derive from his historical studies. he has often renewed and expanded the possibilities of the history of science as an interpretive discipline of past and current scientific practices. and, in my view, he only did so because he applied laudan’s lesson exemplarily: “the historian’s task requires that he possesses a theory (implicitly or explicitly) about rational belief and rational action” (laudan 1977, 167). but in any case, i don’t think that the kuhnian heritage has been exhausted. it’s surprising that his essays collected in the road since structure (2000), more than twenty years after its first publication, have hardly attracted philosophers and historians of science. compared to the enormous, almost instantaneous resonance of the structure of scientific revolutions (1962), these essays remain virtually unknown. unlike the structure of scientific revolutions, kuhn’s later writings opposed contemporary mainstream philosophy of science and language represented by kripke and putnam. for my part, i think that also the post-structure essays deserve to be better used in confronting recurrent problems in the historiography of science. i am thinking about things such as the myth of universal understanding, naive antianachronism, and the preeminence of formalism in scientific theories, among others. therefore, i believe that kuhn’s ideas still constitute an essential part of what can be conceived as good training in history and philosophy of science. interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 6 vfbc and mlc: during your academic training, you were part of brazil’s significant expansion and consolidation of the studies of the history of science from an epistemological viewpoint. – especially in the modern period. how do you evaluate the current scenario in the country regarding these studies? what are the perspectives for young researchers interested in entering this area and, more specifically, in newtonian studies? eduardo salles de o. barra: in fact, looking back, i feel privileged to have my education marked by two significant moments in the history of science in brazil at the end of the 20th century. first, i could attend the legendary history of science colloquiums, promoted by the center for logic, epistemology and history of science of the university of campinas (cle/unicamp), in the late 1980s. very few people were professionally dedicated to the history of science in brazil, and the cle colloquiums allowed everyone to communicate with everyone broadly and collaboratively. a single round table, for example, could occupy the program for an entire afternoon. those were other times. unfortunately, i could not enjoy this environment as a researcher, but i was a diligent listener of two editions of the colloquiums, which contributed a lot to my education. second, when i entered the usp to do my master’s degree in 1990, i actively participated in the seminars led by pablo mariconda with his students and other interested scholars. there were as many as four simultaneous seminars, all with weekly editions. among these seminars, the most outstanding were based on the complete reading of the mechanization of the world picture (1950), by the brilliant eduard jan dijksterhuis, as well as the seminars based on the study of the elements of euclid, reconstructing each of the demonstrations in detail. the presentation and discussion of each chapter of dijksterhuis’s fascinating work were presented by each participant (undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students). he or she had in-depth knowledge of the subject examined there – more precisely, the works of a particular scientist from pythagoras to newton. in the elements case, the group performed all the demonstrations of the 13 books that make up this monumental work one by one. this exercise was crucial for me to go through the long and complex demonstrations of newton’s principia with a reasonable level of comprehension and understanding of his proof strategies and mathematical methods conceptually. although i had some excellent experiences with my students in the same sense with this “collective learning” through seminars, i couldn’t offer them something with the same density and formative quality. however, on the other hand, they enjoyed a greater variety of international exchanges from an early age that was very sporadic or did not even exist for my generation. these exchanges allowed them to be more in tune with the debates going on in other countries and gave international visibility to the quality work that, even if isolated, we were doing here in brazil. moreover, as i said before, the works of this new generation of historians of science with a philosophical nature and (or) background – or epistemological, as you prefer – started to be better received in institutional circles of philosophy, such as departments, graduate programs, academic associations, and journals. this greater receptivity is due, in large part, to the clever work of cooperation carried out by researchers, mostly graduates of the graduate program in philosophy at cle/unicamp, linked to the philosophy departments of usp, unicamp, the federal university of santa catarina (ufsc), and the state university of rio de janeiro (uerj). in paraná, although we didn’t have a significant event, this collaborative work occurred on a smaller scale in most public universities. between the years 2002 and 2005, the paraná network of research in history and philosophy of science united and provided cooperation among researchers and students from some of the central universities in the state, the state university of interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 7 londrina (uel), the state university of maringá (uem), the state university of west paraná (unioeste), and the federal university of paraná (ufpr), with a branch that became increasingly relevant to issues of science teaching in primary education. vfbc and mlc: in 2010, you were one of the founders and the paraná school of history and philosophy of science’s primary coordinator. tell us a little about how this pioneering project was born, how it has developed, and its prospects. eduardo salles de o. barra: my answer to this question will be almost a corollary of what i have narrated above. at the beginning of this century, we had achieved a very significant institutional presence in philosophy departments and graduate programs. however, it was imperative that this academic production reach a wider audience, even if this was not much more than just recruiting new researchers to the field. from my experience as a professor and advisor, i can see the best talents for the history and philosophy of science usually emerging among those who, to some extent, have had previous training, even if rudimentary, in some scientific area, before a specialized training in philosophy. usually, these are young people who are somewhat intellectually “bothered” or “misfits” in undergraduate or graduate courses in a particular scientific or technological career. i was a great believer in the old cle history of science colloquium model, particularly its side effects, for recruiting and initiating young people with this profile or related interests in our field. with this in mind, i talked to a group of my students at the time, among them veronica calazans, alex calazans, daniel tozzini, and my colleague in the philosophy department, ronei mocelin. so, inspired by the experience of the former paraná network of research in history and philosophy of science, we’d organize a periodic event aimed at training – something that would be a genuine summer school. thus, we created this event and named it the paraná school of history and philosophy of science. today, it’s known as the paraná school of history and philosophy of science and technology, in short, the hfc&t school. offering a space for the dissemination of original research wasn’t the primary goal of the hfc&t school. the goal was to explore the formative potential of this initial research to engage new audiences and new researchers in appropriating our scholarly production. among these new audiences, our attention turned to primary education teachers, especially in natural sciences. the reason for that was that our proposal was immediately very well received by colleagues in the area of science teaching, both at ufpr and the federal university of technology – paraná (utfpr), with the participation of joanez aires, nestor saavedra, marcelo lambach, and awdry miquelin. in the first editions, the partnership with paraná’s education department was also decisive, with the participation of otoniel álvaro da silva and edson pegoraro highlighting this engagement. it all started in 2011. thereafter, a new edition of the seminar has been held regularly every two years. in 2021, concluding a decade of activities, we continued – albeit remotely – the sixth edition of the event. the formula is quite simple, combining a main course (to which a renowned researcher is invited) and thematic workshops (proposed by university researchers and selected through a public call). the event lasts four days. the main course takes place in the morning on all four days, while the workshops last for two days (eight hours) and take place in the afternoon. on average, 20 workshops are offered. attendance has ranged from 400 (2013) to 100 (2017) participants. currently, the hfc&t school is part of a network of similar events proposed by colleagues mauro l. condé (ufmg) and ivã gurgel (usp). they have organized at their universities events that were inspired by the paraná experience. the proposal of taking the discussions in this field to a broader public have also resulted in the invitation from interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 8 the ufpr’s dean of graduate studies(pró-reitoria de pós-graduação) to offer a course on philosophy of science and technology directed to the most diverse graduate courses at ufpr and other universities consortium members of the program of transversal disciplines (http://www.prppg.ufpr.br/site/transversais/), under the auspices of the superintendence of science, technology and higher education of paraná (seti). in the last edition of the discipline, in 2020, more than 300 graduate students enrolled, coming from the most diverse areas of knowledge and linked to programs based at ufpr, utfpr, uem, unioeste, the state university of ponta grossa (uepg), and the federal institute of paraná (ifpr). vfbc and mlc: your trajectory as a teacher began in high school. how would you describe the impact of this activity on your higher education experience? considering your direct involvement in pibid,6 anpof7/high school, and prof-filo8 over the last years, how do you think about the insertion of philosophy in high school in brazil? what are the crucial steps that still need to be taken? eduardo salles de o. barra: in 1984, i started my teaching career teaching religious education in the minas gerais state public school system and philosophy in the private school system. in 1986, one year after graduating, i was approved in a competitive examination for the são paulo state public school system. the following year, i moved to capital of são paulo to teach at the angelo bortolo primary and high school. i didn’t stay in são paulo for more than that year. i took a new exam for uel, in the north of paraná, and moved there at the end of that year. at uel, i joined as an assistant professor, the beginning level of the career, since i didn’t even have a master’s degree at that time. as i said, i entered the master’s program at usp only in 1990. years later, when i was already at ufpr (to which i transferred in 2002), i resumed contact with high school soon after taking over the undergraduate course coordination in 2009. at that time, i realized that my main task would be to contribute to engaging the philosophy course at ufpr in the great effort that the country was beginning to make to value undergraduate studies. the undergraduate studies hadn’t been prioritized until then by the investment expansion policies that universities had increasingly experienced since the mid-1990s. my experience in são paulo, although short, had made a deep impression. i had the opportunity to participate in pedagogical meetings promoted by the coordenadoria de estudos e normas pedagógicas – cenp (coordination of studies and pedagogical norms). there the curriculum of philosophy in high school was discussed with several professors from universities, mainly from usp. my experience in the science teaching group at uel between 1987 and 2002 had also sharpened my perception of the responsibilities and possibilities of universities’ engagement in supporting policies of improvement and expansion of primary education, particularly in the training of teachers and production didactic material. therefore, when i took over the coordination of the philosophy course at ufpr in 2009, i had a specific repertoire of interests and projects to be carried out to support the teaching of philosophy in schools. at that time, paraná had already resumed the teaching of philosophy in high school for at least a decade. since 2006, through the 6 institutional teaching initiation scholarship program (pibid). it is a program of the ministry of education of brazilian government. 7 the national association of graduate studies in philosophy (anpof) is a brazilian academic organization that brings together graduate courses in philosophy at a master’s and doctoral level. 8 professional master’s degree in philosophy. interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 9 enforcement of state law, philosophy had become compulsory throughout the state. there was an exceptional technical team in the paraná department of education at that time, led by juliano orlandi, bernardo kestring, and jairo marçal. they had conceived, edited, and published an extraordinary work in the field of didactic publications, which was the anthology of philosophical texts (2009). with the active participation of other colleagues and nearby state schoolteachers, particularly luiz henrique vieira, andrea cachel, rejane giacomazzi, and lucio lobo, we have started the translation workshops. these workshops were aimed at continuing the production of didactic material for the teaching of philosophy in schools, and contributing to expanding the collection of philosophical texts that the anthology has made available to teachers and students. this project was soon incorporated into the philosophy subproject that we submitted to pibid and received funding through scholarships and grants for the next four years. this funding allowed us to produce and publish the translation with commentaries and didactic orientations of four philosophical booklets by montaigne, malebranche, berkeley, kuhn, and the evelyne rogue’s book, philosophical text commentary. this experience with pibid was the basis for the formulation of the anpof-high school proposal, which was requested by vinícius figueiredo, the president of anpof at the time. intended to welcome and encourage the participation of philosophy teachers from primary education in the xv national meeting of philosophy, which took place in curitiba in 2012, the anpof-high school was conceived as a segment of the event’s program. this segment consisted of experience sharing sessions that were reported by primary education teachers, in addition to a plenary session, whose theme was precisely the role of graduate studies in supporting and promoting the teaching of philosophy in primary education. danilo marcondes, felipe ceppas, and patrícia velasco also participated in this plenary session. felipe and patrícia are members of the philosophize and teach the philosophy workgroup that, more than a decade ago, brought the agenda of philosophy teaching to the anpof meetings and, in a certain way, prepared the path for anpof-high school. the symposium’s audience was composed of a significant number of members of the philosophize workgroup, joined by an even more notable number of other professors and students linked to graduate programs associated with anpof and a significant contingent of primary school teachers. it was a memorable evening. the theater was packed to capacity. the discussions that followed the initial interventions were very heated and propositional. this agitation led to the proposal to create the prof-filo – a professional master’s in philosophy program in the following 2014 edition of the national meeting of philosophy in campos do jordão, sp, when the second edition of the anpof-high school also took place. in 2017, the prof-filo began its activities in 15 public universities in various parts of brazil with about 200 students. today, after the high school reform and the bncc (common national curricular base), not to mention the recent advent of civic-military schools, it isn’t easy to predict the future of teaching philosophy in schools. here in the paraná state system, the weekly workload for teaching philosophy has already been reduced by half. i foresee that to contain the advance of this suppression of critical and reflective components within the high school curriculum will be necessary to carry out a mobilization similar to those done between 1980 and 2000. i mean something as was initially led by the former seaf (society of studies and philosophical activities), culminating with the inclusion of philosophy and sociology in the high school curriculum in 2008. the conservative and reactionary wave attacking brazilian education gives no signs that it will retreat on its own. it will take a strong reaction and resistance movement to preserve the main interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 10 achievements in academic qualification and social inclusion in brazil’s school educational system. in philosophy teaching, i believe that anpof can do and has done a lot in this direction. but in my modest evaluation, we need an entity that will lead this resistance in consortium with anpof and, above all, will start to build a positive agenda so that it will be possible to remove all of this accursed inheritance from this conservative and reactionary period. i believe that we already have critical mass for the foundation of a brazilian society for the teaching of philosophy. its mission would be precisely to give continuity to the tradition of defense of teaching philosophy initiated by seaf. what was inherited by the philosophize and to teach philosophy workgroup of anpof, expanded with anpof-high school and, more recently, institutionalized in graduate studies by prof-filo. in this new context, the sense of “defense” needs to go beyond that of resistance and encompass the positive agenda i referred to above: what will become of the teaching of philosophy when all this (or part of it) passes? what should we do now to expedite this future? vfbc and mlc: bringing together your two areas of interest (education and epistemology), what is the importance of the philosophy of science in the educational process? in your recent research work regarding didactic publications in philosophy, do you think that the philosophy of science occupies a place that matches its importance? eduardo salles de o. barra: as someone who did his first studies in philosophy at a time when philosophy was more available on the newsstands – with the incredible editorial success of the magnificent collection the thinkers (os pensadores) – than in the universities and schools, i must recognize that we are much better off today than we were in the 1980s. there have been incredibly significant advances, which only became possible with advancing the country’s re-democratization process. since then, philosophy has come to occupy a more prominent space in universities, contributing decisively to the leap in quality that public universities has taken in the last 30 years. during this time, our graduate school system became a world reference, and our undergraduate education expansion policies raised our efforts towards social inclusion to a new level. in schools, i also believe that philosophy has come to occupy prominence and leadership when education for citizenship has become the impetus of educational policies. evidence of this, in my opinion, is the participation of philosophy in the national program of textbooks (pnld) with works signed by some of the most distinguished intellectual leaders in the area, such as marilena chaui, silvio gallo, vinícius de figueiredo, and juvenal savian filho, besides the work of maria helena pires martins and maria lúcia de arruda aranha, with their already legendary book, philosophizing (filosofando). in the specific case of the philosophy of science, i believe that its space has also expanded significantly. previously, i reported the positive repercussions achieved by our hfc&t school also in graduate studies, to the point of becoming a transversal discipline that, in the two semesters that it was offered, it had reached more than 500 graduate students from the most diverse areas of knowledge in the universities of paraná. at the interface between university and school, i also highlight the place where issues and themes derived from the history and philosophy of science have occupied the curricula components in the area of natural sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology). interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 11 however, in didactic publications specific to philosophy, philosophy of science still occupies a subordinate place, usually attached to the unit dedicated to the theory of knowledge or interspersed with discussions on the sociology of science and technology. when it comes to philosophy tout court, whether in the school context or some other academic contexts, we all know that the prominent place is always reserved for ethics and political philosophy – the bncc even repeats this pattern. and the philosophy of science is not the only one to be eclipsed by the school expression of the infamous “return to ethics”. aesthetics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of mind are also omitted, among many other philosophical themes with potential citizenship in the school context, due to their affinities with other curriculum components. all in all, however, i think we have come a long way in bringing the philosophy of science within reach of a wider public. i am very encouraged that factors outside those that are strictly in philosophical circles have been the most decisive for this slow and gradual expansion. these factors greatly favor the task of bringing our internal discussions to the general public. here, the deweyan motto for education applies, i.e., the culture as a goal. to the extent that a genuine “scientific culture” is disseminated among us, so the chances are increasing that the expansion of the philosophy of science will be on the academic and school agendas. the current moment, arising from the reactions to the pandemic, of confronting denialism through an emphatic defense of science and its results may, in the future, represent an essential step in this direction. vfbc and mlc: you have sequentially held, since 2009, three crucial positions in university management: institutional coordinator of pibid, director of the human sciences sector, and dean of undergraduate and professional education at the federal university of paraná. how does your background in philosophy and, more specifically, in the philosophy of science contribute to the university’s vision that you have led in carrying out these positions? eduardo salles de o. barra: first of all, after so many years of academic practice in philosophy, i have learned to convert specific professional values into attitudes: suspension of judgment, discursive moderation, and intellectual emancipation. all of these have helped me transition from the academic universe to the management universe without any great upsets. but, as sartre said, hell is not us; it is the others. otherness is a constant challenge for every manager: how do my interlocutors think? how should i understand what they say to me? how should i proceed to make myself understood by them? in this respect, to build a language of negotiation with my audience, my expertise in philosophy was also of some relevance. in pibid, i was greatly favored by my specialization in the history and philosophy of science. unlike many colleagues in the humanities, i never had any distaste for the teaching and research subject matter nor my colleagues’ methods in the natural sciences and mathematics. most of the time, i was genuinely intellectually interested in the interlocutions with these colleagues. they allowed me to give materiality to ideas that i had collected from my readings in my field of specialization – such as, for example, the kuhnian thesis of the functional character of “normal” education for the practice of mature science. during my time at the head of the dean’s office of undergraduate studies, when i also interacted with colleagues from the applied sciences (engineering, health, business, etc.), i could expand this scheme. it greatly facilitated the processes of understanding differences, building consensus, and negotiating. from a less pragmatic point of view, i think my training has also favored me to always look at problems to their fullest extent. i perhaps brought this ability more from my interview: eduardo salles de o. barra 12 historiographical practice than from my philosophical approach. first, i always maintained great respect for the history of the institutions whose management i was responsible for. i was, for example, lucky enough to be at the head of the human sciences sector of ufpr when preparations were made for the celebration of its 80th anniversary. i dedicated myself to reading and studying everything produced about this unit’s history, founded under the faculty of philosophy, sciences, and letters of paraná (faculdade de filosofia, ciências e letras do paraná). the knowledge of this history gave me more security to conduct, among others, the planning processes of its future. second, the historiographical practice also educated my gaze in the direction of the broadest possible syntheses. so it is this avoidance of a particularized, detailed look, guided by a limited portion of evidence and sources. this holistic gaze has also prepared me to identify, respect, and manage diverse professional and subjective perspectives when dealing with problems. unfortunately, these principles are not selfapplicable. they do not always translate immediately into pragmatic effectiveness. i believe they have lent themselves more to spare me from the misconceptions of dirigisme, partisanship, and dogmatism in the manner of a negative moral. and this, for a manager, should not be considered something negligible. vfbc and mlc: thank you very much! references cupani, alberto. 2013. por que ainda thomas kuhn? in condé. mauro l.; penna-forte (org.), thomas kuhn: a estrutura das revoluções científicas [50 anos]. belo horizonte: fino traço. dijksterhuis, eduard jan. 1950 [1986]. the mechanization of the world picture. princeton: princeton university press. domingues, ivã. 1991. o grau zero do conhecimento. belo horizonte: loyola. galillei, galileu. 1634 [1638] discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla mecanica e i movimenti locali. in: favaro, a. (ed.) edizione nazionale dell’ opere di galileo galilei. firenze: g. barbera, v. 8. [tradução brasileira: duas novas ciências. trad. de l. mariconda and p. r. mariconda. rio de janeiro/são paulo: mast/nova stella, 1988] heath, thomas (ed.) 1956. the thirteen books of euclid’s elements. new york: dover, 3 vols. kuhn, thomas. 1970. the structure of scientific revolution. chicago: university of chicago press. kuhn, thomas. 2010. the road since structure. chicago: university of chicago press. laudan, larry. 1977. progress and its problems. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. newton, isaac. 1687 [1999]. the principia: mathematical principles of natural philosophy. translated by, i. bernard cohen and anne whitman, assisted by, julia budenz. berkeley: university of california press. popper, karl. 1962. conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge. london: routledge. microsoft word 9reichenberger layout 84 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 84-99 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2018 – this is an open access article idtc dossier methods and cognitive modelling in the history and philosophy of science–&–education how to teach history of philosophy and science: a digital based case study andrea reichenberger1 abstract: the following article describes a pilot study on the possible integration of digital historiography into teaching practice. it focuses on émilie du châtelet’s considerations of space and time against the background of leibniz’s program of analysis situs. historians have characterized philosophical controversies on space and time as a dichotomy between the absolute and relational concepts of space and time. in response to this, the present case study pursues two aims: first, it shows that the common portrayal simplifies the complex pattern of change and the semantic shift from absolute-relational concepts of space and time to invariance and conservation principles. second, against this background, i present the online reading guide on émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics, a teaching and research project designed to help navigate du châtelet’s institutions physiques (1740/42). this project makes du châtelet’s important text visible to a broad audience and allows for a more critical and deeper view on classical topics of the history of philosophy and science in a more accessible way than traditional introductions. keywords: digital historiography; teaching history of philosophy and science; émilie du châtelet; early modern philosophy; space and time received: 25 january 2018. reviewed 10 september 2018. accepted: 27 september 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.08 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction for a long time, the history of philosophy and science was told as a history of geniuses and their pioneering discoveries and groundbreaking insights. there is currently a movement 1 andrea reichenberger [orcid: 0000-0001-5007-935x] is a postdoctoral researcher at the faculty of arts and humanities – department of social and human sciences – institute of philosophy: center for the history of women philosophers and scientists at paderborn university. address: technologiepark 21, room: tp21.2.31, 33100 paderborn, germany. e-mail: andrea.reichenberger@upb.de how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 85 toward correcting this historical bias. the past twenty-five years have seen an explosion of a re-discovering, re-reading and re-forming the history and historiography of philosophy and science. in this regard, a number of studies have emphasized, in many different ways, that a well-founded historiography of science can test and falsify philosophical theories about science. from this perspective, the philosophy of science is an empirically testable discipline. historiography is therefore understood as a science of science, or meta-science, in a close analogy to our understanding of natural sciences. as jouni-matti kuukkanen puts it, “the key idea is testability; that historical case studies perform the role of empirical validation or falsification of the philosophical models of science. in this way, case studies were meant to provide ‘a reality check for philosophy of science’” (kuukkanen 2018, 186). contrary to this approach, it is argued that philosophical analyses of past science are better described as hermeneutic procedures than as exercises of testing theories (schickore 2018). these debates are by no means new, but have a long history of their own. throughout the twentieth century, the epistemological and methodological waves and turns within the history and historiography of philosophy and science revolved around the questions of qualitative or quantitative methods, verifiability, evidence, truth, objectivity, and interpretation. strangely enough, these debates are still going on today without considering the role and challenge of digital humanities and digital history. it would go beyond the scope of this contribution to offer a wide-ranging analysis and discussion on how the history of science should be written and what factors should explain theory changes by means of a digitalbased historiography. the purpose of my contribution is a practical one. i want to show how a digital-based historiography of philosophy and science not only invites us to broaden our toolset for the study of history but also to expand our analytical horizons and to conduct research that moves beyond traditional historical descriptions and techniques. i want to present a case study that shows how historical research and teaching practice can be combined in order to question and correct classical doctrines and established patterns of thought and to reveal at the same time women’s contributions into the historiography of sciences. whether this approach offers an instrument for testifying philosophical models of science should be left open for discussion. in any case, this approach should be both, a hermeneutic procedure and a critical instrument for learning from history and teaching history of science and philosophy. the overall topic of the case study is space and time in early modern philosophy. the focus lies on émilie du châtelet (1706–1749).2 a critical engagement with her work on the foundations of physics (institutions physiques 1740/42) allows us to recover and re-evaluate the historical debate on space and time in the 18th century as presented in classical textbooks. against this background, an online reading guide is presented, which is currently being developed as part of a project on digital humanities at paderborn university, called “center for the history of women philosophers and scientists”, supported by the ministry of higher education and research of north rhine-westphalia, germany. the online reading guide on émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics pursues the objective to present an online tool that helps students, teachers and researchers in navigating this highly complex work and to make this important historical document visible to a broad audience. with the help of this tool, it is also possible to introduce in the history of the space-time debate beyond entrenched clichés, as will be shown here. 2 émilie du châtelet (1706–1749) is best known for her work on the foundations of physics, or institutions physiques (du châtelet 1740, first edition; du châtelet 1742, second edition), and for her translation of and commentary on isaac newton’s principia, published posthumously in 1756 and 1759 (du châtelet 1759). it would go beyond the scope of this article to discuss her works in detail. for further reading see, e.g., hagengruber (2012); reichenberger (2016); zinsser (2006). how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 86 the debate on space and time in early modern philosophy: the standard reading there are virtually no introductions to the philosophy and history of physics that do not address the relational-absolute position of space and time as a dichotomy (see, e.g., carrier 2009; disalle 2006; wüthrich 2017). in his foreword to max jammer’s book concepts of space. the history of theories of space in physics, albert einstein summarized the age-old controversy over the nature of space as follows: (a) space as the positional quality of the world of material objects; (b) space as the container of all material objects. in the case of (a), space without a material object is inconceivable. in the case of (b), a material object can only be conceived of as existing in space; space then appears as a reality which in a certain sense is superior to the material world. (jammer 1954, xiii) john stachel speaks about a “conflict between two views of the nature of space” (stachel 2006, 220) and distinguishes between the absolute concept and the relational concept in the same manner: “the absolute concept: space is a container, in which matter moves about. […] the relational concept: space has no independent existence. it is just a certain set of positional relations between material entities” (stachel 2006, 220). the leibniz-clarke correspondence, as one always reads, documents the difference between the (leibnizian) relationalist view and the (newtonian) absolutist view of space. if stachel is right, then it was the “newtonian conception of space that triumphed in spite of the cogent arguments of leibniz and huygens against it” (stachel 2006, 201) – at least up to einstein’s theory of relativity. in fact, the absolute-relational dichotomy does not do full justice to the complexity of the historical and conceptual debate regarding space and time. even decades ago john earman, among others, has advocated that “the absolute-relational contrast is far from being a dichotomy” (earman 1989, 14). further, he has emphasized that questions regarding the nature of motion should not be confused with questions regarding the space-time-structure. the question was not only whether absolute space and time really exist but (also) whether a material object can only be conceived of as existing within space and time. the difficulty lay in specifying what was meant by “material objects,” “points,” “events,” “masses,” etc. and how bodies move and interact. my aim is not to retell the entire history of the space-time problem, but to integrate émilie du châtelet in this context in order to show how her example can be used in teaching practice to make the complexity of this debate and its interconnectedness with invariance and conservation principles visible. émilie du châtelet on space and time: beyond the standard reading at the beginning of the fifth chapter of her magnum opus, the institutions physiques (du châtelet 1742), du châtelet stresses that the question of the nature of space is one of the most famous, controversial and essential questions in physics and metaphysics. then she contrasts the absolute vs. relational view of space: some argue that space is nothing over and above things; space cannot be a real thing-in-itself, it is a mental abstraction, an ideal being, the order of coexisting things; and there is no space without bodies. others disagree. they maintain that space is absolute and real. space has to be distinguished from the bodies placed in it. space is impalpable extended, penetrable, and not solid, a universal vase, or vessel, within which bodies are placed: how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 87 some have said: space is nothing over and above things, it is a mental abstraction, an ideal being, it is nothing other than the order of things as they coexist, and there is no space without bodies. others have, on the contrary, maintained that space is an absolute being, real, and distinct from the bodies placed in it, i.e. an impalpable, penetrable, non-solid extension, the universal vessel that receives the bodies that are placed in it; in a word, a kind of immaterial and infinitely extended fluid, in which the bodies swim. (du châtelet 1742, § 72)3 du châtelet argues, in line with leibniz, that space cannot be real and absolute because this assumption was in conflict with the principle of sufficient reason: if space is a real being and subsistent without bodies that could be placed in it, it makes no difference in which part of this homogeneous space one places them, as long as they keep the same order among them: therefore there would not have been any sufficient reason why god would have placed the universe in the location where it is now, rather than in any other, since he could have placed it 10,000 leagues further away, and put the east where the west is; or indeed he could have reversed it, so long as he kept things in the same place in relation to each other. (du châtelet 1742, § 74)4 leibniz used this thought experiment at the beginning of his third letter to clarke: now from hence it follows (supposing space to be something in itself, besides the order of bodies among themselves) that ’tis impossible there should be a reason, why god, preserving the same situations of bodies among themselves, should have placed them in space after one certain particular manner, and not otherwise; why everything was not placed the quite contrary way, for instance, by changing east into west. (leibniz 1717, 59)5 leibniz’ argument is a reductio ad absurdum argument, by constructing a situation in which god has to make a choice lacking a sufficient reason. contrary to clarke, who argued that 3 the following translations are based on the online-translation presented by the notre dame group under the direction of katherine brading. url: https://www.kbrading.org/translations. consulted september 1, 2018. in the footnotes the quotations are rendered in the original language based on the amsterdam edition (du châtelet 1742), here: “quelques-uns ont dit: l’espace n’est rien hors des choses, c’est une abstraction mentale, un être idéal, que ce n’est que l’ordre des choses entant qu’elles coexistent, & qu’il n’y a point d’espace sans corps. d’autres au contraire ont soûtenu, que l’espace est un être absolu, réel, & distinct des corps qui y sont placés; que c’est une étendue impalpable, pénetrable, non solide, le vase universel qui reçoit les corps qu’on y place; en un mot, une espèce de fluide immatériel & étendu à l’infini, dans lequel les corps nagent.” 4 “car non seulement il n’y auroit, comme vous venez de le voir, aucune raison de la limitation de l’étendue; mais, si l’espace est un être réel & subsisiant sans les corps, & qu’on puisse les y placer; il est indifférent dans quel endroit de cet espace similaire on les place, pourvu qu'ils conservent le même ordre entre eux; ainsi il n’y auroit point eu de raison suffisante pourquoi dieu auroit placé l’univers dans la place où il est maintenant, plutôt que dans toute autre , puisqu’il pouvoir le placer dix mille lieues plus loin, & mettre l’orient où est l’occident; ou bien enfin le renverser, en faisant garder aux choses la même situation entre ells.” 5 the french edition by des maizeaux (1720, § 5, 32) reads as follows: “quil est impossible qu’il y ait une raison pourquoi dieu, gardant les mêmes situations des corps entre eux, ait placé les corps dans l’espace ainsi et non pas autrement et pourquoi tout n'a pas été pris à rebours (par exemple), par un échange de l’orient et de l’occident.” how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 88 god is entirely free to do as he pleases, leibniz emphasized that everything god does must be done for a reason. if there is no sufficient reason for god’s acting in a particular manner, then he is no more than an all-powerful tyrant inventing arbitrary standards and acting in arbitrary ways. if there were indiscernibles, god would have violated the principle of sufficient reason, by choosing without reason between equally good alternatives. so, it would be absurd for god to act against reason because this would mean to act against his own nature. against this background, du châtelet comes to the following conclusion: mr. leibniz’s reasoning against absolute space is therefore irrefutable, and one is forced to abandon this space, if one does not wish to renounce the principle of sufficient reason; that is to say, to renounce the foundation of all truth. (du châtelet 1742, § 74)6 as in the case of space, du châtelet argues that the common notion of time as an absolute being, immutable, eternal, and subsisting by itself, is misleading. to substantiate this claim, du châtelet refers to leibniz’s famous question as to why god had not created the universe a thousand years earlier or later (du châtelet 1742, § 96). for one posits temporal relations as existing of instants among absolute time, that is independent of things and their states, there is no way of deciding which instants they occupy. instants, i.e. temporal units, or points, cannot be distinguished from one another. thus, any point of time is identical to any other point in time, only distinguishable by the things placed within it. if time is a substance, then it would matter when god decided to create the world at a particular instant of time and one could ask what sufficient reason god had for creating it at the time he chose rather than creating it earlier or later. god’s creation itself must have a final cause which helps to actualize the best of all possible worlds which is lacking if the creative act had occurred earlier or later. clarke, who claimed to agree with the principle of sufficient reason, replied that “this sufficient reason is often the simple or mere will of god” (clarke 1717, 61). leibniz felt misunderstood. god’s will should always be in accordance with the principle of the sufficient reason. god can never act without sufficient reason. like leibniz, du châtelet draws an analogy between space and time: space is the order of coexisting things; time is the order of successive things.7 we observe, as leibniz said, a series of coexisting things. we abstract from these observations and thus gain the concept of space. du châtelet also deals with the question of the representation of space and time, i.e., how we came to form our ideas of extension and gain the concept of space and time through abstraction (du châtelet 1742, § 80). to illustrate the crucial role of abstraction du châtelet compares the concepts of space and time with the concept of number: space is an abstraction of coexisting things as numbers are an abstraction of things numbered. it would be meaningless to speak about numbers without things that can be numbered. analogous, space would be meaningless without postulating entities (beings) that act in space and time. thus, space is not the extension of a thing, any more than duration is its time. like the number is different from the numbered thing, time is different from the measured thing. while extension and duration, therefore, must always belong to some actual things, space and time are relations belonging to possible things. space and time express possibilities. 6 “ainsi le raisonnement de mr. de leibnits contre l’espace absolu est sans replique, & l’on est forcé d'abandonner cet espace, ou de renoncer au principe de la raisson suffisante, c’est-à-dire, au fondement de toute vérite.” 7 “j’ay marqué plus d’une fois, que je tenois l’espace pour quelque chose de purement relatif, comme le temps; pour un ordre des coexistences, comme le temps est un ordre de successions. car l’espace marque en termes de possibilité, un ordre des choses qui existent en même temps, en tant qu’elles existent ensemble; sans entrer dans leurs manieres d’exister” (des maizeaux 1720, § 4, p. 31). how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 89 thus, possible coexistences constitute space, successive existences constitute time (du châtelet 1742, § 105). in leibniz’s theory, space does not anymore constitute an independent background, but rather takes the form of a geometrical object itself. leibniz’s aim was to represent the relations among geometrical figures directly, without recourse to the cartesian co-ordinates and equations of ordinary analysis. the basis for his new approach to space was to define an extensum (extended thing) in terms of “situs”, i.e., situation. initially, “situs” denotes a disposition of smallest parts or unities in relation to the whole. the basic relations are those of equality, similarity and congruence. congruence presupposes co-existence. this leads leibniz to a new definition of extensum as a whole with co-existing parts that have a mutual situation and to a more sophisticated characterization of space in terms of extensum and situs: it is the ordering of situations that constitute space. leibniz’s theory remained, however, fragmentary. in 1715 leibniz presented some crucial ideas of his new foundational program in his initia rerum mathematicarum metaphysica (leibniz 1715). he defined time, duration, space, extension and situation in quasi-axiomatic form: time, leibniz said, is the order of existence of those things which are not simultaneous. duration is the magnitude of time. if the magnitude of time is uniformly and continuously diminished, time disappears into a moment, whose magnitude is zero. space is the order of coexistents or the order of existence among things which are simultaneous. the extension is the magnitude of space. it is wrong to confound extension with what is extended, as is commonly done, and to regard it as a substance. if the magnitude of space is uniformly and continuously diminished, it disappears into a point whose magnitude is zero. situation is a mode of coexistence. it not only involves quantity but quality too. quantity, or magnitude is that which can be recognized in things only by their compresence or simultaneous perception. leibniz distinguishes between quality, or form, and quantity, or magnitude, and he says that similar things are those that do not differ with respect to qualities. leibniz’s considerations help to explain the connection between his analysis situs, his theory of space and time and his metaphysical monadology, i.e., an ontology of individual substances whose perceptions are representations from a given point of view. the philosophical problem, for which leibniz sought a solution, is known as the labyrinth of the continuum: can that which is spatially extended consists of unextended and partless units? leibniz’s solution – extended objects can be divided ad infinitum, but this infinite divisibility takes place only at the phenomenal level –, presupposes a metaphysical realm. it is often overlooked that leibniz’s space-time relationalism stands and falls with the metaphysical postulate that space and time have their reason, or ground, in the actions of simple substances (see schepers 2006/2007). these real units are what leibniz called entelechies, or forms, and which ground the laws of motion in the phenomenal world. substances are metaphysical points, endowed with a spontaneous internal activity, which leibniz called primitive active force. du châtelet was obviously familiar with leibniz’s idea of an analysis situs, also known as geometric characteristics, although it is difficult to reconstruct what she really knew about it. in this context, du châtelet’s comparison between space and numbers offers not only a better illustration of the relationship between space and things. it helps to understand the crucial differences, as du châtelet explains, between “location,” “place” and “situation”: firstly, location is not the placed thing itself, but it differs from the placed thing as an abstract thing from its concrete counterpart. the location of a being is its determined manner of coexisting with other beings (du châtelet 1742, § 88). it can be absolute or relative. absolute location is the one that suits a being insofar as we consider its manner of existing with the whole universe considered as immobile; and its relative location is its manner of coexisting with some particular beings. imagine, for example, a person inside a ship which is sailing at constant speed. since the ship is moving at a constant speed and direction the person will how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 90 not feel the motion of the ship. the relative location of the person and of everything that is on this boat does not change at all but their absolute location is constantly changing due to every part of the boat also changing its manner of existence equally with respect to the shore, which we regard as immobile. however, if the person walks on the boat, the person changes his relative location and absolute location at the same time. secondly, we call place the assembly of several locations, that is to say, all the locations of the parts of a body taken together (du châtelet 1742, § 92). finally, we call situation the order that several coexistent non-contiguous things maintain through their coexistence, such that taking one of them as the first, we give a situation to others that are far away in relation to that one. thus, taking a house in a city as the first, all the others acquire a situation with respect to this house, because they are separated from each other, and because we can determine their situation by their distance from that which we took as the first. therefore, two things have the same situation with respect to a third when they are at the same distance (du châtelet 1742, § 93). it is no coincidence that at this point du châtelet attaches great importance to the distinction between space and time and the measurement of spatial and temporal distances: time is usually represented by the uniform movement of a point that describes a straight line, because the point is there a successive being, present successively at different points, creating by its flow a continuous succession to which we attach the idea of time. we also measure time by the uniform movement of an object. (du châtelet 1742, § 93)8 uniform motion, i.e., motion in a straight line, plays a crucial role for the geometrical representation and construction of a body’s motion in space and time. by means of motion, time is measurable. du châtelet reminds of traditional methods of time measurement, e.g., through the movement of celestial bodies, and she highlights christiaan huygens’ construction of pendulum clocks as a milestone on the way to a more precise time measurement (du châtelet 1742, § 107). the measurement of time allows us to distinguish past, present, and future events and to give to ourselves and others an idea of what we mean by such a portion of time, e.g., the annual and daily course of the sun, the vibrations of a pendulum, minutes, hours, days, and years; but it is quite possible that other things have been used as measurements by other peoples. the only one that might be universal is what is called an infinitesimal small instant of time (du châtelet 1742, § 114). what is that supposed to mean? leibniz’s differential calculus and newton’s method of fluxions were both methods of calculating the motion of an object; both methods presuppose and require the notion of a finite rate of change at each instant. this is analogous to the notion that a moving body has an instantaneous velocity at a given moment in time. under this conception, every motion is conceived of as beginning from a point, or an instantaneous moment, and ending at another point, or an instantaneous moment. for practical purposes of measurements, the position from which we make an observation has to be taken as invariant, although there is no fixed point in space and time to which everything must be related. this explains why motion has to be distinguished from time: time (not to be confused with its measurement) is ideal; motion is real and actual (du châtelet 1742, § 109). interestingly, in chapter 11 du châtelet defines motion as the passage of a body from the place it occupies to another place (du châtelet 1742, § 211) in accordance with newton (in 8 “on représente ordinairement le tems par le mouvement uniforme d’un point qui décrit une ligne droite, parce que le point est l à l’être successif, present successivement à différens points, & engendrant par la fluxion une succession continue à laquelle nous attachons l’idée de tems. nous mesurons aussi le tems par le mouvement uniforme d’un objet.” how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 91 contrast to leibniz) and distinguishes three kinds of motion: (i) absolute motion (le mouvement absolu), (ii) relative common motion (le mouvement rélatif commune), and (iii) proper relative motion (le mouvement rélatif propre). absolute (real) motion is the motion of a body relative to other bodies which are assumed to be immobile (du châtelet 1742, § 213). relative common motion is defined as that which a body experiences, when it is at rest, in relation to the bodies which surround it. du châtelet adds that this is the case in which the absolute place of the bodies changes, though their relative place stays the same; this is what happens to a pilot who sleeps at the tiller while his ship moves, or a dead fish carried along by the current (du châtelet 1742, § 214). relative proper motion is the one experienced, when, being transported with other bodies in a common relative motion, one nonetheless changes one’s relationship with them, as when i walk on a sailing ship (du châtelet 1742, § 215). what follows is du châtelet’s version of galileo’s ship, based on the principle of relativity according to which there is no internal observation (i.e., without looking out the window) by which one can distinguish between a system moving uniformly from one at rest. hence, any two systems moving without acceleration are equivalent, and unaccelerated motion is relative, i.e., dependent on the observer (in its modern term: reference system). du châtelet’s classification of different kinds of motion is based on the foundational problem of how one should be able to distinguish between real and apparent states of motion (and rest). the laws of motion provide the determination of real states of motion, that is the change in velocity. in newtonian physics, the changes in velocity are caused by impressed forces. leibniz agreed that true motions can be distinguished from merely apparent ones by the identification of causes. on several occasions, leibniz had referred to the relativity of motion as implying the phenomenality of motion. nevertheless, he did not reject the reality of motion. the reality of the phenomena of motion derives from their being founded in force. this is in accordance with newton. in leibniz’s sense, however, the concept of force has a different meaning. forces that are determined as the causes of bodies acting and being acted upon by one another are derivative forces, i.e., instantaneous modifications of something permanent, namely form, or substance. to be more precise, motion does not just mean changing place or position, but changing the situation. this assumption presupposes more than just the dynamic conception of a point moving and producing a line, which can be extended to the motion of a line generating a surface; it presupposes the existence of force. the true reason for the change, i.e., the cause of motion, is the force. motion – in a leibnizian sense – is relative only if it is considered in abstraction from the force. neither space nor time, but the force is the real and absolute quantity, which justifies and explains absolute motion. “force” in this sense refers to the quantity mv2, or “living force”, which is conserved in all interactions. du châtelet concludes: thus, in order to make certain that a being has changed its place, and in order for this change to be real, the reason (cause) for its change, that is to say the force that produced it, must be in the being at the moment at which it moves, and not in the coexisting beings. this is because if we ignore where the true reason for change lies, we also ignore the reason why these beings changed place. (du châtelet 1742, § 88)9 9 “ainsi, pour que l’on puisse assurer qu’un être a changé de lieu, & pour qu’il en change réellement, il faut que la raison de son changement, c’est-à-dire, la force qui l’a produit , soit en lui dans le moment qu’il se remue, & non dans les coéxistans; car si on ignore où est la véritable raison du changement , on ignore aufli lequel de ces etres a changé de lieu.” how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 92 if there were nothing more to motion than a change of position relative to other bodies, then there would be no real motion. real motion requires, in addition to the relative change of place, a cause (force, action) of that relative change. in his principia, newton had suggested that the absolute, or true motion of bodies is to be defined relative to absolute space and time, and to be discovered by its properties, causes and effects. for newton “place” was “the part of space that a body occupies, and it is, depending on the space, either absolute or relative” (newton 1999, 409). newton added: “i say that part of space, not the position (situs) of the body or its outer surface” (newton 1999, 409). in his correspondence with clarke, leibniz favored an alternative concept of space and time, based on the concept of the position/situation of a body. newton had maintained that “absolute motion is the change of position of a body from one absolute place to another” (newton 1999, 409).10 leibniz argued that real, or absolute motion is to be defined with respect to the active forces that he took to be inherent and absolute. at first glance, du châtelet just adopts leibniz’s relationalism, arguing against newton’s absolute space and time. however, it is worth taking a closer look. leibniz agreed with both, newton and clarke, that neither space nor time were substances (none of them advocated space-time-substantialism). in his correspondence with leibniz, clarke defended newton’s opinion that space and time were attributes of god, who was the only self-existent substance, and he simply identified time with the duration of all things. leibniz disagreed. for him, space and time were neither substances nor attributes, but relations and insofar ideal, not real. the ultimate constituents of reality are monads, or simple substances which leibniz identified with powers, or forces. the crucial problem with which the later generations struggled was: how does the world of our experience fit into leibniz’s account of reality? our everyday experience is of extended objects causally interacting, but, for leibniz, at the fundamental level there is no inter-substantial causation and there are no extended substances. how, then, is the world of our experience related to the world as it really is? this was also a crucial problem for du châtelet who tried to understand leibniz’s approach to space and time, searching at the same time for a successful integration of leibniz’s living force, its measure and its conservation, into a coherent theory of motion. from today’s perspective, it seems obvious that leibniz established a rudimentary expression for the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy, at least if we concede that leibniz used the word “living force”, or vis viva, to signify what we would call “work”. from today’s perspective, the dispute about the question of whether the force of bodies in motion, striking each other, is proportional to the simple velocity of the motion or proportional to the square of the velocity, was wrongly posed. both quantities are conserved, the product of mass and velocity as well as the quantity of the product of mass, multiplied by its velocity squared. the first refers to what is now called momentum, the second to the kinetic energy of a moving body. in 18th century mechanics was not clear at all what exactly are forces and how they produce different kinds of motion. force was not only understood as the cause of acceleration (external to matter), but also as the cause of uniform rectilinear motion, i.e., of inertial motion (intrinsic to matter). du châtelet could not make this clear (see reichenberger 2018). further, it is a matter of dispute whether christian wolff influenced du châtelet more than leibniz. it was and is widely known that leibniz’s initia rerum mathematicarum metaphysica was written in response to wolff’s elementa matheseos universae, published in 1713 (wolff 1713). wolff adopted some of leibniz’s definitions in his german metaphysics (wolff 1720) and in his ontology (wolff 1730). however, wolff rejected 10 “locus est pars spatii quam corpus occupat, estque pro ratione spatii vel absolutus vel relativus. pars, inquam, spatii; non situs corporis, vel superficies ambiens. […] motus absolutus est translatio corporis de loco absoluto in locum absolutum” (newton 1726, scholium: iii, iv). how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 93 leibniz’s concept of monads. wolff’s simple beings are indivisible physical points equipped with (indeterminate) active and passive forces that underpin physical forces of motion and resistance, not metaphysical points, endowed with a vital activity or spontaneous action and perception, linked to spirits of souls (see stan 2018, 485). du châtelet affirmed that bodies interact and that the elements’ action and resistance is the sufficient ground of corporeal inter-agency. was this a fundamental misunderstanding of leibniz’s philosophy? one could argue the point. with regard to an important point, however, du châtelet went beyond leibniz and newton. once again, wolff might be her source. “du châtelet ends with a definition of substance as ‘durable, modifiable subject’, namely, that which ‘conserves’ and ‘keeps constant’ essentials and attributes as its modes vary and succeed one another” (stan 2018, 480). according to du châtelet, common notions of “substance” given by the scholastic philosophers, by descartes and by locke have proven to be wrong. the scholastics defined “substance” as ens quod per se subsistit et sustinet accidentia, that is to say, a being which subsists by itself. but it’s not clear at all, what it is to subsist by oneself (du châtelet 1742, § 51). descartes and others defined “substance” as a being which exists in such a way that it does not need any other being for its existence. now, as one can plainly see, du châtelet says, that this returns to the untenable scholastic definition of “substance”, and that furthermore, if one takes this definition rigorously, one is solely left with god as the only one true substance. after all, locke’s definition of “substance” is also misguided, i.e., that substance is no other thing than a subject which we do not know. by contrast, du châtelet defines “substance” as follows: one can define substance like this: that which conserves (preserves) the essential determinations and constant attributes, while its modes vary and succeed each other. (du châtelet 1742, § 52)11 this definition is remarkable insofar as it opened the door from leibniz’s “substantiation of force” (thönes 1908, 17) to our modern understanding of the principle of invariance under transformation. loose talk about whether space and time is either relative or absolute often leads to serious philosophical and historical misinterpretations. it is a commonplace to think that leibniz favored relationalism, whereas newton maintained that space and time are absolute. this standard reading is not very convincing, because it is under-specified and it overlooks the complexity of meanings of basic concepts and foundational issues regarding space and time. a closer look at du châtelet’s considerations on space and time help to deepen our understanding not only of leibniz’s criticism of clarke’s defense of newton’s space and time but also towards the usually neglected background of analysis situs. the lesson we can learn from du châtelet is a subtle semantic shift from absolute-relational concepts of space and time to invariance principles, related to conservation laws. 11 “l’on peut définir la substance, ce qui conserve des déterminations essentielles, et des attributs constans, pendant que les modes y varient et se succèdent.” compare, at this point, christian wolff, who writes in his ontologia: “subiectum perdurabile et modificabile dicitur substantia” (wolff 1730, § 768). substance means: “substantia est subiectum determinationum intrinsecarum constantium atque variabilium” (wolff 1730, § 769); or: “quod in se continet principium mutationum, substantia est” (wolff 1730, § 872). how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 94 how to teach the history of space and time in early modern philosophy: beyond the standard reading it is not easy to integrate the results presented in the foregoing chapter into teaching practice. although more and more scholarship on du châtelet’s philosophy is emerging, it is not yet sufficiently understood what role she played in the context of already wellresearched philosophers, specifically newton, leibniz and kant, and the position she takes on key themes, such as space and time, within the history of philosophy. in order to establish du châtelet as an independent philosopher and reconstruct her philosophical approach by examining her writings and her discussions of the relevant works of her time, it is important to integrate her work in courses taught at universities on the history of philosophy and science or the early modern period. but how? one cannot assume that students can speak several (old) languages or can read manuscripts. up till now, there is no critical edition of her institutions physiques. in 2009, isabelle bour and judith zinsser published a partial translation of émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics (zinsser and bour 2009). since 2014, faculty and students at the university of notre dame have worked to complete the translation. so, a lot has been done in recent years to overcome the void in research on du châtelet’s philosophy. as an alternative and complement to these traditional publishing and teaching activities, the online reading guide on émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics is currently designed to help navigate du châtelet’s institutions physiques (1740/42). this teaching and research project is part of the project center for the history of women philosophers and scientists at paderborn university, germany. it aims to make this important historical and highly original document visible to a broad audience. the project is unique in the growing research field of digital humanities, but it may hopefully provide a model for future projects in online teaching practice. each chapter of the reading guide is structured as follows: firstly, the content of the chapter is summarized. secondly, the content is commented on in the footnotes. thirdly, the works of authors named in the institutions physiques are provided with a link (if the works can be ascertained from the text). fourthly, central passages of the text are quoted literally. each quote links to the corresponding page of the original amsterdam edition institutions physiques de madame la marquise du châstellet adressés à mr. son fils (1742). deviations from the prault edition institutions de physique (1740) are not mentioned if they are negligible. occasionally, text passages have been switched. it should also be mentioned that phrases or sentences have been added to some parts of the text. insofar as these additions are substantively and contextually relevant, reference is made to them. faithfulness to the original french text is guaranteed. no silent corrections of typographical or other errors are applied, and punctuation and style are reproduced. all quotations are linked to the corresponding manuscript-page of the national library of france. the manuscript is online accessible on bnf digital library gallica (see fig. 1). how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 95 let’s have a look at examples for integrating the online reading guide into teaching practice by means of the following two questions and possible sample answers: 1. what resolution of zenon’s paradox does du châtelet offer? (see du châtelet 1742, chapter 9, § 171) du châtelet argues that zenon’s paradox against the possibility of motion does not prove that motion is impossible, but at best that achilles never catches up with the tortoise. however, this is also wrong due to the paradox being based on a false assumption as grégoire de saint-vincent has shown. in his opus geometricum quadraturae circuli sectionum coni (1647),12 grégoire de saint vincent resolved zeno’s achilles paradox, by summing an infinite geometric series. the flaw in zeno’s argument is his unstated assumption that the sum of an infinite cannot be finite. 2. john keill claimed to be able to prove that empty space exists. reconstruct his argument on the basis of du châtelet’s analysis in chapter 5, § 73 of her institutions physiques. john locke distinguishes pure space from the bodies that fill it. in his essay concerning human understanding (1690; french translation 1700, revised edition 1720) he defined impenetrability as the criterion for distinguishing space and bodies: bodies are impenetrable, space is penetrable. another difference between space and bodies is that we cannot see and touch space, but we can see and touch bodies. john keill held the same opinion. in his book introductiones ad veram physicam (1701) he goes even further. he claimed to be able to prove that a larger amount of empty space exists, even within matter itself, than impenetrable corpuscular matter (keill 1720, 117). christian wolff rejected keill’s argument. he maintained 12 users have the possibility to click directly on grégoire de saint vincent’s opus geometricum quadraturae circuli sectionum coni (1647) in the text. the link goes to the page of the eth zurich library, where one can view the original online document or download it as a pdf file. fig. 1: online reading guide on émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics: general introduction. project history of women philosophers and scientists, paderborn university, germany. url: https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/duchateletreadingguide-general-introduction. how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 96 that the so-called “materia subtilissima” did not increase the weight of the body. according to the archimedean principle, the bodies would lose as much weight as the weight of the volume of the fluid they displaced (aerometriae elementa 1709). keill countered in a letter to wolff printed in january 1710 (acta eruditorum jan. 1710, 11–15). wolff answered promptly. his reply appeared in the same journal one month later (acta eruditorum feb. 1710, 78–80). johann bernoulli i intervened. in a letter to wolff (26 april 1710), he agreed with wolff that keill’s argumentation was wrong. however, bernoulli i argued differently from wolff: if the greater weight of the lead ball would be due to the fact that it loses less weight in the “fluidum subtilissimum” than the cork ball of the same size, then the resulting weight difference would be so small that it would not be observable. lead and cork thus have almost the same specific weight, which contradicts experience as well as keill’s argumentation. the latter was based on the assumption that the weight of the body is proportional to the quantity of matter (see fig. 2).13 conclusion the case study presented here is one of the many ways how one can teach the history of philosophy and science in a time when digital resources and methods are becoming increasingly important. in contrast to quantitative historiography, cliometrics, and statistics, this approach offers a qualitative analysis regarding a classical philosophical topic: the problem of space and time. by means of this example, it should be made clear that the 13 again, users have the possibility to click directly on john locke’s essay concerning human understanding (1690), john keill’s introductiones ad veram physicam (1701), christian wollf’s aerometriae elementa (1709), keill’s letter to wolff printed in january 1710 in acta eruditorum jan. 1710, 11–15, wolff’s response in acta eruditorum feb. 1710, 78–80, and johann bernoulli’s letter to wolff from april 26, 1710. all links go to online documents. fig. 2: online reading guide on émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics: chapter 5. on space. project history of women philosophers and scientists, paderborn university, germany. url: https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/chapter-5. how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 97 portrayal of controversies on space and time in the philosophy of science as a dichotomy between absolutism and relationalism simplifies the complex pattern of change. in today’s digital age it is possible to make this expert knowledge accessible to everyone in a fast, simple and visualized way, as the digital project of the online reading guide on émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics aims to demonstrate exemplarily. acknowledgment the author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewer for highly useful comments and suggestions, which significantly helped to improve this contribution and the ideas expressed in it, although any errors are my own. this work is part of the research project center for the history of women philosophers and scientists at the faculty of arts and humanities, department of social and human sciences, institute of philosophy, paderborn university (germany), financially supported by the ministry of higher education and research of north rhine-westphalia, germany. references bernoulli, johann i. 1710. letter to christian wolff from april 26, 1710. url: https://www.ub.unibas.ch/bernoulli/index.php/1710-04-26_bernoulli_johann_iwolff_christian. consulted september 1, 2018. carrier, martin. 2009. raum-zeit. berlin/new york: de gruyter. clarke, samuel. 1717. a collection of papers, which passed between the late learned mr. leibnitz, and dr. clarke, in the years 1715 and 1716. london: knapton. de saint-vincent, grégoire. 1647. opus geometricum quadraturae circuli sectionum coni. antverpiae: apud ioannem et iacobum meursios. url: https://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/titleinfo/2705188. consulted september 1, 2018. des maizeaux, pierre. 1720. recueil de diverses pièces sur la philosophie, la religion naturelle, l’histoire, les mathématiques, etc. par mr. leibnitz, clarke, newton et autres autheurs célèbres. amsterdam: h. du sauzet. disalle, robert. 2006. understanding space-time: the philosophical development of physics from newton to einstein. cambridge/new york: cambridge university press. du châtelet, emilie, and newton, isaac. 1759. principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle de newton: par feue madame la marquise du chastellet. 2 vols. paris: desaint et saillant. du châtelet, emilie. 1738. manuscript institutions de physique. bibliothèque nationale français: ffr. 12.265. url:http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b60007500/f1.image.r=institutions%20physiq ues. consulted september 1, 2018. du châtelet, emilie. 1740. institutions de physique. paris: prault. du châtelet, emilie. 1742. institutions physiques de madame la marquise du chastellet adressés à m. son fils. nouvelle édition, corrigée et augmentée considérablement par l’auteur. amsterdam: aux dépens de la compagnie. url: http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10130894.html. consulted september 1, 2018. earman, john. 1989. world enough and spacetime – absolute versus relational theories of space and time. london: mit press, cambridge, ma. hagengruber, ruth (ed.). 2012. émilie du châtelet between leibniz and newton. dordrecht et al.: springer. how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 98 jammer, max. 1954. concepts of space. the history of theories of space in physics. harvard university press, cambridge, ma. keill, john. 1710. letter to christian wolff. acta eruditorum jan., 11–15. url: http://www.izwtalt.uni-wuppertal.de/acta/ae1710.pdf#page=14. consulted september 1, 2018. keill, john. 1725 [1701]. introductiones ad veram physicam. lugduni batavorum: apud joh. et herm. verbeek. url: https://www.e-rara.ch/zut/wihibe/content/titleinfo/453961. consulted september 1, 2018. kuukkanen, jouni-matti. 2018. editorial: can history be used to test philosophy? journal of the philosophy of history 12(2): 183–190. leibniz, gottfried wilhelm. 1715. initia rerum mathematicarum metaphysica. in: mathematische schriften, ed. by carl immanuel gerhardt, vol. 7. hildesheim: olms, 17– 29. locke, john. 1700 [1690]. essai philosophique concernant l’entendement humain. sur la quatrième édition, revue, corrigée, & augmentée par l’auteur. amsterdam: henri schelte. url: https://www.e-rara.ch/doi/10.3931/e-rara-24288. consulted september 1, 2018. newton, isaac. 1726. scholium. in: philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. london: apud guil. & joh. innys. the newton project. url: http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/natp00085. consulted september 1, 2018. newton, isaac. 1972 [1726]. philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. 3rd ed., with variant readings. 2 vols., ed. by alexandre koyré & i. bernard cohen. cambridge: cambridge university press. newton, isaac. 1999. mathematical principles of natural philosophy. 3rd ed., trans. by i. bernard cohen and anne whitman, assisted by julis budenz. with an introductory “guide to newton’s mathematical principles of natural philosophy”, by i. bernard cohen. berkeley: university of california press. reichenberger, andrea. 2016. émilie du châtelets „institutions physiques“. über die rolle von prinzipien und hypothesen in der physik. wiesbaden: springer. reichenberger, andrea. 2018. émilie du châtelet’s interpretation of the laws of motion in the light of 18th century mechanics. studies in history and philosophy of science part a 69: 1–11. schepers, heinrich. 2006/2007. neues über zeit und raum bei leibniz. studia leibnitiana 38/39: 3–18. schickore, jutta. 2018. explication work for science and philosophy. journal of the philosophy of history 12(2): 191–211. stachel, john. 2006. albert einstein: a man for the millenium? a century of relativity physics: xxviii spanish relativity meeting ere 2005. proceedings of aip conference series, vol. 841, held 6-10 september, 2005 in oviedo, spain. edited by lysiane mornas and joaquin diaz alonso. melville, ny: american institute of physics, 195–227. stan, marius. 2018. emilie du chatelet’s metaphysics of substance. journal of the history of philosophy 56(3): 477–496. thönes, adelheid. 1908. die philosophischen lehren in leibnizens théodicée. halle: niemeyer. wolff, christian. 1710. letter to john keill. acta eruditorum feb., 78–80. url: http://www.izwtalt.uni-wuppertal.de/acta/ae1710.pdf#page=83. consulted september 1, 2018. wolff, christian. 1713. elementa matheseos universae. halle: regner. wolff, christian. 1720. vernünfftige gedancken von gott, der welt und der seele des menschen, auch allen dingen überhaupt. halle: regner. how to teach history of philosophy and science – a case study andrea reichenberger 99 wolff, christian. 1730. philosophia prima, sive ontologia. frankfurt/leipzig: regner. wollf, christian. 1709. aerometriae elementa. leipzig : lanckisch. url: http://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vd18/content/titleinfo/9598483. consulted september 1, 2018. wüthrich, christian. 2017. philosophie der physik. in simon lohse, thomas reydon (eds.): grundriss wissenschaftsphilosophie: die philosophien der einzelwissenschaften. hamburg: meiner, 221-228. zinsser, judith p. and bour, isabelle. 2009. emilie du châtelet. selected philosophical and scientific writings. chicago: university of chicago press. zinsser, judith p. 2006. la dame d’esprit: a biography of the marquise du châtelet. new york, ny: viking. further internet sources english translation of émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics. notre dame group; direction: katherine brading. url: https://www.kbrading.org/translations. consulted september 1, 2018. online reading guide on émilie du châtelet’s foundations of physics. project center for the history of women philosophers and scientists, paderborn university, germany. url:https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/projects-2-0/du-chateletsfoundations-of-physics. consulted september 1, 2018. microsoft word rocha layout gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 85 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (7): 85-88 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access book review book review benjamin franklin and his natural philosophy moura, breno arsioli. a filosofia natural de benjamin franklin: traduções de cartas e ensaios sobre a eletricidade e a luz. [the natural philosophy of benjamin franklin: translations of letters and essays on electricity and light] são paulo: editora universidade federal do abc, 2019. 160 p. isbn: 978-85-68576-90-8. r$ 36,00 gustavo rodrigues rocha1 received: 27 july 2019. reviewed: 16 august 2019. accepted: 22 august 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i7.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ______________________________________________________________________ breno arsioli moura is a professor at the federal university of abc (universidade federal do abc – ufabc), at the centro de ciências naturais e humanas [natural and human sciences center] (ccnh), santo andré, sp, brazil, and a faculty member of the graduate program pehcm (pós-graduação em ensino e história das ciências e da matemática2 [graduate program in teaching and history of science and mathematics]). moura, both a historian of science and science educator, is known for his contributions to the history of science in the 18th century, history of optics from newton to early-19th century, and the utilization of science studies in science teaching and education. his book, a filosofia natural de benjamin franklin: traduções de cartas e ensaios sobre a eletricidade e a luz (2019) [the natural philosophy of benjamin franklin: translations of letters and essays on electricity and light], is a work of scholarship on the scientific achievements in electricity by benjamin franklin (1706-1790), famous american statesman, publisher, scientist, and diplomat. as moura argues in his book, benjamin franklin scholarship until the mid-1940s had not been dedicated to studying his scientific achievements beyond the myth of his famous kite experiment. i. bernard cohen (1914-2003), the first scholar to receive a ph.d. in history of science in the united states, changed the state of franklin scholarship when he made his debut as an author with benjamin franklin’s experiments (1941), the first scholarly annotated edition of franklin’s writings on electricity. cohen would later publish other important works on franklin’s research in natural philosophy, such as franklin and newton: an inquiry into speculative newtonian science and franklin’s work in electricity as an example thereof (1956) and benjamin franklin’s science (1990). the establishment of “the papers of benjamin 1 gustavo rodrigues rocha is a professor at the department of physics at the state university of feira de santana (uefs), feira de santana, bahia, brazil, and a visiting scholar at the department of history of the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg), belo horizonte, minas gerais, brazil. address: av. transnordestina, s/n – novo horizonte, feira de santana, ba, 44036-900, brazil. e-mail: grrocha@uefs.br. 2 https://sites.google.com/site/pehfcm/home. gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 86 franklin” by the american philosophical society and yale university beginning in 1954 and the organization of the “benjamin franklin papers” at the library of congress in the early1970s were also of instrumental importance.3 moreover, what might be of interest to those unfamiliar with brazilian work in the history of science is moura’s review of the works done in brazil on benjamin franklin’s science, such as silva, c. c.; pimentel, a. c. (2008), silva, c. c.; heering, p. (2008), pyenson, l. (1998), moura, b. a. (2016), and moura, b. a.; bonfim, t. (2017). the product of four years of investigative and translation work in both brazil and the usa, moura’s book consists of two introductory chapters on franklin’s scientific research on light and electricity followed by the annotated translation of six letters and one essay by franklin outlined in the table below. primary source year publication number franklin’s letter to peter collinson 1747 experiments and observations, 4th edition, 1769 letter 1 franklin’s letter to peter collinson 1747 experiments and observations, 4th edition, 1769 letter 2 franklin’s letter to john mitchel 1749 experiments and observations, 4th edition, 1769 letter 3 franklin’s letter to peter collinson 1750 experiments and observations, 4th edition, 1769 letter 4 franklin’s letter to cadwallader colden 1752 experiments and observations, 4th edition, 1769 letter 5 franklin’s letter to peter collinson 1752 experiments and observations, 4th edition, 1769, also published in philosophical transactions, v.47, p.565-567, 1751-1752 letter 6 franklin’s essay “a new and curious theory of light and heat” 1788 transactions of the american philosophical society, 1793 essay “a new and curious theory of light and heat” is an essay which was read by franklin at a meeting of the american philosophical society in 1788 and published posthumously in 1793 in the transactions of the american philosophical society. as for the letters, they were written between the 1740s-50s and first published in 1751 in a book titled experiments and observations on electricity, made at philadelphia in america. for his work, moura used the 1769 fourth edition.4 chapters 1 and 2 are dedicated to detailing the historical situation of the science of electricity and optics, respectively, as found by franklin when he first became interested in and involved with natural philosophy in the early-1740s. in these introductory chapters, moura outlines some of the key figures and developments leading up to franklin’s work. francis hauksbee (1660-1713), developer of the first machines to generate electrical phenomena, and stephen gray (1666-1736), known as the discoverer of “electrical induction,” were some of the most well-known scientists working on electricity in the uk at the time and were both members of the royal society. meanwhile, charles du fay (1698 3https://franklinpapers.org https://www.loc.gov/collections/benjamin-franklin-papers/about-this-collection/. 4 both primary sources used by moura, namely, the transactions of the american philosophical society (1793) and the 1764 fourth edition of experiments and observations can be found in the internet archive, https://archive.org. gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 87 1739), discoverer of the existence of two types of electricity, which he named “vitreous” and “resinous”, and his disciple, jean-antoine nollet (1700-1770), who supposedly invented the “electroscope”, were some of the most known scientists working on electricity in france with nollet becoming the fiercest european opponent of franklin’s electrical research. willem jacob’s gravesande (1688-1742), a dutch mathematician, and ewald georg von kleist (1700-1748), a german jurist and lutheran cleric, independently invented the so-called “leyden jar”. as franklin became interested in electrical research, he became familiar with these earliest works by all these authors. franklin fomented in 1727 the formation of a club called the “junto”, a group of scholars pondering matters literacy, civic, and scientific, whose members organized the “library company of philadelphia” in 1731. although franklin’s interest in science preceded his involvement in establishing these organizations, it was largely through them that franklin began his scientific research and network with scientists in europe. in 1732 franklin’s “library company” received a copy of mathematical elements of natural philosophy, confirmed by experiments; or, an introduction to newtonian philosophy (1720) by willem jacob’s gravesande, which had been translated into english by john theophilus desaguliers (16831744), a british scientist, lecturer and promoter of newtonian philosophy who replaced francis hauksbee as a demonstrator at the royal society’s weekly meetings. franklin also read john theophilus desaguliers’ two-volume a course of experimental philosophy (17341744) around 1744. franklin met archibald spencer (1698-1760) in philadelphia as early as 1746. a scientist, lecturer, and science popularizer, spencer exposed franklin to some rudimentary electrical experiments. however, it was only when in the same year peter collinson (1694-1768), a british agent for the library company and member of the royal society, sent to the company a glass tube together with a short description of experiments that franklin was set on the course of his electrical research. henry pemberton (1694-1771) was also an important figure for franklin’s involvement with research in natural science. having first met him in london around 1725, pemberton sent a copy of his work, a view of sir i. newton’s philosophy (1728), to the library company. collinson and william watson (1715-1784), an english physician and scientist, promoted franklin’s works in the uk, while georges-louis leclerc (1707-1788), being opposed to jean-antoine nollet’s science, did so in france, as franklin’s work conflicted with nollet’s interpretation of electrical phenomena. finally, it is interesting and important to note that although most of these earliest influences on franklin’s research in natural science were newtonians, his understanding of the nature of light conflicted with theirs based on newton’s opticks (1704), a work franklin most probably read. franklin was then a bit of an outlier when it came to embracing the most respected and accepted interpretation of the nature of light circa 1740, which was based on newton’s opticks, deciding instead to side with other dissenting views such as those of leonhard euler (1707-1783) and claude-nicolas le cat (1700-1768). franklin articulated his vibrational, as opposed to corpuscular, view of the nature of light in his 1752 letter to natural scientist cadwallader colden (1688-1776), arguments analyzed by moura in his translation of this letter (letter 5). moura begins chapter 3 by clarifying the vocabulary used by franklin, which can be confusing if not taken into account the context of the period, namely, i) the difference between “electrick” and “non-electrick”, ii) words such as “electric virtue”, “electric effluvium”, “electrical fluid”, “electrical matter”, and “electrical fire”, and iii) the difference between the verbs “electrise” and “electrify” in franklin’s texts. moura’s comments are very detailed and helpful in understanding the path followed by franklin to develop his ideas about electricity and light. as moura shows us by diving into the first three letters (letters 1, 2, and 3), franklin discovered what today would be called positive and negative charge, what du fray called “vitreous” and “resinous”, the principle of conservation of electric charge, and the fact that items that were sharply pointed could more efficiently attract and gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review 88 conduct electricity than blunter objects. furthermore, franklin conjectured that lightning was electrical in nature and outlined an explanation of the phenomenon. it is in his 1750 letter to collinson (letter 4) that benjamin franklin describes his lighting rod (conductor) and his final version of his theory of electricity. it is only in his 1752 letter to collinson (letter 6) that franklin delineates his famous kite experiment. finally, in his 1788 essay, franklin returns to his corpuscular theory of light, as already seen in letter 5, and speculates more about the nature of light and matter alike. moura accomplishes in his book a very short but detailed investigation and introduction to benjamin franklin’s research on electricity and light as well as a good description of his scientific trajectory – a highly recommended book for those interested in better understanding benjamin franklin’s scientific achievements in these fields. references assis, a. k. t. 2010. os fundamentos experimentais e históricos da eletricidade. montreal: apeiron. cohen, i. b. (ed.). 1941. benjamin franklin’s experiments: a new edition of franklin’s experiments and observations on electricity. cambridge ma: harvard university press. cohen, i. b. (ed.). 1990. benjamin franklin’s science. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. cohen, i. b. (ed.). 1956. franklin and newton: an inquiry into speculative newtonian experimental science and franklin’s work in electricity. philadelphia: the american philosophical society. franklin, b. 1751-1752. “a letter of benjamin franklin, esq; to mr. peter collinson, f. r. s. concerning an electrical kite”. in: philosophical transactions, v. 47, p. 565-567. franklin, b. 1793. “a new and curious theory of light and heat”. in: transactions of the american philosophical society, v. 3, p. 5-7. franklin, b. 1769. experiments and observations on electricity, made at philadelphia in america. london: david henry. moura, b. a. 2016. “teorias vibracionais da luz na grã-bretanha do século xviii”, in: scientiae studia, v. 14, n. 2, p. 333-356. moura, b. a.; bonfim, t. 2017. “benjamin franklin e a formação dos temporais com raios e trovões: tradução comentada de uma carta a john mitchel. in: caderno brasileiro de ensino de física, v. 34, n. 2, p. 460-478. moura, b. a.; silva, c. c. 2008. “a teoria dos estados da luz: considerações sobre alguns papéis das hipóteses na óptica newtoniana”. in: martins, r. a.; silva, c. c.; ferreira, j. m. h.; martins, l. a-c. p. (eds.) filosofia e história da ciência no cone sul: seleção dos trabalhos do 5º encontro. campinas: associação de filosofia e história da ciência do cone sul, p. 91-99. pyenson, l. 1998. “ética e ideologia na ciência de nollet e franklin”. in: história, ciências, saúde manguinhos, v. 1, p. 7-33. silva, c. c.; heering, p. 2018. “re-examining the early history of the leiden jar: stabilization and variation in transforming a phenomenon into a fact”. in: history of science, v. 56, n. 3, p. 314-342. silva, c. c.; pimentel, a. c. 2008. “uma análise da história da eletricidade presente em livros didáticos: o caso de benjamin franklin”. in: caderno brasileiro de ensino de física, v. 25, n. 1, p. 141-159. microsoft word silva neto layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (9): 1-20 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open-access journal article the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto1 abstract: the main goal of this article is to understand the process of formation of the sustainability transitions (st) research field. the working hypothesis of this article states that the field arises through a process of speciation: gradual differentiation, from an older and already established research field (innovation studies). this exercise is useful both as a first approximation into the history of st thought and as a means to assess the explanatory potential of different approaches towards scientific advance (epistemological discussion). our proxy to investigate the evolution of the field is the st language or scientific lexicus (concepts, terms and vocabulary) and how it came to be. the methodology to assess the evolution of this object is threefold: documental analysis (epistemic communities’ newsletters); critical review of the literature (retrofitted concepts and proto-ideas) and bibliometric analysis (scopus/vantage point). the documental analysis provides evidence that st is, indeed, an emergent scientific field. a critical review of the literature points to connections and redetermination of pre-existent concepts and terms from the innovation studies area; bibliometric evidence points to a movement of distancing: after building its own lexicon coherent to its problem framing, st research area is gradually leaving innovation studies terms and concepts behind. general results point to a process of speciation, reinforcing the explanatory potential of epistemological evolutionism. keywords: language and science; epistemology; epistemic community; sustainability; transitions doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i9.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction “this may sound like a matter of semantics only, and it may change little about the substance of the main arguments raised in this paper, but it suggests working on a new policy vocabulary that is better in line with most recent advances in innovation research” (weber; rohracher 2012, 1046, emphasis added). one of the last sentences of the article by weber and rohracher denotes the main point of this article: sometimes, science is a matter of 1 victo josé da silva neto [https://orcid.com.br/0000-0002-9009-1203] is a phd candidate in the science and technology policy department at the state university of campinas. address: rua carlos gomes, 250 – zip code: 13083-855 campinas, sp (brazil). e-mail: victont@gmail.com the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 2 grammar. i do not mean by that the usual grammar, though; rather, grammar as a set of vocabulary rules shared by a specific community that serves specific uses. also in that paper, the authors work hard to refurbish some concepts related to the old literature of innovation systems, so as to couple then to new issues raised by the new literature on sustainability transitions. the title of the article is straightforward: legitimizing research, technology and innovation policies for transformative change: combining insights from innovation systems and multi-level perspective in a comprehensive ‘failures’ framework. in other words, they are trying to create a bridge between the old and the new research fields, and this bridge is built using a specific grammar.2 it may seem strange to deal with scientific advancement through the concept of grammar, or vocabulary. this feeling of unease has a lot to do with the predomination, at least outside the core area of history of science and philosophy of science, of the scientific paradigm proposed by thomas kuhn, in 1962. 3 however, the paradigm is not the only possible conceptual device for focusing on and understanding the advancement of science. in fact, even it’s ontological stance is not consensual. the paradigm is the bearer of a discontinuous view of scientific advancement. according to condé, other authors such as wittgenstein and fleck provide different accounts of scientific advancement: one in which transformations are gradual, not revolutionary. instead of paradigms, they talk of shared codes of language, grammar, thought styles and thought collective. science unfolds then through processes of speciation that surmount the – so problematic – notion of incommensurability, so dear to the early kuhn. this article investigates the emergence of a research area in flux. this new research area, self-nominated sustainability transitions (markard et. al. 2012), seems, at first sight, to corroborate the assumptions of the evolutionary epistemologists of scientific development. the effort to bridge concepts from a related old research area to the new one signs some sort of commensurability and gradualism. to verify to what extent does the emergence of this field matches the assumptions of the gradualist’ scientific change, methodology proceeds in three steps: (i) to review the main concepts of the sustainability transitions research area; (ii) to collect bibliometric evidence regarding the citations among the most important articles of this emerging community; and finally (iii) to look for publication of manuals and/or handbooks, an indicative of a stabilized and shared minimum grammar. the first step looks for proto-ideas: speciation of older concepts, or refurbishing, into better suited new versions of the old concepts. the second step’s main goal is to find out, through co-occurrences of key terms, the relatedness of the emerging research fields with other established research fields (such as innovation systems). the underlying hypothesis takes this form: the scientific field of sustainability transitions has evolved from previous research fields and, gradually, developed a grammar of its own. we do not expect to find a steep paradigm shift whatsoever. instead of that, we expect to find a process of speciation: a continuous improvement in the common language of the field, derived from previous related scientific fields. 2 “in this paper we have worked out a set of guiding rationales for underpinning a broader approach to innovation policy that is geared towards inducing and realizing long-term processes of transformative change towards sustainability. with these rationales we have tried to reconcile structure-oriented innovation system approaches with the multi-level perspective of socio-technical transitions” (weber; rohracher 2012, 1045, emphasis added). 3 condé (2003, 128), who provides most of the theoretical assumptions mobilized in this article, argues that, despite its shortcomings, the simplicity and didatism of the kuhnian paradigm was responsible for its widespread adoption. the paradigm was such an appaling success that even kuhn itself failed later on to overcome it, when trying to advace into more comprehensive frameworks to deal with scientific development (first introducing the disciplinary matrix; finally, the lexicon) (condé 2003, 128). the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 3 theoretical references in those years it comes to life and rapidly reaches full maturity a form of knowledge that reveals characteristics structurally different from other forms of culture, barely managing to create its own institutions and its own specific languages. (rossi 2001, premise; own translation, emphasis added) modern science, according to paolo rossi, struggled to create its own institutions and language. why was language so important? because it mediates the reachable truth and human understanding. even more than understanding nature, language defines the shape of the diffusion regarding that understanding. pre-modern science, often intertwined with alchemy, had its own “ambiguous and elusive” language. the patterns of scientific language also reflect the ontology of science itself. since pre-modern science regarded science / truth as partially concealed, hidden, except for those enlightened beings versed in the scrutiny of secrets, its language was structurally, purposely opaque, “full of semantic slips, of metaphors, of analogies and elusiveness” (rossi 2001, 37). that’s why the language revolution of modern science is so important. the commom grammar, clear and direct, designed to reach the broader audience. the mertonian norm of communalism, which refers to the collective use of what is produced by science, excluding the secrecy and exclusiveness of the scientific universe. yet science is not static, and the language that represents it can not be either. its language, therefore, is dynamic, and is related to the scientific facts that emerge and to the social praxis that defines its meaning. but exactly how does this co-evolution of scientific facts and scientific language happens? condé (2005, 2012, 2016) mentions the basic elements to understand two distinct epistemological stances: the epistemological catastrophism sums up the idea that scientific practice depends on some sort of cognitive consensus that changes from time to time in a discontinuous fashion. this cognitive consensus is subsumed into the kuhnian scientific paradigm (1962). the alternative stance is called epistemological evolutionism, and regards scientific advancement as a gradual process, permanently happening, permanently reforming its consensus, often through processes of language displacement/replacement. ludwik fleck’s notion of thought style and wittgenstein’s proposal of a pragmatic grammar (that gives meaning to scientific practice and at the same time is signified by scientific practice) synthesize this evolutionary stance towards the advancement of scientific knowledge (condé, 2005, 2012). figure 1 scientific knowledge’s epistemological perspectives in dispute (based in condé, 2005) the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 4 however, there are similarities in both perspectives. for instance, the perception that social elements influence the consolidation of both a paradigm or a thought style. the wittgensteinian grammar seems even more connected to the social use of the scientific knowledge: “the rules that constitute the grammar are embedded in social practice. a rule can only constitute itself effectively as such by social praxis. grammar is a social product” (condé 2012, 92). kuhn and fleck, in their own ways, also promoted the “social aspects present in the production of scientific knowledge” (condé 2013, 135, own translation) in this sense, both epistemological perspectives here analysed are externalists: they abide to the idea that the development of science is conditioned by non-scientific, social factors. still, their differences are also startling and, maybe, they rather account for a difference in the degree of change, than for a difference in the nature of change. fleck and wittgenstein reclaimed a progressive change in the cognition’s frameworks that allowed for a specific “guided perception” of scientific problems and facts. kuhn emphasized the radical change of paradigms: “ducks in the scientist world before the revolution, are rabbits afterwards” (kuhn 1970 apud condé 2013, 137). an important consequence of this approach is the commensurability issue. since paradigms abruptly change, there is no room for the previous practices or grammars associated with the paradigm that was overcome – the social conventions and the meanings that social praxis used to attribute to concepts and words were revolutionized. box 1 – key concepts’ definitions grammar: a set of rules that is pragmatically (constructed through social praxis) open, (new rules can be added, old rules changed) and that governs the use of language (condé 2012, 92). another definition is “grammar is constituted as a set of rules that is formed from language-games” (condé 2016, 53). tought style (denkstil): according to condé, the thought style can be perceived as the grammar of science; it is “the set of language-games or semantic-pragmatic rules involved in the construction of scientific knowledge in a form of life” (condé 2012, 91). gestalt: the stablished shape of a thought style, or the concrete interactions in the scientific community under the influence of a specific thought style the impossibility of this bridge between the old and the new leads to a conundrum involving theory and history. history shows that scientific practices, grammars and “technical and literary styles”, as mentioned by fleck, do not disappear after a revolutionary episode. rather, they evolve and change – they adapt to the new social praxis, they absorb elements of the past and resignification also happens. this process could, at least in theory, be captured by the evolution of a specific scientific community grammar: “science is a grammar or a thought style among multiple and different languages and practices that emerge in society” (condé 2012, 93). kuhn’s theory, in this case, is not a flawless construct. therefore, for our purposes, and imbricated in our hypothesis, epistemological evolutionism presents a higher potential for explaining the emergence of new research fields. fleck, instead of using the notion of paradigms, explains the stability and cohesion of a thought style through the installation of a gestalt – a specific, historically and socially conditioned pattern of shaping scientific knowledge – of bringing scientific problems to the world and the peers. thus, the prevailing gestalt specifies a well defined way of shaping “thought’s visual fields”. the altercation of gestalten, however, is not a radical battle of “all or nothing”; assuming a gestalt does not imply the same incommensurability present the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 5 between competing paradigms (condé 2013) (for some thoughts on different criteria for intertheory concurrence see box 2). following that definition, what changes? the circulation of scientific knowledge itself. if there is some indirect communication between different thought styles and their respective gestalten, there is also a constant open-ended system that might evolve under new influences. this is the circulation between collective thoughts. we may even postulate that there are two steps of circulation and cross-fertilization between collective thoughts, or thought styles: one, is the inherited knowledge from previous existent proto-ideas and concepts; the second one is the speciation, or mutation of the thought style (condé 2013, 140). new rules for “guided perception” emerge then, from fragments of past thought styles – and even competing ones. box 2 – incommensurability and inter-theoretical rivalry along with the kuhnian incommensurability, the problem of inter-theoretical competition arises. before kuhn, the traditional view of the philosophy of science had two criteria to assert when two theories were in a competitive state: (i) the convergence criterion required that both theories be devoted to the same object of study (and it is for this reason that the copernican-ptolemaic pair was understood as a competitor and the copernican-darwinian pair did not); (ii) the criterion of divergence, according to which some incompatibility of beliefs about that object should exist between theories. the thesis of incommensurability suspends the possibility of the first criterion being respected: there being no referential identity between theories separated by a scientific revolution, “the effective relation of the competition will perhaps not be destroyed, but the logical spine of the traditional notion will be broken: if one can not determine if they speak about the same entities, two intertheoretical statements can not be said to be logically incompatible” (oliveira 1991, 45). this same author claims that kuhn never offered an alternative theory for inter-theoretical competition, although he did give a clue: kuhn comments in some passages how, even with the passage from one theory to another, the use of the same signs persists, even if with different functions. the signs, therefore, would be a kind of identifier of a kinship relationship (descent) between theories – and the new would emerge from the old by recycling its signs. thus, oliveira’s interpretation is very close to epistemological evolutionists: 4 “intertheoretical rivalry would be thought of as an instance of the conflict of generations ...” (oliveira 1991, 51) this mutation implies no pre-defined chronological period. it may take centuries, or it may take years. there must be, however, enough time for the new thought style to conceive its own gestalt – and the technical and literary style associated with it. certainly, the closer the thought styles (their kinship relationship, as stated in box 2), the less time needed for 4 as stated by condé: “there are connections – to a greater or lesser degree – not just between scientific thought and everyday life, but also between different scientific thought styles (fleck, 1986, 81). in wittgensteinian terms, there are family resemblances between these particular realities” (condé 2012, 102). we can think of this open systems (thought styles and grammars) slowly evolving together with the social praxis, and in this process reprogramming the same signs/words/concepts (or inserting new ones) towards new meanings/functions. and perhaps, it is precisely this modest degree of commensurability between the old and the new that provides, through praxis, some creativity and fosters diversibility into the scientific disciplines, as theoretically explored by fleck (1980, 144) apud condé (2003, 140). the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 6 this mutation/adaptation. but there is no clue concerning practical, i.e. historical measures of that in the literature here discussed. finally, an observation becomes necessary. wittgenstein’s concept of grammar is not restricted to the literary style or concepts mobilized by a scientific community at any given time. it ties into a much broader set of issues – institutions, social rules, etc. – and resembles fleck’s concept of thought style. our focus hereafter rests on literary style, keywords and key concepts, as a very narrow clipping within a huge set of codes and tacit rules that conform a grammar in the wittgensteinian sense. methodology to assess the evolution of the st field, this article combines elements of bibliometric analysis (top papers, yearly publications, citations and co-citations) with content analysis (key-words and concepts). those statistics are related to a set of articles that compose the st field. to get to this core set of articles, i follow markard et al (2012) research method. their search string was “title-abs-key (“strategic niche management” or “technological innovation system” or “technological system” or “multi-level perspective” or “transition management”)” (markard et al. 2012, 959). this search string led to a data set (in scopus, as the original research preconized) of 3.867 documents, almost a 100% increase over the 1.950 documents found by them in 2012. since this first search string goal is to establish the core papers of the field, i have followed markard et. al. (2012) procedure and, based on the information provided by the titles and abstracts of the documents, deselected those unrelated to our subject. finally, i have compared the top 20 documents those authors arrive at with the list provided by scopus as a result of the new search and checked manually for documents that had not appeared in this new set of results. this procedure led to the manual insertion of 9 documents. the result is documented in annex 1. the second step, still reproducing markard et al (2012) search, was to look up for all the documents citing one or more of the 20 documents comprising the sustainability transitions “core-set”. the result was 7.312 documents. then, the same key-word filter used in markard et al. (2012) was applied,5 resulting in a set of 2.140 documents.6 they comprise what is here considered the research field of sustainability transitions – nearly fourfold the number markard et al. (2012) had found six years ago. the core-set was then analyzed with the aid of vantage point software, especially for the identification/analysis of keywords and most recurrent terms in the abstracts, through the software’s natural language processing tool. results main concepts and proto-ideas there is some important meta-reflection on the field of sustainability transitions. beyond markard et al. (2012), geels (2013a), geels (2013b), chapin and ligtvoet (2014) and sengers et 5 title-abs-key ((sustainab* or environmental* or bio* or renewable or sociotechnical) and (transition or transform* or “system innovation” or “radical innovation” or shift or change)). the authors justify this filter by arguing that “the first part of this string is intended to refer to sustainability-related characteristics, while the second part should refer to the fundamental nature of the change” (markard et. al. 2012, 960). we also limited the search for articles only and excluded those publishing in 2019. 6 in their original search, the authors did a third step after this one: they manually inserted documents from special issues. we have not reproduced this third step since many of the documents they manually inserted were already in the list after our second step, so we only assume the risk of incurring in minor data losses. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 7 al. (2016), conducted their own bibliometric analysis. nevertheless, in this sub-section, we focus on the core concepts of the field and their foundations. for that purpose, geels (2004), weber and rohracher (2012), smith et al. (2010) and loorbach et al. (2017) offer good insights. they inquire about the theoretical origins of the research field and how and why it emerged as it did. before getting into the concepts, it is important to understand how the field evolved. smith et al. (2010) excel at this exercise: they conceptualize the intersection of sustainability and innovation studies as an area undergoing changes for, at least, the last forty years (autonomous research fields take time to establish!). this long term view allows them to see a recurring pattern of broadening the scope, both of the (i) problem framing supposedly addressed by the field and its practitioners and of (ii) analytical broadening, the natural response of the analytical tools to the higher demands of new problems framed. figure 2 – evolution of problem-framing and analytical-framing related to sustainability and innovation studies. source: adapted from smith et al. (2010) the last and current round of broadening saw the emergence of the multi-level perspective and other conceptual devices to address the issue of “system innovation for sustainability”. the mlp aggregates diverse pre-existent theories into a (supposedly) coherent body of relations, as figure 3, from geels (2004, 40) demonstrates. it is an explicit example of gradual scientific evolution; even oliveira’s observation (1991) (commented in box 2) seems to find evidence here: signs are kept, but functions and meanings are redetermined. in this operation, the long-wave theory, constructed by contributions of simon kuznets, j. a. schumpeter, carlota perez and christopher freeman is coupled to the landscape level, the broadest level in the mlp building. the meso-level is understood in terms of regimes, and here not even the word changes, using nelson and winter (1982) seminal contribution to evolutionary economics, i.e., the technological regime concept. finally, the literature dedicated to large technical systems and social studies of science and technology provides the elements to the micro-level, the niche, the bearer of change, the level responsible for introducing novelties into the system in a process inspired by the classical diffusion studies. one must understand that the change in terminology is not devoid of meaning: it reflects the changes in the problem and analytical framing of the field. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 8 of course, its validation by the scientific community might happen or not, and this has more to do with its potential to explain those new problems framed. while weber and rohracher (2012) also abide by the strategy of concept retrofitting, smith et al. (2010) alert to the dangers of an indefinite re-framing of the problematique of the area. the larger the scope, the harder to find an adequate, accurate and efficient analytical tool to respond to its challenges. maybe the problem framing enlargement is part of the process of autonomy construction of the field and we may observe a redefinition and a tighter scope of the problems addressed by sustainability transitions in the future. figure 3 – the old and the new: mlp and a theory patchwork source: extracted from geels (2004) still, the days of such close interaction with the previous, consecrated, scientific body, seem to be coming to an end. loorbach et al. (2017) state that new subjects and “intellectual expansions” are drawing the field away from the most popularized socio-technical transition pathway, so akin to innovation studies. 7 a long excerpt from the authors, therefore, is deemed useful here: more recent intellectual expansions of the field include […] socio-ecological system understandings; socio-economic trends and new economy phenomena […] these socalled intellectual expansions are not just a matter of additional disciplinary perspectives. they represent a shift in the object and dimensions of sustainability transitions: from a focus on socio-technical systems to a recognition of socio 7 actually, loorbach et al. (2017) localize the emergence of st in two clusters: one is the field of innovation studies (ssst and economics of innovation), and the other one is a generic field of “environmental studies” (environmental assessment, integrated assessment, sustainability governance, environmental policy). one can speculate whether the most popular approach in the field today mlp was not elevated to this popular condition precisely because it approached itself to the fields of innovation studies (already consecrated, with prestige and a wide community of practitioners) instead of approximating the myriad of strands generically categorized under the heading of “environmental studies”. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 9 ecological, socio-economic, and socio-political systems as equally relevant objects of transition” (loorbach et. al, 2017:603). we turn now to the bibliometric evidence with this point in mind: does available data shows this research field in movement? and if so, where to? bibliometric evidence the results are presented in two parts: the general numbers of the field; then, a comparison between the numbers until 2011, when markard et al (2012) did their assessment and the numbers from 2012 on. this second part intends to show if (and how) the field changed from markard et al (2012) up to now (2018). a) the general picture the field registers an important increase in the number of peer-reviewed articles published since 1998. graph 1 shows some important yearly outputs milestones. in 2010, the field registered the first year with 100 publications. it was a substantial growth comparing to the mean between 2005 – 2009. in 2014, four years later, it reached the mark of 216 publications. and three years later, it broke the 300 articles/year mark, in 2017. the pattern of growth shown is literally exponential, as the exponential trendline demonstrates (and the high value of r2). this is a strong evidence that sustainability transitions is, indeed, an emerging field of research. there is still no sign of desacceleration and, ceteris paribus, the field might register a bigger number of publications in the next years. graph 1 – peer-reviwed articles per year tables 1 and 2 account for the most productive authors in the field and for the country of origin of the articles, respectively. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 10 table 1 – top 10 authors by number of articles published in the field (1998 – 2018) table 2 – articles’ countries of origin source: author’s own. markard et al. (2012) had already pointed to the european-bias of the field. the bias remains, as the top authors and counties of affiliation in table 1 and table 2 demonstrate. the data shows some signs of deconcentration: china accounts for 51 articles, japan for 36 and south-africa registers 32. it is important to remember, though, that the affiliation list is nonexcludable, so the same article may be attributed to more than one country of origin. tables 3 and 4 take us to the issue of vocabulary, our focus in this study. table 3 brings the most used keywords and table 4 sums up the most recurrent phrases and/or concepts in the titles and abstracts of the article data set. table 3 – recurrent keywords the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 11 table 4 – recurrent concepts in the abstracts (nlp mechanism) the combined analysis of tables 3 and 4 allows one to identify a common set of themes (sustainability, sustained/sustainable development, climate change), a concern with specific topics in this field (energy policy, renewable energy, renewable resources), the orientation towards applied knowledge (energy policy, governance approach, policy), the dynamic nature of the object (transition, process, change) and its relatedness with another, already established, the field of research, i.e., innovation studies (innovation, technology). the following sub-section will split these numbers into two sub-groups; we expect to capture the evolution of the field before and after 2012. b) sub-sets comparison: 1998–2011 versus 2012–2018 the years of 2011-2012 were chosen as the dividing line of the sub-sets for some reasons: 2011 marks the first publication of environmental innovation and societal transitions (eist), 8 a dedicated journal to socio-technical transitions; also in 2011, sustainability transition research network (strn) 9 published its first newsletter; and, in 2012 research policy published its special issue on sustainability transitions, including markard et al. (2012), which broadly spread the theme and became a landmark. breaking down the core-set into two sub-sets has a logic: the earlier publications should reflect the formation of the field and, as it is the hypothesis of this study, display connections to another, already established, research field. we assume that the features of sub-set i (1998-2011) should demonstrate higher relatedness to the innovation studies research area than sub-set ii (2012–2018). the higher influence of innovation studies in the earlier, formation phase, of sustainability transition studies, if identified, points to the process of speciation discussed earlier. more specifically, one hopes to find higher importance of terms and concepts that belong to the innovation studies area in sub-set i; the formation and consolidation of a proper lexicon in sub-set ii. 8 “aims and scope: the journal offers a platform for reporting studies of innovations and socioeconomic transitions to enhance an environmentally sustainable economy and thus solve structural resource scarcity and environmental problems, notably related to fossil energy use and climate change”, available in < https://www.journals.elsevier.com/environmental-innovation-and-societaltransitions >, last acess in 25/11/2018. 9 “strn is an international network of more than 1’500 scholars interested in sustainability transitions. sustainability transitions are long-term transformation processes of established industries, sociotechnical systems and societies to more sustainable modes of production and consumption”, available in < https://transitionsnetwork.org/about-strn/ >, last acess in 25/11/2018. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 12 table 5 – top 10 authors comparison 1998-2011 2012-2018 articles author articles author 13 geels, f. w. 18 brown, r. r. 12 rotmans, j. 15 kern, f. 11 hekkert, m. p. 15 raven, r. 11 kemp, r. 13 frantzeskaki, n. 10 smith, a. 12 loorbach, d. 9 whitmarsh, l. 12 smith, a. 6 jacobsson, s. 12 sovacool, b. k. 6 loorbach, d. 11 truffer, b. 6 negro, s. o. 11 wells, p. 6 raven, r. 10 hekkert, m. p. source: author’s own. table 6 – top 20 countries (affiliation) comparison 1998-2011 2012-2018 nº articles frequency country nº articles frequency country 131 209 netherlands 434 689 united kingdom 106 154 united kingdom 275 435 netherlands 50 87 united states 225 344 germany 44 64 sweden 200 343 united states 32 47 germany 156 214 sweden 28 38 australia 145 239 australia 20 28 canada 89 121 canada 20 25 switzerland 76 118 finland 18 26 spain 73 132 france 17 32 finland 66 81 norway 13 15 france 65 95 switzerland 12 17 austria 64 75 denmark 12 14 japan 58 66 austria 8 10 italy 57 88 italy 7 7 belgium 53 84 belgium 7 7 denmark 49 78 china 6 6 norway 43 68 spain 5 6 greece 32 43 south africa 3 5 thailand 24 42 japan 2 4 chile 23 48 new zealand source: author’s own. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 13 table 5 and 6 show that not much has changed from the first to the second set in terms of authors or countries. the object we are looking at remains euro-centric, despite some new entrants. now, the following tables (7 and 8) bring the more interesting findings. table 7 – keywords comparison 1998-2011 2012-2018 articles keywords articles keywords 126 sustainable development 494 sustainability 121 innovation 355 sustainable development 101 sustainability 325 innovation 80 climate change 253 climate change 70 energy policy 222 sustainability transitions 50 technology change 178 transition 46 transition 171 energy policy 45 technology development 151 governance approach 41 renewable resource 146 renewable energy 39 technology 140 energy transition 36 governance approach 130 renewable resource 35 transition management 118 environmental policy 33 environmental policy 114 alternative energy 27 economics 97 technology development 26 public policy 93 decision making 25 stakeholder 93 socio-technical transition 25 strategic approach 83 conceptual framework 24 conceptual framework 82 stakeholder 22 alternative energy 79 governance 22 learning 79 multi-level perspective source: author’s own. table 7 shows some interesting data. keywords from the first set seem to be much more related to the field of innovation studies: technology change, technology development, technology, economics and learning are some of the most iconic themes of innovation studies area. on the other hand, keywords from the second set do not maintain the same pattern: only technology development makes the list. in their place, new keywords show up, consolidating a field-specific lexicon. multi-level perspective, socio-technical transition and, reverberating the self-entitled name of the newborn research area, sustainability transitions. keywords related to policy and policymaking show up since the first set and remain in the second. this is evidence that the field, in addition to its technical and scientific concerns, has always been connected to an applicability heuristic. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 14 table 8 recurrent concepts in the abstracts (nlp mechanism) comparison 1998-2011 2012-2018 articles freq. abstract nlp articles freq. abstract nlp 113 190 transition 477 733 transition 111 155 development 365 466 development 83 110 process 311 449 sustainability 75 118 innovation 276 346 research 67 94 sustainability 256 304 analysis 65 76 research 249 308 process 58 72 change 231 362 innovation 58 74 climate change 228 303 change 53 63 concept 228 278 policy 53 76 sustained development 200 277 sustainability transitions 52 62 policy 197 265 governing 50 65 technology 187 227 climate change 43 56 system 184 212 challenge 41 46 potential 174 217 actor 40 58 governing 173 192 case study 40 57 interaction 166 214 concept 40 47 product 164 188 potential 38 44 case 161 171 case 37 42 society 146 208 transform 36 45 challenge 135 157 social source: author’s own. table 8 depicts fewer changes from the first to the second sub-set than the previous one. from the top 20 terms/concepts in the first sub-set, 16 remain; still, the ones that are left behind are, again, related to innovation studies: technology, system, interaction and product. once again, sustainability transitions emerge, confirming the popularity of the name. sustainable-related terms gain ground, while innovation loses momentum. manuals and handbooks the publication of manuals and handbooks is indicative of the formation of some sort of consensus among the research community. it provides some common ground, assumptions that do not sparkle disputes or controversies anymore. that is why fleck sees the manuals as important in the formation of scientists (fleck 1979, ix, apud condé 2003, 136). with this intention, i have searched in the strn newsletters for the publication or indication of manuals and handbooks in the field of sustainability transitions. the strn newsletters are a great source of material for this kind of inquiry into the formation of the field. they are quadrimestral and are published since march 2011. for this article, we analyzed from the first to the june 2018 newsletters, totaling 28 documents. they usually cover six topics: (i) words from the chairman, (ii) environmental innovation and societal transitions (the communities journal, founded in 2011), (iii) network news, (iv) event announcements, (v) new research projects and (vi) publications. my focus was only on the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 15 publications – therefore there is a lot of material that can yet be scrutinized to understand the initial years of this research area. after reviewing the 28 documents concerning publications in the field, there are zero references to the manual and one reference to the handbook. the first mention of to handbook is in strn 12th newsletter: there is also a handbook in the making, to be published by springer, which signals efforts towards codification. the handbook on sustainability transition and sustainable peace, edited by hans günter brauch, úrsula oswald spring, john grin, and jürgen scheffran, will contain several chapters that aim to take stock of academic developments in the transitions-field in the last 10 years. (strn 12th newsletter, emphasis added) then, the strn 21st newsletter registers this publication’s debut. according to the document, the handbook has been written by “60 authors from many disciplines and 18 countries on five continents” (strn 21st newsletter). the list of subjects is diverse:  moving towards sustainability transition;  aiming at sustainable peace;  meeting challenges of the 21st century: demographic imbalances, temperature rise and the climate–conflict nexus;  initiating research on global environmental change, limits to growth, decoupling of growth and resource needs;  developing theoretical approaches to sustainability and transitions;  analysing national debates on sustainability in north america;  preparing transitions towards a sustainable economy and society, production and consumption and urbanization;  examining sustainability transitions in the water, food and health sectors from latin american and european perspectives;  preparing sustainability transitions in the energy sector;  relying on transnational, international, regional and national governance for strategies and policies towards sustainability transition. still, the description of the book and its highly heterogeneous formation leaves much more the impression of a compendium than anything else. it is distinct from manuals and handbooks as we can see in other disciplines, e.g. economics. thereby, despite this solitary effort, the field has not yet arrived at a common set of principles, concepts or frameworks at the required level to produce manuals and/or handbooks. this is another evidence of the emergence in process of the area. summing up results from the three steps:  the field is still struggling to define itself as an autonomous area – and for this reason, there is still no broad consensus of what are the basic presuppositions or ontological stances that could fit into a manual and/or handbook;  bibliometric evidence points to a process of distancing from innovation studies – indicating the consolidation of a common and proper language – more adequate to the problems under concern in the st area; if the new intellectual avenues mentioned by loorbach et al (2017) in fact gain ground, this process could go further yet and we would see in the near future the diminishing relative importance the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 16 of themes, vocabulary and concepts belonging to innovation studies in this new area. discussion fleck says that it might be impossible to grasp entirely the precise contours of a scientific discipline. our aim, however, was much more modest. we aimed at the process of emancipation taking place within the sustainability transitions arena. additionally, i have used this case to reflect upon the epistemological evolutionism potential. given the evidence here summarized, i come to four conclusions: 1. the sustainability transitions research field is an emergent field; 2. the sustainability transitions research field has an important connection with innovation studies; 3. the aforementioned connection is dynamic: it is a process of inspiration and emancipation, that reflects, through changes in the structure of language and codification, changes in the problem framing and the analytical framing belonging to the field (in a 40-year long process – and still counting); 4. the evidence points to a process of speciation in the evolution of this specific field concerning the present object, the next steps include collecting the following set of data: authors’ network evolution (do they collaborate more with innovation studies authors in the earlier phase of the emerging field than later?); co-occurrence analysis (does the concepts in the articles of the core-set are associated with more innovation studies concepts in the earlier phase of the emerging filed than later? looking for patterns of redetermination); and citation analysis (does the earlier phase articles cite more innovation studies articles?). then, this data might be enough to attest that the process of speciation is, indeed, indisputable. furthermore, understanding the processes of institutional formation, synchronous to the linguistic evolution of the field, could help to understand how coevolution takes place between the epistemic community and the scientific field itself. therefore, it would be valuable to observe the formation of this epistemic community, its staff, its formation and legitimation rites, frequency of meetings, shared values and norms. this article has limitations. first, there is no guaranteed relation between the patterns observed in the emergence of this specific field of research and any other, in any specific area. even research communities under the same broad category, such as ecology (under the same “environmental studies” umbrella), may present a very different pattern of evolution from the one described here. second, the description is partial and insufficient: partial because the emergence of this strand of literature is still happening; insufficient, because of the quantity of scientific production related to the sustainability transition which surpasses this author’s reading capacity. finally, there seems to be a grey area of institutional meddling that counts a lot to the advancement and establishment of a new research field, i.e., the creation of new journals, universities committees’ engagement, associations, scholarships, etc., until that the new area reaches consensus (or, as we shall see, a gestalt) and becomes a candidate to advise public policies (an epistemic community in action). this interesting and compelling element is almost absent from this working paper; eventually, it shall appear in a rather anecdotal fashion. still, there are strong reasons to defend the accomplishments of this article. first, it sheds light on the emergence of a field that, from its birth, intends to influence public policy on a large scale. second, it blends a case study (sustainability transitions) with a framework discussion on epistemology (catastrophism or evolutionism). the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 17 thus the article opens space to the debate of different perspectives on the evolution of science. the epistemological evolutionism, applied to the emergence of a scientific field or scientific discipline seems to deal well with this notion of speciation, i.e., the gradual emancipation of what was once a topic of interest in an established area into an autonomous research area. however, one can think of other types of gradual processes, e.g., fusions, which could be conceptualized as the gradual unification of a diverse array of small strands into a greater area. actually, if we base ourselves on the double origins of the field, i.e., innovation studies and sustainability studies (loorbach et al, 2017), both speciation and fusion might have happened in parallel. but that’s for another moment. the linguistic approach applied in this article proved to be a very interesting analytical lens. as we have seen, there is a lot of dispute going on in the field concerning names, terms, concepts and definitions. language is working, as the mobilized theory suggests, as institutional, grammatical rulemaking, happening through the social praxis of this specific scientific community, or epistemological community. rossi’s view on language is, therefore, vindicated: “if connections, juxtapositions and relations between the terms of language reproduce connections, juxtapositions and relations between things, naming is tantamount to knowing” (rossi 2001, 231). a few caveats before the end: this article focuses on processes that occur in the field of social sciences... even if one would not like to differentiate things a priori, we must take this into account. language-games, to use the expression of wittgenstein, might have a different dynamic in the natural sciences. another issue is the existence of a protoepistemological community, one that exerted the role of midwifery to bring into light this emergent scientific area. the contrast is clear, e.g., there was no epistemic community pushing ex-ante for the creation and establishment of economics as a specific discipline (of course, this does not exclude proto ideas and pioneers). i mean: the sustainability area was a political cause 10 and a cultural phenomenon before it started to articulate itself as a scientific area of study. this is a source of idiosyncrasy present in this case. to conclude, if we follow this lead, that scientific fields of inquiry can form under different contexts, from within other fields, more or less influenced by external events (such as politics), mainly due to social praxis associated with its scientific grammar, does the notion of a well-behaved scientific cycle (normal science – paradigm failure – paradigm contestation – scientific revolution) turns to dust? no, one could answer, because kuhn’s framework seems to be pretty good at explaining intertheory competition (let us leave incommensurability issues apart for now); but, as it turns out, the majority of science is not competing with other strands over the same ideas or objects. it is competing with itself, its self-contained, and struggling to determine its own vocabulary, language and gestalt. for this reason, goodman’s observation seems accurate: “[…] we begin at any time with some old version or old world that we have at hand and to which we are connected until there are determination and conditions to transform it into a new one” (goodman 1978, 97, apud oliveira 1991, 50). 10 “our mission is to deepen the scientific understanding of sustainability transitions through a program of networking, research coordination, education and synthesis activities. we also strive to be a hub for practitioners in policy making, civil society, and business who are working to advance societies into more sustainable directions” available in < https://transitionsnetwork.org/about-strn/ >, last acess in 16/11/2020. the dual purpose indicated by the group (strn) demonstrates how it is an area of scientific research with clear purposes of application for public policies and with direct and profound repercussions on the very vision of the world and society. the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 18 conclusion this article served a dual purpose. it can be read as a historical analysis of the formation of a specific scientific field, the studies of sustainability transitions, and it can be read as a case study of scientific advancement from an evolutionary (linguistic) perspective. following these purposes, we present elements that demonstrate the autonomy of the studies for sustainability transitions. there is evidence of the formation of a specific language in the field, even though this is a process in the making. there is also evidence that this process was influenced by scientific fields that are already established and with their own traditions and language, strengthening the hypothesis that scientific progress, in this case, appears to be a process of speciation. the article sought to demonstrate with this exercise how the linguistic vision of scientific advancement can provide a robust conception for issues associated with the epistemology and historiography of science. acknowledgments i thank flávia consoni, rosana corazza and diego moraes for their comments in an earlier version of this article. i am especially grateful to vinicius muraro for making the vantage point software available. i also thank the editors of transversal and two anonymous reviewers. finally, i would like to thank capes for funding the doctoral scholarship in the postgraduate program in science and technology policy at unicamp. annex 1 most-cited publications in the field of sustainability transitions (based in markard et. al, 2012 and updated) no title author(s), year and journal citations (2018) 1 technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study geels, f.w., 2002, research policy 1664 2 typology of sociotechnical transition pathways geels, f.w., schot, j., 2007, research policy 1296 3 from sectoral systems of innovation to sociotechnical systems: insights about dynamics and change from sociology and institutional theory geels, f.w., 2004, research policy 1062 4 regime shifts to sustainability through processes of niche formation: the approach of strategic niche management kemp, r., schot, j., hoogma, r., 1998, technology analysis and strategic management 1059 5 understanding carbon lock-in unruh, g.c., 2000, energy policy 984 6 more evolution than revolution: transition management in public policy rotmans, j., kemp, r., van asselt, m., 2001, foresight 790 7 the governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions smith, a., stirling, a., berkhout, f., 2005, research policy 785 8 functions of innovation systems: a new approach for analysing technological change hekkert, m.p., suurs, r.a.a., negro, s.o., kuhlmann, s., smits, r.e.h.m., 2007, technological forecasting and social change 772 9 on the nature, function and composition of technological systems carlsson, b., stankiewicz, r., 1991, journal of evolutionary economics 739 10 bricolage versus breakthrough: distributed and embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship garud, r., karnøe, p., 2003, research policy 649 the emerging research field of sustainability transitions: an evolutionist perspective on scientific advance victo josé da silva neto 19 11 analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems: a scheme of analysis bergek, a., jacobsson, s., carlsson, b., lindmark, s., rickne, a., 2008, research policy 613 12 the multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions: responses to seven criticisms geels, f.w., 2011, environmental innovation and societal transitions 518 13 strategic niche management and sustainable innovation journeys: theory, findings, research agenda, and policy schot, j., geels, f.w., 2008, technology analysis and strategic management 518 14 innovation studies and sustainability transitions: the allure of the multi-level perspective and its challenges smith, a., voß, j.-p., grin, j., 2010, research policy 501 15 the politics and policy of energy system transformation explaining the german diffusion of renewable energy technology jacobsson, s., lauber, v., 2006, energy policy 461 16 the diffusion of renewable energy technology: an analytical framework and key issues for research jacobsson, s., johnson, a., 2000, energy policy 452 17 caution! transitions ahead: politics, practice, and sustainable transition management shove, e., walker, g., 2007, environment and planning a 428 18 technological innovation systems and the multi-level perspective: towards an integrated framework markard, j., truffer, b., 2008, research policy 422 19 ontologies, socio-technical transitions (to sustainability), and the multi-level perspective geels, f.w., 2010, research policy 407 20 the past and future of constructive technology assessment schot, j., rip, a., 1997, technological forecasting and social change 383 21 transforming the energy sector: the evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology jacobsson, s., bergek, a., 2004, industrial and corporate change 354 22 toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions coenen, l., benneworth, p., truffer, b., 2012, research policy 314 23 can cities shape socio-technical transitions and how would we know if they were? hodson, m., marvin, s., 2010, research policy 284 24 processes and patterns in transitions and system innovations: refining the coevolutionary multi-level perspective geels, f.w., 2005, technological forecasting and social change 276 25 the dynamics of transitions in socio-technical systems: a multi-level analysis of the transition pathway from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles (1860-1930) geels, f.w., 2005, technology analysis and strategic management 255 26 regime resistance against low-carbon transitions: introducing politics and power into the multi-level perspective geels, f.w., 2014, theory, culture & society 251 27 a socio-technical analysis of low-carbon transitions: introducing the multi-level perspective into transport studies geels, f.w., 2012, journal of transport geography 212 28 strategies for shifting technological systems. the case of the automobile system schot, j., hoogma, r., elzen, b., 1994, futures 204 29 rethinking the multi-level perspective of technological transitions genus, a., coles, a.-m., 2008, research policy 184 references chappin, e. j. l.; ligtvoet, a. 2014. transition and transformation: a 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(ed.) analytical and continental philosophy: methods and perspectives: papers of the 37th international wittgenstein symposium. vol xxii, pp. 52-54. geels, f. w. 2002. technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study. research policy (31): 1257-1274. geels, f. w. 2013a. “reference list to transition publications”. retrieved from < http://www.transitionsnetwork.org/files/reference%20list%20to%20transition% 20publications.pdf >, (accessed in 01/12/2018). geels, f. w. 2013b, words from the chairman, in 10th strn newsletter, p. 1 haas, p. 1992. introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination. international organization: knowledge, power and international policy coordination (46): 1-35. kuhn, thomas. 1970 [1962]. the structure of scientific revolution. chicago: the university of chicago press. loorbach, d.; frantzeskaki, n.; avelino, f. 2017. sustainability transitions research: transforming science and practice for societal change. annu. rev. environ. resour (42): 599-626. markard, j.; raven, r.; truffer, b. 2012. sustainability transitions: an emerging field of research and its prospects. research policy (41): 955-967. oliveira, j. c. p. 1991. kuhn e quine. cadernos de história e filosofia da ciência 1 (1): 33-53. rossi, paolo. 2001. o nascimento da ciência moderna na europa. são paulo: edusc. sengers, f.; wieczorek, a.; raven, r. 2016. experimenting for sustainability transitions: a systematic literature review. technological forecasting & social change (145): 153-164. smith, a., voss, j., grin, j. 2010. innovation studies and sustainability transitions: the allure of multi-level perspective and its challenges. research policy 39(4): 435-448. sustainability transitions research network, 28 newsletters, many years. available in < https://transitionsnetwork.org/ > (accessed in 01/12/2018). weber, m.; rohracher, h. 2012. legitimizing research, technology and innovation policies for transformative change: combining insights from innovation systems and multi-level perspective in a comprehensive “failures” framework. research policy (41): 1037-1047. microsoft word lima rosa bento layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (9): 1-19 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2020 – this is an open-access journal article translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima1 gabriela gomes rosa2 miguel rocha bento3 abstract: in this paper, we discuss the potentialities and challenges of historical approaches related to the symmetrical anthropology proposed by bruno latour and collaborators. to accomplish this goal, first, we provide a brief account about how sociology and anthropology of science evolved, stressing how these different movements correlate with historiographical approaches. second, we introduce the metaphysical scheme of symmetrical anthropology and discuss which characteristics a historical narrative should have to be consistent with this world vision. third, we briefly describe the articulation of the uncertainty principle focusing on appropriating such characteristics. based on this concrete historical account, we discuss the potentialities and challenges of this approach to history of physics. keywords: symmetrical anthropology; symmetrical sociology; actor-network theory; symmetrical history; science studies doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i9.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction as any other utterance, historical narratives cannot be understood in isolation, since they are committed to different values, world views, and, in the case of the history of science, to different conceptions about nature of science. hence, we may say that the different historical 1 nathan willig lima [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0566-3968] is a professor in the department of physics at the federal university of rio grande do sul – ufrgs. address: av. bento gonçalves, 9500 – bairro agronomia. porto alegre, rs, brasil – 91501-970. e-mail: nathan.lima@ufrgs.br 2 gabriela gomes rosa [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6071-8346] is a graduate student of physics teaching at the federal university of rio grande do sul – ufrgs. address: av. bento gonçalves, 9500 – bairro agronomia. porto alegre, rs, brasil – 91501-970. e-mail: gabrielagomesr@outlook.com 3 miguel rocha bento [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8507-9445] is a physicist and a member of the research project of symmetric sociology of physics education at the federal university of rio grande do sul – ufrgs. address: av. bento gonçalves, 9500 – bairro agronomia. porto alegre, rs, brasil – 91501-970. e-mail: miguel.r.bento@gmail.com translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 2 approaches always correlate with the various disciplines of their time (such as sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and sciences themselves). in this sense, the historiographic work consists of making this correlation explicit. as videira (2007, 127) outlines, historiography should be a critical discourse that reveals, to the greatest extent, the epistemological, historical, political, and axiological roots on which historical discourses are built. in other words, historiography reveals the relation between the historical approach and different world views. in the present work, we assess these relations, chiefly addressing that between history of science (and, more specifically, history of physics) and sociology/anthropology of science. it is important to mention that there are many studies that propose a sociology of physics, which, of course, has important implications to history of physics (reyes galindo 2011). nonetheless, our main goal is to discuss the potentialities and the challenges of historical approaches that are, at some level, committed to the worldview that underlies what bruno latour (1993) calls symmetrical anthropology4 – which has not been much explored in the field of history of physics. we will call such historical approaches as symmetrical history. in order to follow videira’s recommendation, we briefly discuss different possibilities of history of science according to its possible relations with sociology and anthropology of science, following latour’s (1993) reasoning. in the sequence, we introduce latour’s world view (latour 1993; 1999d; latour et al. 2012; latour 2016; 1988b; 1999e; 1988a; 2005), which claims to be rooted in a different metaphysical formulation when compared to previous sociological trends. then, to make the potentialities and challenges of the approach clearer, we introduce a symmetrical history account of the articulation of the uncertainty principle.5 and, finally, we present our final remarks. the history of symmetrical history the presentation of historical narratives about science and physics had taken place through their whole development process, even though history of science was only constituted as an autonomous discipline in the 20th century (kragh 1987). in the beginning, the production of historical accounts had the purpose of contributing to the stabilization of science as a valid tradition in the pursue of truth, quarrelling with religion and philosophy (videira 2007). the positivist doctrine proposed by augusto comte in the 19th century, for instance, suggested a linear conception of science progress, which unavoidably runs into a final point, which is the contemporary knowledge (comte 1830). according to foucault (1979), this kind of history is concerned with the study of origins (ursprung). in the origin resides the conception of the thing-in-itself (before any accident or distortion), the essence and the truth. in the positivist history, to search for the origins is to search for the seed that ultimately and unavoidably will lead to our present knowledge; is to show the solid ground where contemporary conceptions stand upon. so, this first era of historical approaches can be characterized by the narratives of scientists and epistemologists in defense of a specific conception of nature of science (videira 2007; alfonso-goldfarb 1994). in this perspective, the progress of science is explained by some natural element, such as the discovery of truth or of an essence. we may 4 latour uses this term in the essay we have never been modern (latour 1993). as we will discuss, the worldview defended in this essay is consistent with further propositions of the author such as the actor-network theory (latour 2005). 5 the articulation of the uncertainty principle, first presented in a paper written by heisenberg in 1927, is addressed in several different works (tanona 2004; camilleri 2007; m. s. longair 1984; jammer 1966; jijnasu 2016). thus, we do not aim to claim any historical novelty, but rather the opposite, that is to explore the potentiality of looking to a known historical event with a new metaphysical worldview. translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 3 call these descriptions as “epistemological history of science”.6 they relate to sociology and anthropology by denying their role in characterizing scientific knowledge. the structural changes that took place in the industrial revolution in the end of the 19th century corroborated the conception of science as the source of economic growth and social welfare, reinforcing the myth of linear progress (auler and delizoicov 2001). it seems to be a consensus, however, that confidence on science and on its capability of promoting social well-being was drastically called into question after the world war ii (lopes 2013), a scenario that allowed the rise of more critical accounts of the history of science, being pursued by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists (lightman 2016). latour (1993) describes this new era of sociological and anthropological accounts on science as disputed by two different movements: the critique and the deconstruction.7 following latour (1993), we may call “critical history of science” those historical accounts that explain science progress by mobilizing only elements from society (and no longer from nature). shapin & schaffer (1985) and boris hessen (2009)8 exemplify this sort of historiography. some premises of such descriptions were synthetized in the strong programme of sociology (sps) (bloor 1991). particularly, the program explores social causes for the “success” and “failures” of science instead of the asymmetrical description of the “epistemological history”, in which natural causes explain the success and social causes explain the failures.9 as latour (1993) points out, however, the sps deconstructs nature as the source of truth, but it still reifies social structures. if the natural essences are not objective and intrinsically real for the sps, the social structures are.10 in this sense, latour (1993) claims that it is not possible to say that sps is fully symmetrical. on the other hand, the “deconstruction movement” and consequently what we may call “deconstructive history” went further, dissolving not only nature but also society – reducing reality to games of language and power (latour 1993). although derrida (1997) is often mentioned as the leading figure of deconstructivism, a clear example of “deconstructive history” can be found in foucault’s (1979a; 1979b) discussion on the relation between truth and power and his proposition of genealogical studies. more specifically, foucault (1979a) proposes genealogy as a study opposed to the search of origins (ursprung). instead of adopting the teleological perspective of the positivist history – the supra-historic standpoint from which is possible to analyze history, the genealogist is committed to highlighting the singularities and specificities of each event. thus, genealogy is devoted to the accidents and not the essences. therefore, genealogists do not search for the ursprung (the thing-in-itself, the essence and the truth): what they search for is the herkunfut (provenance) and the entestehung 6 bruno latour (1993) discusses bachelard’s description of science to characterize epistemology as the discipline that explains scientific knowledge using natural elements only. although proposed in a different period, lakatos’ (1978) rational reconstruction also could be included in this sort of historiography. 7 videira (2007) speaks about a post-positivist period in history of science – from 1945 to 1970 – in which thomas kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions (kuhn 1996) plays an important role – and a post-modernist period, from 1970 on. it is possible to make a parallel between the post-positivist history and what latour calls “critique” and post-modernist history and “deconstruction”, although these categories do not fit completely. 8 originally delivered in 1931 at the second international congress of the history of science in london, it is prior to the 1945 turning point of history of science (videira 2007). despite of that, its proposal embodies the spirit of what latour calls critique. 9 for instance, the “epistemological history” explains geocentrism by saying that it was grounded in religious tradition while heliocentrism was allowed by the discovery of the true system. in other hand, “critical history” would explain both movements through social causes, as the adoption of a specific religious view. 10 latour’s critiques on ssp were challenged by bloor (1999) and then, reaffirmed by latour (1999b). translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 4 (emergence). while herkunft is associated to singularities of events, as well as accidents and distortions, entestehung is associated to the dispute, conflict, and shock of forces. emergence is only produced in a determined state of powers. in this sense, genealogy does not provide any certainty, neither it shows us that science was created on a solid foundation – on the contrary, it stresses the lack of any foundations, rationality or stability as the characteristic of events, which always are singular. in summary, epistemological history describes science as something independent of society. on the other hand, critical history ascribes to social structures the source of scientific progress (its successes and failures) and deconstructive history gives up any attempt to provide solid ground for scientific endeavors. instead of deciding which claim is true, latour (2016) proposes to take the controversy of the different approaches as the object of study and to explain how this was possible in the first place. the objective of latour’s (2016) historical accounts is to show how something that was politically disputed, that depended on the social affairs and that was constructed upon accidents and mistakes, in the end rises as objective and natural. in order to do so, it is not possible to be committed with the metaphysical perspective of the previous historiographical trends (latour 1999d). it is necessary to adopt another posture about the relation between nature and society – what can be called fully symmetrical perspective (latour 1993). this new metaphysical perspective was built up by latour and collaborators through decades and is still object of philosophical construction (harman 2009). it is chiefly grounded in sartres’s existentialism (sartre 2007), callon’s sociology of translation (callon 1984), whitehead’s philosophy of propositions (whitehead 1978) and tarde’s monadology (tarde 2007). sociology of translation, philosophy of propositions and actor-network theory: a monadological perspective to describe history of science symmetrically according to latour (1993), the modernist period is an attempt to forge an absolute separation between nature and society, as what we observe in kant’s (2005) philosophy. the “epistemology” is firmly grounded in this ontological scheme. despite of that, when we look to laboratories and historical primary sources, what we find is the process of intense hybridization of natural and social elements in what latour (1993) calls quasi-objects (or hybrids). on the other hand, the critique dissolves nature while sustaining society as an ontological pole, and deconstruction dissolves everything. as we have pointed out, however, although the positivist history seems not to resist to an accurate and deep analysis of the primary sources, it seems that scientific knowledge at some point resists to human volition and subjectivity. otherwise, in the middle of a pandemic, should we consider scientific orientations only as an effect of discourse? in order to provide an alternative description of scientific knowledge and progress, one that is epistemic but not only epistemic, sociological but not only sociological, and discursive but not only discursive, latour starts from sartre’s (2007) existentialism, according to which the rejection of the conception of god in contemporary philosophy implies that human nature has no essence. humans were not created to be something, so they do not have a pre-existing essence – they produce and stabilize their essence along their lives. what latour (1993) proposes with symmetrical anthropology is to extend sartre’s conception to all non-humans, to all quasi-objects: their essence is not something preexisting too, but something to be stabilized along time. in this sense, the scientific practice does not discover nature, but it creates nature and makes it stable. there is a particularly important but subtle element in this perspective: symmetrical anthropology is also nontranslations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 5 essentialist as deconstruction, but it emphasizes the capacity that different actors11 have of creating and stabilizing essences. in this sense, its focus is on construction and association and not on destruction. this conception has direct impact on how history is told: one should not look for objective pre-existing beings that meet with each other. on the other hand, what one seeks is the articulation of actors, whose essence is not objective and immutable. one aims to explain how these new articulations change their essence and create new actors. in the end, nature and society are created and stabilized by the practices of the actors and not the contrary (this is the key feature of actor-network theory). one way of describing such articulations is through the terminology of the sociology of translation, which is based on three principles: agnosticism, generalized symmetry, and free association (the abandonment of all a priori distinctions between the natural and the social) (callon 1984, 196). the generalized symmetry and the free association principles lead us to propose that humans and non-humans must share agency along history (latour 1999a). in this sense, nonhumans are not material objects waiting to be used by humans, as they also change the course of human actions. when scientists speak, they are proposing something that was constructed in the articulation of humans and non-humans. every time this happens, the result is a process of “translation”, which is never the simple combination of the original programs of action, but rather something new: “in place of a rigid opposition between context and content, chains of translation refer to the work through which actors modify, displace, and translate their various and contradictory interests” (latour 1999d, 311). in the process of translations, the scientist, in particular, may assume the role of spokesman – representing all non-humans (which cannot speak) in the same way political representatives speak in the name of an assembly of humans that would not be listened if they were to speak all at the same time (latour 1993). this translation always involves uncertainties, and, sometimes, the spokesman may betray the group (callon 1984). this non-essentialist and symmetrical perspective was adopted by latour (1999c) to organize a historical account on pasteur’s work on fermentation. in this case, pasteur’s work resulted in the existence of a new actant – the yeast. this process of coming into existence by the mediation and translation is called by latour as articulation, which derives from whitehead’s philosophy of proposition (whitehead 1978). according to this perspective, each actor may be recognized as a proposition, which only exists by the articulation of other propositions. it is important to note, however, that when pasteur mobilizes equipment, theories and samples in his laboratory trials, the microbes become articulated by all these propositions and they become independent of pasteur himself (it is not subjective anymore). that is why epistemology, critique and deconstruction are at some point right: all of them emphasize different dimensions of the same process. therefore, symmetrical anthropology (and, as a consequence, what we call symmetrical history) attempts to explain how the whole collective of humans and nonhumans come into existence and how they change over time. all actors (humans and nonhumans) have agency, they transform reality and impact other actors’ agency as well as they are transformed and have their agency impacted by other actors. this metaphysical perspective, however, is not new in sociology (latour et al. 2012; latour 2001). gabriel tarde (1843-1904) proposed a monadological sociology, defending that the use of the concept of monad (minimum element, whose existence is actually sustained by the relations with other monads) was crucial to sociology (tarde 2007). according to tarde (2007), science does not 11 actor is defined in the following sense: “instead of starting with entities that are already components of the world, science studies focus on the complex and controversial nature of what it is for an actor to come into existence. the key is to define the actor by what it does-its performances under laboratory trials” (latour 1999d, 303). translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 6 owe its progress to the adoption of a positivist perspective, but to the search of monads – such as atoms, molecules and cells. a symmetrical history of physics: methodological considerations from the symmetrical anthropology and its metaphysical scheme, we propose six characteristics to symmetrical history. these characteristics should not be understood as rules, but a translation of the metaphysical perspective. it is very important to highlight that for an account to be a symmetrical history it does not have to use latour’s concepts explicitly but only to be consistent with the metaphysical perspective (latour 2005). in other words, it does not need to speak about quasi-objects, actors, and so on. certainly, if during the process the necessity of mobilizing a specific concept rises, it is possible to use it, yet it is not necessary. accordingly, symmetrical history is the one that shows the following characteristics: a) the history moves toward the stabilization of nature and society. symmetrical history reveals how elements of nature and social structures were articulated and stabilized after a controversy. we may describe the provenance and emergence – which reveal the singularities of the event. however, we must highlight what makes nature and society stable. b) non-humans have agency: instead of telling a history in which humans use objects to make history, symmetrical history observes how humans and non-humans articulate, mediate, and translate each other. of course, the scientist plays the role of spokesman, but again their will is affected by non-humans’ agency at some point. c) actors do not exist independently – they are the articulation of other actors. instead of considering “reality” a binary property, symmetrical history acknowledges reality as a continuous spectrum. an actant exists according to the number and stability of associations of its network. in this sense, symmetrical history is non-essentialist. in symmetrical history, one shows the work of the scientist to mobilize elements to make a new actor real. d) knowledge and belief are symmetrical: all statements are valid in a specific network, in a specific set of propositions – what latour calls space-time envelope (latour 1999d). e) it is possible to hierarchize propositions: although there is not any essential difference between knowledge and belief, in a certain spacetime envelope, it is possible to compare the networks mobilized by different actors. in this sense, it is possible to hierarchize propositions. there are propositions that exist more than others, and as a consequence some statements are truer than others. f) interior and exterior of science are mixed: instead of separating the social from the natural, symmetrical history deals with collective of humans and non-humans. thus, it is not possible to separate interior from exterior of science, ontology from epistemology and epistemology from politics (latour 1999d). this does not mean translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 7 that all these aspects must be present all the time, but rather that they may be (latour 2005). g) actors must speak: instead of projecting a priori categories onto the history or aiming to find the “real history”, one should focus on listening and reporting the actor’s own narratives. in this sense, the symmetrical history is always based on narratives of the own protagonists, with all subjectivities and controversies that this can bring about. we do not expect to mirror “historic reality”, but to articulate what latour (2005) calls a risky account. by bringing more points of view into the account, one makes it more stable. the six characteristics that we propose for symmetrical history may also be found in two of latour’s historical studies on physics (latour 1988a; 1999f). when we think about physics, however, some specificities that were not addresses by latour may appear. specially, there are theoretical works on physics that do not deal with any laboratory experiment, which is a key element of latour’s description. in this case, a different sort of actor seems to play an important role: the “mathematical actor”. mathematical symbols in theoretical physics may be considered actors in the same way as laboratory equipment is. and mathematical manipulations should be like laboratory experiment. in this sense, we claim that mathematical symbols should be treated as any other non-human for symmetrical history. although latour does not discuss this issue, the reader can find a wide literature about the interplay between physics and mathematics (ferreira and silva 2020; lützen 2013; paty 2003). in the next section, we will propose a symmetrical discussion on the articulation of the uncertainty principle, chiefly discussing heisenberg’s (1927) paper.12 we intend to discuss how it was possible to pass from a deterministic world to a world of indeterminacies in 1927.13 in order to achieve such a goal, we will try to answer the following questions: what were the associations necessary for the uncertainty principle to come into existence? what were the translations? which were the variations of meaning and agency? were there betrayals? what was heisenberg’s program of action? has he succeeded or failed? the articulation of the uncertainty principle – translations and betrayals14 emergence (entestehung) of the uncertainty principle the beginning of the 20th century was colored by the intense proliferation of new actants (such as the quantum, the atom, the wave function, and so on) and of new principles legislating the behavior of this new “nature”, such as the ehrenfest’s adiabatic principle and 12 we will follow the english translation (heisenberg 1983a). we also address a comment made by heisenberg (1983b) in 1967. it is important to stress that it is far known that, after world war ii, heisenberg aimed to present himself in a nice picture (howard 2004). thus, this narrative should be considered a risky account – in which the interests and conceptions of heisenberg (the spokesman) are already hybridized with the primary sources. if we were interested about discovering the consistencies of heisenberg’s narrative, we should search for other spokesmen and to confront their accounts – which could be object of another study. 13 there is a distinction between uncertainty and indeterminacy. the first refers to fluctuations associated to a measurement while the second refers to something that is intrinsic in nature (jammer 1966). as we will discuss, heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’ led to an indeterminate worldview. 14 as we will discuss in the final remarks, along the text we overemphasized some categories to highlight the potentialities and challenges of this historiographic trend. in a usual historic presentation these categories would not need to be discussed explicitly. translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 8 bohr’s correspondence principle (jammer 1966). although many movements and actors can be mentioned, two special programs of action are important to be highlighted. leaded by albert einstein, the first one promoted the study of radiation from the perspective of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (klein 1967), leading to the articulation of a corpuscular radiation in 1905 and of a dual radiation in 1909, based on a strong realist perspective and a deep sense of unification. in another direction, we may observe the studies about the structure of matter and, more specifically, the development of atomic models. in this scenario, niels bohr may be mentioned as one of the exponents (kragh 2012). the physicist developed another culture of approaching physics, as he had a different philosophical background when compared to einstein. he was much influenced by william james’ pragmatism and by harald høffding’s studies on søren kierkegaard (jammer 1966). many of his ideas were directed toward the possibility of blurring the boundaries between the subject and the object – the distinct and non-accessible kant’s ontological poles –, a concept that plays an important role in the copenhagen interpretation (heisenberg 1958). the development of bohr’s ‘astronomical’ model for the atom motivated a revival of the interest for mathematical methods used in astronomy (such as in the celestial mechanics written by laplace in the beginning of the 19th century), which could be used in the description of matter. in 1925, werner heisenberg produced a paper in which he adopted the mathematical formalism coming from the studies on celestial mechanics to inaugurate what would become quantum mechanics. heisenberg was committed not only to a determined way of practicing physics, but also to a specific philosophy of physics, firmly grounded in the positivist doctrine, as it can be seen from the abstract of his umdeutung paper: “the present paper seeks to establish a basis for theoretical quantum mechanics founded exclusively upon relationships between quantities which in principle are observable” (heisenberg 1967, 261). the development of heisenberg’s program in the subsequent years by heisenberg himself, born, dirac, jordan and pauli would lead to matrix mechanics and to transformation theory. furthermore, after 1924, heisenberg started an intense collaboration with niels bohr, and in 1926 he became a lecturer in copenhagen, at the same time dirac and jordan were also there. matrix mechanics, thus, can be considered the translation of the mechanics of the atom, atomic spectra and niels bohr’s original program. the formulation is grounded in the discontinuity of atomic processes, matrix formalism, pragmatism, existentialism, and positivism. however, the stabilization of this program would have been deeply impacted by the rise of a competitor, not only rooted in a different philosophy, but grounded in a different mathematical formalism and supported by other set of physical data. to be more precise, erwin schrödinger had long studied statistical mechanics, and for many years was searching a description of quantum phenomena that could be compatible not only with special relativity but also with general relativity (joas and lehner 2009). schrödinger, as einstein, was committed to a realistic perspective and, in the year of 1926, proposed wave mechanics, in which not only electromagnetic radiation was described as continuous waves but electrons too. in this way, schrödinger’s program was based on continuity. it also described atomic spectra, dealt only with differential equations (and not matrixes) and was grounded in realism. in 1925, werner heisenberg attended one of schrodinger’s lectures in munich (heisenberg 1983b), when he presented his undulatory interpretation of quantum mechanics. heisenberg was disturbed by schrödinger opposition to quantum jumps and discontinuities, but nobody seemed to agree with his objections – on the contrary, schrödinger’s interpretation seemed to just gain popularity among the theoretical translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 9 physicists:15 it offered a clear picture of what was happening in the quantum level and it used mathematical formalism with which physicists were acquainted (differential equations). not much later, niels bohr invited schrödinger to go to copenhagen to debate the interpretation of quantum theory. after long and exhaustive debates (which, according to heisenberg (1983b) led schrödinger to be physically sick), schrödinger’s continuous description and bohr’s quantum jumps could not be reconciled. after schrodinger had left copenhagen, the researchers of bohr institute centered their attention towards the problem of formalism and interpretation of quantum mechanics, analyzing the many paradoxes that the different interpretations could produce. this was the scenario that allowed the “emergence” of the uncertainty principle, where there is the confrontation between two worldviews, with their own philosophies, mathematical structures, conceptual bases, phenomena and scientists. each one of the opposite networks are in a struggle to stabilize itself and destabilize the other. this conflict is summarized in the introduction of heisenberg’s 1927 paper: the physical interpretation of quantum mechanics is still full of internal discrepancies, which show themselves in arguments about continuity versus discontinuity and particle versus wave. already from this circumstance one might conclude that no interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible which uses ordinary kinematical and mechanical concepts (heisenberg 1983a, 62). heisenberg as a spokesman in 1927, niels bohr was still not convinced about how to solve such controversy – and it was only when he left copenhagen on vacation that heisenberg decided to take the lead and to assume the role of spokesman, proposing his own interpretation (heisenberg 1983b). in this sense, we may understand heisenberg’s paper as the defense of the whole program that started in 1925. heisenberg had a cause to defend and an alternative narrative to deconstruct. like a lawyer in the tribune, his objective was to defend a claim and make it plausible. to do so, he had to expose the claim, show proofs, find allies and witnesses, and disqualify the opposite interpretation. he had to convince that he had the most suitable way to describe and interpret quantum kinematics and dynamics. some elements of his claim are explicitly expressed on the paper’s abstract, others are distributed throughout the paper and are defended only implicitly. in order to make the argument clearer, we synthetize heisenberg’s claim in five utterances. along our presentation, we will show how heisenberg defend all of them: a) quantum objects are particles. waves should not play any role in quantum mechanics. b) one can only speak about observable quantities. discontinuity, thus, is a key feature of quantum reality. c) dirac-jordan theory is the correct formalism to mathematically describe quantum mechanics (heisenberg 1983a, 62). schrödinger’s formalism is therefore unnecessary. 15 in 1927, for instance, heisenberg refers to schrödinger’s interpretation as “popular” (heisenberg 1983a). translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 10 d) canonically conjugate quantities can be determined simultaneously only with a characteristic indeterminacy (heisenberg 1983a, 62). although the term used is indeterminacy, heisenberg understands that the relation of uncertainty is caused by the measurement equipment. e) this indeterminacy is the real basis for the occurrence of statistical relations in quantum mechanics (heisenberg 1983a, 62). since all we can speak about is what we measure, to say that there is uncertainty in the measure is equivalent to say that there is indeterminacy. this indeterminacy is the source of all statistical relations, which are described by the formalism as a sort of error propagation. to convince the scientific community about his claim, heisenberg needs to mobilize a set of witnesses and allies. gedanken laboratory witnesses to exemplify what he meant, heisenberg proposed throughout the paper different gedanken experiments involving the simultaneous measuring of non-commutable observables such as position and momentum, time and energy and action and angle variables. in each case, heisenberg provided rough phenomenological descriptions and found a relation between the uncertainty associated to each pair of variables. for the case of the relation between momentum and position, he discussed the case of an electron observed in a gamma-ray microscope. for the case of the relation between time and energy, he discussed the split of a beam of atoms in a stern-gerlach experiment. finally, for the case of the relation between action and angle variable, he discussed the franck-hertz experiment. in each gedanken experiment involving non-commutable variables by which heisenberg found an uncertainty relation, the experiment became a witness of his claim. let us see how he presented this sort of reasoning: at the instant when the position is determined – therefore, at the moment when the photon is scattered by the electron – the electron undergoes a discontinuous change in momentum. this change is the grater the smaller the wavelength of the light employed – that is, the more exact the determination of the position. at the instant at which the position of the electron is known, its momentum therefore can be known up to magnitudes which correspond to that discontinuous change. thus, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely. in this circumstance, we see a direct physical interpretation of the equation 𝒑𝒒 − 𝒒𝒑 = 𝑖ℏ. let 𝑞 be the precision with which the value 𝑞 is know (𝑞 is, say, the mean error of 𝑞), therefore here the wavelength of the light. let 𝑝 be the precision with which the value p is determinable; that is, here, the discontinuous change of 𝑝 in the compton effect. then, according to the elementary laws of compton effect 𝑝 and 𝑞 stand in the relation 𝑝 𝑞 ~ℎ. (heisenberg 1983a, 64) since the microscope cannot speak, heisenberg spoke for it and used its “speech” in his defense. we will discuss in more detail some aspects of this translation in the next sections. at this point, we just want to highlight the role that non-humans play in the articulation of heisenberg’s proposition. translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 11 mathematical witnesses the non-human witnesses of the gedanken laboratory truly corroborated the case and participated in the articulation of heisenberg’s proposition. however, heisenberg’s presentation of such examples was always rough, and, in a sense, they give the impression that if, for instance, another experiment was chosen to determine position and momentum, it would be possible to overcome the indeterminacy limits. to provide a universal principle, it would be necessary to provide more than “laboratory trials”; it was necessary to provide something that would be more stable than the choice of a laboratory equipment. he needed a “mathematical trial”. when one uses the mathematical formalism to represent a quantity, one represents it regardless of the equipment used. thus, all heisenberg must do is to speak in the name of mathematics. to do so, heisenberg proposed that when we represent a particle using jordan’s formalism with a gaussian function, the standard deviation should be pragmatically interpreted as the standard deviation (or mean error) of a measurement. this interpretation, however, is not something that is expressed in the equation, but added by the spokesman when he speaks in the name of the equations. by proposing this interpretation, heisenberg wrote the gaussian function representing a particle in the q-space (position-space). multiplying the function by its complex conjugate (what, nowadays, we recall as the probability density function), he obtained the expression 𝑆𝑆 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑜 exp − (𝑞 − 𝑞 ) 𝑞 (1) also, using dirac-jordan theory, it is possible to transform s from q-space to p-space and, again, compute the product with its complex conjugate. heisenberg found that 𝑆𝑆 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑜 exp − (𝑝 − 𝑝 ) 𝑝 (2) where 𝑝 and 𝑞 are related through 𝑝 𝑞 = ℏ (3) it should be stressed that heisenberg proposed an equality (and not an inequality, like it is expressed nowadays).16 despite of that, in the same paper, heisenberg showed that the product between the uncertainties can be larger than ℏ , but because of his pragmatic interpretation he considered that the equality is the only right expression. according to heisenberg, the wave packet described in t=0 establishes a region where the particle can be found around a mean value with some precision. after some time, the inaccuracy increases in the position of the particle, since the original indeterminacy is propagated, making the wave packet broadened. however, after a second measurement, the position of the particle turns to be determined in a specific region whose length is equal to the initial one (and which is determined by the precision of the equipment used). in other terms, the measurement reduces the extension of the wave packet – what nowadays could be called the collapse of the wave function. 16 according to what is known today, the equality only holds for gaussian packages at a specific time. for other wave packet shapes and as time runs, the product becomes larger than ℏ/2. translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 12 furthermore, heisenberg computed the extension of the wave packet after a period 𝑡, and he showed that it was bigger than the original one. in this sense, heisenberg had the chance to rewrite his uncertainty equation as an inequality (𝑞 . 𝑝 ≥ ℏ ), but as he interpreted the relation as something that spoke about the measurement situation, where the wave packet was reduced to the original length, he sustained the relation as an equality. philosophical argumentation to make the case plausible, heisenberg must assign the phenomenological outputs to the mathematical formalism and provide a consistent worldview. this worldview is articulated by three philosophical standpoints. first, heisenberg addressed the problem of how concepts coming from classical mechanics can be used in the atomic dimension. influenced by an argument that often appears in bohr’s argumentation (heisenberg 1996), heisenberg assumed that we cannot describe reality with concepts that we have not used classically, since our way of describing reality (our conception of space and time, for instance) are a priori conditions of knowledge itself, as it is expressed in the kantian philosophy (kant 2005). despite of not being able to provide new concepts to speak about reality, it does not mean that the a priori judgements are absolute and universal. the concepts that we use in the classical world can only be used in quantum mechanics considering that there is always some uncertainty related to the measurement of two conjugate quantities. in this sense, heisenberg advocates for a revision of kantism. furthermore, it is possible to recognize some influence of kierkegaard in heisenberg’s argument. heisenberg claims that it is not possible to isolate a quantum object: in order to be able to follow the quantum-mechanical behavior of any object one has to know the mass of this object and its interaction with any fields and other objects. only can then the hamiltonian function be written down for the quantum mechanical system (...) about the “gestalt” (construction) of the object any further assumption is unnecessary; one most usefully employs the word “gestalt” to designate the totality of these interactions. (heisenberg 1983a, 64) the “gestalt” construction that heisenberg described directly confronts the kantian scheme in which there are object in themselves (independent of their surroundings) as it was explained by heisenberg (1996) himself – and it holds a parallel with kierkegaard’s philosophy. moreover, this gestalt worldview was hybridized with positivist and pragmatic postures. in order to call attention to the depth of what he was about to propose, heisenberg, again, makes a parallel with the special theory of relativity, stressing that to determine a position means to determine the experiment with which is possible to determine position: when one wants to be clear about what is to be understood by the words “position of the object”, for example of the electron (relative to a given frame of reference), then one must specify definite experiments with whose help one plans to measure the position of the electron; otherwise this word has no meaning. (heisenberg 1983a, 64) finally, he mobilized a positivist interpretation in its highest expression in the following excerpt: “i believe that one can fruitfully formulate the origin of the classical “orbit” in this way: the “orbit” comes into being only when we observe it” (heisenberg 1983a, 73). translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 13 attacks against schrödinger’s wave mechanics besides defending his own claim, heisenberg attacked schrödinger’s mechanics three times throughout the paper. in the first one, he mentioned that dirac’s formulation is the truly invariant formalism, which was an important feature if one thinks in terms of the development of a relativistic quantum mechanics. second, heisenberg discussed the relation between micro and macromechanics (this is the title of one of schrödinger’s papers), opposing to schrödinger’s previous discussions: “the transition from microto macromechanics has already been treated by schrödinger, but i do not believe that schrödinger’s considerations get to the heart of the problem”(heisenberg 1983a, 73). finally, in the third attack, heisenberg stressed his disagreement with schrödinger: certainly, one cannot overestimate the value of the mathematical (and to that extent physical) mastery of the quantum-mechanical laws that schrödinger’s theory has made possible. however, as regards questions of physical interpretation and principle, the popular view of wave mechanics, as i see it, has actually deflected us from exactly those roads which were pointed out by the papers of einstein and de broglie on the one hand and by the papers of bohr and by quantum mechanics on the other hand. (heisenberg 1983a, 82) heisenberg’s final defense: a new nature the problem that heisenberg addressed to close his defense is how it is possible to link the statistical nature of quantum mechanics with the existence of conservation of physical quantities. heisenberg’s answer is that the problem is not in the logical structure of causality, but in its premises, i.e, it is never possible to determine precisely the initial state of a system, so we cannot predict precisely its subsequent states: but what is wrong in the sharp formulation of the law of causality, “when we know the present precisely, we can predict the future,” is not the conclusion but the assumption. even in principle we cannot know the present in all detail. for that reason, everything observed is a selection from a plenitude of possibilities and a limitation on what is possible in the future. (heisenberg 1983a, 83) in this sense, it seems that quantum mechanics suggests that there is a real independent world where causality holds. however, this world is inaccessible to us because every measurement perturbs the original system. in this sense, all we have access to, all we can observe is not contemplated by this “causal world” and is subject of uncertainty relations. taking the positivist position seriously, all we can talk about is the measurement results, and thus causality finally fails: as the statistical character of quantum theory is so closely linked to the inexactness of all perceptions, one might be led to the presumption that behind the perceived statistical world there still hides a “real” world in which causality holds. but such speculations seem to us, to say it explicitly, fruitless and senseless. physics ought to describe only the correlation of observations. one can express the true state of affairs better in this way: because all experiments are subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, and therefore to equation (1), it follows that quantum mechanics establishes the final failure of causality. (heisenberg 1983a, 83) translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 14 the indeterminate nature was born. translations and betrayals we have passed through the main points of heisenberg’s defense: his claim, the mobilization of gedanken laboratory experiments, the mobilization of dirac-jordan mathematical formalism, the use of pragmatism, existentialism and positivism to interpret all the articulation and his final defense. the combination of all these elements corresponds to a translation that is conducted by heisenberg, the spokesman. nevertheless, in this process at least two characters were betrayed. the first was bohr, who did not commit to the full rejection of wave description of quantum phenomenon. as we will discuss on the next section, when bohr read the first version of the paper, already approved but not published, he convinced heisenberg to add a note mentioning that the wave description of radiation was used in the analysis of the gamma ray microscope and that it was an essential part of heisenberg’s description! actually, the defense of both pictures – corpuscular and undulatory – was performed by bohr in 1928 in his proposition of the complementarity principle (bohr 1928). in this sense, heisenberg’s intention of rising as the spokesman of the copenhagen program was frustrated by bohr’s opposition to a purely corpuscular description. moreover, a central aspect of heisenberg’s proposition is the derivation of the uncertainty relation from the dirac-jordan’s formalism. despite of using their formalism, heisenberg denied jordan’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. in 1927, jordan had already proposed a probabilistic interpretation, which was not associated simply to the measurement process (longair 2013). heisenberg thus mobilized jordan’s formalism but betrayed his interpretation: of course, we would also like to be able to derive, if possible, the quantitative laws of quantum mechanics directly from the physical foundations—that is, essentially, from relation (1). on this account jordan has sought to interpret the equation 𝑆(𝑞, 𝑞 ) = ∫ 𝑆(𝑞, 𝑞 )𝑆(𝑞 , 𝑞")𝑑𝑞′, as a probability relation. however, we cannot accept this interpretation (§2). we believe, rather, that for the time being the quantitative laws can be derived out of the physical foundations only by use of the principle of maximum simplicity. (heisenberg 1983a, 82) these two betrayals had concrete consequences to heisenberg’s program. provenance (herkunfut) of the uncertainty principle in the process of mobilizing allies, sometimes heisenberg presented contradictory statements or, at least, not very rigorous reasonings, as pointed by bohr. some of them were addressed in the note added during the editing process. let us examine some of the “unstable points” of the microscope gedanken experiment: i) 𝑞 is called the mean error of 𝑞. the calculation of this parameter is based on the wave theory of light (it is caused by diffraction), while 𝑝 is computed with a corpuscular theory (it is caused by the compton effect), which makes heisenberg sustains both pictures at the same time, the opposite of what we claimed to do, as pointed out by bohr ii) 𝑝 is not a mean error, but the maximum variance of momentum. so, while 𝑞 is an error, 𝑝 is a disturbance (jijnasu 2016). translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 15 iii) heisenberg did not consider the problem of the real microscope and ignored concrete factors such as the objective diameter. iv) heisenberg did not show how the indeterminacy came from the commutator relation; he just attached them. throughout the paper, heisenberg claims that the commutator was the origin of the uncertainty relations, but he did not prove it. v) heisenberg stressed the necessity of expressing how a physical quantity is measured. in the gedanken experiment, he described how 𝑞 is measured and what 𝑞 means in the experiment: there is not any concern to measure 𝑝 and to empirically define 𝑝 . besides these internal instabilities, in the case of the uncertainty principle for time and energy, also there are some contradictions that would be pointed out by other scientists: a) heisenberg claimed that the uncertainty principle for time and energy came from the commutation relation between these two quantities. however, in the subsequent years, it was shown that it is not possible to propose an operator of time that it is self-adjoint through all the spectrum (busch 2008). b) in the stern-gerlach experiment, time is treated as the time necessary to perform a measurement. however, heisenberg also uses time as the interval of a transition: the time transitions or ‘quantum jumps’ must be as concrete and determinable by measurements as, say, energies in stationary states. the spread within such an instant is specifiable is given according to equation (2) by , if δ𝐸 designates the change of energy in the quantum jump. (heisenberg 1983a, 76) while the first is an external measurement of time, the second is an intrinsic parameter (busch 2008). finally, heisenberg’s derivation using dirac-jordan’s theory used a gaussianwave packet arbitrarily, without any justification. despite of that, he claimed that the uncertainty relation is valid to all conjugate variables. stabilizing nature heisenberg’s analysis of the gamma microscope contradicted his own claim. he also forgot many important features of the experiment. he claimed to speak about measurement errors, but he referred to position error and to momentum perturbation (this one, only estimated and not measured). he changed the concept of uncertainty along the paper, sometimes referring simply to an interval (as in the case of time). he claimed that the uncertainty relation came from the commutation relation, but he did not show it. he assumed a commutation relation for time and energy that cannot be written uncritically. his derivation was for a specific case and he claimed it to be universal. we have all these reasons to agree with foucault that in the base of science there is only error and accident. despite of that, nature became somehow indeterminate after 1927. somehow an uncertainty principle emerged and remains alive until today. the way we can explain that is by recognizing that the uncertainty relation was not only articulated by heisenberg. he was the spokesman. but the proposition was also articulated by non-humans. and non-humans have their own agency. in the case of the uncertainty relation, the equations mobilized by heisenberg turned out to speak what heisenberg could not speak himself. translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 16 heisenberg’s interpretation, his main claim and defense, the one based on the betrayal of bohr’s conception and jordan’s interpretation, was not successful at all. today, we learn quantum mechanics through schrödinger’s equation and not dirac-jordan’s formalism. and we speak about probability waves and not error propagation. however, the mathematical structure of the uncertainty principle (without heisenberg’s interpretation) was more solid than his intention, and its association resisted. following jammer’s (1966) reconstruction, just after heisenberg published the paper, in the same year, kennard (1927) has shown that the gaussian case was the minimum bound to the indeterminacy relation. also, in 1928, hermann weyl (1950) demonstrated the uncertainty relation as an inequality (which is valid for gaussian and non-gaussian packages). in the same year, c. g. darwin (1928) has pointed out that the transformation between the position and momentum representations can be understood in terms of a fourier transform, ruark (1928) called the uncertainty relation as the uncertainty principle, and kennard (1928) computed the uncertainty in position and momentum for an electron passing through a shutter, showing that it corresponds to the fourier resolution of a train of waves passing through the same shutter. the mathematical proof that the uncertainty relation holds to all canonical conjugate variables only came in 1929 (robertson 1929). after robertson’s publication, schrödinger (1930), whose interpretation of quantum physics was competing with heisenberg’s conception, found a new and more general expression for the uncertainty principle. so, what was successful in heisenberg’s proposition was not his interpretation, his claim, but the objective mathematical structure that was independent of him, and that resisted to his interpretation. this was the stable association that allowed the principle of uncertainty to survive along history. an important question is why, then, this mathematical association was so stable? if we take gabriel tarde’s claim seriously, that science progresses every time it adopts a monadological perspective, the success of heisenberg was to introduce the monad of determinacy, what can be thought – as heisenberg himself mentions – the monad of “volume in the phase space” (heisenberg 1983a, 65)17. as tarde claims, this monad ought to be an essential part of reality, dependentof courseof other monadsbut still stable enough to resist heisenberg’s translations and betrayals. final remarks we discussed possible characteristics of a historical account that relate with symmetrical anthropology. we understand that, for a history to be symmetrical, it does not have necessarily to use specific concepts, but it must agree with the presented metaphysical scheme. we exemplified that with the discussion on the articulation of uncertainty principle. the main challenge to produce such a narrative was to decide about when to explicitly use the concepts of symmetrical anthropology. not using them at all would make difficult for the reader to connect the narrative with the theoretical discussion; using them too much could make it obscure. so, there is an equilibrium point that is not easy to achieve and that must be pursued in every narrative. on the other hand, our narrative allowed us to speak about theoretical physics without using a sectarian language – we reframed heisenberg’s work as the work of a lawyer in the tribune (characteristic “f”). we discussed the necessity of mobilizing different actors for the 17 according to the intrinsic interpretation of the uncertainty principle (jijnasu 2016) one may think that, differently of classical mechanics, according to which a particle may occupy a single point in the phase space, quantum objects are fuzzy, that they are distributed over a region of phase space, whose minimum volume is given by the uncertainty principle. in the same way, tarde interpreted the atom as the monad of matter, so we may interpret the uncertainty principle as an expression of the monad of volume in phase space. translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; gabriela gomes rosa; miguel rocha bento 17 uncertainty principle to exist (characteristic “c”). these actors were laboratory equipment, mathematical formalism, and philosophical doctrines (characteristic “f”). what explains heisenberg’s success and failures were not beliefs nor knowledge, but his ability in articulating propositions (characteristic “d”). his betrayal of bohr’s and jordan’s interpretation may have played an important role in the failure of his interpretation, while the further articulation of the mathematical expression allowed its survival. the fact that the mathematical expression survived with a different meaning exemplifies the fact that nonhumans have their own agency independently of human volition (characteristic “b”). in the end, we speculate that the stability of the uncertainty principle is due to the fact that heisenberg introduced, without knowing, a monad of determinacy, agreeing with gabriel tarde’s claim. in this sense, we understand that symmetrical history has the potentiality of allowing us to speak about physics without having to commit to an internalist or to an externalist approach and without having to assume an absolutist or a relativist perspective. also, it may allow us not only to describe physics, but also to provide explanations for its progress according to the stability of associations. references alfonso-goldfarb, ana maria. 1994. o que é história da ciência. são paulo: brasiliense. auler, décio, and demétrio delizoicov. 2001. “alfabetização científico-tecnológica pra quê?” ensaio pesquisa em educação em ciências 03 (1): 122-34. bloor, david. 1991. knowledge and social imagery. chicago: the university of chicago press. bloor, david. 1999. anti-latour. studies history and philosophy of science 30 (1): 81-112. bohr, niels. 1928. the quantum postulate and the recent development of atomic theory. nature (121): 580-90. busch, paul. 2008. the time-energy uncertainty relations. in time in quantum mechanics, edited by j g muga, r s mayato, and i l egusquiza, 2nd ed. berlin: springer. callon, michael. 1984. some elements of a sociology of trabslation: domestication of the scallops and the fisherman of saint brieuc bay. the sociological review 32 (1-suppl.): 196-233. callon, michel. 1984. some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of st brieuc bay. the sociological review (32): 196-233. camilleri, kristian. 2007. bohr, heisenberg and the divergent views of complementarity. studies in history and philosophy of science part b: studies in history and philosophy of modern physics 38 (3): 514-28. comte, auguste. 1830. cours de philosophie positive, tome premier. paris: rouen frères. darwin, charles galton. 1928. free motion in wave mechanics. proceedings of the royal society 11 (776): 258-93. derrida, jacques. 1997. of grammatology. vol. 87. baltimore: the john hopkins university press. einstein, albert. 2006. física e realidade. revista brasileira de ensino de física 28 (1): 9-22. ferreira, ciro tomazella, and cibelle celestino silva. 2020. the roles of mathematics in the history of science: the mathematization thesis. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 6-25. foucault, michel. 1979a. nietzsche, a geneaologia e a história. in microfísica do poder. rio de janeiro: edições graal. foucault, michel. 1979b. verdade e poder. in microfísica do poder. rio de janeiro: edições graal. harman, graham. 2009. prince of networks: bruno latour and metaphysics. melbourne: re.press. translations, betrayals and controversies in the articulation of the uncertainty principle: potentialities and challenges of a symmetrical history of physics nathan willig lima; 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(phd diss., cardiff university). robertson, h p. 1929. the uncertainty principle. physical review 34 (1): 163-64. ruark, arthur edward. 1928. the limits of accuracy in physical measurements. proceedings of the national academy of sciences 14 (4): 322-328. sartre, jean paul. 2007. existentalism is a humanism. new haven: yale university press. schrodinger, erwing. 1930. about heisenberg uncertainty relation. proceedings of the prussian academy of sciences (2): 296-303. shapin, steven, and simon schaffer. 1985. leviathan and the air-pump. princeton: princeton university press. tanona, scott. 2004. uncertainty in bohr’s response to the heisenberg microscope. studies in history and philosophy of science part b: studies in history and philosophy of modern physics 35 (3): 483-507. tarde, gabriel. 2007. monadologia e sociologia e outros ensaios. são paulo: cosac naify. videira, antonio augusto passos. 2007. historiografia e história da ciência. escritos 1 (1): 11158. weyl, hermann. 1950. the theory of groups & quantum mechanics. new york: dover publications. whitehead, alfred north. 1978. process and reality: an essay in cosmology. new york: the free press. microsoft word laranjeiras lucena chiappin layout 72 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 72-92 issn 2526 – 2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2020 – this is an open access journal special issue – historiography of physics boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras;1 jojomar lucena;2 josé r. n. chiappin3 abstract: boltzmann’s work in physics has been studied almost always opposing a strictly mechanical approach of the 2nd law of thermodynamics – attributed to his first works in kinetic – molecular gas theory (1866-1871) – to a probabilistic approach, built and developed in his later works (1872-1884). the analysis of the use of these different approaches covers a spectrum of positions ranging from the recognition of an intrinsic incoherence to boltzmann’s thinking, go through a radical change in the development of his work, until the adoption of pluralistic strategies as justifications for their methodological options. the purpose of this paper is to explore boltzmann’s research program from the view of what we characterize as heuristics of representation, highlighting the tools used he used for the solution of problems related to thermal phenomena. we will argue that what in the standard historiographical analysis is understood as a radical turn in boltzmann’s work – probabilistic “turn point”, that is, the use of an overtly statistical terminology (combinatorial formalism, 1877) instead of a kinetic language (kinetic formalism, 1872) in the analysis of evolution toward the thermal equilibrium (maxwell’s distribution) – could be better understood as a change of representation within the same conceptual framework. keywords: boltzmann; statistical mechanics; heuristics of representation received: 15 april 2020. reviewed: 29 may 2020. accepted: 22 june 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction the second half of the 19th century witnessed – to use a concept from lakatos’ epistemology 1 cássio c. laranjeiras [orcid: 0000-0003-4158-8077] is a professor of physics in the institute of physics at the university of brasilia – unb. address: campus universitário darcy ribeiro – asa norte, brasília – df, 70919-970, brazil. e-mail: cassio@unb.br 2 jojomar lucena [orcid: 0000-0001-6097-0066] is a researcher in the department of economics at the university of são paulo – fea – usp. address: av. prof. luciano gualberto, 908 – butantã, são paulo – sp, 05.508-010, brazil. e-mail: jojomarls@gmail.com 3 josé r. n. chiappin [orcid: 0000-0003-3202-2274] is a professor of economics in the department of economics at the university of são paulo – fea – usp. address: av. prof. luciano gualberto, 908 – butantã, são paulo – sp, 05.508-010, brazil. e-mail: chiappin@usp.br boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 73 – the degeneration4 of the mechanistic program.5 the status of the mechanical view of the world, established through the immense philosophical influence reached by newtonian mechanics, the great finished scientific theory of its time, had come under suspicion for several reasons, including the autonomy achieved by thermodynamics through the works of w. thomson (1824-1907) – the later lord kelvin – and r. clausius (1822-1888) and the development of the maxwell – faraday theory of electromagnetism carried out by heinrich hertz (1857-1894). at the end of this same century, alternatives to the mechanistic program were being proposed and passionately debated, with the energetics program proposed by pierre duhem (1861-1916) deserving special mention, a program that aspired to a broad unification of physics based on thermodynamics, more specifically upon the energy concept.6 for a discussion on the energetics movement, which focuses particularly on the works of georg helm, willard gibbs, wilhelm ostwald, and ernst mach, among others, see (deltete 1983). ludwig boltzmann (1844-1906) was a remarkable presence in this debate (deltete 1999, 45-68). as a great advocate of the twin banners of mechanism and atomism (lindley 2001), he developed a rich and complex research program, specifically in the kinetic – molecular theory of gases.7 through its advancement, it was possible not only to formulate a brilliant defense of the mechanistic program, although modified, but also to develop an introduction to the theory of probabilities as a fundamental law of physics, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, laying the foundations of modern statistical mechanics8 and even paving the road for quantum theory (flamm 1997). besides, he wrote extensively on philosophical issues, especially about the philosophy of science, although his systematic interest in this matter emerged only after he had given his important contributions to physics,9 which makes 4 the term degeneration was used by philosopher of science imre lakatos (1922 – 1974) to represent the stage through which research programs pass when they no longer can achieve the expected success in resolving the proposed problems. the model of research programmes was formulated in an attempt to resolve the perceived conflict between different views of dynamics of construct of science, more specifically between k. popper’s falsificationism and the revolutionary structure of science described by t. kuhn. see (lakatos 1984, 47-89) and (kulka 1977, 325-344). 5 the origins of a mechanical or mechanistic outlook on the world can be found in the physics of the ancient world, although a clear definition of what we might call a mechanistic program dates back to the 17th century, with such names as galileo, boyle, pascal, huygens, descartes and newton, whose works contributed to its establishment and progress, removing the concept of final cause and most of the concepts of aristotelian form, substance and accident that had dominated medieval thought in natural philosophy (hankins 1985, 13). in the 19th century the mechanistic insight played an important role in physics. under the term mechanic or mechanistic, we understand here the mathematical description of nature based on the concepts and methods pertaining to the science of motion, in which all entities are defined in terms of matter, motion, and central forces. see also (boas 1952, 412-541) and (strien 2013, 191-205). 6 the energetics program was very concerned with an epistemological reconstruction of the objective core of knowledge and saw itself as a response to the need for providing a physical interpretation to purely mathematical operations. in this sense, the construction of all concepts and the realization of all calculations should take the amount of energy present in the system as their starting point. an extensive discussion on the research program of p. duhem can be found in (chiappin 1989) and (oswaldo 1998, 79-140). 7 this theme was the subject of a previous publication (laranjeiras et al. 2006) made by us when we emphasized boltzmann`s research program based on the tools and methods used by him in the analysis of thermal phenomena. 8 from a modern perspective, we could say that statistical mechanics is a formalism that seeks to objectively explain the physical properties of a very large quantity of matter based on the dynamic behaviour of its microscopic constituents (pathria 1972). 9 his scientific papers, collected in wissenschaftliche abhandlungen, contain more than 100 papers on statistical physics alone. see (boltzmann 1909). boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 74 his trajectory particularly interesting, in so far as his philosophical reflections reflect and systematize his scientific experience.10 boltzmann’s work in physics has been studied almost always opposing a strict mechanical approach of the 2nd law of thermodynamics – attributed to his first works in kinetic theory of gases (1866-1871) – to a probabilistic approach, built and developed in his later works (1872-1884) (klein 1973, 53 – 106; brush 1976, 603 – 630; brush 1986; elkana 1974, 243 – 279; uffink 2007, 2017). the analysis of the use of these different approaches covers a spectrum of positions ranging from the recognition of an intrinsic incoherence to boltzmann’s thinking (uffink 2017), go through a radical change in the development of his work (klein 1973 53-106; brush 1976, 603-630; brush 1986), until the adoption of pluralistic strategies (badino 2011, 353-378) as justifications for their methodological options. badino identifies the birth of this standard historiographical reconstruction “with the publication of klein’s paper, the development of boltzmann’s statistical ideas” (1973) (klein 1973, 53-106), where he clearly advocates a radical turn in boltzmann’s views, especially with respect to the introduction and the meaning of probability from 1868 to 1877 (badino 2006). defending the use of pluralistic strategies by boltzmann and adopting a continuity line in contrast to the idea of rupture in his work, badino argues that his theory of equilibrium states, developed in the initial period (1868-1871), depends on foundations that are both mechanical and probabilistic and that the non – equilibrium theory (1872-1877) stems directly as a development of these foundations (badino 2006). moreover, he shows that the extensive use of asymptotic conditions allowed boltzmann to bracket the problem of exceptions of the h–theorem11 (badino 2011, 353-378). by adopting a similar perspective and assuming the independence of thermodynamics in relation to mechanics in boltzmann’s thought, aurani defends the idea that probability already appears (although not formally) in boltzmann’s reasoning in his paper of 1866, when treating the irregularity of the movement of atoms in the construction of temperature definition. according to aurani, as early as 1866, boltzmann conducted his work in the direction of a probabilistic interpretation of the 2nd law and the concept of entropy insofar as it sought meaning for the mean variations of the mechanical magnitudes of the system, relating them to the motion of an atom (aurani 1992, 10-63). this reinforces the idea of coherence and no – rupture in the development of boltzmann’s thought. in support of these ideas, the purpose of this paper is to explore boltzmann’s research program from the view of what we characterize as a heuristics of representation, highlighting the tools and methods he used for the solution of problems related to thermal phenomena.12 the boltzmann’s program was rooted in the context of the mechanistic program of the 19th century and developed coherently and consistently committed to expanding and putting into operation the resources of mechanics – taken by him as an adequate and unifying representation of the phenomena of nature – in the understanding of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. in this direction, his initial representation for entropy – associated with hamilton’s minimal action principle – will converge to a mechanical – statistical representation, incorporating new heuristic elements into its research program such as notions of ensemble and probability spaces. so, if there is a turning point in boltzmann’s 10 boltzmann was driven to philosophical reflection by the need to establish a dialog between science and philosophy, without giving up on the specificity of each field, recognizing, but acknowledging a common area of interaction where both fields could talk communicate (videira 2000, 200; broda 1983, 97). 11 the understanding of the non – admission of exceptions to the h–theorem by boltzmann in his paper of 1872 lies at the heart of the argument in defence of a statistical turn in his thinking from 1876. 12 a detailed discussion of the heuristic of representation in science taking the physics of descartes and fermat as an example can be found in (laranjeiras et al. 2017). boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 75 thought we should look into his representational transition and not into his probabilistic approach. the paper is organized as follows: in sections 2 and 3 we will briefly present, from a heuristic point of view, boltzmann’s representational perspective on scientific theories and his insertion in the context of the mechanistic program of the 19th century. sections 4, 5 and 6 are devoted to showing how boltzmann made use of the heuristics of representation in the development of statistical mechanics. finally, in section 7, we address the critiques of h– theorem and its role in the consolidation of statistical representation in boltzmann’s work. boltzmann and the heuristics of representation the idea of representation in science has been the subject of study by different authors (hughes 1977, 325-336; suarez 1999, 75-83; 2010, 91 – 101; van fraassen 1980, 2004, 794-804), with particular focus on the central role occupied by models in the scientific endeavor (mnt 1999). in the specific case of boltzmann, his understanding of scientific knowledge and his view of physical theories (“bildtheorie”) have been widely discussed in the literature, especially the works of hiebert (hiebert 1981, 175-198), miller (miller 1984), wilson (wilson 1989, 245 – 263), d’agostino (d’agostino 1990, 380-398), blackmore (blackmore) and regt (regt 1996, 1999, 113-134). although in these studies, as it should be, the representational role of theories in boltzmann’s work is contemplated, we identified an analysis gap related to the heuristic aspect of the representations used by him. as an example, we will argue that what in the standard historiographical analysis is understood as a radical turn in boltzmann’s work – probabilistic “turn point” (klein 1973, 53-106; bmu 2009, 174-191), that is, the use of an overtly statistical terminology (combinatorial formalism, 1877) instead of a kinetic language (kinetic formalism, 1872) in the analysis of evolution toward the thermal equilibrium (maxwell’s distribution) – could be better understood as a change of representation within the same conceptual framework. recognizing jan von plato (plato 1982, 72-89) as one the first to claim that boltzmann might have envisioned a statistical meaning of the h–theorem from the very beginning, badino assumes a contrary position of a probabilistic turn on boltzmann’s work, attributing it to what he characterizes as “mechanistic–slumber narrative” (badino 2011, 353-378). in this direction, his work shows that boltzmann adopted a pluralistic strategy based on the interplay between a kinetic and a combinatorial approach, which reinforces the idea that these different representations are part of the same frame of reference. assuming a position contrary to the idea of a probabilistic turn in boltzmann’s work and assigning it to what he characterizes as a “mechanistic–slumber narrative”, badino brings together important elements that reinforce the idea that these different representations are part of the same frame of reference. the reconstruction of badino shows that boltzmann adopted a pluralistic strategy based on the interplay between a kinetic and a combinatorial approach (badino 2011, 353-378). the hard core of boltzmann’s philosophical reflection is directly associated with the idea that scientific theories are representations, mental images of phenomena, committed to the description and understanding of the behavior of nature (boltzmann 1899a). speaking about the meaning of the theories – in reply at a farewell ceremony at graz (16 july 1890), when had been called to a professorship at munich – boltzmann made his vision clear by saying: i am of the opinion that the task of the theory consists in constructing a picture of the external world that exists purely internally and must be our guiding star in all thought and experiment; that is in completing, as it were, the thinking process and carrying out boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 76 globally what on a small scale occurs within us whenever we form an idea. (boltzmann 1899a, 33) according to boltzmann, science is committed to give explanations of natural phenomena and not merely describe them or predict their occurrence. in this sense, the initial elaboration of images can and should be immediately and constantly perfected, which is the main task of the theory (boltzmann 1899a). boltzmann even considers contradiction as an inherent aspect of the progress of theories, clearly signalling his conception of scientific progress as a consequence of his theoretical pluralism. this perspective is explained by him when he says: a closer look at the course followed by developing theory revels for a star that it is by no means as continuous as one might expect, but full of breaks and least apparently not along the shortest logical path. certain methods often afforded the most handsome results only the other day, and many might well have thought that the development of science to infinity would consist of no more than their constant application. instead, on the contrary, they suddenly reveal themselves as exhausted and the attempt is made to find other quite disparate methods. in that event, there may develop a struggle between the followers of the old methods and those of the newer ones. the former’s point of view will be termed by their opponents out – dated and outworn, while its holders in turn belittle the innovators as corrupters of true classical science. this process incidentally is by no means confined to theoretical physics but seems to recur in the developmental history of all branches of man’s intellectual activity. (boltzmann 1899b, 79) this perspective will be fundamental so that we can understand the adoption of a statistical representation in the frame of reference of the mechanics adopted by boltzmann. adopting a pluralistic theoretical position devoid of ontological values, which is to say that it cannot ascend to the level of the essences and surpass the plane determined by phenomena, its emphasis rests on the capacity of theories, as representations, to lead to results in correspondence with experience (videira 2006, 273). in this sense, for boltzmann: (...) it cannot be our task to find an absolutely correct theory but rather a picture that is, as simple as possible and that represents phenomena as accurately as possible. one might even conceive of two quite different theories both equally simple and equally congruent with phenomena, which therefore in spite of their difference are equally correct. the assertion that a given theory is the only correct one can only express our subjective conviction that there could not be another equally simple and fitting image. (boltzmann 1899b, 91, emphasis added) from a heuristic point of view, boltzmann’s representational perspective on scientific theories is committed to providing a better picture of phenomena, with no guarantee that this picture is optimal or perfect, but sufficient for immediate goals. although the content of representations can be objectified, finding referents in reality, representations in themselves do not imply to correspond to reality, but to conform to it. this is clearly reinforced in one of his reflections on the discrete or continuous nature of matter when he says: the question of whether matter consists of atoms or is continuous reduces to the much clear one, whether the continuum is able to furnish a better picture of phenomena. (boltzmann 1899b, 91) boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 77 in this sense, his conception of physical theory, together with his “pragmatist and darwinist roots” – see, e.g. (regt 1999, 113-114) – , leads us to believe that his understanding was that the atom exists insofar as it has explanatory value, as a theoretical entity derived from a process of elaboration of pictures of reality; ultimately, as a heuristic tool for understanding the world. the absence of ontological commitments and the emphasis on methods and techniques committed to the solution of problems related to thermal phenomena will be the core of what we are characterizing here as a heuristic of representation in boltzmann’s thought, and which will substantially mark his work in statistical mechanics. boltzmann in the context of the mechanistic program throughout the 19th century, two great research programs set in the same scenario molded by a broader program – the mechanistic program – were faced with the problems posed by thermal phenomena. on the one hand, a theory of heat developed in the framework of phenomenological thermodynamics, based on general empiric allows and completely independent of statements concerning the ultimate nature of matter. on the other hand, a kinetic – molecular theory, whose foundation focused on statements about the atomic nature of matter and which conceived heat as a form of motion associated with the molecules of substances. peter clark, following the model of “scientific research programs” of imre lakatos, characterizes these approaches as two major research programs, namely the thermodynamic program and the atomic – kinetic program (clark 1974, 41). each possessed a distinct hard core and employed quite different basic principles and heuristic techniques (clark 1974, 43). the perspective of the thermodynamic program was the consideration of the existence of a definite relationship between an amount of heat and the work that can be produced by it through any path. from this perspective, the laws of heat should be deducted from these relations. in the middle of the 19th century, the works by carnot, kelvin and some preliminary studies by clausius, to cite a few examples, converged in this direction. the kinetic – molecular program, on the other hand, was based on the assumption that the behavior and the nature of substances resulted from the movement of an enormous amount of elements, which ultimately were ruled by the laws of mechanics. krönig, clausius, maxwell and boltzmann are representatives of this research program. clark defends the thesis of the degeneration of the atomic – kinetic program after 1880 and the progressive character of the thermodynamic program, with a subsequent resumption of that after 1905 with the prediction of the existence and magnitude of brownian motion (clark 1974, 43). in contrast to this position, as indicated in the introduction to this paper, our position goes in the direction of indicating the degeneration of the mechanistic program in its strict sense and not of the atomic – kinetic program itself, since it will find new heuristic elements for its development. it’s in the context of confrontation between these two programs that one of the major recurring problems faced by theoretical physics in the 19th century can be placed, which boltzmann would take as a central problem and starting point for his work, namely, the possibility of formulating a consistent molecular model within the classical newtonian mechanical framework, from which the observable properties of matter could be calculated. this meant giving an explanation of the laws of thermodynamics in terms of the behavior of systems involving a huge number of molecules. in his efforts to represent and understand the observable properties of matter from a microscopic perspective, boltzmann was faced with the challenge of defining and representing thermodynamic equilibrium. when trying to explain irreversibility, he was led to the investigation of the molecular properties of thermodynamic states and to develop a general treatise of thermal equilibrium, through which he surpassed the then current approaches in the kinetic theory of gases, boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 78 developed by clausius and maxwell. the use of analytical mechanics’ tools – considered by boltzmann as “the entrance gate through which we step into the vast and imposing edifice of theoretical physics” (boltzmann 1899, 129-30) – guided by his atomistic perspective on the structure of matter, enabled him to treat microscopic motion mathematically and, subsequently, to construct a statistical approach as a representational heuristic resource to understand relations between mechanic sand thermodynamics within his research program. a mechanical representation of entropy the frame of reference for the construction of the boltzmann’s program occurred with the publication of “on the mechanical meaning of the second law of the theory of heat” (boltzmann 1866), in which he sought to use a kinetic approach to understand the thermodynamic irreversibility in the representational framework of mechanics. the experience shows us that, in their vast majority, the natural processes observed in the macroscopic scale tend to occur in a single direction, i.e., they are irreversible. tackling the problem of irreversibility, therefore, meant reconciling the irregular, reversible nature of the motion of the constituent elements of a given system, with the regular, irreversible nature presented by these same systems when viewed from a macroscopic perspective. the relationship between the 2nd law and the constitution of matter had already been laid out in the clausius’ work, who arrived at the definition of entropy through the concept of “disaggregation” (clausius 1865), a concept related to the internal arrangement of atoms and which measures the degree in which the molecules of a body are dispersed during the heat generation process. a connection with mechanics could be sought by building functions of the coordinates and momentum of the particles that make up the system, which could represent the thermodynamic quantities (temperature and entropy) and the two modes of energy transfer: heat and work (klein 2010, 58). in addition, it was necessary to make a mechanical distinction between reversible and irreversible processes, which meant constructing a mechanical representation of thermodynamic equilibrium; in other words, basing thermodynamics on a kinetic theory, making irreversibility emerge naturally from the laws of mechanics (dahmen 2006, 283). this way one could look for a theorem that related these mechanical functions in the same way they were related in clausius’ thermodynamic work. as such, it would be possible to establish a link between mechanics and thermodynamics. this would be boltzmann’s starting point, which is clearly illustrated in the opening of his paper (1866), in which he opens his discussion on the subject for a long time, the identity between the first law of the mechanical theory of heat and the principle of living forces [principle of the conservation of energy] has been known; compared with this, the second law occupies a particularly exceptional position and in no case has its demonstration been assumed to have been made clearly and directly. the purpose of this paper is to provide a completely general and purely analytic proof of the second law of thermodynamics, in addition to discovering the theorem in mechanics that corresponds to it. (boltzmann 1866, 9, emphasis added.) different interpretations have been made about this proposal from boltzmann, almost always mediated by the reduction of thermodynamics to mechanics (klein 2010, dugas 1950, aurani 1992). reduction, in the sense that we employ the word here, is the explanation of a theory or a set of experimental laws established in a field of research by another theory that was usually, although not always, formulated in another field (nagel 1961, 338). klein states that boltzmann’s goal was to derive the 2nd law as a “purely mechanical theorem” (klein 2010, 58). in his view, boltzmann’s insertion into the mechanistic program occurs from the perspective of reduction of the phenomena of nature to mechanics. dugas boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 79 points out another perspective which, although related to the latter, relativizes some of its aspects by assuming that boltzmann intended simply “to give to this principle (2nd law), within the framework of kinetic theory, a purely analytical demonstration, and to find the mechanical theorem which corresponded to it” (dugas 1950, 153). therefore, in dugas’s view, boltzmann’s project still assumes some dependence of thermodynamics on mechanics, the latter being in the position of reference to the former. aurani, concerned with a possible reductionist identification of boltzmann’s thought with the mechanistic, defends the idea that he did not seek the reduction of the 2nd law to a mechanics theorem, through a proof of its theoretical nature, nor to translate it into a framework of kinetic theory. she assumes the independence of thermodynamics in relation to mechanics in the thought of boltzmann, who, according to her, sought to make explicit the fundamental character of the law using it as a “guide in the formal treatment of the irregular variation of the mechanical magnitudes of the system and the establishment of coherence between the visible stability of the macroscopic bodies and their continuous variation at the microscopic level” (aurani 1992, 12). we are faced with three positions that are not at all irreconcilable and which, therefore, can translate different elements of boltzmann’s program. our thesis is that boltzmann’s program is inserted in the context of the mechanistic program of the nineteenth century committed to putting into operation the resources of mechanics to give a proper and unified representation of nature. the operability of these resources in solving problems within heat theory had already been expressed in the kinetic theory of gases and it was, therefore, necessary to extend their possibilities, especially of analytical mechanics, now in dealing with the problem of the thermodynamic irreversibility. in this sense, the idea of reduction thermodynamics to mechanics minimizes the complexity and dynamics of boltzmann’s thought. making use of a definition of temperature inspired by kinetic theory – working with the temporal mean of the kinetic energy of atoms – boltzmann would seek to establish relationships between the 2nd law, in the form established by clausius, and hamilton’s principle of least action. his strategy was therefore to use the formalism of mechanics to represent the relationships between the changes in state of bodies and the variation of action in the motion of atoms. as such, he formally established the relations between the quantity of heat supplied to the bodies and the variation of in motion of each atom in space – through the equality between the variation of the action and the variation of the kinetic energy of each atom – with the following expression:13 𝑆 = ∬ 𝑑𝑘 = 2∑𝑙𝑜𝑔 ∫ 𝑑𝑡 + 𝐶 (1) although he achieved a mechanic analogy for entropy through the proof of a theorem known as the generalized form of the principle of least action, the explanation for its irreversible increase remained open. in his mechanical characterization of the state of equilibrium, and the consequent mechanical representation of entropy, here stricted himself to strictly periodic, and therefore mechanically reversible, systems. his mechanical counterpart for entropy, given by eq. 1, was restricted to systems whose molecular configuration repeated after a certain period of time 𝜏 = (𝑡 − 𝑡 ). his attempt to extend his proof to non – periodical systems, those where the orbits of particles are not closed, proved unconvincing (klein 1970, 88), which led him to conclude only that “if the orbits are not closed in a finite time, we can still look at them as closed in an 13 boltzmann used the letter “c” (from latin “celeritas”) to indicate speed, as was common at that time. boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 80 infinite time” (boltzmann 1866, 30). despite this consideration, he was not able to establish a molecular basis for irreversible processes and therefore failed to solve the problem of irreversibility. five years later (1871), in on the reduction of the second law of the mechanical theory of heat to general mechanical principles (clausius 1870), clausius arrived at the same theorem, only this time emphasizing one element ignored by boltzmann, namely the possibility that the force function (potential energy unction) could be subject to change. according to daub, this aspect is of utmost importance, since it is only when the force function is considered that the important issue emerges of linking its variation with work (daub 1969). afterwards, the potential energy function would be considered by boltzmann in his new attempt to interpret thermodynamic irreversibility, which he laid out in “analytical proof of the second law of thermodynamics from the law of equilibrium distribution of kinetic energy” (boltzmann 1871). the distribution function and the foundations for a statistical representation of entropy the construction of a statistical representation as an alternative to a kinetic representation (more strictly mechanical), developed in 1866, was only possible by recognizing the role of maxwell’s molecular speed distribution function – of which boltzmann would make different interpretations in his papers of 1871 (boltzmann 1871a, boltzmann 1871b, boltzmann 1871c) – allowing him to build new heuristic tools, such as the notions of statistical ensemble and probability of states, which in themselves can be understood as new representations of the states of bodies. starting with the same considerations maxwell made in “on the dynamical theory of gases” (maxwell 1965), boltzmann extended the equilibrium distribution to maxwell’s molecular speeds in a monatomic gas, addressing the case when a field of external forces is present, such as the gravitational field (maxwell – boltzmann distribution) (boltzmann 1868). on his occasion, he presented us with two different methods to achieve this goal: the kinetic method and the combinatorial method. dissatisfied with the derivation of the distribution function developed by maxwell, which he considered difficult to be understood due to its brief presentation, boltzmann spent the first section of his paper (1868) filling in some gaps and illustrating some aspects with concrete examples, which, in his understanding, maxwell had failed to elucidate, such as the nature of the distribution function. it is here that we find for the first time what would become his first definition of the concept of probability (based on kinetic arguments), represented as a temporal average. probability was identified with the fraction of a sufficiently long time interval, during which the speed of a specific molecule has values within a certain volume in the velocity space. later (1871), probabilities would appear in a much more explicit way, linked to the concept of the state of a system, defined according to the limits of the coordinates of the atoms.14 the combinatorial method is independent of any statements about collisions between the molecules and is not based on any argument of a kinetic nature. assuming that the probability of finding a molecule in a given region of space is proportional to the “size” of that region, he was able to reconstruct the usual results of thermal equilibrium. although this method was unsuccessful in deriving the maxwell distribution in three dimensions, it is 14 the concept of probability conceived as a temporal average can already be found in the 1866 paper, when boltzmann treated temperature as a function of the average kinetic energy of each molecule in time (boltzmann 1866, 14). on that occasion, he made use of probabilistic notions in his reasoning, even though he did not use the word probability. boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 81 extremely valuable to the theory of probabilities and to the statistical physics (d. constantini et al. 1997, 486). the central idea behind this method is that the macroscopic description of a state of equilibrium (macrostate) does not distinguish between the many microscopic states (microstates) that are compatible with it. what boltzmann did was consider a system (a gas made up of a very large, but finite number “n” of molecules) with total energy “e” divided into “k” discrete pieces “x”, in such a way that 𝐸 = ∑𝑖𝑘 = 𝑛𝑥, where 𝑘 is the energy of the ith molecule. in general terms, the problem faced by boltzmann was how to calculate the probability that the energy of a molecule would lie between k and k+dk regardless of the energies of other molecules in the system. his intention was to derive an expression for the number of different possible paths to divide the total amount of energy between the different molecules. his starting point in the search for a solution to the problem was to divide the total energy “nx” of the system in “p” equal parts, so that the continuum of energy values for each one of the molecules were divided into a finite number of intervals this eminently finitist attitude by boltzmann has always been in agreement with his physical intuition. this outlook would be picked up again in his 1872 paper, when he built an interesting method of work based on the discretization of energy.15 this procedure was in line with the link of energy that he had defined earlier, i.e. 𝐸 = ∑ 𝑘 = 𝑛𝑥. by exemplifying this procedure in the case of a system composed of two and three molecules, boltzmann presented us with a second conception of the notion of probability, designed now as the ratio between the number of favourable cases and the number of possible cases, i.e., the probability that a given molecule would have energy “𝑘 𝑥” is defined as the number of microstates for which the particle “i” has this amount of energy divided by the total number of microstates.16 this is the so-called particle ensemble average. using the equiprobability of states as heuristic argument, boltzmann made clear why a system in equilibrium should obey maxwell’s law of distribution. simply because it is the most likely to be found in thermal equilibrium, since it corresponds to the largest number of microstates. through the work of gibbs, the hypothesis of equality of probabilities, a uniform distribution of probabilities in the space of states, later led us to the definition of the microcanonical ensemble, a set of microscopic states characterized by a same constant value of energy, which are associated with the same probabilistic weights. as noted by klein (klein 2010, 62) – and as our discussion on kinetic and combinatorial methods also sought to show – boltzmann interpreted maxwell’s distribution function in two different ways in his analysis of the nature of the thermo – dynamic equilibrium. he seemed to consider them as equivalent, and directly linked to a notion of probability conceived as temporal average and as particle ensemble average, respectively,17 which came later to be known as ergodic hypothesis. but boltzmann used the concept of probability to refer to the state of a gas as a whole, which was when he introduced the concept of the probability of a state of a gas. in the third section of his 1868 paper, in which he introduced us to a general solution for the thermal equilibrium problem, his starting point was to consider a system of n material points, representing its coordinates and speed components respectively by xi, yi, zi and ui, vi, wi, where i= 1,2…, n (boltzmann 1868, 92). by using his first definition of probability as temporal average [originally used in the context of a molecule], he then 15 this eminently finitist attitude by boltzmann has always been in agreement with his physical intuition. this outlook would be picked up again in his 1872 paper, when he built an interesting method of work based on the discretization of energy. 16 the micro states are defined by the designation of k1 pieces of energy to particle 1, k2 pieces of energy to particle 2... kn pieces of energy to particle n, ∑ 𝑘 = 𝑘 . 17 in the temporal average, probability is identified with the fraction of a sufficiently long time interval, during which the speed of a specific molecule has values within a certain volume in the space of speeds. in the particle ensemble average, it is identified with the fraction of the total number of molecules that, at a given moment, have speeds in a given volume element. boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 82 introduced the probability of a certain state of the system as the relative proportion of time in which the gas remains in a given region of space, which was done by indicating the probability that the parameters of the gas take values in certain intervals (boltzmann 1868, 92-93). unlike in 1866, boltzmann therefore no longer speaks of the trajectory of a particle, but of the limits of the position coordinates and the speed of their set. the probabilities, tested conceptually in the kinetic approach of 1866 and used implicitly in their dual meaning in 1868, would appear explicitly in 1871 through the expression “the probability of different states of bodies” (“die wahrscheinlichkeit der verschiedenen zustände des körpers”), and are implied in the expression “state distribution” (“zustandsverteilung”). it is as support of this new representation that “phase space” finds its place as the space of all accessible states to the system under study. boltzmann’s contact with maxwell’s work, therefore, marked a new stage in the development of his research program, incorporating two new representational heuristic elements: (1) the use of the “distribution function” to replace a full set of molecular variables; (2) the replacement of arguments of a kinetic nature, linked to a temporal description of the irregular movement of particles, by arguments of a probabilistic nature, which would establish the relationship between the system’s evolution in time and the particles’ limits of movement in space. based on this new approach, a new method of representation of the thermodynamic equilibrium began to be outlined in boltzmann’s program. it was characterized, on the one hand, by the creation of the statistical ensemble18 and, consequently, the adoption of a new space that was no longer the μ – space of individual particles, but the space of the entire gas, the γ – space, called phase space, the space of all states accessible to the system under study;19 and on the other hand, by there placement of the temporal average by a spatial average, taking over the entire statistical ensemble, in the representation of a given macroscopic physical quantity (thermodynamic variable). let’s better specify this heuristic level in boltzmann’s thinking, which was built over the year of 1871, at the root of which a hypothesis can be found the ehrenfests later dubbed the ergodic hypothesis (boltzmann 1871, 270) (ehrenfest et al. 1959,21) and which marks his transition from a kinetic approach to statistical approach him a very peculiar way. to calculate the temporal average of a given quantity a in the laboratory, we usually take the average of its values over a very long period τ. as such, we can write 〈𝐴〉 = lim → ∫ 𝐴(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 (2) on the other hand, one could imagine a set of systems distributed in the phase space (“statistical ensemble”) in such a way that the density of these systems is given by ρ (q, p). the average value of the quantity a in the ensemble is then given by 18 this is a set of (fictitious) replicas of the real system, which are similar in their nature (macrostate), but differ among themselves in the particular values that their parameters (position coordinates and momentum) assume at a given moment (microstate). the ’ensembles’ were proposed by boltzmann as a strategy to overcome the difficult problem of keeping track of the temporal evolution of an isolated system made up of many particles (n→∞). later, the ensemble method became a basic tool of statistical mechanics through the work of gibbs. 19 the name μ – space and γ – space can be attributed to the ehrenfests (ehrenfest et al. 1959). boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 83 〈𝐴〉 = ∫ ( , ) ( , ) ∫ ( , ) (3) boltzmann’s hypothesis consisted in assuming that the average values defined by equations 2 and 3 are identical and equal to the thermodynamic value of a. this means assuming that the average of a function in time, obtained by following the points of its trajectory, would be taken on all points and, therefore, would be equal to the phase average. it is based on this assumption that we will find what the ehrenfests presented in 1911 as being the “justification of boltzmann – maxwell” (ehrenfest et al. 1959, 21), which became known as the ergodic hypothesis, i.e., the idea that the phase trajectory of a (single) dynamic system is such that it passes in the proximity of all points that are compatible with its total energy.20 in von plato’s view (plato 1982), admitting to this idea would mean adopting a somewhat careless reading of boltzmann’s work, for whom the idea of a single trajectory filling the entire space of states was not in his horizon. in fact, boltzmann admits to the possibility of different trajectories (the lissajous figures are the example of motion he uses), formulating ergodicity as a condition for the existence of only one invariant of motion: total energy. with the impossibility of assigning ergodic behaviour to a single system, which meant admitting the theoretical dependence to initial conditions as possible, boltzmann would therefore use what he later called a trick (kunstgriff), “the fiction of infinitely congruent independent systems” (boltzmann 1884, 123), the so – called ensembles, as they became known after gibbs.21 for the specific case under consideration here, those where all systems have the same energy, boltzmann used the expression ergoden22 (gibbs’ microcanonical ensemble). this way, the ensembles23 are introduced as are presentational heuristic resource in the solution of the problem of calculating the macroscopic properties of gases independent from their microscopic evolution. subsequently, the “ensemble method” became the foundation of statistical physics through the work of gibbs, who cites boltzmann in his preface to “elementary principles in statistical mechanics” (gibbs 1901, viii) as a pioneer in the use of this type of representation. to justify this, boltzmann considered that during the evolution of the system, the time ∆t spent in a given element of volume ∆v of the (discrete) phase space is proportional to the volume element, i.e., lim → ∆ = ∆ (4) where v is the total volume of the region considered. suppose that a given system s finds itself, for a sufficiently long period of time τ, in the state si for a period of time τi. in the same way that we can define the relative frequency of a given event, we can define the relative proportion of time in which the gas remains in that 20 this position has been the source of controversy, with important contributions from brush (brush 1967), von plato (plato 1982) and gallavotti (gallavotti 1995). following brush’s reasoning, we would like to highlight here that although the so – called ergodic hypothesis was in boltzmann’s considerations, it was not presented by him as a condition of his theory of gases, as the work by the ehrenfests (ehrenfest et al. 1959, 21) would seem to indicate. 21 we are indebted to prof. gallavoti, in (gallavotti 1995), where for the first time we came across an analysis that clearly established boltzmann’s priority with regard to ensembles. 22 the term was introduced explicitly for the first time by boltzmann in 1884 (boltzmann 1884). 23 boltzmann used the term “inbegriff von systeme” (“the highest representation of the system”) to represent them (boltzmann 1884, 123). boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 84 state (τi/τ). this was the strategy of boltzmann when he identified this fraction of time (τi/τ) with the probability of states. we can, therefore, understand this period of boltzmann’s work (1868-1871) as marking the beginning of the construction of what is known as sample space in statistical language, the space of events, which from a statistical mechanics perspective is the set of all microscopic states (microstates) accessible to the system.24 in addition, we also recognize boltzmann’s conceptual effort to assign probabilities to the space of states, forging what we now know through the concept of probabilities,25 the space within which the states will be distributed with their respective probabilities. in this sense, we can see the use of two types of sampling spaces on the horizon of the boltzmanian program for statistical mechanics, whose unfolding we recognize in gibbs’ work, namely: (1) pi space: the space where the states are distributed with equal probability and which are represented by the so – called ergoden from boltzmann (gibbs’ microcanonical ensemble.) (2) pii space: the space where the states are divided according to different probabilistic weights, given by the maxwell–boltzmann distribution and represented by what boltzmann called holode (gibbs’ canonical ensemble.) we therefore identified a transition in representational heuristics in boltzmann’s program, which goes from a kinetic approach to a statistical approach, using maxwell’s speed distribution function as an element of mediation (c. laranjeiras et al. 2006). in a statistical language, we can say that in the kinetic approach, boltzmann attributed the average property of the population (gas) to the sample. in the statistical approach, the distribution function will form the basis of the representation that will allow this extrapolation. a mechanical-statistical representation of entropy the papers of 1871, previously referred to, were without a doubt an important step in boltzmann’s representational transition. even excluding irreversible phenomena – let us remember that the treatment was exclusively directed to states of equilibrium – boltzmann was able to develop new tools through this contact with maxwell’s work. his next step was to extend the statistical treatment to irreversible phenomena through a dynamic approach to the process of evolution to thermal equilibrium. this is the emphasis of his 1872 paper, further studies on the thermal equilibrium of gas molecules (boltzmann 1872), an essay of approximately 100pages presented to the academy of vienna. the paper begins with a critique of the derivation of speed distributions for a gas in thermal equilibrium, given by maxwell in 1867 (maxwell 1965), emphasizing the fact that deduction had shown only that the maxwell distribution, once reached, would not change because of the collisions between molecules. it failed to show, and this was boltzmann’s intention, that the gas should always approach the limit found by maxwell, whatever its initial state. 24 it is within the boltzmann’s program (late 19th century) that we find the framework for the construction of sample spaces in statistical mechanics, which will be perfected, in the sense that they become more operational, by gibbs (dawn of the 20th century, see (gibbs 1901)) and will be more thoroughly developed from a mathematical perspective by kolmogorov in the early decades of the twentieth century. see (kolmogorov 1950). 25 this is an important milestone in the birth of statistical mechanics, whose task it would be to build strategies to assign probabilities to the space of states. boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 85 in his justification for maxwell’s hypothesis about the statistical distribution of speeds, boltzmann made use of a dynamic approach26 by studying the path to equilibrium, i.e., the process by which a given system evolves toward equilibrium. his starting point is based on the collision mechanisms, developed in 1871 (see boltzmann 1871), that promote the temporal variation of a function [f (v1,t)] which gives the number of molecules with velocityv1at a given time t1. by treating collision processes in a precise way, he obtained the time derivative of the molecular distribution function, an integro–differential equation that can be written in the following way: ( , ) = ∫ ∫ [𝑓(𝑣 ,𝑡)𝑓(𝑣 ,𝑡) − 𝑓(𝑣 ,𝑡)𝑓(𝑣 ,𝑡)]𝜓(𝑣 ,𝑣 ,𝑣 )𝑑𝑣 𝑑𝑣 (5) this is the so-called boltzmann’s equation, which describes the temporal evolution of f when this function at some initial time is given. maxwell had argued that the distribution of velocities will remain stationary if the number of collisions is equal.27 in eq. 5 such equality makes the expression in square brackets in integrand vanishes, leading us to the maxwell distribution. this way boltzmann showed that the maxwell distribution is in fact a stationary solution of the equation. but also showed that it is the only one. to prove this he introduced a certain quantity h, a function of the dynamic state of the system which, in the absence of a constant factor, coincides with the entropy of clausius and which measures how far a system at time t is removed from its state of equilibrium. with this, he ended up proving a theorem, the so – called h–theorem,28 for the common foundations of the laws of mechanics and the laws of probability, according to which entropy must always increase or remain constant. the h–theorem consists in demonstrating the existence of a certain function, originally represented as e(t) and later as h(t),29 defined in terms of f (v,t), 𝐻(𝑓,𝑡) = ∫𝑓(𝑣,𝑡)ln𝑓(𝑣, 𝑡)𝑑𝑣, (6) where f(v,t) is a solution of eq. 5, which can never increase, but only decrease or remain constant, i.e. ≤ 0. (7) since h cannot decrease infinitely, it must approach a minimum value and then remain constant, which is the final value corresponding to the maxwell distribution. bearing in mind that h is related to thermodynamic entropy in the final state of equilibrium,30 the result is 26 boltzmann’s dynamic approach contrasts with the stationary approach used by maxwell. in the latter, the starting point is the state of equilibrium right from the beginning, while in the former this state is studied as a result of an evolution process of the system. 27 kuhn (kuhn 1978, 40) notes that boltzmann made the calculation of the number of collisions that occur in a unit of volume during a time interval dt employing a technique that dates back to clausius, regarding his calculation of the mean free path of gas molecules. in fact, boltzmann had calculated the average number of such collisions, although he did not make this aspect explicit. this aspect is of the utmost importance because it characterizes the statistical dimension of boltzmann’s deduction. 28 a detailed discussion of the h–theorem, including an analysis of the objections around it made by loschmidt and zermelo, can be found (harvey 2009). 29 originally boltzmann called his function e but as this could be confused with e for energy, he changed it to a capital greek letter eta (=h). 30 the quantity h is proportional (with a constant of negative proportionality) to the entropy of the gas in the form given by boltzmann in his 1871 paper (boltzmann 1871). boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 86 equivalent to the proof that entropy must always increase or stay constant. this way boltzmann established for the first time the fundamental connection between the microscopic approach (which characterizes statistical mechanics) and the macroscopic approach (which characterizes thermodynamics); he even gave us a direct method of calculating the entropy of a given physical system from a purely microscopic point of view. with the h–theorem, boltzmann tried to explain the irreversibility of natural processes, showing how molecular collisions tend to increase entropy; any initial distribution of molecular positions and speeds will certainly evolve to a state of equilibrium in which the speeds are distributed according to maxwell’s law. at the end of his paper, after expanding his results to compound gases and polyatomic molecules, affirming that the same methods could be applied to a gas with molecules with complex structures, boltzmann made the calculation of entropy – establishing a physical sense for the quantity h, which is defined based on the distribution function. the criticisms to the h–theorem and consolidation of statistical representation the article of 1872 was the target of criticism, which forced boltzmann to explain the statistical content of his new representation with greater clarity. formulated in the form of paradoxes – the paradox of reversibility (loschmidt 1876) and the paradox of recurrence (zermelo 1896) – the criticisms were specifically related to the nature of the irreversibility in physical systems. the core of the criticisms could be summarized in the following question: how to explain the irreversible behavior of systems from the macroscopic point of view based on mechanical models that are strictly reversible and recurrent? in other words, the issue here was how to reconcile his general equation (eq. 5) with the classical dynamic. a contradiction was seen, which boltzmann sought to dilute, between a basic premise of his derivation, the reversibility of individual collisions, and the irreversibility predicted by his theorem for a system with many particles. from the critics’ perspective, it was not possible to reconcile a molecular theory based on newtonian mechanics and the general principle of dissipation of energy. boltzmann became aware of the criticism of loschmidt – his colleague at the university of vienna and advocate of atomism – through an article presented by him to the vienna academy of sciences in 1876 (loschmidt 1876). the response came in 1877 (boltzmann 1877a), when boltzmann emphasized the role of probability in his understanding of the 2nd law. loschmidt was concerned about some aspects of boltzmann’s work, especially about the possibility of providing a molecular basis for the second law of thermodynamics. loschmidt’s argument, which later became known as the paradox of reversibility, was that we can never derive the irreversible approximation to equilibrium and the monotonic increase of the entropy associated with it from reversible mechanical laws. if entropy is a function specified from the positions and velocities of the particles of a system and if that function increases during some particular movement of the system then by reversing the direction of time in the equations of motion it would be possible to specify a trajectory through which entropy decreases. in his response to loschmidt, boltzmann emphasized that the molecular proof of the 2nd law was not solely based on mechanics, but on mechanics along with the laws of probability. boltzmann’s argument was that although loschmidt was correct in asserting that reverse motion would produce a decrease in entropy and that this motion was as consistent with the laws of mechanics as the original movement of increasing entropy, he boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 87 had not attempted to do so that the probability31 of those initial states which produce an increase in entropy is unusually greater than of those which lead to its diminution. a reversal of this process could not be achieved solely by taking a steady state and reversing molecular speeds. it would be necessary to choose very special microscopic states (in the midst of an immense number of microstates compatible with an equilibrium macrostate) that had been developed from non – equilibrium states. only the reversal of speed in these cases make it possible to decrease the entropy. but this is quite unlikely. in a second paper in 1877 (boltzmann 1877b), the statistical dimension of boltzmann’s thinking becomes more clearly outlined. this paper, where he explicitly states that entropy is a measure of the probability of a state, is the culmination of his studies on the relationship between the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the calculation of probabilities. over the course of his approach – combining his definition of h (introduced in 1872), the monotonic decrease of h (which emerged as a result of his kinetic equation), the role of entropy (s) in thermodynamics (he had suggested that s is associated with – h), and his concept of the probability of states (w) – boltzmann wrote for the first time the equation which planck would later make familiar as 𝑆 = 𝐾 log𝑊. the fundamental idea here is that the entropy of a macrostate is determined by the number of ways in which this macrostate can be obtained (microstates) through the different arrangements of the molecules in the system (combinatorial definition of entropy). this is a milestone in boltzmann’s program insofar as entropy, which from the point of view of thermodynamics was given by a trajectory, was now to be related to the number of states accessible to the system. by emphasizing the role of probability in understanding the irreversibility of the 2nd law, boltzmann introduced an important method (most likely distribution method) later used by w. gibbs (1838-1903) in his development of statistical mechanics. another criticism came through the so-called “recurrence paradox” (1896), based on a well known theorem from poincaré, the “recurrence theorem” (zermelo 1896), according to which a mechanical system contained in a finite volume and with finite energy would, after a finite time, return to the proximity of its initial state. in the hands of ernest zermelo (18171923), this theorem was used to justify the impossibility of the continuous and monotonic increase of entropy with time. zermelo showed (zermelo 1896) that poincaré’s theorem implies that boltzmann’s h–function is an almost periodic function of time and, therefore, that a deterministic mechanical system cannot remain in a final state, as we would expect from the h–theorem. in other words, h(t) decreases during a certain time interval until it reaches its lowest value in the equilibrium and grows back spontaneously to reach its original value, thus contradicting the h–theorem and the second law of thermodynamics. boltzmann’s reply came in the same year (1896) in an article entitled “reply to zermelo’s remarks on the theory of heat” (boltzmann 1896), where he asserts that the 2nd law of thermodynamics was not simply a mechanistic but statistical principle, stating that equilibrium state is not a single configuration of the systems, but a set of possible configurations (majority), characterized by the maxwell – boltzmann’s distribution. in this sense, the recurrence to some particular initial states would be a mere fluctuation, the occurrence of which would require an infinitely long time. at the beginning of the article he emphasizes very clearly his position: clausius, maxwell and others have already repeatedly mentioned that the theorems of gas theory have the character of statistical truths. i have often emphasized as clearly as possible that maxwell’s law of the distribution of velocities among gas molecules is by no means a theorem of ordinary mechanics which can be proved from the equations 31 by probability, boltzmann was referring to the number of possible paths through which the initial conditions (microstates) could be chosen so that they were compatible with the macroscopic variables observed (macrostates). boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 88 of motion alone; on the contrary, it can only be proved that it has very high probability, and that for a large number of molecules all other states have by comparison such as mall probability that for practical purposes they can be ignored. at the same time i have also emphasized that the second law of thermodynamics is from the molecular viewpoint merely a statistical law. zermelo’s paper shows that my writings have been misunderstood. (boltzmann 1896, 219) throughout the paper, boltzmann reaffirms the validity of poincare’s theorem denying however that his application by zermelo to the theory of gases was correct. he recognizes that zermelo is correct when he states, from the mathematical point of view, the periodicity of the behaviour of the h–function, but emphasizes that this periodicity is far from contradicting his theorem, being in complete harmony with it. boltzmann admits that recurrence to an initial state is not mathematically impossible, but unlikely. conclusions throughout this paper, which sought to reconstitute ludwig boltzmann’s research program for statistical mechanics from the perspective of representativeness heuristics in science, we highlighted some tools he used for the solution of certain problems related to thermal phenomena. from a mechanical representation of entropy, associated with the principle of least action, passing through the use of maxwell’s distribution function, it was possible to identify the construction (in a coherent and consistent way) of a statistical representation based on the concept of ensemble and the use of probability spaces. in the context of the debates surrounding boltzmann’s work, we defend the idea that if there is a turning point in boltzmann’s thought we should look into his representational transition and not into his probabilistic approach. here, in our view, is the contribution of the present work, whose historiographical and philosophical perspective – in contrast to the traditional view – allows us to identify representation as a heuristic instrument for articulating its research program. references aurani, katya m. 1992. la nature et le rôle des probabilités dans les premieres recherches de boltzmann sur la 2ème loi de la thermodynamique (les articles de 1866, 1871, 1872 et de 1877). thèse de doctorat, department of philosophy. université de paris 7, paris. badino, m. 2006. was there a statistical turn? the interactions between mechanics and probability in boltzmann’s theory of non equilibrium (1872-1877), preprint. badino, m. 2011. mechanistic slumber vs. statistical insomnia: the early history of boltzmann’s h–theorem (1868-1877). the european physical journal h (36): 353-378. boas, marie. 1952. the establishment of the mechanical philosophy. osiris (10): 412-541. blackmore, j. 1995. ludwig boltzmann, his later life and philosophy, 1900-1906, book two: the philosopher. dordretch: kluwer. boltzmann, ludwig. 1866. über die mechanische bedeutung des zweiten hauptsatzes der wärmetheorie. wiener berichte (53): 195-220. boltzmann, ludwig. 1868. studien über das gleichgewicht der lebendigen kraft zwischen bewegten materillen punkten. wiener berichte (58): 517-560, in wissenschaftliche abhandlungen, vol. 1, paper 5. boltzmann, ludwig. 1871a. analytischer beweis des zweiten hauptsatzes der mechanischen wärmetheorie aus den sätzen über das gleichgewicht der lebendigen kraft. wiener berichte (63): 712-732, in wissenschaftliche abhandlungen, vol. 1, paper 20. boltzmann and the heuristics of representation in statistical mechanics cássio c. laranjeiras; 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jojomar lucena; josé r. n. chiappin 92 videira, a. a. p. 2000. a filosofia da ciência de ludwig boltzmann: atomismo, mecânica clássica, darwinismo e pluralismo teórico. ciência e filosofia (6): 199-225. videira, a. a. p. 2006. boltzmann, física teórica e representação. revista brasileira de ensino de física 28 (3): 269-280. doi: 10.1590/s1806-11172006000300004. von plato, j. 1982. boltzmann’s ergodic hypothesis. archive for history of exact sciences 42 (1): 72-89 wilson, a. d. 1989. hertz, boltzmann and wittgenstein reconsidered. history and philosophy of science 20 (2): 245-263. zermelo, e. 1896. über einen satz der dynamik und die mechanische wärmetheorie. annalender physik (57): 485-494. on a theorem of dynamics and the mechanical theory of heat. english translation by s. g. brush in kinetic theory: irreversible processes, vol. 2, edited by s. g. brush (pergamon press, oxford, 1966), pp. 208-217. microsoft word 14biacino layout 171 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2018 (5): 171-192 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2018 – this is an open access article article the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino1 abstract: the evolution of the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century in france after the definitions by dirichlet and riemann and the introduction of several pathological functions is studied. some young mathematicians of those years (baire, known for his classification of discontinuous functions, borel and lebesgue famous for their new theories on measure and integration) made several attempts to propose a large class of functions as “accessible” objects. their discussions, their purposes and polemics are reported often by their own words supported by a large bibliography. the contribution of some italian mathematicians, as vitali, is also underlined. some of such discussions are linked to the growth of measure and function theories, others will find mathematical answers in the modern theory of computability for real functions. keywords: borel and lebesgue measurable functions; baire classes; borel–lebesgue controversy; axiom choice; lebesgue not borel measurable functions received: 26 january 2018. reviewed 3 september 2018. accepted: 18 november 2018. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.13 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ e ... si dà luogo... alla domanda “se, conservando tutta la generalità contenuta nella definizione, una funzione y di x data in un certo intervallo possa sempre o no esprimersi analiticamente per tutti i valori della variabile nell’intervallo stesso per una o più serie finite o infinite di operazioni di calcolo da farsi sulla variabile”, e a questa domanda, nello stato attuale della scienza, non può ancora rispondersi in modo pienamente soddisfacente, poiché, quantunque si sappia ora che per estesissime classi di funzioni e anche per funzioni che presentano grandissime singolarità può darsi un’espressione analitica, resta però ancora il dubbio che, non facendo nessuna limitazione, possano anche esistere funzioni per le quali ogni espressione analitica, almeno con gli attuali segni dell’analisi, è del tutto impossibile. (dini 1878, 37)2 1 loredana biacino [orcid: 0000-0001-7035-3993] is a former associate professor at the d. m. a. of university “federico ii” of naples. address: via blundo, 42, 80128 napoli, italy. e-mail: loredana.biacino2@unina.it 2 and … the question arises “whether any function y of x defined in an interval could always be analytically represented for all the values of the variable in that interval by means of one or more finite or infinite series of operations to be done on the variable, or not”; in the present state of science the the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 172 introduction and bibliography in the cultural ferment of the first decades of the 20th century the following mathematical problems went through a rigorous examination: what is a “genuine” real function? how can it be defined, described, identified? what functions are effectively accessible to the mathematicians? as an intuitive geometrical concept of the analysis was abandoned and new objects without physical reference burst into the mathematical practice, whether they were sets or functions, it was necessary to introduce suitable methods to access to these new entities. indeed, during the whole of the 19th century almost all mathematicians, grounded on an intuitive geometric outlook on mathematics, thought that analytic functions, that is functions that are sum of a power series, were more than enough for all purposes. precisely, a real function f in an interval ]a,b[ is called analytic if it is such that for every xo]a,b[ there exists a real number >0 and a sequence of real numbers ao, a1, a2, … such that f(x)=an(x-xo)n for every x]xo-, xo+[. an analytic function is very regular, i.e. indefinitely derivable. all the elementary functions, polynomials, sinx, cosx, ex, sinx, cosx, logx … and the functions obtained from them by means of the algebraic and the composition operations are analytic, but there are also analytic functions without representation in terms of elementary functions. however, in relation with the solution of the heat differential equation in 1822, in his paper théorie analitique de la chaleur, j. fourier (1768-1830) claimed that “arbitrary”, more general functions could be represented by a trigonometric series. just by studying fourier series, in 1837 dirichlet (1825-1859) considered the totally discontinuous function whose value is 1 for rational and 0 for irrational arguments (the dirichlet function) and furnished the first “abstract” definition of a real function of a real variable. this definition was well accepted: it closed at the time a long dispute about what had to be understood by the word function, in which many mathematicians had been involved. the dispute had begun after the publication of d’alembert’s paper about the vibrating chord in 1747: indeed, d’alembert thought that the solution, even if not necessarily analytic, had to be sufficiently regular in every time, because it was a solution of a differential equation. on the contrary, euler, in 1748, in de chordarum exercitatio, exposed his thought that the starting position could be arbitrary, the presence of one or more angular points signifying that in those points the curve had been pinched. as a consequence, euler, in 1755, in his institutiones calculis differentialis, had given a general definition, trying to enclose all possible ways in which a quantity may be determined by other quantities: precisely he defined a function as a quantity which depends on other quantitities in such a manner that, when those vary, it also varies. a progress with respect to the definition appeared on introductio in analysin infinitorum in 1748 where a function consisted in an analytic expression of a variable quantity, in other words, a sum of a power series. after dirichlet’s definition of abstract function, other facts came to light: riemann (1826-1866) furnished an example of an integrable function with an infinite number of discontinuities between any two limits. he defined (x) as the excess of x over the nearest integer, that is (x)=0 if x =|x|+ ½; (x)=x-|x| if x<|x|+1/2; (x)=x-|x|-1 if x>|x|+1/2, and therefore 1/2<(x)<1/2 for every x. then he considered the following function: question cannot be answered in a completely satisfactory way since, notwithstanding very large classes of functions and even many very singular functions are known to be analytically representable, it is not clear yet, at least by the current means of analysis, if there exists any function without analytical representation (dini 1878). the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 173 f(x)= ( ) + ( ) + ( ) + …. = ∑ ( ) the series converges for every x. all the points x=p/2n with p and n relative prime are discontinuity points with f(x+) and f(x-) finite and such that the jump in these points decreases to 0 when n diverges. the function f(x) is continuous in all the other points. therefore, by riemann integrability condition the function is integrable. if we consider its integral function f(x)=∫f(x)dx we obtain a continuous function that is not derivable in all the discontinuity points of f(x) and therefore fails to have derivative at infinite points in every interval. riemann discussed the function f(x) in his inaugural dissertation in 1854, but it was published only in 1867 (riemann 1898). notwithstanding f(x) is pathological in the sense it is without derivative in an infinite number of points and therefore it is not possible to visualize it, it was well accepted, since such points constitute only a subset of the rational number set. the situation was quite different for the function presented in 1861 in his lessons at the university of berlin by weierstrass (1815-1897) that caused a complete revision of the concepts on the basis of mathematical analysis. weierstrass gave the example of a continuous function in the real axis, but without derivative at any point. the surprising function has the following formulation: f(x) = ∑ 𝑏 cos(𝑎 𝑥), where a is an odd integer and b]0,1[ is such that ab>1+3/23. g. darboux (1842-1917), in his famous memoir (darboux 1875), gave an example of another pathological continuous function that is neither increasing nor decreasing in every interval: also, this function cannot be expressed in terms of a power series and it is impossible to visualize it. as a consequence, discussions arose whether general functions represented by trigonometric series or only analytic functions could be useful for mathematicians: what significance could have pathological functions or functions without an analytical representation? was the horror felt by hermite (1822-1901) for continuous functions without derivative justified? the situation is well summarized in the last years of the 19th century by g. frege (18481925) in (frege 1960). he noticed that the reference of the word “function” had been extended by the progress of science. indeed, the field of mathematical operations that serve for constructing functions had been widened by adding to the traditional operations of addition, multiplication, exponentiation and their converses, the various means of transition to the limit, thus adopting something essentially new. moreover “people […] have actually been obliged to resort to ordinary language [...], e. g., when they are speaking of a function whose value is 1 for rational and 0 for irrational arguments” (frege 1960, 28). what is completely new, frege goes further still and admits not necessarily mathematical objects as arguments and values of functions. he calls “the capital of x” as the expression of a function and says that if we take the german empire as the argument, we get berlin as the value of the function (frege 1960, 31).4 to conclude, in the early years of the 20th century, after the work of weierstrass, darboux and cantor the situation was less confused, but undoubtedly more varied. while, in general, many mathematicians were not interested in the subject and some of them kept 3 a reader can find a deep analysis of this period in (manheim 1964). 4 but which are the admitted objects? frege only says that an object is anything that is not a function, so that an expression for it does not contain any empty place. a statement contains no empty place and therefore we must regard what it stands for as an object. but what a statement stands for is a truth value, true or false. thus, frege allows a function that leads from a proposition to its truth value. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 174 even a hostile attitude,5 only a few of them tried to give an answer the previous questions, with different motivations, some of them revolutionizing at the same time measure and integration theory and launching the modern theory of functions of a real variable. this paper will be focused on the thorough analysis about the ontological character of the mathematical concept of function, and the manner to do mathematics in which many mathematicians, particularly french, as e. borel (1871-1956), r. baire (1874-1932), h. lebesgue (1875-1941) and m. fréchet (1878-1973), but also italian, as g. vitali (1875-1932), g. fubini (18791943), beppo levi (1875-1961) and l. tonelli (1885-1946), were involved. the reader can find some contact points with the similar analysis developed for example by monna (monna 1972). h. gispert in (gispert 1995) studies deeply the work of the french mathematicians in connexion with the development of the set theory by g. cantor but she is not interested in the disputes and controversies risen after the publication in 1904 of zermelo’s paper about the choice axiom. this period is thoroughly analyzed in this paper. other suggestions and information about the analysts which developed their work using the empiristic theory of sets after the apparition of zermelo’s paper can be found in (cavaillès 1937) and in (cassinet and guillemot 1983). the contribution of some italian scholars to the growth of a new way to understand mathematics will be also underlined: indeed, in particular the thought of u. dini (1845-1918), one of the most important italian mathematicians of xix century, was characterized by a deep interest in some theoretical questions about real analysis and measure theory; on this subject we have to notice that, only three years after the fundamental memory by g. darboux (darboux 1875), u. dini dedicates a whole chapter of (dini 1878) to the hankel singularities condensation principle, giving a rigorous proof of it and many interesting examples of singular functions. by this principle, starting with a function that is singular with respect to continuity or derivative in one point only, it is possible to create analytical expressions of infinitely many functions which present the same kind of singularity in infinite points in every part of the interval where they are considered. it is also possible to determine the analytic forms of the dirichlet function, that will be the object of a paper of a disciple of u. dini, alberto tonelli (tonelli 1885) to be not mistaken for leonida. also the chapter, “funzioni che non hanno mai la derivata determinata e finite”, of (dini 1878,147-166), deals with deeply pathological functions. as another example, the interest in the study of the analytic representation of discontinuous functions is proven also, some years after, by the early paper by severini (severini 1897), where the weierstrass approximation theorem is extended to a class of functions which are riemann integrable and therefore can present a particular kind of singularities. but there are many other italian mathematicians that gave a fundamental contribution towards real analysis in the second half of 19th century: we limit ourselves to mention g. ascoli (1843-1896), c. arzelà (1847-1912), v. volterra (1860-1940), who was one of the founders of functional analysis, and g. peano (1858-1932): in 1887 this former author, introduced for the first time peano measure in his treatise (peano 1887). only in 1893, in the second edition of the first vol. of his course d’analyse, (jordan 1893), c. jordan will give the same definition for subsets of a euclidean space. informations about the italian authors of the fist decades of the 20th century and their contribution to the development of measure and function theory can be find in the papers (pepe 1984), the preface of g. pepe to vitali (vitali 1984) and (vaz ferreira 1991). 5 see for example (pepe 1984), the preface by g. pepe to vitali (vitali 1984, 8-11) and (vaz ferreira 1991, 377-78). the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 175 the first papers on real analysis at the beginning of 1900 in the years around 1900, baire, borel, lebesgue were the mainly involved mathematicians in a deep analysis and some hard polemics about the concept of function. baire was the first to be interested in real functions in an exclusive manner. lebesgue wrote about him, in the comptes rendus des séance de l’académie des sciences (lebesgue 1958, 67), immediately after his untimely death in 1932 that while before baire the scholars were interested in real variables only by chance and for the study of complex analysis, their exclusive occupation since the beginning of the 20th century, baire was the first to devote all his scientific activity to the theory of real variables. baire observed (baire, 1899 and 1905) that in many applications we have often to consider discontinuous phenomena. every kind of singularities and discontinuities can enter in many questions beyond the mathematician’s control, hence the scholar has to study in an abstract manner the relations between the two notions of continuity and discontinuity; but often the mathematicians pass over a general treatment of the problems, considering only particular cases. so, with respect to the functions, they consider only analytical functions or more generally derivable functions, studying their properties deeply. baire thought on the contrary that it is worthwhile doing a more general approach to mathematics, determining what functions are accessible to our study. he wrote that in a course of classical analysis the fundamental notions are presented immediately in a very general manner; straight afterward the field of study is restricted by imposing some restraints. thanks to them it is possible to construct the theories which constitute mathematics. it is therefore justifiable to try if it is possible to deduce from the first general definitions all the general conclusions. in this way one can propose to develop beyond the current analysis, another branch of analysis, different from the first with regard to the quantity of obtained results, but on the other hand offering more complete enunciates (baire 1905, iii). in this context, it is important to answer the following question: under what conditions is a discontinuous function the limit of a sequence of continuous functions? the treatment of this problem occupies largely his work. the answer is known as baire theorem: a real discontinuous function of a real variable is the limit of a sequence of continuous functions if and only if it is punctually discontinuous, that is its continuity points are dense in every perfect subset of the real line. in his thesis, baire (baire 1899) develops his program exposing a subdivision into classes of all functions (baire’s functions) which should be of interest to mathematicians: in the class 0 there are the continuous functions, in the class 1 the functions that are limits of continuous functions but are not continuous, in the class 2 the functions that are limits of functions of class 1 but are not in class 1 and so on, up to classes of transfinite order.6 one year before, the book (borel 1898) had been published: a new fundamental approach to measure theory came into sight. sets that have the power of continuum as the cantor set7 or are dense on an interval as the rational number set have null measure! a constructive attitude with respect to mathematical objects became a prevalent habit and the question of the existence and the definition of sets and functions an essential question. as 6 good sources of information about baire are (gispert 1995) and (dugac 1975-76). 7 the cantor set on the closed interval [0,1] is constructed in the following way: we first estract from [0,1] the middle third, i.e., the open interval ]1/3, 2/3[ of lenght 1/3. we then proceed similarly with each of the two remaining intervals, i.e., we estract from each of them the middle third, namely, the open intervals ]1/9, 2/9[ from [0,1/3] and ]7/9,8/9[ from [2/3,1]. an analogous procedure is carried out with each of the four remaining closed intervals and the process is continued indefinitely. the closed set which results is called cantor set. it has zero measure and the power of the continuum. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 176 an example, what is the meaning of a genuine function? such for borel is an effectively defined function that is a function such that it is possible to calculate, by means of a limited number of operations and with a given approximation, its value corresponding to a given value of the variable (borel 1898, note ii, 117). another question, linked to the previous one is the following: there are no problems with integer numbers or geometrical continuum, of which we have an immediate intuition, but can we have a concept of sets whose power is greater than the continuoum? can we have a general conception of discontinuous functions? as a consequence of his ideas about mathematics, borel’s answer is no, as he thinks that in the practice the use of these concepts is difficult and sometimes impossible, and the mathematicians have to use effectively enumerable sets and well-defined sets and functions. borel believes that it is difficult to introduce the consideration of all the classes of functions whose set has a power greater than the continuum because we are not able to calculate a function if it is not defined by means of at most infinitely enumerable many elements. this happens for continuous8 functions or functions having only an enumerable set of discontinuities (borel 1898, note i, 109). on the contrary a discontinuous function is defined by infinitely not enumerable many conditions; to all practical purposes it is impossible to define it (borel 1898, note iii, 126). summarizing it is necessary to distinguish, both in the sets of points and in the discontinuous functions two big classes: the sets and the functions which cannot be defined by an enumerable set of conditions and those which can defined in such a way: only the latter can be considered useful (borel 1898, note i, 110). few years after, in his leçons sur l’intégration, (lebesgue 1904a), whose main purpose is a revolutionary integration theory, lebesgue introduces new arguments for the discussion. he thinks, as baire, that discontinuous functions play an important role in mathematics, but he does not limit himself to the baire functions: his theory of measurable sets and functions is modelled according this idea and shares not much with borel measurable sets and functions (he calls b measurable). lebesgue feels however to be in debt to borel for his measure theory and in the first time he tries to follow as much as possible borel’s point of view. so he observes (lebesgue 1904a, 109, footnote 1) that the set of the b measurable sets has the continuum power, therefore there exist other sets besides the b measurable sets; this does not mean however that it is possible to exhibit a not b measurable set, that is to say a finite number of words characterizing one and only one not b measurable set. he says that we will always meet only b measurable sets. in particular, all baire functions are b measurable. so the field of the functions that could interest the mathematicians had become very wide and new classes of functions attracted their attention: baire’s functions, effectively defined borel functions, borel and lebesgue measurable functions. on the basis of the conception of these classes there were, as we will see, some general ideas that even if not strictly related to the intuitionist philosophy, shared its constructive approach and are generally known under the name of french empirism. the methods that would be used were characterized by two fundamental criterions: they had not to imply contradictions and they had to be accessible to mathematicians and even available for applications. 8 indeed, borel considers, as baire, real functions of real variable and observes that, in order to define a continuous function, it is enough to consider the values it assumes in the rational numbers. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 177 the analytically expressible functions by lebesgue in (lebesgue 1905) the author introduces the analytically expressible functions, that is the functions that can be built from polynomials by the ordinary arithmetic operations and by passing to the limit a finite or enumerable number of times. accordingly, all the elementary functions, being analytic, are also analytically expressible, but the converse does not hold. indeed, since the limit of a sequence of analytic functions, in general, is not analytic, it is obvious that the new definition is very wider than the one given by euler in 1748 in his introductio in analysin infinitorum where all the defined functions were analytic. the totally discontinuous dirichlet function is not analytic but it is analytically expressible since: (x)=𝑙𝑖𝑚 [𝑙𝑖𝑚 (𝑐𝑜𝑠 𝑚! 𝑥) ]. lebesgue treatment is very close to the study of function classes done by baire some year before; we are not astonished at the fact that one of the basic results of the paper is the following theorem: a function is analytically expressible if and only if it belongs to a suitable baire class. the proof is immediately drafted: every continuous function is analytically expressible by the weierstrass theorem (it is the uniform limit of a sequence of polynomials). the other baire functions can be obtained from continuous functions passing to the limit once or more times and therefore they are analytically expressible too. the converse is trivial because all the polynomials are continuous. then lebesgue classifies the borel functions, proving that: a function is analytically expressible if and only if it is borel measurable. an obvious consequence is that: a function is borel measurable if and only if it belongs to a suitable baire class. we can read the proof of this equivalence also in a paper of the same year 1905 by vitali, un contributo all’analisi delle funzioni, (vitali 1984, 189), where also the concept of truncation of a function appears, but not with regard to integration as will be considered by de la vallée poussin. we ought to observe that in 1905 g. vitali had yet wrote a brief paper, una proprietà delle funzioni misurabili 9(vitali 1984,183), where he proved that every real measurable function is the sum of a function of class not greater than 2 and of an a.e. zero function. there was some interest in the nature of baire functions in those years: for example, in a postcard of june 1st, 1905 guido fubini writes to vitali, (vitali 1984, 454) and with regard to the previous paper, claims that all baire functions are measurable, since limits of 9 a first version of this paper was written since 1903, as follows from the letter of pincherle to vitali dated november 22th 1903 (vitali 1984, 435). in this letter, pincherle gives advise about the draft of the paper that in his opinion contains an interesting result. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 178 measurable functions. so they are the sum of a second class function and a function with null integral.10 fubini comes back to this subject by another postcard on june,12st. also, lebesgue in his thesis (lebesgue 1902) had already established that all baire functions are just summable (but, in that context, the meaning of summable is the same of measurable); moreover, in (lebesgue 1904b) he had deeply studied several properties of first class functions. here the proof of the previous result we can find in (de la vallée poussin 1916) is reported because, notwithstanding it dates back to some year after, it is written in a very clear style. first, de la vallée poussin proves, as lebesgue in the leçons, that baire functions are b measurable: indeed, the continuous functions are b measurable and all the other baire functions are obtained from them by means of limiting passages: but the limit of a sequence of b measurable functions is a b measurable function. then he proves the converse implication by steps. first of all the characteristic function of a closed set d is of class 1: indeed, the function associating with every point p of the space its distance from d, r, is continuous and is zero if and only if pd, therefore the characteristic function of d is given by the limit for n tending to infinity of the sequence of continuous functions and therefore it is a baire function of class 1. consider now whatever b set t: since t can be obtained by finite or enumerable unions or complements of closed rectangular domains, its characteristic function is a baire function. we now can conclude that every b measurable function f is a baire function since it is the limit of a sequence of linear combinations of characteristic functions of b measurable sets. indeed if, for example, f is bounded, its set of values is enclosed in an interval, this interval can be divided by the points a1<a2< ... <an+1 such that ai+1-ai< for i=1,2, ...,n. let ei be the borel set of the points x such that ai f(x)<ai+1 and let fi be the characteristic function of ei. then f is the limit for  tending to zero of the baire functions a1f1+a2f2+ ...+anfn and therefore f is a baire function. since every lebesgue measurable function coincides a.e. with a b measurable function, every lebesgue measurable function a.e. coincides with a baire function. in this way the universe of all the functions that can be of some interest for the mathematicians could be described by baire functions or analytically expressible functions and a.e. null functions. let us return to (lebesgue 1905); lebesgue proves again many technical results, some of them already proved by baire, for example: an analytically expressible function is punctually discontinuous on every perfect set, when the sets of first category11 with respect to such a perfect set are ignored.12 lebesgue hints at the possibility that this necessary condition is also sufficient but does not face the question (lebesgue 1905, 188).13 instead, he proves a theorem that furnishes a new way to define the functions of class n by continuous functions: the baire real functions of class n coincide with the functions of n+1 variables that are continuous with respect to every variable when the same value is given to all variables. 10 such a function is a.e. zero by another paper by vitali of the same year, sulle funzioni ad integrale nullo (vitali 1984, 193). 11 given a metric space x a subset e of x is called a first category set if it is the union of a sequence of sets such that the interior of the closure of every one is the empty set. the other sets are all of second category following baire’s nomenclature. 12 as an example, the dirichlet function is continuous on the set we obtain from the interval [0,1] ignoring the rational number set (that is a first category set). 13 in (lusin 1930, 154-155) the answer is negative. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 179 finally, in the last chapter of his long memoir, lebesgue proves that in every baire class there exists some element and that there exist functions which are not analytically expressible. in this context lebesgue claims that he will try to never talk about a function without defining it effectively; so, he is very near to borel’s position. for example, lebesgue, as borel, considers a function as perfectly defined if it is possible to denote it by a finite number of words. but he advises: no wonder if later he will consider as completely defined functions he is unable to calculate for any value of the variable. the dirichlet function is of this kind, indeed it is, as we have already seen, analytically expressible and therefore b measurable, bien-définie in the meaning of borel, but it is totally discontinuous and therefore if x=c, where c is the euler’s constant,14 since we do not know whether it is a rational number or not, it is impossible to calculate the value of the function in this point, even if it is possible to calculate so many decimal ciphers of c as we want. this example is important in the evolution of borel’s thought: some years after he will call asymptotically defined15 a function like dirichlet’s function. in 1912 he says that a bounded function f defined in a domain d is asymptotically equivalent to polynomials if there exists a sequence of polynomials converging in measure to f. then he proves that the limit of a bounded sequence of functions that are asymptotically equivalent to polynomials is asymptotically equivalent to polynomials and therefore every analytically expressible function is asymptotically equivalent to polynomials (borel 1912, 192-193). it is worth noticing that the concept of converge in measure was known by borel and lebesgue since 1903 (lebesgue 1903, 1229); see also further development in (lebesgue 1906,9), and (borel 1905, 35). in (lebesgue 1903) the author for the first time mentions the topological property of a measurable function, that is if f(x) is a measurable function defined in the interval [a,b], then for every >0 there exists a set h such that f(x) is continuous in the set [a,b]-h. this property will be clearly stated and proved by vitali in (vitali 1905, 183). in the same year 1905 vitali will make clear the content of a note by lebesgue to his leçons (lebesgue 1904,129), giving the definition of absolutely continuous function and proving that a function is an integral function if and only if it is absolutely continuous. let us come back to (lebesgue 1905); as we have seen lebesgue shifts the question of the definition of mathematical objects from the possibility of their effective construction to a “language” problem: a mathematical object is defined if it is possible to describe it with a finite number of words that apply to the object in an unequivocal way, that is when a characteristic property of the object can be named; for example the function, equal to one if the euler’s constant c is rational, equal to zero otherwise, is named, in other words is 14 the euler’s constant c is defined as the limit of the converging sequence: ∑ −logn. 15 in (borel 1912) the author is definitely against the analytical definitions: indeed, he considers a definition like “the number a is equal to zero if the euler’s constant is an algebraic number and one otherwise” at the borderline of mathematics. in it, the defined number depends on some unknown event: the definition is regarded as a mathematical one only for the mathematical nature of the unknown event and therefore it is possible to give the number a an analytic definition. but in order to obtain an explicit formulation for it, many passages to the limit are necessary so it is really impossible to calculate it. then the analytic definition does not have any mathematical meaning, but it is merely the translation in a more complex language of the primitive definition in such a way that eventually the value of the number a depends on the solution of a problem that we are not able to treat by any regular method. the fact that the problem is mathematical in nature seems to be an accessory circumstance. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 180 defined, even if we do not know a method in order to state with a calculation what is the effective value it assumes.16 such a kind of definition of the mathematical objects is the outcome of a continuous examination about their nature: one year before, in the leçons, lebesgue espouses a point of view like hilbert, when he begins chap. vii making a list of the six properties the integral has to verify; he writes that in this way he is defining it, the definition being descriptive and not constructive. a descriptive definition requires that the enunciated conditions have to be compatible. in a footnote, he adds that the aim of the leçons is just searching a constructive definition of the primitive functions equivalent to the descriptive one, that is a model of the given system of axioms in order to prove also its consistency. here the constructive attitude of lebesgue obviously does not coincide with the stronger point of view of borel. but, as we have seen, in 1905, lebesgue drops hilbert’s approach taking up the new idea, a vague criterion of almost extra-mathematical character in the opinion of borel. lebesgue does not agree to carry out infinitely many choices without determining the law they are made out. it is worthwhile observing that the axiom of choice is the object in 1907 of an interesting paper (lebesgue 1907), where lebesgue studies for the first time functional operations. he considers in place of the subsets of a given set the characteristic functions of their complements, in such a way the family of the subsets of a given set can be seen as a family of functions f(x,) depending on a parameter  and the zermelo function can be seen as a correspondence that associates with every  a number y() such that f(y(),)=0. as lebesgue observes, in the early years of the 20th century, several functional operations were known, as for example the l.u.b. or the g.l.b. of a set or of a function, the total variation, etc..., or the correspondences studied by volterra, hadamard, pincherle17, but they had not been sufficiently studied yet, except the definite integral. lebesgue tries to give a definition of the previous operation, as an analytical procedure associating an analytically expressible number y() with every analytically defined function f(x,). he proves that even if we limit ourselves to the enumerable sets it is impossible to define for them a zermelo correspondence by means of analytic procedures. in other words, lebesgue proves that no analytically representable nor only measurable function exists defined in an enumerable set x such that with every subset {x1, x2, x3, . . .} of x associates a number from {x1, x2, x3, . . .}. by this proposition lebesgue agrees with borel’s point of view about enumerable sets: borel writes in (borel 1905,164) that, in general, we have to distinguish between enumerable sets and effectively enumerable sets since a proper part of an effectively enumerable set can be not effectively enumerable and all the supposed paradoxes of the set theory are caused by the wrong proposition: every enumerable set is an effectively enumerable set. coming back to (lebesgue 1905), lebesgue proves that it is possible, for every finite or transfinite number , nommer a function of class . borel faces the same question the same year, in the note iii in the appendix of (borel 1905); since the set e of the functions whose class exceeds a given number has the power of the continuum18 while, by cantor’s theorem 16 it is also possible to name a set such that we cannot decide whether a given object belongs to it or not. for example, let e be the singleton {1} if the euler’s constant is rational and let e be the empty set otherwise: then it is not possible to decide whether 1 belongs to e or not. 17the book (pincherle 1901) was a pioneering work on functional analysis. in it a fundamentally new point of view is exposed: the analytic functions are conceived as points in an infinite dimensional linear space and the theory of functions is the study of linear functionals on this space. in the following years, pincherle wrote some other papers about this topic but only some years after they seemed outdated owing to the rapid and remarkable growth of the newly born theory of functional analysis. 18 in (lebesgue 1905) the author observes explicitly that the family of the  class functions, since it is defined by an enumerable set of conditions, has the power of the continuum in accordance with note the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 181 the set f of all functions has power greater than the continuum, the set f contains infinitely many functions that do not belong to e. borel claims that this reasoning, based on the power, has a serious fault: we know that there are functions that do not belong to e, but we have not the manner to define one of them, that is to designate one of them in such a way to be able to distinguish it from the others. then borel furnishes a procedure to prove that there exist functions that are not in the classes 0,1 and 2 trying to exhibit one of them; he claims that such a procedure can be generalized to classes of greater order, but notices that the arising definitions will imply some impracticable operations. here is the proof he gives: since the set of the functions belonging to the classes 0, 1 and 2 has the power of the continuum, there is a one-to-one correspondence between it and the set of numbers of the real interval (0,1) which is possible to exhibit in a bien déterminée way. then let fx be the function corresponding to the real number x(0,1). we can consider the following function f(x)=0 if fx(x) 0; f(x)=1 if fx(x)=0. of course such a function does not belong to the previous classes, but, as borel notices, it could be also beyond any classification. he remembers that he had communicated this proof to lebesgue who had improved it and obtained the definition of a function certainly of class 3 to appear on the jordan journal. borel obviously referred to (lebesgue 1905) where lebesgue proves that for every ordinal 𝛼 it is possible to name a function belonging exactly to the 𝛼 class; moreover in it lebesgue proves that there are functions that are not analytically expressible and therefore are not b measurable, but one can name.19 thus, besides b measurable functions whose values we are not able to calculate, but we can name, like dirichlet function, there are also lebesgue but not b measurable functions and sets that can be named:20 lebesgue considers a set of this kind (lebesgue but not b measurable), contained in a perfect one whose measure is zero21 and observes in a footnote that every bounded function that is zero in every point not belonging to such a set is riemann integrable, therefore (lebesgue 1905, 216): iii of (borel 1898). the preceding condition is also necessary; since a discontinuous function depends on a set more than enumerable of conditions, the power of the set of discontinuous functions is greater than the continuum. note iii of (borel 1898) is interesting because for the first time a general theory of the functions is proposed and the two mathematical conceptions of the time, the idealist and empiristic mentalities exposed by paul du bois-reymond in his théorie générale des fonctions compete among them. borel takes up a definite position against the idealist mentality. he adds in a note that this does not mean that it is impossible to find some result that can be applied to all functions like for example the beautiful theorem by darboux about the definite integral: the superior integral and the inferior integral always exist. but results of such a kind are very unusual and the previous theorem itself, notwithstanding its theoretic beauty, cannot be applied if the function is too general. 19 the proof is obscure, full of gaps and uses the second class ordinals. we will give it in section 5 in the form proposed and completed by lusin; we will also give an example of a simple function that is not borel constructed by lusin using the laws of arithmetic. borel (borel,1922) considers again the question of the definition of a not analytically expressible function by means of transfinite ordinals in a very skeptical manner in the paragraph: sur les définitions analytiques et sur l’illusion du transfini. lebesgue hints at measurable but not b measurable sets already in his thesis. in (lebesgue 1904, 112) he writes in a note: “i do not know if it is possible to name a non-measurable function b; i do not know if there are non-measurable functions.” 20 it is well known that lebesgue measurable sets that are not b measurable can be determined by the choice axiom. 21 obviously, it is a null peano-jordan measurable set. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 182 it is possible to name riemann integrable functions that are not b measurable.22 lebesgue claims also that it should be interesting to begin a study of the functions and the sets that we can name and closes his analysis posing a question that has a particular meaning in the year in which vitali published his example of a not lebesgue measurable set using zermelo’s axiom (vitali 1984, 231): it is possible to name a not measurable set? (as lebesgue makes clear, the memoir was written in may 1904). analytic and projective sets by lebesgue and lusin the whole memoir (lebesgue 1905) was a source of ideas and methods that inspired many subsequent authors, as de la vallée poussin, hausdorff, souslin, sierpinski, kuratowski etc. it was also the starting point and furnished the matter of important researches made by lusin; the work of this author consisted for many years of the development of some points of it; the outcome of this study was a deep treatment of the subject that can be found in many papers and in particular in the memoir (lusin 1927) and the book (lusin 1930). lusin was interested in comparing the concepts of a function defined by borel by means of infinitely enumerable many conditions and a function that is possible to name in the meaning of lebesgue: he thought that they coincide (lusin 1930, 5) and to this end he submitted his forerunners work to a close analysis. indeed, after baire classification of functions many other classifications of b measurable sets have been given: among them the first was furnished in (lebesgue 1905). precisely, at page 156, a b measurable set e is called by him f of  class if there exists a function f of  class such that e={𝑥: 𝑓(𝑥) = 0} and this is impossible by a function of less class than . analogously e is called o of  class if there exists a function f of  class such that e={𝑥: 𝑓(𝑥) > 0} and this is impossible by a function of less class than . for =0 the f sets are closed and the o sets are open. obviously, the complement of an f set is an o set of the same class and vice versa. some years after in (de la vallée poussin 1915) we find another classification: a set is called to be of class  if its characteristic function belongs to the  baire class. lusin studied in detail all the properties of the baire-de la vallée poussin classes of b measurable sets, but what is more interesting he studied deeply the projection operation in the class of b measurable sets. the starting point of this study was a mistake in (lebesgue 1905, 191), where lebesgue claims that if a set e is b measurable then his projections are b measurable. this, in general, is proved to be not true and lusin started from another definition by lebesgue to correct this statement. in (lebesgue 1905, 165) lebesgue observes that all the b measurable sets e can be described by means of analytic equalities or inequalities, that is there exists an analytically expressible function f such that e={𝑥: 𝑓(𝑥) = 0} or {𝑥: 𝑓(𝑥) ≠ 0}; therefore they can be called analytic sets. the inverse proposition was never enunciated by lebesgue and is not true. then souslin and lusin, in order to complete lebesgue’s program producing the more general functions that can be named, used the new terminology for a class wider than the class of b measurable sets. they gave the name of analytic sets to all the sets that can be written by means of analytic equalities and only by them, i. e. they did not give the same name to their complements. in (lusin 1930) the set i of irrational numbers of the interval 22 all the subsets of a null peano-jordan measure set are peano-jordan null measure sets. now the cantor set c has null peano jordan measure and therefore all its subsets are null peano jordan measure sets: now since c has the power of continuum, its power set has the power greater than the continuum. but b measurable sets are numerable, thus there exist infinitely many null peano jordan measure sets that are not b measurable and therefore their characteristic functions are riemann integrable but not b measurable. lebesgue has the problem of nommer one of these functions. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 183 (0,1) is considered and a set e is called analytic if there exists a continuous function f(t) on i such that x=f(t) for every xe. in (lusin 1927) the two definitions are proved to be equivalent. first lebesgue had pointed out the theoretic interest of the projection as an operation that allows to form new sets it is possible to name starting from already known sets. analytic and projective sets were studied by m. suslin (1894-1919) and lusin since 1917 and after in a long series of papers from 1925 to 1927 on the comptes rendus acad. sc., in (lusin 1927) and the book (lusin 1930); the theory of the projective sets was the subject of the lessons he gave at moscow university in 1924-25. sierpinski also was interested in projective sets in a series of papers. the class of the projective sets contains all the analytic sets and their complements in the following way. combining the operation of projection (p) with the operation of complement (c) it is possible to obtain, starting from b measurable sets e, all the analytic sets, as pe, then from their complements it is possible to obtain a new class of sets, cpe, that can be named even if their nature is unknown; again it is possible to obtain the new sets pcpe and so on: all these sets are the projective sets, a very difficult class to study. lusin proves many properties of these sets: in particular, in (lusin 1930, 144): a set is analytic if and only if it is the orthogonal projection of a b measurable set; and at page 152 and page 155: the analytic sets (and their complements obviously) are all measurable (but not necessarily b measurable). as a consequence: the projective sets are not b measurable in general. about lebesgue’s construction of a not b measurable function which can be named, as exposed by lusin in (lusin 1930) an interesting geometric interpretation of the example proposed in (lebesgue 1905, 213-214) is given: lusin dedicates a large part of his book in order to make it clear. lebesgue considers a sequence z1, z2, . . . whose terms are all the rational numbers of the interval [0,1] and a number t belonging to the interval [0,1] he writes in the form t= + + ...., 𝜗 =0,1 using only a finite number of digits 1 when this is possible. now lebesgue deletes in the sequence z1, z2, . . . all the 𝑧 corresponding to indexes i such that 𝜗 =0 and calls z’1, z’2, . . . the remaining z. in (lusin 1930, 198-202) this construction is interpreted in a geometric way that is much more clear and intuitive than the analytic one proposed by lebesgue. lusin considers in the otz plane the square 0≤ 𝑡 ≤1, 0≤ 𝑧 ≤1. on the edge t=0 he arranges all the elements of the sequence z1, z2, . . . for every natural n he considers the segment z=zn parallel to ot enclosed in the square; he divides such a segment in 2n equal segments and considers only those of these segments, numbered in the increasing order of t, that are even. the so obtained figure is formed by infinitely enumerable many segments, parallel to ot axis: it is called by lusin a binary sieve and denoted by . the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 184 obviously if t= + + . . . then 𝜗n=1 if and only if the straight line dt passing through t and parallel to oz axis meets the straight line z=zn in a point belonging to . therefore, for every given t the preserved points z are the ordinates of the points in which the straight line dt meets . now, as lebesgue says, given t, and therefore also the corresponding z’, sometimes it is possible to find a symbol of  class in such a way that it is possible to establish a correspondence between the z’ and the symbols < in such a way that to a z’ corresponds only one  and vice versa and if z’() and z’(1) corresponds to  and 1 then if <1 it is z’()<z’(1). obviously, this is always possible if the number of the z’ is finite. this means that there are some t such that the corresponding z’ can be well ordered (in the increasing order of the oz axis) and therefore an ordinal  can be associated with t. let  be the set of such t and let e be the complement of .. in (lebesgue 1905) it has been previously proved that, given the ordinal  it is possible to name a function of class , let it be . then lebesgue puts (t,x)=(x) if t belongs to , (t,x)=0 if t belongs to e. lebesgue claims that this function is not b measurable (lebesgue 1905, 214). in order to prove this, he proves that for every symbol  there exists a corresponding value t, and he claims that this is enough to prove that the function  is not b measurable. lusin observes that this is equivalent to say that intersecting the binary sieve  with the straight lines parallel to oz axis it is possible to obtain all the parts of the given sequence z1, z2, . . . . he makes clearer and completes lebesgue’s proof in his book: indeed in it he proves that by some preceding general theorems (lusin 1930, 180 and 195) the set e is analytic and it is not b measurable if the sieve  is not bound, that is if there is no ordinal greater than all the ordinals involved in the sieve. he obtains this result by an alternative more simple proof than lebesgue: indeed, given an infinite part p of the sequence z1, z2, . . . , he begins by showing that there exists one and only one point t such that the straight line dt meets the binary sieve  in points whose ordinates are in p; to this end he considers the binary development + + .... and puts 𝜗n=1 if zn belongs to p and 𝜗n=0 otherwise. the point t0= + + . . . is the required point. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 185 now the set of the points z1, z2, . . . is dense in the interval [0,1] and therefore, by a cantor’s theorem, whatever the well ordered set w is, it is possible to determine a part of the sequence z1, z2, . . . that can be ordered in the increasing order in such a way to be equivalent to w. then there is no ordinal greater than all the ordinals involved in the sieve. thus the set e, defined by lebesgue and now exposed, is the first example in the literature of an analytic set (and therefore a lebesgue measurable set) that is not b measurable. lusin claims that the nature of the function (t,x) is unknown, but, obviously, the characteristic function of e is a lebesgue not b measurable function obtained without using the choice axiom, but using all the transfinite ordinals of (0,1). in order to avoid the recourse to the transfinite ordinals, in (lusin 1927) lusin names a not b measurable function in a completely arithmetic way, using lebesgue’s method for the proof and a completely arithmetic example given by baire (acta mathematica, t. 30) of a function of the third baire class. in fact, given the interval (0,1), baire considers an irrational number x written as a continuous fraction x = ⋯.. the function that associates every x with the sequence of natural numbers a1, a2, a3, .... is bijective. baire puts f(x)=1 if such a sequence diverges, f(x)=0 otherwise and proves that the so obtained function belongs to the third class. now lusin considers an analogous function in the following way: a sequence a1, a2, a3, ....is called compound if among its terms there is a sequence such that its terms are divisible each by another, otherwise the sequence is called simple; then lusin defines f(x)=1 if the sequence is compound, f(x)=0 otherwise. he uses lebesgue’s sieve to prove that f(x) is not b measurable. his proof was proved to be wrong, but only in 1978 this simple function has been proved to be not b measurable by kanovei (kanovei 1978). after zermelo’s axiom in 1904 zermelo’s axiom focuses the discussions on the ontological character of the mathematical entities: a new criterion is introduced in the discussion, and as time goes on, the mathematical positions about the problem are outlining and getting stronger. in 1904 baire, borel, lebesgue and hadamard exchanged on this subject five letters, published in 1905 as correspondences in the bulletin de la société mathématique de france 33, 261-273; they were reprinted in (borel 1914) under the title: cinq lettres sur la théorie des ensembles. in the first letter to borel, hadamard agrees with zermelo but disagrees with borel: borel considers the choices of zermelo’s axiom equivalent to enumerate the elements of the set some after the others, this enumeration being transfinite. hadamard observes that such an enumeration consists in the admission that the choice of one element depends on the others, while by zermelo’s axiom the choices are independent of each other. moreover, there is no difference in the application of the axiom in the case of not enumerable infinitely many choices and in the case of only enumerable infinitely many choices. finally, zermelo does not give any manner to execute effectively some operation linked to the choice function and it seems doubtful that someone will be able in the future to give it. certainly, it would be more interesting to solve the problem determining effectively the wanted correspondance, but as borel poses the question, this would be not different from the problem of its existence: and this is the fundamental difference between a correspondence that can be defined and one that can be described. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 186 on the other hand, in his letter to hadamard, baire denies the possibility of admitting the choice axiom since it is already senseless to consider the set of all subsets of a given set. “in particular, given a set . . . it is wrong for me to consider the parts of this set as data.23 all the more, i refuse to attach any meaning to the fact of conceiving a choice made in every part of a whole.” in his letter to borel lebesgue makes a subtle difference between nommer and proving the existence. by the cantor reasoning about the existence of an infinity not enumerable of numbers we are not allowed to name une telle infinité, but we cannot doubt about such an existence. with the second letter to borel, hadamard distances definitively from him. he believes, like cantor, that the set of all the subsets of the real interval (0,1) and the set of all the functions have a meaning and he understands that their power is greater than the power of continuum, but all this does not have any meaning for borel, who requires the extra condition, without mathematical meaning, that all these entities have to be defined by a finite number of words. two different conceptions of mathematics are facing each other and hadamard does not intend to change his own. and finally: the law lebesgue requires seems to be like the analytical expression that riemann’s opponents demanded with force. lebesgue will reply to this reproach maintaining a middle position between the platonic mentality of hadamard and the constructive approach of borel by the following words: in any question of existence, it is necessary to take into account two different mentalities: that of the idealist and that of the empiricist of p. du bois-reymond. in the foregoing, i have given the definitions their idealistic meaning [...] on the contrary, i made empiricist reasonings because they are the only ones that idealists and empiricists agree to declare correct. by giving definitions their idealistic meaning, we are sure to give them a meaning as broad as empiricists will never give them; but it does not follow that one must use idealistic demonstrations. (lebesgue 1907, 211)24 in 1905 borel answers hadamard’s letter putting an end to the correspondence, but also trying to reconcile the two different positions. his attitude towards the choice axiom remains however inflexible: in 1914, in the second edition of his leçons, p.161-162, he writes that the complete arithmetic notion of the continuum requires the possibility of enumerably infinite many choices. he believes such a possibility is very questionable, but anyway it is to be distinguished essentially from the possibility of not enumerably infinite many choices, that seems to him a complete nonsense. 23baire’s position about the power set seems very similar to borel’s position; his mentality is very far from lebesgue’s theory as we can see in (baire 1907), where he limits himself to classical measure and riemann integral, without quoting lebesgue’s work. 24 in 1910 lebesgue will write: “it is necessary to add that various authors [vitali, sul problema della misura dei gruppi di punti di una retta, bologne, 1905; lebesgue, sur les correspondences ponctuelles, etc. (atti d. r. acc. d. sc. di torino, 1907); contribution à l’étude des correspondences de m. zermelo (bul. de la soc. math. de france, 1907); ed. van vleck, on non mesurable sets of points (trans. of the am. mat. soc., 1908)] have indicated methods of forming non-measurable sets, but these methods suppose that operations are employed which are neither known nor possible to be characterized logically. [“il est necéssaire d’ajouter que divers auteurs [vitali, sul problema della misura dei gruppi di punti di una retta, bologne, 1905; lebesgue, sur les correspondences ponctuelles, etc. (atti d. r. acc. d. sc. di torino, 1907); contribution à l’étude des correspondences de m. zermelo (bul. de la soc. math. de france, 1907); ed. van vleck, on non mesurable sets of points (trans. of the am. mat. soc., 1908)] ont indiqué des procédés de formation d’ensembles non mesurables, mais ces procédés supposent qu’on emploie des opérations qu’on ne sait ni effectuer, ni meme caractériser logiquement. (lebesgue 1910, 371)]. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 187 when the choices are not enumerably infinite many we are not able to define the choice function, that is to distinguish it from another similarly generated function and therefore it is not possible to consider it as a mathematical being. we finish this section with the words of g. pepe: he underlines in (pepe 1984, 189) that at the beginning of the 20th century the disputes for priority of results or about foundations made more complicated the success of the researches about real analysis: the controversy between those who supported the use of zermelo’s axiom and those who rejected it was particularly severe. for example, in italy, vitali and tonelli militated in two opposite alliances: vitali accepted choice axiom and used it in its general form to prove the existence of a set not lebesgue measurable, on the contrary tonelli rejected it and elaborated an organization of variational calculus without it. very probably for this kind of disputes the proof by vitali of a not measurable set was published in a booklet, not inserted in a periodic review.25 the controversy between borel and lebesgue as the years went by, borel exposed positions about the existence and the definitions of the mathematical entities more and more far from the ideas of lebesgue. in (borel 1912) he distanced himself from lebesgue in an inflexible way, opening a controversy about the constructivistic and platonic approach to mathematical objects. in the leçons of 1898, borel had given his definition of b measurable sets, by a construction from the bottom, starting from the real intervals and applying a finite or enumerable number of times the operations of union and complement. in 1912 borel completes his construction defining the integral for bounded analytically expressible functions as the limit of a sequence of integrals of polynomials that approximate the integrand function26 and for unbounded functions as the limit of a sequence of riemann integrals, extending a procedure already used by jordan for functions with a finite number of singularities to the case of functions with enumerable many discontinuities. in his exposition he claims priority of his ideas in introducing measure and superiority of methodological and mathematical character of his integral and, in general, of his conception of mathematical entities, defending borel sets and functions (the only biendéfinis sets and functions) against the apparent (in his opinion) generalizations introduced by lebesgue. for example, he says, even if lebesgue has gone as far as “naming” a not analytically expressible function, it is necessary to point out that such a function is different from an analytically expressible one only on a null measure set and therefore the two functions are equivalent with respect to integration.27 25 as another consequence: “carriere brillanti per fubini e tonelli, carriera stroncata per vitali” (vitali 1984, 12) 26 borel proves that every bounded analytically expressible function f is the limit in measure of a sequence of polynomials and defines the integral of f as the limit of the sequence of the integrals of such polynomials. 27 and also, in the note: “i leave apart the objections it is possible to make to the existence of the function named by lebesgue. lebesgue himself specifies the difference between naming and defining a function; but i would be more explicit than him and whenever all the transfinite numbers of the second class (and not only those less than a given one) appear, it would seem to me we are going out of mathematics.” (borel 1912, 208) in 1898, borel was already critical, but less drastic: “one can ask whether there is much illusion in the idea we have conceived, following g. cantor, of the power of the second principle of formation.” (borel 1898, note ii) the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 188 obviously, in this way, borel keeps his distance also from cantor’s28 mathematics; in the paper he confirms with force his aim: to distinguish between the calculations that can be really carried into effect, in order to give useful tools for applications and those for which this is not possible. we find in this paper the definition of a calculable number and a calculable function for the first time: “we say that a number  is calculable if, for every given integer number n, it is possible to obtain a rational number whose difference from  is less than 1/n.”29 all the rational numbers and all the irrational numbers for which an effective procedure for the calculus of their decimal digits is given are calculable. this and the following definition of a calculable function represented the first attempts that will be followed by a. turing and other mathematicians in the construction of recursive theory. for example, borel considers a problem that is nowadays known as undecidable:30 when two calculable numbers are equal? obviously, the excluded middle principle cannot be used in this situation, since given two calculable numbers beside the possibility that they are equal or not there is also the possibility that we are not able to decide whether they are equal or not. here is the definition of a computable function: we will say that a function is computable when its value is computable for any computable value of the variable31 borel claims that, since if  is a calculable number, it can be obtained with an arbitrary approximation, then also f() has to be calculated in the same way and therefore every computable function f has to be continuous.32 borel knows the restrictions derived from his definitions but these restrictions are not arbitrary: they are necessary if we want to distinguish real mathematics from the purely verbal logical speculations, where the only concern is avoiding contradictions (borel 1912, 166). as it is evident borel’s pragmatic treatment is far from logic and hilbert’s formalist apparatus, and is closer to semi-intuitionist mathematics: his work is typically constructivist 28fundamentally his work is developed inside cantor’s theory, with a fondness for enumerable sets and for sets generated by enumerable conditions and therefore having the power of continuum, feeling on the converse a strong dislike for the sets whose power is greater than the continuum. with respect to the continuum, since it cannot be omitted doing mathematics, borel assumes sometimes a position similar to kroneker’s position with respect to the natural numbers, indeed he writes in 1898: “we will admit that the set c of the numbers between 0 and 1 is given, without searching how it could effectively be.” 29 borel definition is very close to the definition of a computable real number: a real number a is computable if there exists a computable (by means of a turing machine) function f: nq which for every natural number n > 0 gives a rational number r such that |a-r|<1/n. 30 we can find the same type of problem already in (borel 1898, note ii), where a procedure is described such that it is possible to recognize (in principle) if two continuous functions are different, but the procedure does not give an answer if they coincide. 31 the definition seems quite simplistic: nowadays the mathematicians adopt a rather more complex definition for a computable function of a real variable. 32 borel dwells upon the continuity of calculable functions when he intends to calculate their approximate integrals: “an integral can be effectively calculable by means of the preceding methods if and only if the set of the points where the integrable function is not calculable has zero measure. this could be impossible if a function is assumed to be calculable only in the calculable values of the variables, since the set of these values has zero measure; but a function can be considered calculable in some not calculable values of the variables if it is known that in these values it coincides with a calculable continue function” (borel 1912, 205-206). the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 189 and shares its philosophical approach with heyting, who in those years agreed yet with borel’s ideas. in (lebesgue 1918) lebesgue33 answers quite irritated and puts for his part an end to the discussion answering all reproaches in detail for the last time. he defends himself against borel’s attacks about his methodological point of view, the mathematical definition of integral and priority questions. he writes also that in his memoire of the journal de mathématique in 1905 he was able with difficulty to name a not b measurable set and a not analytically expressible function and he thought it was impossible to encounter such a kind of sets or functions in analysis. he then agreed with borel, who considered well defined only b measurable sets and functions. but now, in their paper on the comptes rendus, january 8, 1917, the russian mathematicians lusin and souslin have announced they are able to name not b measurable sets and functions obtained by projecting b measurable sets in such a way that it is now a nonsense to search a general method that applies only to b measurable sets and functions (lebesgue 1918,198). indeed if a set is lebesgue measurable then almost all its projections are lebesgue measurable and if a set is b measurable then all its projections are lebesgue measurable (fubini 1907), but they are not necessarily b-measurable; in general, as we have seen, they belong to an intermediate class between b-measurable sets and lebesgue measurable sets, that is they are analytic.34 borel answers immediately (borel 1919) and makes clear another time his priority about the fundamental concept of measure, but he confirms also he holds lebesgue’s work in high esteem.35 moreover, about the result by lusin and souslin, he claims that if he had been informed when he wrote his memory, he should have changed something in it, but he adds that he would have treated the b measurable sets with a particular interest anyway, since almost all the sets a mathematician deals with are part of them. in the same manner, the discovery of the continuous functions without derivative does not stop the study of derivable functions (borel 1919, 80). with these words, the controversy can be said settled: lebesgue will not mention the question anymore. in the note (1), p. 117 of the second edition of his leçons he will observe that the principal advantage to study the measurable sets and not only the b measurable sets is not the fact that one can deal with a larger class of sets, but that one identifies the essential property of the sets to which it is possible to assign a measure, obtaining a self contained compatible theory. he adds that borel seems to have considered in the class of the b measurable sets only those that can be obtained, starting from the real intervals, using the operations of union and complement a finite number of times, while, for a correct definition, also transfinite ordinals seem to be necessary. but anyway, while borel will maintain his position, lebesgue, besides these technical observations, will be more conciliatory after some years and will affirm once more to be in debt with borel for the concept of measure. 33 in that period lebesgue was a candidate for a job as professor at the sorbonne and was waiting his election to the académie des sciences. 34 it is interesting to remember that lusin, to underline the difficulty of the study of analytic sets, claims: “the author of this book inclines [...] to consider the examples constructed by himself as forms of words and not defining really accomplished beings, but only potentialities” (lusin 1930, 322). 35 about the constructive definitions he writes: “i do not see how it is possible to pretend to reason about a determined but not defined individual: there is a contradiction in terms about which i have often insisted; i believed so far that hadamard was the only french geometer who did not agree with me on this point; but i am realizing that lebesgue’s ideas have undergone a change in the opposite direction to mine and while in 1905 he roughly agreed with me against hadamard, he does not agree with me today; but i would not go so far as to say that he agrees with hadamard” (borel 1919, 76-77). the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 190 lebesgue’s contribution to variatonal calculus. we conclude this paper with a contribution of lebesgue to variational calculus as is exposed in a manuscript found in a drawer of his office and published after his death (lebesgue, 1963). as we have already seen, in the first years of the 20th century the mathematicians did not think highly of the researches about real analysis, except for the paper about trigonometric series, because they had no applications. lebesgue was aware of this fact as he acknowledges sometimes. so besides the fundamental contribution he gave to the theory of trigonometric series, we have to refer to the notes he wrote about variational calculus, an important topic where the new theories revealed their power. these notes were prepared for a course he gave at the french college, where he exposed in a clear manner the classical and the direct method. lebesgue begins observing that the direct method of the variational calculus corresponds exactly to the weierstrass theorem about the existence of the minimum and the maximum of a continuous function of one or more real variables: given a functional f(p), where p is a function of one or more real variables (hadamard first used the word fonctionelle), given a minimizing sequence of functions, p1, p2, ... i.e. a sequence such that the sequence f(p1), f(p2), .... tends to the glb of the values of f, if the function po is the limit of the sequence p1, p2, ... and if f is continuous in a suitable sense, then the value f(po) coincides with the glb, that is, f(po) is the minimum of the functional. lebesgue claims that this method was introduced by arzelà in a very important paper that passed unnoticed, so hilbert exposed it at the zurich congress in 1897 reproducing in some way the paper he did not know. only after few years, arzelà decided to point out his priority and therefore the direct method on variational calculus has to be ascribed to both hilbert and arzelà. but there was a considerable counterpart to the papers of hilbert and many mathematicians dealt with this new procedure after him. it consists in considering a minimizing sequence p1, p2, ....: it always exists; then a limit element po has to be considered, that does not exist in general. a paper by ascoli, (ascoli,1883), furnishes the following result,36 the analogous of bolzano weierstrass theorem for the functions: if the functions of a sequence are uniformly bounded and equicontinuous, that is for every >0 there exists >0 such that |fi(t+h)-fi(t)|< for every i and |h|<, then the sequence has a limit and the limit function is continuous too. if f has some continuity property, then f(po) is the required minimum. now, in general, the functionals are continuous only in particular cases. lebesgue remembers that in his thesis he had extended the definition of lower or upper semicontinuous function in a point given by baire to the functionals: then he was inspired just by a philosophical interest, but as it often happens, his idea turned out to be very useful for the direct method. a functional f(p) is called lower semicontinuous in po if the smallest of its limits when p tends to po is at most equal to f(po) (in an analogous way an upper semicontinuous functional can be defined). it is now clear that if a functional f is lower semicontinuous and if po is the limit obtained before then f(po) is the minimum. lebesgue remembers also that leonida tonelli proved that in all the problems called regular the lower continuity comes true and therefore it is possible to apply the direct method as before. it is for this reason that lebesgue underlines the minor part he played in this progress of the method, at the moment that many authors ascribe the idea of semicontinuity for functionals to tonelli.37 36 ascoli presented this paper to the competition for the royal prize for the mathematics in 1883, announced by the accademia dei lincei. no competitor won the prize because the board of examiners did not judge the produced papers enough complete and postponed the competition until two years after. 37 see (tonelli 1915) and (tonelli 1920). the concept of function at the beginning of the 20th century: a historiographical approach loredana biacino 191 references ascoli, giulio. 1883. le curve limiti di una varietà data di curve. mem. acc. dei lincei 18 (3): 521586. baire, rené. 1899. sur les fonctions de variables réelles. annali di matematica 1 (3): 1-23. baire, rené. 1905. leçons sur les fonctions discontinues. paris: gauthiervillars. baire, rené. 1907. 2nd vol. 1908.leçons sur les théories générales de l’analyse. paris: gauthiervillars. borel, e’mile. 1898, 2nd edition 1914. leçons sur la théorie des fonctions. paris: gauthiervillars, borel, e’mile.1905. leçons sur les fonctions de variables réelles et leur développements par des séries de polynomes. paris: gauthier – villars. borel, e’mile. 1912. le calcul des intégrales définies, journ. math. pures et app.8 (6): 159-210. borel, e’mile. 1919. l’intégration des fonctions non bornées. ann. e.n.s. 36 (3): 71-92. borel, e’mile. 1922. méthodes et problems de théorie des fonctions. paris: gauthier – villars. cavaillès, jean. 1938. méthode axiomatique et formalism, le probleme du fondement des mathématiques. paris: hermann. cassinet, jean and michel guillemot. 1983. l’axiome du choix dans les mathématiques de cauchy (1921) à godel (1940), phd. thesis, université toulouse iii. darboux, jean gaston. 1875. mémoire sur les fonctions discontinues. annales de l’�̇�cole normale 2 (4): 55-112. dini, ulisse. 1878.[ed. u.m.i. 1990]. fondamenti per la teorica delle funzioni di variabili reali. pisa: nistri. dugac, pierre. 1975. notes et documents sur la vie et l’oeuvre de rené baire. archive for history of exact sciences 15: 297-383. frege, gottlob. 1960. translations from the philosophical writings of gottlob frege.oxford: peter geach and max black. fubini, giudo. 1907. sugli integrali multipli. rend. acc. dei lincei xvi:608-614. gispert, hellen. 1995. la théorie des ensembles en france avant la crise de 1905: baire, borel, lebesgue … et tous les autres. revue d’histoire de mathématiques 1: 39-81. jordan, camille. 1893. course d’analyse de l’école polytechnique, vol. i, second edition. paris: gauthier-villars. kanovei, vladimir. 1978. proof of a theorem of lusin. math. notes of the academy of sciences of the ussr 23 (1): 35-37. lebesgue, henry. 1902. intègrale, longueur, aire. annali di matematica vii (iii): 231-359. lebesgue, henry. 1903. sur une propriété des fonctions. c. r. acad. sci. paris 137: 1228-1230. lebesgue, henry. 1904a. 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circolo mat. palermo: 167-249. de la vallée poussin, charles. 1015. sur l’intégrale de lebesgue. trans. am. math. soc. 16: 435501. de la vallée poussin, charles. 1916. intégrales de lebesgue. fonctions d’ensemble. classes de baire. paris: gauthier – villars. vaz ferreira, artur. 1991. giuseppe vitali and the mathematical research at bologna. lecture notes in pure and appl. math. 132: 375-395. vitali, giuseppe. 1984. opere sull’analisi reale e complessa – carteggio. bologna: cremonese. microsoft word batan layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-12 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán1 [http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0201-3190] abstract: in this work, i propose some notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in the historiographical proposal of guillermo boido (1941-2013). in the first place, i will locate the topic proposed in the shared framework from the “colloquium of historiography of science in latin america (argentina – brazil – uruguay): reception, reflection and production.” second, i will refer to some aspects of boido’s academic career and i will place him in what i identify as a “second stage” of the history of science in argentina. third, i will dwell on some of boido’s writings, particularly on those in which he addresses the questions of whiggism and presentism. fourth, i will recover some elements on the treatment of these issues in recent works carried out from the perspective of historical epistemology. finally, in conclusion, i will propose a current epistemological evaluation of whiggism and presentism between reception and reflection; an evaluation oriented to sustain a “critical” (loison 2016) and “pluralist” (chang 2021) presentism, in the face of the epistemological, ethical and political challenges of our current days. keywords: historiography of science; guillermo boido; whiggism; presentism; historical epistemology doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction mobilized by the call for the “colóquio historiografia da ciência na américa latina (argentina – brasil – uruguai): recepção, reflexão e produção” / “coloquio de historiografía de la ciencia en américa latina (argentina – brasil – uruguay): recepción, reflexión y producción”,2 i return to those referents that paved the way in the history of science from a 1marcela renée becerra batán is an exclusive full professor in “epistemology of the social sciences”, faculty of human sciences, national university of san luis (unsl). address: 950, ejército de los andes av., p. c. 5700-san luis, san luis, argentina. e-mail (institutional): mbatan@email.unsl.edu.ar 2organizers: mauro condé (ufmg) and marlon salomon (ufg). from october 21st to november 11th, 2021. between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 philosophical perspective in argentina. one name clearly stands out: guillermo boido. two historiographic issues of great importance and validity also addressed by him are highlighted: whiggism and presentism. from the conviction that it is essential to revisit the legacies critically and reflectively in order to transform our practices, in this work, i will propose some notes for a current epistemological evaluation of the aforementioned issues, considering boido’s work. first of all, i would like to place this work within the framework of the colóquio/coloquio that brought us together: i) in a conception of the historiography of science. as condé and salomon (2021) state: “by establishing historicity within the history of science, the historiography of science produces understanding that lies between the history of science and the philosophy of science – with sociological and anthropological ramifications – (1). we face “an essentially transdisciplinary field” that provides us with “a transversal view” of scientific activity; a field which, in turn, has a history that is susceptible to epistemological judgment. i will meet this transdisciplinary field from epistemology. ii) between the “reception” and “reflection” axes, as defined in the call for the colóquio/coloquio.3 the alternation between these two terms will run throughout this work and become particularly evident in the conclusion. the trajectory of boido and his place in the history of science in argentina in this section, i highlight some aspects of the academic career of guillermo boido (19412013): professor of physics and astronomy and specialist in science education and history of science. between 1964 and 1966, at the faculty of exact and natural sciences (fcen, for its acronym in spanish) of the university of buenos aires (uba), boido was a physics instructor in the innovative admission course directed by eduardo flichman.4 unfortunately, this course was violently interrupted, and its film records were destroyed after the “night of the long batons”5 on july 29th, 1966. however, it was resumed almost two decades later, after the return of democracy, in 1984. in this democratic period, boido was professor of history of science at uba and the national university of la plata (unlp). in addition, he taught courses and seminars in other argentine and latin american universities and institutions. among his writings, we find texts on the history of science and books on physics and poetry. also committed to scientific dissemination, he was a founding member and associate editor of the revista ciencia hoy.6 likewise, he published numerous articles to disseminate epistemological issues in the “epistemology” section of the magazine exactamente from fcen, uba. boido would occupy a prominent place in the history of science in argentina after a first stage, the one that developed from the 1930s to the mid-1970s, and whose main protagonists were julio rey pastor (1888-1962), aldo mieli (1879-1950), josé babini (1897 3 see: condé and salomon, call for the colóquio/coloquio. 4 eduardo héctor flichman (1932-2005), physicist and philosopher of science with whom guillermo boido shared projects, research, productions and a long-lasting friendship. 5 the violent removal of professors and students from five schools from the university of buenos aires (uba) who opposed the intervention of the military in the university. 6founded in 1988, and still running nowadays, inspired by and associated with ciência hoje from brazil. between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 1974) and desiderio papp (1895-1993),7 whose perspective has been coined as “the peak of universalism” by cueto and silva (2020). i place boido in what could be identified as a second stage, which begins after the return to democracy in 1983, and is characterized by the flourishing of a history of science from a philosophical perspective. in this regard, lombardi, cordero and pérez ransanz (2020) actually highlight that boido has dynamically promoted the development of a philosophical history of science in our country. in this second stage, it is worth mentioning at least some other references, productions, and training and research spaces: i) alejandro cassini and marcelo levinas, with their works on history of physics at the beginning of the 20th century, and christián carman, with his works on antique astronomy (lombardi, cordero and pérez ransanz, 2020); ii) alberto guillermo ranea, with his works on galileo galilei, descartes, leibniz, newton and darwin8; iii) víctor rodríguez and his work at the national university of córdoba (unc), which involved his courses on the history of science, his impulse for the creation of the logicalepistemological area of the school of philosophy and the organization of the “jornadas de epistemología e historia de la ciencia” since 1989, and the publications that derived from it: the books epistemología e historia de la ciencia. selección de trabajos de las jornadas, and then the epistemología e historia de la ciencia journal,9 as well as the continuity of these tasks and lines of research with luis salvatico and hernán severgnini;10 iv) the “asociación de filosofía e historia de la ciencia del cono sur” (afhic), with its meetings since 1998 and its publications: asociación de filosofía e historia de la ciencia del cono sur (selection of works from the meetings) and volúmenes temáticos;11 v) the “centro de estudios de filosofía e historia de la ciencia” (cefhic, national university of – unq) since 2016, directed by pablo lorenzano, with the edition of the journal metatheoria. revista de filosofía e historia de la ciencia (jointly with the tres de febrero national university – untref), the collection of books filosofía y ciencia and the organization of scientific and academic events;12 vi) the creation of postgraduate degrees, such as the master and doctorate in epistemology and history of science (untref) directed by césar lorenzano and coordinated by verónica tozzi13 and the master in philosophy, with an orientation to philosophy and history of science (unq), directed by daniel busdygan.14 it should be emphasized that guillermo boido has been connected in various ways with practically all of these people and spaces for the teaching, research, production and academic dissemination in the field of history of science articulated with a philosophy of science / epistemology, and in all of them, he has left his fruitful legacy. 7maría laura martínez and juan queijo olano (from udelar, uruguay) referred to these authors in the colóquio /coloquio and in this special issue, 11 (december) 2021, of transversal (martínez 2021) (olano 2021). 8see: https://www.utdt.edu/ver_contenido.php?id_contenido=12692&id_item_menu=22938. maría martini (uba) brought up this author at the colóquio/ coloquio. 9see: sobre la revista | epistemología e historia de la ciencia – https://revistas.unc.edu.ar/index.php/afjor/about 10see: https://ffyh.unc.edu.ar/proyectos-de-investigacion/proyectos/areas/filosofia/ 11see: http://www.afhic.com/es/ 12see: cefhic | centro de estudios de filosofía e historia de la ciencia – universidad nacional de quilmes http://cefhic.web.unq.edu.ar 13see: untref http://www.untref.edu.ar/posgrado/doctorado-en-epistemologia-e-historia-de-laciencia 14see: universidad nacional de quilmes carreras maestría en filosofía – http://www.unq.edu.ar/carreras/57-maestría-enfilosofía.php#q between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 the written production of boido. his approach to whiggism and presentism in this section, i will refer to some of boido’s writings, particularly those in which he addresses various aspects of the issues of whiggismo and presentism. then, i will introduce them chronologically and briefly comment on them. a) first, i would like to dwell on boido et al. ([1988] 1996), a book that contains the “reading material for the distance course of scientific thinking, programa prociencia, conicet”. boido was the director of the history and foundations of science area of this program, which had a high impact and wide dissemination throughout argentina, especially influencing the teaching practices at the tertiary and university levels. in the bibliography of this book, the authors can be observed, and the issues both on the history of science [modules 1, 2 and 5], 15 and on epistemology [modules 3 and 4],16 which found their way to our country through boido and flichman, the main authors responsible for these receptions. the privileged theoretical lines, as well as the absent ones, can also be seen; in the aforementioned modules 3 and 4, for example, the bibliographic references are exclusively epistemological texts of the analytic style. 15“módulo 1 bernal, j. d., historia social de la ciencia, barcelona, península, 1967. conant, j., la comprensión de la ciencia, barcelona, plaza & janés, 1963. conant, j., la ciencia y el sentido común, buenos aires, kraft, 1953. ducassé, p., historia de las técnicas, buenos aires, eudeba, 1985. módulo 2 cohen, b., el nacimiento de una nueva física, buenos aires, eudeba, 1961. crombie, a. c., historia de la ciencia. de san agustín a galileo, madrid, alianza, 1984. geymonat, l., el pensamiento científico, buenos aires, eudeba, 1961. kearney, h., orígenes de la ciencia moderna, madrid, guadarrama, 1970. koestler, a., los sonámbulos, buenos aires, eudeba, 1963. kuhn, t., la revolución copernicana, barcelona, ariel, 1978. toulmin y goodfield, la trama de los cielos, buenos aires, eudeba, 1963. (…) módulo 5 bernal, j. d., historia social de la ciencia, barcelona, península, 1967. ducassé p., historia de las técnicas, buenos aires, eudeba, 1985. farrington, b., la civilización de grecia y roma, buenos aires, siglo xx, 1979. gordon childe, v., ¿qué sucedió en la historia?, buenos aires, siglo xx, 1960. lilley, sam, hombres, máquinas e historia, buenos aires, galatea nueva visión, 1957. ribeiro darcy, el proceso civilizatorio: de la revolución agrícola a la termonuclear; buenos aires, ceal, 1973. von martin, alfred, sociología del renacimiento, méxico, fondo de cultura económica, 1962”. (boido et al. [1988] 1996, 223). 16“módulo 3 y módulo 4 brown, h., la nueva filosofía de la ciencia, madrid, tecnos, 1983. bunge, m., la investigación científica, barcelona, ariel, 1969. carnap, r., fundamentación lógica de la física, madrid/bs. as., hyspamerica-orbis, 1985. chalmers, a., ¿qué es esa cosa llamada ciencia?, madrid, siglo xxi, 1984. hempel, c., filosofía de la ciencia natural, madrid, alianza, 1979. klimovsky, g., estructura y validez de las teorías científicas, en gaeta y robles nociones de epistemología, buenos aires, 1985. nagel, e., la estructura de la ciencia, buenos aires, paidós, 1968”. (ibidem, 223) between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 b) next, boido seeks to “present the multiple images of galileo and the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries that historians of science have built today” (boido 1996, 13). at the end of each chapter, there is a section of historiographical debates entitled: “the historians discuss”. the first one is precisely called: “the temptations of the whig historiography” (41-42). here, boido recalls that butterfield ([1931] 1951) takes the term “whig” from 19th century historians of english constitutional history to refer to the historiographic approach characterized as “the ahistorical writing of history”. this kind of writing, which in history of science seeks to highlight the trajectory towards the current science and whose original sin is an anachronism, is based on a strong presupposition: that science has, at least in latent form, an existence in every historical time, and those achievements and failures must be estimated in relation to it. the application of this criterion will expel from the history of science, for example, theories that turned out to be erroneous in the light of a later science (…). the historian will also discard, considering the factors under study, factors that nowadays we consider non-scientific or irrational. (boido 1996, 41) this is opposed by another diachronic and contextualist approach, but boido stresses that “a strict diachronic approach is utopian. no one escapes from (…) the ‘glasses of the present’ that allow them to access a historical view” (boido 1996, 42). this is related to avoiding excesses, both from the synchronic whig approach as well as the contextualist diachronic approach, and to cultivating non-exclusive perspectives: “as the danish historian helge kragh states, the historian of science must have a two-faced janus head capable of respecting the advantages and recognizing the limitations of both approaches” (boido 1996, 42). c) from boido and flichman, i recover this quote: in the fields of history and philosophy of science, the problem of different elucidations for certain fundamental expressions is often discussed, when they are applied to different times or even to the same time (…). however, our main intention is not semantic-pragmatic but epistemological and ontological (…). we will not care if the term “mechanics” (or its equivalent in the regional language and time or trend considered) existed or not, or if it was used in the same or in a different way. what will be of our interest is to analyze what mechanical theories, with our elucidation of “mechanics”, were developed in the history and geography of the western scientificphilosophical world that we will try to cover. (boido and flichman 1996, 48-49) i consider that boido and flichman admit at least two forms of presentism here. in this regard, and advancing some distinctions proposed by loison (2016), a “descriptive presentism” may be observed in this quote in relation to the term “mechanics”, and even an “empirical presentism” linked with the “ontological intention” of the authors. d) in 1998, boido turns to alexandre koyré17 to strengthen his criticism of the historians who err on the side of anachronism, particularly in the case study of blaise pascal: 17 from what marlon salomon pointed out in the aforementioned colóquio/coloquio regarding different pronunciations of the koyré surname linked to various receptions by this author, i note that boido always pronounced it: “koi-ré” (salomon 2021). on the other hand, it should be noted that boido placed koyré on the side of the “internalist” historians of science. between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 alexander koyré said that when the study of a thought that is not our own is approached, grasping what that thinker knew or believed to know is as important as forgetting what we know or what we believe we know today.18 many past scientists have been victims of the anachronism that koyré repudiates and, for example, blaise pascal. addressing pascal’s thought becomes particularly intricate because such anachronism has been practiced with the complicity and agreement of historians of science, philosophy and literature, who, at least until recent times, have fragmented it and deposited the fragments in watertight disciplinary compartments. (boido 1998, 47) e) in 1999, boido advances on positivist and anachronistic historiographies; this time, on those that presuppose the permanence of an identical “experimental method” throughout history. boido once again leans on koyré: figures as dissimilar as gilbert, bacon, harvey, kepler or galileo in the history of the scientific revolution have warned us about the value of experience as an antidote to speculative thought. however, alexander koyré reminds us that “the empiricism of modern science is based not on experience but experimentation” and that this is “a teleological process whose end is determined by theory”.19 hence, regarding the experimentalism of renaissance science and the science of the 17th century, we should first discriminate between those theories oriented by mechanistic thought and others that are part of traditions from aristotelian or hermetic roots. with different nuances, and as victims of positivist and anachronistic historiography, gilbert, galileo and bacon have traditionally been characterized as the precursors or founders of modern science, in particular, for having practiced or highlighted the merits of an alleged “experimental method”. thus, for example, the historian william dampier considered that galileo “combined gilbert’s experimental and inductive methods with mathematical deduction, with which he discovered and established the true procedure of physical science”.20 this point of view is historically and epistemologically inadmissible today. (…) the belonging of gilbert and galileo to opposing paradigms or scientific traditions, present at the time, supposes dissimilar assumptions about nature and the ways to obtain knowledge, and, particularly, different ways to conceive experimentation. (boido 1999, 78) f) in boido and lantz, the authors conclude their article on natural philosophy and theology in newton by highlighting the historicity of the categories “science”, “rationality of historical agents” and “reason”: as newton’s case shows, we must be cautious when talking about science in the past. it is not about a ripe fruit (science never is), but about attempts to tackle problems, whose nature, scopes and formulation change over time, with criteria, arguments, dispositions, philosophies, interests, techniques, in short, with an arsenal of resources that, for the most part, were expelled from the science of the moment by a subsequent science. we speak of coherence and rationality of historical agents; but what do these terms mean, which for certain philosophers of science have an absolute and ahistorical 18boido quotes: koyré, alexandre. (1955) 1981. místicos, espirituales y alquimistas, madrid: akal, 71. 19boido quotes: koyré, alexandre. 1953. “an experiment in measurement”. proceedings of the american philosophical society, vol. 97, nº 2. 20boido quotes: dampier, william c. (1929) 1972. historia de la ciencia y sus relaciones con la filosofía y la religión. madrid: tecnos, 157. between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 value? (…) perhaps rationality is not a perennial category of the spirit or an eternal datum of human history, (…) but rather a historical conquest. (boido and lantz 2002 72) g) in 2006, boido and kastika indicate that they have developed a historiographical category to refer to certain ideas and practices of a past, but that “it would be anachronistic” to refer to current ideas and practices with this category: in order to avoid misunderstandings, we must point out that our ‘science of music’ is a historiographical category of analysis elaborated from the consideration of ideas, studies and practices of various kinds that were valid in the historical period considered. for our purposes, it would be anachronistic to use such an expression in relation (…) to science and music as we understand them nowadays. (boido and kastika 2006, 66) the anachronism that we seek to avoid here may be related to one of the two definitions of this term indicated by chang: the “intrusion of the (…) past into the present” (chang 2021, 99). h) finally, in boido and flichman, the latest synthesis of long years of research, expositions and shared writings on whiggism and presentism may be found. in appendix i of this book, the authors present four positions about the elaboration of historiographical categories (two of which are presentist, and two of which are not) and they pronounce on each of them: 1anachronic or whig, presentist and anti-relativist. the historiographical categories have been elaborated by “understanding and judging the past in terms of our current knowledge and values” (boido and flichman 2010, 91). the reading of the historical sources requires a translation in a language of the present. about this position, boido and flichman express the following: “if we intend to achieve – at least in part – the understanding of the past on its own terms, we must renounce it” (boido and flichman 2010, 91). 2à la pierre menard, presentist and relativist. the interpretation of historical sources is subject to those who read them from a particular present. boido and flichman refer to this position in this way because of its similarity to a literary writing and reading technique proposed by jorge luis borges, but they consider that history cannot be identified with literature. we explicitly reject this position, since this would lead us to consider that episodes such as the disappearance of thousands of people during the last military dictatorship in argentina, or the nazi holocaust, are but a possible interpretation of oral and written documents about historical events, and, as a consequence, of the historical facts themselves. (boido and flichman 2010, 92-93) 3synchronic or antiwhig, not presentist and relativist. it is necessary to take into account only the knowledge and values of the period under study, and at the same time, not to translate what is found in the historical sources into a contemporary language. boido and flichman do not agree with this position because it leads to a “mere antiquarianism”. by attempting to go into the past as if they were a time traveler, the historian “ceases to be a historian. there is no historian without historiography and all historiography is elaborated from the present of the historian!” (boido and flichman 2010, 92). between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 4anti-antiwhig, “non-presentist” and anti-relativist, in which the authors are decidedly positioned. from this position, which is intermediate between whig and antiwhig, it is possible to recover the past, entering it, but without abandoning our current knowledge and values, provided with concepts that perhaps were not perfectly visualized in a specific historical agent, but which, because of our current concepts, we can discover their seeds in their documents or testimonies. (boido and flichman 2010, 93) beyond boido. presentism and whiggism in historical epistemology works in this section, i will recover some elements on the treatment of presentism and whiggism in recent works carried out from the perspective of historical epistemology. if i choose this perspective, it is because i agree with what loison affirms: historical epistemology is best characterized as a way not only to raise the problem of presentism in the history of science but to solve it. i argue that historical epistemology accounts for both the historicity and the rationality of science and thereby escapes the dead ends of whiggism and positivism on the one hand and relativism on the other. (loison 2016, 30) when reviewing state of the art, confirms a resurgence of presentism in the history of science from the 1980s onwards, to a point such that “[t]he question is therefore no longer if we have to make room for presentism, but rather how we should use presentism” (loison 2016, 29). regarding such uses, loison distinguishes four forms of presentism in the history of science and three misuses of the very same ones that give rise to bad practices in this disciplinary field. 1empirical presentism: current scientific knowledge serves to understand better the empirical substratum that served as the basis for the explanations of scientists of the past. 2descriptive presentism: “the comparison / transcription / translation of the structure of a past explanation in terms that are understandable in the present” (loison 2016, 31). this form of presentism may have an improper use: anachronism, which consists of not differentiating between i) the categories, concepts, terms, descriptions of the past of the actors, and ii) the categories, concepts, terms and analytical and scientific descriptions of the past of the historians. 3causal-narrative presentism: “the use of events that occurred after the period considered to identify causal historical processes and to give perspective to the narrative produced” (31). a misuse of this form of presentism is whiggism, which in a first sense refers to the idea that the historical development of science is linearly and finalistically directed towards the truth of the current science. 4normative presentism: “the use of present-day concepts and explanations to identify and emphasize the obstacles faced by earlier concepts in order to understand the same class of phenomena as well as their intrinsic limitations and theoretical shortcomings” (loison 2016, 32). a misuse of this form of presentism is whiggism, which in a second sense refers to the between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 idea that current science is “the truth” and that, therefore, it must be the absolute standard to judge past science – which is still incomplete and immature. finally, loison proposes a critical presentism, which he finds at the core of the project of the historical epistemology, and above all, in canguilhem’s work. thanks to this new and overcoming form of presentism, a relationship of mutual criticism between present and past can be established in such a way that current science can be used as a standard (although not as an absolute one) to judge the past and, in turn, the past can be used to criticize current science, and even to promote new theoretical developments and to transform the present. i also recover some ideas from almeida, who, in a recent dialogue with calazans21, emphasized the difference between the present of science and the present of the history of science. i believe that this issue can be linked to the difference between the object of a science and the object of the history of sciences in canguilhem (1968) and the differences between bachelard and canguilhem in relation to their concerns about the present and about the current affairs. regarding the latter, almeida points out: although canguilhem admits that he intends to carry out, in biology, a “recurrent history”, according to the bachelardian definition, that is, a history that can be clarified according to the purpose of the present, there are considerable differences between his analyzes. (...) differently from bachelard, the concern for the current affairs, in canguilhem, will not start from the current content of a specific theory or scientific concept but from its effect on the formation of a scientific culture that is still alive. (almeida 2018, 101-102) finally, i draw some ideas from chang which are of interest to our topic. i) chang proposes distinguishing “in one sense, presentism is simply inevitable, as the historian has no choice but to be in the present”; ii) whiggism, “a particular form of presentism that is based on the notion that the present is better than the past, and that the past constitutes a progressive lead-up to the present” (chang 2009, 252) and finally, iii) triumphalism, which should not be confused with whiggism. rather, it is a winner’s history, which implies a “selection in the choice of events and people to celebrate” (chang 2009, 252) and which can lead to a “distortion of facts” (chang 2009, 253). in particular, the lack of discrimination between whiggism and triumphalism has caused serious misunderstandings in historiographies that criticize the excesses of the traditional historiography of science and has led to the abstention of any judgment of epistemic values. facing this situation, chang proposes a historiographical pluralism and an independent judgmentalism in the history of science. chang proposes a “presentist history for pluralist science”. presentism in historiography is not only inevitable, but it can also be activist, that is, a presentism that selectively and increasingly consciously uses the present “in order to do better history to meet our historiographical purposes” (chang 2021, 100). from the different kinds of presentism one could choose from, chang advocates a “philosophical history” of science – especially an epistemological history – as well as an active “emancipatory presentism” and a “pluralist presentism.” the latter, linked to a scientific pluralism, should promote writings of history that recover fertile alternatives from the past that have been and are discarded by mainstream views, guided by a judgment issued from the historian’s present: “what is 21see: conferência de veronica calazans (utfpr): “história e filosofias da ciência e da tecnologia” youtube, second conference of the cycle “história e historiografia das ciências”, organized by gt história da ciência e tecnologia da anpuh-go, with the support of ppgh-ufg and fh-ufg, 7th october, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6ifbhry9me between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 operative here is my present, not the present of the orthodox professional scientists” (chang 2021, 107). chang relates this pluralist historiography with his proposal for a “complementary science”, which invites us to cultivate history of science and philosophy of science to improve the present scientific knowledge in multiple and novel ways. as a conclusion: notes for a current epistemological evaluation the path i have completed allows me to outline some notes for a current epistemological evaluation. regarding the “reception” axis, from our present, i highly value the authors and the historiographical issues of science that have come to us through the teaching and the writings of boido, as well as the legacy that boido left in practically all the people and teaching, research, academic dissemination and communication spaces for a history of science with a philosophical perspective that emerged in the early 1980s, and that are still in force in argentina. regarding the “reflection” axis, from our present, i value i) what boido was able to reflect upon and elaborate, particularly around the topics of whiggism and presentism, as well as ii) what we can reflect upon today around these central topics in the historiography of science, based on contributions from historical epistemology. as for i), in a general way, it could be said that boido was able to think about these topics within the framework of the dispute “whiggism vs. historicism” (or “whiggism vs. contextualism”) as it developed in anglo-saxon countries, but not within the framework of what was developed in this regard in the french sphere (braunstein 2008). in this sense, the authors most frequently referred to by boido are butterfield, kragh and koyré -even when the latter “does not pronounce the term whiggism, he is led to reject this idea when he insists that the past be interpreted on its own terms” (braunstein 2008, 99). furthermore, in this context of anglo-saxon debates, the term “presentism” in boido is understood as an interpretation and assessment of the past from the present that must be completely rejected. in his view, the presentist elaboration of historiographical categories can only be either anti-relativist (anachronistic or whig) or relativist (à la pierre menard), but for various reasons, both positions are unacceptable to him, all of which leads him to place himself in a position that he understands and identifies as “non-presentist.” on the other hand, i do not find in boido any reference to this dispute in the french sphere. in this regard, braunstein points out that in the french-style history of sciences, “the terms of the debate oppose ‘presentism’ to the ‘purely historical’ history of science. but the judgment on these two positions is reversed in relation to the anglo-saxon situation” (braunstein 2008, 100). in this french context, bachelard and canguilhem address the issues of presentism and “recurrent history”, but none of this is found in boido. regarding ii), i am driven to affirm that even though boido defined his position as “nonpresentist”, it can be related to some of the forms of presentism indicated by loison (2016): with an empirical presentism, with a descriptive presentism that does not fall into anachronism, with a causal-narrative presentism that does not fall into whiggism/positivism and with a normative presentism that does not fall into whiggism. but boido did not have the epistemological perspective nor did he have enough references to articulate a critical presentism. furthermore, it is clear that boido accepted “the inevitability of presentism” highlighted by chang (2009 and 2021), but that he placed himself in a position that he called “non-presentist” because he did not sufficiently distinguish between “presentism”, “whiggism” and “triumphalism” (chang 2009). between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 finally, based on the path followed so far, i propose to think about presentism and whiggism today from the historical epistemology, as a historiographical perspective that allows us “to reveal history in science” (canguilhem 1952, 54), to account for both the contingency and the rationality of science and sustain a “critical” (loison 2016) and “pluralist” (chang 2021) presentism, to meet the epistemological, ethical and political challenges of our present. references22 almeida,tiago santos. 2018. canguilhem e a gênese do possível. estudo sobre a historicização das ciências. são paulo: editora liberars. boido, guillermo et al. [1988] 1996. pensamiento científico i, edited by andrea pacífico buenos aires: programa prociencia conicet. boido, guillermo. 1996. noticias del planeta tierra. galileo galilei y la revolución científica. buenos aires: a-z editora. boido, guillermo and eduardo flichman. 1996. la noción de “mecanismo” en la ciencia clásica. in epistemología e historia de la ciencia. selección de trabajos de las vi jornadas, edited by marisa velasco and aaron saal, 48-58. córdoba: área lógico-epistemológica de la escuela de filosofía y centro de investigaciones de la ffyh, unc. boido, guillermo. 1998. entre cartesianos y jesuitas: a la búsqueda de blaise pascal. in epistemología e historia de la ciencia. selección de trabajos de las viii jornadas vol. 4 nº 4, edited by horacio faas and luis salvatico, 47-55. córdoba: área lógicoepistemológica de la escuela de filosofía y centro de investigaciones de la ffyh, unc. boido, guillermo. 1999 gilbert, galileo y bacon: experimentalismo y tradiciones en conflicto. in epistemología e historia de la ciencia. selección de trabajos de las ix jornadas vol. 5 nº 5, edited by eduardo sota and luis urtubey, 78-83. córdoba: área lógicoepistemológica de la escuela de filosofía y centro de investigaciones de la ffyh, unc. boido, guillermo and maximiliano lantz. 2002. newton como teólogo: anochecer de un día agitado. in epistemología e historia de la ciencia. selección de trabajos de las xii jornadas vol 8, nº 8, edited by norma horenstein, leticia minhot and hernán severgnini, 67-72. córdoba: área lógico-epistemológica de la escuela de filosofía y centro de investigaciones de la ffyh, unc. boido, guillermo and eduardo kastika. 2006. ciencia y música en la obra de vincenzo galilei (ca.1520-1591). in física. estudos filosóficos e históricos, edited by roberto de andrade martins, guillermo boido and víctor rodríguez, 65-84. campinas: afhic. boido, guillermo and eduardo h. flichman. 2010. historia de un ave fénix. el mecanicismo, desde sus orígenes a la actualidad. buenos aires: prometeo libros. braunstein, jean-françois. 2008. les trois querelles de l’histoire des sciences. in l’histoire des sciences. méthodes, styles et controverses, edited by jean-françois braunstein, 87-103. paris: puf. butterfield, herbert. (1931) 1951. the whig interpretation of history. london: g. bell. canguilhem, georges. 1952. la théorie cellulaire. in la connaissance de la vie, 49-98. paris : librairie hachette. canguilhem, georges. 1968. l’objet de l’histoire des sciences. in études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences, concernant les vivants et la vie, 9-23. paris: librairie philosophique j. vrin. 22 except for citations of original texts in english, the remaining are my own translation. between reception and reflection: notes for a current epistemological evaluation around whiggism and presentism in guillermo boido’s historiographical proposal marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 12 chang, hasok. 2009. we have never been whiggish (about phlogiston). centaurus, 2009, vol. 51, 239–264. chang, hasok. 2021. presentist history for pluralist science. journal for general philosophy of science 52: 97-114. condé, mauro l. and marlon salomon. 2021. call for contributions. handbook of the historiography of science. springer book series. cueto, marcos and matheus alves duarte da silva. 2020. trayectorias y desafíos en la historiografía de la ciencia y de la medicina en américa latina. asclepio, 72(2): 320. https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2020.21 lombardi, olimpia, alberto cordero and ana rosa pérez ransanz. 2020. philosophy of science in latin america. the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (spring 2020 edition), edited by edward n. zalta. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/phil-science-latin-america/>. loison, laurent. 2016. forms of presentism in the history of science. rethinking the project of historical epistemology. studies in history and philosophy of science (60): 29-37. martínez, maría laura. 2021. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. (11): 1-17. olano, juan a. queijo. 2021. cernuschi vs. papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. (11): 1-13. salomon, marlon. 2021. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. (11): 1-14. microsoft word salomon layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-3 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science from the editor marlon salomon1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2446-2141] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ for some time now, we have wanted to publish a special issue devoted to studying the relations between michel foucault and the history of science. today, at last, our readers have the contribution of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science to the discussions on these complex relations. this special issue certainly does not exhaust this field of study, but it opens several exciting avenues for reflection and new research. the history of sciences in the french historian-philosopher’s work goes back to his first studies on the history of psychology and his first books on history of psychiatry, medicine and the human sciences (published during his lifetime) from the 1960s. at that time, he explicitly inscribed his historical-philosophical reflection in the french epistemological tradition, particularly in the wake of the work produced by such figures as gaston bachelard, alexandre koyré, jean cavaillès, and georges canguilhem after the interwar period. in an important book published in portuguese a little over four decades ago – probably the first dedicated to michel foucault’s work and not yet translated into other languages – the brazilian philosopher roberto machado (1981) demonstrated how an essential part of the methodological basis of the author of les mots et les choses was taken up not without modifications from the french epistemological tradition. for example, notions such as the bachelardian idea of “recurrence” were fundamental for configuring the temporal layers of foucault’s épistémès or even in his late studies on ethics. but, insisted machado, he took this notion up again after the redefinitions imposed on it by koyré and canguilhem. therefore, the inscription in this tradition did not mean fidelity to a school and implied a series of displacements. françois delaporte (2007) demonstrated, for example, how in naissance de la clinique, foucault critically confronted the conceptual vocabulary of the author of le nouvel esprit scientifique and sought to rethink a series of notions that bachelard had situated in the field of psychoanalysis to the detriment of historical analysis. at the same time, i might add, through the notion of “knowledge”, explicitly developed in his archéologie du savoir, foucault neutralized and, put in other terms, the bachelardian opposition between scientific knowledge and common sense or even that between poetics and epistemology. if we dwell further on this period, it is not unimportant to observe how foucault simultaneously introduced into the study of this history a whole series of materials and domains hitherto little considered by the epistemological tradition. for example, his histoire de la folie analyzed more than medical treatises and psychiatric theories on madness. regulations, legislation, ordinances, administrative and police documents, literary and 1 marlon salomon is a full professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: marlonsalomon@ufg.br. transversal from the editor transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 iconographic documents, in short, a whole series of archival materials (the later famous lettres de cachets, for example) were mobilized in his historical-philosophical study. at the same time, the birth of certain institutions of seclusion, medical or social, and the way they were shaped after the classical age received particular attention in his research. with this new approach, foucault moved philosophy into the archives and transformed the very domain of investigation of the history of sciences, shifting from an analysis of scientific discourses to a history of their extra-scientific conditions of possibility. although, at the same time, even on the one hand, we can observe that foucault remained philosophically connected to the problem of reason as it had been formulated in works by historians and philosophers such as bachelard, cavaillès, and koyré from the interwar period and in the wake of the introduction of phenomenological thought in france, on the other hand it is necessary to highlight how he shifted this problem to the domain of the practices and “social institutions that in fact produce the norms of health and illness, normality and madness” (rancière 2018, 336). paul veyne (2008) saw in this displacement a profound reconfiguration of the relations between history and philosophy and jacques rancière, a singular “widening of the philosophical scene” and a new interest in what he termed the “great reason” at the expense of the “little reason of philosophers” (rancière 2018, 336). the way to an encounter with historians was open. and in fact, his books were not disregarded by them at that time. but the relationship with historians of science was not necessarily smooth. as malika sager (2022) demonstrates, the english reception of the birth of the clinic did not fail to underline the profound differences between the french historianphilosopher’s conceptions and those of historians of medicine like e. h. ackerknecht, o. temkin, and h. e. sigerist, opening a chasm between him and traditional historians. foucault’s controversy with the historian of medicine jacques léonard is an example of this tension. the very definition of the object of this history was at stake, and foucault did not fail to return to this example to mark the distinctions between the conceptual history and the social history of science. but his interest, beginning in the 1970s, in george rosen’s work on social medicine demonstrates that this relationship was not made only under the sign of polemics. likewise, we cannot forget that the then columbia university professor published in 1967, shortly before the release of his madness in society (rosen 1968), a very favorable review of histoire de la folie (foucault 1965), released in english in new york in 1965 (rosen 1967). from the 1970s on, the history of science did not disappear from michel foucault’s horizon of interest. on the contrary, it was integrated into his investigations that turned their attention to the problem of power relations. social medicine, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, economics, statistics, penal sciences, and a whole series of other sciences began to be questioned based on this new interest. previously considered by foucault only from the epistemic viewpoint, the human sciences themselves began to be interrogated from the meshes of power. it was no longer a question of a history of how man became, at the same time, an object and subject of knowledge in western thought, but of knowing how, through the constitution of new technologies of power (disciplinary system, normalization) aimed at individuals, knowledge such as pedagogy, psychology, criminology, etc. could be constituted. with the notion of biopower or biopolitics, the life sciences began to be questioned from a different perspective. at the same time, books such as la volonté de savoir demonstrated how biopolitics was a condition of possibility for a whole series of social sciences such as demography, for example. to develop this research, at that time, he was forced to create an entire series of instruments and tools that countless historians would widely take up. this brief presentation shows us how any dossier on the relations between michel foucault and the history of science that pretends to be exhaustive is doomed to failure. the range of domains to which his intelligence was directed could be characterized as encyclopedic in the short period of just over two decades. i have pointed out here only a transversal from the editor transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 series of multiple paths through which his work intersected with the historical trajectory of different sciences. beyond them, i could also mention the enormous importance and impact of his work on the historiography of the sciences. this is because his work opened new paths to be followed by new research or because his work reoriented many historiographical trends. the opening of foucault’s archives to public consultation, the publication of all the courses he taught at the collège de france, and the numerous book manuscripts (some dating from before the 1960s, such as those recently published [foucault 2021; foucault 2022]) will fuel for many years to come reflection and research on his relations with the history of science. our goal with this special issue was only to reaffirm the importance of this historiographical work. references delaporte, françois. 2007. foucault, canguilhem et les monstres. in: braunstein, jeanfrançois. canguilhem: histoire des sciences et politique du vivant. paris: puf. foucault, michel. 2022. la question anthropologique. cours, 1954-1955. paris: gallimard, ehess. foucault, michel. 1965. madness and civilization. a history of insanity in the age of reason. new york: pantheon books. foucault, michel. 2021. phénoménologie et psychologie. 1953-1954. paris: gallimard, ehess. machado, roberto. 1981. ciência e saber: a trajetória arqueológica de foucault. rio de janeiro: graal. rancière, jacques. 2018. a história como multiplicidade temporal – entrevista com marlon salomon. in: salomon, marlon. heterocronias. estudos sobre a multiplicidade dos tempos históricos. goiânia: ricochete. rosen, georges. 1967. book review of michel foucault’s “madness and civilization”. journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, vol. 3. rosen, georges. 1968. madness in society: chapters in the historical sociology of mental illness. chicago: university of chicago press. sager, malika. 2022. foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death”. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science. (12): 1-15. veyne, paul. 2008. foucault, sa pensée, sa personne. paris: albin michel. microsoft word ã†vila layout 148 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 148-151 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open access journal obituary carlos alvarez maia (1945-2019), a present historian gabriel da costa ávila1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.12 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ____________________________________________________________________________ professor carlos alvarez maia was a master for my generation of historians of science. maia was a physicist who had become a historian very early in his career, and had produced rigorously solid work. his most recent books have greatly advanced the field of historical studies of science. what he demonstrated as a professor with timidity and humility yet was displayed with audacity and boldness in his writing. maia argued in defense of the radical historicity of scientific knowledge and against scientism, which he called an “ideological disaster”. in addition to these qualities, carlos maia was, for the most part, generous, and open, as well as affectionate towards his colleagues and students; furthermore, he had a very deep sense of humor and was honestly concerned about collaborating with students and young researchers in their formation. the field of the history of science in brazil will lose enormously with his absence. carlos alvarez maia was from rio de janeiro and studied physics at the pontifical catholic university of rio de janeiro (puc-rio) at the beginning of the 1970s. it was a crucial moment in brazil’s scientific life. the heroic era of national physics in the 1950s and 1960s – with cesar lattes, jayme tiomno, josé leite lopes and mário schenberg – had given way to the heavy atmosphere of the military dictatorship and the hardest years during the ai-52 in 1968, and the 1974 elections. puc was one of the great centers of national physics along with the university of são paulo and the university of brazil (after the federal university of rio de janeiro – ufrj), and its recent university reform had favored the idea that students needed to acquire a wide range of knowledge. at the puc, carlos maia attended hilton japiassú’s classes, whom he had approached and affectionately called “japi”. at that time, japiassú was an influential philosopher and historian of science as well as author of numerous works, and translator of françois châtelet and paul ricoeur. japiassú was developing research that would lead to his bachelardian epistemological history of the modern scientific revolution. it is in this context that carlos maia, still a undergraduate student in physics, came into contact with the history and philosophy of science. in an interview granted to the journal temporalidades, in 2011, maia stated, “we read kuhn, koyré, bohr, heisenberg, bohm and 1 gabriel da costa ávila [orcid:0000-0002-5871-9013] is a professor of history in the center for arts, humanities and letters at the federal university of recôncavo da bahia and member of the scientia – theory and history of science group – ufmg. address: rua ana nery 25 centro, cachoeira – ba 44.300-000, brazil. e-mail: gabriel.avila.00@gmail.com 2 institutional act number five (ai-5) was the fifth of seventeen great decrees issued by the military dictatorship in brazil in the 1960s and 1970s. it was the most radical of all institutional acts and was issued by president artur da costa e silva on december 13, 1968. obituary: carlos alvarez maia gabriel da costa ávila 149 feyerabend” (araújo, silva e silva 2011, 12) as he recalled the creation of the macumba physics study group. after graduating in 1978, maia went on for a master’s degree in astrophysics at the prestigious brazilian center for physics research (cbpf) in the following year. he conducted research on rotating neutron stars but remained focused on his interest of the studies on science and gradually consolidated his background in epistemology, history and philosophy of science. it was also a time of transformation in these areas of knowledge with the publication of david bloor’s knowledge and social imagery in 1976, and, mainly, of the english edition of ludwik fleck’s book, genesis and development of a scientific fact (published in 1979). maia was one of the first fleck’s readers in brazil. he used to tell us enthusiastically about how he felt when he first came into direct contact with the ideas of the polish author and laughed at the difficulties when he remembered waiting for months to acquire the book when it was first published in the usa. in order to do this, he had to write to the university of chicago press, order the book, make the payment, etc. the conditions for doing these activities in these fields of research improved a little in brazil in the early 1980s and professor carlos maia was present at that time. in 1983, he participated in the founding of the brazilian society of history of science (sbhc) and, in the following year, helped establish the research center for history of science of the national observatory (now the museum of astronomy and related sciences [mast]). he later became a researcher at this center and moved from physics to history. it was a productive time for the intellectual development of our late carlos. from this period, there were the questions, concerns and the drive to develop a phd dissertation. it should be remembered that, at that time, pursuing a doctorate in brazil had different requirements than nowadays. today at the beginning of an academic career, one must have a phd degree as well as training that has to follow a standard of “productivity” with specific criteria for the term, format, and nature of research. in the late 1980s in brazil, there were few courses, not many positions, and a small number of professors capable of guiding a phd dissertation. in the field of the history of sciences, the doctoral program in social history at the university of são paulo was the center for training during this period, so maia went there to develop his phd dissertation, the plot of sciences in liberal society: the histories of sciences, sciences and history. about ten years ago, when i was working on my own phd dissertation, i wrote to professor maia to request a copy of his doctoral dissertation. he answered me with a long email detailing the mishaps of the text and stating that the only copy was in the faculty of philosophy library at the university of são paulo without any revision and available only for consultation. days later, he asked me for my mailing address: he had found a copy of the thesis and would send it to me. a few weeks later, a huge box with three volumes adding up to almost a thousand pages had arrived. the text patiently wove a long web of an episteme anchored in historicity; however, i will talk about carlos maia’s ideas below. here, i want to remember something that caught my eye. at the end of the dissertation’s acknowledgments (which included, among its pretextual elements, a “farewell to thomas kuhn”, who had died a few months before the defense), one can read: “to freud and marx”. this copy was bound and deposited for local consultation in the faculty of philosophy library at the federal university of minas gerais – ufmg. maia’s phd dissertation was prepared under the guidance of shozo motoyama – a major figure in the history of science in brazil and director of the center for the history of sciences at the university of são paulo since its founding in 1988 (the same year in which carlos maia started his phd). motoyama led this center until his retirement. he was part of a group of professors which also included maria amélia dantes, simão mathias, and amélia império hamburguer. carlos maia was part of the first group of brazilian professionals with a graduate degree dedicated specifically to the history of science (and with him other important historians of this generation, such as maria margaret lopes, silvia figueiroa, heloisa bertol domingues, olival freire junior and many others). this new professional context was much obituary: carlos alvarez maia gabriel da costa ávila 150 more independent for the historian of science in relation to its object, since the sciences were now analyzed from the viewpoint of history; both from the point of view of specific training in a history department and of the professional allocation as a history of science researcher, which seemed to have been a propitious environment for the development of some central ideas in professor maia’s thinking. the link and the position of the historian of sciences concerning his object have become a central point for professor maia, and it is one of his important contributions to our area. he finished his doctorate in 1996 and, shortly afterward, joined the history department at the state university of rio de janeiro – uerj. at the uerj, maia stayed for almost twenty years, where he taught a variety of subjects and guided research in the areas of theory of history and history of sciences, which provided him with a happy combination that also led him to his research subjects that interested him. he created the laboratory of historical studies of science, from which he gathered together his students. he was well liked by his students, who, in undergraduate and graduate studies, were surprised by the sharp-wittedness of his intellectual provocations. these last few years, the crisis, which had almost closed uerj, worried professor maia. in 2008, he was a visiting scholar in the history department at the ufmg – where he strengthened ties with the group scientia by participating in various activities and collaborating to strengthen a network more focused on the theoretical problems of the history of science and its historiography. in scientia, carlos maia left an intellectual legacy and many friends who will remember him fondly. speaking of professor carlos maia’s research, i would like to highlight two of his significant contributions to historical knowledge. the first, in the field of theory of history, is recorded in the book history, science, language: the relativism-realism dilemma (2015), which was originally published in spanish in 2011. in this work, maia criticizes the theory of post-annales history and mobilizes the epistemological fortune of the historians of science to propose ways out of the “crisis of history” that has arisen since the late 1980s. one of the foundations of the crisis and the origin of so much anguish among the corporation of historians at the end of the 20th century is related to the post-structuralist offensive on the fragile scientific bases of history – whose narrative form would bring it closer to fiction and literature. as a consequence, history would be completely stuck to the textual dimension without reaching “reality”. narrative and language would become problems for historians. and it is precisely in the language that maia simultaneously unravels the “mentalist” idealism and scientific mythology that plagued the theory of history in search of an extra-textual reference or an “objective” contact with reality. maia considered that this debate around the dangers of “postmodernism” kept a lot of theoretical reactionism and carried unthinking conceptions of language and science that were limited as well as anachronistic. “we need to overcome the inertia of our conceptual and methodological stances”, stated maia (2015, 31). this inertia that reifies the “historical fact” and that conceives language as the “mere transmission of ideas (...) invention of the rational mind aimed at expressing ideas that would already be preestablished” (maia 2015, 111). and here comes the insight that many historians who have theorized about the issue of language and narrative lacked. maia goes to the bottom in the intertwining between history and language: “the human being is human by the verb (...) there is no society without a verb. there is no history without language, as there is no language outside of history” (maia 2015, 47). more than any other brazilian historian, maia knew how to take advantage of the epistemological reflections of the history of science to rigorously theorize about history tout court and the historicity of the human. mobilizing fleck and derrida, hayden white, karen barad and wittgenstein, he reflects on historicity in the pragmatical “intersection of things with the words spoken” (maia 2015, 57). the materiality of language and the historicity of the human are intertwined in symbolic-material agencies. with the same patience and finesse of those who weave an exceptionally fine net, maia transported the most advanced theory of history to analyze the transformations in the obituary: carlos alvarez maia gabriel da costa ávila 151 history of science in the 20th century. thus, he was notable for his thesis of the “absent historians” and contributed greatly to the fact that historians were concerned with theoretical reflection likewise about the history of the sciences, which he did not leave this task to the exclusive responsibility of philosophers and scientists. he drew our attention to how the corporation of historians had incorporated scientific metaphysics into their disciplinary protocols that alienated professional historians from the research in the history of science. the history of the sciences should be left to scientists so that they are able to unravel its content and hold on its epistemological values. this narrative has been criticized since thomas kuhn – whom maia himself considered part of a movement to domesticate the history of science produced by the science system. carlos maia’s work problematizes this common conception in the history of science, that it should be a history made by scientists and not by historians. he does this on the side of historians, demonstrating how they also agreed with this social division of intellectual work, because they are considering an image of science in the singular and with a capital letter, which is a unique and ahistorical entity, producing truths that reach the order of nature and, for this reason, they move away from the corrosion of historicity. the absence of historians – which is, in fact, the defeat of a certain historicist project that was outlined in the 1920s and 1930s – is seen as negative for the effective understanding of science. this strategy is more the expression of the corporate dispute around legitimizing narratives of social prestige (and, ultimately, financing). by excluding professional historiography, the history of science is circumscribed to the field of problems and the horizon of expectations of the “scientific community” – which used the discipline as a space for its myths of origin – or philosophy, for which the history of science is the epistemological laboratory and is at the service of normative projects. the autonomy of the history of the sciences is, in a sense, the guarantee of an arena where one can establish a critical and diverse view of science, and where multiple histories are found in the “incorporation of diverse intertwined meta-discursivities, or rather, by being intertwined (...) a history of the histories of science” (maia 2013, 289). the absence of professor carlos alvarez maia will be felt by all of us who are curious and fascinated by this complex object of the contemporary world, which is the science and its history. a history that is in maia’s writings – providing the tools to navigate safely against the general current of scientism and naive views on science – will endure in a manner that is serious and courageous. finally, in addition to contributing to the advancement of the history of science, we will sorely miss professor carlos maia’s place in a world where there are few generous and kind people willing to teach us how to think. references araújo, george fellipe zeidan vilela; silva, emilly joyce oliveira lopes e silva, paloma porto. 2011. “história, verdade e linguagem: a historicidade das ciências”. entrevista com o prof. dr. carlos alvarez maia. temporalidades 2 (3): 11-21. maia, carlos alvarez. 2013. história das ciências: uma história de historiadores ausentes. precondições para o aparecimento dos science studies. rio de janeiro: eduerj. maia, carlos alvarez. 2015. história, ciência e linguagem: o dilema do relativismo-realismo. rio de janeiro: mauadx. microsoft word gottschalk layout paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-17 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue – wittgenstein and the sciences: history and philosophy of science and science education paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk1 abstract: the concept of paradigm became, in the middle of the last century, a central concept in the philosophical discussion about the nature of scientific knowledge. however, little attention has been paid to the strength of this concept in the constitution of the senses in general and, in particular, about its role in the transmission and acquisition of new scientific concepts, not only in the community of scientists, but also among basic-science teachers and students. i argue that a wittgensteinian-inspired reflection on the transcendental use of this concept, as part of the grammar of scientific concepts, can clarify not only fundamental questions about the nature of scientific activity (avoiding both dogmatic and relativistic conceptions), but can also provide us with clues to identify sufficient, though not necessary, conditions so that something becomes an object for scientific thinking in the context of school education. keywords: paradigm; scientific facts; basic science; grammar of uses; wittgenstein received: 14 march 2021. reviewed: 08 april 2021. accepted: 12 may 2021. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ when we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (light dawns gradually over the whole.) (wittgenstein, oc § 141) introduction as it is known, after a teaching experience in the 1920s to elementary school children, ludwig wittgenstein returned to cambridge university in 1929, and began to investigate issues that he had left open in the tractatus logico-philosophicus,2 among which, was that of the 1 cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk [orcid: 0000-0003-4376-5268] is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of são paulo – usp. address: av. da universidade, 308 butantã, são paulo sp, 05508-040, brazil. e-mail: crisgott@usp.br 2 the tractatus logico-philosophicus was wittgenstein’s first great work, published in 1921. from now on, i will refer to it only as the tractatus, and i will use the abbreviation tr when citing it, followed by its aphorism number. as for the other works by wittgenstein mentioned in this text, i will use the following abbreviations: pi to refer to philosophical investigations, oc for on certainty and bgm for paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 2 enigmatic nature of the “simple object”. throughout this reflection, he forged a set of concepts such as “language game”, “family resemblances”, “following rules”, “forms of life”, among others, with therapeutic purposes in order to clarify the confused thinking and thus dissolving enigmatic problems of traditional philosophy.3 these concepts and his philosophical observations on the pragmatic functioning of language have impacted several areas of knowledge beyond the tout court philosophy, including, more recently, the areas of philosophy of education and science education. in this text, i will resort to the concept of paradigm, as used by wittgenstein to clarify one of the issues he had left open in the tractatus, in order to describe some of the conditions for a student to constitute new objects of thought in science education, aiming to prevent pedagogical confusions that arise when the teacher disregards the multiplicity of uses of our words, and assumes that every word must have an extra-linguistic reference, which would be located in the empirical or mental worlds, or even in an ideal realm of metaphysical entities.4 as we will see, in contrast to the prevailing image underlying the various philosophical theories that language would only have a descriptive and communicative function, as if there were an immediate relationship between the name and the object represented by that name, our philosopher resorted to the concept of paradigm to obtain the following therapeutic result: “grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (theology as grammar.)” (pi § 373). in other words, the meaning we start to attribute to our actions, to what we observe, think and feel, is constituted by grammar,5 which is understood as a set of rules that we learn to follow and that become the condition of meaning for our linguistic expressions and behaviours, within what he would call “language games”.6 these rules, when expressed linguistically, are called by him grammatical propositions, i.e., statements that express our most fundamental certainties and convictions, which we do not give up. wittgensteinian therapy goes through the description of these rules, having as one of its purposes to show, among other therapeutic results, that the meaning of a word does not have a previous existence (in the empirical world or in an ideal world), that would be only “dressed” by our language, but is gradually constituted by a grammar of uses, inside language games. from this pragmatic perspective, through language, meanings are constructed, and not that they previously existed in the world, as presupposes the referential conception of language. mainly in the studies of empirical sciences, the referential use of language manifests itself in a hegemonic way, due to the fact that their primary purpose is to describe the facts of the world, seeking explanations for the phenomena investigated through the observation and experimentation of empirical objects. however, confusion sets in when the philosopher of science and, in particular, the teacher of one of the science disciplines, stuck in an bemerkungen über die grundlagen der mathematik, followed by the corresponding paragraph numbers. 3 philosophical therapy refers to a method developed by wittgenstein in the 1930s with the purpose of curing confused philosophical thinking. in this sense, it starts from a problematic concept of philosophy approached by different interlocutors representing different philosophical currents in order to, through a polyphonic dialogue, compare the different positions among themselves, aiming at conceptual clarification. 4 cf. gottschalk (2018, 2020). 5 wittgenstein (2009) also refers to the term “grammar” as a descriptive science of the construction of linguistic mechanisms that enable the use of signs, which would characterize the second phase of his philosophical activity: “grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such-and-such an effect on human beings. it only describes, and in no way explains, the use of signs.” (pi § 496). 6 the term, “language game”, was coined by wittgenstein to refer to language as a set of regulated activities, involving not only words but also actions, objects, interlocutors, mental states, among other fragments of the empirical world (pi §§ 7, 23). paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 3 exclusively referential image of language, generalises the descriptive function for the entire scientific language, assuming the existence of autonomous and extra-linguistic meanings previously present, in some way, in the empirical world. against this assumption, i initiate by presenting the paradigm’s role in the constitution of the multiple meanings of a word, and then, turn to other wittgensteinian concepts to point to some of the implications of that image in science education. simple objects versus paradigms in language after returning to cambridge university in the late 1930s, wittgenstein began to distance himself from some of his theses in the tractatus logico-philosophicus, initiating a process of self-therapy. in this first great work, he had proclaimed that a proposition is meaningful if it corresponds to a possible fact in the world, regardless of whether it actually occurs. consequently, all the propositions of the sciences would be significant, insofar as they refer to facts of the world that could be verifiable, thus assigning truth values to these propositions (t or f). as we can see, wittgenstein presents in this first phase of his thought a figurative conception of language, in which language would have as its primary function to represent the world through a projection relation, which, in turn, would occur through thought. any meaningful proposition of language would be liable to a logical analysis that would result in increasingly simple propositions, in a chain that would end with what he called elementary propositions, namely, statements that did not involve being further analysed into other propositions, they would be constituted only by a set of names. analogously, each fact of the world represented by a meaningful proposition would also be liable to be analysed in simpler facts, until arriving at facts called, by wittgenstein, atomic facts, which in turn, would be a combination of simple objects. at the end of both analyses, each name should refer to a simple object in the world through a substitution relation: each name replaces the simple object represented by it. in other words, language at this last level would play a role in naming. therefore, in the tractatus, it is at this most elementary level that language would touch the world, as this relation of substitution would be the effective point of contact between language, thought and the world, a condition for the existence of a meaningful proposition.7 in other words, names would be the “antennae of language” in the world (tr 2.1515). at this point we can see a referential conception of language guiding the thinking of the young ludwig, which would be questioned by he himself years later (pi § 23). according to his biographers, at the time he wrote the tractatus, if asked to provide an example of a simple object, he would have replied that this would not be a task for the philosopher, but for scientists.8 his task would be over by showing how the language was logically related to the world, leaving the door open to investigate how the application of logic in the world would effectively take place. however, this atomist way of seeing the functioning of language also left some philosophical problems open to our philosopher, as mentioned before, which would be tackled by him many years later, in the early 1930s, already as a professor at cambridge university, and no longer as a student of his mentor bertrand russell. gradually, wittgenstein realised that language does perform not only a referential function, but also a multiplicity of other functions. and the contact between the word and the world through the process of naming would be seen by him only as a preparation for the linguistic sense. in fact, in his work philosophical investigations, already in the second phase of his thought, wittgenstein begins with an excerpt from augustine, in which the philosopher of patristics describes learning the mother tongue as being reduced to a naming process: one 7 in the tractatus, wittgenstein states that the simple object cannot be described, but only named (tr 3.3, 3.221). 8 see (monk 1995). paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 4 learns the meaning of words by pointing to their references in the world. in this language image, according to wittgenstein (pi § 1), “[…] we find the roots of the following idea: every word has a meaning. this meaning is correlated with the word. it is the object for which the word stands”. in contrast to this image of linguistic meaning, our philosopher suggests that we do not make theoretical explanations about the meaning of a word, but that we look at how we do use it in different circumstances.9 following wittgenstein’s suggestion, if we observe the effective use we make of our words, for example, “ball”, “chair” and “table”, we will see that it is not enough to point at some objects and say to a child, “this is a ball”, “that is a chair”, “this is a table”, and so on, so that she or he immediately grasps their respective meanings, and believe that next they will be able to compose these simpler propositions into more complex ones, and to say with meaning, “i threw the ball on the table and then it fell on the chair”, among others uttered with these words. if we look, as a child actually learns to speak, we will see that the same word is used by his or her interlocutors with different senses in different circumstances. the child will be introduced to different balls, tables and chairs throughout his first years of life, and will gradually learn to use these words in certain contexts, until, from a certain unpredictable moment, he or she will be able to apply these words in new situations. for example, the child who is learning the mother tongue will hear orders from his family, “sit at the table”, in the sense of going to dinner, “bring a chair”, in the sense of moving it from one place to another, “put away your ball” (“and do not throw it against the window”), among other possible instructions. pointing at a ball and saying “this is a ball” is not enough for its meaning to be acquired, as the referential conception of language suggests. the ostensive gesture of pointing at an object only has the function of preparing the place of application of the word “ball”, that is, what is being done is to present a model of what it means to be a ball, a sample of how we apply this word in certain situations. in short, the presented ball has a paradigmatic function, in the sense that the ostensive gesture introduces that empirical element in language, as a sample of what it is to be a ball – and not, as the referential conception of language assumes, that we would be pointing at something outside language, which would be the meaning of the pronounced name. at this level, it is not yet possible to talk about meaning. the child is initially only being trained to associate the same word with similar objects (different balls), and learns to memorise this sound, “ball”. concomitantly, the child will hear this sound in different situations where this word is used, until she or he is able to form the concept of ball. let us take a closer look at what wittgenstein calls our attention to, when he criticises the augustinian image of meaning, still using the example above. the moment an adult says to the child, “this is a ball”, and points to a ball, this object becomes a means of presenting the language for the gradual constitution of the meaning of the word “ball”. in other words, the empirical object ball becomes an instrument of language, is incorporated by it, and is no longer an extra-linguistic object. in this sense, the later wittgenstein moves away radically from a referential conception of language. the ball pointed at has no meaning yet. at this first level, the empirical object “ball” becomes a rule of how we apply this word, among many others, having in this context a paradigmatic role: the empirical sound of the word “ball” is connected with the object ball through an ostensive gesture, being established, in this way, an internal relationship between the word “ball” and the object pointed at, as opposed to what wittgenstein considers an external relationship between different elements, such as the empirical laws of physics, which establish relations of cause and effect. interestingly, we have here a situation analogous to that of the simple object of the tractatus, which can only be named. however, from wittgenstein’s new pragmatic perspective, the object employed 9 “[..] don’t think, but look!” (pi § 66) paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 5 as a sample is no longer a metaphysical entity (like the simple object in that work), but a means of presenting language, in which the object plays the role of a paradigm.10 a classic example of paradigm is the standard metre. until the middle of the last century (from 1889 to 1960), a platinum-iridium bar was considered as the metre prototype, kept under lock and key at the international agency for weights and measures. for being at that time the paradigm of a meter, the platinum bar did not measure a metre, it showed what a metre is. today, it refers to the length of the path taken by light in a vacuum over a time span of 1/299 792 458 seconds. similar to that bar, the current definition of metre does not have a descriptive role, maintaining the paradigmatic and normative function of the platinum bar: having a metre is the distance travelled by light in a vacuum over a given time interval. hence, analogously to the platinum-iridium bar, this definition started to play the role of a norm, having a formal use, detaching itself from the empirical circumstances that led to its formulation. in other words, the above definition acquired autonomy in relation to the empirical. it is not a description of a metre, but a rule we learn to follow in order to apply this word in measuring empirical objects. thus, we have been using the word “metre” following one or more rules that constitute its grammar, where the current definition of a standard metre is expressed through a definition, and no longer through a paradigmatic object, but preserving the paradigmatic function of its previous application. it is through the employment of the concept of paradigm (in the sense above), that wittgenstein clarifies the enigmatic nature of the simple object in the tractatus. something can in fact be considered simple and unyielding to any analysis, insofar as it has been incorporated into our language, and not because there are simple elements in themselves, autonomous and independent of language, as initially assumed by him. according to moreno: this [objects unyielding to any analysis] is simply the case for all objects that are introduced in our language games as a standard measure, as a rule for using words. when taking an object as being the rule for using the word “metre”, for example, we cannot say that such an object is or is not “one metre” long, or rather, we cannot measure it, as it is the very criterion of all measurement. but this only means that such an object is taken as an instrument of our language – as a means [of presentation] for our language game – as well as a rule in the game of chess. this object can, in fact, be considered simple and unyielding to any analysis; but only and exclusively because it became part of our language. (moreno 2000, 78) as observed above, the paradigm performs the role of rule, analogous to the rules of chess. also in the game of chess, we have rules that say the names of the pieces and how to move them on the board, regardless of their empirical properties. but at this first level of learning the rules of chess, the game is not yet being played, these are just preparatory rules. 10 the term “paradigm” is a vague concept, the first meanings of which can be found among the greeks and which has unfolded into a range of meanings, mainly in the field of empirical sciences.10 we do not intend, here, to go back to the history of this concept, of how it was introduced by ludwik fleck10 (2010) to shed light on the genesis of scientific facts, and later used by thomas kuhn (1995) to defend the existence of incommensurable theories in scientific activity, nor the appropriations made by paul feyerabend (2007) in his controversial work against method. nor is it of interest, for the current purposes, to describe how this concept has been used in other senses and terminologies in different fields of knowledge, such as the total social facts in geertz’s anthropology, the evidential paradigm in the ginzburg microhistory, serendipity in merton’s sociology or even when the linguistic peirce introduces the term abduction in his semiotic theories (azanha 1992, chapter 6). although there is no exact meaning for paradigm, i will consider, in this text, one of its aspects, the one that is more recurrent throughout the history of philosophical thought: that of a norm, a reference for organizing the world in a certain way. paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 6 it is in this same sense that not only the standard metre, but also the ball pointed at, play the role of a rule, one of the rules of the language games in which the child is being inserted, having, therefore, a transcendental use in the kantian sense, as we will see next. on a second level (of the game itself), the child will learn to apply the same word (ball) with other senses (following other rules), no longer to name a particular object, but to operate with it in different ways: “pass the ball!”, “look at the colour of that ball...”, “the sun looks like a shiny ball”, and gradually, the meaning of this word is constituted, based on the different rules of usage that we learn to follow. similarly, when a child enters school, she or he will hear new words, which they do not yet know; words that are not present in their daily life, such as “ball”, “chair”, “table”. now as a student the child will hear about “electrons”, “solar energy”, “river systems”, “cells” and so on. here again, the question of the paradigm is posed in another context of use. how will the meaning of these words be constituted in the context of school? what will be the paradigms of electron, system, cell, energy, etc.? grammatical propositions as also having a paradigmatic function since the writings of immanuel kant (1724-1804), philosophers have sought to unravel the enigma of the existence of statements characterised by him as being synthetic a priori knowledge, present not only in the field of logic and mathematics, but also in the empirical sciences, although these are mostly made up of synthetic a posteriori judgments.11 in fact, scientific knowledge comes from empirical experience, observations and experiments, thus providing a posteriori knowledge. the concept of gravity, for example, was formulated by sir isaac newton when observing the movement of bodies in free fall, in which the empirical experience was a sine qua non condition to validate that new theoretical knowledge. but how does one explain the possibility of new knowledge that does not depend on observation and / or empirical experimentation? where does the knowledge come from, for example, that an object falling from one point to another will cover the shortest distance between the two points? there is no experiment that can falsify this claim, that the shortest distance between two points belonging to the same plane is a straight line. it is a type of knowledge that contains a need; we cannot imagine the opposite of this. but where does the evidence for this knowledge come from, which does not depend on any empirical experience? wittgenstein’s answer to these questions is analogous to that of columbus’s egg; extremely simple and at the same time revolutionary. according to moreno (2018), our philosopher makes a pragmatic interpretation of kant’s a priori, maintaining the idea of a transcendental function of the synthetic a priori statements, and attributing the same function to grammatical propositions,12 namely, those propositions mentioned above, that express our most fundamental certainties and that play the role of rules inside our language games. in other words, kant’s synthetic a priori judgments came to be interpreted by wittgenstein what he came to call grammatical propositions. for example, the statement that between two points, the shortest distance is a straight line, seen by kant as a synthetic proposition a priori, comes to be seen by wittgenstein as part of the grammar of euclidean language games, which underlie newtonian theories. it is a condition of meaning for empirical descriptions in euclidean space. it is a grammatical proposition insofar as it has a normative function, i.e., we cannot imagine the opposite of what is being stated, that the shortest 11 in his work critique of pure reason, already in the title of item v of his introduction, kant affirms: “in all the theoretical sciences of reason are contained, as principles, synthetic judgments a priori” (kant 1999, 60). my translation. 12 these linguistic rules, called by wittgenstein grammatical propositions, are a condition of meaning for the other propositions, constituting a grammar within us, as we will see below. paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 7 distance between two points is not a straight line! this euclidean postulate plays the role of a rule that entails a need: it must be so. according to kant (1999) in his critique of pure reason, normative principles would already be present in all theoretical sciences, but, in the case of mathematics, all of it would be constituted by synthetic judgements. in his own words: “they are always a priori and not empirical judgements because they bring with them a need that cannot be taken away from experience” (kant 1999, 60). when adding the numbers “7 + 5 = 12”, for example, 12 is not contained in any way in the previous numbers, as it would be in the case of analytical propositions13, nor is it knowledge that arises from experience. how, then, to explain the evidence of this statement? kant resorted to intuition in order to overcome this difficulty: “the arithmetic proposition is, therefore, always synthetic; this is recognised much more clearly when slightly larger numbers are considered, since then it becomes evident that, even if we turn our concepts inside out however we want, without getting help from intuition, we could never find the sum by the simple dismemberment of our concepts” (kant 1999, 61). wittgenstein recognises the necessary character of mathematical statements, but differently from kant, he does not attribute an intuition to the individual as a condition for the recognition of mathematical or geometric evidence. in his observations on the foundations of mathematics, he uses examples of how we actually operate with the signs of mathematics, without creating theories, just describing the techniques underlying certain statements. returning to the example provided above by kant, from the perspective of wittgenstein, the statement “7 + 5 = 12” contains a necessity simply because it is based on conventions that we have learned to accept. we group the numerical elements in a certain way, and master a certain counting technique. most of the time, these actions are learned in the school context, where the teacher presents the child with different techniques on how to operate with mathematical signs. let us take a closer look at how this happens. we can imagine that a teacher draws 7 xs on the blackboard and 5 more xs beside them, then tells the students that she or he will perform the sum of these elements. the teacher then writes a plus sign between the groups, draws circles around each group, proposes to count all the xs thus grouped, then places an equal sign next to the two sets and writes beside it the number 12. however, in order to highlight the conventional nature of the rules of mathematics, wittgenstein encourages us to imagine other possibilities of relating sets of elements, mobilising our will to accept other actions for an arithmetic sum, if the grouping techniques, for example, were different: “just look at the figure to see that 2 + 2 = 4” – then just look at the figure 13 the analytical propositions are a third kind of knowledge considered by kant. it occurs when the predicate of the sentence is already present in the subject, as for example, “the rose is a flower”. the predicative being a flower is contained (concealed) in the subject rose. see kant (1999, p.58) paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 8 to see that 2 + 2 + 2 = 4. (bgm, i 38) although we can imagine people who do this to group objects in their form of life, this way of adding things would not make sense in our form of life; this is not how we proceed, this is not how we act when we add numbers. we accept the learned conventions without contesting them, they are often as if “swallowed”, as wittgenstein observes in his last writings: i am told, for example, that someone climbed this mountain many years ago. do i always enquire into the reliability of the teller of this story, and whether the mountain did exist years ago? a child learns there are reliable and unreliable informants much later than it learns facts which are told it. it doesn’t learn at all that that mountain has existed for a long time: that is, the question whether it is so doesn’t arise at all. it swallows this consequence down, so to speak, together with what it learns. (oc § 143) when we learn a language game (which presupposes the learning of its rules), we do not doubt our teacher, the doubts and agreement only appear later: “child learns by believing the adult. doubt comes after belief” (oc § 160). returning to wittgenstein’s example of the arithmetic sum above, in the same way that we “swallowed” that mountains existed for a long time, we also swallowed a certain way of grouping sets to count the totality of its elements, which is not always explained. most of the time, it is tacit teaching. however, it is sometimes necessary to make explicit such conventions, which become our certainties. through them, we learn to act regularly, that is, to regularly do different things in different situations. in other words, we learn the institution of “following rules”. the above examples from wittgenstein help to clarify the enigmatic kantian question of synthetic propositions a priori: the feeling of evidence is linked to our access to the initial rules of the game in which we are being inserted, such as the introduction of paradigms in language, through a determined teaching, gradually learning that there are adequate and inadequate applications. in this sense, the meaning lies in the application of the rule, not in the rule itself. the rule we learn to follow is only a condition of signification. in the statement 7+ 5 = 12, we sort of “swallow” the way of grouping the elements in play, we count using the learned decimal system, and we do not question the equivalence between the two sides of the equation. and it is at this moment that the teacher’s authority comes into play, as the child does not question the tacit statements and actions of his or her teaching. in the same way that it does not occur to a child to question the existence of mountains when she or he hears about them, neither will they question the way in which their teacher groups the elements of a sum: 7 + 5 must be equal to 12. this proposition turns to have a paradigmatic function; it becomes a rule that we learn to follow and that we start to apply in different situations. in other words, it turns to be a grammatical proposition in the wittgensteinian sense. the student is now unable to imagine its opposite, that 7 + 5 is not equal to 12. paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 9 these linguistic mechanisms of construction of a rule are quite clear in the area of mathematics education, resulting in propositions that play a normative function. initially, fragments of the empirical world are chosen to operate as paradigms. to teach fractions, for example, the teacher presents continuous fragments of the empirical such as cakes, pies and pizzas to divide in equal parts and present them as examples of fractions of a continuous whole, or else he chooses a discrete whole, such as playing cards, or a number of candies to introduce discrete representations of the concept of fraction, or even teach division techniques and point out the result obtained as also being a fraction, and so on. from these initial conventions of what it means to be a fraction, the student gradually learns to operate with this concept in a multiplicity of situations, establishing relationships among its uses. for example, comparing the fractions to each other (a fraction is greater or less than the others), adding them up, dividing them and thus becoming able to solve problems involving partitions. thus, after a certain moment, we can say that the student acquired the concept of fraction. she or he will be able to apply it in different situations, even in the face of a new application, not yet presented to them. in the school context, new paradigms are presented, and other meanings are formed from the same word, meanings that are related to each other through family resemblances (pi §§ 66-67). adding rational numbers will involve other techniques, but with a certain kinship in relation to those that the student already mastered in order to add natural numbers. the numbers will not only be used for counting objects, but the student will also use them to measure objects whose measurements are not represented by integers. we have invented several different techniques that underlie each of these different rules, with family resemblances among them, and we have learned how to apply them in different circumstances. hence, taking up once again the example of the arithmetic sum, 7 + 5 = 12, unlike kant, our philosopher shows us that what is behind the conviction with which we affirm this synthetic proposition a priori is the result of training, namely, the learning of a diversity of techniques learned in the language games of mathematics, and not due to a supposed mathematical intuition potentially present in the child. in other words, the feeling of evidence is linked to our access to the initial rules of the game through a determined teaching, and not due to any kind of intuition. according to wittgenstein: “disputes do not break out (among mathematicians, say) over the question of whether or not a rule has been followed. people don’t come to blows over it, for example. this belongs to the scaffolding from which our language operates (for example, yields descriptions)”. (pi § 240) as wittgenstein draws our attention, all these techniques used in the construction of rules constitute the scaffolding that yields descriptions, among other functions of our language. therefore, any empirical description presupposes this previous work on language, and not some mysterious process in the student’s mind, yet to be unravelled, and that would allow immediate access to sense data. this also applies to teaching in the empirical sciences, particularly when observation does not happen immediately. we can imagine such a situation in an astronomy class. how to teach a student what is a “black hole” in the cosmos? would it be equivalent to describing a hole we fall into when we are distracted? in the same way that the student had to learn the integers to be able to operate with rational numbers, she or he will also need to have the concept of a hole in the ordinary use of the word in order to be able to make sense of the scientific concept of a black hole.14 although we cannot have direct access to them, as we 14 “black holes” are objects in the cosmos, which are indirectly observable through powerful telescopes. they arise from the death of stars, and contrary to what was previously believed, black holes do not dredge energy. by analysing the different spectra of the radiation emitted by them, paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 10 would see a hole in the street, we assume that they exist, and this statement (“there are black holes”) is a condition for investigating their properties and behaviours. the statement of their existence is, therefore, a grammatical proposition, analogous to statements about the existence of electrons, atoms, neutrons and other subatomic particles. students are persuaded of their existence, even though they are told that the nearest black hole is 1,600 light-years from earth. this is an example of a grammatical movement, which resembles a new way of seeing the ordinary use of the word, quite distant from it, but we can recognise some common aspects: you interpret the new conception as the seeing of a new object. you interpret a grammatical movement that you have made as a quasiphysical phenomenon which you are observing. (remember, for example, the question “are sense-data the stuff of which the universe is made?”) but my expression “you have made a ‘grammatical’ movement” is not unobjectionable. above all, you have found a new conception. as if you had invented a new way of painting; or, again, a new metre, or a new kind of song. (pi § 401) however, unlike the grammatical propositions that we “swallow” when we are learning our mother tongue, scientific definitions need to be learned, not discovered, as many pedagogical conceptions of the new school15 suggest. these definitions are similar to the standard metre, which some decades ago was represented by a platinum-iridium bar, and is currently represented by a grammatical proposition, whose paradigmatic function remains, stating what it is to be a metre in a new way. similarly, the successive definitions of “black hole” also play this role; they are not describing anything, on the contrary, they are conditions of possibility for possible descriptions, which can be empirically verified, confirming or not the current cosmic theories with some degree of probability. therefore, although any statement can also have a descriptive use, a definition has the same transcendental function as kant’s pure principles of reason, like his structures of sensibility (time and space), with which we would represent the universal a priori conditions under which things themselves become objects of our cognition in general. according to moreno (2018), from wittgenstein’s perspective, the transcendental function becomes pragmatic, as we pay attention to the conventional and arbitrary nature of our propositions that contain a need, as is the case with definitions: [...] even when norms are defined during the use of language, the definitions do not express properties of the application circumstances; they exclusively guide the symbolic action, determining or suggesting a path to follow inside the game. this is done, of course, previous to the application of the norm itself, although a given application of a norm can be the occasion to set a new norm (pi § 83). thus, the norms of use allow the extra-linguistic experience to be organised independently of its material properties, and, at the same time, they are immersed in the circumstances of scientists found that they eject more energy than they absorb, which led them to the conclusion that black holes actually consume their mass. 15 the new school movement emerged from the ideas of jean-jacques rousseau (1712-1778), in his work emilio, a treatise on education published in 1762 that revolutionized current practices. from rousseau’s perspective, the child is not born with a ready reason, but this is being formed from observation and experimentation with the objects of the world. this assumption, based on an empirical conception of knowledge, gave rise to new pedagogies that, until today, advocate the protagonism of the child who “builds his own knowledge”, where the teacher is often seen as a mere mediator. paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 11 that experience through the applications of language that are made to them. thus, we can say that the norms of use are valid a priori and constructed a part post and this, to summarise the tractarian image critiques by wittgenstein, causes the crystalline purity of the a priori forms to acquire the conceptual transparency of the norms of use – such as the opacity of white (see üf), which is norm and application. (moreno 2018, 29) in fact, the example mentioned above about one of the rules we follow to apply the word white, namely, that “white is not transparent (it is opaque)” or that “white is lighter than all other colours”, also clarifies the process of building these rules and their subsequent application16 in the field of the sense data. in the language game of colours, these norms may have originated in the empirical, when comparing the colours among themselves, using different objects as samples of certain colours and observing empirical properties of the compared objects. gradually the rules are constructed, such as, “there are four primary colours”, “white is lighter than all other colours” and so on, regardless of empirical circumstances that could eventually contradict these claims. in our western grammar of colours, they become principles that are followed normatively, or as moreno suggests above, although built a parte post, they turn to be a priori principles, in the sense that they acquire an autonomy towards the empirical. from this new conception of language, in which the paradigm occupies a central position, the enigma of the existence of simple objects in the tractatus is dissolved, clarifying the processes of objectivity in the sciences: the concept of paradigm solves the difficulties that wittgenstein had encountered in clarifying the essentially pre-predicative nature of the immediate data of perception and for its linguistic expression – a legitimately phenomenological problem that would accompany his concerns until the end of his life. at this level of elaboration of meaning, rules for the application of words are at stake, as an elementary technique of linguistic practice; we still have no concepts. these will appear only afterwards, as a result of the different applications of the words, marked directly by the paradigm – the logical names of the tractatus – to the different situations still regulated by the paradigm. the result will be the predication, carried out through this new linguistic instrument that is the concept. wittgenstein readily realises that the same paradigmatic function can also be exercised by statements, that is, by linguistic instruments that contain concepts. and by statements of a special kind, namely, that say what the object is, giving it properties considered essential or, at least, properties that we would not accept to detach from the object. for example, that white is lighter than black, that sensations are private, that the word “table” has five letters, that the sum of 2 and 2 has 4 as a result, etc., are descriptive of properties that the experience seems to be incapable of distorting, or at least, as wittgenstein says, the opposite of which we would not be able to imagine. such statements also exercise the paradigmatic function, no longer at the elementary, pre-predicative phenomenological level, but already at the predicative level: they are paradigms, now, of the very being of objects with all their essential properties, or considered as such. (moreno 2019, 33-34) in wittgensteinian terms, “grammar tells what kind of object anything is” (pi § 373) in both senses above, at the elementary level and also at the predicative one. at the first level, the child learns the meaning of the table by applying this word in several situations in which she or he observes family resemblances among the different types of tables that are all called “table”. at the second level, conceptual relationships are formed that express properties of 16 in giving this example, the author refers to the work of wittgenstein, bemerkungen über die farben, in which wittgenstein makes observations regarding the opacity of white (üf § 132, § 183 ff.). paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 12 the objects above, that once crystallised, the child cannot imagine its opposite, that the word table does not have 5 letters, or that 2 and 2 is not equals to 4. the statements “table has 5 letters” and “2 + 2 = 4” become part of the grammar of what it means to be respectively table and number 4. we have two examples here of an empirical object (table) and another of an ideal object of mathematics (the number 4), which are gradually constituted through internal relations of meaning, beyond the most elementary technique of ostensive gesture (pointing to some empirical object employed as a sample). these norms gradually constitute the meaning of both empirical and ideal objects, exercising also a paradigmatic function, thus constituting the basis for knowledge production. still according to moreno: building rules of meaning (…) means to create and even invent internal relations between objects within the technical contexts that are the language games, from relations of logical inference present in mathematical demonstrations and proofs, to relations between sensible objects, such as that between two colours of lighter or darker shades, or the relations of objects with themselves, such as identity or the number of letters of a word, etc. these are not empirical or causal relations, with which the description of the uses of words is concerned, but meaning relations, created in the linguistic activity that involves a myriad of elements of the situations of dialogue and is at the same time involved in them. (moreno 2018, 33) thus, even the relations of meaning between empirical objects are constituted within the language, and not outside it, being possible to conclude that the scientific meaning relations are also constructed in language. in other words, scientific theories establish within themselves what their objects of thought are, the rules that we must follow in order to make sense of them. most importantly, science language games also tell us what should be considered as an empirical object, that could confirm or not its conjectures. in wittgensteinian terminology, it is the grammar that defines what the object is, and not something external to the use of words, including what should be considered an empirical object for a specific scientific theory. hence, scientific theory, as conceptual apparatus, presents the criteria to delimit what is inside and what is outside its theoretical body, i.e., grammar is autonomous in relation to the empirical, even in the language games of the sciences. the criticism to the received view and the pragmatic conception of wittgenstein the idea of the autonomy of grammar in relation to the empirical, present in the reflections of the second phase of wittgenstein’s thought, put into question the positivist theses that goes back to francis bacon in the 17th century to the theses defended in particular by the logical positivism of the vienna circle theorists (schlick, carnap and others). the new conception of objectivity in general that emerges from wittgenstein’s late work challenged the positivist image of science that has crossed the century in new guises, and this has not gone unnoticed by some of the philosophers of science such as thomas s. kuhn and paul feyerabend, who, based on different arguments, made a strong criticism of the received view.17 17 the received view has its roots in the ideas of francis bacon, present in his work novum organum (1620), which prioritized the mastery of a single method and empirical experimentation as central to what he considered to be a legitimate scientific practice. in the past century, several philosophers of science have challenged this positivist conception of science, in particular the image that scientific paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 13 from my point of view, both kuhn and feyerabend, when criticising the received view, approached the ideas of wittgenstein, as they realised the fruitfulness of the notions of paradigm and of following rules for a better understanding of the nature of scientific activity. kuhn, in using the concept of paradigm to support an incommensurability of scientific theories, led him to what he called scientific revolutions throughout the history of scientific thought. whereas feyerabend, categorically denied the idea that carrying out science could be reduced to a mere application of a method (seen as a set of rules to be followed). in fact, the history of science shows us how scientific innovation stems, most of the time, from the transgression of a methodological rule (which we could also associate with a paradigm shift), establishing new theories. however, i also think that we can still advance a lot from wittgenstein’s perspective, when we look at science not as a merely descriptive activity of the facts of the world (and that, at times, it introduces new paradigms and even transgresses some of its methodological rules), but essentially as an activity that constitutes new objects of thought, thus making it possible to organise the empirical world under different aspects, expanding our way of seeing, and at the same time deepening certain themes, relating them in different ways. in this sense, i believe that wittgenstein is closer to ludwik fleck (2010), a polish doctor and microbiologist, who looked at science as an activity organised by the communities of researchers, coining the concept of thought collectives as open and “communicable” systems: “(…) the process of knowledge is not the individual process of a theoretical ‘consciousness in itself’; it is the result of a social activity, since the respective state of knowledge goes beyond the limits given to an individual” (fleck 2010, 81). moreover, according to him, a scientific fact is not reduced to an empirical fact. as with gestalt forms, seeing as (a fact) is linked to the different theories/conceptual apparatus that we have. consequently, the scientific fact is constituted within the theory, it does not exist outside it. still according to fleck, both the fact and the theory are subject to changes depending on the stage of the investigation, and the “errors” in communication can lead to new scientific discoveries. similarly to fleck, wittgenstein notes that sensitive perception itself is already conceptual, and therefore, due to a collective way of seeing. to paraphrase our philosopher (paragraph 373 of the pi mentioned at the beginning18), a scientific fact is built inside one or more scientific theories; we see from the theoretical frameworks learned (“the scaffolding”). to see as becomes possible from a “rival” theory, in which new aspects of the scientific object/fact are observed. what fleck calls an error in communication that leads to a new scientific discovery, in my view, can be interpreted from the perspective of wittgenstein as a transition from one sense to another of the same concept, allowing not only the expansion of the concept in question but also its interrelation with other concepts, thus constituting what wittgenstein called grammatical propositions, seen by him as the foundations of meanings that we attribute to the empirical world. in other words, from the perspective of both thinkers, there is no unidirectional scientific progress, as if we were approaching a final reality (empirical or logical). on the contrary, through various linguistic techniques as the basis of our theories and concepts, we attribute multiple meanings to what we think, do and observe, leading to unpredictable directions, sometimes contrary to those taken initially, forcing scientists to formulate rival theories or even to abandon theories previously accepted as definitive.19 the repercussion of this in education highlights the importance of the activity is linear, progressive, and fundamentally dependent on the ideas of notable individuals in their respective areas of scientific knowledge. see (azanha 1995, chapter 1). 18 “grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (theology as grammar.)” (pi § 373). 19 a beautiful example in the history of physics is the caloric theory that had gained wide acceptance during the eighteenth century, with considerable explanatory power. although at the end of this paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 14 teacher’s relationship with his or her students, as it is the teacher who presents to them these new perspectives on the facts of the world, perspectives that we could call ... paradigmatic; not in the sense of incommensurable ways of seeing, but in the wittgensteinian sense of existing family resemblances among all of them, in a greater or lesser degree. this antiessentialist concept forged by him explains, in part, the non-relativism of our philosopher. in fact, as we saw above, from the pragmatic perspective of wittgenstein, the meaning we attribute to something, be it the object ball or any other (like the “black hole”), depends on the application of one or more linguistic rules, regardless of its empirical properties, i.e., “the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (pi, §43). we trigger at least one rule of meaning when using a certain word in a given context.20 words alone are meaningless, have no life, what confers life to them is the use (pi, §432). in the language games of the empirical sciences, this is quite clear, as the scientist formulates hypotheses, verifies them by making experiments and observing the facts of nature. wittgenstein himself gives us some examples of language games in the sciences: “describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements; constructing an object from a description (a drawing); reporting an event; speculating about the event; forming and testing a hypothesis, presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams” (pi § 23), and so on. however, as i sought to emphasise throughout this text, although most language games in the empirical sciences are practically all referential (since they involve descriptions that refer to objects in the empirical world), the scientific concepts involved in these games were formed from rules of meaning, established through techniques of a conventional nature. for example, so that i can affirm, in the context of newtonian physics, that the colour blue is a luminous wave with a length that varies from 4,300 to 4,700 angstroms, it is assumed that our interlocutor already knows the grammar of the colours of our form of life. she or he has already been introduced to blue objects as having a paradigmatic function, i.e., our interlocutor was previously introduced to fragments of the empirical world, incorporated by language as a means of presenting the colour blue. these fragments of the empirical (blue objects, colour charts, etc.) stop being empirical when they are instituted as norms, stating what it is to be blue. these turn into conventions with a paradigmatic role, which could be different in other forms of life. we know, from anthropologists and travellers, of communities who organise time and space, as well as colours, in very different ways than in western civilisation. however, it does not mean that anything goes, or that there are no ultimate fundaments for our scientific knowledge. by showing us how we actually constitute the meanings of our words, through various techniques such as that of the paradigms in language, wittgenstein shows us that the foundations of knowledge and meaning occupy a place between the transcendental and the empirical. as moreno notes: “sharing the same paradigms means assuming the same way of speaking and thinking about the contents of experience, giving them the same meanings within the game, sharing the same conceptual grammar, that is, the same rules that we apply when combining concepts” (moreno 2019, 39). therefore, although they originated in the empirical, they contain a need that we do not give up, as in kant’s synthetic a priori propositions. century it was universally accepted, it was replaced in the following century by a mechanical or kinetic theory of heat, summarily rejecting the materialist theory that preceded it. 20 remembering that according to wittgenstein, the rules contain an intrinsic vagueness, they do not determine the action, they only establish a field of possibilities; as in the rules of the tennis game, which delimit what is possible and what is not possible to do, but do not say what to do (pi § 68). paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 15 final therapeutic considerations in these dark times of setbacks in environmental policies and scientific research in various parts of the world, in particular in brazil, the understanding of the processes of attributing meaning to the facts of the world, characteristic of the sciences, becomes essential to distinguish scientific truths from what we call today “fake news”. there is an urgent need to distinguish scientific activity from dogmatic theories defended in a fundamentalist way, such as conspiracy theories, which are increasingly in vogue, characterised by their denialism.21 science, on the contrary, does not deny the facts, which have a fundamental role in confirming or not its conjectures. through observation and empirical experimentation, which must follow scientific procedures and canons, our theories change with time. as fleck had stated, a scientific fact is built into the theory, so both changes. the abandonment of some of the scientific statements and substitution for others simply shows science’s antidogmatism, insofar as a statement is considered scientific if it can be refuted, there are no absolute truths.22 nevertheless, this does not mean that anything goes, as kuhn was accused of, nor do feyerabend’s ideas23 lead to the understanding of scientific activity as a systematic transgression of one or more rules of the scientific method. as we noted above, both philosophers only sought to relativise certain scientific tenets of the received view and, for this, they took their arguments to the extreme. from a wittgensteinian perspective, what we have is a grammatical relativism, which is situated between the transcendental and the empirical, that is, it is neither a question of “anything goes”, nor the belief in ultimate empirical foundations. our philosopher simply draws our attention to the fact that, although our paradigms (and as well as our grammatical propositions) have their origin in the empirical world, they turn to be normative. they are part of our conceptual framework constituted in our way of life, intrinsically involved in our habits, institutions and ingrained in our western culture. scientific activity also involves an enormous amount of techniques and conventions that make this initial connection between scientific language and the world possible, where one of its most elementary techniques, as we saw, is the use of paradigms followed by paradigmatic definitions. thus, science has fundaments that are, at the same time of a conventional nature, and constituted by norms. as pointed above, these are not absolute foundations, which could be found in some extra-linguistic realm, as presupposes a referential conception of language that dominated the thought of the young wittgenstein. in fact, in the second phase of his thinking, the meaning of a word does not have a previous existence in the ideal world of logic, nor in the empirical world, nor in an individual’s intuition. on the contrary, the senses of a word result from a work within the language games, and therefore, they are linguistic in nature, relating to each other, through family resemblances. as stated by wittgenstein in the epigraph of this text: “when we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (light dawns gradually over the whole)” (oc § 141). 21 the term denialism was used initially to refer to the denial of the holocaust by some historians in the 1980s. more recently, it has been used in brazil to deny events of the past, such as slavery, torture during the military dictatorship and, currently, to ignore global warming, the covid-19 pandemic as well as the scientific protocols recommended for its treatment, such as masks, social distancing and the recently developed vaccines. 22 this was one of the principles espoused by karl popper, and which, in my view, in addition to being a staunch critic of the received view, he emphasized the hypothetical character of any scientific statement. see (popper 1974). 23 feyerabend himself reconsidered, in his last writings, certain statements of his work, which could give rise to total relativism. see (feyerabend 1996). paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 16 in short, the statement that conventional normative statements are at the base of scientific activity does not lead to total relativism simply because we cannot untie the scientific concepts from the ordinary senses that we attribute to our most fundamental ordinary concepts, which “belong to the scaffolding from which our language operates”, as wittgenstein puts it. both scientific and ordinary aspects of our concepts are related to each other through family resemblances; however distant a “black hole” may be from a simple ball that a child learns to kick. acknowledgement english revision by oscar kent mahar. references azanha, josé mario pires. 1992. uma ideia de pesquisa educacional. são paulo: editora da universidade de são paulo. feyerabend, paul. 2007. contra o método. tradução cezar augusto mortari. são paulo: editora unesp. feyerabend, paul. 1996. matando o tempo – uma autobiografia. são paulo: fundação editora da universidade estadual paulista. fleck, ludwig. 2010. gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico. tradução georg otte e mariana camilo de oliveira. belo horizonte: fabrefactum. gottschalk, cristiane maria cornelia. 2018. teaching to be critical: the struggle against dogmatism. educational philosophy and theory, 50 (5): 469-477. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1168731 gottschalk, cristiane maria cornelia. 2020. a reflection on the linguistic sense towards a wittgensteinian inspired pedagogy. educação and realidade 45 (3): 1-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2175-6236106761 kant, immanuel. 1999. crítica da razão pura. tradução de valério rohden e udo baldur moosberger. in coleção os pensadores. são paulo: editora nova cultural ltda. kuhn, thomas. 1995. a estrutura das revoluções científicas. são paulo: editora perspectiva. moreno, arley ramos. 2000. wittgenstein – os labirintos da linguagem. são paulo: editora moderna e editora da universidade de campinas. moreno, arley ramos. 2018. for an epistemology of use. one aspect of the wittgensteinian concept of use: construction of the sign and constitution of meaning. in wittgenstein nas américas. org. azize, rafael lopes. salvador: edufba. moreno, arley ramos. 2019. wittgenstein e os valores: do solipsismo à intersubjetividade. in wittgenstein sobre ética. orgs. marques, antónio and cadilha, susana. lisboa: universidade nova de lisboa. popper, karl. 1974. conjectures and refutations. london: routledge & kegan paul. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1998. on certainty. edited by g. e. m. anscombe and g. h. von wright. oxford: blackwell publishers ltd.. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1989. bemerkungen über die grundlagen der mathematik. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1994. tractatus logico-philosophicus. são paulo: editora da universidade de são paulo. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1998. on certainty. edited by g. e. m. anscombe and g.h. von wright. blackwell publishers ltd, oxford. paradigm and objectivity in the sciences: pedagogical repercussions from a wittgensteinian perspective cristiane maria cornelia gottschalk 17 wittgenstein, ludwig. 2009. philosophical investigations. translated by g.e.m. anscombe, p.m.s. hacker, and joachim schulte. – rev. 4th ed. / by p.m.s. hacker and joachim schulte. oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. microsoft word djordjevic layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-17 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue – wittgenstein and the sciences: history and philosophy of science and science education getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic1 abstract: this paper aims to demonstrate the fecundity of pairing specific insights from on certainty with research in the philosophy and history of the natural sciences. to do so, it discusses one set of related themes in the work that focus on the possibility of and nature of revolutionary change. specifically, i argue that several of wittgenstein’s rather gnomic remarks presage van fraassen’s insistence on the need for decisions and emotions throughout scientific revolutions. moreover, i argue that reading both together enriches each’s individual account and helps further make sense of why and how conversion is not just a ‘mad leap in the dark’. keywords: philosophy of science; volunteerist epistemology; emotion; van fraassen; wittgenstein. received: 28 december 2020. reviewed: 16 march 2021. accepted: 15 april 2021. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “could moore really prove his belief [that the world existed long before him] be the right one? i do not say that moore could not convert the king [raised to believe that the world began existing when the king was born] to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way.” (wittgenstein 1969, § 92 – emphasis mine) “neither side will grant all the non-empirical assumptions that the other needs in order to make its case… though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing his science and its problems, neither may hope to prove the case.” (kuhn 2010, 147 – emphasis mine) “so here is the problem for epistemology: we take ourselves to have knowledge and to know what it is to be rational. yet we also look back and see that in our past our presumed knowledge went into crisis, and the crisis was resolved in ways that burst the very categories of our then-putative knowledge and reason … the epistemologist is confronted with radical conversion… there are times when epistemology itself needed to undergo radical changes and did so.” (van fraassen 2002, 74 – emphasis mine) introduction on certainty is fascinating both because of its breadth and because of the inchoate status wittgenstein assigned to it (for this status, see, e.g., wittgenstein 1969 §§ 387, 400, 422, etc.). 1 charles djordjevic [orcid: 0000-0002-4638-9838] is a senior researcher at the hong kierkegaard library at st. olaf college. address: 1520 st. olaf avenue northfield, mn 55057 – usa. e-mail: djordjevicc@gmail.com getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 2 indeed, targets in the book include – mocking feigned philosophical skepticism (e.g., wittgenstein 1969 §§ 347, 467, 495, etc.), cavell-esque points about the interdependence of words, concepts, practices, and objects (e.g., wittgenstein 1969 §§ 61-64, 114, 126, etc.; cavell 1991, 64-100), moves towards a contextualist conception of the verb “to know” (e.g., wittgenstein 1969 §§ 237, 347-553, 407, etc.; derose 1995), and perhaps even hints at semantic externalism (e.g., wittgenstein 1969 § 649). this paper aims to demonstrate the fecundity of pairing specific insights from on certainty with research in the philosophy and history of the natural sciences. to do so, it discusses one set of related themes in the work– the possibility of and nature of revolutionary change. specifically, i argue that several of wittgenstein’s rather gnomic remarks presage van fraassen’s insistence on the need for decisions and emotions over the course of scientific revolutions. moreover, i argue that reading both together enriches each’s individual account and helps further make sense of why and how conversion is not just a ‘mad leap in the dark.’ section i sets the stage. i briefly discuss volunteerist epistemology and use wittgenstein to adumbrate a taxonomy of types of beliefs. in section ii, i discuss van fraassen’s account of how and why decisions concerning what to believe are critical to scientific practices in revolutionary times as well as why emotion may be crucial for such decisions. i also begin to pair aspects of his account with wittgenstein, showing that they fruitfully complement and supplement each other. finally, in section three, i sketch out, far too briefly, how one might use wittgenstein to enrich van fraassen and van fraassen to enhance wittgenstein in such a way that the problem of conversion becomes more epistemically tractable. i should make two notes at the outset. first, given that wittgenstein 1969 is such an inchoate work, i discard the order of the remarks and pair them together in such a way that, i hope, helps shed light on what is afoot. though this may not be the best purely exegetical strategy, i believe wittgenstein might well have endorsed it as he notes that “[e]ven if i have hit the mark only rarely, he [a future reader] would recognize the targets i am constantly aiming at” (wittgenstein 1969 § 387). second, since the point of this essay is demonstrating the fecundity of reading wittgenstein and van fraassen together, i simply accept and assume all aspects of van fraassen’s “new epistemology” (e.g., van fraassen 1984, 1988, 1989, 1995, 1995, 2000, 2002). of course, there have been criticisms of this on several grounds (e.g., christensen 1991; psillos 2007). however, such objections are tangential to my interest, and so i bracket them. will-to-believe? wittgenstein 1969 raises the question of if, how far, and why, the volunteerist account of the belief propositional attitude might be necessary to make sense of our epistemic practices. by “volunteerism,” i mean any account that contends that one can form or modify distinct beliefs based on decision and the will. thus, wittgenstein asks, “[i]s it maybe in my power what i believe? or what i unshakably believe?” (wittgenstein 1969 § 173). relatedly, he wonders if he “can… be in doubt at will?” (wittgenstein 1969 § 221). he further queries, after an examination concerning how certain beliefs interdepend with forms of life, “[b]ut doesn’t it come out… that knowledge is related to a decision?” (wittgenstein 1969 § 362). however, his answers to these questions are decidedly mixed. thus, on the one hand, he notes that “[t]his doubt isn’t one of the doubts in our game. (but not as if we chose this game!)” (wittgenstein 1969 § 317). further, “[w]hat is a telling ground for something is not anything i decide” (wittgenstein 1969 § 271). on the other, he notes that “in the end we can only adduce such grounds as we hold to be grounds, is to say nothing at all” (wittgenstein 1969 § 599). he also points out that “[i]f someone says that he will recognize no experience as proof of the opposite, that is after all a decision” (wittgenstein 1969 § 368). further, getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 3 “the questions that we raise, and our doubts depend on the fact that propositions are exempted from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn” (wittgenstein 1969 § 341) and “it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are indeed not doubted” (wittgenstein 1969 § 342). one way to make sense of these varied answers is to distill from wittgenstein 1969 a taxonomy of types of beliefs. indeed, should a taxonomy be viable, the apparent inconsistencies would dissolve, as wittgenstein would be addressing different kinds of beliefs with each remark. moreover, such a taxonomy would help clarify precisely where, how, and why decisions and the will might have to enter into epistemic practices. and, indeed, wittgenstein insists that “[o]ur empirical propositions do not form a uniform class” (wittgenstein 1969 § 213). further, he notes that [i]t might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions that were not hardened but fluid; and this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened and the hard ones became fluid. (wittgenstein 1969 § 96) given this, let us read wittgenstein as offering, admittedly implicitly, a taxonomy of beliefs based not on their semantic content, but based on their varied roles in our epistemic practices (e.g., wittgenstein 1969 §§ 654-658). such a taxonomy will be pragmatic in that “there is no sharp division of one from the other [kinds of belief]” (wittgenstein 1969 § 97). nevertheless, it will bring into view exactly where volunteerism might be an apt account for a particular subtype of belief. see figure 1 for the taxonomy. let us discuss each type and subtype in turn. to begin, wittgenstein distinguishes between what i term unmediated and mediated pragmatic roles for beliefs within our justificatory practices. to do so, he asks, “what is the difference between my treating it [an error] as a mistake and my treating it as a mental disturbance?” (wittgenstein 1969 § 74). and the critical difference is that an unmediated belief is a belief such that “i cannot depart from it without toppling all other judgments with it” (wittgenstein 1969 § 419). for example, consider a situation where i look out my window, see that it is raining and then see that the rain stops. i utter, “it was raining”. in turn, someone might ask, “why do you believe that it was raining?” and i retort, “i saw it”. to carry on doubting my belief that it was raining, the person i am speaking with might accuse me of being disingenuous or else begin to entertain philosophical skepticism. let us assume she does the latter. to sustain her skepticism, the person doubting my belief may invoke, e.g., (c) (b) (a) figure 1 types of belief unmediated x mediated direct x indirect formal x hardened ✓ getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 4 demons that trick me. however, this quickly pulls in not just my belief about the rain, but all of my beliefs and the justificatory practices that underwrite them. this is partly because the very idea of “evidence” itself seems to have been called into question (cf. cavell 1979, 4986). to this form of skepticism, wittgenstein asks “why not [doubt]… the meaning of these words as well?” (wittgenstein 1969 § 456). in other words, if a person seriously entertains that a demon has tricked me into the belief that i saw rain, why cannot she further maintain that the self-same demon has tricked me with respect to the semantic content that the sentence i utter, “i saw rain”, expresses. indeed, why should she believe that the english type-sentence “i saw rain”, in my mouth, expresses anything more than, e.g., mere sound and fury that signifies nothing? given this, wittgenstein notes that “[a] doubt without an end is not even a doubt” (wittgenstein 1969 § 625). and this is because, if the semantic content of an answer to a doubt is, itself, rendered doubtful, then it becomes unclear how to reply to the doubt. moreover, assuming, as wittgenstein seemed to (cf. wittgenstein 2009, e.g., §§ 243-315), that there is some relationship between natural language and the supposed language of thought, this can easily be internalized. if i seriously entertain the possibility that a demon is tricking me about basic perceptual capabilities, why not push this further and doubt the propositional content that the doubting/believing attitude is directed towards? and this sort of doubt would betoken a mental disturbance as, quite literally, the propositions that our attitudes are directed towards no longer have any clear content. given this, it is simply unclear what the semantic content of the supposed doubt is. notice, however, that this does not so much refute skepticism as insist that, if one wants to continue to be an epistemic subject, such a position becomes pragmatically untenable. we return to this in section ii. by contrast, mediated beliefs have a different role in our justificatory practice. specifically, a mediated belief’s role is to allow us to form beliefs about some situation via factors that are signs of, or evidence for, it. given this, wittgenstein asks if “only a certain regularity in occurrence makes induction [logically] possible?” (wittgenstein 1969 § 619). and wittgenstein, it seems to me, gives two distinct answers that reflect direct or indirect mediated beliefs. for direct mediated beliefs, wittgenstein treats the question of induction, and amplifying inferences more generally, practically. to do so, wittgenstein notes that he “want[s] to treat man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. as a creature in a primitive state” (wittgenstein 1969 § 475). given this, he points out that “[t]he squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. and no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions” (wittgenstein 1969 § 286). taken together, these quotes suggest that wittgenstein believes that, practically speaking, our instincts rest on a uniformity not necessarily in nature per se, but in our reactions. in other words, there is a regularity of responses, but this need not be taken to imply some sort of deep uniformity in nature (cf., e.g., van fraassen 1989, e.g., 151-215; van fraassen 1994, esp. 120-124). indeed, “[t]he child… learns to react in such and such a way; and in so reacting it doesn’t so far know anything. knowing only begins at a later level” (wittgenstein 1969 § 538). moreover, wittgenstein also notes that our ascriptive practices concerning beliefs change for direct mediated beliefs. thus, “we can see from their [primitive humans’] actions that they believe certain things definitely, whether they express this belief or not” (wittgenstein 1969 § 284). in other words, we ascribe to squirrels, primitive humans, etc., the belief that winter is coming, even if they cannot express this. and though these sorts of direct mediated beliefs are logically open to worries about induction, they do not interest wittgenstein, as his focus in on certainty tends to be on avowed beliefs rather than ascribed beliefs. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 5 in contrast, indirect mediated beliefs enable inferences from some feature(s) of the world to some uniform type, regularity, etc., rather than relying on an inflexibility in our instinctual responses. thus, wittgenstein notes that it is clear that our empirical propositions do not all have the same status, since one can lay down such a proposition and turn it from an empirical proposition into a norm of description. think of chemical investigations. lavoisier makes experiments with substances in his laboratory and now he concludes that this and that takes place when there is burning…. he has got hold of a definite world-picture… i say world-picture and not hypothesis because it is the matter-of-course foundation for his research and as such also goes unmentioned. (wittgenstein 1969 § 167) notice, first, that wittgenstein’s focus has clearly changed. indirect mediated beliefs are not straightforward instinctual extensions of reactions. instead, here we have a far more cognitively strenuous sort of inference from a state-of-affairs being such-and-so to, e.g., some theoretically posited entity – one imagines, given the case, the presence of (and so the existence of) oxygen. second, wittgenstein is bringing into view something like a paradigm or a conceptual schema. indeed, to rehearse precisely this case, it seems clear that lavoisier did not simply read off the existence of oxygen from experiments, for the simple reason that priestley would have demurred and taken them as a sign of dephlogisticated air (kuhn 1977, 169-173; kuhn 2010, 52-91. for a reply see kitcher 1978). third, and most critically, wittgenstein’s conception of the propositions that constitute the framework has nothing whatever to do with their supposedly ‘analytic’ status (cf. glock 1996 for a helpful elaboration). we return to this in a moment. in any case, wittgenstein further breaks indirect mediated beliefs into two subtypes, each of which plays a different role in a scientific research program (cf. lakatos 1978, 8-101). the first subtype is what i term formal. by this, i mean, roughly, mathematics, and various applications of mathematics, that a research program uses. wittgenstein distinguishes this subtype by entertaining the thought that “[i]f the proposition 12 x 12 is exempt from doubt, then so too must non-mathematical propositions be” (wittgenstein 1969 § 653). he replies, “[b]ut against this there are plenty of objections– in the first place there is the fact that ‘12 x 12 etc.’ is a mathematical proposition, and from this one may infer that only mathematical propositions are in this situation [i.e., being exempted from doubt]” (wittgenstein 1969 § 654). partly, wittgenstein highlights the fact that formal beliefs form a unique class insofar as one can only infer from one mathematical proposition to another, but not to the empirical world per se (see wittgenstein 1969 §§ 651-657 for further comment). of course, the rulefollowing issue’s inventor is aware that the supposed rails to infinity are far less evident than one might think (e.g., wittgenstein 2009, esp. § 201, wittgenstein 1964, part i, e.g., §§ 111-113. see, e.g., kripke 1982, 7-54, for a forceful elaboration of the issue. see, e.g., wright 1982, passim, for a more general account of wittgenstein’s discussions of mathematics). nevertheless, the sort of doubts and beliefs wittgenstein is after here are different in that they relate, however indirectly, to empirical states-of-affairs (cf. wittgenstein 1969, e.g., § 563). thus, though volunteerism (or ‘bolshevism’, cf. dummett 1978) in mathematics may be an open question, it is not the central focus of wittgenstein 1969 and so can be bracketed off. the second subtype is what i term a hardened belief. these are beliefs that have the form of empirical propositions [i.e., not ‘analytic,’ assuming there is such a thing], were hardened and function as channels for such empirical propositions as were not getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 6 hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that the fluid propositions hardened and the hard one’s became fluid. (wittgenstein 1969 § 96) notice two things. first, again, it is clear that hardened beliefs have nothing whatever to do with ‘analyticity’, meaning-stipulations, and so on. for wittgenstein, the hard-core of a research program is not something a logician can simply read off and then (re-) (de-) construct2 into a sanitized framework for the research program in question (cf. carnap 1958). second, critically, it seems to me that these hardened beliefs are deeply akin to functional a priori judgments, quasi-analytic judgments, or, perhaps, conditions for positivity (see, e.g., stump 2011, kuhn 2000, 33-57 & 176-195, or hacking 2002, 159-199, respectively). in effect, these hardened beliefs, though empirical in the sense both that they seem to make claims about the world and that they are, to some extent, confirmed or disconfirmed by experiments, are exempted from doubt (at least during normal science) in such a way that they function as inferential bridges and yardsticks whose truth is not usually doubted. a classical physicist believes that force is mass times acceleration. this belief certainly appears to be a claim about the world. however, it is different from a belief about, e.g., when a falling rock will hit the ground. and this is precisely because the force belief functions as a prerequisite for constructing a newtonian model of a targeted system (cf. giere 2006, 5995). in other words, the force belief (and others like it) sets out both how to parameterize and model a target and what connections and transformations these parameters can undergo. it constitutes a scientific representation exactly because it proffers us the conditions that must be met for a model of a target to count as newtonian. again, this procedure is worlds (perhaps even possible worlds?) apart from ‘analytical entailments’ and such. these sorts of hardened beliefs, beliefs that we exempt from doubt in such a way that they can serve as prerequisites for representations of a target in terms of a model, that volunteerism begins to get a grip. indeed, wittgenstein makes the straightforward point that we chose to exempt certain beliefs in this manner because “[w]e just can’t investigate everything, and for that reason, we are forced to rest content with assumptions. if i want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put” (wittgenstein 1969 § 343). indeed, to seriously entertain doubts about the force belief is to stop doing classical physics. however, what is critical about this is not that such beliefs are somehow apodictic, that they track something built into the fabric of the world, or even that such beliefs are necessary for being epistemic agents. instead, their certain status reflects the fact that, for this subtype of beliefs, our eyes are closed to doubt (cf. wittgenstein 2009, ii xi § 331). this exception is needed to begin studying, learning, modeling, thinking in terms of, etc., classical physics. however, “[i]f someone says that he will recognize no experience as proof of the opposite, that is after all a decision” (wittgenstein 1969 § 368). in sum, for wittgenstein, the beliefs that are subject to the will are precisely hardened beliefs that, e.g., the physics community has chosen to exempt from doubt. this choice is required for the simple reason that such beliefs are preconditions for abstraction, idealization, modeling, etc. moreover, in further support of this contention, it does seem as though neophyte students first studying physics need to will themselves to believe statements like “an object in motion remains in motion”, in spite of both their ‘default’ framework (e.g., disessa 1982) and their ‘intuitions’ (e.g., chi 1992). and this choice to will certain beliefs turns on the fact that “[t]he schoolboy believes his teacher and his textbook” 2 as van fraassen rightly points out, one of the odd things about such reconstructions are that they are, often, deconstructions. in effect, to explicate a research program is to distort it and discard certain linkages that may appear ‘logically ambiguous’ but are required for research practices (cf., e.g., van fraassen 2002, 113-114). given this, such reconstructions are deconstructions in precisely the sense that they are a ‘misreading’ of what is afoot. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 7 (wittgenstein 1969 § 263). indeed, his “learning [science] is based on believing” (wittgenstein 1969 § 170). without this, working to make sense of the claim that objects in motion remaining in motion are moot. after all, balls around here always stop rolling! however, wittgenstein’s analysis of this type of belief does not clarify when and why we might revoke our decision to believe. indeed, though wittgenstein clearly thinks such a shift, and a subsequent conversion/revolution, is not only possible but may sometimes occur, he does not discuss what might engender it. to fill in this lacuna, let us turn to van fraassen. taking it personally and getting emotional in the last section, i argued that wittgenstein identified a particular sort of belief, a hardened belief, such that its role rests on a willed decision to exempt it from doubt. i further argued that such a willed exemption might well be a critical precondition for scientific learning and practice. however, it remains unclear what might lead a person to revoke this decision and so doubt, and ultimately change, a hardened belief. to begin to address this, let us turn to van fraassen’s elaboration of a volunteerist epistemology in revolutionary times (e.g., van fraassen 1984, 1988, 1989, 1995, 1995, 2000, 2002). to begin, such a revocation of a hardened belief would have radical ramifications. and, indeed, van fraassen’s discussion of scientific revolutions and conversions stresses precisely this point. thus, [w]hen we come to the sorts of decision involved there [in a scientific revolution wherein we entertain the thought of revoking the hardened status of a mediated, indirect, hardened belief], the contemplated outcomes make no sense from the anterior [pre-revolutionary] point of view (van fraassen 2002, 101). indeed, from the pre-revolutionary point of view, the proposed revolutionary belief is “literally absurd, incoherent, inconsistent, obviously false, or worse – meaningless, unintelligible – within the older view” (van fraassen 2002, 72). let us unpack this. notice, first, that this sense of a radical epistemic rupture makes good sense. as mentioned above, to seriously doubt one of newton’s laws is to begin to stop doing newtonian physics. and, in a world where newton’s physics is physics, such a doubt seems to be almost nonsense, or else an all-out attack on physics itself (see kuhn 2010, passim, for examples of how stark such breaks are). let us call such proposed beliefs that ‘liquify’ hardened beliefs and replace them with a different hardened belief, a revolutionary belief. second, elaborating on this, van fraassen notes that the devil here is clearly seen by the fact that the proposed revolutionary belief is simply not a live-option for a person trying to contemplate it, given her priors. indeed, spelling this out in a related context, van fraassen claims that a person faced with a decision has first of all an opinion [or belief3] about the current state of nature: what the relevant facts are like. second, he imagines a set of alternative actions. unfortunately, his imagination is limited, so some possible actions open to him may fail to be included. the opinion above may also have such limits: he imagines various ways the world may be, and these may not exhaust all possibilities, logically speaking. thus, imagination enters in two ways. let 𝑆 … 𝑆 be the states of nature he imagines as possible; his opinion consists in judgments of the form “𝑆 is q(k, m) as likely as 𝑆 ”; the number q(k,m) is called his odds for 𝑆 against 𝑆 . in addition, let the 3 it seems to me that van fraassen is rather unclear about what, if anything distinguishes opinions from beliefs. this may stem from the fact that he tends to treat both in decision theoretic terms (e.g., van fraassen 1984). given this framework, it may be that there really is not a relevant difference. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 8 set of actions he imagines as possible be 𝐴 … 𝐴 . his imagination steps in to supply possible outcomes of these actions; let these be 𝐶 … 𝐶 . his opinion [or belief] contains further judgments of the form ‘if the actual state of nature is 𝑆 and i do action 𝐴 , then 𝐶 is q(k, m, n, p) as likely to occur as 𝐶 ,’ thus entering further odds… [in an unbearable situation, like when one is faced with a proposed revolutionary belief and an increasingly degenerate research program], the limits of these three imagined sets, sub specie his opinion, are such that he has ‘nowhere to turn.’ (van fraassen 1988, 142) unpacking this a bit, a vital problem for a proposed revolutionary belief is that it is taken as “absurd”, where this means it might be logically possible but, against one’s priors, is assigned an extremely low credence. notice that this is markedly different from non-revolutionary belief formation. for the latter, one might accommodate a new belief by, e.g., eliminating possibilities and re-jiggering probability distributions (cf. van fraassen 1995, 13-14). in marked contrast, a proposed revolutionary belief has such a problematic status precisely because “[t]he transition to the new view of nature [that the proposed revolutionary belief entails] was to a view that was literally and logically incapable of being accommodated in any way with the previous view” (van fraassen 2002, 70). crudely put, there is no way to accommodate the proposed revolutionary belief, given one’s priors. third, according to van fraassen, one cause of adopting revolutionary beliefs is a crisis in the research program. thus, he notes that one necessary condition for revolution is “our expectations are disappointed, that the earlier rate of success has diminished, that we have been working fruitlessly on our current projects” (van fraassen 2002, 93). this is very much in keeping with kuhn (e.g., kuhn 2010, 66-91) and lakatos (e.g., lakatos 1978, e.g., 34 (but passim)). for both, one critical motivation for a revolutionary belief adoption is the realization that the old research program is failing. it is beset by anomalies, unable to cope with the data, its theories and models are more and more baroque, with epicycles on epicalyces within epicycles, and so on. notice that this degeneration of the research program can be grasped by the pre-revolutionary without too much work. simply put, the world and her priors are no longer getting along, and her expectations seem not only thwarted but increasingly ridiculous. however, critically, the emergence of such anomalies and such is, as yet, insufficient to provoke a revolution. as lakatos aptly said, this is partly because “all programmes grow in a permanent sea of anomalies” (lakatos 1978, 6. see also, e.g., 53-55). there seem to be at least two additional elements required for revolution. one is a rival research program that, through absurd by pre-revolutionary standards, needs to exist and be gaining converts (cf., feyerabend 1970 or 2010, passim). the other is a subjective factor. thus, van fraassen stresses that the failing research program needs to become “a despair about the human condition [that] has to turn into a sense of rebellion against the received view” (van fraassen 2002, 93). in other words, van fraassen stresses that scientists need to take the failures of the research program personally and get emotional. though we return to this in a moment, again, this is in keeping with kuhn (e.g., kuhn 2010, 140-150) and especially feyerabend (e.g., feyerabend 2010, e.g., 105-121), who each stress that emotions seem to be important and reoccurring features of revolutionary times. finally, fourth, van fraassen notes that any tractable volunteerist epistemology (and any epistemology that takes such epistemic ruptures seriously) needs to provide some story about how we can “exercise the will on options unless we consider them as genuine options. how can we make intelligible to ourselves the process of choice, which takes us into options that we could not see as genuine options beforehand?” (van fraassen, 2002, 94). in other words, assuming that a proposed revolutionary belief strikes a pre-revolutionary as absurd, how can she so much as entertain it? getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 9 it is here that two different answers seem possible. these are: the ‘prussian’ account; and the ‘english’ account (see van fraassen 1989, 171-173, for the terms). let us examine the prussian account and its perils now. we discuss aspects of the english account in the next section. the prussian account begins by insisting that the rational beliefs are beliefs derived from a rationally tractable procedure, i.e., conditionalization a la bayes. given this, and given that a revolutionary belief is absurd by pre-revolutionary lights (e.g., van fraassen 2002, 64110), it follows that adopting the revolutionary belief is irrational. the prussian account may well stress the aforementioned subjective factor, the strong emotional reaction, to further support this. indeed, since, per assumption, an ideal bayesian agent would not have (or not allow) her emotions to interfere with her belief formation, it seems that such emotional outbursts betoken an irrational reaction. given this, the prussian account is likely to explain scientific revolutions with “external factors”. by this, i mean the contention that scientific revolutions are not internally rational. instead, revolutionary belief formation reflects, e.g., political, economic, psychoanalytic, etc., changes that cause one’s ‘leap’ into revolutionary belief adoption (for example, shapin & schaffer 2011, passim, discuss how shifts in politics led to a reconceptualization of “knowledge” from demonstration to reliable testimony, thereby carving out room for experimentation and a scientific community). and, concomitant with this, there may be causes for someone to adopt a proposed revolutionary belief, but there are not reasons. however, van fraassen insists that such a prussian account both (a) misunderstands reason and (b) mischaracterizes the role of emotions. let us take each in turn. for (a), the conception of reason, van fraassen contends that “what it is rational to believe includes anything that one is not rationally compelled to disbelieve” (van fraassen 1989, 171-72). he further adds that “rationality is but bridled irrationality: rational belief is belief within the bounds of reason – that is, permitted (as opposed to compelled) within the dictates or criteria of reason” (van fraassen 2002, 97). it is here that three bridges to wittgenstein 1969 become extremely helpful. first, if van fraassen maintains this for all types of beliefs, he seems stuck with demons that trick us and the logically possible radical skepticism therein (cf. van fraassen 1988, 146-155; 1989, 176182). to this possibility, van fraassen notes that “we can and do see the truth about many things: ourselves, others, trees and animals, clouds and rivers – in the immediacy of experience” (van fraassen 1989, 178). indeed, commenting on moore’s refutation of skepticism, van fraassen further contends that “i can see my hand, but i can only believe in it as the means for lifting the cup, breaking the bread, touching a hand” (van fraassen 1988, 153). plausibly, one way to make sense of these claims is precisely in terms of unmediated beliefs. we believe that there is one hand not as an inference per se. instead, we believe this because our epistemic lives would fall into disarray without it. thus, as wittgenstein stresses, “[moore’s use of ‘know’ in his refutation] is the truth only inasmuch as it is an unmoving foundation of his language-games” (wittgenstein 1969 § 403). if this is so, then radical skepticism can be ruled out not because it falls on the wrong side of reason but because we cannot seriously entertain it and continue to be epistemic subjects at all. thus, radical skepticism may be a permissible belief insofar as it does not violate rationality. however, it is pragmatically unworkable precisely because it is self-stultifying if one wants to continue being an epistemic subject.4 second, against the idea that we always need a rule like conditionalization for belief updating, van fraassen claims that especially if one begins from a broadly bayesian point of view, 4 notice that this is a conditional claim, and the antecedent is optional. indeed, we can easily imagine people who have little interest in being epistemic subjects and find real peace in, e.g., pyrrhonist skepticism. we return to this in a moment. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 10 any such rule [in addition to conditionalization like abduction, inference to the best explanation, etc.] which goes beyond the mere logical accommodation of evidence… makes its adherents incoherent in the following precise sense: by their own lights, they sabotage themselves through the commitment to follow that [non-bayesian] rule (van fraassen 1989, 173). so far, this seems entirely in keeping with the prussian account. the only beliefs we can form that avoid dutch book arguments are ones formed via conditionalization. however, van fraassen notes that this “conclusion is only that if and when we commit ourselves to a rule for the revision of opinion, it must be non-ampliative… but who says that we must commit ourselves to such a rule beforehand” (van fraassen 1989, 174)? van fraassen adds that “[i]t will be no use [to claim] … that if he expected to proceed rationally, then he would not expect to proceed by rules” (van fraassen 1989, 174). these somewhat jarring claims are underwritten by van fraassen’s conception of what our epistemic situation really is. for van fraassen, our epistemic situation is marked by frailty, partial information, finitude, the constant possibility of utterly bizarre priors, and a felt sense of how lucky we are to manage to obtain anything like true beliefs (e.g., van fraassen 1994, 118-124; van fraassen 2000, 272279). given this, for van fraassen, a prelapsarian epistemology that, e.g., stipulates logically omniscient agents with reasonable priors and full knowledge of all their well-ordered credence assignments, is not so much a useful idealization as a product of ideology, an attempt to cover over the bleakness (and related excitement and wonder) of our real predicament (e.g., van fraassen 2002, 60-63). again, wittgenstein emphasizes just such points. thus, wittgenstein stresses that “[t]he difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing (wittgenstein 1969 § 166). further, he notes that “[a]t the foundation of wellfounded belief lies belief that is not founded” (wittgenstein 1969 § 253). however, wittgenstein’s presentation of our real epistemic situation seems to open the door to radical epistemic relativism. it is here that van fraassen can assist wittgenstein, as we discuss in section iii. finally, third, pursuant to the second point, one aspect of the prussian account that van fraassen attacks is the normative contention that a belief revision should count as rational only if it follows some pre-set rule or algorithm. indeed, for him, this contention removes our responsibility, displaces our need to make decisions, and discounts the sheer complexity of our epistemic situation. indeed, the contention inexorably levels down this complexity, reducing it to some prefabricated standard that always already determines what ‘being rational’ or ‘being reasonable’ means. pace this contention, van fraassen insists that neither the logic of belief and knowledge nor the theory of subjective probability can address more than a severely abstract aspect of our epistemic life… neither logic nor empirical study will take away this element of choice or the value judgment involved in that choice. (van fraassen 2002, 88) elaborating on this, van fraassen notes that [william] james points out [james 1956, 63-110] that the belief that one can jump [over a chasm and avoid freezing to death on a mountain] is almost a necessary condition of jumping successfully… [bracketing the issue of how the will might engender this belief, t]he contrast between the mountaineer who jumps, perhaps to survive… and the one who hunkers down till dawn, perhaps to survive… is a contrast between forms of life. the question is: which life does he find worth living. once we see that there is no method, no rule which will produce a rationally compelling conclusion… virtues other than the ability to calculate profit and risks come to light. (van fraassen 2000, 274) getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 11 this thought is further spelled out by van fraassen’s reading of pascal’s wager not as some way to trick ourselves into belief in god (as if god would accept that we bet on her, casino style, to save us!), but as a device to both frame and, by framing, show the limits to decisiontheoretic procedures (van fraassen 2002, 94-100). van fraassen’s primary point, i take it, is that our complicated epistemic lives cannot be reduced to such algorithms. and one reason for this is that there are irresolvable tensions that can only be coped with by value judgments concerning who one is and what one hopes for (cf. kuhn 1977, 320-339). to take a well-known example, either i can maximize true beliefs or minimize false ones, but i cannot simultaneously do both (runder 1953). and the selection criteria i have that determines which i pick interdepends with my stance (cf. van fraassen 2002, 46-63) or attitude (wittgenstein 1969, § 404). in other words, it turns on who i take myself to be (am i so risk-averse that believing anything other than tautologies with probability one seems like a leap of faith?) and what i want (do i want to be a revolutionary beyond the ‘bounds of sense’?). the point is that this tension, and others like them,5 are simply a feature of our epistemic situation, and attempts to idealize them away are tantamount to avoiding our responsibility for becoming and being the sort of epistemic agents we are or want to be. to this, wittgenstein adds that i would like to regard this certainty [e.g., the belief the mountaineer has that she can make the jump], not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality [as if the critical issue is that she did not carefully conditionalize and calculate her chances, given her priors] but as a form of life (wittgenstein 1969, § 358) dissatisfied with this, wittgenstein adds, “i want to conceive of something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified” (wittgenstein 1969, § 359). it seems as though wittgenstein also is trying to argue that there is no epistemic view-from-nowhere rule, no way to remove the critically important role that form(s) of life play in informing us about where, how, and with what we should begin. values are inexorably interwoven into our epistemic lives, and values reflect path-dependent histories, choices, ideals, and so on. indeed, [w]hat we consider reasonable or unreasonable alters… very intelligent and welleducated people believe in the story of creation in the bible, while others hold it as proven false, and the grounds of the latter are well known to the former (wittgenstein 1969, § 336) in other words, what a ‘reasonable’ prior is taken to be, turns partly on the entire way one has gone about engaging with the world epistemically up until this point. in sum, the prussian account’s conception of reason, for both wittgenstein and van fraassen, is an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for what we believe and where we stand. for both, there are logically possible beliefs that are both true and that we, give our priors, may well assign extremely low credence to. for both, our epistemic situation is shot through with tensions, conflicts, discordant values, etc., such that attempts to idealize these away is to distort what’s afoot, almost beyond recognition. and, for both, the role that risk aversion, courage, one’s goal of achieving the ataraxia that pyrrhonist skepticism promises or of boldly venturing forth to speculate about whatever, one’s history of trust paying off or trust leading to horrors, etc., (cf. van fraassen 2000; wittgenstein 1969 § 288-299), should be emphasized as a critical feature of how we actually get by, epistemically. 5 van fraassen 2002, 86-90, notes at least four different tensions in our epistemic situation. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 12 for (b), the role of emotions, van fraassen notes that the prussian account’s dismissal of emotions as ‘merely’ irrational reactions that cannot be part of rational belief formation turns partly on the prussian conception of rationality attached above. given this, there are at least two related points van fraassen makes about emotion and/in epistemology. first, one aspect of an emotional reaction is that it precisely reflects a commitment. someone becomes emotional because “all outcomes of envisaged actions [possible beliefs, etc.] are just different forms of misery” (van fraassen 1988, 143). and these dead ends seem so stark and demand some sort of revolution, precisely because they call into question the decision to make sense of nature in terms of, e.g., classical physics. to see this more clearly, consider that it is easy to imagine someone accepting that newtonian physics is sufficient for building bridges around here and not caring that, when stuff gets really small or goes really fast, newton starts having problems. such a ‘utilitarian’ attitude concerning science would obviate the need for revolution because the subjective factor would be missing. thus, what strong emotional reactions, and taking crises at the outer edges of research so personally, reflect is one’s deep commitment to a research program, over and above its merely pragmatic payoff (cf. van fraassen 1980, 10). suffice it to say, this is simply not reflected in the prussian account. second, relatedly, van fraassen contends that emotions, properly understood, have “a definite cognitive and volitional function” (van fraassen 2002, 104). specifically, and drawing from sartre, van fraassen claims that we can see this function clearly in terms of the decision paradigm whose anomalies they are. the values of possible outcomes of various actions are changed [the credence assigned to beliefs are changed, etc.] in a way that changes the action [situation] into something different. (van fraassen 2002, 106) this is accomplished partly because emotions enable “a new sort of alternative (or a new cross-classification of the same outcomes as envisaged before)” (van fraassen 1988, 143). thus, what strong emotional reactions change are “imagined sets of possibilities, or the opinions concerning them, or values and desires that define their significance” (van fraassen 1988, 132). notice that, phenomenologically speaking, this understanding of emotion seems to far more accurate and compelling than a pushmi-pullyu mechanistic model, at least in extreme cases (van fraassen 2002, 103). for example, a person may have a prior belief that they are worthless. and they may find themselves in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship. however, as the relationship persists and the abuse worsens, they might be pushed to a point where they simply cannot tolerate it any longer, where they no longer know how to go on. and, suddenly, they might come to believe that they do not deserve such treatment, that they are worth more than this. and this belief may well lead them to leave the abuser, against their ‘better judgment’. a logical possibility (the belief that one is worth something) that had a low credence is suddenly transmogrified into a live-option. moreover, many tales of conversion stress exactly this radical “transvaluation of all values” (van fraassen 1989, 143, see also 135-141). if this is compelling, then it seems like emotions can play precisely the role we need. they are what can enable us to reject our priors and consider seriously (supposedly) absurd possibilities. however, van fraassen asks, “how could any emotion make meaningful to us what was patently absurd by our lights previously?” (van fraassen 2002, 109). and, indeed, his comparisons of such emotions to “magic” (van fraassen 2002, 109) or “voodoo” (van fraassen 2002, 104) attest to a critical lacuna in this account. to wit, emotions in themselves seem insufficient for such a transmutation of the plausibility set and credence re-assignment getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 13 to possible beliefs.6 and it is here that wittgenstein can begin to supplement van fraassen, as we see in the next section. relativism vs. responsibility; idle emotions vs. epiphanies in the last section, i adumbrated van fraassen’s radical conception of revolutionary change. i also discussed why, for him, a prussian account of reason is not viable. finally, i proffered a brief discussion of how and why emotions seem to be a promising avenue to internally account for revolutionary belief adoption, both because they help account for the need to revolt and because they enable a radical reassessment and re-assignment of one’s credence viz. logically possible revolutionary beliefs. in this section, i read wittgenstein and van fraassen together so that two critical issues facing this radical account of revolutionary belief adoption (and conversion) are mitigated. specifically, i use van fraassen to help wittgenstein avoid extreme epistemic relativism. and i use wittgenstein to begin to help address van fraassen’s question about what factors enable emotion to transvalue our credence assignments of various beliefs. together, this helps further the point that conversion, though resting on a decision, need not be construed as a ‘mad leap.’ to begin, both van fraassen and wittgenstein, it seems to me, adopt an english account of reason. on this view, whatever belief is not forbidden by rationality is rationally permissible. however, this raises the specter of radical epistemic relativism. this danger seems to become particularly acute in wittgenstein. for example, he gnomically remarks that he would ‘combat’ the other man [who consulted an oracle instead of a physicist] – but wouldn’t i give him reasons? certainly; but how far do they go? at the end of reason comes persuasion (think of what happens when missionaries convert natives). (wittgenstein 1969, § 612) this quote seems to invite a radical relativism such that the people who consult the oracle are doing something perfectly licit, epistemically speaking. indeed, we might further contend that they are playing a different ‘orthogonal language-game’ from physics (cf. winch 1964). and it is precisely here that van fraassen can help mitigate this worry. first, van fraassen notes that [a] judgment of opinion… is not itself an autobiographical [or auto-ethnographical] statement of fact. it does not state or describe [one’s psychology, one’s culture] but avow: it expresses a proposition attitude. to make it is to take a stance. to adopt an attitude or stance is akin to a commitment, intention. (van fraassen 1988, 179 emphasis mine) in turn, this begins to alter how to construe the situation. for example, consider the azande hardened belief that “some people are witches and can injure them in virtue of an inherent quality… against [witches], they employ diviners, oracles, and medicines” (evans-pritchard 1976, 1). as evans-pritchard’s justifiably famous ethnography goes on to show, this hardened belief may well be a precondition for an entire cultural ensemble of practices (evanspritchard 1976, passim). however, critically, this belief among the azande is not an auto 6 indeed, phenomenologically speaking, it seems equally clear that there are occasions where nothing like this transpires. one gets pissed off by a rude remark, takes a long walk, and wakes up the next day feeling silly that such a slight had such an outsized effect. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 14 ethnographic reflection on their cultural ensemble. instead, they take this belief to be about the world– i.e., there are witches, and these are found and fought with oracles. second, following from this, the azande have taken a stand concerning what the world is like. and respect for them as epistemic agents dictate that we take this stand seriously. to do so, we must not deny the element of free choice involved in our own [and azande] decisions. however comforting that might be– how nice to think that we could not rationally have concluded differently– it would still be intellectual bad faith. (van fraassen 1989, 179-180) however, equally clearly, this respect for the azande and their epistemic agency also requires that we are willing to “accuse this [witchcraft-oracle belief complex] of being mistaken or wrong but not of being irrational” (van fraassen 1989, 179). this is simply entailed by taking the azande seriously as having avowed their belief and made a commitment. notice that this is not the “reasoning that so often supports relativism” (van fraassen 1989, 179). as it were, ’anything goes!’ to begin with, but taking belief avows seriously means actively assessing, criticizing, etc., them (cf. van fraassen 2002, 31-63, for why this is a hallmark of the empirical stance). crucially, where the conversation goes from there, if and how an azande can be converted or convert us, is unsurprisingly unpredictable. however, and this is the point, such dialogical exchanges concerning hardened beliefs are certainly rational in the english sense.7 moreover, relativism miscasts this precisely because it misreads the azande belief as an odd ‘expression of culture’ that refuses to take it seriously. hence, under this reading, wittgenstein’s turn to persuasion is not an admission that, e.g., physics is in no better (or worse) shape than oracles. rather it stems from both his refusal to rely on a prussian account of reason and his insistence on holding the azande (and ourselves) accountable for our commitments as epistemic subjects. moreover, wittgenstein’s use of emotionally charged words like “combat”, “persuade”, and the allusion to missionaries reflect a realization that, during such exchanges, attempts to bracket out emotions is both not to take this situation seriously enough (a lot rides, for the azande, or us, on their or our (dis)belief in witchcraft oracles) and deprives all parties involved in a critically important feature of our actual ways with beliefs. turning to how wittgenstein can help van fraassen, recall that one key lacuna in van fraassen’s account of emotions and their epistemic role is how, precisely, they can trigger a transformation of the credence we assign to revolutionary beliefs. though this is a complex problem, i believe that wittgenstein provides one factor that helps begin to solve it. to begin, the aspect of the problem i focus on is what differentiates idle emotions, from an epistemic perspective, from ones that can trigger a reassessment and a reassignment of credence. and one insight that can be drawn from wittgenstein is that triggering emotions interdepend not only with absurd revolutionary beliefs but also new or different practices. for example, returning to the above quote, wittgenstein asks us to “think of what happens when missionaries convert natives” (wittgenstein 1969, 612). taking up this invitation, it is telling that st. francis famously remarked that missionaries should “preach the gospel [be it of a new religion or new research program] when necessary use 7 two further points should be made. first, “respect” and “taking seriously” seem to me to inexorably depend on the epistemic context in such a way that we, the people with the guns, must always keep in mind certain asymmetries vis-à-vis the azande that may engender epistemic (and worse) injustices (cf. fricker 2007, passim). second, perhaps a careful and critical dialogue will show that azande oracles and physics are orthogonal in the same sort of way that first-order predicate calculus and poetry are. this would be a wonderful conclusion. but it must be the result of a discussion, not an a priori stipulation. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 15 words”. in other words, one critical feature of conversion is that a different set of practices enter the scene. in turn, this insistence on practice brings into view three critically important factors that partly account for how emotions can trigger revolutionary belief adoption. first, a focus on practice helps account for why there is an emotional reaction in the first place. in effect, it is likely that astronomers do not fall into despair when a new theory of astrology is proposed. and this is partly because such a new theory does not affect their practices in the slightest. in contrast, revolutionary beliefs and theories interdepend with practices so that one ramifies into the other and vice versa. given this, part of why the emotional reaction occurs is that the pre-revolutionary has an internal tension. she notes that the revolutionaries claim to believe absurd things. however, she also notes that they are using equipment, running experiments, building models etc., in new or different ways (cf. kuhn 2010, 111-134). and this intersection between belief and practice does, in fact, begin to put pressure on her own commitments. perhaps there is more to heaven and earth than in her current research program? second, following from this, it accounts for why emotions can only act as triggers against the backdrop of a new research program. in effect, the emotional reaction can only do epistemic work when a new set of practices underwrite and are being underwritten by the revolutionary belief. though cognitively speaking from a pre-revolutionary viewpoint, these beliefs are absurd, they are related to novel practices, from a pre-revolutionary perspective. and, again, it is this strange conjunction of ‘mad’ beliefs and new practices that begins to enable emotions to play an epistemic role. finally, and most critically, third, emotions that can trigger reassessment and reallocation of credence precisely by provoking the pre-revolutionary to “look at the practice of language, then you will see it” (wittgenstein 1969, § 500). in other words, van fraassen’s account of revolutionary belief adoption tends to focus exclusively on the theoretical/semantical level (e.g., van fraassen 2002, 64-152). 8 however, wittgenstein reminds us that “[n]ot only rules [theories, beliefs, etc.] but also examples are needed for establishing a practice” (wittgenstein 1969, § 139). if this is so, then a pre-revolutionary’s emotional trigger might cause her to begin practicing differently, even if this does not yet make total sense to her. for, “in the beginning was the deed” (wittgenstein 1969, § 402). or, as pascal would remind epistemic volunteerists, sometimes one must “[f]ollow the way by which they [converts] began; by acting as if they believed… even this will naturally make you believe” (pascal 1958, 233). in sum, part of what enables emotions to trigger in the epistemically relevant way is that practices are changing and being changed by revolutionary beliefs. and, since it seems likely that science is more than theories (cf. galison 1997, 781-803), an emotion might lead a pre-revolutionary scientist to change her practice, even without fully endorsing the beliefs involved therein (cf. van fraassen 1980, 56-59). by doing so, she would begin to change the credence assigned to the proposed revolutionary belief, as she comes to see how the proposed revolutionary belief practically works. in sum, emotions might lead one to do so as to believe. conclusion this paper has attempted to demonstrate the fecundity of reading certain parts of on certainty together with van fraassen’s “new epistemology”. specifically, it has explored how each enriches the other’s account of revolutionary change and conversion, as (permissively) 8 given his semantic understanding of theories, laid out very early and very clearly in van fraassen 1980, 6-69, this focus is unsurprising. getting emotional: wittgenstein, van fraassen, and making sense of revolution charles djordjevic 16 rational. in this view, the certainty of beliefs depends on decisions, and changing these decisions requires emotions. in closing, if nothing else, i hope that this paper’s argument has helped address and redress one myth. to wit, that later wittgenstein was a thinker so concerned with the ‘ordinary’ that he has little to say to philosophy and history of (especially, the natural) sciences. if nothing else, i hope i have helped confute this myth. acknowledgments i would like to thank participants in the “wittgenstein’s philosophy of psychology” workshop at the university of zurich’s philosophy department for providing invaluable feedback on an early draft of this paper. i would especially like to thank dr. pit genot and mr. pablo hubacherhaerle for their constant encouragement. references christensen, david. 1991. clever bookies and coherent beliefs. the philosophical review vol 100(2): 229-247. carnap, rudolf. 1956. empiricism, semantics, and ontology in meaning and necessity: a study in semantics and modal logic. chicago, il: phoenix books press. cavell, stanley.1979. the claim of reason: wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy. oxford, uk: oxford university press. cavell, stanley.1991. conditions handsome and unhandsome: the constitution of emersonian perfectionism. chicago, il: university of chicago press. chi, michelene. 1992. conceptual change within and across ontological categories: examples from learning and discovery in science in cognitive models of science edited by roland giere and herbert feigl, 129-186. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. derose, keith. 1995. solving the skeptical problem. the philosophical review vol 104 (1): 1-52. disessa, andrea. 1982. unlearning aristotelian physics: a study in knowledge-based learning. cognitive science vol 6: 37-75. dummett, michael. 1978. reckonings: wittgenstein on mathematics. encounter vol. l (3): 6368. evans-prichard, edward. 1976. witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the azande. oxford, uk: clarendon press. feyerabend, paul. 1970. consolation for the specialists in criticism and the growth of knowledge edited by imre lakatos and alan musgrave, 197-230. london: cambridge university. feyerabend, paul. 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(2002). the empirical stance. new haven, ct: yale press. winch, peter.1964. understanding a primitive society. american philosophical quarterly. vol 1 (4): 307-324. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1969. on certainty. new york, ny: harper torchbooks. wittgenstein, ludwig. 2009. philosophical investigations. oxford, uk: wiley blackwell press. microsoft word martini layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-15 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3593-3217] abstract: the aim of this article is to provide a critical revision of the notion of “reception” of academic works in general and of the histories of the sciences in particular. this will broaden the scope of the notion in a way that can include the new and unexpected receptions of the history of science in latin america. to achieve this, i propose the concept of “figural co-production”, which i understand as a set of situated practices where the available cultural resources are appropriated, and that allows for productive interactions between heterogeneous collectives that aim for the configuration of knowledge. this theoretical proposal enables me to analyze verónica tozzi thompson’s appropriation of the works of steven shapin and martin kusch in her pragmatist approach to the philosophy of history. this appropriation, i contend, can be seen as a case of reception of the shapinian history of science in argentina. keywords: figural co-production; historiography of the sciences in argentina; narrativist philosophy of history; testimony; “marita verón” judiciary case doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction how can we address the reception of the history of science throughout a variety of academic disciplines? how can we rethink how non-academic collectives appropriate the historiographies of science made available by academia? and conversely, how can we rethink the academic appropriations of non-academic cultural resources? to answer these questions, the present article problematizes different understandings of the notion of ‘reception’ of academic works in general and of the history of science in particular. the objective is to present a critical proposal of the notion in such a way that it includes the plural and unexpected receptions of the history of science in latin america. to this end, i propose the 1 maría de los angeles martini is a professor in the department of sociology at the universidad de buenos aires [university of buenos aires]; she is also a professor at the department for the humanities and social sciences at the universidad nacional de moreno [national university of moreno], moreno, argentina. address: universidad de buenos aires – ba santiago del estero 1029, c1075aau, ciudad autónoma de buenos aires, argentina. email: mariadelosangelesmartini@gmail.com figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 concept of “figural co-production”, which i develop by appropriating and bringing together white’s (1999) concept of “figural causation” with jasanoff’s (2004) idioms of co-production. the concept of “figural co-production” will allow me to examine the productive interactions that took place within heterogeneous collectives in the configuration of knowledge. drawing from this analysis, i present the work of the argentinian philosopher tozzi thompson (2012) and her appropriation of the work of shapin and kusch as an illustration of the unexpected reception of the shapinian history of science. tozzi thompson examines the testimonies of survivor witnesses of dictatorial violence by understanding them as performative acts in the present. thus, the production and circulation of testimonies are knowledge-constitutive. besides the richness present in her disciplinary appropriation of different disciplines, tozzi thompson’s article deserves special attention because it allows me to present a reception case outside academia: the court case of maría de los ángeles verón, better known as “marita verón’s case”. verón’s disappearance on 3 april of 2002 in the province of tucuman (argentina) was reported as kidnap and as a case of sexual exploitation by a women’s trafficking organization. at the beginning of the 21st century, the search for marita, which was led by her mother susana trimarco, became a flagship of the struggles against gender violence and sexual exploitation in argentina. ten years after her disappearance, an oral trial took place in room ii of the penal chamber in tucuman. there, the organization accused of kidnap was acquitted on the grounds that the testimonies provided by the testifying victims of sexual exploitation were unreliable. nevertheless, the supreme court of justice of tucumán (2013) later overturned the ruling and condemned the accused. claudia sbdar, judge of the supreme court, actually cited tozzi thompson’s article in order to support her decision to validate the victims’ testimonies. history and theory, the academic journal where the article had been originally published, highlighted this fact in their social networks, where they asked: “have you ever wondered whether work in theory of history or the journal itself has any impact on the ‘real world?’”. throughout the present work, i emphasize the productive relationship between the philosophy of history, the history of science, and the idioms of co-production of science and technology studies. this relation facilitates the understanding of the interweaving of appropriations or “expropriations” that configure the porous borders between different collectives both within and outside academia. figural co-production and appropriations writing a history of the receptions of the history of science in latin america commits us to revise the reception relation. this revision involves a set of philosophical questions that, far from leading to the mere development of the affinities, similitudes, and redefinitions of a historiographic corpus, enables us to examine the epistemological, ethical, and political commitments underlying both our selection of “antecessors”—which includes those deserving our affiliation as well as certain “antecedent” productions—and their incorporation to our traditions. such commitments can be found in the recognition or the rejection of those affiliations that the histories of receptions carry forth; in the nomination of a canon for the history of science, to which we recur when attempting to identify the receptions; or in drawing the limits within which we accept the relation of reception (must the histories of the receptions be kept inside the margins of the history of science? or can be extended to other disciplines and even to non-academic fields?). the relation of reception is a specifically historical bond, and as such, we must avoid repeating two unfruitful considerations in order to gain a deeper insight into this relation: either examining it as part of a causal-deterministic relation or examining it as the predictable realization that, built from teleological grounds, develops previous potentials. in both cases, figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 the established nexus is thought to have an orientation that moves from the past to the present. thus, the mechanicist causal relation and the genetic relation invisibilize the situated practices in which the available cultural resources are used in new forms that respond to the problems posed by the present (white 1999). i propose to clarify our understanding of the practices of reception through narrativism, which i understand, with tozzi thompson (2021), as a program of philosophical and theoretical research into history for the discipline, for life and the public sphere. i consider that the notion of “figural causation” and the “figure-fulfillment” model, resignified by hayden white (1999) from the work of erich auerbach (2003), allows us to provide a fruitful understanding of, first, the way in which the relations among historical events are established in the plots of historical representations and, second, of the genealogical relations that may constitute a tradition. according to the figure-fulfillment model, the links between anterior and posterior phenomena are established retrospectively and are presented through a double articulation: “the later terms in a series of presentations (darstellungen) have an explanatory function visà-vis the earlier ones: the later terms complete, consummate, or otherwise explicate the earlier ones (…) [t]he earlier term explains the later one insofar as its serves as a necessary precondition of the latter” (white 1999, 94). the whitean interpretation claims that we are in the presence of a specifically historical mode of causation, “figural causation”, according to which a historical event “remains open to retrospective appropriation by any later group that may choose it as the legitimating prototype of its own project of self-making and hence an element of its genealogy” (white 1999, 96). the figural character of this causal relation does not risk the facticity of the previous events but does question their configuration qua antecedents. the events do not change; what changes is the relationship that agents of the later time retrospectively establish with those events (white 1999). at the same time, as white notes (1999), the model is employed by auerbach to provide a diachronic plot of the history of western literature. a representative literary text can be both the consummation of a previous text and the potential prefiguration of some later text within a tradition: “in the way that a premise of a joke fulfilled in its punch line, or the conflicts in an opening scene of a play is fulfilled in its ending. the later figure fulfills the earlier by repeating the elements thereof, but with a difference” (white 1999, 91). if we extrapolate this analysis to the reception of historical works in general—and the history of sciences in particular—we can consider that the successive connections result from retrospective acts of appropriation, or better said, of expropriation of previous works which are then configured in its antecedents. these acts of expropriation witness what is new and original in the present, and thus go beyond merely signaling continuity with the past. inasmuch as the affiliations and the constitution of a historiographic genealogy of science are established through the historians’ own decisions, who chose “to regard themselves and their cultural endowment as if they had actually descended from earlier prototype” (white 1999, 89), their historical productions are performative acts that not only intervene in the present but that are projected toward the future—presenting themselves as promises that can be followed in the ways of configuring science and its history. i want to analyze the receptions one step further and explore this phenomenon concerning the lives of individuals, collectives, and communities. do we appropriate academic productions in our everyday lives? do we share and occasionally challenge academia’s epistemological, ethical, and political commitments? can the notion of a “figural causation” account for the appropriations of historiographical productions that take place in our daily lives? white (2014) focuses on the appropriations of the past made from everyday life. to this purpose, he distinguishes between a historical and a practical past, a distinction that he takes from oakeshott (1983). however, rather than dwelling in the analysis of the receptions figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 that take place within everyday life, he uses this distinction to show what type of commitments to the past are established by historiography and by the non-historiographic realizations, as well as their usefulness in relation to people’s daily actions. the historical past constructed by academic historiography is, he writes, “a highly selective version of the past understood as the totality of all the events and entities that once existed but no longer exist and most of which have left no evidence of their existence” (white 2014, xiii). this past, white affirms (2014), is just an esoteric product that lacks the resources to fulfill the everyday needs of a situated activity or respond to public interest problems. while academic history can, in the last instance, account for what other people did in other times, places, and circumstances, it is not possible to infer what is needed in order to respond to existing problems. thus, the explicit recognition from the academic historians that their study of the past is carried forth in their own terms seems to prevent historiographical realizations from becoming appropriated by individual agents in their everyday lives. in contrast, the practical past—that is, “the past that people as individuals or members of groups draw upon in order to help them make assessments and make decisions in ordinary everyday life as well as in extreme situations” (white 2014, xiii)—is a space of experience for action, opened up by literature, as well as by a plurality of critical-theoretical perspectives that confront the way the past is represented within academia. nevertheless, even if the notion of “historical past” allows for the examination of receptions and interactions, it overemphasizes the portrayal of academic historiography as an impotent discipline vis-à-vis the situated public action. the realizations of professional historiography, confined to an esoteric sphere, are unable to intervene in practical and political matters. in white’s account, professional history does not appear as a cultural resource available for individual or collective action. still, the figure-fulfillment model does not a priori exclude the constitution of a link between academic historiography and nonacademic discourses that emanate from the lifeworld, nor does it limit the former’s possible intervention in public controversies or its cooperation in situations that require knowledge of the past. given that my objective is to address the notion of “appropriation”, understood as a movement that relates to heterogeneous collectives—and not only to those collectives belonging to academic disciplines—i propose to bring together the concept of “figural causation” with the focus on the co-production of scientific knowledge as developed by jasanoff (2004). the key aspect behind the idioms of co-production is the claim that “the ways in which we know and represent the world (both nature and society) are inseparable from the ways in which we chose to live in it” (jasanoff 2004, 2). in this sense, the emergence, stabilization, and changes in our knowledge of the world, the world itself, and people’s forms of life within it are mutually constitutive. the process of co-production always operates “against the backdrop of an extant order, in which people already ‘know’ in pragmatic terms what counts as nature or science and what as society or culture” (jasanoff 2004, 19). this is why the boundary works never reach definitive stability. on the contrary, the limits are subject to conflicts and disputes regarding the scope of those domains, and are submitted to processes that change them, remodeling (sometimes subtly and provisionally, while other times drastically) the ways in which the world is organized. in what way do the different social agents use the available cultural resources? how are those resources articulated throughout the agents’ formal and informal practices? who contests their uses? how are these resources reevaluated, and in what way do the appropriations they are subject to challenge the established delimitations? these are questions that expose the profoundly political sense of scientific co-production, as well as the problems that it brings with it. practices of making-identities, making-discourses, and making-institutions are at stake in the public arenas, and they are enabled not only by mismatches and controversies but also by the collective production of knowledge and the ways in which people choose to lead their lives. figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 i propose to use the notion of “figural co-production” in order to account for the set of situated practices, carried forth by a heterogeneous collective, of cultural resources expropriation as well as knowledge, natural order and social order co-production. in this way, the practices of reception—that is, the appropriations and the configurations of a genealogy—can be extended beyond the disciplinary limits, and therefore produce links between heterogeneous collectives. in the specific case of the reception of the history of science in latin america, the notion of “figural co-production” warns us about the variety of spaces in which the historiography of science has been appropriated, and about the way the latter has navigated across borders that are in constant motion. it also highlights the local character of the appropriations and of the novelties that result from its situated uses; the ways in which the scientific understanding of the past is related to contemporary issues; and, finally, the figural character of the receptions—which are taken as promises that, in white’s words, move progressively “toward a goal that is never ultimately realizable nor even fully specifiable” (white 1999, 88). in what follows, my aim is to examine the bonds within an unexpected genealogy. its unpredictability lies in how it brings together appropriations that elude the usual disciplinary canons at play. in general terms, the history of science has established links with the philosophy of science and the studies of science and technology. even when these appropriations are sometimes cut across by conflicts, the meta-scientific disciplines seem to be the adequate sites to explore the genealogies constructed in relation to the history of science. however, few studies connect the philosophy of history, historical theory, and social epistemology with the history of science, as is the case in the appropriations before us. my interest in these types of unexpected appropriations lies in the way they allow us to conceive of the possibility to expand the disciplinary canons. this is particularly relevant when it comes to highlighting problems, providing new answers, and opening up the playing field to new and creative analytical interactions within the historiographic studies of science. embodied science: the emergence of an unexpected genealogy the spaces and the embodied nature of scientific knowledge constitute a figure that is portrayed throughout shapin’s work as a promise that needs fulfilled (1988, 1994, 1998; shapin and shaffer 1985; ophir and shapin 1991; shapin and lawrence 1998). as shapin puts it: “no space, no science; no bodies, no science” (shapin 1995, 258). in leviathan and air-pump (shapin and shaffer 1985), a metonymy of place grounds new experimental practices: “the experimental philosophy is founded in groups whose primary index is spatial locality. groups are defined by scenes as sites, and agents are set there in laboratories (…). to know means to be in a place” (clark 1994, 41-42). the connections between the constitution of knowledge and the spatial distribution of the participants or the access to spaces of knowledge—who is allowed access and how is this related to the value of experimental knowledge? —exhibit the ways in which “[t]he public display of the moral basis of experimental practices depended upon the form of social relations obtaining within these sites as much as it did upon who was allowed within” (shapin 1988, 374). experimental philosophy built a space where access to the facts was made possible, and its moral certainty was expressed. the facts, “foundational item [s] of experimental knowledge, and of what counted as properly grounded knowledge generally, [were] an artifact of communication and whatever social forms were deemed necessary to sustain and enhance communication” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 25). the laboratory was marked by the construction of the facts, and that demanded the multiplication of witnesses. the testimony was the device that was to secure the presence of a true state of affairs in nature. figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 experimental philosophers had the urgency to establish what constituted reliable scientific knowledge, and, consequently, to model a truth-teller and to regulate their testimony. therefore, the laboratory, as a public space, had to be configured simultaneously as a physical and a social-moral space. however, the “public” dimension turned out to be problematic: the presence of witnesses was crucial, and still, the decision of whom to trust was far from easy to take. who could be that trustworthy voice that would recount the truth? the nascent laboratory and the identity of the experimental philosopher were jointly modeled according to the resources made available by a “gentlemanly” culture. even when the laboratory initially occupied a great variety of places—pharmacies, cafes, gentlemen’s private residences, laboratory tool-shops—it was still configured in accordance with the physical site where, most times, the social relations of experimental life took place: the public rooms of the gentlemen’s private residences (shapin 1988). in turn, given that the legitimation of the experimental practice depended upon the configuration of the experimental philosopher’s identity, the moral virtues of the philosopher had to lead to truthfulness and trust in his testimonies. the cultural practices of the 17th century in england attributed to the gentlemen the virtues of integrity and independence: a gentleman was obliged by a code of honor to be truth-teller, and never to lie to another gentleman. therefore, the transference of those virtues to the identity of the experimental philosopher secured the link between the moral and epistemic orders, and, with this, the trustworthiness of the experimental witnesses (shapin 1994). parting from those configurations, the experimental philosophers came to assert the existence of a causal relationship between the polity structure of the scientific community and the authenticity of the produced knowledge. the polity organization of the community, according to this, was composed of free men that transmitted, accurately, whatever they had witnessed, and whatever they sincerely believed. whoever pretended to interfere with this way of life was interfering with the capacity of knowledge to reflect reality (shapin and schaffer 1985). the community of experimental philosophers acted as an ideal and stable society that could help with political and ecclesiastical standardization. even when claiming to be neutral vis-à-vis any controversy surrounding the state or religion, this claim was nothing but a strategy intended to make sure that the polity organization of the experimental community could be conceived of as a model to follow for general social matters. in this way, the metonym “no space, no science; no bodies, no science” unfolds when drawing the boundaries of experimental knowledge. such boundaries simultaneously configure the facts, the testimonies, the identity of truth-tellers, the experimental space, the polity organization of the community of experimental witnesses, and, finally, the social and political model that is proposed as a solution for the crises unfolding in england during the period of the restoration. the performativity of testimony. honoring the testimony martin kusch (2002; 2009) goes beyond the meta-scientific realm, and appropriates the works of shapin (1994) and of shapin and shaffer (1985) to develop a communitarian epistemology: “the starting point of this book was the attempt to translate some of their central insights [barry barnes, david bloor, harry collins, and steven shapin] into the language of epistemology, and to work through the tensions that result from such translation,” he writes. “however, this book does not aim for a faithful translation” (kusch 2002, 4). kusch’s appropriations, as he points out, are certainly not translations, but rather attempts to fulfill the figures proposed by the sociology of scientific knowledge, which are now extended to the forms of common knowledge. these appropriations unfold in the gap between individualistic and communitarian epistemologies. for the former, knowledge is fundamentally a property of the individual, and figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 only acquires its social dimension thanks to interpersonal transmission. conversely, kusch affirms (2002), the term “knowledge” as well as its cognates (“know”, “knower”) signal social status, and as such, they only exist to the extent that there are communities that construct, impose, or confer them. in this sense, the existence of knowledge is dependent on the existence of communities. hence why, for kusch, knowledge is social not only because it is conferred social status, but also because it is attributed to groups and not to individuals. yet, despite the differences, there is a common denominator in all the different epistemological perspectives, a space all must transit when aiming to address the social dimensions of knowledge: the testimony. kusch considers that rewriting a communitarian epistemology requires a commitment with the revision of the testimony, and to draw it apart from its association with the legal context. within this context, the original meaning of “testimony” as a knowledgetransmitting mechanism underpins an individualistic epistemology, as well as the refusal to recognize the testimony as knowledge-constitutive. in his rewriting, kusch also explicitly acknowledges the debts he has to the sociology of scientific knowledge. kusch presents the testimony, a synecdoche of knowledge, as the fulfillment of the shapinian history and of the theory of social institutions forwarded by the sociology of scientific knowledge. in so doing, kusch performs a movement that starts with the figure “to know means to be in a place” and then presents the performative testimony as a generative source of knowledge, one whose characteristics provide meaning to the whole, i.e. to knowledge –“testimony is almost always generative of knowledge: it constitutes epistemic communities and epistemic agents, social statuses and institutions, taxonomies (including taxonomies of the natural world), and the category of knowledge itself” (kusch 2002, 12). in the first place, the development of the figure of a performative-generative testimony points toward barry barnes’ (1988; 1995) and david bloor’s (1996; 1997) analyses of social institutions. in bloor’s words (1997), the social institutions can be treated like giant performative utterances produced by social collectives. every social institution refers to something created collectively through self-referential practices. to be a member of a group is a necessary and sufficient condition to be a member of that group. what we know when we know that someone belongs to a group is not a property inherent to the person, but is rather something about the knowledge that others have about that member of the group and of the practices performed in relation to such a group. therefore, knowledge as social status is constituted by the widely distributed communal performative: knowledge is a social referent created by references to it; and these references occur in testimony—as well as in other forms of talk. such talk includes claiming that something is knowledge, challenging knowledge, testifying to knowledge, questioning knowledge” (kusch 2004, 71). every direct and indirect reference to knowledge is a performative act that creates knowledge as a status. what is more, any social status and any social institution is a product of a performative testimony. in the second place, this construal of the testimony brings with it an epistemic-moral dimension. kusch (2009) quotes: knowledge is a collective good. in securing our knowledge we rely upon others, and we cannot dispense with that reliance. that means that the relations in which we have and hold our knowledge have a moral character (…) [t]he fabric of our social relations is made of the knowledge – not just knowledge of other people, but also knowledge of what the world is like – and, similarly (…) our knowledge of what the world is like draws on knowledge about others people – what they are like as sources of testimony, whether and in what circumstances they may be trusted. (shapin 1994, xxv-xxvi) figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 the strict separation between epistemic and non-epistemic values is thus blurred when examining knowledge as a collective good, and in the light of shapin and schaffer’s (1985) dictum: the solution to a problem of the order of knowledge is at the same time a solution to a problem of the social order, and vice versa. knowledge is produced in a moral field and moves with its assessment over the virtues and characteristics of people. the question then becomes: who can we trust? in principle, kusch (2009) proposes the virtues of accuracy and sincerity as nonnegotiable values necessary to maintain trust in others’ reports. now, if, as kusch considers, those values are a part of a socially shared network, and are only meaningful in relation to other values, then taking into account only accuracy and sincerity limits our comprehension of the testimony qua social institution. the attributions of knowledge, kusch holds following barnes (1995), “play a key role in the collective action that constitutes the institution of testimony. they do so by honouring the informants (…)” (kusch 2009, 79). these attributions constitute performative acts through which we praise the witnesses for contributing to the community’s wellbeing. kusch points to shapin’s (1994) analysis in order to revise the link between trustworthiness and freedom. if the institution of the testimony is a collective good, such that attributing knowledge is attributing honor, freedom, and social power, then questions arise regarding who is in a position to make their affirmations count as legitimate knowledge. these questions not only point toward the witnesses and their identities, but also evidence the witnesses’ exclusions. in england, during the 17th century, the ideals of integrity and independence of the gentleman—which were linked to truthfulness—allowed connecting the unreliable truthfulness of others with their constrained circumstances (their social roles made them dependent on other people, or their actions responded to foreign orders) (shapin 1994). nevertheless, as we have seen, the attributions of knowledge honor the good informants for their contribution to the existence and flourishing of a community, and therefore, not conceding these is a way to censor and dishonor. more so, the practice of dishonoring makes someone appear as incapable of participation in the constitution of a collective good, and as unable to form part of a group. in other words, to negate the status of the knower has the function of expelling that person from the community (kusch 2009). building from this analysis, kusch claims: “it would be superficial to think that gentlemen excluded women, domestics, italians, and so on, from the category of knowledgemakers on the grounds that these latter groups were constrained in their circumstances and hence not free” (kusch 2009, 87). essentially, this interpretation corresponds to a reductionist and foundationalist vision, insofar as it considers that the testimonies express perceptions or experiences of submission and dependency. according to kusch, the relation between knowledge and freedom must be understood in light of performative-generative practices of testimony. in the case of the society of the 17th century in england, to be a gentleman was a key placeholder for epistemic reliability. the economic and social independence made the gentleman a free person, free even of any obligations that could lead him to deceit. the performative practices of the gentlemen, in which they negated the ascription of knowledge and honor to women, servants, to the poor, the miserable, among other marginalized groups, guaranteed the expulsion of all of those groups from the institution of testimony. kusch is conscious of how unanticipated are his claims: i emphasize it here in order to downplay the distance that exists—in the mind of many epistemologists—between the sociology of knowledge and the philosophical study of knowledge. (…) any project that runs counter to widely held intuitions and the mainstream of the discipline is bound to appear difficult and demanding. this study, i fear, is no exception to this rule. (kusch 2002, 4-5) figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 shapin’s book (1994), and his works with shaffer (1985), kusch affirms (2009), do not help us solve problems formulated by tradition, but they do help us to understand the reasons why we hold on to our present intuitions regarding the relationship between freedom and testimony, and why the testimony lies in the center of our reflections on knowledge. additionally, kusch makes explicit some of his epistemological, ethical, and political commitments. according to him, the objective of communitarian epistemology is to comprehend rather than to change an epistemic community. nevertheless, he sustains that “epistemology and politics are more closely connected than tradition would have it. to understand knowledge is to understand epistemic communities; and to understand epistemic communities is to understand their social and political structures” (kusch 2004, 2). survivor witnesses and the construction of the recent past the examination of the successive unexpected appropriations of some of shapin’s works reaches a crucial turning point. the expropriation that concerns us in this section takes place in the disciplinary field of narrativist philosophy of history, and is mediated by kusch’s communitarian epistemology. this expropriation is the one performed by the argentinian philosopher verónica tozzi thompson, with her publication of “the epistemic and moral role of testimony” (2012). there, she sums up her approach: “my specific, pragmatist approach combines the recent accounts of hayden white about ‘witness literature’ with the ‘generative-performative’ consideration of testimony by martin kusch. the purpose is to appreciate, in a non-foundationalist way, the epistemic and moral role of testimony in the constitution of the representation of the recent past” (tozzi 2012, 1). tozzi thompson’s work shows the exploration and appropriation of different cultural resources. it also avoids falling into the usual disciplinary canons of philosophy through different creative strategies and reproducing the conventional philosophical receptions that have taken place in argentina. her appropriations of shapin’s theses on the sociology of scientific knowledge and the history of science are integrated with other diverse resources: the new philosophy of history, the pragmatist philosophy of john dewey and george mead, the analytic philosophy of science and language, social epistemology, a hermeneutic perspective. furthermore, from her position as director of the collection historia y teoría (prometeo editorial), tozzi thompson has pushed the limits of philosophical studies and of the theory of history by, for example, incorporating translations into spanish of works by hayden white, dominick lacapra, david carr, to name a few, as well as two important works by shapin, never pure (published as nunca pura in 2014) y a social history of truth (published as una historia social de la verdad in 2016). tozzi thompson (2012) presents a new metaphorical figure of testimony, focalized in the voices of witnesses, survivors of the genocidal violence of a terror state: “the testimony functions in fact as the ‘constitution’ of that past itself” (tozzi 2012, 5). the recovery of testimonies in the limit events of recent history and the problematization of the epistemic privilege—that is, the privileged access to past events possessed by the survivor witnesses of dictatorial violence—by the philosophy and theory of history is the starting point from which an epistemology of the testimony can unfold. this epistemology of the testimony thus positions itself in the center of what is known as the “new philosophy of history”. the new philosophy of history, tozzi thompson affirms, has been highly critical of the concept of “historical representation” as a truthful and impartial portrayal of past events. according to her, a realistic representation of the past is something to be produced, not something to be found or discovered in the evidential record. there is, thus, no single way to figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 realistically represent reality. hence why, tozzi thompson asserts, historical controversies are not only about the past but about what constitutes a more adequate representation of it in epistemic and ethical terms (tozzi thompson 2021). the differences between historians lead us to the recognition that it is they who have to make decisions regarding which explanation fits best, what types of emplotment and what style of presentation are better, and what ideological commitments they hold onto in relation to the nature of historical events. however, tozzi thompson warns, the new philosophy of history does not affirm that evidence is irrelevant for historical research. the victimization events on a massive scale during the past century and the confluence of their occurrence and the registers through new electronic devices—which produced great amounts of information and the capacity to manipulate it, in what hayden white interprets as a “modernist event’’—forced a revision, not only of the nature of historical events, but also of the role of testimony of survivors or victims of the recent past. how, tozzi thompson asks, “should the attestation of any witness survivor or victim be used? should it be used in the classic documentary function, to prove the occurrence of the events? or should it function as a legitimate way for the survivors or victims to dispute the appropriation of their past?” (tozzi 2012, 5). revising the institution of testimony, as tozzi thompson does, goes beyond foundationalism and reductionism, which see testimony as a mere mechanism of transmission of knowledge and epistemic privilege of experience of the survivors as its justification. on the contrary, she points out that “[a]lthough the experience of ‘having been there’ or ‘having suffered in their own flesh’ can motivate their desire to attest to what they saw and endured, their attestation is not a reflex to their experience” (tozzi 2012, 7). in this way, the examination of the testimony of the survivors of concentration camps that tozzi thompson carries forth fulfills kusch’s communitarian epistemology. according to it, the testimonies are an original part of the production of knowledge. we accept the testimonies because of the meanings they constitute in and through their divulgation and in the responses that these receive from others. the past experience of suffering is not what grants authority to the testimony. therefore, tozzi thompson concludes, “[w]hen presented with the witness testimony of experience of the concentration camp or other places of horror, we are dealing not with a direct representation of a naked experience but with the cultural resources that constitute the politics of identity of the whole society” (tozzi 2012, 17). figural co-production in the argentinian judicial system maría de los ángeles verón is a young woman from tucuman that disappeared in 2002 after leaving her home to attend a medical appointment. marita verón never returned. her parents, the police investigation, and the prosecutors that intervened in her cause have all sustained that she was victim of kidnap and of human trafficking (which was related to prostitution). such an accusation and the identification of the accused were fully based in proofs provided by witnesses. the cause reached the stage where an oral trial was to take place in 2012. the sentence, dictated by the tribunal of room ii of the penal chamber of tucuman, in argentina, took place on 11 december of that year. the decision was to absolve the thirteen defendants. the judges eduardo romero lascano, emilio herrera molina and alberto piedrabuena (who was the president of the chamber) sustained in their sentence that the testimonies provided by the victims of sex trafficking demonstrated the existence of a sex trafficking network: the witnesses have been the only relevant evidence brought to trial, that is, the young women that spent time on one of the tree venues of la rioja: el desafío, candy and figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 candilejas. (…) this, because the other proofs presented, the proceedings from domiciliary searches, did not through positive results at all.2 nevertheless, the judges considered that the witnesses’ testimonies were insufficient to prove the existence of the illegitimate deprivation of liberty and the promotion of prostitution exerted upon maría de los ángeles verón: “in every case, the statements by these young women are completely at odds with the other proofs, there is no way to corroborate their testimonies, and these are not even supported by the other testimonies, with which they clash”.3 even when more than a hundred witnesses transited the audience chamber, the tribunal only recognized the statements of one witness, fátima mansilla, which they considered “the only proof by a witness that has been brought to the debate that has an incriminatory strength”.4 mansilla declared that she had been kidnapped and sexually exploited when she was sixteen years of age by daniela milhein and her husband alejandro gonzález, two of the accused in verón’s case. she declared to have known and spoken to marita verón in the house of the married couple, where the latter was said to be deprived of her liberty. nevertheless, the judges considered that there were obstacles that prevented them from considering the testimony as truthful. on the one hand, the judges held that when comparing fátima’s declarations with those of the other witnesses some contradictions and imprecisions came to the fore. on the other hand, fátima’s credibility was diminished, according to the tribunal, because she was a denouncer and a complainant of milhein and gonzález in the case of her own kidnap and sexual exploitation. even while the judges, based on psychological skills, did not consider her to be lying, they still argued: without having to lie, one can still be misrepresenting the truth. the lack of truth is not originated in a psychological or pathological component (…) but in the interest to benefit oneself or to hurt someone else. in this particular case, fátima mansilla had no lack of reasons, if she had denounced being a victim of kidnap, mistreatment, and harassment of different kinds. an elementary consequence of this is the loss of objectivity and veracity on the part of the witness.5 these fragments, extracted from the sentence of the penal chamber of tucumán, exhibit the currency of the belief in a connection between freedom and the value of a testimony, a belief inherited from the gentlemanly culture. a foundationalist argument, as the one employed by the tribunal, derives the value of the testimony from the experience of the witness. it is expected that the witness transmits their knowledge based on their perceptions and memory. the testimony is the base from which the past is represented; it allows for the recovery of the past—of what really happened. in this sense, the objectivity and veracity of a testimony presuppose a precise correspondence between the facts and the mind’s contents. however, for the tribunal, just as in the english 17th century, the condition of dependency of women makes them unable to be truth-teller: 2 causa: iñigo david gustavo, andrada domingo pascual and others s/ illegitimate deprivation of liberty and corruption (maría de los ángeles verón). file n°23554/200226/10/2012, p. 573. 3 causa: iñigo david gustavo, andrada domingo pascual and others s/ illegitimate deprivation of liberty and corruption (maría de los ángeles verón). file n°23554/200226/10/2012, p. 574. 4 causa: iñigo david gustavo, andrada domingo pascual and others s/ illegitimate deprivation of liberty and corruption (maría de los ángeles verón). file n°23554/200226/10/2012, p. 531. 5 causa: iñigo david gustavo, andrada domingo pascual and others s/ illegitimate deprivation of liberty and corruption (maría de los ángeles verón). file n°23554/200226/10/2012, p. 531. figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 12 the young women that marched through the tribunal evidenced the devastating effects of lived experience: anguish, post-traumatic stress, profound depression, fears—patent in the medical, psychological and psychiatric histories and reports received by the tribunal. this sickly and perverse relationship between the ruling (the misters and misses) and the ruled generated a psychological dependency. thus, even when some of the women could in fact free themselves, some of them came back, because they had promised to do so, or they did not reveal their situation, thus collaborating in the reproduction of their own oppression.6 yet, in terms of the figure-complement relation of shapin-kusch, we can comprehend how do the practices of dishonoring and of expulsion from a community are at play in this case. the performative act of the testimony is generative of knowledge, something that is achieved through self-referential practices of a collective or a community. as such, the tribunal, through the performative act of denying the young witnesses the attribution of knowledge, prevented knowledge from being configured, and at the same time invalidated any proof against the defendants. the cause reached the supreme court of justice of tucumán, where, in december of 2013, the acquittal was revoked, condemning all of the imputed. when revoking the sentence of the penal chamber, claudia beatriz sbdar—which was at the time a member of the supreme court of justice—explicitly acknowledged the epistemological presuppositions of the tribunal: in the present case, one observes that the declarations of the victims have not been considered to be bearers of truth given that their discourses are vague—a vagueness that is the product of the witnesses’ own condition as victims of sexual exploitation. their contributions are disqualified for not being monolithically coherent as testimonies for the cause, when, actually, the contradictions, the reluctance to declare, the hesitancy, and so forth, are an indelible sign in these types of crimes and their victims, who find themselves in an evident vulnerable situation.7 following this, judge sbdar appropriated some fragments from tozzi thompson’s article (2012), making the philosopher’s words her own. the literal quotes from fragments of the article are unquoted in her text,8 something which accentuated the judge’s ethicalpolitical commitments. in relation to the arguments exposed by the tribunal of the penal chamber, which demanded that the witnesses present the past as it had occurred, sbdar affirms, in tozzi thompson’s voice: when we adopt an epistemic or moral stance on genocide and state-terror events — one based on a victim’s privileged voice—we cannot eliminate three presuppositions that are otherwise widely accepted: (1) the privileged access of the witnesses to the 6 causa: iñigo david gustavo, andrada domingo pascual and others s/ illegitimate deprivation of liberty and corruption (maría de los ángeles verón). file n°23554/200226/10/2012, p. 570. 7 supreme court of justice of tucumán: (17/12/2013) “iñigo david gustavo, andrada domingo pascual, gonzález sofía de fátima, medina myriam cristina, derobertis humberto juan s/ illegitimate deprivation of liberty and corruption”. file: p23554/2002. veredict 1098/2013, p. 167. https://www.cij.gov.ar/nota-12751-caso-marita-ver-n--fallo-de-la-corte-suprema-de-justicia-de-tucumn.html 8 all citations from tozzi’s article (2012) are present in the supreme court of justice of tucumán: (17/12/2013) “iñigo david gustavo, andrada domingo pascual, gonzález sofía de fátima, medina myriam cristina, derobertis humberto juan s/ illegitimate deprivation of liberty and corruption”. file: p23554/2002. veredict 1098/2013, p. 168. figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 13 past events that they witnessed; (2) the homogeneity of the experience of the victims; and (3) the homogeneity of the ways in which that experience is expressed. (tozzi 2012, 3) nevertheless, sbdar warns, the new epistemology of testimony, as put forward by dr. tozzi, still recommends looking at the testimony of witnesses not as a journey to the past but as an action in the present. (…) [the] testimonies are neither secondary sources of knowledge nor are they dependent upon experience and reason. moreover, the productioncirculation of testimonies acts not only in the context of justification but also as legitimately constitutive of knowledge. (tozzi 2012, 3) the judge, therefore, embodies the communitarian epistemology, and with it, its ethical and political commitments: “to adopt this posture implies that the tribunal must abandon the idea that the testimony constitutes a sheer document that remits to the past,” she states, only to come back to tozzi thompson, whose words she once again appropriates: this communal and social approach has three valuable consequences for the subject of the nature and role of witness testimony. first, it frees witness testimony from the idea that it is essentially a transmission without interpretation (and therefore distortion) of a direct experience. second, it calls upon survivors of limit events to participate in the collective job of creating and shaping representations of what has happened. third, by insisting that testifiers play the game of cognitive construction, it directs attention to the linguistic conventions of testifying and to its performative character. that is, it allows us to see the language games in which testimonies take place in ordinary life. (tozzi 2012, 15-16) it is relevant for this analysis to bring together the appropriations done by judge sbdar with the campaign against human trafficking that gained relevance during the first decade of the present century. gender violence and sex trafficking become fundamental issues in the gender agenda of that epoch, which can be defined as post-neoliberal (pecheny 2013). one of the particularities of the campaign against trafficking in argentina was certain activist collectives’ invocation of the political rhetoric and symbols used by human rights organizations in their demand for “memory, truth, and justice” for the crimes committed during the civic-military dictatorship. using the language of human rights allowed us to interpret cases of sex trafficking as disappearances (varela 2018). in line with that available resource, the work of tozzi thompson, which focused on the testimony of the victims of state terrorism, is signaled by sbdar as a figure to be fulfilled through the sentence that grants the attributions of knowledge to the victims of sex trafficking. through the notion of “figural co-production”, we are able to bring together the availability, circulation, and appropriation of heterogeneous resources that, in this case, were part of the configuration of sex trafficking as a public problem. the appeal to tozzi thompson’s work by judge sbdar is not simply a scholarly reference that circumstantially connects an academic production with a legal case—as tends to happen with scientific counseling. we must, rather, understand this appeal, in terms of a figural co-production, as part of a set of complex practices of making-identities, making-discourses and makinginstitutions, which a part of the argentinian community articulates, and thus reconfigures the world, its representations, and the way they decide to inhabit such a world— reconfigurations that are always incomplete and thus open to further change. figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 14 conclusion in this article, i have introduced a broadening of the concept of “reception”, which is understood as a figural co-production, something that allows us to account for the ways in which academic and non-academic productions are articulated and what are their epistemological and ethical-political commitments, as well as the practices of world-making of a certain community. the notion of “figural co-production” enables us to explore the processes of reception of the history of science in latin america, challenging the disciplinary limits, canons, and reified dilemmas. in this way, we can also navigate the creative ways in which theory is appropriated within our communities. likewise, the particular case study addressed constitutes an invitation to consider and to strengthen the productive relations between the narrativist philosophy of history and the historiography of science. if we broaden the scope of our inquiries and orient our sights toward historians of science qua narrators of their own work, then a set of questions emerges: what linguistic resources are available to the different history of the science in order to represent the past realistically? how do the historians of science establish and account for the historical distance that constitutes—in epistemic, aesthetic, ethical, and political terms—a more adequate representation of science’s own past? through our situated inquiries, we will be able to broaden this set of questions. acknowledgments this work was written within the framework of the following projects directed by the author: picydt 2018 unm-r n° 281/19 and ubacyt, programación científica [scientific programming] 2020, 20020190200206ba. department of sociology, universidad de buenos aires [university of buenos aires], buenos aires, argentina; department for the humanities and social sciences, universidad nacional de moreno [national university of moreno], moreno, argentina. references auerbach, erich. 2003. mimesis. the representation of reality in western literature. princeton and oxford: princeton university. barnes, b. 1988. the nature of power. cambridge: polity press. barnes, barry. 1995. the elements of social theory. london: ucl press. bloor, d. 1997. wittgenstein, rules, and institutions. london: routledge. bloor, david. 1996. idealism and the sociology of knowledge. in social studies of science, 26 (4): 839-856. clark, w. 1995 narratology and the history of science. studies in history and philosophy of science part a 26 (1):1-71. jasanoff, sheila. 2004, states of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order. london, routledge. kusch, martin. 2002. knowledge by agreement: the programme of communitarian epistemology. oxford: oxford university press. kusch, martin. 2009. testimony and the value of knowledge. in epistemic value, edited by a. haddock, a. millar, and d. pritchard, oxford: oxford university press, 60-94. oakeshott, michael. 1983. on history and other essays. oxford: blackwell. ophir, adi and steven shapin. 1991. the place of knowledge: a methodological survey, science in context 4(1): 3-21. pecheny, m. (2013). sexual politics and post-neoliberalism in latin america. scholar and feminist online [online]. available at: http://sfonline.barnard.edu/gender-justice-andneoliberal-transformations/sexual-politics-and-post-neoliberalism-in-latin-america [accessed 18 november 2021] figural co-production: unexpected receptions of the history of science maría de los ángeles martini transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 15 shapin, steven and lawrence, christopher (eds.). 1998. science incarnate: historical embodiments of natural knowledge. chicago: university of chicago press. shapin, steven and schaffer, simon. 1985. leviathan and the air-pump: hobbes, boyle, and the experimental life. princeton university press. shapin, steven. 1988. placing the view from nowhere: historical and sociological problems in the location of science. transactions of the institute of british geographers, n.s. xxiii, 5-12. shapin, steven. 1994. a social history of truth. chicago: chicago university press. shapin, steven. 1995. cordelia’s love: credibility and the social studies of science, perspectives on science, iii, 255-275. tozzi thompson, verónica. 2021. narrativism. in the routledge companion to historical theory, edited by chiel van den akker, new york: routledge, 113-128. tozzi, verónica. 2012. the epistemic and moral role of testimony in the constitution of the representation of recent past. history and theory, 51,1-17. varela, cecilia. 2018. sex trafficking as desaparición [disappearance]: vernacularised human rights discourses in the argentine anti-trafficking campaign. in routledge international handbook of sex industry research, edited by susan dewey, isabel crowhurst, chimaraoke izugbara. new york: routledge, 198-210. white, hayden. 1999. figural realism. studies in the mimesis effect. baltimore and london: the johns hopkins university press. white, hayden. 2014. practical past. illinois: northwestern university press. microsoft word oliveira layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-18 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue – wittgenstein and the sciences: history and philosophy of science and science education kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira1 abstract: for dropping the incommensurability idea elaborated at the time of the structure of scientific revolutions, kuhn dismisses the concept of “revolution”. the incommensurability involved the incomparability of theories. in this new environment, the revolution is replaced by conceptual reformulation and the incommensurability becomes occasional. the linguistic turn in kuhn’s thought involves conceptual changes whose aim is to get around the accusation of relativism that the former notion of incommensurability arouses. the most fundamental effect of these conceptual reformulations is the commitment to a traditional conception of semantics. it changes the comprehension of the historical and social nature of the foundations of the changes that scientific knowledge goes through. the comparison between the answer to the problem of paradigm priority attributed by kuhn to wittgenstein and wittgenstein by himself shows that the basis of the normative nature of paradigm commitment is an essentialist concern. in the second half of this paper, i will evaluate kuhn’s manner of getting around the problems of incommensurability in contrast to wittgenstein’s view of philosophy dealing with similar issues in on certainty. this enables one to essay answers to the problems of incommensurability without relativism or any commitment to a traditional conception of semantics. these contrasts show how far kuhn’s new theory of science departs from the wittgensteinian inspiration and abandons the point of view of the structure of scientific revolutions. the development of these two halves makes it possible to indicate reasons to believe that questions concerning the theory and history of science can benefit largely from a grammatical exploration, which gives rise to a theory of science inspired by wittgenstein’s thought, as mauro condé suggests. keywords: kuhn, wittgenstein, incommensurability, paradigm, grammar, certainty. received: 15 march 2021. reviewed: 15 april 2021. accepted: 04 may 2021. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ for bob fernandes, a paradigm. scientific activity can never be a lonesome enterprise. as much as the development of science involves the work of an extraordinary scientist, the results of his genialness can only be evaluated in the light of a community made up of a strong network of commitments that 1 wagner teles de oliveira [orcid: 0000-0002-1806-3785] is a professor in the department of philosophy at the state university of feira de santana. address: avenida transnordestina – feira de santana, ba. 44036900 – brazil. e-mail: wtoliveira@uefs.br kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 2 supports ordinary scientific work. these are conceptual, theoretical, methodological and instrumental commitments that take the form of rules, practices, procedures, operating principles, interactions, behaviors, habits. these commitments are a source of determination of scientific practices insofar as they define the margin of maneuver in which the work of science is developed. whatever may be outside the defined limits may well have been denied the characterization of scientific, which means that the standards to which the knowledge produced is submitted, those built by the scientific community over time, allow the recognition of knowledge as such. therefore, a well-established scientific specialty is equipped with “rules that tell the practitioner of a nature specialty what both the world and his science are like” (kuhn 1970, 42). from kuhn’s point of view, commitments provide the scientist with the security in which he could not concentrate on solving the problems “that these rules and existing knowledge define for him” (kuhn 1970, 42). the rules define the genuinely scientific nature of problems that it is possible to clarify “the nature of normal scientific practice” from them. after all, normal science is defined by what scientists normally do and, as commitments are constitutive of the scientific community, then adherence to them defines belonging to a community while integrating it comprises the practice of science submitted to those same commitments. the community bond depends on the solidity of this network of commitments, which must manifest itself with each new act of the scientist and act as a blind spot in all his procedures. they reflect agreements in which practices are anchored and without which there is no need to talk about the scientific community. the normative nature of this network of commitments has a history that consists of its establishment throughout the practices, being its validity relative to the community to which these same practices belong. as there is no sense in having practices without the possibility of regulating actions and there is no such rule in the absence of standards for correcting actions, having such a network of commitments supposes the existence of a community built around them. the world’s and science nature revealed by the rules determine the scientist’s catch of sight, what his field of vision includes and what could only be outside of it. everything suggests that these are natural consequences of the kuhnian idea of science guided by scientific achievements instituted as models of problems and solutions. according to kuhn, it seems to be inseparable from the science perspective the idea of scientific development as established in a dynamic in which continuities and ruptures take place, normal and revolutionary, as well as the idea that history of science does not consist of a linear path towards the truth. the incommensurability between rival theories takes place as a very natural result of this conception of science. after all, continuity is nothing more than the perpetuation of practices according to models established as normal, whereas the rupture consists in the abandonment of such models, being its most fundamental consequence to stop practicing the science defined by them (kuhn 1970, 34). this way of understanding scientific comprehension seems to assume the rules preponderance over scientific practices as fundamental to science development. after all, the regulation of scientific conduction would be essential to traditions construction without which science would not develop once they comprise the models improvement to which practices are submitted. however, this is not exactly how kuhn believes things are going. for him, the highly determined character of science is not to be confused by science being “entirely determined by rules” (kuhn 1970, 42). it is true that there is a set of rules to which the entire scientific community adheres, but it is not true that this set holds everything that the community has in common, nor that those rules are necessarily explicit. with this, kuhn denies that the rules are the source of coherence of the tradition instituted by normal science. the rules, therefore, can play only a secondary role, because “derive from paradigms, but paradigms can guide research even in the absence of rules” (kuhn 1970, 42). kuhn’s consideration that a paradigm may well preside a scientific community in the absence of rules states more than the fact that paradigms do not need rules. although it is a highly determined activity, normal science does not lack the determination of rules, which is kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 3 not to say that scientific practices can take place without guidance. apparently, the question, for kuhn, is how much practical references can guide the activities of a community giving it the determination that rules could also be able to check. the priority of paradigms over rules, denotes more than a secondary character of rules; it means that the determination of scientific practices can dispense with rules explanation capable of delimiting the worlds and science nature. so, scientists may well agree on the lasting character of certain scientific achievements and then assume them as guiding their specialty and “sometimes without being aware of it, about the particular abstract characteristics that make those solutions permanent” (kuhn 1970, 44). here, it is not just the absence of a body of rules that enjoys unanimity but the absence of a standard interpretation of the paradigm (see kuhn 1970, 44). both, according to kuhn, would not represent an impediment to the proper fulfillment of the guiding function of the paradigm. after all, nothing prevents normal science from being guided “by the direct inspection of paradigms” (kuhn 1970, 44). the “direct inspection of paradigms”, whatever that means, seems to be the last resort to keep the typical guiding function of paradigm upright. however, it is a favorable field for disagreement on issues that should be a peaceful point due to intrinsic requirement to the same function exercised by the paradigm. the absence of an adequate body of rules paves the way for the commitments relativization that constitute the scientific community. it is not an effective remedy to affirm that the absence of paradigm reduction to rules that enjoy unanimity does not prevent the paradigm from fulfilling its orientation function for such relativization, as it seems to be at stake how to preserve community engagement in tradition on the absence of defining criteria for the same tradition. in other words, criteria are lacking to assess the fit between practices and the paradigm that guides them. paradigms are, therefore, a source of coherence in tradition, but their preservation depends on that high determination that characterizes scientific activity. as there is no agreement on how the paradigm should be interpreted, there also does not seem to be a guarantee of determination, which must manifest itself in a shared understanding of problems and solutions. for this very reason, in this case, the question for kuhn becomes (1) “what restricts the scientist to a particular normal-scientific tradition?” and (2) “what can the phrase ‘direct inspection of paradigms’ means?” (kuhn 1996, 44). the connection between kuhn’s history of science and wittgenstein’s philosophy is well known, and it is used to solve problems that the latter does not prove capable of facing alone. in this case, for example, as we know, kuhn believes that wittgenstein, “although in a very different context”, presented “partial answers to questions”. everything happens as if kuhn left the problem, he just identified to wittgenstein, whose formulation is summarized in (1) and (2) and which fate of the main concept of his work seems to depend. it is not an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most fundamental philosophical problems formulated by kuhn in the structure of scientific revolutions. however, if this is the case, it is as if kuhn gave wittgenstein’s philosophy the answer to the main question of his work. kuhn presents the formulation of wittgenstein’s question which, according to him, is the starting point for wittgenstein’s exploration of the problem. as is natural, his formulation must have its own diction, which allows us to think that he does not leave the main problem of his work simply in the care of wittgenstein. kuhn’s thought linguistic turn about science seems to leave behind fundamental aspects of scientific rationality comprehension as a historical and social construction that could be understood as the main legacy of his work. the idea of incommensurability is undoubtedly an important indication of the fundamental character of what is left behind. the abandonment of this idea has the purpose of saving scientific rationality from relativism and dogmatism in which its effects immerse science. however, kuhn’s moderate version of incommensurability, as it were, is accompanied by a kind of essentialist commitment – this is my hypothesis. everything suggests that there would be no trace of essentialism in the structure of scientific revolutions. from the confrontation between what is typical of kuhn’s kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 4 way of formulating and answering his questions and wittgenstein’s perspective for himself, it must be possible, i believe, to make it clear that kuhn’s way of presenting wittgenstein’s perspective reveals philosophical concerns that are against wittgenstein’s thinking, insofar as they imply some essentialism. this is not to say that kuhn’s new ideas are latent in the structure of scientific revolutions, but, at best, that future essentialism is not entirely foreign to him, although adherence to essentialism represents an undeniably radical upheaval in kuhn’s thinking. i. the task of the historian of science, to some extent, is to make explicit the rules that shape the commitments accepted by the scientific community. for kuhn, the acceptance of the rules is not homogeneous, nor would it need to be. moved by the intention of describing the guiding principles and rules of the community, the historian would elaborate general statements capable of describing the convictions on what scientific practice is based. as a matter of fact, some of these statements are taken for granted. others may well be rejected by a portion of the community which does not recognize them. for this reason, both the task of describing rules and paradigms is unsatisfactory. as a result, it does not seem that the scientific community is not determined by rules. this means that only a typical difficulty in the historian’s work of identifying what the community has in common as materialized in rules in which that same community would submit. the question, therefore, becomes the extent to which “the coherence of the research tradition” can be understood; without that, it is simply not possible to speak in community, in terms of rules. the origin of this difficulty is that it is possible for scientists to disagree on the reasons that support the paradigm to which their practices are submitted without, therefore, deserting the community to which they belong. scientists can agree that a newton, lavoisier, maxwell, or einstein has produced an apparently permanent solution to a group of outstanding problems and still disagree, sometimes without being aware of it, about the particular abstract characteristics that make those solutions permanent. (kuhn 1970, 44) this means that a scientist may well have his practices adhering to a certain paradigm without being able to explain it in terms of rules. and, furthermore, interpretation divergence in relation to which rules are representative of paradigm is not a sufficient obstacle to prevent paradigm from guiding research. at this point, the difficulty acquires even more dramatic airs, as the criteria for defining belonging to the community are at stake. after all, if a group of scientists is engaged in defending a particular interpretation of the paradigm, how to define whether they are in tune with the tradition determined by the paradigm? this difficulty gains a more serious aspect because of the possibility, left by kuhn, that the absence of a unanimous interpretation does not prevent the paradigm of exercising all its strength of determination to think of a community divided between those who share one or another interpretation. it is clear that the situation is different, since it is not a question of confrontation between paradigms, then the dissenting interpretation is not a cause of incommensurability. however, the situation is analogous to the conflict between two divergent traditions, each determined by a paradigm. not having a standardized interpretation is the same as not having a reduction of the paradigm to rules that enjoy unanimity. that is why the difficulty formulated by kuhn is about what “restricts the scientist to a particular normal-scientific tradition” in the absence of “a competent body of rules”. “a competent body of rules”, of course, means “rules to which the paradigm has been reduced and which enjoys unanimity”. the question, in this case, kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 5 seems to cover up the real question. the question is about what gives unity to the community, that unity without which the community is not a community. the path to the solution, paved by kuhn, seems to have no more than the virtue of opening up the problematic and unresolved character of the question since it is based on the distinction between interpretation and direct inspection of the paradigm. kuhn himself recognizes the problematic character of the solution when questioning what “direct inspection of paradigms” means. the starting point for the solution is the notion of “family resemblance” attributed by kuhn to wittgenstein (kuhn 1970, 45). according to kuhn, what we need to know to use terms like “chair”, “leaf” or “game” in an unambiguous way, without provoking discussions, is explained by our way of using language and by the world in which we apply it (kuhn 1970, 45). there would be no set of characteristics applicable to the members of a class and only to them, nor does there need to be one, because, for example, when faced with an unknown activity we appeal to the word “game”, because “what we are seeing bears a close ‘family resemblance’ to a number of the activities that we have previously learned to call by that name” (kuhn 1970, 45). as such, “games, and chairs, and leaves are natural families, each constituted by a network of overlapping and crisscross resemblances” (kuhn 1970, 45). the existence of such a conceptual network, according to kuhn, would be sufficient to guarantee the identification of hitherto unknown objects. the coherence of the research tradition of a given scientific community, from this point of view, is safe in the absence of a body of rules exactly insofar as something similar holds for problems and techniques that take place in that same tradition: what these have in common is not that they satisfy some explicit or even some fully discoverable set of rules and assumptions that gives the tradition its character and its hold upon the scientific mind. instead, they may relate by resemblance and by modeling to one or another part of the scientific corpus which the community in question already recognizes as among its established achievements. scientists work from models acquired through education and through subsequent exposure to the literature often without quite knowing or needing to know what characteristics have given these models the status of community paradigms. (kuhn 1970, 45) what constitutes the scientific community is not a set of rules, but a way of proceeding assimilated from education. in this sense, it is inherent to the scientific activity not to call into question procedures accepted by the community and, therefore, the paradigms work in a tacit way, which explains (1) the difficulty for the historian of science to discover the rules that led specific traditions and can be clarified by considering the (2) nature of science education (kuhn 1970, 46). difficulty (1) would be identical to that difficulty faced by the philosopher when trying to discover “what all games have in common”. scientists (2) do not assimilate laws, theories and concepts abstractly or in isolation from the scientific activity itself. on the contrary, and this is a characteristic feature of scientific education, laws, theories and concepts are assimilated as they are applied. the introduction of scientists to a new theory, in this sense, is done in such a way that application is inseparable from theory. “a new theory is always announced together with applications to some concrete range of natural phenomena; without them, it would not be even a candidate for acceptance” (kuhn 1970, 46). as such, the historian’s frustration in seeking the body of rules defining a specific tradition is explained by the fact that scientific activity does without such a body of rules. however, the question of rules is important for kuhn, not only because it shows that the historian’s frustration would be justified, but above all because the clarification of its origin brings to light the relationship between scientists and the paradigm that guides their practices, making the paradigm priority over visible rules. scientific education, in this case, plays a key role, being decisive in the sedimentation of a tradition. in fact, the nature of kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 6 scientific education, as understood by kuhn, is fundamental to the idea of scientific development as constituted by continuities and ruptures. scientific development depends on the establishment of specific traditions whose construction is made by the scientific work carried out in the light of their models, and this work is responsible for improving these same models to the same extent that it sediments them. the indisputable character of models, concepts and theories thus plays an essential role in scientific development understood in this way. the role played by the paradigms depends on the community’s silence about models, concepts and theories. “normal science can proceed without rules only so long as the relevant scientific community accepts without question the particular problem-solutions already achieved” (kuhn 1970, 47). in effect, scientists become interested in the rules to which the paradigms that conduct their activities could be reduced when these same paradigms are insecure, which would happen in moments of the history of science called by kuhn as “pre-paradigm period”, which are characterized “by frequent and deep debates over legitimate methods, problems, and standards of solution, although these serve rather to define schools than to produce agreement” (kuhn 1970, 47-8). the tacit character of the paradigms is an indication that scientific knowledge is guided by a kind of normative commitment that varies over time, which means that “scientific knowledge is thus relative to the variable normative commitments and changing of real scientific groups” (doppelt 2001, 159). it is true, as doppelt intends, that this conception of scientific knowledge implies that the changes that science historically goes through are incompatible with the positivist idea that it is timeless (doppelt 2001, 160). as a consequence, scientific development is marked by variability in normative commitments. after all, over time, necessarily, the models to which the scientific activity of a community undergoes change. however, the way of understanding adherence to a new network of commitments seems to be what is most unique about kuhn’s thinking about science. if the debate, in preparadigmatic periods, on the legitimacy of methods, problems and solutions serve much more to define schools than to produce agreements, it is because the justification for adhering to a paradigm does not involve the presentation of reasons. scientific schools, therefore, eventually in conflict, would not be in a position to prove for what reasons the paradigm they defend is better, “or even that any reasonable person at the time would be compelled to accept is as the better” (barnes 1982, 55). scientific activity does not require scientists to be able to give reasons that justify what they normally do, nor does it lack it. after all, scientific action moves within the margin of maneuver left by what the community recognizes as a model of work, what it has in common. this means, among other things, that adherence to one model defines the community, distinguishing it from another, and the refusal to one model is always adherence to another. such adherence can only look like a normative commitment, because only in this way is it able to guarantee the coherence between the choices made by the scientist and the tradition to which his work belongs, that is, only in this way the persistence of acts repeated over time in the absence of rules can be guaranteed. this commitment defines procedures, problems and solutions, that is why it defines the membership in a community, as it is also in the light of it that the scientific is distinguished from the non-scientific. “the reception of a new paradigm often needs a redefinition of the corresponding science. some old problems may be relegated to another science or declared entirely ‘unscientific’” (kuhn 1970, 103). in the same sense, since joining a network of commitments does not involve the presentation of reasons, then an eventual incompatibility between theories guided by antagonistic commitments cannot also be resolved by presenting reasons. in a word, “the competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs” (kuhn 1970, 143). scientists, in a sense, are not in a position to present or understand them by virtue of their education. it is not an inability, but a characteristic of scientific work. adherence to the network of commitments that connects the disciplinary development of science to a tradition is, above all, practical. the battle between paradigms is then the kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 7 confrontation between ways of practicing science, whose foundations do not require enunciation. it seems to be exactly this characteristic of the science responsible for leading kuhn inevitably to defend the incommensurability of the paradigm. observed from a point of view outside them, antagonistic paradigms only comprise “incommensurable ways of seeing the world and of practicing science in it” (kuhn 1970, 4). seen one from the perspective of the other, the ways of seeing the world and practicing science can, at the very least, give rise to the conclusion that this is a method error. incommensurability is a natural consequence of the priority of rule paradigms. kuhn’s argument that supports the priority of paradigms, as we have seen, has as its starting point the following question: “in the absence of a competent body of rules, what restricts the scientist to a particular normal-scientific tradition?” (kuhn 1970, 44). kuhn derives his argument from what he considers wittgenstein’s “partial answers” to questions of this kind. however, kuhn makes it appear that wittgenstein’s philosophical interest, in this case, is guided by the question of what we need to know “in order that we apply terms like ‘chair’, or ‘leaf’; or ‘game’ unequivocally and without provoking argument” (kuhn 1970, 44-5). it was, according to kuhn, from this question that wittgenstein elaborated the “partial answers”. it does not matter, here, to evaluate the correctness of kuhn’s interpretation, even because kuhn himself warns the reader, stating in a note that “part of the point that follows cannot, therefore, be attributed to him”, although, in my view, in this case, almost nothing can be attributed to wittgenstein (kuhn 1970, 45). the attribution of this question to wittgenstein, as made by kuhn, reveals that kuhn’s argument makes the transition between the question about what guides the practice of normal science, in the absence of an adequate body of rules, to the question about what problems and research techniques of a normal science need to have in common to ensure that scientific work will follow the route determined by the current paradigm. in this sense, after presenting a paraphrase of wittgenstein’s answer to the question he is assigned, kuhn begins his own argument by saying that “what these [the various research problems and techniques] have in common is not that they satisfy some explicit or even some fully discoverable set of rules and assumptions that gives the tradition its character and its hold upon the scientific mind” (kuhn 1970, 45). the excerpt from wittgenstein’s work, indicated by kuhn, comprises the part between pages 31 and 36 from the 1953 edition of philosophical investigations, which corresponds to the excerpt from § 64 to § 79 of any other edition. according to kuhn, “for wittgenstein, in short, games, and chairs, and leaves are natural families, each constituted by a network of overlapping and crisscross resemblances”, which makes the identification of objects or activities successful. in the section between §§ 64-79 of the philosophical investigations, however, wittgenstein presents the reasons why we call language a diverse and broad set of processes and phenomena without being able to recognize something in common in them. wittgenstein’s starting point, in § 65, is exactly the refusal to attribute something in common to everything we understand as language, so that the notion of “family resemblances” (wittgenstein 2009 § 67), to which kuhn refers is a key player in the critique of essentialism, which results in the question of what, after all, there is in common “to all these activities, and makes them into language or parts of language” (wittgenstein 2009 § 65) the tone of these considerations made by wittgenstein that led his thinking to the notion of “family resemblances” is given in § 65 itself: instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, i’m saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all a but there are many different kinds of affinity between them. and on account of this affinity, or these affinities, we call them all “languages”. i’ll try to explain this. (wittgenstein 2009 § 65) kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 8 the elucidation promised by wittgenstein is made from the contrast between the typically essentialist demand that there is something in common and how things really happen – between what should be like this and what we see for having abandoned that demand (wittgenstein 2009 § 65). as paraphrased by kuhn, wittgenstein then explores similarities and dissimilarities of the activities we call ‘game’ and concludes that “we apply the term ‘game’ because what we are seeing bears a close ‘family resemblances’ to a number of the activities that we have previously learned to call by that name” (kuhn 1970, 45). a network of overlapping and interlocking similarities is sufficient to identify something like a game. in the words of wittgenstein himself, “we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: similarities in the large and in the small” (wittgenstein 2009 § 66). and if, for wittgenstein, there is no better characterization for these similarities than “family resemblances”, it is because they “for the various resemblances between members of a family a build, features, color of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth an overlap and crisscross in the same way” (wittgenstein 2009 § 67). kuhn’s paraphrase of wittgenstein’s thought is, of course, limited to what concerns the analogy between ‘game’ and ‘research problems and techniques’. therefore, kuhn is in a position to say about the existence of essential characteristics to what we call the ‘game’ that “wittgenstein, however, concluded that, given the way we use language and the sort of world to which we apply it, there need be no such set of characteristics” (kuhn 1970, 45). as is also natural, wittgenstein’s conclusion does not matter in analogy, according to which ‘game’ is an intrinsically vague concept. “for how is the concept of a game bounded? what still counts as a game, and what no longer does? can you say where the boundaries are? no” (wittgenstein 2009 § 68). after all, the vagueness that does not disturb the use of the word ‘game’ might not be desirable if applied to models that function as a source of guidance for scientific activity, on whose function the coherence of work depends on the scientist with the tradition to which he is linked, however flexible such models may be. nor can the commitments that determine the leeway for activities reputed to be scientific be vague, just as science, from the kuhnian point of view, could not survive without having something in common with the activities of scientists engaged in the same tradition. at least at first glance, kuhn’s conception of scientific development would not survive this vagueness without experiencing an indeterminacy that would cause the collapse of the guiding function exercised by paradigm. it is true, however, that wittgenstein admits that use of words is not entirely regulated, so that he experiences some indeterminacy. “but no more are there any rules for how high one may throw the ball in tennis, or how hard, yet tennis is a game for all that, and has rules too” (wittgenstein 2009 § 67). on the contrary, for kuhn, the coherence of the research tradition may well “not imply even the existence of an underlying body of rules and assumptions” (kuhn 1970, 70-1). the confidence conferred to scientific practice by the paradigm allows scientific investigations to dispense with any discussion of the scientific problems and solutions legitimacy, as questioning it would imply to discard the paradigm to which scientists are committed. however, the fact that scientists do not argue about what reasons a problem or solution is considered legitimate may mean, for kuhn, that “at least intuitively, they know the answer” (kuhn 1970, 70-1). although everything happens as if kuhn subscribes to wittgenstein’s “partial answers”, the development of his argument and its implications show that appearances are deceiving because his concern turns to what there is something in common or essential to scientific activity and which is capable of defining a tradition. such concern, of course, determines your way of reading wittgenstein. the normative character of the scientific commitment to the paradigm seems to excuse the scientist from presenting reasons that justify it. perhaps, for this reason, it is closer to the way in which it understands that wittgenstein’s question has traditionally been answered than to the solutions that wittgenstein’s thought formulates to that same question: “that very old and has generally been answered by saying that we must kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 9 know, consciously or intuitively, what a chair, or leaf, or game is. we must, that is, grasp some set of attributes that all games and that only games have in common” (kuhn 1970, 44). ii. incommensurability, according to kuhn, is the main theme of the structure of scientific revolutions (kuhn 2000, 91). to that extent, themes such as scientific rationality and relativism would be far from having a central role in its reflection on science. incommensurability plays a central role in kuhn’s philosophy of science, because for him it is “an essential component of any historical, developmental, or evolutionary view of scientific knowledge”, in such a way that incommensurability would not be “the threat to rational evaluation of truth claims” as its critics claim (kuhn 2000, 91). however, criticism of the idea of incommensurability does not necessarily imply understanding rationality or relativism as the main targets of kuhn’s thought. relativism is understood as an effect of applying the notion of incommensurability. at least, this is the case in friedman’s criticism. according to him, the lack of agreement on the rules that govern the transition to a new scientific paradigm does not seem to leave any scope for understanding that such transition can be rational (friedman 1947, 48). “non-rational factors, having more to do with persuasion or conversion than rational argument, must necessarily be called in to explain the transition in question” (friedman 1947, 48). since it is not possible to explain the transition between one paradigm and another by appealing to rational factors, then the normative commitment that determines the link between scientific activity and research patterns can only have the nature of a profession of faith (see kuhn 1970, 158). thus, the very notion of scientific rationality would be left to the fate of the history of science development, becoming the result of an arbitrary choice. incommensurability plays an important role in the development of science, for kuhn, mainly because it is linked to the idea of the scientific revolution, as a fundamental event for scientific development, which means that science does not develop without crises that lead to a rupture with the vision associated with the prevailing tradition. what makes these breaks possible is the fact that scientific development is guided by performance standards built over time. the idea that science, as barnes intends, is not “a set universal standards, sustaining true descriptions and valid inferences in different specific cultural contexts” (barnes 1982, 10) is linked to this way of understanding the history of science. on the contrary, scientific models are nothing more than a specific form of culture, so science could very well be the object of sociological study like any other form of knowledge or culture (barnes 1982, 10). interestingly, relativism seems to stem from what is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of kuhn’s history of science: the very conception of science. the relativism resulting from the idea of incommensurability, identified by friedman and other critics, can be mitigated if it is considered that incommensurability does not imply incomparability. and, it seems, this is exactly what kuhn will try to do, as friedman shows (see friedman 1947, 48-49). the main consequence of the emphasis on the historical and social nature of the models that guide scientific practices and, therefore, determine the development of science, is to understand scientific knowledge as characteristically discontinuous. this, it is true, does not mean that science is characterized by a state of permanent revolution. the revolutions that mark the discontinuity of scientific knowledge, in a sense, have their conditions built from the work of normal science, done in continuity with the current scientific vision. it is not that normal science fuels revolutions but that the construction that characterizes normal science is complementary to the reconstruction of which revolutions consist. “revolutions are responses to problems within traditions of research, not external disturbances” (barnes 1982, 56). the fact that science proceeds based on criteria and standards shared by a community is perhaps the most important factor in the relationship between continuity and kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 10 discontinuity. undoubtedly, the reconstruction in which revolutions consist implies changing criteria and research patterns, which is manifested in a radical transformation of culture, procedures and perception. for that reason, “if we examine a scientific field before and after a revolution, we observe what are essentially two distinct ways of life, maintaining two distinct systems of verbal culture” (barnes 1982, 55). kuhn imagines that the construction of a new reference system, as a result of the revolutions, inaugurates a new way of seeing the world, this view of the world being transmitted tacitly by science education. the sociological nature of such a construction means, above all, that science is something practical, which seems very trivial. it ceases to seem trivial inasmuch as it implies that this implies refusing to understand scientific choices as determined by experimental logic, since the consideration of an experiment is itself made from the point of view of the worldview determined by the paradigm. it is precisely at this point that kuhn’s philosophy of science gives rise to the charge of relativism. after all, if paradigmatic determinations should prevail over the logic of scientific research, then the decision about which is the best paradigm cannot be determined by logic. consequently, the decision is not based on evidence, nor could it be proved, which is an effect of the immeasurable nature of the paradigms (see barnes 1982, 55-56). the revolutions are a response to unpredictable problems from the point of view of normal science. the reorientation they promote involves, therefore, the construction of a new research model capable of solving them. the unpredictability of these problems allows us to characterize them as enigmas, since their eruption breaks with the regularity of research and undermines the security that allows the development of normal science. thus, the construction of a new paradigm returns the essential assurance to the practice of science. in this sense, the solution to a scientific puzzle causes a new way of seeing the world flourish. it understands the break with that old point of view from which the anomalous problems would remain unsolvable. it is also in this sense that scientific knowledge is inseparable from historicity and social conditioning. however, too much emphasis on this may cover up the philosophical question that seems to guide kuhn’s way of thinking, which does not stop at answering which reasons arises from the solution of a scientific enigma to a way of seeing the world. the most fundamental philosophical question, for kuhn, is associated with incommensurability because the most important aspect of incommensurability is the denial that scientific knowledge is merely cumulative. it does not seem to be for any other reason that kuhn considers incommensurability to be a fundamental aspect of his thinking. against the scientific knowledge perspective that it is a cumulative succession of ideas, kuhn understands that disruptions are decisively important in science. for this reason, the philosophical question that guides his thinking concerns the nature of the change brought by ruptures that mark science development. and i do not think kuhn’s answer to that question is as clear and simple as barnes makes it out to emphasize the social and psychological nature of adhering to paradigms (see barnes 1982). incommensurability is the source of rupture that constitutes the scientific revolution. there is, therefore, no way to get rid of the undesirable effects of incommensurability, such as relativism and the unfounded character of theoretical choices, without leaving incommensurability behind. however, this also involves reviewing the conception of scientific knowledge linked to the idea of a paradigm and a scientific revolution. the linguistic turn through which kuhn’s thought goes is an attempt, as condé has said, to solve problems arising from his theory of science, whose main elements are paradigm, incommensurability and scientific revolution (condé 2020, 86). according to kuhn himself, the reworking through which his thinking goes replaces discontinuity as a characteristic feature of scientific development with “significant reformulation” (kuhn 2000, 87). kuhn will claim that this is a conceptual review, but it is difficult to imagine the conceptual change resulting from this review as not being an abandonment of concepts central to his theory of science, such as kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 11 scientific revolution and incommensurability. with this, the very conception of scientific knowledge also seems to undergo reformulation. the concept of “incommensurability” seems to appear only as the same word for a radically different concept, starting with the fact that it no longer implies or involves noncomparability between theories. it is true that the conceptual reformulation typical of the development of science may have the consequence of making statements that were previously accepted as possible descriptions of reality unintelligible, but this does not imply the impossibility of translating them into subsequent scientific terminology. it is all a matter of mastering the new and the old language. the incomparability makes sense only from a monoglot perspective. therefore, faced with untranslatable statements, “the historian becomes bilingual, first learning the lexicon required to frame the problematic statements and then, if it seems relevant, comparing the whole older system (…) to the system in current use” (kuhn 2000, 77). without such a domain, it is impossible for the historian to understand the meaning of the statements or have access to the possible worlds that the conceptual system that accommodates such statements encloses. the domain of the system is understood by kuhn as a process of re-education that involves “the recovery of the older lexicon, its assimilation, and the exploration of the set worlds to which it gives access” (kuhn 2000, 85). the linguistic turn seems to make incommensurability only mean the absence of a common language to which divergent theories can be reduced (see kuhn 2000, 36). however, according to kuhn, it is only a matter of correcting the understanding of the old notion, eliminating confusions produced by the metaphorical use of the term. therefore, more modest than its critics suppose, incommensurability, according to kuhn, is safe from all the criticism that consists of associating incommensurability with incomparability of theories. the version of incommensurability that kuhn characterizes as modest is restricted to regions of the theory, being, therefore, a question of linguistic significance, no longer a conflict between radically incompatible perspectives. however, it seems inconsistent that the notion of incommensurability leads kuhn to state that “when aristotle and galileo looked at swinging stones, the first saw constrained fall, the second a pendulum” (kuhn 1970, 121) does not involve just a dispute over meaning. it is for no other reason that kuhn considers the application of the “demonstrations of a switch in visual gestalt” to what is happening with scientific revolutions so suggestive: “what were ducks in the scientist’s world before the revolution are rabbits afterwards” (kuhn 2000, 111). change, in this case, cannot be understood as a conflict between interpretations, since interpretations presuppose a paradigm that determines them. therefore, changes of this nature are not simply corrections of occasional errors in the old system to be replaced by the new one (see kuhn 2000, 15). instead, they involve not only changes in natural laws, but also changes in the criteria according to which those laws relate to nature. the character of this type of change explains why scientific development cannot be merely cumulative. the world perceived by a scientist changes according to the paradigm shift because perception is determined by the paradigm. as a result, reactions, expectations and scientific beliefs also change. from this perspective, the rupture caused by scientific revolutions cannot be stopped in the realm of language. in refusing to call the sun a “planet”, according to kuhn, copernicans were not simply denying a meaning, but elaborating a new meaning of “sun” that would make it possible to continue “to make useful distinctions in a world where all celestial bodies not just the sun, were seen differently from the way they had been seen before (kuhn 1970, 128-9). for the same reason, later, kuhn will say that the sentence “in the ptolemaic system planets revolve about the earth; in the copernican, they revolve about the sun” is incoherent, as each occurrence of “planet” connects to nature differently (kuhn 2000, 15). the definition of incommensurability compatible with this perspective, according to kuhn himself, is “the impossibility of defining the terms of one theory on the basis of the terms the other”, but it also concerns the “methods, problems-field, and standards of kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 12 solution” (kuhn 2000, 34), not dwelling on the scope of language, so that it seems unequivocal that the linguistic turn causes the abandonment of this concept. according to the version defended by kuhn, the main reason for incommensurability concept changes is the abandonment of theoretical changes with “gestalt switches”. such identification, according to him, would have been produced by the dubious use of the idea that divergent theories contained divergent worldviews (kuhn 2000, 34). this would have resulted in an emphasis on the visual character to the detriment of the conceptual nature of theoretical change. the discontinuity that marks the development of science is intrinsic to the understanding of theoretical changes as being gestalt switches. from kuhn’s viewpoint, this characterization of theoretical changes would have resulted from his theory of science having understood scientific processes in the light of his “experience with the process by which historians move into the past” (kuhn 2000, 87). as a general rule, scientific work is alien to the past, nothing more natural than the image of scientific knowledge as cumulative is more familiar to scientists. “the science is unique among creative disciplines in the extent to which they cut themselves off from their past, substituting for it a systematic reconstruction” (kuhn 2000, 87). understanding that that image of scientific development does not do justice to the past, nothing more natural also that the historian characterizes “experiences breakthrough as a gestalt switch” (kuhn 2000, 88). furthermore, this characterization would not have taken into account obvious differences between individuals and groups, abusing the metaphorical use of the “gestalt switch”. “communities do not have experiences, much fewer switches. as the conceptual vocabulary of a community changes, its members may undergo gestalt switches” (kuhn 2000, 88), but not all of them equally or all the time. although kuhn strives to make it appear the opposite, his considerations about gestalt psychology, in the structure of scientific revolutions, can hardly be understood as the result of a vocabulary dubiousness. they present themselves much more as a testament to the commitment of his theory of science to the philosophical perspective that this modality of psychology inspires. and it seems to be precisely from this commitment that his theory of science is undone by leaving behind the old notion of incommensurability. the abandonment of the gestalt switch metaphor leads kuhn’s thinking to understand incommensurability as only punctual, no longer implying incommunicability or incomparability. the assertion that different theories and practices are not necessarily incommunicable or incomparable does not necessarily imply that there is “positive facts or transcendental metaphysics as the absolute basis of different scientific knowledge” (condé 2014, 55). however, this is not exactly the path taken by kuhn’s theory of science, which starts to consider the primacy of the scientific community over its members as determined by a conceptual structure that gives unity to the community and sets it apart from other groups. one such lexical structure is “a module within the head of an individual group member” (kuhn 2000, 104). the conceptual framework works in the way of “preconditions of possible experience”, like the kantian categories, but unlike them, exposed to the possibility of change. lexicon’s theory provides kuhn with an answer to the question about what is essential to scientific activity capable of defining a tradition or what is in common with rival theories that allow comparison and communication between its defenders. this leads kuhn’s theory of science to abandon that old notion of incommensurability. however, the price to pay for this is the requirement that there be “something permanent, fixed, and stable”, something like “kant’s ding an sich”, underlying the processes of change that characterize the development of science. kuhn’s solution to the undesirable effects of incommensurability is clearly linked to a “traditional semantic conception of language based on the idea of representation of nature by means of categories, conceptual schemes, etc.” (condé 2020a, 376) of that is the consideration of what is underlying the transformations that science goes through as “ineffable, indescribable, undiscussable” (kuhn 2000, 104). thus, changes and transformations are based on a structure, which can be revised, but which is maintained as a kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 13 guarantee of stability without which changes and transformations would not be possible. scientific revolutions, from this perspective, must be understood as “fundamental change in some taxonomic categories”, as they are episodes that confront scientists “with problems like those the ethnologist encounters when trying to break into another culture” (kuhn 2000, 94). changes in the conceptual framework that determines scientific beliefs and limits them make familiar what appears strange in the absence of adequate taxonomic categories. kuhn seems to be convinced that this is the best way to deal philosophically with the revolutionary changes intrinsic to the historical development of science, as it allows us to understand them simply as the transformation of the conceptual scheme constituting problems and solutions. even in the texts in which he elaborates what friedman correctly called “kuhn’s late version of ‘paradigm’” (friedman 2002, 181), kuhn’s conceptual formulations, at the very least, allude to wittgenstein’s thinking, the most emblematic of which is a characterization of the confrontation between different conceptual schemes such as the clash between different forms of life. however, kuhn’s relativization of the a priori is against the perspective of wittgenstein’s thought. in on certainty, wittgenstein formulates a conception of certainty that if it cannot be understood as an alternative way to this way of dealing with revolutionary changes in the development of science, at least, it can be understood as questioning as to whether this is the only alternative. the question that leads wittgenstein’s thinking to this conception of certainty concerns how a certainty instituted in the course of human activities can become a constitutive condition of thought and language. certainty is thought, in this context, as constitutive of a reference system that gives confidence to human practices in general, symbolic or non-symbolic. insofar as this reference system determines understanding, the consideration of statements as true or false, as well as the validation of hypotheses, becomes a matter of understanding, which means that considering a given proposition as false can be proof of incomprehension. nothing can be more foreign to this conception of certainty than to understand the confidence that guarantees the stability essential to the development of human activities as “merely a constructed point to which some things approximate more, some less closely” (wittgenstein 1969 § 56). this is because certainty is, above all, a matter of attitude. more than an interconnected network of beliefs, certainty is a form of action and thought. the confidence that allows the normal development of practices can materialize in propositions, but certainty does not consist of propositions assumed to be true no matter what. as the certainty that materializes in these propositions guides practices, such propositions may very well never be formulated or never be called into question. they are thus diverted from the “all inquiry on our part” route, remaining immune to questions and doubts. “they lie apart from the route traveled by inquiry” (wittgenstein 1969 § 88), but not in isolation as if it constituted a kind of a priori propositions. after all, “we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions” (wittgenstein 1969 § 88). this conception of certainty implies that there is something out of the question as a condition for the possibility of research. for this reason, certainty has a normative character. wittgenstein understands that it belongs “to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are indeed not doubted”, but not in the sense that there is an absolute basis as a reference for scientific investigations (wittgenstein 1969 § 342). the structure to which symbolic elaborations and human actions are submitted, for wittgenstein, is not sublime, it is above all a construction made over time and established as a reference by the practices themselves. beliefs form a system within which “all testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis take place” (wittgenstein 1969 § 105). it is not a question, for wittgenstein, how much the facts can have priority or be independent of the beliefs, even because the system formed by them determines what we call in fact, having, on the other hand, an interaction between the facts and the system, so that if the facts were different, the system would not be the same. kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 14 beliefs work in the same way as religious faith, because their determining character cannot be justified except by appealing to the practices determined by them. the confrontation between different reference systems may involve recourse to the presentation of reasons only to the extent determined by the similarities between them. in what they have to be irreducible, once the reasons are over, each one would remain “declare the other a fool and heretic.” the recourse to reasons would then give way to persuasion (wittgenstein 1969 §§ 611-12). thus, the transition from one reference system to another has the character of “the conversion of a special kind”, through which would go on to “to look at the world in a different way” (wittgenstein 1969 § 92). the change brought about by adherence to a new reference system is practical in nature, as certainty is the norm of action and thought. the drastic nature of this change is due to the revision of what the practices guided by the old reference system established as out of the question. to that extent, the change implies a reorientation of practices. as the confidence that allows the development of human activities is a practical issue, the transition from one system to another does not experience the typical disorientation of the absence of a reference that guides the activities. furthermore, for this reason too, wittgenstein does not need to resort to a revisable a priori. * * * kuhn’s commitment to a traditional semantic conception leads him to support an idea of scientific progress with characteristics typically linked to this type of semantics. its late version of “paradigm”, in which the most important feature is to replace the idea of revolution with that of reformulation, involves a softer incommensurability concept than that of the structure of scientific revolutions. the new version of incommensurability has the advantage of allowing a comparison between rival theories and, consequently, a rational assessment that makes it possible to justifiably choose between one and the other, mainly because there is an area of intersection between different conceptual schemes. the difference between rival theories comes to be understood as taxonomic. therefore, relative to the respective conceptual scheme to which each is subordinate. the consequence of this, in practical terms, is to understand that the difference between copernican statements and ptolemaic statements is not a matter of fact but of meaning. “the content of the copernican statement ‘planets travel around the sun’, cannot be expressed in a statement that invokes the celestial taxonomy of the ptolemaic statement ‘planets travel around the earth’” (kuhn 2000, 94). the term “planet” occurs as the same type in both statements, but “the two kinds overlap in membership without either’s containing all the celestial bodies contained in the other” (kuhn 2000, 94). this conception of incommensurability evades the charge that the theoretical incomparability resulting from the old conception has the consequence that it is not possible to have reasons that justify the choice of the paradigm, because “what counts as a good reason is determined by the decision” (shapere 1984, 47) to adopt the paradigm. from this point of view, relativism is inherent to incommensurability, since two paradigms “cannot be judged according to their ability to solve the same problems, or deal with the same facts, or meet the same standards”, so that if scientific progress is characterized by the replacement of the paradigm, then “replacement is not cumulative, but is mere change” (shapere 1984, 47). since the paradigms are incommensurable and, therefore, incomparable, the evaluation of a paradigm can only take place from another paradigm, the denial of a paradigm is always the affirmation of another point of view. the criteria according to which a paradigm can be evaluated are internal to itself, “so that evaluation would inevitably question-beggingly favor the paradigm from which the evaluation was made” (siegel 2001, 210). kuhn will respond to this criticism by saying that he never denied the existence of reasons that justify the choice of paradigm, he only insisted “that such reasons constitute values to be used in making choices rather than rules of choice” (kuhn 2000, 157). in any case, according to shapere, if kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 15 the paradigm shift consists of a radical break, “a conversion experience”, as kuhn intends (kuhn 1970, 151), then kuhn “is thus led to deny, for example, that einsteinian dynamics is an advance over newtonian or aristotelian dynamics”, as there would be no continuity between them, to the point that it is impossible to speak of advancement (shapere 1984, 47). the change in the notion of incommensurability circumvents this imputation of relativism, but it does not seem to solve the questions that concern the rational character of scientific development. from friedman’s point of view, the problems of the old paradigm conception are reissued by the new conception. in particular, the question about what guides scientific research in the period of transition between paradigms. as there are no principles or rules in force in the period of transition to a new conceptual scheme, then the change must face a certain arbitrariness and cannot be guided rationally, which means that the paradigm shift would continue to be, for kuhn, an experience of conversion (friedman 2002, 182). this seems to be a natural consequence of the idea that scientific decisions should be subject to the orientation of the conceptual scheme. what is reasonable from the point of view of a conceptual scheme may well present itself as nonsense from the point of view of another. and that is what incommensurability means. but kuhn deserves a fair assessment. the perspective of the late version of ‘paradigm’ allows the overlapping of conceptual schemes, which allows for the existence of “bridgeheads permitting a member of one to acquire the lexicon of the other” (kuhn 2000, 104). in the absence of a wide-ranging overlap, says kuhn, “would it be possible for the members of a single community to evaluate proposed new theories when their acceptance required lexical change” (kuhn 2000, 104). kuhn’s conceptual maneuver circumvents, at least partially, the imputation of irrationality to the process of a paradigm shift, but it has a price to pay for the commitment to a traditional semantic conception, as it consists of the requirement that there is something underlying the processes of differentiation and change. in the manner of the kantian categories, the lexicon determines the possible experience a priori; unlike the kantian categories, the lexicon can change. it is clear that kuhn, despite his commitment to a kind of relativized a priori, does not leave behind the idea that scientific knowledge is constituted by ruptures, and is not mere accumulation. however, it is not so clear how much this commitment does not imply the abandonment of that conception of knowledge whose most important characteristics are related to the idea that the development of science depends on historical and social factors, as the emphasis on disruptions is greatly mitigated by means of kuhn’s understanding that there is something fixed and immutable in common with theories. indeed, if, on the one hand, the truth emerges from scientific practices, on the other hand, this is at the expense of the conceptual scheme providing “ways of being-in-the-world” that do not play the game of truth. if the old paradigm conception gave rise to the idea that the changes that science goes through could not be rationally grounded, it is because that conception of paradigm assumed that scientific rationality was a construction made over time. if the paradigm is left behind and replaced by a new one, the standard of rationality related to it is also left behind, so to speak. as such, the scientific rationality related to the late version of ‘paradigm’, at least at first glance, is foreign to the idea that historical and social factors are preponderant in the development of science. not because it is a problem that what may be essential in science is historically determined, in order to vary over time, but because the requirement that there is something fixed clashes with the idea of historical determination. it links the theory of science elaborated in this context to the structure of scientific revolutions much more by the type of essentialist concern about the guarantees of individual scientific work’s connection to a tradition than by way of understanding the reasons on which scientific changes are based. despite the sense that kuhn gives to a priori, which he borrows from kant, the linguistic turn that his theory of science goes through has features that allow approximations with wittgenstein’s philosophy, also in the sense of formulating questions that he would answer in another way. for kuhn, the changes that science goes through comprise episodes kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 16 of history in which scientists are faced with alternative theories. the scientific decision, in these cases, is guided by values such as “accuracy, breadth of application, consistency, simplicity, and so on” (kuhn 2000, 119). these values guide the change of beliefs. for wittgenstein too, criteria such as simplicity are fundamental in solving conflicts between incompatible beliefs: “remember that one is sometimes convinced of the correctness of a view by its simplicity or symmetry, i.e., these are what induce one to go over to this point of view. one then simply says something like: “that’s how it must be” (wittgenstein 1969 § 92). from wittgenstein’s viewpoint, fundamental beliefs that structure actions and thought compose a world-picture, “the inherited background against which i distinguish between true and false” (wittgenstein 1969 § 92). the propositions that describe them cannot be considered neither true nor false, “their role is like that of rules of a game” (wittgenstein 1969 § 95). in addition to considering that “the ways of being-in-the-world which a lexicon provides are not candidates for true/false”, kuhn (2000, 104) understands that “each lexicon makes possible a corresponding form of life within which the truth or falsity of propositions may be both claimed and rationally justified, but the justification of lexicons or of lexical change can only be pragmatic” (kuhn 2000, 244). the linguistic framework that guides scientific practices, in this way, produces standards of correction and validity to which the problems and solutions of science are subordinate, which means that the evidence is always relative to the inherited background. kuhn and wittgenstein, each in their own way, bring down both the idea of priority of the facts in relation to the beliefs whose evidence they would determine and the idea that the truth about the world, which emerges from scientific practices, would be an approximation of the truth and, as such, independent of mind and culture. according to kuhn, both are fundamental to the philosophy of science. what separates kuhn from wittgenstein is that the latter leaves determination to the practices themselves, which takes shape in kuhn’s adherence to the revisable a priori. having come to subscribe to the idea that divergent conceptual schemes have a transcendental reference in common, which enables them to understand each other from points of contact and perhaps is the main illustration of how much the development of kuhn’s theory of science undermines what can be considered his main legacy, as this brings his conclusions closer to those two fundamental ideas to the philosophy of science, which, according to him, constitute the science authority for a whole tradition of thought. everything suggests that kuhn’s change, of course, has the purpose of saving the rationality of science from relativism that incommensurability and its effects have on scientific activity, even though he is not ready to admit it. as it is the old notion of paradigm that crushes those two fundamental ideas to the philosophy of science, so instead of consolidating the substitution of the scientific authority that they incorporate, the new route of kuhn’s theory of science offers reasons to subscribe to them. the problems arising from the incommensurability idea, from the wittgensteinian point of view, may well be solved without this expedient, solely based on the idea of a perspective without relativism. this does not mean that i am about to say that kuhn’s sin is the fact that he is not wittgenstein. just that thinking about the issues raised by kuhn’s work from the point of view of wittgenstein’s philosophy, as, for example, condé does, opens a very fruitful way to think about alternatives to both kuhn’s essentialism and the a priori relativized of logical positivism. (see condé 2020b, passim). the “grammar of science” that results from the exploration of this path, i believe, creates fertile conditions for thinking about a model of scientific rationality that removes the communicative rationality from the question, as thought by friedman (see 2002, 184), without searching for inter-framework principles. for the same reason that it would refuse the search for common principles, it would be against the theory of science tested by kuhn when drafting the lexicon theory, because such a grammar is marked by the abandonment of the dream with the transcendental, understanding any constitutive necessity as an instituted necessity. at worst, a wittgensteinian-inspired theory of science shows how much the development of the kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 17 answers to questions formulated by kuhn would benefit from grammatical exploration and how much kuhn preferred another route, perhaps not so alien to the structure scientific revolutions as it seems. conclusion the linguistic turn in kuhn’s thought is more profound than a mere conceptual review. the changes are so profound that it seems as if the theory of science argued in the structure of scientific revolutions has been abandoned. in my view, kuhn’s sketch of a new theory of science preserves some aspects of the early theory, but most importantly, the essentialist commitment which backs his thought about science is the same. in the first half of this paper, i undertake an analysis of kuhn’s work in comparison to wittgenstein’s thought in order to demonstrate that kuhn uses the notion of family resemblance in an essentialist sense. afterwards, in its second half, i compare kuhn’s new ideas and the view held by wittgenstein in on certainty, by means of which kuhn’s essentialist commitment appears even stronger. the point which is addressed by this comparison consists in illuminating the view according to which kuhn’s essentialist commitment both links his new ideas to the structure of scientific revolutions and figure as the main reason why he abandons his former viewpoint. therefore, the main issue in this paper is the evaluation of the extent of this change. as an alternative to kuhn’s theory of science, i think that a wittgensteinian-inspired theory – as suggested by condé (2014, 2020b) – can answer the problems of incommensurability without relativism, as far as it can tackle problems that arise from a traditional conception of semantics. references barnes, b. 1982. t. s. kuhn and social science. the macmillan press: london. condé, m. l. 2020a. comments on thomas kuhn’s philosophy of language. trans/form/ação: revista de filosofia da unesp 43 (número especial): 373-378. condé, mauro l. 2020b. wittgenstein e os filósofos: semelhanças de família. belo horizonte: fino traço. condé, mauro l. 2014. wittgenstein’s grammar and the contemporary scientific rationality. in: rinofner-kreidl, s.; wiltsche, h. (ed.) analytical and continental philosophy: methods and perspectives: papers of the 37th international wittgenstein symposium. (xxii): 5254. kirchberg am wechsel. davidson, d. 1974. on the very idea of a conceptual scheme. proceedings and addresses of the american philosophical association, vol. 47, pp. 5-20. doppelt, g. (2001) incommensurability and the normative foundations of scientific. knowledge. in: hoyningen-huene, p.; sankey, h. (eds.) incommensurability and related matters. dordrecht: kluwer, pp. 159-179. friedman, m. 2001. dynamics of reason: the 1999 kant lectures at stanford university. stanford: csl publications. friedman, m. 2002. kant, kuhn, and the rationality of science. in. heidelberger, m.; stadler,f. (eds.) history of philosophy of science: new trends and perspectives (dordrecht: kluwer, p. 171-190. gattei, s. 2008. thomas kuhn’s “linguistic turn” and the legacy of logical empiricism: incommensurability, rationality and the search for truth. london: ashgate. kuhn, thomas. 2000. the road since structure. chicago: chicago university press. kuhn, thomas. 1970. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: chicago university press. kuhn and wittgenstein: the paradigm priority problem, relativism and incommensurability wagner teles de oliveira 18 siegel, h. 2001. rationality and relativism. in: hoyningen-huene, p.; sankey, h. (eds.) incommensurability and related matters. dordrecht: kluwer, pp. 207-256. shapere, d. 1984. reason and the search for knowledge. boston studies in the philosophy of science, vol 78. dordrecht: springer. wittgenstein, ludwig. 2009 [1953] philosophical investigations. oxford: basil blackwell. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1969. on certainty. oxford: basil blackwell. microsoft word salomon layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-14 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2446-2141] abstract: this article intends to briefly reconstitute the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré’s work in brazil. i do not seek to make a general analysis but just to focus on two pathways by means of which his work was introduced in this country. i endeavor to reconstitute the history of the translation of his books into portuguese and identify the main vectors and intellectual contexts responsible for his works’ acclimatation in brazil. those two pathways roughly correspond to two distinct geographies and intellectual cartographies; in rio de janeiro, interest in his work stemmed from the introduction of french epistemological thinking in the wake of philosophers’ readings louis althusser’s works after the 1960s; in são paulo, it was linked to university institutionalization of the history of science, starting in the late 1950s, initially promoted by scientists. that history enables an understanding of the major lines and forms that the history of science assumed in brazil. furthermore, the study permits the comprehension of the logic of the international circulation of ideas and the history of the translation of human sciences books as forms of cultural appropriation. keywords: alexandre koyré; cultural appropriation; french epistemology; circulation of ideas; historical epistemology; internalism versus externalism doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ my object here is quite modest and circumscribed; i do not intend to reconstitute the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré’s work in brazil and its reception. that kind of objective would require taking up the routes by which his works arrived in the country, determining the way they were received and mapping the plurality of readings and uses that have been made of them ever since the turn of the fifties to the sixties. that would have required an extensive research effort and a prolonged consultation of innumerable archives and libraries, and, unfortunately, due to the restrictions that the covid-19 pandemic has 1 marlon salomon is a full professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: marlonsalomon@ufg.br. english translation by martin charles nicholl. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 imposed on circulation, it was not possible. furthermore, it would have demanded work so much more extensive that it would extrapolate by far the dimensions of an article. i intend to make a rapid analysis of just two of the ways by which his first books and texts arrived in brazil. my strategy, to that end, will be to identify elements of the different intellectual contexts and translation and publishing institutions of his first texts so as to identify some of the vectors of his introduction in this country. it will be necessary to simplify the reconstitution of those trajectories to some extent in order to cover the subject in the space of a few pages. i am fully aware, however, of the series of problems and of the limitations that strategy presents. for an author’s books and texts to be read in other cultures and other countries by readers that share a language other than the one in which the works were written, they do not necessarily need to be translated. the world of the universities is quite cosmopolitan, and a considerable part of the texts written in the dominant languages of the global scientific system circulate free of those obstacles that are usually observed in the circulation of those originally published in peripheral languages. for a very long time, french was a central language of the world language system. thus, the fact that there are no translations of a given author’s work does not mean that he or she has not been read. however, there is no doubt that its translation points to the existence of a greater sphere of interest to its not being exclusive to the universe of the initiated. it is possible to present, immediately, the difference between the two trajectories, connected, as they are, to different disciplines and geographies: on the one hand, the history of the sciences, in são paulo and on the other, the history of philosophy in rio de janeiro. more importantly, that reconstitution places before us the problem of the international circulation of ideas and the cultural appropriation of the books and authors of the human sciences. let us begin with the guanabara bay. the first of alexandre koyré’s books to be translated and published in brazil appeared in a collection entitled campo teórico [theoretical field] coordinated by two young brazilian althusserians. that collection was founded in 1975 in the rio de janeiro-based publishing house forense-universitária by manoel barros da motta and severino bezerra cabral filho. barros da motta held a degree in philosophy (1970) from the federal university of rio de janeiro and cabral filho held a degree in history (1977) from the fluminense federal university. the publication in brazil of the first books of authors such as alexandre koyré, gaston bachelard, georges canguilhem and michel foucault was indissociably connected with the extant interest in the epistemological reflection fed by the reading and introduction of louis althusser’s marxism in brazil in the second half of the 1960s decade. those young men would meet in the leonardo da vinci bookshop on the rio branco avenue, in the center of rio de janeiro. on saturday mornings, teachers, intellectuals, writers, professors, poets, politicians and students flocked to that important bookshop, interested in getting to know the latest publications that had arrived from paris. it was a place that was fundamental for rio de janeiro’s intellectual sociability in those days of the military dictatorship that afflicted the country from 1964 to 1985. it was barros da motta who suggested to dona vanna piraccini, the legendary founder and proprietor of the leonardo da vinci, the importation of althusser’s books. at that time, cabral filho was employed by the bookshop. a considerable part of the “discovery” of french epistemology stemmed from the extant interest in the marxism of althusser. bachelard, for example, was considered to be “one of the immediate precursors of althusserian epistemology” (pires 1971, 174). as far back as 1965, the author of lire le capital stated that one of the central concepts that guided his reading of marx, that of the coupure épistémologiue [epistemological rupture], had been taken from bachelard (althusser 2005 [1965], 24). again in 1965, he acknowledged his debt to the “masters of the readings of works of knowledge, who, for us, were g. bachelard and j. cavaillès, and who today are g. canguilhem and michel foucault”, some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 and to that list, in another place, he later added the name of alexandre koyré (althusser 1973, 13; 50). if we remember that althusser himself acknowledged how lacan’s theoretical effort in his reading of freud, which had transformed the interpretation of psychoanalysis, had inspired him and his students in their own reading of marx, then we can obtain a set of names that could, at a given moment, be theoretically associated and integrated. it is clear that barros da motta and cabral filho’s collection was guided by that conception. the first title of the new collection, campo teórico, was published in 1977. it was michel foucault’s o nascimento da clínica [naissance de la clinique] translated by philosopher roberto machado. the following year georges canguilhem’s o normal e o patológico [the normal and the pathological] 2 appeared and in 1979, the third title of the collection was published, do mundo fechado ao universo infinito [from the closed world to the infinite universe], by alexandre koyré, in a co-edition (that was abandoned immediately afterwards) with the university of são paulo. in the 1980s, three more titles were published: estudos de história do pensamento científico [études d’histoire de la pensée scientifique] also by alexandre koyré in a co-edition with the university of brasília (the second edition was to appear under the aegis of the rio de janeiro publisher alone); the second brazilian edition of michel foucault’s a arqueologia do saber [l’achéologie du savoir] in 1986, jacques lacan’s da psicose paranoica em suas relações com a personalidade [on paranoiac psychosis and its relationship with personality]. four more titles were published in the 1990s: in 1991, estudos de história do pensamento filosófico [études d’histoire de la pensée philosophique], by alexandre koyré; in 1995, the book michel foucault: uma trajetória filosófica para além do estruturalismo e da hermenêutica [michel foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics] by paul rabinow and hubert dreyfus; in 1997, teoria e clínica da psicose [the clinical theory of psychosis] by the brazilian psychoanalyst antônio quinet; and, finally, in 1999, raymond roussel, by michel foucault, the last of the french philosopher’s books published when he was alive to be translated in brazil. barros da motta was to be equally responsible for coordinating the same publisher’s edition and translation of dits et écrits, from 2002 on, which ended up being published in ten volumes organized thematically. as can be seen, the readily identifiable theoretical relation interwoven among those authors materialized and sedimented with the collection which received them in the country; the first three authors the collection published were, in sequence, foucault, canguilhem and koyré. strangely enough, it published nothing of bachelard’s.3 even though that interpretation of the proximity and the relations among those authors, materialized in the structuring of the “collection”, was remarkable and enjoyed a long life in brazilian culture, the books and authors placed side by side in the brazilian collection graphically publicized by means of a project and visual identity of its own, were actually nothing more than the result and materialization of a cultural appropriation. 2 the althusserian nature of that reception was apparent in the edition of o normal e o patológico which in its third printing, in 1990, carried a postface by pierre machery that was presented by louis althusser himself (almeida 2018, 175). 3 in 1968 the rio de janeiro publishing house tempo brasileiro translated gaston bachelard’s work le nouvel esprit scientifique into portuguese and the publishers zahar editores (also rio-based) launched o racionalismo aplicado [applied rationalism]. the first of althusser’s works to be published in brazil, pour marx, appeared in 1967 precisely in the collection biblioteca das ciências sociais [social science library] published by zahar editores with the title análise crítica da teoria marxista [a critical analysis of marxist theory] (motta 2017). some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 the first four titles published by the coleção campo teórico of the forense-universitária publishing house in that appropriation, koyré was strongly associated to the history of philosophy; to a certain kind of philosophy which characterized the work of foucault, canguilhem, cavaillès and bachelard in the same way. as can be seen, it was a koyré connected to the rio de janeiro francophiles, connected to the interest in french epistemology extant in rio de janeiro at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. it was a koyré connected to some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 a french philosophical-historical tradition highly marked by the french marxist and the structuralist context of the 1960s which entered brazil via the guanabara bay. 4 in his “introduction” to the first book of alexandre koyré’s to be translated in brazil, barros da motta largely took up yvon belaval’s text on that french historian-philosopher of russian origin. he remembered koyré’s engagement in the main political events of the first half of the 20th century, his importance in the philosophical renovation that took place in france of the 1930s, in the introduction of hegel to that country, and the drawing closer that it fostered between linguistics and anthropology that was to make the structuralism of levistrauss feasible. he was the “master reader” of belaval. “his thinking is going to be present in the research of foucault, althusser, thomas kuhn and of all the french and american currents of the history of science” (barros da motta 2006, vi).5 barros da motta passed on the set of his research, profiling a koyré, historiographer of mystic, religious, philosophical and scientific thought and insisting on his “conviction of the unity of thought” and the impossibility of separating such thoughts when writing history. that, however, was not the only koyré to arrive in brazil at that time, which obliges us to leave sunny rio de janeiro for a while and return to são paulo. in that city of drizzle, we will find a koyré who is, above all, a historian of science. the intellectual context of são paulo, particularly in regard to its relations with the marxist tradition, was quite different. there was strong anti-althusserianism at the time in são paulo and, there, althusser’s works had a greater repercussion in the social sciences than in philosophy. in 1968 são paulo university professor and philosopher josé arthur gianotti published an article with the title contra althusser [against althusser]; in 1971, the marxist publisher and historian caio prado junior launched the critical work o estruturalismo de lévi-strauss e o marxismo de althusser [levistrauss’s structuralism and althusser’s marxism]; and sociologist fernando henrique cardoso himself raised objections to althusser’s work and opposed it. one of rio de janeiro’s leading althusserians, carlos henrique escobar, accused fernando henrique cardoso and josé arthur gianotti of boycotting the althusserian school (motta 2017). if we consider that those figures occupied important institutional positions in the academic field and the publishing market, then we can see that french epistemology did not encounter the same conditions for its introduction in são paulo as it been afforded in rio de janeiro. the history of science became institutionalized in brazil in the mid-1960s in the physics department of the university of são paulo, associated to the figure of theoretical physicist mário schenberg (1914-1990), who managed to form a group of students orientated towards the history of science, among them, shozo motoyama and maria amélia mascarenhas dantes. the university reforms implemented by the authoritarian brazilian state at the end of that decade obliged the group to migrate to the history department; schenberg was compulsorily retired by the military dictatorship in 1969. in 1971, motoyama defended the first history of science thesis in brazil and became the first professor of that study discipline in the same department. in 1973, mascarenhas dantes, who was a history of science teacher became the second person in the country to defend a history of science thesis. it was by that 4 in my view that makes it easier to understand the fact that over the years gaston bachelard’s epistemological work has been translated in rio de janeiro by the publishing house contraponto and that the complete works of jean cavaillès e georges canguilhem, published in france more recently have been published in rio de janeiro by the publishers forense-universitária (in 2010 the grupo editorial nacional gen acquired it). strangely enough central works of koyré’s bibliography such as études galiléennes, études newtoniennes and la révolution astronomique ohave never been translated or published in brazil. in other words, his longest, most technical works, fruit of the development of important projects, are still unpublished in brazil. that to me is an important element to consider regarding his history in brazil. 5 that introduction of barros da motta’s was not present in the first edition of the book. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 means that the unresolvable north american internalism versus externalism debate and polemic of the 1960s penetrated brazil.6 schenberg’s role in introducing and formatting the professional historiography of science in brazil still needs to be correctly dimensioned. in the second half of the 1950s, the publishing house difusão europeia do livro launched itself with the translation/publishing of three collections that clearly indicated the existence of a new demand for reference works and manuals directed at a new university audience. they were a história geral da civilização [histoire générale de la civilisation], organized by maurice crouzet, and translated in brazil in 17 volumes between 1955 and 1958, the história geral das ciências [histoire générale des sciences], organized by rené taton and published in brazil between 1959 and 1967, in 14 volumes, and the história geral da civilização brasileira [the general history of brazilian civilization], organized by sérgio buarque de hollanda, starting in 1960, a kind of local version of the series that crouzet had conceived (venâncio; furtado 2013, 14). the second tome of the história geral das ciências collection published in 1960 was dedicated to modern science and its first volume, to the renaissance. the first book of the volume was dedicated to the “the exact sciences” and divided into three chapters: “mathematics”, “the copernican revolution” and “physics” and they occupied a mere 100 pages of the volume (!). it was written by alexandre koyré and as far as i know, it was the first of the french historian-philosopher’s works to be translated in brazil. jacó guinsburg was responsible for the overall coordination of that volume’s translation and gita ghinzberg did the actual translation of koyré’s text. the first tome of the collection on “ancient and medieval science” had been launched in the preceding year. there was a brief introduction in its first volume written by mário schenberg. the text began by justifying the translation of the series insofar as the attention of the day had been turned on science. that was because it was an age “marked by the development of industry and technology” (schenberg 1959, 7). accordingly, it had become essential to acquire knowledge of “the results and methods of various scientific disciplines” (schenberg 1959, 7). following that schenberg addressed scientists directly. he argued that the level of specialization attained by the various sciences had made it impossible to learn science in its entirety and in its relations with humanity. on losing sight of the relationship of his specialty with the other different scientific disciplines, the scientist ends by causing “serious harm to his professional activity”. on ignoring philosophical and ideological influences “on the process of scientific development” the scientist could become the victim of profound prejudices. “it seems to me to be of great use for any scientist, to dedicate some time to the study of the history of all the sciences within the framework of the general history of social institutions” (schenberg 1959, 7). for schenberg, the “history of science” had a “unique dramatic quality” that had to do with “the multi-century struggle to discover and make use of the laws of nature and of society” (schenberg 1959, 7). to him, the amplification of human power and liberty depended on that knowledge. “great thinkers have taught that liberty is the knowledge of necessity. the history of science, is therefore, also the history of man’s struggle for his liberation” (schenberg 1959, 7). 6 i am not claiming that the history of sciences was born in brazil at this time. on the contrary, numerous historical studies on different fields of knowledge were published in brazil during the first half of the 20th century. in 1943, fernando azevedo’s book brazilian culture was released, in which the evolution of science received special attention. later, in 1956, azevedo edited the sciences in brazil, an extensive collection with the collaboration of many authors. i do not intend to reconstitute the history of science in brazil but only highlight the main paths through which alexandre koyré’s work was introduced in brazilian land. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 finally, schenberg stated that the brazilian translation of the series that taton had organized should contribute towards “stimulating interest in the history of science in our country”, but he also declared that the volumes of the collection were not destined for the specialized public alone. “taton and his collaborators knew how to ally scientific rigor with a simple and agreeable presentation in such a way as to make his work accessible to readers with a median cultural [level]” (schenberg 1959, 7). the professional historiography of science entered são paulo through scientists attached to the university of são paulo (usp). schenberg was the chair professor of “celestial and rational mechanics”; biologist paulo sawaya, director of the faculty of philosophy, science and language, was in charge of the general coordination of the brazilian translation of the general history of science; the cover fold texts of the volumes of the first tome were signed by josé reis, an important advocate for the creation of the discipline in brazil, and those of the second tome volumes, by mathematician omar catunda. many of the translators of various chapters of the series were by the professors of different disciplines at the university of são paulo (usp) and the philosopher ruy fausto was also an important translator of the series. it was probably on the basis of that nucleus created around the figure of schenberg and with the support of historian euripides simões de paula, director of the faculty of philosophy, language and human sciences, that the history of science would become transformed into an academic discipline in brazil. it was, therefore, directly linked to scientific work and not to historians, at least in those first moments. it is interesting to note how, in the 1970s, the reflection on the emergence and institutionalization of the history of science in brazil insisted on the fact that its occurrence was an effect of the surge of development and the maturing of the scientific and technological community that had been going on for two decades.7 motoyama, who was the first professional historian of science in brazil, given his research and teaching activities, was also the first researcher in the country to take an interest in the “history of the historiography of science”. in an article with the title “some reflections on the contemporary historiography of science” published 1975, he presented the history of science as a genre or “scientific discipline” based on three great stages that had characterized it “since tannery’s first pioneering works at the end of the 19th century” (motoyama 1975, 613). his temporal frame on the subject, as his evocation of tannery’s name shows, corresponds to that of the institutionalization but even more to that of the autonomization of that history as an academic discipline in which he acknowledged the history of his own profession. the period of institutionalization would have been marked by a “culturalist” tendency represented by the pioneering works of sarton and mieli. the isis review was the publication most representative of that tendency which was “a globalizing historical perspective of science. in terms of method, it traced established a correspondence between science and the ‘cultural sphere’ of a given people or period”. the works of neugebauer, needham and duhem could be framed in that tendency. it would have been fundamental in enabling the history of science to constitute itself as an academic discipline that was “autonomous and independent, free from restraints and the sometimes-distorting vision of the sciences or of the philosophies to which it had formerly been subordinated” (motoyama 1975, 613-614). it would also have been important insofar as it “displaced the axis” from preoccupation with 7 in 1979 the historiography of science had already been granted citizenship of the scientific city and so the first história das ciências no brasil [the history of science in brazil] dedicated a chapter to it. the chapter’s authors stated that: “just a little over 10 years ago favorable winds began to blow for the institutionalization of the discipline fostered by the maturation of the scientific community itself and government measures designed to promote scientific and technological development to serve as a base for economic development” (garcia; motoyama; oliveira 1979-1980, 387). some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 european science, to reveal science’s existence in other cultures and civilizations (babylon, china, india etc.) interest in which had become dormant due to excessive specialization and forgetfulness of that initial globalizing perspective. after the 1930s, that historiography would have become divided between the externalist and internalist tendencies. the former had as its “basal objective the explanation of a superstructure called science by means of considerations involving its infrastructure. that kind of approach was adopted by the so-called socialist historians of science, among them, the marxists”. motoyama included historians such as crowther, bernal, needham (again), lilley, struick, hogben and ogawa. their importance lay in their inclusion of the “social variable” in their comprehension of the phenomenon of science. in 1975, however, the times are lean for the externalists faced with the exhaustion of their adopted method. on making a correspondence between the forms of production and science through the intermediation of technique, those historians were fortunate in establishing its orientation, associating, for example, newton’s era with mercantilism, or early greek science with the mercantile-slavery society but they could not get beyond that because when they actually endeavored to explain in greater detail the threads of that correspondence, they came up against serious difficulties that have yet to be overcome. (motoyama 1975, 614) motoyama suggested that one possible solution for that impasse would be constituted by “the introduction of intermediary structures” among the terms of that correspondence, like kuhn’s paradigm. motoyama identified the founding of the journal of the history of ideas in 1940 as a landmark in the affirmation of the “internalist current” and listed historians such as randall jr., moody, lovejoy and mackeon as its major exponents. it was, then, a case of inserting the history of science within the more general context of the history of ideas. this history was a reflection of the weberian-orientated intellectual history in vogue at the time in the united states and consisted of a systematic analysis of the concept formation process, the identification of the so-called intellectual elements and the reconstruction of scientific development based on them. (motoyama 1975, 615) that was the explanation for why the main themes that the tendency addressed revolved around the great scientific and philosophical theories. that perspective of the history of science would have been responsible for transforming the understanding of “scientific development”. for that reason, it was no exaggeration to state that it would have turned itself at that time into “the dominant orthodoxy of the present day”. it would also have turned into a limiting historiographic factor insofar as it had raised up “new myths and dogmas”. motoyama spoke of the existence of an “internalist flank”, related to the philosophy of science, that had developed in europe. it was possible to distinguish at least two “streams” within it. he explicitly took up, once more, the kind of distinction that canguilhem had made a few years before between the “laboratory model” and the “tribunal model” in a text entitled l’objet de l’histoire des sciences. in the first case, the history of science was understood as being a laboratory of epistemology and our author listed among its exponents flourens, laffitte and dijksterhuis, the very authors canguilhem had cited. the second was one of “history judged or sanctioned by epistemology – an epistemology in intimate correlation with the science of the present”, and that was “the history of science of bachelard, of canguilhem, of koyré”. in that historiography, the effort is directed at understanding the past as a living organism of a cultural whole called science. accordingly, the investigation of the science of the past in its aspect as some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 past, means understanding it as being the overcoming, in its own times, of the activities and methods that preceded it, but judged in the light of the scientific values of today. (motoyama 1975, 615-616) as can be seen, he closely followed canguilhem but disagreed with him regarding the real “opposition” between the models. to motoyama, one model was inductive and the other deductive but what was really important to underscore was that neither is “selfsufficient and they must be considered as being complementary parts of a more complex scientific cognition process” (motoyama 1975, 616). his disagreement with the french life sciences philosopher and historian deepened to the extent that his position became irreconcilable with that of canguilhem insofar as, for motoyama, in the case of this particular historiography, the intimacy between history and philosophy was so great that it ended up becoming dangerous for its autonomy. the text passage in which he underscores that is interesting for also summarizing his conception of the history of science. given that the history of science is the clarification of the essential nature of various variables such as the logic of science, the logic of scientific development, the relationship of science with forms of thinking and cosmovision and the analysis of how those variables are intertwined in the historical process, the need for an intimate relationship of historical research with the philosophy of science is perfectly understandable. however, there is an ever-present danger that it will end up affiliating itself with the latter and many have incurred in that error including the great canguilhem. (motoyama 1975, 616) here we have a sociological stance in regard to the conflict of faculties: it was the autonomy of the fledgling recently-instituted discipline – which he headed at the usp – that all such intimacy placed in danger: it was necessary to make the limits of, and frontiers between the two disciplines perfectly clear and avoid any epistemological promiscuity on pain of losing its independence. because of the limits the pandemic has imposed on my investigation, i do not have the material elements needed to develop that hypothesis further,8 but it seems clear that the institutional context was by no means indifferent to the historiographic reception in são paulo. nevertheless, it is important to point out that koyré, just like bachelard and canguilhem, was historically and conceptually framed in a perspective stemming from the north-american historiographic context of the history of science. furthermore, on the other side of the north atlantic, foucault did not associate himself with the french epistemological trinity. that was quite different to what had been going on in rio de janeiro since the 1960s with the introduction of french epistemology mediated by philosophers and not by scientists. a review of the first of koyré’s books to be translated in brazil appeared in the brazilian press in the newspaper jornal do brasil in the same year as the book was launched. theologian gilberto vilar presented a phenomenological interpretation of the book and its thesis on the “cultural revolution of the 17th century” and man’s withdrawal from the world in which he lives. furthermore, koyré was presented as a “philosopher and historian” and his work do mundo fechado ao universo infinito as being “an important book for scholars of history and philosophy” (vilar 1979, 3). in the eyes of the rio de janeiro intellectuals, the independence of history from philosophy that motoyama clamored for would make it impossible to understand the very project of figures like koyré. indeed, for a real understanding it would be necessary to relate it to the philosophical perspective and even to distinguish it from certain ways of conducting 8 it effectively impeded me from consulting shozo motoyamas’s thesis galileu galilei – um estudo sobre a lógica do desenvolvimento científico [galileu galilei – a study of the logic of scientific development]. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 historiography. that relationship, however, was not with any random kind of history. roberto machado (1942-2021), who at the time was professor of philosophy at the catholic university and the state university of rio de janeiro felt that epistemology, and he viewed koyré in that sphere, as did the others in rio, sought to understand science based on an analysis of its scientificity. to analyze the conditions of possibility for such knowledge differences, he elected “history as the privileged instrument of analysis”. that does not mean to say, however, “that all the history of science is philosophical by definition or reflects philosophically”. but when the philosophies of the concept such as those of bachelard, cavaillès, koyré or canguilhem thematize science in its historicity, they do more than simply describe the inventions, traditions and authors. for epistemology, the history of science can only achieve its objective of establishing the historicity of science by situating itself in a philosophical perspective and consequently, distinguishing itself from the scientific and historical disciplines as such. (machado 1981, 9) while on the one hand, in rio de janeiro, there was the singularity of the french philosophy of science in relation to others interested in scientific knowledge, identifying an intrinsic and inseparable relation with history, in são paulo, that very posture was seen as incurring the risk of subordination and calling for precaution and distancing. at the same time, machado made it clear that the history of epistemology was not exactly that of the historians. there seemed to be a chasm separating the two perspectives. as can be seen, motoyama’s interpretation of the history of this discipline was that of its development in the usa. his choice of tannery as the starting point of his history instead of laffitte, the first ever teacher of “the general history of science”, at the collège de france, clearly denoted the trajectory and affiliation he intended to trace out in that reconstitution, insofar as it favored historiographic figures who described themselves as “pure historians” of science, that is, independent of science and of philosophy. from tannery he passed to sarton who founded his review in 1913 and immediately afterwards at the beginning of world war i emigrated to the usa, and to mieli who, in 1919, founded the archeion in italy but emigrated to paris in 1928 and then, in 1939, to argentina. lastly, motoyama identified the 1930s and 40s as the decades of the emergence, on north american soil, of the internalismexternalism dichotomy, “a polemic that is still open” (motoyama 1975, 614), and one that delimited “the” theoretical problem of the young discipline. without any mediation of the “european” origins of the discipline, motoyama jumped straight to its history on the other side of the atlantic – sarton became a professor at harvard but that did not serve motoyama as a thread of continuity between two periods or connection between two spaces, as it was disconnected from the dichotomy that was more important to him. it meant that, without any justification, he abandoned any analysis of the sequence of the discipline’s historical development in europe without even problematizing that option. when mieli arrived in paris, his project was immediately hosted by the centre international de synthèse of henri berr who had instituted a history of science section in it (blay 1997; salomon 2017) and there was a series of initiatives in course directed at institutionalizing the history of science. a year earlier, mieli himself had founded the international academy of the history of science, an initiative designed to congregate all historians of science and technology around the world. 1932 would mark the beginning of its university institutionalization with abel rey creating the history of science and technology institute at the sorbonne which would in turn launch the means of publicizing it, the thalès review (redondi 1986). i am not endeavoring to point out flaws or gaps in motoyama’s analysis with all that has been set out above, but merely to underscore that the choice of names, dates, tendencies and places woven into his account enable us to discern how the history of science that arrived in brazil was the one produced in the north-american context. the fact that some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 motoyama frequently referred to the history of “science” in the singular, an english language habit, rather than in the plural, as is usual in french, is another indication of that. that history then, was divided into poles to which it was possible to ascribe and register all the work in course. it is not only the fact that motoyama took as his reference canguilhem’s text based on the french edition of 1968, considering that in 1972, the althusserians of rio de janeiro published a special number of the tempo brasileiro review on epistemology, which carried a translation of the article o objeto da história das ciências [the object of the history of science] and it had tremendous repercussion and circulation and was a great sales success. a barrier impeding any kind of dialogue seemed to arise. another equally notable fact is that motoyama ignores canguilhem’s argument about the lack of conceptual rigor and meaning of the internalism-externalism dualism, in the view of that historian and philosopher of the sciences of life. indeed, his argument explains why that particular historiographic notion seems not to have carried the same weight in france and to have actually been scorned in the rio de janeiro reception of those authors. furthermore, canguilhem was quite harsh in his criticism of the north-american historiography founded on that cleavage and he made it clear that it was a discussion that belonged to the anglo-saxon world. he defined that externalism as “a weakened or rather, impoverished marxism, current in the rich societies” and suggested a text of koyré himself for a critical reading respecting it. it is, however, important to underscore how, for canguilhem, that opposition stemmed from a basic conceptual problem that transformed it, at the outside, into a theoretical question devoid of any historiographic meaning: “it is evident that one or the other position [externalism and internalism] are equivalent to assimilating the object of the history of science to the object of a science” (canguilhem 2012 [1968], 8).9 a science worthy of that name, to the director of the sorbonne institute of the history of science and technology, began exactly with the definition and delimitation of its object. in his view the northamerican historiography did not even manage to differentiate the object of their discipline from the objects of those disciplines whose history it intended to write. as can be seen, motoyama skirted that criticism and without any ado inscribed figures like bachelard, koyré and canguilhem in the north-american historiographic cleavage. that helps to explain his critical stance in regard to canguilhem’s perspective. on the other hand, that kind of criticism shows how, on the european or french side, it made little sense to take that kind of problem into consideration which allows us to imagine that the rio de janeiro ‘epistemologists’ viewed the historiographic discussion of the opposition between internalism and externalism as being the fruit of a lack of philosophical rigor. final considerations in the 1960s, koyré disembarked in brazil via galeão [rio’s main airport] and cumbica [a são paulo airport], partly bound to distinct histories and stemming from distinct intellectual contexts. it is true that i have exaggerated and caricatured somewhat in my way of presenting things. in the early 1980s, the philosopher hilton japiassu presented a koyré in the framework of french epistemology but at the same time alongside bachelard, as an adept of an internalist conception of the history of science (he absolved canguilhem and foucault of that sin). he integrated the discussion on epistemology to that on the history of science but presented the latter based on the externalism internalism opposition; he even mobilized needham to explain the internalist conception using the traditional arguments against it. my study here, as can be seen, is not exhaustive and does not set out to 9 that book was published in a collection coordinated by manoel barros da motta. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 12 reconstitute the history of the introduction of koyré in brazil rather, it endeavors to present two of its major lines.10 the study of the international circulation of ideas is very interesting in relation to this case. koyré the historian à la são paulo was an author whose original field of the production of ideas had disappeared on crossing the atlantic and disembarking in north-american soil; at the same time it was epistemologically inscribed and naturalized in a context unlike the one that had given rise to its ideas and which was structured on the internalism/externalism dichotomy. pierre bourdieu noted that one of the first ‘structural factors’ of the international circulation of ideas was “the fact that the texts circulated without their contexts” (bourdieu 2002, 3). such factors are responsible for the production of innumerable misunderstandings such as when hilton japiassu (1981, 65) defined koyré as the master of internalism. thus it is not only the ideas that circulate internationally, but also the idées reçues (bourdieu 2002, 3), the labels, the classifications and certain categories of understanding produced in certain intellectual contexts that end up determining, framing, and limiting the interpretations of a given work in other contexts insofar as they are incorporated by agents in other academic fields. a supplementary fact or a historical milepost in the introduction of those two koyrés in brazil sprang to my attention when, many years ago, i perceived how many of my university colleagues all over brazil pronounced his name, not as koyré as he himself pronounced it in france, but, instead as ‘kuare’ as it was pronounced in the usa which clearly indicated a cultural appropriation of his work and of its circulation in brazil. 10 it would be necessary, for example, to investigate his presence in the usp’s department of philosophy. gérard lebrun was familiar with alexandre koyré’s work and cited it in texts and interviews. in the faculty of education, he was most certainly read by students, given that one of their lecturers on the history and philosophy of education, josé eduardo rodrigues villalobos, had translated one of koyré’s texts for the department’s review in 1979 (koyré 1979, 55-70). in the same way, it would be necessary to accompany the ramifications of the rio side of the discussions on the relationship between epistemology and the history of science such as can be seen in the work of japiassu. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 13 alexandre koyré alexandre koyré is not a historian-philosopher well-known to the general public in brazil. there are few registrations of his name in the archives of brazil’s major newspapers. there is only a simple review of a book he wrote published in the main media. in those few registrations he is always portrayed as a french philosopher and historian which, to me, indicates that the north-americanized, internalist koyré remained restricted to a small circle. it was only in 2002 that the folha de são paulo dedicated a text exclusively to him but one which, curiously enough, was not written by a brazilian. it was written by the argentinean essayist juan josé saer and devoted to analyzing the political text that koyré had published during the world war ii and which at the time of the essay, had recently been published in france. the image, based on a fairly well-known photograph was prepared by the são paulo newspaper’s art editors to illustrate saer’s text. it seems never to have left the pages of the são paulo newspaper. some remarks on the history of the introduction of alexandre koyré in brazil marlon salomon transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 14 references almeida, tiago santos. 2018. canguilhem e a gênese do possível: estudo sobre a historicização das ciências. são paulo: liberars. althusser, louis. 2005 [1965]. pour marx i. paris: la découverte. althusser, louis. 1973. lire le capital i. paris: maspero. azevedo, fernando. 1943. a cultura brasileira: introdução ao estudo da cultura no brasil. rio de janeiro: ibge. azevedo, fernando. 1956. as ciências no brasil. volumes 1-2. são paulo: editora melhoramentos. barros da motta, manoel. 2006. “apresentação – alexandre koyré: revolução e verdade na história do pensamento científico e filosófico”. do mundo fechado ao universo infinito. 4ª ed. rio de janeiro: forense-universitária. blay, m. 1997. “henri berr et l’histoire des sciences”. in: biard, a.; bourel, d.; brian, e. henri berre et la culture du xxe siècle. histoire, science et philosophie. paris: albin michel. bourdieu, pierre. 2002. “les conditions sociales de la circulation international des idées”. actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol. cxlv, décembre. canguilhem, georges. 2012 [1968]. “o objeto da história das ciências”. estudos de história e filosofia das ciências. trad. abner chiquieri. rio de janeiro: gen; forense-universitária. garcia, joão carlos v.; motoyama, shozo; oliveira, josé carlos de. 1979-1980. “o desenvolvimento da história da ciência no brasil”. in: ferri, mário; motoyama, shozo (orgs.). história das ciências no brasil. são paulo: edusp. vol. ii. japiassu, hilton. 1981. questões epistemológicas. rio de janeiro: imago. japiassu, hilton; marcondes, danilo. 1989. dicionário básico de filosofia. rio de janeiro: zahar. koyré, alexandre. 1979. “sobre a influência das concepções filosóficas na evolução das teorias científicas”. trad. josé eduardo rodrigues villalobos. revista da faculdade de educação, vol. i e ii, nº 5. machado, roberto. 1981. ciência e saber: a trajetória arqueológica de michel foucault. rio de janeiro: graal. motoyama, shozo. 1975. “algumas reflexões sobre a historiografia contemporânea da ciência”. revista de história, vol. lii, nº 103. motta, luiz eduardo. 2017. “a recepção de althusser no brasil: o grupo brasileiro da revista tempo brasileiro”. novos rumos, v. 54, nº 1. pires, eginardo. 1971. “a teoria da produção de conhecimentos”. in: baeta neves, luiz felipe; mendonça, antônio sérgio. epistemologia e teoria da ciência. petrópolis: vozes. redondi, pietro. 1986. “préface”. in: koyré, a. de la mystique à la science. cours, conférences et documents – 1922-1962. edited by pietro redondi. paris: ehess. salomon, marlon. 2017. “revolução, crise e o problema da filosofia em alexandre koyré no entreguerras”. in: almeida, fábio ferreira de; salomon, marlon (orgs.). de bergson a rancière: pensar a filosofia francesa do século xx. goiânia: ricochete. schenberg, mário. 1959. “apresentação à edição brasileira”. taton, rené (org.). as ciências antigas do oriente. são paulo: difel. t. i. vol. i. venâncio, gisele martins; furtado, andré carlos. 2013. “braziliana & história geral da civilização brasileira: escrita da história, disputas editoriais e processos de especialização acadêmica (1956-1972)”. tempo e argumento, vol. 5, nº 9. vilar, gilberto. 1979. “a virada filosófica”. jornal do brasil, caderno livro. rio de janeiro, 9 de junho. microsoft word costa layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-4 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal book review richmond, sheldon. a way through the global techno-scientific culture. cambridge scholars publishers, newcastle-upon-tyne, 2020. 221 pp., isbn: 9781527549227. reviewed by: thiago costa1 [http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2965-8418] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.11 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “plus l’homme est ignorant, plus son obéissance, plus sa confiance dans son guide est absolue” qu’est-ce que la propriété? (paris, 1840) pierre-joseph proudhon culture and knowledge under the technopoly regime in his most recent work, a way through the global techno-scientific culture, published in 2020, canadian philosopher sheldon richmond addresses essential questions of philosophy of technology and its inevitable political and social implications by characterizing contemporaneity under an autocratic regime marked by subordination to techno-scientific culture. for richmond, favoured and guided by computer technologies, techno-scientific culture has gradually become predominant since world war ii. although his book consists of eight parts − the preface, prologue, six chapters, and epilogue − richmond dispenses with linearity in the reading of his work. instead, as in a diagram or a mosaic, where components assume autonomy of meaning, the philosopher suggests that his readers establish their criteria, that is, orient themselves by their interests in exploring the work. this approach ensures a dynamic quality of the work. nevertheless, the subjects treated oscillate around two central axes, maintaining an internal coherence in the sequential structuring adopted or provided by the author. from the preface to the third chapter, “culture”, richmond discusses the main problems identified with the enormous contemporary technological sophistication. thus, for example, in the first chapter, “mystique”, and the second chapter, “knowledge”, the philosopher discusses the manipulation of the sense of reality and the subsequent disintegration of stable experience of knowledge derived from what he has termed the “mystique” of computers. with the 1 thiago costa is a professor at the federal institute of mato grosso – ifmt, campus fronteira oeste. he is also a ph.d. candidate in aesthetic and history of art in the university of são paulo – usp, with an internship in the program of history at the federal university of minas gerais – ufmg. address: instituto federal de educação, ciência e tecnologia de mato grosso – campus fronteira oeste. rodovia mt-473, s/n cep: 78250-000. pontes e lacerda – mt, brasil. e-mail: thiagocosta248@yahoo.com.br thiago costa – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 characterization of the conditions that in his understanding pervert the present, threatening humanism and humanity, the author then provides a path, a proposal for the reform of society. it is with this perspective, that is to say, of proposition and confrontation, that between the fourth chapter, “dialogue”, and the epilogue, richmond approaches the expedients he believes indispensable to break with the mystique and the oppressive authority of the technocratic elite and then establish a genuinely democratic relationship in the promotion of information/computing technologies. thus, in the fifth and sixth chapters, respectively, “philosophers” and “criticism”, the author suggests a transversal posture that prioritizes dialogue and cultural exchanges. this openness allows a type of learning guided by the dialectics of argumentation and individual experience or otherness marked by appropriations, approximations, and exchanges. supported by karl popper and michael polanyi, richmond seems to defend a more accessible and more exploratory interaction of subjects with computer technologies. he defends, thus, subjective experience and the dispensation of intermediaries or authority figures – and constraints – that advise the actions with the machines. richmond’s project resembles that of the brazilian educator paulo freire in his training proposal through praxis. however, in richmond, it is through the private posture of criticism – conjecture and refutation, hypothesis and falsifiability – that institutions and society can be reformed. in his beautiful and thought-provoking book, richmond points out that some of the central or most popular questions concerning the development of computer technologies are but an expression of mystique. these questions are doubts about the superseding of human intelligence by artificial intelligence, the possibility of the emergence of consciousness in and of machines, questions about the ethical nature or otherwise of eventual independent behaviour. moreover, appropriation and/or anthropic projection, the habit of conferring human meanings to inanimate phenomena or entities, for example, to technology instruments, further serves as a stimulus to alienation. for the author, despite the effort to formulate a kind of metaphysics of machine, which hinders the free interaction of the “techno-subjects” – the ordinary users – with the apparatus, computer technology remains an object creation, artificial, with the purpose to supply human insufficiencies. among the concepts employed by richmond, some are particularly important in his analysis and understanding of contemporary techno-scientific culture, namely, “technoelite,” “techno-subject”, “technopoly” (taken from neil postman [1992]), and “mystique”. according to the philosopher, the mystique is part of the exercise of “technopoly” power and characterizes the “techno-elite” within the technocratic regime. mystique derives from and constitutes a broader process of domination and exclusion. richmond names the “techno-elite”, a privileged caste of techno-scientific culture, those with technical expertise and control over the distribution of specialized knowledge. the philosopher identified the autocratic and absolutist regime through which they rule with a “technopoly” or a monopoly over technology, its uses, functioning, and knowledge. by controlling information and knowledge, the mystique promotes naturalization of the difficulties in handling computer technologies by the “techno-subjects”. in this way, it reinforces the power and authority of the “techno-elite”. for richmond, techno-subjects or ordinary users often believe that experts carry a tacit, and therefore private and non-transferable, knowledge that determines their privileged caste position. in reality, the technology elite – the experts, the technicians, the industry professionals – thrive and secure their power precisely on alienation from the workings of machines and, in particular, computing tools. the “technopoly” thus regulates the economy of knowledge. under the regime of “technopoly”, the philosopher adds, everyday dependence is created while the subjects or “techno-subjects” are alienated from the inner workings of the computing machines. knowledge is denied and restricted, and in this way, the mystique surrounding the devices acquires reality. the contemporary technocratic regime operates a thiago costa – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 new kind of colonialism: technological colonialism. alongside the imaginary and the customs, the western expansion on the global periphery is renewed and updated. in this case, through the almost generalized use of information and computing tools, this situation was accentuated during the pandemic and the consequent adoption of social isolation and remote work. however, as we know, the novelty of this story is only apparent. during the 18th and 19th centuries, industrialization in central europe stimulated the predatory search for raw materials in regions such as africa and latin america, establishing a circularity: they became suppliers without any right to redress and, later, lay consumers of inputs billed abroad. the current crises in the semiconductor and energy industries exemplify this complex web of interdependence that shapes the daily relations of individuals and groups of people, companies and nations. moreover, their regulation imposes a complicated geopolitical and diplomatic adjustment – as seen, among others, in the renewed conflicts between the us and china, which affect almost all countries – and does not respond solely or strictly to technical and/or industrial issues. the issue of connectivity and inequality of access is complex, even for experts and scholars. in november 2021, a report by the international telecommunication union (itu),2 reposted on the un website, pointed out that about 40% of the world’s population, almost 3 billion people, have never used the internet or any other modern information device. a significant portion of the invisible people does not correspond to richmond’s illustrative scheme, namely, the “techno-elite” and the “techno-subjects”. despite effective technological dependence, distant areas in developing countries and rural regions remain apart from the realities of the big centres. in these spaces of absence, mystique acts even more intensely. it is fed while it disseminates and crystallizes the policies of neoliberalism, which transforms knowledge and access to technological goods into mere consumer relations. the promotion of connectivity warehouses to serve the almost 3 billion invisible people, by itself, that is, in an uncritical way and without articulation with other structural measures of inclusion – the fight against poverty, higher-quality public education –, only favours the increase in power of the “techno-elite”. to the invisible people, the only thing left is subjection as new “techno-subjects”. the expansion of technopoly affects local culture and knowledge by imposing new patterns of behaviour and thought in an illusion of global integration, which erases ethnic specificities and then operates a homogenization of behaviours and identities. technopoly works through ethnocide. therefore, techno-scientific sophistication threatens not only humanistic values – already questioned before with nietzsche and heidegger – but the very constitution of humanity. automated systems replace the labour force of men and women to the same extent that spaces of sociability and interaction are displaced to virtual agoras. this movement establishes not virtual reality, but virtuality considered the real. this conception is the proposal of a “metaverse”, for example. in this sense, says richmond, the contemporary presumption that is diagnosing metaphysics’ death is mistaken. there is a detachment: from man to machines, namely computing technologies. the mystique gives a metaphysical and absolute character to computational instruments. in this process, the mystique of technology replaces the mysteries of nature. in mystique, therefore, symbolic and material aspects are articulated. richmond points out that mystique also includes elaborating a particular technical language – such as jargon in art – whose decoding acts as discrimination of class identities since its content is often inaccessible to ordinary users, to non-specialists. this movement is yet another expedient in the historical relationship between the dominated and the oppressors. however, richmond avoids employing traditional marxist classifications. although he mentions marx and uses the 2 link to the itu report: https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/pages/pr-2021-11-29-factsfigures.aspx. link to the report on the un page: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/12/1106862. accessed on december 05, 2021 thiago costa – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 term “revolution” nine times throughout the book, at no point did the author admit to a more profound or structural political and social sense. instead, he preferred to adopt qualitative terms less laden with ideological connotations, such as “reform”, “change”, and even “radical transformation of society”. in reality, the canadian philosopher relies on the division elaborated by c. p. snow in his well-known work two cultures, published in 1959, in which the chemist and writer schematizes western history and thought utilizing two predominant, distinct and irreconcilable cultures, namely that of the natural sciences and that of the humanities. with c. p. snow, richmond intends to demonstrate that economic status does not determine social or caste status within the techno-scientific culture, nor does the expertise that defines the expert depend on formal, academic education since rich and poor alike are equated by identical inability and frustration in the handling of sophisticated computer technologies. thus, the dissatisfaction with computing instruments does not stem from a supposed natural intellectual inaptitude identified with particular social groups, nor from a timid and constrained individual posture. instead, the recognition of belonging to the “techno-elite” or the “techno-subjects” is more complex and nuanced. supported by snow, richmond says that the distinction arises from different conceptions of the world, that is, if guided by humanistic values – of attention to eminently human needs and, therefore, erratic and sensitive – or by a post-human ideal of behaviour, of aspiration to technical objectivity guided by the automation of behaviours and reflection, in which all criticism and objective knowledge are dismissed. the inclination between one or the other will determine the continuity of the human species. the programmatic sense with which richmond exposes the crisis of contemporaneity – the elimination of the human through the adoption of an automaton behaviour, based on an ideal of technical objectivity; and the annihilation of all truth content of knowledge and, thus, the elimination of knowledge itself – nevertheless maintains an optimistic character. alongside individual interaction as a means of acquiring indispensable technical knowledge, richmond proposes a return to the socratic method as an alternative to the monopolistic control of techno-scientific culture. only through democratic debate, accessible to all and open to dissent, would it be possible to establish an effectively humanistic system within the technopoly regime. in other words, by valorising liberties based on a “techno-plurality”. however, more than the mere democratization of equipment and access, it becomes fundamental to create self-management mechanisms to maintain the means and technological knowledge, that is, its popularization. unlike democratization, popularization allows the “techno-subjects” to assume – through dialogue and criticism – the individual and collective autonomy that is indispensable both for the interaction with technologies and to produce techno-scientific knowledge. the central question posed by richmond in his work consists, therefore, in the search for a form of democratic modelling of social institutions that can restore the material dimension of computer technology and, thus, of breaking the circularity of mystique. for the canadian philosopher, the most efficient administration of the knowledge economy must contemplate the plurality of perspectives and abilities and provide the free enterprise of criticism. with the radical transformation of society and managing information and/or computer technologies, knowledge is rescued, and humanity is preserved. microsoft word condeì† layout the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 41 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (7): 41-57 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access article article the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science1 mauro l. condé2 abstract: this paper aims to demonstrate that a qualitative change in the use of language to codify social practices and technological developments was an essential point in the construction of the so-called scientific revolution. in other words, alongside the social and technological settings developing in the european context from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, the pragmatic-linguistic codifications that emerged in this process were essential for the construction of modern science. the role of language in this process, which is understood from this pragmatic viewpoint, is called here the linguistic thesis on the scientific revolution. keyword: linguistic thesis; language and science; scientific revolution; modern science, wittgenstein received: 03 june 2019. reviewed: 03 october 2019. accepted: 20 november 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i7.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ what a copernicus or a darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view.3 ludwig wittgenstein introduction around the seventeenth century, the european way of life changed profoundly and with exponential implications that subsequently spread throughout the world. there were social, economic, political, and technological transformations so radical in this context that enabled the rise of modern science. in turn, science contributed enormously to the profound change 1 this article is based on an opening lecture held at the “1st school for the history of science” at the university of são paulo (usp), on july 23, 2018. i am very grateful to the organizing committee for the invitation, particularly to prof. dr. ivã gurgel (usp) and prof. dr. gildo magalhães (usp). 2 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br 3 “das eigentliche verdienst eines kopernicus oder darwin war nicht die entdeckung einer wahren theorie, sondern eines fruchtbaren neuen aspekts” (wittgenstein, 1980 [1977], 18). the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 42 in human knowledge, leading alexandre koyré to characterize this singular event as a “scientific revolution”.4 therefore, whether or not we give credence to the franco-russian historian of science’s statement about modern science as a radical break from the past, or accept the idea of a “continuous” and “progressive” transformation (duhem, crombie), or even an “evolution” (fleck) of knowledge as advocated by other authors, it is undeniable that the advent of modern science affects us to this day. in other words, it is a truism that the scientific revolution has indelibly changed human life. i assert, however, that the use of the expression “scientific revolution” does not necessarily advocate koyré’s thesis about this radical rupture, but is merely a useful “label” or rubric that has become usual and, in different ways, aggregated to this series of social, technological, and epistemological transformations that culminated in the construction of modern science. whether this change was an abrupt “revolution”, or a continually prepared “evolution”, is a matter of fact that has represented some “disruption” or “deflection” of the historical process and, as a consequence, created modern science. what would have caused this great transformation of knowledge in that context? in other words, what would have caused modern science? or the scientific revolution as characterized by koyré and his followers? admittedly, there were multiple factors, and in this sense, possibly, modern science was the result of this whole set of changes in the values and practices of the medieval world. would it be possible, however, to point out a determining factor or, at least, more prominently in conducting this process? did science develop intrinsically, or did factors external to it have a determining influence? these were issues addressed by the debate internalism versus externalism between the 1940s and 1960s.5 for authors labeled as externalists, such as edgar zilsel, social and technological factors – in the new economic context brought on by capitalism – allowed for the construction of modern science by uniting the practical knowledge of higher craftsmen (or artist-engineers) with the theoretical knowledge of philosophers and humanists (zilsel, 2000 [1994], 6).6 on the other hand, for koyré, labeled as the highest representative of internalism, such social and technological factors would be secondary and science would be the first and foremost result of a “metaphysical attitude” (koyré 1966 [1939], 13). since ancient greece, science would be essentially theoria (koyré 1973 [1966], 399). moreover, koyré argued that if technical elements were fundamental to the scientific revolution, it would have occurred with the roman engineers a thousand years earlier (koyré 1973 [1966], 75). in affirming the hegemony of the theory over technological and social issues, the franco-russian historian concludes that the invention of the clock, for example, was due much more to the ideas of scientists (galileo, newton, and huygens) than to the excellent work of artisans who manufactured this timepiece (koyré 1971 [1961], 354, 357). finally, for him, theory prevails over technique and social issues, which would have secondary contributions. a decisive point made here is that, to some extent, this debate between internalism and externalism, which sought to understand the foundation of modern science, did not reach a consensus – no matter how great the effort7 – because there is a lack of analysis of the issues concerning language use in that proper context. language is an essential element that provides more satisfactory answers as to understanding “how” modern science arose. although the question of language has already appeared in some interpretations on modern 4 according to shapin, “the phrase ‘the scientific revolution’ was not in common use before alexandre koyré gave it wider currency in 1939” (shapin 1996, 2). 5 shapin suggests the dates of this debate between the end of world war ii and the end of the cold war (shapin 1992, 333). 6 paolo rossi developed some essential aspects of the zilsel thesis in i filosofi e le macchine 1400-1700 (rossi 2009 [1962]). 7 in a sense, kuhn’s classic book, the structure of scientific revolutions, is a somewhat successful attempt to resolve this debate (kuhn 1970 [1962]). the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 43 science before the mid-twentieth century, indeed the historiography of science began to assimilate the issue of language with the developments of the so-called “linguistic turn”. for that purpose, it was especially important the philosophy of the later wittgenstein, as well as more categorical works that affirmed the relevance of social aspects in the construction of scientific knowledge.8 the later wittgenstein, especially in his philosophical investigations (2008 [1953]), is a central figure in the pragmatic approach of language. as regards to the assimilation of language in the historiography of science, the austrian philosopher was also a thinker with significant influence on kuhn (1970 [1962], 2000), and shapin and schaffer (1985). similarly, i will consider wittgenstein’s philosophy of language – with its notions of “language games” (sprachspiele), “form of life” (lebensform), and “grammar” (grammatik) (condé, 1998, 2004, 2018) – to propose a linguistic thesis for the scientific revolution. in other words, although authors such as kuhn, shapin and schaffer have already assimilated wittgenstein’s philosophy to understand the history of science, their results do not seem to have reached all possible implications, especially regarding to the advent of the modern scientific revolution. indeed, what i am trying to demonstrate is that, from the elements put forward by wittgenstein’s work, it is possible to deepen one’s understanding of what the scientific revolution was and, consequently, the production of scientific knowledge in and of itself. according to the linguistic thesis, starting from the interactions between social and new technologies in the context of emerging capitalism, as presented by zilsel, we can go further in understanding that the pragmatics of language played a very relevant role in the conduct and organization of this production process of our technical and theoretical knowledge of society and nature, as well as of the use we have made with this knowledge. in a sense, one can argue that modern science is the result of a new pragmatic linguistic order or a new codification of the process of knowledge production based on this social and technological context, uniting practical and theoretical knowledge, as postulated by zilsel. thus, the linguistic thesis can be an excellent instrument for assessing “how” engendered the elements are that made the scientific revolution possible. finally, it is important to acknowledge that understanding the active role of language codification in this process of scientific knowledge production is very important not only for its historical aspects, but also because the process of making science is still linguistically similar to what engendered the rise of modern science. considering how the scientific revolution produced knowledge allows us to understand how science has developed historically and, as a consequence, the linguistic thesis can also be an excellent instrument to understand the science of today. in aiming to understand the problem of language in the production of scientific knowledge, i will first analyze how some significant authors of the historiography of science understood the issue of language. then i will work on the idea of the linguistic thesis on the scientific revolution. by addressing the issue of language discussed by these authors, the purpose is not to approach their works as a whole – an impossible task for an article – but to delineate how the problem of language appears in the historiography of science. and, finally, i will develop the linguistic approach to understanding the scientific revolution. the problem of language in the historiography of science theses about the construction of modern science became recurrent in the twentieth century. several historians, sociologists, and philosophers have elaborated different theses as to what could have produced the scientific revolution in that context. however, even when they 8 although kuhn’s work gave more visibility to the social perspective in understanding scientific knowledge, this point was already defended by authors such as fleck, zilsel, hessen, grossman, etc. the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 44 made references to the issue of language, these authors did not place it as a central point in the process. if one analyzes the second half of the twentieth century, after the consolidation of the linguistic turn, one can see a development of language’s role in the historiography of science. language became progressively present in the analysis of scientific knowledge, although this movement does not appear to have reached all of its complexity yet. thus, throughout the twentieth century, authors such as burtt (1925), fleck (1935), kuhn (1962, 2000), and shapin and schaffer (1985) analyzed the issue of language. and clearly, one can see that while burtt and fleck cared about language, which they referenced in their writing before the linguistic turn, both did not feel the need for a more systematic treatment of it. they did not highlight language as a central tool for elucidating the production of scientific knowledge. subsequently, kuhn, and shapin and schaffer – already inserted in a context in which the linguistic turn was already present – made great strides towards clarifying the issue of language as an essential element in the construction of science. finally, all these authors, throughout the twentieth century, gave us excellent reasonings to think about the problem of language in the development of scientific knowledge, although, they have not yet achieved all the possible success in their analysis, especially concerning the advent of the scientific revolution. in what follows, i will address aspects of these abovementioned authors’ work regarding language so as to map how the issue of language has evolved in the historiography of science. from what they have already presented, we can go further to elucidate the role of language in the construction of scientific knowledge, especially concerning the episode of the scientific revolution. burtt and the language at the service of metaphysics already in the first half of the twentieth century, one can see explicit references to language in a classic text such as edwin burtt’s, the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science, edited in 1925. although burtt’s central thesis states that metaphysics (or the change from medieval to modern metaphysics) was the critical point in the construction of modern science, it is not very clear as to what he exactly means by metaphysics. unlike koyré, for whom metaphysics is linked to cartesian mathesis universalis or the platonic ideas that support the foundations of mathematics as the epicenter of the scientific revolution (condé 2017), in burtt, perhaps, one can understand metaphysics – almost in a cultural sense – virtually as a diffuse set of beliefs and values of a given historical period. thus, for burtt, modern science would be the result of this change of metaphysics or transformation of the beliefs of medieval society to those of modern society (burtt 1925, 2). according to burtt, medieval cosmological ideas would have been replaced with an ethical-social conception in which concepts such as “progress”, “control”, and the like (burtt 1925, 3) find their meaning when one follows the “metaphysical notions” of the modern thought. and this is how burtt concludes, similar to koyré’s position,9 that what happened at the beginning of modern science was a change of metaphysical conception of the natural world that transformed the thinking of medieval man into that of modern man (burtt 1925, 5). in other words, if we understand burtt’s notion of metaphysics as a set of beliefs, the changes in beliefs and the attitude toward them led to the need to develop a new understanding of the nature’s working. and something central to burtt’s conclusion is that it 9 besides having a broader notion of metaphysics than koyré, for burtt, metaphysics is a “scaffold” that provided the foundation of science and would have fulfilled its role after science arose. in contrast, koyré criticizes burtt and maintains that metaphysics is an element that remains present in science even after its consolidation (koyré 1971 [1961], 255). like koyré, burtt also referred to this metaphysical change as a “revolution” (burtt 1925, 16). the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 45 becomes necessary to use a new “language” and ideas to express this new metaphysics. “modern philosophers have been endeavouring to follow the ontological quest in terms of a relatively new background of language and a new undercurrent of ideas” (burtt 1925, 13). for him, the terminology of the medieval world no longer explained the modern world. therefore, with its new metaphysics, modern period (newton) has established precise mathematical meanings for concepts such as “force”, “mass”, “inertia”, as well as giving new meanings to old concepts such as “space”, “time”, “movement” (burtt 1925, 20). according to the author of the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science, this new language will define modern man’s new relations with the objects of his knowledge, which is very innovative for the year burtt is writing. however, shortly after, the role of language is reduced to metaphysics when he points out that the answers to modern scientific questions about space, time, and matter, and the new relationships to objects are what conclusively “constitute modern metaphysics” (burtt 1925, 21). we realize, therefore, that even though burtt has a place for language, he eventually understands it in the context of his metaphysical project. language is a simple adjunct to metaphysics. indeed, the questions about language as it will be consolidated in the linguistic turn were still very incipient in the context of the 1920s in which burtt wrote. fleck and the ordinary language versus logical language in fleck’s now-classic book, genesis and development of a scientific fact, edited in 1935, one can see several references to language. generally speaking, fleck attaches great importance to ordinary language in the production of scientific knowledge, opposing the logical language supported by the vienna circle, particularly by carnap. as a central point, for fleck, a logical and empirical language cannot be conceived without incorporating the social aspects (fleck 1979 [1935], 50, 177). long before the linguistic turn established the relationship between language and the pragmatic aspects of the social, fleck already understood that the relationship between these social aspects and language was paramount to the understanding of science. thus, unlike burtt, who exactly a decade earlier connected language to metaphysics, fleck related social elements and language to reach an adequate understanding of the production of scientific knowledge. according to the polish thinker, language and social practices unite the “thought collective” (denkkollektive) that produces knowledge or the “thought style” (denkstil) in a specific period. any kind of learning is connected with some tradition and society, and words and customs already suffice to form a collective bond. cognition is the most sociallyconditioned activity of man, and knowledge is the paramount social creation. the very structure of language presents a compelling philosophy characteristic of that community, and even a single word can represent a complex theory. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 42) in addition to attributing to the language this role of a unifying the “thought collective”, fleck asserts that language in itself has no meaning, but only in the context of knowledge production (thought collective) the meaning emerges. “word as such do not have fixed meanings. they acquire their most proper sense only in some context or field of science” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 53). moreover, language not only has an importance in the dynamics that will lead to the construction of concepts and theories (even if they are not eternal) that will unify the thought style in our thought collective, but, after the acceptation of a scientific theory, language continues to play a significant role in the process of consolidating science. language helps in forming the “system of opinion” or the “harmony the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 46 of illusion” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 27) to unify the scientific community. fleck asserts that “words which formerly were simple terms become slogans; sentences which once were simple statements become calls to battle” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 43). therefore, language is fundamental in the thought style’s creation by formulating its specific vocabulary – terminologies – which, from there, will help in the maintenance of science, stabilizing the thought style of a thought collective. a closer investigation of thought style and of the general social characteristics of thought collectives in their mutual relations can be made by concentrating upon stable thought collectives. such stable (or comparatively stable) thought communities, like other organized communes, cultivate a certain exclusiveness both formally and in content. a thought commune becomes isolated formally, but also absolutely bonded together, through statutory and customary arrangements, sometimes a separate language, or at least special terminology. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 103) more than unite the thought collective internally (intracollective), language is one of the crucial elements for connecting different thought styles (intercollective) and even different historical periods, thus establishing a tradition in the production of knowledge. concepts or notions that fleck calls “proto-ideas” or “pre-ideas” in language (fleck, 1979 [1935], 23, 26) pass through different thought styles over time, such as the ideas of syphilis or atoms. for fleck, language is thus a connecting link running through different thought styles. “whether we like it or not, we can never sever our links with the past, complete with all its errors. it survives in accepted concepts, in the presentation of problems, in the syllabus of formal education, in everyday life, as well as in language and institutions” (fleck, 1979 [1935], 20). with this ability to transit between different collectives, language is not only the element that unites a collective or connects it to other thought collectives (or other thought styles), but it has the plasticity to reshape or create new meanings when these concepts migrate or circulate among different thought collectives (interkollektiven denkverkehr). words as such constitute a special medium of intercollective communication. since all words bear a more or less distinctive coloring conforming to a given thought style, a character which changes during the passage from one collective to the next, they always undergo a certain change in their meaning as they circulate intercollectively. one could compare the meaning of the words “force”, “energy”, or “experiment” for a physicist, a philologist, or a sportsman. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 109) finally, for fleck, language plays a crucial role in the final constitution of what is considered a scientific fact or what is understood by scientific objectivity. this tendency to reify and objectivize the conceptual creations of scientific thought arises, as has already been described, during the migration of ideas throughout the collective and is inseparably bound up with it. graduated in several steps, it begins with statements by different scientists as well as the historical development of a problem, so that it becomes depersonalized. special expressions or “technical terms” are introduced. to these are added special symbols and possibly a whole sign language such as is used in chemistry, mathematics, or symbolic logic. such a lifeless language guarantees fixed meanings for concepts, rendering them static and absolute. (fleck, 1979 [1935], 144) however, although fleck had excellent and innovative ideas about language in the construction of scientific knowledge, the author of genesis and development of a scientific fact did not think that he should do a better systematization of language or create a type of the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 47 language theory that could highlight the real role of language in science production. he believed that the simple understanding of natural language (as opposed to logical language) in this process of science production would solve the problem of knowledge. in a way, the separation between “context of discovery” versus “context of justification” presented by the neopositivist philosopher hans reichenbach (1938), shortly after fleck’s work appeared, would include sociological and linguistic remarks about science in the field of the “context of discovery”. all the same, this was perhaps one of the factors (among many) to move fleck’s work away from the historiography of science for many years.10 almost three decades later, kuhn will revive fleck’s book, but unfortunately, the american philosopher will not give much value to the issue of language as proposed by the polish thinker, assimilating only the social aspect present in the production of scientific knowledge (kuhn, 1970 [1962] vii). kuhn and the lexicon of science thomas kuhn incorporated aspects of the issue of language into his conception of the history of science already in his classic book, the structure of scientific revolutions, edited in 1962. there, albeit indirectly, some elements appear in this sense – in particular, in his references to wittgenstein (kuhn 1970 [1962], 44-45) in the chapter “the priority of paradigms” – but it will undoubtedly be with his later concept of lexicon that he will assume the full importance of language for understanding the process of producing scientific knowledge. thus, in his following texts, language occupies his interest progressively until his death in 1996. in 1995, kuhn stated: “much of my thoughts these days goes to language” (kuhn 2000, 259).11 in a pragmatic viewpoint, still strongly inspired by wittgenstein,12 for kuhn, the lexicon is precisely the way information about the language and the world is distributed in our interactions and representations of the world. unlike what he previously affirmed in his famous book; a scientific revolution would now be a “linguistic revolution” in which knowledge about nature comes with the language. as kuhn exemplifies in planck’s case, revolutions were accompanied by changes in the way in which terms like “motion” or “cell” attached to nature. in this example there was actually a change in the words themselves, one that highlights those features of the physical situation that the revolution had made prominent. when planck around 1909 was at last persuaded that discontinuity had come to stay, he switched to a vocabulary that has been standard since. previously he had ordinarily referred to the cell size ε as the energy “element”. now, in 1909, he began regularly to speak instead of the energy “quantum”. (kuhn 2000, 28) 10 ironically, it was in this reichenbach’s book that kuhn found the reference to fleck’s book (kuhn 1979, vii). 11 the importance of language in kuhn occurs progressively in the following texts: “what are scientific revolutions?”, “commensurability, comparability, communicability”, “possible worlds in history of science”, “the road since structure”, “the trouble with the historical philosophy of science” and “afterwords” from the book world changes: thomas kuhn and the nature of science, organized by paul horwich, in 1993. these texts appeared separately between 1982 and 1993 and are now part of the book the road since structure. from here, all references follow this edition (kuhn, 2000). 12 kuhn recognizes wittgenstein “recurrent role” in his “philosophical development” (kuhn 2000, 72), and makes many direct references to wittgenstein’s concepts, such as language games, form of life, and uses (kuhn 2000, 62, 63, 100, 244, 245). the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 48 in a sense, one can say that kuhn has moved towards a linguistic turn with which he has tried to solve old problems presented in his theory of science in the structure of scientific revolutions. according to this new linguistic viewpoint, unlike the idea of radical rupture between scientific concepts or worldviews associated with the notion of incommensurability of the paradigms shown in his book, the idea of scientific revolution should now be seen not as a radical rupture but as a change of language. the incommensurability would focus much more on difficulties between the language of different groups or between present and past scientific theories – now called lexicon by him stead of paradigms – than an impossible overlap between these groups, such as the idea of a gestalt switch made us believe (synthesized in the duck-rabbit gestalt figure), or even his conception of paradigm shift or scientific revolution. among the problems brought about by the concept of paradigm, perhaps one of the most important has been the need to answer the following question: how is one paradigm incommensurable with another, but still able to understand the other? it will be with the lexicon theory that kuhn will try to solve this problem. the incommensurability exists because these different groups build their vocabularies that give access to different possible worlds. “to possess a lexicon, a structured vocabulary, is to have access to the varied set of worlds which that lexicon can be used to describe” (kuhn 2000, 61). thus, the incommensurability between lexicons would no longer mean any overlap between them. what exists are varying degrees of linguistic differences. however, according to kuhn, understanding different lexicons requires not only a superficial translation of concepts from one area to another but an extension of a complete network of concepts from one area to another. this is not a process of “translation” (kuhn 2000, 59), but of “bilingualism” (kuhn 2000, 93, 238). in translation, to bring understanding from one area of knowledge to another, we organize the conceptual field from one area to another without necessarily both areas having a mutual understanding of all the nuances of the conceptual network of each lexicon. in bilingualism, the same individual dominates both lexicons. and, as the holder of this expertise, he or she understands the nuances of each lexicon. finally, in bilingualism – unlike translation – it is possible to reconstruct, from our lexicon, the foreign lexicon. kuhn, however, turns away from an entirely pragmatic perspective by approaching, at least, a metaphysical vocabulary. to make the connection between different lexicons possible, kuhn concludes that his theory presupposes the kantian notions of categories and ding an sich. “the position i am developing is a sort of post-darwinian kantianism. like the kantian categories, the lexicon supplies preconditions of possible experience” (kuhn 2000, 104). the kuhnian lexicon would, therefore, give the “conditions of possibility” to achieve knowledge of natural phenomena. this would make knowledge of the world to some extent dependent on human perception, but, as with kant, not completely (because they would rest on the ineffable). to be specific, kuhn further emphasizes his kantian position by postulating that what guarantees the possibility of change among lexicons is some kind of ding an sich. the north american philosopher states: “underlying all these processes of differentiation and change, there must, of course, be something permanent, fixed and stable. but, like kant’s ding an sich, it is ineffable, undescribable, undiscussible” (kuhn 2000, 104). kuhn, however, attempts to mitigate the metaphysical nature of the kantian concepts of categories and ding an sich by giving them historical and social aspects, “but lexical categories, unlike their kantian forebears, can and do change, both with time and with the passage from one community to another” (kuhn 2000, 104). nevertheless, this kantian position ultimately limits kuhn’s epistemology, since he does not ground them directly in the nature, social and technological contexts of knowledge production, but instead link them to the kantian metaphysics of the ineffable. in other words, kuhn advances to understand the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 49 language as an essential aspect in the production of scientific knowledge but fails to give his theory of lexicon a sufficiently pragmatic stance and ultimately resorts to a metaphysics of the ineffable, indescribable, and indisputable to justify it. shapin, schaffer and the experimental form of life after kuhn’s classic book, the structure of scientific revolutions, one of the most impactful books on the historiography of science was leviathan and the air-pump: hobbes, boyle and the experimental life by shapin and schaffer, edited in 1985. although the authors define the book as “an exercise in the sociology of scientific knowledge” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 15) linked to the “strong program” in different passages, they based the book’s proposal directly on wittgensteinian notions of “form of life” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 18, 20, 22) and “language games” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 49, 51, 67), thus taking an approach based on the pragmatism. by addressing this controversy between hobbes and boyle concerning the existence of the vacuum – in the epicenter of modern science in the seventeenth century – according to the authors, his intention was to understand the internal logic of the experimental “form of life”. according to shapin and schaffer, in his new experiments, boyle did not create an epistemology but established rules of procedure to teach the experimental philosopher how to deal with “practical matters of induction, hypothesizing, causal theorizing, and relating of matters of fact to their explanations” (shapin and schaffer, 1985, 49). in this way, boyle established an “experimental narrative” (shapin and schaffer, 1985, 63), that is to say, more than conducting his experiments, he created an experimental “language game” and an experimental “form of life” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 49, 51) which involves not only the production device of experiments in itself (the air pump mechanism), but all the social and linguistic (collective) developments necessary for the consolidation of science. indeed, to produce experimental knowledge, or to generate matter of facts, it is required to establish a set of conventions that are linguistic and social. only one experimental philosopher who accomplishes the experiment cannot validate a scientific fact. only the collective of members can provide recognition of a scientific fact. as a result, this validation is achieved through the linguistic and social rules of the collective. in other words, the fact is not only about performance, but “upon the assurance of the relevant community that they had been so performed” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 55). the uses of language obeying a convention, among other things, indicate whether an experimental philosopher takes part in a community (shapin and schaffer 1985, 70). therefore, linguistic and social practices define the members of the community. so more than “speak”, the members “act” in this collective according to its rules. following a wittgensteinian pragmatics viewpoint, the authors state: “the ultimate justification of convention does not take the form of verbalized rules. instead, the ‘justification’ of convention is the form of life: the total pattern of activities which includes discursive practices” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 52). to outline these collective social and linguistic practices of the new experimental form of life created by boyle, the authors of leviathan and the air-pump established three different concepts of technologies that, according to them, would be present in the process of scientific knowledge production. the three technologies are: “material technology”, “social technology” and “literary technology”. starting from the analysis of the controversy between boyle and hobbes about the air pump, the big science of the xvii century (shapin and schaffer 1985, 38), the authors define their three conceptions of technologies as follows: a material technology embedded in the construction and operation of the air-pump; a literary technology by means of which the phenomena produced by the pump were the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 50 made known to those who were not direct witnesses; and a social technology that incorporated the conventions experimental philosophers should use in dealing with each other and considering knowledge-claims. (shapin and schaffer 1985, 25) to this extent, more than material technology or material technical device (the air pump), literary technology, and social technology are, according to shapin and schaffer, essential “knowledge-producing tools” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 25). in other words, to produce science is equally important, along with the apparatus of material technology, the use of other technologies that establish the conventions upheld by the scientific community (social technology) and to define the mechanisms of transmission of scientific knowledge (literary technology). finally based on these technologies, they synthesize what was accomplished in the book: “we identify the technical, literary, and social practices whereby experimental matters of fact were to be generated, validated, and formed into bases for consensus. (…) we discuss the social and linguistic practices boyle recommended to experimentalists” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 18). one can realize that similarly to fleck and kuhn, they affirm the interconnection between linguistic and social practices for the definition of scientific knowledge. beyond producing the air pump with its material technology, the role of literary technology was to help create an experimental community. for the authors of leviathan and the air-pump, “boyle’s literary technology dramatized the social relations proper to a community of experimental philosophers. only by establishing right rules of discourse could matters of fact be generated and defended” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 69). the “rules of discourse” set out the language and practice to be followed by members belonging to the community or experimental form of life. in this sense, for the authors, hobbes and boyle, in following different rules of discourse, belonged to two different forms of life. thus, they followed different literary technologies in considering the air pump experiment. as the authors point out by analyzing hobbes and boyle concerning the air pump, the difference between hobbes and boyle on cohesion was not, therefore, a difference in mechanism or a difference in their attitudes towards the horror vacui: both embraced the former and abominated the latter. it was a difference in conceptions of proper speech about such phenomena, and, therefore, a difference in exemplifying how the natural philosopher was to go on. (shapin and schaffer 1985, 91) as in fleck and kuhn, one can see that, for shapin and schaffer, knowledge takes place in a community or a collective (shapin and schaffer 1985, 56) being linguistic and social. however, rather than stressing the linguistic and social character of knowledge, at the conclusion of the book, shapin and schaffer go in the other direction by stating that knowledge is eminently political. regardless of whether boyle was considered by several historians of science as the father of the experimental life, for shapin and schaffer, this would not be the point in the history of science they sought to make. for them, rather than being exclusively scientific, “the solution of the problem of knowledge is political” (shapin and schaffer, 1985, 342). boyle’s new scientific proposal would share, according to the authors, with the new political order instituted by the “restoration” of monarchical power, the same form of life that supported the ideal of an open and liberal society. this new political organization should also be the space for building the then nascent science. the laboratory, like the space for the construction of useful knowledge, belonged to the same order brought about by political restoration. the authors end the book by concluding: “we put ourselves in a position to realize that it is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know. knowledge, as much as the state, is the product of human action” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 344). the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 51 however, by defending this political position – beyond the linguistic and social aspects in their interaction with the material technology for the production of facts – the authors ended up turning to epistemological relativism in which the criterion of fact production becomes ultimately political. the political instance would define whether knowledge is validated or not. “the form of life in which we make our scientific knowledge will stand or fall with the way we order our affair in the state” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 344). prominent authors like thomas kuhn have criticized this relativist shift that, by overemphasizing the political aspect, would be downplaying nature’s role in the process of producing scientific knowledge.13 although it is not my aim to criticize this fantastic book and only draw attention to the issue of the language it presents, i would like to reiterate a point. indeed, the political aspect can be an instance that inhibits or stimulates the production of scientific knowledge, thus political elements are a “necessary condition”, but not a “sufficient condition” for the production of knowledge. these sufficient conditions, as the authors also demonstrated, are in the social and linguistic practices that create the material technology for understanding the interactions between mankind and nature. finally, these experimental language games would be the epistemological parameters for the definition of knowledge, and not political language games, even though the two have, to use a wittgensteinian expression, “family resemblances” (wittgenstein 2008 [1953] §§ 67, 77, 108). the grammar of the scientific revolution the linguistic thesis on the scientific revolution seeks to affirm that language, understood in its pragmatic conception – especially from the perspective of the later wittgenstein – was a crucial element that enabled the production of scientific knowledge in the scientific revolution. in other words, language began to play a coordinating role in the processes of production of the new technological know-how and social orders presented by emerging capitalism. this new role of language has enhanced the dialogue between techniques and theory – also modifying the theory itself. the theory thus starts to ground the scientific practices – reciprocally anchored in these techniques and social orders – finally establishing the modern scientific revolution. as i tried to demonstrate from the authors analyzed, language has been progressively incorporated by the historiography of science since it became an academic discipline. we can learn from burtt – regardless of his metaphysical project – that language plays a vital role in the way we organize our objects, whether technical or scientific, even though burtt privileges scientific objects with a metaphysical halo. we have seen with fleck that it is practically impossible to dissociate language from the social in the production of scientific knowledge. we only do science, among other material assumptions, from a social context using language to create and express concepts and theories, and one consolidates scientific practices by the specific terminologies that language provides us. along the same lines, according to kuhn, we only know the world because we establish the use of language for it. that is to say, we create a lexicon from where we interpret it. in the scientific lexicon, information about language and the world is distributed in our interactions and representations of the world. for kuhn, we only access the world from our lexicon. in the same vein, shapin and schaffer reinforce the idea that knowledge is social and to be accepted as a product of the collective, it is necessary to use social and literary technologies, such as certain language games (which are social and linguistic), beyond of scientific artifacts themselves, or what they call material 13 kuhn’s criticism appears in “the trouble with the historical philosophy of science” (kuhn 2000 [1992], 105-120). the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 52 technology. finally, i remarked that wittgenstein’s influence was a huge presence in kuhn’s analysis as well as in shapin and schaffer’s book. in understanding the role of language as presented, in what follows, based on the later wittgenstein, i will seek to address more specifically the issue of language in the advent of the scientific revolution. the point is not to show historically how a particular scientist – or scientific theory – in the early days of science established scientific knowledge or created a scientific community, but to understand the epistemological – and not precisely historical – process of the scientific knowledge production in that context. therefore, seeking a possible “origin” of modern science is not about establishing the historical “ground zero” of this event, but about attempting to understand it epistemologically as a mechanism of production of knowledge as such in that context of the emerging capitalist society that led to the scientific revolution. in analogy to charles darwin’s use of the word “origins”, in his the origins of species, where the celebrated british scientist does not seek to find the “ground zero” of evolution but to understand the mechanism of “speciation” that generates or originates a new species. thus, i am trying epistemologically to recognize the device that creates a new process of knowledge production that took place between the world of medieval man and that of modern man. as in shapin and schaffer, and partly in kuhn, the assumption here is that the construction of modern science constituted a new form of life (a lexicon for kuhn or thought style according to fleck), specifically, an experimental form of life, as the authors of leviathan and the air-pump established, or one could say a scientific form of life. in other words, my goal is to understand, from an epistemological viewpoint, the assumptions of the advent of modern science or how a pre-scientific society starts – from the late middle ages – to create the mechanisms to constitute itself as a scientific society. in the authors analyzed above, this question about the epistemological device in the advent of modern science appears partially, since they sought to analyze how science was historically done in its early days and not necessarily how, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was structured the mechanism of knowledge production that drove to modern science. in other words, in interpreting the history of science, they highlighted how science worked considering social and linguistic aspects, but they are not necessarily looking for the mechanism that constructed science, in terms similar to those discussed by zilsel and koyré, when these authors try to explain what produced the scientific revolution. therefore, the aim here is to use the linguistic approach – already partially developed by the authors treated above – to answer the question directly about the scientific revolution or the advent of modern science as posed by the internalism versus externalism debate. according to the zilsel thesis (zilsel 2000 [1994], 6), as mentioned earlier, the social and economic conditions brought by capitalism, by presenting new values such as individualism, competition, profit, etc., created an environment that allowed the approximation of practical knowledge of higher craftsmen or artist-engineers to theoretical knowledge of academics philosophers (in addition to humanists). this union of the artisans’ practical knowledge to the academics’ methodology made possible, according to zilsel, the construction of modern science. from the wittgenstein’s linguistic viewpoint, we could further argue that this confluence between technical and theoretical knowledge in this society enabled not only social and technological developments (by turning technique into technology), but it also established epistemological developments by generating theories about nature, improved experimental technical apparatus and finally created the science. unfortunately, however, zilsel did not stress the importance of language in this process. as a consequence, in the historiography of science, metaphysical theses such as those of koyré and burtt became prioritized to explain the scientific revolution. to understand how language is linked with the zilsel thesis, we need to look at some developments of this thesis. for this philosopher and historian of science, the new the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 53 production system of capitalism, rather than prioritizing the production of war artifacts, was widely used in the production of varied artifacts and goods consumption, which was unlike other socio-economic contexts, such as in the roman empire, for example (zilsel 2000 [1942], 8-9). this reorientation of the technical output in this new scenario also implied more and more social and economic transformations that gradually changed medieval society. there was significant growth in new techniques that brought about major social implications. if we seek to see the linguistic thesis connect to the zilsel thesis, one can see that this complexification of techniques in this new social order also presented new pragmatic and linguistic rules that significantly modified the very social structures. in other words, new language games have emerged because these new techniques and their different uses have come to imply the construction not only of new technical devices with their new terminologies but their applications in the newly emerging social settings. in wittgensteinian terms, it was the establishment of new and varied language games in this emergent form of life, or, as one can say, the constitution of a “grammar of knowledge”. in that environment there were favorable conditions – which possibly rested on imponderable historical constraints – that brought about a new technical knowledge. this development was in opposition to the traditional medieval culture that was hitherto predominant. although this medieval knowledge was based on traditional practices and customs, it did not have systematic and written methodologies in its formulation and transmission. and, of course, there was not a stimulus for this purpose. unlike medieval society, in early capitalism, the new techniques were formulated and codified in treatises and manuals with specific terminologies and uses, and could thus be transmitted and reproduced in different places, thereby solving local and cross-border problems. putting it in another way, these new “technical language games”, unlike traditional knowledge, constituted a new grammar of knowledge, specifically, a new set of social, linguistic, and pragmatic rules (grammar) that, more than the technical devices itself, changed the social conditions of its surroundings. for the author of philosophical investigations, grammar is this set of rules for the use of words in specific contexts of actions and social interactions, thus being more than mere linguistic rules, rules of behavior.14 therefore, for wittgenstein, the rules that make up our grammar come from our “patterns” of behavior, our habits, customs, and institutions (wittgenstein 2008 [1953], §§ 142, 199, 202, 226, 227). when we understand the rule as the product of a language game, we can conclude by the operative character of the rule. following a rule is an operation – this is the pragmatic character of the rule. according to wittgenstein, grammar is this set of rules, uses, and language games based on a form of life. it is in this sense that, based on these technical and social language games, the modern scientific culture will be constituted. science will be set up as a new grammar of knowledge or a new form of life, notably, under the social and technological conditions from the xv to xvii centuries, we will find the presuppositions for the constitution of the grammar of the scientific revolution. to sum up, from the end of the medieval period, the new scenario brought by capitalism made possible a new grammar of behaviors, habits, customs, and institutions in which the new techniques that emerged created new technical language games leading to more and more new social uses for them. in other words, in that context, the more one has the development of new techniques – and later the technology and science in itself – the 14 in his philosophical investigations, wittgenstein distinguishes two levels of grammar: “surface grammar” (oberflachengrammatik) and “depth grammar” (tiefengrammatik) (wittgenstein 2008 [1953], § 664). surface grammar addresses the specific characteristics of expressions without regard to the general grammatical and social context in which these expressions are generated. on the other hand, depth grammar is a grammar in which the rules of language are engendered in its relation to the whole set of social, linguistic, behavioral rules. the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 54 more exponentially one saw the creation of new language games that gradually allowed for the development of institutions and theories necessary for the construction of modern science. more than producing new techniques impacting society, in this new context, devices were also created to transmit this knowledge. it is a period in which technical manuals proliferate (rossi 2009 [1962], 37-40). the treatises brought new terminologies, new uses, and new social implications. finally, new language games were constituted by sponsoring the new social orders – which reciprocally demanded new techniques – that would virtually form modern society. thus, one can argue, in wittgensteinian terms, that these new technical language games constituted a new grammar of knowledge. at some point, the traditional epistemological conceptions themselves would be affected by this movement, which would become the basis to creation of modern science – of course, science itself went beyond these technical, social and technological aspects (but the most very high theoretical aspects are also the fruit of the same grammar). an essential point to understanding the relevance of these new technical language games in the construction of this grammar of knowledge (form of life), which developed from the renaissance, is the analysis of the issue of technique (art) as imitatio naturae (imitation of nature) or the relationship between art and nature. the renaissance built a new perspective on this issue that could be analyzed, in wittgensteinian terms, as a new grammatical consideration (grammatische betrachtung) (wittgenstein 2008 [1953] § 90), or the creation of the new grammar of knowledge. according to the aristotelian view, in the ancient and medieval world, techné (art) or art (ars) was conceived as the imitation of nature. it was the “artificial” by imitation of the “natural”, particularly, the human constructs as a copy of nature. however, in the renaissance, with the accumulation of these new techniques, this issue will change completely. the technique will no longer be a copy of nature (rossi 2009 [1962], 145-152). this process can be understood, according to the grammar of knowledge, as a type of “autonomy of technique” over the simple exercise of imitating nature. understanding this process of autonomy of technique as a grammatical consideration means that there was a change in the set of rules within the technical language games. these new techniques now serve many social and economic purposes that do not necessarily have as their central assumption the imitation of nature. although nature could be the source of inspiration and ultimately the very limits of what can be done, this accumulation of new techniques and their social implications has shown that it is possible to engender these new technical rules (grammar) without being an imitation of nature. these new technical language games, as social devices, had in themselves their own logic and purposes. in other words, it is possible to have rules that copy nature, but also rules that do not imitate nature and yet can have consistency and are capable of expressing and transforming their surroundings with different social modulations. finally, techniques are not just the imitation of nature, but also the imitation (adequacy) of society. not all technical and social interaction would need to be based on the aristotelian postulate of imitation of nature; so it was possible to codify technical processes that had, as their specific purposes, to enable social and linguistic (pragmatic) interactions as an autonomous system, or at least only secondarily so as to keep their references to nature. from this viewpoint, beyond imitatio naturae, the new techniques simulate the social structures that promote them. like the social, the techniques as products of this society are ruled structures (grammar), thus showing their condition as language games. it is in this sense that technique is constituted as an extension of the social. a rule (technical, social or linguistic) can only have a meaning and therefore be effective if it is inserted within the context of a social praxis. in this sense, a technique is a linguistic and social extension. indeed, a technical device created by this society only makes sense if it reflects the linguistic and social rules of that society. any technical object is invested by the grammar of the society the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 55 that created it. just as grammar is a social product, a technique is also a social product that is governed by the rules of the society that created it. based on this crucial point, it follows that grammar – as a set of linguistic, social, material and behavioral rules as a whole – establishes a social convention which, by emerging in the “rough ground” (wittgenstein 2008 [1953] § 107) of these social practices, could be different if this praxis were otherwise (or could be changed from one society or a form of life to another). rules make up our grammar come from our “patterns” of behavior, our habits, customs, and institutions (wittgenstein 2008 [1953], §§ 142, 199, 202, 226, 227). in ancient and medieval societies, the rules for the construction of technical devices were simple because their social demands and the possibilities of their institutions were also simple. these were relatively simple societies. therefore, there was not a higher degree of social complexity in these contexts, which would allow them to develop their techniques. if the technique reflects the society that created it, then noncomplex societies tend to develop simple techniques, whereas complex societies tend to produce sophisticated techniques. not only is technique a language that reflects the society that created it, but the language in itself – which orders social and technical processes – that is also a technique. “to understand a language means to be master of a technique” (wittgenstein 2008 [1953], § 199). in this sense, language games and grammar are not a type of natural metaphor or imitatio naturae. they are not a simulacrum of nature. they are an expression of human action, to be specific, the linguistic metaphor of “grammar”, as a set of language games and their rules, hold the idea that language (by its plasticity) is not a simple representation of nature (although it need to place oneself within the limits of nature), but an expression of human creative activity in its interaction with nature. therefore, one can conclude that modern science arose when modern society was able to create more and more complex social and technical rules that were not necessarily limited to be a copy of nature. the development of technique allowed us to move from the idea of a “natural man” to an “artificial man”. as an artificial being, humans are governed not only by their biological nature (natural being) but by their social behavior. in short, modern science arose because the modern man was able to create new social, technological, and linguistic rules in the new context presented by capitalism, which reached a level of complexity that placed the idea of imitatio naturae in the background. in other words, modern science arose when society was able to create complex rules of social behavior and produce a knowledge of the world that was not the mirror of nature (imitatio naturae), but rather reproduced by society itself in interaction with its environment. finally, modern science arose when a new grammar was created with its different and varied language games. the notion of grammar promotes the understanding of language from a different perspective than the traditional conception of language based on an idea of representation or copy of nature. from the viewpoint of grammar, there is now a social (collective) “interaction” of mankind with nature. this position promotes a breaking of the aristotelian and kantian grammar of categorization, thereby establishing a new “grammatical consideration” (wittgenstein, 2008 [1953] § 90) or a new point of view (neuen aspekts) (wittgenstein, 1980 [1977], 18). the main point is no longer about building categories, as kuhn wanted by rehabilitating kant’s ideas, but about “following the rules of the language game” (wittgenstein 2008 [1953] § 206) in the form of life. following the rules, allows us to understand the grammar that connects us to the world. based on the idea of grammar explained above, we can finally contest koyré’s metaphysical statements about the scientific revolution. as aforementioned, for the francorussian historian of science, since ancient greece, science is mostly theory and, if technical elements were essential to the scientific revolution, it would have occurred with the roman engineers a thousand years earlier. according to the grammar of knowledge, one may argue the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 56 that the romans could not develop science because the technical and social devices at that time would hardly have evolved enough to reach the scientific thought. roman society did not constitute a form of life developing the technique and its social implications to the point of creating science. consequently, the romans failed to produce a scientific or experimental form of life. modern science arose because modern society was able to create a new social and technological grammar that gave solid foundations to this process. modern society has reached a high level of complexity in its rules (material, behavioral, and linguistic). these rules (social and technical) did not exist in the roman empire. indeed, science is much more than technique or technology having important social, material, and theoretical aspects, – although, ultimately, the theory itself is the product of this grammar of knowledge. however, for grammar and its language games, all these aspects (social, technological, material and theoretical) work together. in this way, one can conceive that the confluence of practical and theoretical knowledge, as pointed out by the zilsel thesis, brought about the advent of science. conclusion this article sought to demonstrate the importance of language in the construction of modern science, which is called the linguistic thesis about the scientific revolution. it is assumed that language, understood from a pragmatic perspective, provide us with useful elements to understand how the confluence of practical knowledge from the craftsmen and artistengineers, and the theoretical knowledge of the philosophers – as pointed out by the zilsel thesis – made possible the advent of modern science. following its purposes, the article analyzed how the historiography of science worked the problem of language. in the next instance, the pragmatic approach was developed, especially from a wittgensteinian viewpoint, as an instrument for understanding the scientific revolution. finally, the article sought to demonstrate that with a linguistic reinforcement of the notion of grammar, the zilsel thesis is an excellent tool against metaphysical theses about the scientific revolution as defended by historians, such as koyré or burtt. references condé, mauro l. 2018. a gramática da história. intelligere (6):1-10. condé, mauro l. 2017. the philosopher and the machine: philosophy of mathematics and history of science in alexandre koyré. in: raffaele pisano, joseph agassi and daria drozdova (eds.), hypotheses and perspectives in the history and philosophy of science. springer, pp. 43-62. condé, mauro l. 2004. as teias da razão: wittgenstein e a crise da racionalidade moderna. belo horizonte: argvmentvm. condé, mauro l. 1998. wittgenstein: linguagem e mundo. são paulo: annablume. fleck, ludwik. 1980 [1935]. entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschftlichen tatsache. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. fleck, ludwik. 1979 [1935]. genesis and development of a scientific fact. chicago: the university of chicago press. koyré, alexandre. 1966 [1939]. études galileennes. paris: hermann. koyré, alexandre. 1971 [1961]. études d’histoire de la pensée philosophique. paris: gallimard. koyré, alexandre. 1973 [1966]. étude d’histoire de la pensée scientifique. paris: gallimard. kuhn, thomas. 2000. the road since structure. chicago: the university of chicago. kuhn, thomas. 2000 [1992]. the trouble with the historical philosophy of science. in the road since structure. chicago: the university of chicago. the language of the scientific revolution: a linguistic thesis on the origins of the modern science mauro l. condé 57 kuhn, thomas. 1979. foreword. in: fleck, ludwik. genesis and development of a scientific fact. chicago: the university of chicago press. kuhn, thomas. 1970 [1962]. the structure of scientific revolution. chicago: the university of chicago press. reichenbach, hans. 1938. experience and prediction: an analysis of the foundations and the structure of knowledge. chicago: the university of chicago press. rossi, paolo. 2009 [1962]. i filosofi e le macchine 1400-1700. roma: feltrinelli. shapin, steve.; schaffer, simon. 1985. leviathan and the air-pump: hobbes, boyle and the experimental life. princeton: princeton university press. shapin, steve. 1992. discipline and bounding: the history and sociology of science as seen through the externalism-internalism debate. history of science (30): 333-369. shapin, steve. 1996. the scientific revolution. chicago: the university of chicago press. wittgenstein, ludwig. 19807 [1977]. culture and value [vermischte bemerkungen]. chicago: the university of chicago press. wittgenstein, ludwig. 2008 [1953]. philosophical investigations. malden, oxford, victoria: blackwell. zilsel, edgar. 1976. die socialen ursprünge der neutzeitlichen wissenschaft. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. zilsel, edgar. 2000 [1942]. the sociological roots of science. in: zilsel, e. the social origins of modern science. dordrecht, boston, london: kluwer academic publishers. edited by diederick raven, wolfgang krohn and robert cohen, dordrecht, boston, london: kluwer academic publishers. zilsel, edgar. 2000 [1994]. the social roots of science. in: zilsel, edgar. 2000. the social origins of modern science. dordrecht, boston, london: kluwer academic publishers. edited by diederick raven, wolfgang krohn and robert cohen, dordrecht, boston, london: kluwer academic publishers. microsoft word almeida layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-10 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3678-3161] abstract: historicity is a key epistemological component of the definition of “science” proposed by authors such as gaston bachelard, georges canguilhem and michel foucault, and partially accepted by the brazilian collective health builders. what we call the “historicity awareness” of collective health is the field’s recognition that there is no knowledge of health without history and that its history interferes with its results, with the conceptualization of its objects, its cognitive and technological practices, and the feasibility of its promises of enhancing the quality of life towards an equal society. this helps explain why humanities in general and history, in particular, are ubiquitous to health education, where they are known as health and medical humanities or, as is more usual in brazil, human and social sciences in health. they helped to imagine an equitable health care system of which the concrete manifestation, however imperfect, is the brazilian unified national health system, the sus. health humanities, medical humanities, and history of science and technology are all interdisciplinary fields that challenge historiography and theory of history to look beyond the borders of our normative understanding of the historian’s professional identity – which legitimacy is achieved through specific academic training – to properly evaluate the multiple expressions of society’s relationships and engagements with history and time. keywords: historicity; canguilhem; sigerist; collective health; health and medical humanities doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “collective health is a scientific field that contributes to the study of the process of health-disease-care as a social process in various groups and populations, concerned with geographical, historical and social distribution, and with the ways in which each society sets its demands on health and is organized to meet their needs in this field.” graduate course in collective health, faculty of medical sciences, unicamp. the epistemological history of brazilian collective health cannot be understood without reference to the political context of the american continent. between the 1950s and the 1970s, there was a series of coups against democratically elected governments in different 1 tiago santos almeida is an assistant professor and a postdoctoral researcher with a pnpd/capes grant of the graduate program in history at the federal university of goiás. he is also a visiting researcher in the institute of collective health at the universidade federal da bahia. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: tsalmeida@ufg.br historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 countries of latin america, leading to the establishment of dictatorial regimes aligned with u.s. economic and political interests, supported by local capitalists and the high ranks of the armed forces. it started in paraguay, in 1954. then, ten years later, came the coup in brazil. in the same decade, imperialism took over bolivia, peru, and argentina; in the 1970s, over chile and uruguay. beyond south america, governments of the dominican republic, haiti, panama, nicaragua, guatemala, el salvador, and honduras were also overthrown. constant in this process, yet another proof of the class nature of these regimes, was the persecution, violence and even the murder of politicians and militants from the democratic opposition, not necessarily marxists. and there were many forms of organized class resistance, from the construction of parties, unions and other clandestine organizations and movements to the guerrillas. from this context emerged among health workers and researchers, mainly associated with medical education, social medicine, preventive medicine, and epidemiology, a common struggle for democracy and the universal right to health. the sanitary reform movement is considered, by those inspired by gramsci, to be an expression of the political struggle and organization of specialized workers who attempt to understand and change social reality and sought to raise the class consciousness of the masses through the “sanitary consciousness”, following a leninist inspired revolutionary program: “damos el primer passo hacia la revolución socialista por el unico procedimiento posible, por la unica senda certera, a saber: por la senda de la república democrática” [we take the first step towards the socialist revolution by the only possible procedure, by the only right path, namely: by way of the democratic republic]. (lenin apud teixeira 1980, 24). according to gilberto hochman and everardo duarte nunes, collective health “was constructed historically by a number of individuals, groups and institutions in various areas of knowledge and professional practice, located both within brazil and outside it” (hochman and nunes 2015, 136). they listed a set of “individuals/actors who have contributed decisively, with ideas and actions, to the construction of the field”: juan césar garcía, samuel pessoa, ricardo bruno mendes gonçalves, rodolfo dos santos mascarenhas, cecilia donnangelo, izabel dos santos, guilherme rodrigues da silva, mário magalhães, walter leser, joaquim alberto cardoso de melo, maria cecília puntel de almeida, giovanni berlinguer, and hernán san martin. they collaborate or actively participated in the construction of collective health as a field of practices and knowledge of health and also of their workers and researchers’ organizations, such as cebes – brazilian center for health studies, in 1976, or abrasco – brazilian association of collective health, in 1979. they worked together with a transnational network formed by sergio arouca, juan césar garcía, miguel márquez, saul franco agudelo, asa cristina laurell, jaime breihl, everardo duarte nunes and susana belmartino, among many others that worked with paho – pan american health organization or participated in the construction of alames – latin american social medicine association, created in 1984, in ouro preto (mg), brazil. all democrats, some of them also socialists, there is no need to measure their individual levels of proximity or affiliation to marxism. for us, suffice it to say that they shared a conception du monde, as henri lefebvre would describe it, that made all the new concepts and theories thought by and for collective health to be measured by their degrees of historicity and by their potential to promote changes. considering historicity both as a concept and a “moral economy”, we capture the epistemological meaning and practical (many times technological) effects of the references to history in key concepts and theories of the field responsible for the education of the sanitarista, the worker of the brazilian unified national health system, the sistema único de saúde, the sus. we can see it in the very object of collective health, the conceito amplo de saúde [broad concept of health], a concept of health constructed at the 8th national health conference in 1986 (the first one to include historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 workers associations and leftist political organizations) and validated by the inclusion of the “right to health” in the 1988 constitution and the construction of the sus. 1 in its most comprehensive sense, health is the result of the conditions of nutrition, housing, education, salary, environment, work, transport, employment, leisure, freedom and right to the land and access to health services. it is, above all, the result of the forms of social organization of the production, which can create great inequalities in life. 2 health is not an abstract concept. it is defined in the historical context of a certain society and at a certain moment of its development, and it must be conquered by the population in its daily struggles. (comissão organizadora da 8ª conferência nacional de saúde 1986, 04) thinking in terms of what is called by lorraine daston (2017) “moral economies” and “epistemic virtues”, historicity is revaluated within certain theoretical constructs of collective health, especially those marked by the reference – as an epistemological basis of the concept of health – to george canguilhem’s le normal et le pathologique. canguilhemian historical epistemology and historiography of medical thought are at the foundations of an original theory of health according to which, for instance, the objective value of technology is also measured by its attention to the concrete social-historical conditions of the population (especially the poor and uninsured) and for its potential to change them for better. in short, for its potential to create new normativities. ricardo bruno mendes gonçalves described it as the “historically verified and socially meaningful capacity to institute vital norms”. the use of canguilhemian theories is both epistemic – historicity awareness becomes a way of knowing health, against the omnipotence of the biomedical perspective – and poiéticopraxeológico [poietic-praxeological], to quote francisco vázquez garcía, i.e., “con fines de creación, de transformación práctica del mundo” (garcía 2021, 37) [for creation, for the practical transformation of the world]. the readings and uses of le normal et le pathologique in latin-american medical theory, in the context of the sanitary reform, are both historical and historiographical evidence, evidence for a history of historicity in collective health. mendes gonçalves thought of himself as part of a “school of thought, research and educational practices” (something “less than a paradigm”, he said) whose initial concerns were raised by maria cecilia ferro donnangelo. the framework of the school’s collective project, he explained, was formed by four “concepts” or “rational categories” – historicity, sociality, structure, and totality – organized “inside and around” two “values that through those concepts eager for objectification”: confidence in the rationality of human beings, which he describes “as a power capable of reorganizing and reorienting their practical interventions in the world, in life, in society, in history, in knowledge”, and hope, understood “as an objective historical value for human beings”, meaning they “chose a path that pushes for the full realization of [their] values within the times of [their] individual lives and of the execution of [their] collective work” (mendes-gonçalves 1995, 139-140). in le normal et le pathologique, canguilhem argues that health is more than normal – from a biological, statistical, or psychic point of view. normality, in this all too narrow sense, produces health practices concerned only with preservation, incapable of helping the individuals to adapt to new situations imposed by their environment, a non-normative normality. for canguilhem, health is normativity, that is, the ability to create norms, the ability to remain normative in face of environmental infidelities, from both nature and society. in práticas de saúde e tecnologia: reflexões teóricas (1988), mendes gonçalves proposed a canguilhemian philosophy of technology, waging against what he considered to be the purely ideological nature of certain theoretical perspective that, addressing the “technological issue” with an emphasis on technical efficacy, reestablished health as “normality” – a supposed biological, natural entity – instead of “normativity” – a social, historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 historical process. mendes gonçalves condemned a priori any theory of technologies of health care that saw medical practice as “the model that contains a ‘professional’ using certain work instruments to perform a ‘diagnoses’ circumscribed to the ‘anatomicphysiological body’ of a ‘patient’ to whom is proposed a ‘therapeutic’” (mendes-gonçalves 2017, 219). collective health technologies should be intersubjective, patient-empowered, and oriented not to the past (restauration of the old normality) but to the future (creation of new normativities). thanks to historicity, mendes gonçalves gave shape to a new idea of health technology through which the concept of health may offer, “in rupture with all verbalisms, the proof of its validity”, as canguilhem (1994) once wrote, referring to the phenomenotechnical history of the concept of reflex movement, from books to laboratory to medical practice. mendes gonçalves long engagement with history (and not only medical history) resulted in a theory of health that expresses the epistemological function of technologies (their mutually creative interactions with the object of collective health) and its role as instruments for emancipation regarding inequalities in brazilian public health. “the fundamental basis of this possibility”, he said, “can be found in georges canguilhem’s o normal e o patológico [le normal et le pathologique]” (mendes-gonçalves 2017, 218). ligia maria vieira da silva, jairnilson paim and lilia blima schraiber, in a seminal article entitled “o que é saúde coletiva?” [what is collective health?], proposed a “theoretical framework” directly related to historicity. health, they say, “is linked to the structure of society through its economic and political-ideological instances, thus presenting a historicity”. health practices (promotion, prevention, rehabilitation etc.) “constitute a social practice and bring with them the influences of the relationship of social groups”. the object of collective health “is constructed within the limits of the biological and social and comprises the investigation of the determinants of the social production of diseases and the organization of health services and the study of historicity of knowledge and practices on those determinants”. still on this point, the authors say, “the interdisciplinary character of this object suggests an integration in the level of knowledge (...), bringing together professionals with multiple backgrounds”. then, the idea that health post-secondary education demands an attitude of permanent (and historical) criticism of “the successive projects and definitions of health practices that have emerged in capitalist countries and have influenced the reorganization of medical knowledge and the reformulation of models of healthcare” (vieira da silva, paim and schraiber 2014, 8). this attitude of historicity in the sanitarista is the result of a transformation in medical education that made history of medicine part of the theory of medicine, as henry sigerist, founder of modern medical historiography, always prescribed. in fact, we notice the reception of two great historiographic affiliations in theoretical texts that, in the 1970s, set in motion revolutionary changes in the medical education, thought and practices in latin america. the oldest, and closer to marxism, is the german-american school of medical history, that of sigerist, erwin ackerknecht, owsei tenkim, charles rosen, etc. the other is the so-called french school (“style” is more accurate, according to jean-françois braunstein) of epistemological history/historical epistemology, represented by georges canguilhem and michel foucault, who, not being marxists themselves, began to be read in latin america with the blessings of althusserism. in the works of juan césar garcía, cecilia donnangelo, and sergio arouca, canguilhem’s le normal et le pathologique is quoted from the 1971 argentine translation, from siglo xxi publishing house. dominique lecourt wrote a preface that, he says, is meant as a testimony of the “priceless theoretical debt” of the “marxist-leninist philosophers grouped around louis althusser” (lecourt 1971, vii) with the works of canguilhem, who was himself persona non grata in the french communist party. although not always recognized by medical historiography, which is more inclined to see the differences between the two schools (the french one being more often approximated to the polish school of ludwik fleck), sigerist’s works accompanied historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 canguilhem’s medical studies, teaching activities and publications since the late thirties. this is something often neglected by professional historiography, despite all the evidence provided by canguilhem himself since the 1940s. this is clearly seen in canguilhem’s medical thesis, from 1943, which would form the first part of le normal et le pathologique. it is an effect of canguilhem’s reading of the french translation of einführung in die medizin (1931), the most important work of sigerist’s european period, a handbook to medical students where all subjects are presented from a historical perspective. sigerist reappears already as the founder of the social history of medicine, and in the company of ackerknecht, at the last years of canguilhem’s professor career, in his courses on history of scientific and medical ideologies in the xix century, which resulted in the book idéologie et rationalité dans l’histoire des sciences de la vie, from 1977, when he was already retired from the sorbonne and had already left the direction of the institut d’histoire des sciences et des techniques. thus, sigerist’s investigations on the history of medical ideas and physiology and ackerknecht’s on the history of therapeutics and medical practices helped to form the historiographical basis of the concept of “medical ideology”, which must be understood as something different from the very french concept of “scientific ideology”: a theoretical distinction based not on the national accents of each concept but on canguilhem’s thesis on science and technique in medical epistemology.2 the many quotes from introduction à la médecine and the many praises paid to sigerist in lo normal y lo patológico (le normal et le pathologique) were not underestimated by latin american researchers, and it was common to find references to canguilhem and sigerist in texts now recognized as classics of collective health. nunes, who has important studies on sigerist, attentive to the reception of his work in latin american social medicine and collective health, especially in the works of garcía and mendes-gonçalves, says that the use of canguilhem and sigerist in mutual support served to the elaboration of a “theoretical [or conceptual] history of practice” and a “social history of practice” (nunes 2017, 119). it is not clear at this point if ackerknecht’s criticisms towards foucault on the history of the paris hospital were noted. however, through the articulation of these two great schools, the history of medicine became one of the components of the consolidation of collective health in brazilian universities, and historicity became a way of thinking medical education and epistemology of health. according to vieira da silva (2018, 63), cecilia donnangelo’s medicina e sociedade and garcía’s la educación médica en la américa latina “contained the theoretical elements necessary to cause the rupture that would later be consolidated with antônio sérgio de silva arouca’s thesis, o dilema preventivista, and with the brazilian sanitary reform project”. we have found in them direct and determinant references to canguilhem’s history and philosophy of medical thought. in donnangelo and arouca, we have also found references to foucault’s naissance de la clinique and to the manuscript of one of the conferences he presented, in 1974, at the institute of social medicine of the universidade do estado do rio de janeiro (ims-uerj) – three of them were translated and published twice each by paho journal educación médica y salud between 1976 and 1978, before being published in portuguese by roberto machado, in microfísica do poder. that was the starting point for my research. an exercise of epistemological history “desde nuestra américa” (from within our america), to say with marcela renée becerra batán, for me, it is also about facing an old question, the cognitive status of historicity3 and its role to the legitimation of scientific inquiry 2 for a detailed analysis on this, see (almeida 2018). 3 see also (condé 2017): “more than a history, science has historicity. science necessarily constitutes itself through a historical process not only chronological, that is, which takes place in time, but also in the sense that the very history of knowledge becomes a constitutive element of this knowledge and historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 (almeida 2018, 17), but from a new perspective. developed simultaneously at the faculty of history of the universidade federal de goiás (ppgh-ufg) and at the institute of collective health of the universidade federal da bahia (isc-ufba), my research on historicity as moral economy follows with different instruments – such as the geo-history of knowledge, as proposed by larissa alves de lira, the comparative approach to the history of humanities or, of course, daston’s historical epistemology – the lines of investigation opened by josé ricardo ayres in “georges canguilhem et la construction du domaine de la santé collective brésilienne”. it tends to focus on the uses of canguilhem and foucault in the history of brazilian collective health and, thanks to liliana santos (isc-ufba) decisive collaboration, on the actuality of their works to critically thinking on current subjects of the field concerning medical education, and technologies and epistemology of health. the actuality of canguilhem’s accidental philosophical contribution to the epistemology of collective health is summarized by silva, schraiber and mota in “the concept of collective health: contributions from social and historical critique of scientific production”: canguilhem’s (2012) definition of health seeks to understand how life has been lived, articulating everyday life with society’s rules. it seems to us to be the closest to our conception of what is a concept. it considers disease as prevented living with regard to the way life in society flows, that is, a practical (particular concrete) obstacle to the way in which, historically and socially, social relationships are occurring within the limited time and place; and health as permitted living that is living concretely exercised relative to that social normativity. thus, there is no definition of health or disease outside of social normativity, as a generic, universal abstract that is independent of social and historical reality. therefore, and at the same time, it is not possible to define health and disease only by considering the normal and the pathological based on the anatomical-functional irregularities of biomedicine. (silva, schraiber and mota 2019, 11) the first wave of the latin-american reception of canguilhem formed a style of historical reasoning to collective health shared by authors of theoretical works in the field, such as cecilia donnangelo, sergio arouca, ricardo bruno mendes gonçalves, naomar de almeida filho, ricardo lafetá novaes, sandra caponi, dina czeresnia, josé ricardo ayres, lilia blima schraiber, and many others from different teaching and research institutes, such as the ims-uerj, the sergio arouca national school of public health/fiocruz and the institute of collective health of the universidade federal da bahia, for example. perceived as products of a “school”, canguilhem’s lo normal y lo patológico (le normal et le pathologique) and foucault’s el nacimiento de la clínica (naissance de la clinique) helped not only to raise historicity awareness in social medicine, epidemiology, public health and preventive medicine, helping to pave the way for collective health, but also to create, within the health and medical humanities, a modernist, or futuristic historiographical style (see almeida, 2019) that, far from the eyes of historians’ professional identity, marks with a certain air de famille books as different as o dilema preventivista (arouca), danação da norma (machado et al) and epidemiologia e emancipação (ayres). according to ayres, his book reveals “the concern with the development of collective health” shared by those who look at it “from within” and at a moment of sudden transformation. “for a certain methodological affinity, and even for expressive thematic proximity”, he wrote, “let us begin the explanation of the epistemological perspective to be developed, taking as a starting point its relationship with the french school, the so-called historical epistemology” (ayres 1995, 28). and it was “to build rigorously and precisely an epistemology that is subsidiary to the canguilhemian-based historical epistemology” that, thus interferes with its final result. there is no knowledge without history, and its history interferes with its results: what i call the historicity of science here” (condé 2017, 21). historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 according to almeida filho, mendes-gonçalves “formulated this central hypothesis: the historical development of a body of abstract scientific knowledge occurs as a response to the need for a social practice that seeks to respond to concrete situations and problems” (almeida filho 2017, 18-19). this has everything to do with that “confidence in rationality” shared by the members of their school. critical investigation concerning the relations that modern societies established with the truth was one of the significant tasks undertaken by the historiography of science in the second half of the 20th century, in order to understand how certain discourses and practices that were producers, even if collaterally, of different forms of violence and inequities could be accepted as true, and, more important, to find out how to do things differently, without abandoning scientific reason. “in the history of science in france”, foucault wrote in the preface to the normal and the pathological, “what we are to examine essentially is a reason whose autonomy of structures carries with itself the history of dogmatisms and despotisms – a reason which, consequently, has the effect of emancipation only on the condition that it succeeds in freeing itself of itself” (foucault 1978, 24). to collective health, it meant the ability to reflect at the same time historically, epistemologically, and politically about the knowledge of health and healthcare practices socially adopted at the present moment. a unique way of incorporating history of medicine into the theory of medicine, which characterizes a certain form of critical take on norms, education, technology, and healthcare models in capitalist societies. a political gesture of those who, from within brazilian collective health, make a historical and epistemological critique of scientific rationality not to “relativize” it, but to put science and technology in the service of certain democratic and emancipatory values, to produce new healthcare practices and knowledge, to produce new normativities. since the 1980’s, the epistemological construction, academic institutionalization, educational policies, and curricula of the field of collective health are opened and constrained by the hinge effect between the sanitary reform movement and a long background of privatizing political reasoning towards public health. it is one of the many expressions of the capitalist nature of the 1964-1985 dictatorship and the 2016 coup against elected president dilma rousseff, which was followed by a fraudulent tribunal d’exception, only recently invalidated by the supreme court, to demoralize and criminalize the worker’s party (pt) and to arrest former president lula, who was on the road to a secure victory in the presidential elections of 2018. this led first to michel temer and later to jair messias bolsonaro, who together put under siege the sistema único de saúde. since constitutional amendment 95 was approved in december 2016, the federal budget for health has been decreasing more and more. in 2019 alone, the cuts of public investments in health care reached r$ 20 billion. in brazil, from january 2020 to november 2021, there have been 22.030.182 confirmed cases of covid-19 with more than 613.000 deaths, reported to world health organization. the real numbers are considerably higher. eyes on the brazilian unified national health system, collective health, today, goes through a painful experience of noncoincidence with itself, also a form of historicity awareness. if forty years ago historicity established as a moral economy to the knowledge of health and as the engine of brazilian collective health revolutionary impetus, now it has a more contained note which helps to maintain a reflective look at the field itself, a methodological precaution towards its promises but also its ideals and practices of rationality. looking from a historical standpoint at its own epistemological foundations and achievements in the face of the capitalist drive towards the production of health inequalities, collective health kept historicity entangled with confidence in rationality and with hope, the value that calls to action. “collective health on the move”, that was the tone of the 12th brazilian congress of collective health, in 2018, two years after the coup d’état, two years before the covid-19 pandemic: historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 these are troubled times in brazil’s history: political instability, legal uncertainty, economic crisis, a systematic assault on social and labor rights, public policies, and public universities, growing market privileges, and budget slashes (including in science and technology). the champions of this backward, nearsighted movement, which attempts to repeal the 1988 federal constitution and further oppress the underprivileged classes and social groups, are the same ones that have always opposed fairer income distribution and democratic progress in brazil. hope and despair are socially produced in tandem. (…) in order to rethink brazil, we need to reflect on the organization and practices of the health reform movement, representative organizations, and social movements as a whole. in recent years, the brazilian collective health association (abrasco) has based its action on this understanding, seeking to radically democratize the brazilian state and society, and thus our own association. inspired by the expression that “hope is in us... and in others”, we say that resistance and social changes will depend on the people, on our capacity for activism and collaboration. whatever the fate of the powers-thatbe, no matter how serious the country’s crisis, we must do our part to defend the sus, our proposals, the right to health, and public university. (campos 2018, 2) conclusion collective health is the product of the struggle of health workers and researchers for democracy and universal health care in latin america. the “collective health builders” are intellectual and political protagonists of the history of a health reform and of the creation of the brazilian unified national health system (sus). they were “men and women who, in different ways, thought, wrote, spoke, acted, organized, administered and essentially desired and imagined institutions, associations, policies and health systems which were more public, national, inclusive and egalitarian” (hochman and nunes 2015, 38). they also set the foundational stones of the “right to health” inscribed in the 1988 constitution, after the two decades period of dictatorship (1964-1985). as a field of scientific practices and knowledge, collective health is based on a nonbiomedical concept of health and rejects the idea of the hospital as the privileged locus of care. instead of a natural, biological concept, health is seen as geographically, socially, and historically determined, both as a scientific object and human value. collective health students should be critically informed about previous models of health care system, in order to exercise constant vigilance towards their own practices, and collective health technologies should be intersubjective, patient-empowered, and oriented not to the past (restauration of the old normality, prior to the disease) but to the future (creation of new normativities). and, as an objective way of knowing and intervening, brazilian collective health is not only compatible, but requires a moral economy: historicity. acknowledgments the first version of this paper was presented during the “colóquio de historiografia da ciência na américa latina [argentina – brasil – uruguai]”, in october 2021, hosted by the graduate program in history of the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg) and the graduate program in history of the federal university of goiás (ufg). i am very grateful to mauro condé and marlon salomon for the invitation and all colleagues who took part in the debates. the theme is strictly related to my postdoctoral teaching and research activities on theory of history, history of the humanities, and historiography of sciences at the graduate program in history [research line “ideas, knowledge and writings from (and in) history”] of the federal university of goiás, where i have been working with marlon salomon since 2018. furthermore, my research would not be pursued without the period as visiting historicity, historiography, and hope: the moral economy of health tiago santos almeida transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 researcher at the institute of collective health of the federal university of bahia (ufba). from this institution, i am most grateful to liliana santos, a new partner on historical epistemology and health and medical humanities, and also to my teaching colleagues isabela cardoso de matos pinto, claudia fell amado, joseane aparecida duarte, and emanuela almeida. references almeida, tiago santos. 2018. canguilhem e a gênese do possível. estudo sobre a historicização das ciências. são paulo: liber ars. almeida, tiago santos. 2019. sobre o papel da história na formação e transformação do pensamento médico. ponta de lança: revista eletrônica de história, memória & cultura 13 (25), 81-105. https://seer.ufs.br/index.php/pontadelanca/article/view/12965. almeida, tiago santos. 2019. erguendo barreiras contra o irracionalismo: história das ciências e diagnóstico da atualidade em gaston bachelard. tempo [online]. 25 (3): 715-736. disponível em: <https://doi.org/10.1590/tem-1980-542x2019v250310>. almeida filho, naomar de. 2017. por uma epistemologia bruniana: dilemas de um prefácio. in mendes-gonçalves, ricardo bruno. saúde, sociedade e história, edited by liliana santos e josé ricardo ayres, 15-38. são paulo: hucitec; 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scientific production. physis: revista de saúde coletiva, v. 29, n. 01. available from: <https://doi.org/10.1590/s0103-73312019290102>. teixeira, sonia fleury, 1980, reforma sanitária: em busca de uma teoria. 4th ed. rio de janeiro: abrasco – associação brasileira de saúde coletiva. vieira-da-silva, ligia maria. 2018. o campo da saúde coletiva. gênese, transformações e articulações com a reforma sanitária brasileira. salvador: ufba; rio de janeiro: editora fiocruz. vieira-da-silva, ligia maria; paim, jairnilson silva; schraiber, lilia blima. 2014. o que é saúde coletiva? in: paim, jairnilson silva; almeida-filho, naomar de (eds.). saúde coletiva: teoria e prática. rio de janeiro: medbooks. microsoft word machado layout 125 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (8): 125-133 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open access article article science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado1 abstract: in 1987, ernest coumet highlighted the presence of a “scientific revolution” in alexandre koyré’s works. when and where did the destruction of the cosmos and the geometrization of space materialize in the authors she studied? in what work do we find the “revolution” for which koyré is so well known? from unknown texts, at least in 1987, coumet pointed out concordances between koyré’s philosophy of historical knowledge and that of raymond aron – of weberian inspiration – affirming koyré’s famous concept of scientific revolution as “ideal type”. which means to say that, in the works of the author of from the closed world to the infinite universe, “revolution” is not a historical reality, but an interpretative horizon. however, a letter from koyré to aron discovered by us in the archives of this author, deposited in the bibliothèque nationale de france, shows us the unsustainability of coumet’s hypothesis. nevertheless, it seems to us that the great lesson of his singular hypothesis remains, that of the importance of not neglecting the conception of the history of those who focus on the past of the sciences. keywords: alexandre koyré; scientific revolution; conception of history; ernest coumet; german theory of history received: 2 february 2020. reviewed: 16 april 2020. accepted: 24 may 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.10 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ we would have started this article, certainly, stating an axiom if we were to state that the historian’s object, whatever it may be, is not disconnected from his conception of history; it is not possible to think of one without involuntarily thinking of the other; that the way we conceive history shows how we conceive an object that we believe is inserted in it. in fact, it is an idea that is part of historians’ topoi. however, when we apply them to the work of those who are interested or were interested in the history of science, of those who, more latently, thought of science in history, this commonplace becomes more obscure. in 1987, alexandre koyré, the most innovative historian of the sciences of the 20th century, according to pietro redondi, was the theme of a reflection. in pursuing unknown texts, ernest coumet 1 hallhane machado [orcid: 0000-0001-7120-8384] is a ph.d. candidate in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.69090, brazil. email: hallhane@gmail.com science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 126 pointed out concordances between koyré’s philosophy of historical knowledge and that of raymond aron – of weberian inspiration – affirming koyré’s touted concept of the scientific revolution as “ideal type”. it means, then, affirming that there is no, in the works of the author of from the closed world to the infinite universe”, “revolution” as a historical reality, but as an interpretive horizon. meanwhile, a letter from koyré to aron discovered by us in the archives of this author, collected in the bibliothèque nationale de france, points to the unsustainability of the hypothesis that resulted in la révolution scientifique, les révolutions et l’histoire des sciences : comment ernest coumet nous a libérés de l’héritage d’alexandre koyré [the scientific revolution, revolutions and history of sciences: how ernest coumet freed us from alexandre koyré’s heritage] (panza 2001). in this letter, koyré exposes his disapproval of “weber’s nominalism”. however, much more than showing why we were not freed – or better, why we could not be freed – from the koyrean heritage of scientific turnaround, it seems relevant to highlight the important lesson given by coumet’s singular hypothesis: the importance of not neglecting the conception of the history of those who dedicate themselves to studying the past of science. coumet’s controversy: alexandre koyré: la révolution scientifique introuvable? in a conference organized by pietro redondi, in 1986, addressed to alexandre koyré, the historian of the “scientific revolution” of the 16th and 17th centuries, professor and source of inspiration for thomas kuhn, coumet was ready to make an exhibition under the title alexandre koyré : la révolution scientifique introuvable ? “the more i read and reread alexandre koyré, the more i came across seemingly irreconcilable statements” (coumet 1987, 497). after all, how is the scientific revolution characterized in your work? any reader a little familiar with this classic in the history of science would answer that question deftly. these are two related points: the destruction of the cosmos and the geometry of space. here is a formula that has been reproduced countless times, consecrated by the professionalization of this field of history. it is, therefore, necessary, says coumet, to adhere to koyré’s method and question the evidence. effectively, “when and where does the characterization take place in the scientific revolution?” (coumet 1987, 499). in galileo and descartes? for coumet, koyré is very concerned about demonstrating his mistakes and failures. in galilean studies, he seems to be mainly concerned to point the galileo’s embarrassments, his relationship with powerful commonsense, with the idea of cosmos, to prove that he did not formulate the law of inertia, to point, in the second book of these studies, descartes’ excesses and failures and why he was unable to formulate the law of falling bodies. where is victory, the key to the revolution? it was certainly not consummated by them, says coumet. really, as koyré claims in the preface to his from the closed world to the infinite universe, in galilean studies, he built the “prehistory of the great revolution” (koyré 1986 [1957], 9), that occurs with newton, and not with galileo and descartes, considering that it has its end with the elaboration of the newtonian system. thus, coumet uses a koyré conference held in boston, in 1954, in which he affirms the instability and precariousness of the newtonian world, the strange alliance between euclid and atomism, the need for a god to support him. it is necessary, therefore, to add to the list of failures, in which the names of galileo and descartes, were already found, the name of newton. “the scientific revolution, far from adjusting to any historical work, does not appear clearly, but retreats as a poorly accessible horizon; in this first sense, would not the revolution be something impossible to find?” (coumet 1987, 502). it is not the objective here to answer the questions presented by coumet, certainly more numerous and complex than our brief analysis. they imply texts and distinct aspects of science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 127 koyré’s work that were only brought together due to simplification, which has required us to separate exposure. at the moment, we would just like to state that, in koyré’s, the scientific revolution is a process that cannot coincide with any specific work. “the spiritual change i described did not, of course, occur in a sudden mutation” (koyré 1986 [1957], 8). the mathematization of nature and the geometrization of space, that is, the revolution, can be seen in the formulation of the law of falling bodies, elaborated by galileo. they can also be identified in descartes’s errors that properly indicate an “excess” geometry in the explicit formulation of the law of inertia, developed by descartes and in newton’s “laws”. however, they do not absolutely coincide with any of these “laws” or scientific theories. koyré’s interest, since his historical studies on religious and mystical thought, has always been directed towards a “movement of ideas”, another pertinent synonym for “revolution”. but we do not want to construct another objection to coumet’s controversial discussion. those that have already been made conceal the originality of the next steps he took in an attempt to explain the absence of the “revolution” in koyré. “we assume that the characterization sets a program of historical investigation; well, is it really that? what is the statute of the characterization?” (coumet 1987, 503) for koyré, is it truly a framework of ideas, an underlying axiomatic ontology, as gérard jorland argues? does koyré actually indicate the existence, in the xvi and xvii centuries, of a new philosophical substructure in which galileo, descartes and newton were seated and pointed at it? in questioning the statute of characterization, coumet sought to understand a fundamental aspect of koyré’s work; the way in which he understood the historian’s work, the construction and the role of the concepts he employed in his analyzes, his way of conceiving the past and historical knowledge. it was not, in coumet, just a question of method, but also of content. and what was at stake was the concept for which koyré was, and still is, best known: the concept of the scientific revolution. if coumet was right, much of what has already been published about koyré should be reviewed and reworked. coumet’s sources if coumet regrets the lack of studies that privileges the historical theory and methodology admitted and practiced by koyré, if he seeks to advance in this direction, it is because there are unknown texts, at least in 1987, very suggestive, as witnessed by more recent works published in brazil, in france, and in italy. those are two reviews written by koyré, in 1930 and 1932, respectively, on dilthey, and the article “philosophy of history”, 1946, translated and published in brazil, in 2010. those are the texts that coumet refers to and he works on. “one of the most characteristic and most important features – at least for us – of the present moment in german philosophy is the growing influence of dilthey’s work and thought” (koyré 1930, 316). koyré does not hide his appreciation for the spread of the “fine and deep analyzes of the great philosopher historian”, for the “beautiful and penetrating” studies of dilthey, attentive author and “passionate about the nuances”, possessor of the esprit de finesse. for coumet, it is a self-portrait. we could not say that he is wrong. is it not for the nuances that koyré gives in to his studies due to the subtle changes in the meaning of the concepts and terms used by the authors that he addresses? is this not the movement, the “cheminement” of thought that he presents in his works? in fact, does he not call himself a little later, when he published his famous galilean studies, as a “philosopher historian”, as he did with dilthey, in 1930? the 1932 review is even more suggestive. regarding his work, we use the expression, used by himself, “critical of historical reason”. we, therefore, wanted to highlight historical affiliation and link dilthey to the kantian or neokantian movement. not without reason, without a doubt: is it not for science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 128 kant that all attempts at reflective analysis of the spirit finally lead us? and yet, it is not so much a “critique of historical reason”– despite his fine works on the a priori of the moral sciences (einleitung in die geisteswissenschaften, berlin 1868, der aufbau der geschichtlichen welt in den geisteswissenschaften, berlin 1910) – as well as a comprehensive analysis of man, his nature and his spirit, as he manifests himself and reveals himself in history, which dilthey had tried to constitute. in history: it is not an a priori analysis. it is not a question of analyzing, based on given spiritual phenomena (such as science, morals, art) its condition of possibility. it is about taking the man in his totality; it is about understanding it in your real being. now, what is a man, says dilthey, we only know from history, from experience. we only know what we are for what we were, we only know our possibilities for our achievements. (koyré 1932, 489) the koyré’s works, especially those cited by coumet, in which he discusses the changes in scientific thought perceptible in the theories of copernicus, galileo, descartes, and newton, always implies the refusal of an a priori, of a reason like kant, static, unable to change, immobile. koyré does not fixate on the description of a theory from which he affirms what thought is. it is not linked to a “victory” of reason, to achievement, to the elaboration of a formula. even looking at the constantly proclaimed “mathematical realism”, the mathematization of nature, and the geometry of space, koyré spends more than three hundred pages in his galilean studies to describe this philosophical posture of galileo and descartes. he describes in detail each change in the works of the authors he studies, each change in the meaning of the concepts at stake. this is the change, these are the changes that interest you most, not a “given spiritual phenomenon”. and what defines this interest in change? from a historical point of view, there is a notable reason: his interest in change is because he was living one. koyré looked at the copernican revolution stimulated by the revolutions of his century, brought about by new theories like those of einstein and heisenberg. at the beginning of the 20th century, the world had again, as in the period of the 17th-century scientific revolution, become uncertain (koyré 1937). for this reason, the importance of the history of science, of studies on a period as critical as the one he experienced, and what happened after the crisis. like dilthey, koyré believed, in this sense, in the need for history, the ground of achievements, to understand the possibilities in the face of the crisis of the 20th century. in other words, koyré believed that reason was only understood for the – and in – the historical development. it is not just this conviction about the importance of history for the understanding of man, nor the privilege of historical nuance over an a priori extracted from a particular scientific theory, that makes us understand coumet’s interest in this text by koyré. the author of galilean studies also asserts about dilthey that he thought that the human soul only revealed itself in and through its manifestations; that it was these manifestations of his life and activity that are called art, science, philosophy, which partially revealed to us the dark and fruitful background from which they came; he also knew that the “human soul” is only an abstraction and that it is only by analyzing and seeking to understand, implying a historical study, the objectified manifestations, and, for this very reason, the objective of his life, reviving in us the meaning of his historical incarnations that we can – by interpreting this sense – apprehend and understand certain aspects, certain attitudes and certain fundamental structures of the soul, which we can rediscover, starting from the real, some of its possibilities. possibilities, attitudes and soul structures, rather than the spirit, because dilthey, reacting against the excessive and one-sided spiritualization of a man, caused by rationalism, wanted to rediscover the concrete man, his concrete soul, soul that confusion, passion, “élan’’, as much – and even more – as spirit. he knew the science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 129 importance of the vital, the dark feelings; he knew that they formed the fund that nourished the highest productions of the spirit, a fund that was expressed in and by them, but that could never be completely spiritualized. this is also why the spirit could never fully penetrate it. he could not let go of his own background. that is why history, and only history, [...] could allow us to arrive at this knowledge of ourselves. (koyré 1932, 490) it is difficult to specify all the elements of this statement that make us think of koyré’s work, and, consequently, in his connection with dilthey, as pointed out by the book alexandre koyré in incognito, published in 2016, by paola zambelli, in which several excerpts and points of his work are taken up, suggesting the relationship at stake. we highlight, in a way, that koyré’s work which always valued and clarified this dark background that underlies the highest productions of the spirit. koyré’s work has always sought to clarify a background that is not rational, an area that logical thinking does not touch. therefore, it is only up to the historical description devoid of explanatory claims, but comprehensive, ready not to analyze it following the rules of a canon, but to embrace it in its intrinsic strangeness. this theoretical and methodological perspective of koyré is well known and is present in the principle of “unity of thought”, formulated by him in 1951. the theoretical-methodological perspective seems to indicate the “trans-scientific ideas” that underlie theories apparently based on the domain of sciences. it, therefore, indicates the communion between science, philosophy and religion. however, in addition to the collaboration between these domains of specific knowledge (collaboration affirmed and reaffirmed by historiography), this passage extracted from his review of dilthey makes us think of koyré’s insistence in underlining, in his works, “attitudes of the soul” or “aesthetic attitudes” – as opposed to attitudes of “spirit” – as synonyms of reason, logic. the greatest example of koyré’s insistence occurs when he endorses the work of erwin panofsky, in 1955, on galileo’s artistic tastes and the agreement with his position concerning the shape of the planets’ trajectories. from the book of that art historian, entitled galileo as a critic of the arts, koyré writes a text, esthetic attitude and scientific thinking, guaranteeing the influence of the galilean taste for the renaissance, for the purity and perfection of the circular shape, as a cause of galileo’s rejection of kepler’s ellipses. in this text, koyré criticizes historians for “excessive spiritualization”. he considers them defenders of pure rationalism, who ignored passages in which galileo was clearly haunted by the idea of circularity. when they believed that the man was just a spirit, logical reason, they did not perceive something that, for koyré, was before their eyes: galileo rejected the keplerian theory – which would help him in his battle for the defense of the copernican system – because he did not like the ellipse, rejected form by the renaissance. his artistic taste influenced the scientific theories he adopted, because “the ways of human thought are curious, unpredictable and illogical” (koyré 1973 [1955], 287). and similar to the way he describes dilthey, he concluded his text by stating that “purism is a dangerous thing. galileo’s example – by no means unique – shows that there is no need to exaggerate” (koyré 1973 [1955], 287). from this positioning of koyré, it is clear why coumet – like zambelli – paid attention to his texts on dilthey. however, the reviews in question represent only one of coumet’s sources, as another text is used in an attempt to explain koyré’s conception and historical method. this is the article “philosophy of history”. in this rich text, koyré emphasizes the historian’s work. succinct and clear, it gives the impression that he is talking more about his convictions than exposing other works on the subject, that is, the robert lenoble, louis halphen, raymond aron, and eric dardel’s works. one of the most discussed elements is the construction process used by the historian. science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 130 it is the historian, or at least, the historian’s outlook, that determines the order of the facts that are interesting or important to him. history presents itself to us as if it had been cut into slices. history is divided into stories. a division that is undoubtedly not arbitrary, or at least not completely, but which still remains subject to the security. indeed, no cut is necessary. it is very clear that it could be cut in another way. [...] how could it be different? the past is no longer. we are the ones who, in the continuous plot of time and space, remember the objects of our research. as aron rightly states; “the decisive moment of research in history is the definition of terms and the definition of concepts”. (koyré 2010 [1947], 51-52) still, on the fragility of knowledge about “what is not”, in another passage, he states: the knowledge, to reach the purpose that it wants, must adopt the structure of the domain of being that it seeks to apprehend. now, if the ontological structure of physical reality seems to start to be apprehended [...], something completely different occurs in what concerns the domain, much more complex, of life. and what about the realms of social and spiritual reality. the newton – or einstein – of history is yet to be born. [...] in addition, we ignore not only the ontological status of historical realities, which is why we often find ourselves faced with the impossibility of distinguishing them from abstractions or fictions, but we even ignore the natural cleavages of the discoveries where duhem saw precisely one of the tasks – and one of the main achievements – of science. (koyré 2010 [1947], 58-59) coumet points out that the most important parts of this text refer directly or indirectly to raymond aron, a scholar of dilthey, simmel, rickert and weber, as noted in la philosophie critique de l’histoire: essai sur une théorie allemande de l’histoire. they also indicate a concordance between his philosophy of historical knowledge and that of koyré. for coumet, that points to yet another agreement between the authors and what would be the main source of their perspectives: max weber. it is at this point that all his walk through the theory of german history admitted by koyré. for coumet, weber was the historian who most inspired our author’s historical theory and methodology, launching his hypothesis: the “characterization”, or the “scientific revolution”, would not it be a concept referring to a “historical real”, and for this, without an ontological basis and impossible to be discerned from abstractions or fictions? would not it be an “ideal type” of weber, a limit concept, understood as an abstraction, an interpretive horizon (coumet 1987, 513), and not as something that can be found in the 17th and 18th centuries as a historical reality? in that case, it would be in vain to look for the “where” and “when” of the scientific revolution described by koyré. the affiliation to weber would explain, for coumet, the apparent contradictions in the author’s works and the absence of a work in which the mentioned revolution would materialize. the weber’s theory would be, therefore, the main direction of his work – considering the importance of this concept in all his work from the 1930s onwards – essential for a coherent appreciation of his studies. for coumet, it is in german historical theory, which, unfortunately, the author outlines in a single block, which should be linked to the construction of all koyré’s work as a historian of the sciences. koyré and la philosophie critique de l’histoire in a letter from koyré written to raymond aron, probably in 1938, deposited in the fonds aron of the bibliothèque nationale de france, it is possible to identify that koyré was more than an author who set out to address aron’s complementary thesis, la philosophie critique de l’histoire. koyré was one of the authors to whom aron made a point of showing his work. science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 131 the letter is a critical review, it is a response from koyré, in which he describes his opinion on each chapter of this thesis, therefore speaking on dilthey, rickert, simmel, and weber respectively. [...] i want to tell you the impression i had reading your book: it is good, very good indeed. [...] i reread your chapter on dilthey – it’s good, and the systematization you give it does not go beyond the limits of what dilthey could have done. [...] your “rickert” seems to me to give you too much importance. [...] your “simmel” is good. your “weber”, very good. and yet, should i tell you? reading your book, i felt my admiration for weber dissolve. and the one that i still kept for dilthey definitely disappear. [...] it is certainly not your fault, on the contrary. [illegible] [...] separated from the concrete historical context, dilthey and weber’s considerations seem vague and, let’s say clearly, obscure! in dilthey, verstehen’s notion of life, of expression – all this is so obscure! [...] and yet, contrary to what you say, it is dilthey who seems to me to be right, and not weber. weber’s nominalism seems very easy to me and it does not match his practice at all, which, by the way, you indicate. now, it is in practice that a method is judged [...] i n fact, ideal type concepts are only valid – and provide something for the research and interpretation of history – when they are not arbitrarily placed concepts. (koyré, 1938)2 as noted in this letter written by koyré, coumet’s hypothesis is untenable. although koyré did, in fact, show interest and focus on german theorists in history, he was obviously not influenced by them. koyré criticized them, tried to position himself in relation to them. koyré showed respect for some more than others, two above all, weber and dilthey, but he clearly differentiated them. as much as he respected him, koyré did not agree with weber’s “nominalist” stance, his renunciation of the attempt to apprehend historical reality, present in the “ideal type” concept. between weber and dilthey, it was the latter he preferred, his “historical realism”, a realism that, in fact, aron underlines in his book (aron 2018 [1969], 23 109). therefore, it is not possible to perceive the union suggested by coumet, between dilthey and weber, nor in koyré, also in aron. koyré claims that weber’s problem was linked to an “initial error”: he believed that kant was “the newton of history” (koyré 1938);3 the refusal of metaphysics, the departure from the search for essence, the way of conceiving concepts not by generalization, but by “utopian rationalization” (aron 2018 [1969], 232), resulting in the shift of the focus from the historical object to the work of the historian. however, although koyré deeply believed in the theoretical – metaphysical – fragility of history, he believed in the historian’s possibility of apprehending the reality of the past thanks to the “enrichment of historical experience” provided by time, by change. “each time the discovery in the present […] provokes the discovery, in the past, of things that until now had gone unnoticed” (koyré 2010 [1947], 60). koyré was an “epistemological optimist”, an optimism that he also observed in dilthey, as in his reviews of 1930 and 1932. therefore, when he spoke about a “scientific revolution”, he intended to speak of a historical reality that could be known, of a movement of ideas that we find in the authors of the 17th and 18th centuries, a movement marked by “additions of small singularities”, a reality revealed by the “enrichment of the historical experience” concerning the scientific upheavals, thanks to 2 we thank mrs. dominique schnapper, raymond aron’s daughter, for authorizing us to publish significant parts of that letter. 3 the importance of this letter occurs given the possibility of identifying with whom koyré dialogues in his 1946 text, “philosophy of history”. when referring to the beliefs of german history theorists, he states that “the newton – or einstein – of history is yet to be born” (koyré 2010 [1946], 58). it is a criticism of these authors’ strong connection to kant. science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 132 the “two or three deep crises”, of the “revolutions” that his time saw (koyré 1973 [1951], 14).4 a final consideration. however, coumet’s hypothesis was not the result of daydreams. there were reasons to affirm it, resulting in the publication of an article published in the revue de synthèse, in 2001, about the concept of revolution and the way “how coumet freed us from koyré’s heritage”.5 the most recent publications testify to the richness and importance of the texts he used, koyré’s writings on german historians and philosophers. it is necessary to recognize the pertinent emphasis given to possible echoes of koyré’s texts on dilthey concerning his article “philosophy of history”. truly koyré was a profound expert on german theories in this field. and when we adopt coumet’s point of view, the importance of attention to the historical perspective of the authors we are interested in is evidenced, considering the deep implication in the object with which they work. according to redondi, koyré, the most influential and innovative science historian of his century, this certainly passes through the reception of the concept of “scientific revolution”. and if coumet was right? the lesson of uchronia is that, in this case, by neglecting his conception of history and the way he understands the historian’s work, we should review what we have written about koyré. but coumet was wrong. among german theorists, it is not weber, but dilthey who seems to matter most. among the chapters in aron’s book, the only one that koyré claims to have “reread”, that is, seen for the second time, is that of the latter. so, for aron – the great introducer in france of german theories of history – koyré was an important reference on dilthey. and what does that imply? should we once again neglect koyré’s beliefs, historical perspective, and his relationship with the “great philosopher historian”? this is a topic for another work. conclusion koyré's letter to aron opens up a new possibility for us to understand a basic element of the author's work of "from the closed world to the infinite universe", an element to which coumet drew attention. basilar, because, as we said at the beginning of this article, the authors' conception of history, the methodology they employ, the way they understand the concepts they use, all this is intrinsic to the objects they work on. that is what coumet pointed out in 1987, based on extremely suggestive texts. koyré's "scientific revolution" is not separated from his historical theory and methodology. we cannot say that, in this sense, coumet made a mistake. this is what the aforementioned letter shows us, although it also indicates that he did not direct his gaze to the author to whom koyré felt closest. therefore, we see a path of investigation reinforced, but now marked by the figure of dilthey, because the letter in question meets other texts by koyré in which this figure is present in a peculiar way. as zambelli recently indicated, and as coumet himself expressly stated, when speaking about dilthey, koyré seems to give us a self-treatment. thus, we do not see the path opened by the polemic of coumet controversy, but gain new directions, whose consistency only new investigations can assert. references aron, raymond. 2018 [1969]. la philosophie critique de l’histoire: essai sur une théorie allemande de l’histoire. paris: vrin. 4 for an approach to this aspect of koyré’s thinking, see salomon, marlon. “current figures and forms of thought in alexandre koyré” (2015). 5 it is the work of marco panza: “the scientific revolution and the research and sciences: comment ernest coumet nous a libérés de l’héritage d’alexandre koyré”, published in the revue de synthèse (2001). science in history: why ernest coumet [did not] free us from alexandre koyré’s heritage hallhane machado 133 coumet, ernst. 1987. “alexandre koyré: la révolution scientifique introuvable?”. in: history and technology (4): 497-529. koyré, alexandre. 1966 [1939]. études galiléennes. paris : hermann. koyré, alexandre. 2010 [1946]. “filosofia da história”. in: salomon, marlon (org.). alexandre koyré, historiador do pensamento. goiânia: almeida & clement edições. koyré, alexandre. 1973 [1955]. “attitude esthétique et pensée scientifique”. in: études d’histoire de la pensée scientifique. paris: gallimard. koyré, alexandre. 1986 [1957] do mundo fechado ao universo infinito. rio de janeiro: forense universitária. koyré, alexandre. 1930. “der aufbau der geschichtlichen welt in den geisteswissenschaften, par w. dilthey”. in: revue philosophique de la france et de l’étranger (110). koyré, alexandre. 1932. “gesammelte schriten, vol. vii ; weltanschauungslehre, abandlungen zur philosophie der philosophie, par w. dilthey”. in: revue philosophique de la france et de l’étranger (113). koyré, alexandre. 2016 [1946]. “galilée”. in: seidengart, jean (org.). vérité scientifique et vérité philosophique dans l’oeuvre d’alexandre koyré. paris: les belles lettres. koyré, alexandre [carta] 1938? [para] aron, raymon. 3f. koyré, alexandre. 1962 [1945]. introduction à la lecture de platon suivi de [1937] entretiens sur descartes. paris: gallimard. panofsky, erwin. 2016 [1954]. galilée critique d’art. paris: les impressions nouvelles. panza, marco. 2001. “la révolution scientifique, les révolutions et l’histoire des sciences: comment ernest coumet nous a libérés de l’héritage d’alexandre koyré”. revue de synthèse (122) : 411-424. redondi, pietro (org). 2016 [1986]. de la mystique à la science. paris: édition ehess. salomon, marlon. 2015. “figuras da atualidade e formas do pensamento em alexandre koyré”. in: salomon, marlon; condé, mauro l. l. (orgs.). alexandre koyré: história e filosofia das ciências. belo horizonte: fino traço. zambelli, paola. 2016. alexandre koyré in incognito. florence: olschki editore. microsoft word rizzo layout book review a conceptual history of neoliberalism marcelo augusto parrillo rizzo 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (9): 1-4 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open-access journal book review a conceptual history of neoliberalism olsen, niklas. the sovereign consumer – a new intellectual history of neoliberalism. london: palgrave macmillan, 2019. isbn: 978-3-319-89583-3 – 77,97 € marcelo augusto parrillo rizzo1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i9.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ in the last two decades, there has been a great number of books on the history of neoliberalism. as most scholars in this debate recognize it, the literature is divided into three currents: the first understands neoliberalism as a “scheme” designed by the elites in a time that their profits declined, being the retreat of the state a remedy to that situation (exemplified by 2005 a brief history of neoliberalism of british marxist professor david harvey); the second is the foucauldian strain that focuses on neoliberalism as governmentality, a new mode of subjectification that takes the individual as an enterprise and the third takes neoliberalism as an intellectual project, or a network of individuals with similar ideals united through a series of institutions that emerged in the twentieth century. niklas olsen also recognizes these three trends in the introduction of his book but wants to steer us away from them. as a biographer and admirer of the german historian reinhart koselleck, olsen puts in motion the method of begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history), pioneered by koselleck, to analyze the emergence of neoliberalism. as the author explains it, he “analyzes social-political concepts as reflecting phenomena that are shaped in historically concrete situations by historical actors who use concepts to make sense of and order the world, employing them as tools or weapons to meet their political visions”. (olsen, 2019, 7) what comes from this notion is the study of “shaping, negotiation and contestation” on the concept of the sovereign consumer as the core to understanding the rise of neoliberalism. for him, “the study of neoliberalism is the understanding of the history of neoliberalism as an ongoing shaping, negotiation, and contestation of the figure of the sovereign consumer.” (olsen, 2019, 7) as he understands, the definitive feature of the market economy to the neoliberal is the consumer being free to choose, but what constitutes the new political economy denominated as neoliberalism is the conflation of the figure of the consumer into a larger semantic field that is not restricted to the market, but informs value concepts as sovereignty, freedom, democracy among others. hence, the book concerns 1 marcelo augusto parrillo rizzo [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4608-4345] is a phd in history and a researcher of history of neoliberalism. address: faculty of social sciences at the federal university of goiás. avenida esperança s/n, campus samambaia. cep 74690-900 goiânia – goiás – brasil. e-mail: marceloaprizzo@gmail.com book review a conceptual history of neoliberalism marcelo augusto parrillo rizzo 2 itself in tracing the modifications to the notion of the consumer in time enacted by politicians, economists and other areas of study. and what it is delivered by this novel insight is a work that not only escapes the traditional markers of the history of neoliberalism but engages a whole new cast of characters contributing to the ascension of the sovereign consumer and the neoliberal ideology, including thinkers identified with left politics. in this, the book can be put together with recent studies that identify the contributions of left politicians and intellectuals as pivotal to the success of neoliberalism, like leftism reinvented by alice mudge and reclaiming the state by william mitchell & thomas fazi. that is not to say that olsen ignores the usual characters of the traditional accounts of neoliberalism. on the contrary, as most of them, he initiates his history with scholars like ludwig von mises and friedrich hayek, going as far as declaring mises the “inventor of the neoliberal political paradigm and the key actor it utilized—the sovereign consumer” (olsen, 2019, 21), as he understands that the austrian economist innovated in making a direct parallel between market choice and the ballot box, creating a new paradigm where the traditional basis of democracy could be substituted by the mechanisms present in the marketplace. but, if it doesn’t diverge with other works in identifying these believers in the free market as the originators of the neoliberal ideology, in tracing the figure of the consumer as its focus, the book establishes them in a vivid portrait of their time and place and the negotiations and contestations around the concept in which they were involved are not confined to liberal circles and networks which they are commonly placed. the recuperation of works like ones from the free market thinkers of the beginning of the 20th century, frank a. fetter or william h. hutt, is a great example of the ability of olsen to find contributors ignored in the recent bibliography by changing the parameters in which an author is considered relevant in the history of neoliberalism. however, it is not only the less known figures of the free market thinking that the author reveals, but in exploring all the contentions on the figure of the consumer, olsen gives us a picture in which leftists like john a. hobson and leonard t. hobhouse or relegated thinkers like thomas veblen acquires significance. this is a feature which will surround all the book: from the social-democrats of denmark in the last quarter of the precedent century to neo-keynesians economists like kenneth arrow or political scientists with no connection with right-wing politics like anthony downs, olsen constructs an account that encompasses an array of contributions to the figure of the sovereign consumer which is much larger than the typical narrative focused on the debates derived from the walter lippman colloquium or the mont-pelerin society. the landmarks are described by the author in this more varied and pluralistic light, giving a more plausible and complete portrait of the ascendance of neoliberalism, losing the constraint of explaining how a small sect of conservative economists came to rule the world. beginning with the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s as a defining moment, when the pressures of democracy with the enfranchisement of new groups of people and the perceived failures of liberalism to create and distribute wealth makes mises reconceptualize the idea of sovereignity by “shifting it from the political to the economic realm” where “markets simply manage to express the popular will more articulately and meaningfully than do mere elections” (olsen, 2019, 44), making the consumer a spearhead of politics and finishing with the adoption of free market reforms inspired by the notion of the consumer by danish social-democrats in the last decades of the twentieth century, this book never takes neoliberalism as a progression of the ideals of a diminute sect of economists that seduced its contemporary peers. as a koselleckian project, olsen does not take the notion developed by mises in the first decades of the last century and retraces its steps to our contemporary world without modification, but embeds it in a world where “economic theories, political ideologies, and social-political programs […] all drew on distinct consumer figures” (olsen, 2019, 63). the book review a conceptual history of neoliberalism marcelo augusto parrillo rizzo 3 sovereign consumer cannot emerge as the organizer of a new political order until the alignment of ideological intentions and political practice. in this sense, the ordoliberals of the 1930s to 1950s, another group that is paramount in other accounts of neoliberalism, also gains a new perspective in his writing. a good example of this is to us to discover that the minister of economics after the second world war, ludwig erhard, taken as the implementer of the ordoliberal theories in practice in many accounts, was not only trained in economics but developed a career in marketing research. what would be only of anecdotal interest in other works reveals to us how much the dislocation of the consumer to the center of the stage is tributary not only to the economical discourse but to all the articulations around the science of consumption of the epoch. as the author explains: if erhard echoed many of the ideas of the neoliberal economists, he accentuated certain features and added new ones. this is a result of the german politician engagement “through the contentious and transforming, changing with social powers and social conflicts”, as he described koselleck’s method of begriffgeschchite in his 2012 intellectual biography about the historian. having taken its time to examine a myriad of stances about the relations of the consumer with the market and the ballot box in the first half of the twentieth century with an immense amount of research, olsen can advance to the always highlighted decades of the 1970s and 1980s with its multiple political, social and cultural manifestations without the need to ignore any of its aspects, recurring frailty in various historical works about the subject. after all, if it is recognized by all as the period of the fall of keynesianism and the triumph of the ideas of neoliberalism as the “law of the land”, a historical narrative that takes into account the various angles on the consumer takes that fall in a much more widened perspective. this includes the well-known disenchantment with the “corporation man” of the 1950s and 1960s, which characterized movements in the conservative right as the countercultural left in the united states, the consumers’ protection movements in the 1970s and its relations with left-wing politics and, of course, the developments in neoclassical economics and political science from the 1950s onwards (with great insights about the role of the social choice theory that remained ignored most of the time in studies about the theories that supplied neoliberalism). all of them contributing to the shaping of the figure of the consumer that emerges as the object of neoliberal policies. this plurality diverges from most of the bibliography on neoliberalism which centers on the construction of the network of economists and other intellectuals whom wanted to scale back the state and abhorred the enlargement of keynesian politics and its defenders, most exemplified by john kenneth galbraith and his justification for a world populated by large corporations and a large state to counter them. taking keynesians economists, leftwing politicians and activists and other groups estranged from free marketers as key participants in the development of the figure of the consumer, the author builds the history of, using his words, an “ideational convergence between left and right in thinking about government politics, market dynamics, and individual behavior”. (olsen, 2019, 14) with that insight, even if most of the subjects analyzed are economists, as olsen advises in his introduction, it is not the triumph of monetarism over keynesianism that it is the core of the 1970s and the 1980s victory of the neoliberal ideology. in olsen’s book this moment comes not with a bang but a whimper, to quote t. s. elliot’s famous words. the breakdown of keynesianism is taken as one factor among other that contributes to the prominence of george stigler and milton friedman deregulation policies in the 1970s and 1980s, along with it, the author lists the weakening of the regulation movement, undermined not only by free marketers but by new left intellectuals, the rise of the “combined consumer/citizen/ taxpayer/voter” figure in contrast to the citizen consumer and the colonization of other social sciences by the economic discipline. these instances are not taken as separated compartments but reinforce each other creating a dynamic picture. and it is in the last chapter, dedicated to the neoliberal reforms in denmark, that all the arguments exposed before taking immediate materiality as we read about the book review a conceptual history of neoliberalism marcelo augusto parrillo rizzo 4 transformations on the notion of the consumer informing the social policies in the country. we see the mutations of the danish parties’ discourses and their views about the role of the state and how the diminution of the welfare state is taken “naturally”, showing how neoliberalism was implemented with the help of center-left parties developing a “neoliberalism without neoliberals”, as olsen denominates. the book is not only a great contribution to the growing historiographical bibliography about neoliberalism but will be of great interest to the general public interested in twentieth and twentieth-first century politics and economics. besides the immense amount of research, olsen’s narrative is clear, and the author always shows concern in explaining in detail the theories and rationale of the actors involved. any reader will benefit from the array of characters involved and how neoliberalism cannot be taken as a simple ideology concocted by some reactionaries a long time ago, but a vivid result of social and political interactions. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-7 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal book review kusch, martin. relativism in the philosophy of science. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2020. 86 pp. isbn: 9781108969611, $ 20.00 reviewed by: fernanda schiavo nogueira1 received: 20 february 2021. accepted: 01 may 2021. doi http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.08 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ the rehabilitation of the uses of relativism relativism in the philosophy of science, recently released in the cambridge elements series of the cambridge university press, offers a consistent and well-structured introduction to the study of the most effective forms of relativism in the last 50 years. however, the book goes beyond the usual expectations of introductions to any subject discussed: most introduction books present simplified and unreflective versions of the topic. contrary to such reductionist approaches, condensed into the limited space of the 30,000 words allowed for the series’ books, kusch presents an analysis that goes far beyond the set of addressed bibliography. the author transits through an infinity of titles chosen for his investigation with great competence, combining rigour and exactness when interweaving the different thinkers’ viewpoints, highlighting their due similarities and differences. therefore, the restricted number of words in the edition and the extensive volume of sources – factors potentially prejudicial to the good progress of any intellectual production –, did not compromise the quality of the results achieved due to the author’s extensive knowledge of the subject. based on the great intimacy with the object of study, kusch went through the complex labyrinths of the theme with property and equipped with clear and objective language to facilitate the reader’s understanding of the density of the debate developed. kusch has structured his book in six sections. the first one consists of a brief synopsis of the main themes discussed in the book and an introduction explaining the organisation of the work and clarifying the problems that will be investigated in each part. the second section seeks to elaborate possible answers to the book’s central question – “what constitutes relativism?” – by working on the main structuring axes of the relativist frame of reference. the third section examines the different thoughts defended by authors classified 1 fernanda schiavo nogueira [orcid: 0000-0002-2312-5565] is a msc in history of science from the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg) and a member of the research group historiography of science and epistemology (ufmg). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270901, brazil. e-mail: fernandaschiavonogueira@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.08 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ fernanda schiavo nogueira – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 2 as defenders of relativism. are analysed thomas kuhn’s incommensurability, paul feyerabend’s anarchism, hasok chang’s pluralism and giere massimi’s perspectivism. the fourth and fifth sections evaluate the forms of relativism considered the most promising today by kusch, especially bas van fraassen’s voluntarism and the strong programme of sociology of scientific knowledge. finally, the sixth section problematises the strengthening of relativism in epistemology and philosophy of science. it discusses the negative social developments entails by the greater acceptance of relativist ideas currently. perhaps the most original point of relativism in the philosophy of science resides in its refusal of the traditional forms of conceptualisation employed to characterise relativism as “a doctrine concerning the epistemic status of beliefs” (kusch 2020, 4). in the dictionary, the words “doctrine” and “belief” refer to the universe of religion in which occurs the learning of dogmas taught by higher authorities to devotees who passively absorb the precepts transmitted, without a will and devoid of freedom of choice. under fraassen’s inspiration, to avoid erroneous thoughts raised by the vocabulary used concerning relativism, kusch proposes substituting both terms criticised by the author (doctrine and belief) with the term stance. in turn, the word stance denotes the individual’s power of decision in choosing which judgments will shape his possibilities of acting in the world, whose parameters exceed the limits of rationality, to the extent that they suffer the influence of values, virtues, emotions and preferences. thus, kusch defends fraassen’s “voluntarism”, a theory of rationality according to which the will of the subject of knowledge has a privileged place in defining which philosophical traditions will guide him in selecting his commitments in the future investigation process. kusch appropriates the voluntarism sustained by fraassen to explain adherence to relativism as a stance-taking. namely, a subject decision defined by each author who supports ideas encompassed by the relativist frame of reference. nevertheless, by diagnosing the diversity of different thinkers encompassed under the same classification, kusch presents the valuable concern of highlighting how relativism does not constitute a mere gathering of homogeneous stances. he invalidates any reader’s predisposition to inappropriately project any philosophical approach as a single and cohesive totality due to the existing convergences between the positions of most adherents. however, despite valuing the plurality of relativist points of view, kusch understands it is fundamental to elaborate a general definition of what is considered relativism through three tenets: (1) the struggle against absolutism, (2) the opposition to the idea that “anything goes”, (3) the defence of epistemic tolerance. these tenets are shared by a large part of the defenders of this philosophical perspective. let us look more closely at each principle: (1) relativism fights against the existence of archimedean points in the sciences, that is, permanent knowledge structuring axes, non-alterable and independent of time, space or points of view, as rationality and or experimentation supposedly are. relativism is opposed to the idea that the results obtained by scientists, when based on secure foundations, would provide literal descriptions of the world, translated into propositions capable of portraying phenomena the way they occurred. (2) the lack of general measures enables the proliferation of theories considered neither universally true nor universally false and creates responses conditioned by the set of standards to which they belong, i.e., in the society and the time in which they are inserted. however, while noting the impossibility of any scientist issuing judgements with universal validity, relativism does not accept all the scientist’s conclusions as if they were on the same epistemic level. (3) theories will vary according to the epistemic virtues of “accuracy”, “simplicity”, “objectivity”, and “fruitfulness”, that is, values cultivated by science based on which fernanda schiavo nogueira – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 3 scientists will choose which of them will best meet the expectation of adequacy to the world. for relativism, all the results obtained by the scientist, even if differently articulated to the phenomenon, may coexist among themselves in harmony if they contain consistent evaluations, capable of preserving fidelity to the set of standards from which they come. in relativism in the philosophy of science, after delimiting the general peculiarities of relativism, kusch traces the most frequent ideas present in the works classified as relativists. amidst the vastness of existing forms of relativism, he has chosen five pillars considered responsible for explaining the affinities between the viewpoints of relativists that are understood as those that will provide identity to this philosophical perspective. thus, based on a detailed analysis of the intellectual productions of the authors studied, kusch constructed a schematic model of relativism – which he names “relativist spectrum” – considering five notions that he interpreted as essential to characterise this philosophical perspective. these main principles are dependence, plurality, conflict, conversion and symmetry. the “relativist spectrum” is an “ideal type” from a weberian perspective. dependency alerts us to how theories will be considered true or false, according to the rules of the set of standards to which they belong. plurality attributes legitimacy to more than one set of standards for explaining the same dimension of the world. conflict occurs when the epistemic judgments of different sets of standards exclude each other mutually. conversion occurs when the individual adopts a different set of standards from the previously shared one. however, this conversion occurs not only motivated by the quality of the new alternative, the evidence collected or a priori beliefs as by the quasi-religious experience of the faith-based choice. symmetry finds the existence of symmetric sets of standards when: (a) they have local, contingent and variable credibility causes; (b) they are not assessable as true or false by the classification terms of another set of standards from which they did not originate; (c) they are equally true. to explore the different forms of relativism, kusch draws comparisons between the elaborated ideal type (the “relativist spectrum”) and the positions held by the thinkers and an intellectual movement traditionally interpreted as relativist: kuhn, feyerabend, chang, massimi, frassen and the strong programme. according to kusch, in the “relativist spectrum” there is a perfect agreement between the meanings of the ideal type and the investigated reality or the relativist frame of reference. nevertheless, the “relativistic spectrum”, like any other ideal type, accentuates certain aspects considered fundamental in relativism and ignores others as less important. in doing so, kusch runs the risk of artificially simplifying the forms of relativism worked on, framing all the complexity and richness of the authors’ thoughts analysed within the narrow limits of the “relativist spectrum”. however, due to the interventions made to enable the visualisation of the specificities of each investigated point of view, kusch was prevented (at least partially) from promoting a reductionist approach to relativism. unlike much of the specialised literature, kusch does not locate the birth of the relativist frame of reference when kuhn’s most famous book, the structure of scientific revolutions, was published. in contrast, kusch undertakes the significant commitment of dismantling the false interpretation as to the antecedents of relativism. the structure of scientific revolutions introduced profound transformations in understanding scientist/world relations that were considered fundamental in propagating relativism. kuhn intensified the interpretation according to which social aspects interpenetrate the epistemic factors of science knowledge. after kuhn also, there was a growing revaluation of neglected authors who disseminated similar idea before him, such as mannheim and fleck. for kusch, kuhn disseminates the relativist views defended in the structure of scientific revolutions. what happens when kuhn structured as the axes of the book: paradigm, revolution and incommensurability. however, kuhn fought tirelessly to rid himself of the fernanda schiavo nogueira – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 4 classification received as a relativist. of course, due to the pejorative content conventionally contained in the designation. kusch recognises the differences in the conceptualisation established in the structure of scientific revolutions and kuhn’s articles gathered in the road since structure. however, kusch does not mention that kuhn implemented changes to minimise negative consequences caused by the arbitrary use of paradigm, revolution and incommensurability. insofar these concepts would identify the north american thinker to relativism. when working on the main influences suffered by the thinkers studied, such as kuhn and fraassen, and the intellectual movement of the strong programme, kusch elucidates who would be for him the true precursors of relativism: kant and wittgenstein. kusch does not even mention the appropriations made by kuhn of fleck and the strong programme of fleck and mannheim. however, both authors are cited as significant references in elaborating the structure of scientific revolutions and knowledge and the social imaginary. kusch’s forgetfulness – intentional or not – harmed the quality of the argumentation of his book. unfortunately, he did not recognise the pioneering spirit of fleck and mannheim in the creation of an idea that is fundamental to relativism: the historicity of the results found in science. fleck and mannheim were the thinkers who pioneered the detection of how the relations between scientist/world were local and contingent and originated knowledge whose classification as true or false would depend on the thought-style practised in science. probably, the incorporation of kant among the authors who pioneered the dissemination of relativism is much more problematic than kusch assumes. many drawbacks hinder kant from being inserted among the diffusers of relativist ideas since the german thinker defends the “thing in itself” and “categories” inherent to the subject of knowledge, independent of experience (the analytical a priori judgment). approximately after ten years, the relativistic ideas presented in the structure of scientific revolutions were radicalised by authors who defended a relativistic stance. perhaps these authors have gone far beyond kuhn’s book, despite starting from it. kuhn always sought to preserve the balance between the participation of nature and society in science. nevertheless, a large proportion of the adherents to the north american thinker’s views did not share the same understanding and moved the pointer of the scales to undo the proportionality desired by kuhn. one can see this movement, for example, in the strong programme. kuhn did not support any inappropriate overvaluation of the role of social instances in science that was supposedly influenced by his relativism. he criticised the subordinate position to which world observation and scientific experimentation were condemned. specifically, kuhn criticised the strong programme and its derivatives, shapin and schaffer’s leviathan and the air-pump. the author of the road since structure contested precisely how the edinburgh school had (mistakenly) diminished the role of natural phenomena and experiments in the understanding of science. according to kusch, bloor elaborated his strong programme based on four pillars: causality, impartiality, symmetry and reflexivity. to transform the abstract constitutive bases of the strong programme into concrete deployments, kusch chooses to exemplify the application of the edinburgh school’s structures in shapin’s book homo phrenologicus. however, although shapin acknowledges in published works (as in leviathan) his inspiration in the strong programme, it is a controversial issue to what extent he effectively incorporates the ideas of the edinburgh school or even whether he shares the rules of the regulation adopted by its respective members. perhaps shapin gives due acknowledgement to the strong programme as an academic formality, simply because both share common influences originating from the same institution, the unit of science of the university of edinburgh. kusch alerts the fact that many current denialist movements use the core references of the strong programme to ground their questioning of the cognitive authority of science. the author laments how exaggerations committed by militancy, justified by relativism, are fernanda schiavo nogueira – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 5 unduly charged to the account of the strong programme. of course, these exaggerations contribute to the stigmatisation of this intellectual movement by the (supposed) adherence of radicals. the denialist movements contest the scientist’s credibility, a professional considered less trustworthy than non-rational resources employed by militants, such as instincts, emotions and personal beliefs (post-truth). the historically given conditions of science, valued by relativism, are purposely manipulated by the denialist movements and recognised as permission for protesters to doubt the legitimacy of knowledge validated by the scientist. therefore, kusch draws attention to the disservice done to relativism (particularly to the strong programme) due to the failure to acknowledge the advances made by relativist thinking in a scientific investigation. kusch decisively contributes to resizing the discussions on relativism by defining his central goal to analyse this philosophical perspective, not committed to reproducing derogatory views of the relativist frame of reference. according to kusch, it would be enough for his book to fulfil this purpose to be considered successful: “i would be satisfied if this element triggered the additional charitable exploration of these and other relativistic proposals in the philosophy of science” (kusch 2020, 64). since the 1930s, the scientific ideals propagated by reichenbach’s division have constituted the main epistemic instrument used for the diffusion of distorted projections of relativism. these misinterpretations detested relativist intellectuals as propagators of irrationalism, whose works deserved ostracism (as happened with fleck and mannheim). at most, the authors accused of relativism were allowed to interpret the production of knowledge in science confined to the exteriority of the reclusive work of the “context of justification”. many of those banished to the “context of discovery” described the historically given science conditions as mere ornamental scenery that would decorate the scientist’s work routine. thus, it was necessary to recognise the participation of sources of influence originating from society in the results produced by science. although kusch does not directly portray the factors responsible for the stigmatisation of relativism, his book makes it possible to reflect on which motives collaborated to foster the fight against this philosophical perspective. the most forceful challenge against relativism is its supposed opposition to the defence of empiricism/realism. kusch stresses that the questioning directed by relativism to the “thing in itself” and the term-to-term correspondence of theory to phenomenon would not mean to annul the fundamental role of world observation and scientific experimentation. kusch points out that fraassen and the strong programme represent the most promising forms of relativism today fundamentally due to their affinity with empiricism/realism. however, the author does not clarify which mechanisms the new objectivity shared by fraassen and the strong programme would be compatible with the relativist frame of reference. nevertheless, while rejecting the negative stereotypes associated with relativism, kusch prevents the ideas of the relativists from receiving the same mistaken treatment defended by the absolutist stance that they are so critical. discussing relativism from an absolutist perspective would occur if kusch understood it as the only possible epistemic option. however, he relativises the “relativist spectrum” principles when choosing two antagonists to dialogue with relativism: boghossian and friedman. kusch highlights the incompatibility between the strong programme on the one hand and boghossian and friedman on the other. kusch addresses two points: the boghossian’s disagreement with the relativist ideas of conflict and dependency and friedman’s critique of the ethnologist view of science. however, kusch misses an opportunity to investigate other truculent oppositions suffered by the investigated relativists and the organised offensives in defence of the legitimacy of the relations between the theories of science held by these two studied thinkers and relativism. i have in mind kuhn’s ignored criticism against the radicalism of the strong program’s relativist ideas and its followers – perhaps this episode was the main fernanda schiavo nogueira – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 6 disagreement within relativism. kuhn identified in the scientist’s capacity for persuasion and his prerogatives enjoyed due to the position held or the historically given conditions of science, mistakenly overestimated ingredients (although the author recognised them as relevant for knowledge production). according to kuhn, the observation of the world and the carefully conducted experimentation, the rigour in the use of concepts and the good rational structuring of arguments would provide sufficiently strong reasons to legitimise the theories defended. nevertheless, kusch does not go through any problematisation of a similar nature as kuhn. kusch does not extend the explanations on the subject by only finding in relativism and empiricism/realism similar interpretations. however, the overvaluation of the historically given conditions in science almost necessarily leads relativist authors to take abrupt deviations in their approach to natural phenomena. the exaggerated emphasis on negotiations, authority and power in science naturally express extreme interpretations committed by relativism. thus, radical relativist positions do not always correspond to the pure result of the action of negationist movements, as kusch suggests. therefore, although kusch seeks to promote compatibility between relativist and empiricist/realist ideas, he has not expended enough energy to point out how relativism efficiently works for the scientist/world relation or to overcome prejudices embedded in relativism. describing relativists as opposed to valuing natural phenomena is a point of view still very much ingrained in the academic community, so kusch should mobilise more efforts to fight the stigmas projected onto relativism. by way of conclusion, it is worth drawing attention to how kusch invites the reader to reflect on the importance of rehabilitating the uses of relativism and the advantages of adopting relativist ideas in the interpretation of science. relativism’s defence of the connection of historically given conditions to the epistemic factors of knowledge corresponds to the most efficient confrontation in dismantling the scientific ideals propagated from reichenbach’s division to the present day. scientism would describe the production of true knowledge as a result that would depend exclusively on the correct application of the methodology in science and on the scientist’s geniuses, free from any connection with the place of origin of the professional’s creations. the plural influences originated in everyday life would be considered “harmful interferences” because, by invading the core of the investigation process, they would prevent the discovery of truth by leading the scientist fatally to false conclusions. knowledge production would register the evolution of ideas logically linked together, capable of causing the emergence of other new ones by spontaneous generation, in total independence of the historically given conditions. at most, the context of insertion of the scientist would fulfil the task of constituting the “background” that would set the place where the investigation process would take place. relativism defends the attribution of historicity to the epistemic factors of science when it recognises the context of discovery and the context of justification as an undifferentiated totality. in this totality, the epistemic factors of knowledge might deeply merge with the historically given conditions. the community of scientists enjoys autonomy in defining the scientific parameters capable of guiding how professionals will organise the observation of phenomena, the experiments tested and the evaluation of mathematical proofs. still, science is not simply separate in this manner. the plural influences of everyday life act redirecting the direction of the investigation of the problems posed by the population to science. these social factors inspire the scientist for new ideas or even remodel his cognitive capacity by defining rules and conduct. therefore, the rehabilitation of the uses of relativism, defended by kusch, is of fundamental importance. it enables the opening of new horizons to investigate the production of knowledge in science, such as recognising the historicity of epistemic factors. fernanda schiavo nogueira – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 7 references kusch, m. 2020. relativism in the philosophy of science. cambridge: cambridge university press. bloor, d. 2009. conhecimento e imaginário social [knowledge and social imaginary]. portuguese translation by m. a. penna-forte. são paulo: editora unesp. fleck, ludwik. 2010 [1935]. gênese e desenvolvimento de um fato científico [entstehung und entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen tatsache]. portuguese translation by g. otte and m. oliveira. belo horizonte: fabrefactum, 2010. kuhn, t. s. 2018 [1962]. a estrutura das revoluções científicas [the structure of scientific revolutions]. portuguese translation by b. v. boeira and n. boeira. são paulo: perspectiva. kuhn, t. s. 2017 [2000]. o caminho desde a estrutura: ensaios filosóficos (1970-1993) com uma entrevista autobiográfica [the road since structure: philosophical essays 1970-1993, with an autobiographical interview]. portuguese translation by c. a. mortari. são paulo: editora unesp. mannheim, k. 1968 [1929]. ideologia e utopia [ideologie und utopie]. portuguese translation by s. m. santeiro. rio de janeiro: zahar editores. nogueira, f. s. 2021. ludwik fleck e o círculo de viena: história, ciência e linguagem. curitiba: editora appris, forthcoming. shapin, s; schaffer, s. 2011 [1985]. leviathan and the air-pump: hobbes, boyle and the experimental life. princeton: princeton university press. microsoft word rocha layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-6 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal book review matthews, michael. 2021. history, philosophy and science teaching: a personal story. singapore: springer nature, 2021. isbn: 978-98116-0557-4 hardcover book 139.99, usd, e-book 109.00 usd. a personal review gustavo rodrigues rocha1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1621-4401] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.13 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ history, philosophy and science teaching: a personal story is a captivating academic autobiography, published in 2021, by michael r. matthews, australian philosopher of education, known for his contribution to the advancement of the use of history and philosophy of science to enhance science education. as matthews chronicles his own intellectual and career trajectory, he ends up outlining the history of the research in history and philosophy of science and science teaching (hps&st). i began my own journey into hps&st around 2009, as i moved to salvador, bahia, brazil, to pursue a phd at the graduate program in teaching, philosophy and history of sciences ufba-uefs2 – after having already been well trained in the history and philosophy of science at the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg) over ten years. in what follows, i endeavor to outline a personal review of matthews’ book: history, philosophy and science teaching: a personal story. i had the pleasure of meeting mathews twice after beginning my journey into hps&st. firstly, in 2010, at a time i was still a novice in hps&st research, on the occasion of the 1st latin american conference of the international history, philosophy, and science teaching group, which took place in maresias, brazil. a few years later, in 2012, in boston, usa, when i was a fulbright visiting scholar at sts mit, i attended a colloquium at the boston university’s center for philosophy and history of science, where matthews gave a talk entitled “hps&st: looking back and going forward”. 1 gustavo rodrigues rocha is a professor of physics and history of physics at the state university of feira de santana – uefs (brazil). address: universidade estadual de feira de santana – uefs, av. transnordestina, s/n, campus universitário (módulo 5), departamento de física (dfis), novo horizonte, feira de santana/ba, brazil, 44036-900. e-mail: grrocha@uefs.br 2 the graduate program in teaching, philosophy and history of sciences – jointly hosted by the federal university of bahia (ufba) and the state university of feira de santana (uefs) (https://ppgefhc.ufba.br/en) – was established in salvador, bahia, brazil. the program was inspired and informed by what was happening around the world at the time, such as the initiative promoted by michael matthews and his colleagues in founding the international history and philosophy of science and science teaching group (ihpst) in 1989. an account of the conception of this graduate program can be found in freire jr., o. and tenório r. m., 2001. gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 born in sydney, australia, on 19 may 1948, matthews was the only child of alice fitzpatrick and robert a. matthews. having been raised in a traditional irish-catholic atmosphere, michael r. matthews had, from 1952 to 1964, a christian brothers education3, first in a small parish school then as a ‘scholarship’ boy at the large waverley college. matthews kept his connection to catholicism during his education at the university of sydney (1965-69), through to his membership of the newman society. the newman society: oxford university catholic society, founded in 1878, is oxford university’s oldest roman catholic organization, a student society named as a tribute to cardinal john henry newman (18011890). newman was the foremost nineteenth-century champion of liberal or general education. newman’s core liberal (or general) education convictions had a persistent influence on mathews. during these formative years (1968-1975), mathews was also involved in the sydney theological studies society – which he saw as a natural follow-up from the newman society. two important and long-lasting influences on matthews from his early education and upbringing were the ‘structure’ of thomism and the ideals of a liberal or general education. in an educational environment of specialization and fragmentation in times like ours, marked by snow’s ‘two cultures’ split, the ‘structure’ of thomism offers a sense of unity to be sought (although in a completely different framework). in the late-2000s, matthews’ interest in the interplay between the ‘grand schemes’ of cultural worldviews and the ‘piecemeal workings’ of science (chapter 8) also allude somehow to this thomist heritage. the ideals, aims, and values of a liberal or general education, on the other hand, seemed somehow endangered by the influence of constructivism in the 1980s, and cultural studies in the 1990s, in the philosophy of education (as he outlines in chapters 7 and 9, respectively). matthews opposed these tendencies, advocating a more liberal education instead (e.g.: matthews 2020). as outlined in chapter 2, after completing compulsory physics, chemistry, biology, and geology in his first-year at the university of sydney in 1965, mathews took a two-year coursework in philosophy (1966-67), which he considered to have been a life-changing experience. the sydney philosophy department’s professors were, broadly speaking, committed to traditions of realism, rationality, science, and free inquiry, largely inspired by glasgow-trained philosopher john anderson4 (1893-1962). matthews was introduced to the philosophy of science as a consequence of this two-year coursework; logic was taught in the first year and logical empiricism in the second. the sydney philosophy department’s embrace of realism, rationality and science sat comfortably with matthews’ experience of the catholic thomist-realist philosophical tradition. however, he was less at ease with the ontological materialism and ethical utilitarianism of the bulk of the staff. afterward, as he describes in chapter 3, matthews enrolled in the diploma of education (diped) at sydney teachers college (stc) in 1968, taking a course in philosophy of education taught by anna hogg (1910-2011), a scottish christian academic who had studied with richard peters at the london institute of education. peters’ ideal of education, taught in anna hogg’s course, was comparable to the german ideal of bildung and had a strong impact on matthews. matthews wrote, “anna hogg’s philosophy course informed my teaching life” (matthews 2021, 61). here again, we find matthews’s appreciation and inclination towards an education inspired by the enlightenment tradition that will guide his evaluation of a number of educational issues over the years, such as those mentioned 3 founded by edmund rice in waterford, ireland, in 1802, the congregation of christian brothers is a worldwide religious community within the catholic church. patrick ambrose treacy established the first permanent christian brothers community in australia in 1868. 4 john anderson (1893-1962) was a scottish philosopher who occupied the chair of challis professor of philosophy at sydney university from 1927 to 1958, an exponent of ‘empirical philosophy’ and campaigner against the influence of religion on all levels of education. gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 regarding the influence of constructivism (in the 1980s) and cultural studies (in the 1990s) in the philosophy of education. furthermore, at about this period, matthews began his involvement in the philosophy of education society of australasia (pesa). in 1969, matthews began teaching science at dulwich high school (where he taught until 1972). matthews undertook two further part-time studies at sydney university while teaching in school: a med degree in philosophy of education (1969-1973) and a double-honors ba degree in psychology and philosophy (1969-1973). pavlovian-skinnerian behaviorism dominated the sydney university psychology department and the psychology honors’ degree involved both a practical (empirical) and a theoretical thesis. matthews’s theoretical thesis was a 200-page study of causality, intentions and the explanations of behavior. moreover, two classes matthews took at the philosophy department in 1972, both taught by wallis suching (1931-1997), had lasting impacts. the first class was on david hume (shedding light on matthews’ interest in causation for his theoretical thesis in psychology), the second was on marxist philosophy. as matthews informed us: “history of science and marxist epistemology fitted well together” (matthews 2021, 113). wallis suching was also in charge of the 1973 ‘thomas kuhn seminar’ where matthews and his colleagues studied the 1970 edition of kuhn’s work: the structure of scientific revolutions. in studying both empirical science (psychology) and philosophy of science, matthews could notice some philosophical naiveties behind the behaviorist research and the teaching program he was enrolled in. it seems to me, as a reader, that this was a fortunate choice. the importance of studying philosophy of science while studying science couldn’t be clearer. “what was clear to me in studying philosophy and psychology in parallel was how diminished psychology was by its failure to engage with philosophy, and how detrimental this was for the education of students”, matthews wrote (matthews 2021, 73). matthews was offered an appointment as a lecturer in philosophy of education at sydney teachers college (stc) in mid-1972 (a position he held until 1974) (chapter 4). he taught courses such as ‘ideology, society and schooling’ and ‘christianity and marxism’. matthews took a stance on a number of contentious issues related to debates around ‘radical education’, a hot topic of the time, which was not a cost-free indulgence, as matthews did not get tenure at stc. in 1974, an advertised lectureship in philosophy of education at the university of new south wales (unsw) caught matthews’ attention. matthews took the position in 1975 and stayed at unsw, with a brief interlude as foundation professor of science education in auckland (1992-1993), until his retirement in 2008. as he explains in chapter 4, it was during this time that his professional concern with hps&st questions was sparked. a sabbatical year at the boston university’s center for philosophy and history of science in 1978 marked a watershed moment. robert cohen (1923-2017) and marx w. wartofsky (1928-1997), who founded the center in 1960 as an offshoot of the institute for the unity of science (the american transplant of the historic vienna circle), were there and had an important influence on matthews’ trajectory thereafter. michael martin (1932-2015), an analytic philosopher of science, was also part of the staff. abner shimony (1928-2015), however, may have been even more influential in leading matthews’ research interests down two different directions. due to a course on galileo taught by shimony at the boston university’s center for philosophy and history of science, matthews was motivated, after returning to australia, to write a thesis on galileo’s physics, enrolling in an honor ma degree in hps at the university of sydney (between 1979 and 1985) and, about a decade after his ma in hps, this same research interest would inspire matthews to bring his pendulum studies to fruition (as he details in chapter 7). moreover, shimony (and, to some extent, cohen who gave him volume 6 of the boston gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 studies series5 on ernst mach (cohen and seeger 1970)) drew matthews’ attention to the work of ernst mach (1938-1916) as a kind of forerunner of the area of hps&st, a topic matthews would later explore in more depth (matthews 1989, 1990, 2019a). matthews also admired shimony for his defense of the enlightenment project in science education (see shimony 1997). matthews gave that talk i mentioned i attended in 2012, in boston, at the boston university’s center for philosophy and history of science, entitled “hps&st: looking back and going forward”.6 like a cycle that completes itself, matthews began his talk by acknowledging the instrumental role played by the center for his own trajectory and concluded it by mentioning the upcoming enormous 3-volume 2014 international handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching (matthews 2014). “through robert cohen, marx wartofsky, michael martin, and others i was introduced to the ‘boston university style’ of history and philosophy of science. the ‘style,’ exemplified in the boston studies in philosophy of science series, was characterized by its diversity” (matthews 2000, ix). it was also during the same period of his ma in hps that matthews had an important political interlude as alderman on sydney city council from 1980 to 1985 (chapter 5). matthews’ sabbatical at the boston university center for philosophy and history of science was of instrumental significance, but only after a second sabbatical year at the philosophy department at florida state university (fsu) in 1987, did matthews and his colleagues found the international history, philosophy, and science teaching (ihpst) group. among other reasons, matthews chose fsu because of its philosophy department’s faculty member david gruender (1928-2007), who had written on galileo. in april 1987, matthews was at the washington aaas conference’s celebration of the tri-centenary of the publication of newton’s principia (1687). jaakko hintikka (1929-2015), the editor of springer’s synthese journal, suggested to matthews to organize a special issue on the topic of ‘history, philosophy and science teaching’. matthews gathered so many good essay contributions for this special issue of synthese that he had to forward the surplus academic contributions to other journals’ special issues.7 david gruender also encouraged matthews to organize the first hps&st conference, held in tallahassee in november 1989. the conference marked the beginning of the ihpst group in 1989 and its biennial conferences8. regional meetings have also been held in south 5 beginning in 1963, the proceedings of many colloquia at the boston university’s center for philosophy and history of science were published in the series boston studies in the philosophy of science. under the editorship of robert cohen alone, the boston studies in the philosophy of science produced more than 200 volumes in the areas of philosophy of the natural and social sciences, logic, mathematics, and the history and social relations of science. 6 this colloquium “how can the history and philosophy of science contribute to contemporary u.s. science education?” took place at the boston university center for philosophy and history of science on december 7, 2012. gerald holton was present among others. holton was a transitional figure between the institute for the unity of science and the founding of the center. see this talk in https://www.bu.edu/hps-scied/conference-2012/outcomes/presentations/hps-st-looking-back-andgoing-forward/. 7 interchange (vol. 20, no. 2, 1989) (https://link.springer.com/journal/10780/volumes-and-issues/20-2), interchange (vol. 24, nos. 1-2, 1993) (https://link.springer.com/journal/10780/volumes-and-issues/24-1), studies in philosophy and education (vol. 10, no. 1, 1990) (https://link.springer.com/journal/11217/volumes-and-issues/10-1), science education (vol. 75, no 1, 1991) (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1098237x/1991/75/1), journal of research in science teaching (vol. 29, no, 1992) (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10982736/1992/29/4), and synthese (vol. 80, no. 1, 1989) (https://link.springer.com/journal/11229/volumes-and-issues/80-1). 8 the biennial ihpst conferences have been successfully held ever since in kingston, canada (1992), minneapolis, usa (1995), calgary, canada (1997), pavia, italy (1999), minneapolis, usa (1995), calgary, canada (1997), pavia, italy (1999), denver, usa (2001), winnipeg, canada (2003), leeds, england (2005), calgary, canada (2007), notre dame, usa (2009), thessaloniki, greece (2011), pittsburg, usa gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 america, asia, and europe.9 matthews also began editing an ihpst newsletter. in 1989, during the process of organizing the first ihpst conference in tallahassee, matthews met israel scheffler (1923-2014) at harvard university, who offered matthews a contract to write for scheffler’s routledge philosophy of education research library’s series. the result was his seminal 1994 book, science teaching: the role of history and philosophy of science (matthews 1994). scheffler was another important figure for matthews’ philosophy of education: “for nearly fifty years my own teaching and thinking had been informed first by richard peter’s analytic philosophy of education; and second by israel scheffler’s connection of philosophy of education to philosophy of the discipline being taught” (matthews 2021, 268). in 1990, matthews met the kluwer education editor, peter de liefde, at the american philosophy of education society (pes), who suggested turning the ihpst newsletter into a kluwer journal. the journal, science and education: contributions from history, philosophy and sociology of science and mathematics, first appeared in 1992, with four numbers per year, matthews was editor-in-chief until 2019. in 1995, as described in chapter 9, matthews reviewed an article for science and education by argentine/canadian philosopher mario bunge (1919-2020). it was the beginning of a lifetime friendship and intellectual exchange. in 2002, mario’s mathematician wife marta bunge went to sydney’s macquarie university on sabbatical leave and mario contacted matthews to see if he could be an honorary visitor to the school of education, and so he did. just as he had found in shimony before him, matthews found in mario bunge a sober voice of reason championing the enlightenment tradition in science education against its detractors (matthews 2019c). as matthews comments in chapter 9: “the unifying thread of bunge’s scholarship is the vigorous advancement of the enlightenment project, and criticism of cultural and academic movements that deny or devalue the core planks of the project” (matthews 2021, 251). in chapter 7, matthew expresses more fully and in greater detail, the pendulum studies (1995-2005) mentioned, an integrated, cross-disciplinary, hps-informed liberal approach to science teaching. as outputs of these landmark studies, matthews published time for science education: how teaching the history and philosophy of pendulum motion can contribute to science literacy (matthews 2000), and coordinated a large international pendulum project grounded on a number of special issues of science and education,10 two conferences held at unsw in 2002 and 2005, and an anthology co-edited with colin gauld (matthews; gauld; stinnes 2005). in chapter 8, matthews describes the research mentioned above, a project developed between 2008 and 2010 on the mutual interaction of science with cultural worldviews (and how that is expressed in science classrooms). he first oversaw the publication of a thematic double issue on the topic in science and education in 2009,11 later published as a book by springer (matthews 2009a). at around the same time, as matthews organized the first asian regional conference of the ihpst in 2012, he developed particular interests in feng shui as a (2013), rio de janeiro, brazil (2015), ankara, turkey (2017), thessaloniki, greece (2019), and calgary, canada (2021). 9 the 1st latin american regional conference of the international history, philosophy, and science teaching group (ihpst-la), which i mentioned having participated, took place in maresias, brazil, in 2010. the 2nd ihpst-la conference took place in mendoza, argentina, in 2012. the 3rd ihpst-la conference took place in santiago, chile, in 2014. the 4th ihpst-la conference took place in santo andré, brazil, in 2018. 10 science education (vol. 13, nos 4-5, 2004) (https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/volumes-andissues/13-4) and science education (vol. 13, nos 7-8, 2004) (https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/volumes-and-issues/13-7). 11 science education (vol. 18, nos 6-7, 2009) (https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/volumes-and-issues/18-6). gustavo rodrigues rocha – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 worldview, a research interest that extended from 2012 to 2020, resulting in his 2019 publication on the topic (matthews 2019b). another historical figure who caught matthews’ attention, on the occasion of the 5th biennial conference of the ihpst group in leeds, was the english chemist joseph priestley (1733-1804), as the author describes in chapter 8. as matthews rightly pointed out, “priestley is an underutilized figure in science education” and “priestley’s contribution to the modern understanding of photosynthesis is seldom mentioned in school curricula” (matthews 2021, 221). accordingly, matthews elaborated an integrated, cross-disciplinary, hps-informed liberal approach to teaching joseph priestley and photosynthesis (akin to the one previouslyelaborated upon in his pendulum studies) (matthews 2009b). chapter 10 concludes matthews’ book with some reflections on hps&st in science teaching education. in conclusion, i was delighted to learn more about the history of hps&st research through the life and times of matthews. i could connect many dots in my own conception and storyline of this fascinating history and i would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in or involved in hps&st research. references cohen, r. s. and seeger, r. j., 1970. “ernst mach: physicist and philosopher” in: boston studies in the philosophy and history of science. vol. 6, springer. freire jr., o. and tenório r. m., 2001. “a graduate programme in history, philosophy and science teaching in brazil”. science and education, 10: 601-608, 2001. matthews, m. r., 1989. “ernst mach and thought experiments in science education”. in: research in science education, 18, pp. 235–241. matthews, m. r., 1990. “ernst mach and contemporary science education reforms”. in: international journal of science education, 12(3), 317–325. matthews, m. r., 1994. science teaching: the role of history and philosophy of science. new york: routledge. matthews, m. r., 2000. time for science education: how teaching the history and philosophy of pendulum motion can contribute to science literacy. new york: plenum press. matthews, m. r., 2009a. science, worldviews and education. dordrecht: springer. matthews, m. r., 2009b. “science and worldviews in the classroom: joseph priestley and photosynthesis”. in: science and education, 18 (6-7), pp. 929-960. matthews, m. r., 2014. international handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching, 3 vols. dordrecht: springer. matthews, m. r., 2019a. “mach’s educational theory and practice”. in: stadler, friedrich (ed.), pp. 553-570. ernst mach: life, work, influence. springer. matthews, m. r., 2019b. feng shui: teaching about science and pseudoscience. dordrecht: springer. matthews, m. r., 2019c. mario bunge: a centenary festschrift. dordrecht: springer. matthews, m. r., 2020. “philosophical problems with constructivism: some considerations for student-centered teaching and learning”. in: hoidn, s. and klemencic, m. (ed.). the routledge international handbook of student-centered learning and teaching in higher education. routledge. pp. 47-64. matthews, m. r., 2021. history, philosophy and science teaching: a personal story. dordrecht: springer. matthews, m. r.; gauld, c. f.; stinnes, a., 2005. the pendulum: scientific, historical, philosophical and educational perspectives. dordrecht: springer. shimony, a., 1997. “presidential address: some historical and philosophical reflections on science and enlightenment”. in: darden, l. (ed.), proceedings of the 1996 psa meeting, s1–14. microsoft word vieira layout english transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-19 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andréa mara ribeiro da silva vieira1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7136-3648] abstract: this article aims to reflect on the place of history in the history of science from the perspective of brazilian historiography of science, mainly according to the thought of the brazilian physicist and historian of science, carlos alvarez maia. since the 1990s, maia (2013) began to question why the history of science became (and still largely remains) a “history of absent historians” in the face of the predominance of history of science in the natural science departments and the absence in history departments. the dynamic and changing historiography of science itself reaffirms the lack of historical analyses using history’s methodological and conceptual apparatus. thus, epistemological aspects appear interrelated to political-institutional issues. consequently, one has a political-epistemological perspective for discussing the place – or non-place – of history in the history of science. the thought of maia (2013) acts as an essential starting point for reflection. it constitutes a possible opening in constructing a consolidation of discussions about the impacts (of the absence and the presence of the conceptual apparatus of history) in developing new historiography of science conceptually historical. keywords: history of science; absent historians; brazilian historiography of science; public policies for history of science doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.08 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ why “absent historians” when referring to the history of science? the thought of carlos alvarez maia why has the history of science become a history of absent historians? this disquieting question that irrupts the thin layer of regularity that cradles the history of science is the guiding thread of the thought of brazilian physicist and historian of science carlos alvarez 1 andréa mara ribeiro da silva vieira is a phd from the university of brasilia (unb) and a post-doctoral researcher in the graduate program of history at the federal university of minas gerais. address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. email: andreamara.vieira@gmail.com the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 maia (1945-2019)2 summarized in the epigraph of one of his major works: “what is the history of science? a history without history? what is it? perhaps, simply, a history of absent historians” (maia 2013, 11). maia’s reference book history of science: a history of absent historians: preconditions for the emergence of science studies (2013) guided the reflections around the role of history for the history of science. this book is a significant part of his doctoral thesis, the weft of science in liberal society: the histories of science, science and history, whose original manuscript, not by chance, was donated by him to the collection of the library of the faculty of philosophy and humanities fafich/ufmg, since the federal university of minas gerais, until then, appeared as the only university offering mandatory classes of history of science in the undergraduate curriculum of the history department. this type of department would be, therefore, the adequate space for the development and exchange of the problem of the “history of absent historians”, and, indeed, he did it also in honor of scientia: theory and history of science group, of which he was an active member, “participating in several activities and collaborating to reinforce a network more focused on the theoretical problems of the history of science and its historiography” (ávila 2020, 150). the contact with thinkers of the brazilian historiography of science such as professor hilton japiassu (1934-2015), in whose classes he operated the effects of the “demolition of scientistic ideology” and the participation in the study group “macumba of physics” under the guidance of mario bunge, whose goal was to “unravel [our] disturbances before the theoretical and epistemological innovations of twentieth-century physics” (maia 2011, 12) and the historical and philosophical issues became an indispensable complement to scientific knowledge. we read kuhn, koyré, bohr, heisenberg, bohm, and feyerabend. i graduated in physics in 1978 with many concerns but still passionate about the human capacity to develop theories with great explanatory power. (maia 2011, 12) unveiling history, its concepts and methodologies end up shaking the idea of “history of science”,3 leading maia (2013) to believe in the existence of “an identity crisis in the history of science that is hesitant before the undefinition of roles assigned to it” (sic), questioning whether the history of science is history or if it “integrates the philosophy of science”, since, “formed basically by philosophers and scientists” with more “proximity to the philosophy of science and science historiated than with history itself” (maia 2013, 23). thus, “originally this area of work (history of sciences) was occupied by philosophers and scientists interested in unveiling how science – in the past – constructed its truths”, whose “objective of these early 2 maia graduated in physics from the pontifical catholic university of rio de janeiro – puc/rj (1978), with a specialization in social history (1987). under the guidance of professor shozo motoyama, he entered, in 1988, the doctorate in social history at the university of são paulo – usp, at this time fully involved with historiographic studies. under the tutorship of professor josé carlos reis, he did a postdoc at the federal university of minas gerais – ufmg (2008) in the area of theory and historiography of history, thus sealing his commitment to history. he was an adjunct professor of history theory at the state university of rio de janeiro and coordinator of the laboratory of historical studies of science – lehc. maia also worked as a researcher in history of science, astronomy, and nuclear astrophysics at the national observatory, at cnpq’s research center for history of science, and also at the mast – museum of astronomy and related sciences and at the state secretariat of science and technology – setec. available at: http://lattes.cnpq.br/9656659906427297. accessed on: 12 may 2021. 3 maia uses “history of the sciences” (plural) and warns, “the social expression of the science is not singular, it is plural. its singularity is in its plurality, in its multiplicity of ‘roles’” (maia 2013, 83). and more: the “unity of all sciences supposes that there is a single method for the establishment of all knowledge with pretensions to be considered scientific. it is a reinforcement of the notion that there is only one science spelled with a capital letter in the singular: science” (maia 2013, 105). the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 times was markedly epistemological” and the history of science that calls itself history “is not produced by historians” (maia 2010, 7), but “belong to their own historized objects”, as is the case of the history of physics or chemistry. the absence of the historian or history in the history of science is consummated, according to maia, by the non-use of the theories and methodologies of the scientific field of history and, not necessarily, (but sometimes also) by the absence of academic training in the field of history, that is, absent historians are not personified in the historian, but represents the absence of the theories and methodologies of history in the analysis of science. maia (2013) adds: we all know that usually, the historian of science does not have the scientific preparation that allows him to master, for example, einsteinian physics. this is why historians of contemporary science are always scientists, physicists, mathematicians, etc. [...] however, just like historians of philosophy, (also like) they have the severe drawback of not knowing what history is. [...] but, just like the so-called historians of philosophy departments or retired scientists, they also do not know what history is. (barradas in maia 2013, 26) (emphasis added) the historian josé carlos reis (2010) considers that it is common to hear from historians of science that “historiography even belongs to the field of the history of science, but the history of science is not interested in historiography, it does not dialogue with history”. he concludes, “just look at the journals of the area; there is nothing about historiographical knowledge” (reis 2010, 17). “the tendency of the ‘historiography’ of the sciences is to dialogue neither with the historical process nor with historiography.” and cites as an example: “the great historical changes that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, processes and events that every historian knows, the historiography of the scientific revolution mentions them vaguely”, in which the “revolutionary change is described only at the scientific-philosophical level as if this had autonomy concerning its historicity.” (reis 2010, 17). therefore, the historian strictu sensu does not recognize himself in the so-called internalist history of sciences, made by natural scientists, and can make the same objection to it that febvre made to the history of philosophy, made by philosophers: it is a disembodied history, “spirited”, without flesh and blood, where bonfires, inquisitions, restrictions or budgetary incentives are only mentioned rhetorically, like fireworks. (reis 2010, 17) reis (2010) continues with his call for reflection and asks: “who was thomas kuhn? he did not invent the concept of ‘structure’ nor that of ‘revolution’ in 1962. the concept of structure goes back to marx, saussure, durkheim, to the structural history of febvre, bloch, and braudel” (reis 2010, 19). it also highlighted the hegemony lévi-strauss’ structuralism in the 1960s. the concept of “revolution”, according to reis (2010), “came from astronomy, but was completely re-signified by the social sciences”. he goes on to say that “kuhn does not dialogue with his sources, and it seems that he was the genius creator of discontinuity thinking. and he was not!” (reis 2010, 19). therefore, historians of science, usually theoretical scientists with backgrounds in the natural sciences, must understand that, once accepted by the history department, they become “historians strictu sensu” and must learn theory and methodology of history, history of historiography, analysis of primary sources, to make their history of physics, chemistry, medicine, etc. in a nonamateurish way. (reis 2010, 23) (emphasis added) the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 on the other hand, maia (2010) suggests that the classes of history itself “or its professionals, do not see scientific activity as a historical object” and there is a “resistance within history departments4 to the entry of science among their research objects” (maia 2010, 8) through “barriers built among historians tout court who resist considering science as a historical object”, that is, as “an object apt to attend the concerns of the history departments of our universities” (maia 2013, 20). the double face of the absence of historians is in the historians who “ignore, in their central problematics, the specific production of the history of sciences” (maia 2013, 23), besides not conceiving science as a historical object. it is also in the “reciprocal distancing and ignorance of methodologies and problems developed by both tout court authors and scholars of scientific activity” (maia 2013, 23): as a consequence of this concern to “historicize” the sciences, this book points out the need for criteria and conceptual parameters to promote a theoretical and methodological basis for the studies on the history of science to be effectively integrated into the territory of the courses of history. although there is a large and respectable production of professional historians on the subject – “history of science” – it is insufficient. it is well known that this subfield was established independently, maintaining its academic autonomy concerning the science of history. this autonomy was translated into particular thematic clippings and conceptual formulations of its own. (maia 2013, 22) (emphasis added) with that, what is expected is the observance and use of “criteria and conceptual parameters that promote a theoretical and methodological basis, for the studies of the history of science to constitute an activity effectively integrated to the territory of the historical knowledge” (maia 2013, 22), in which the dialogue and the field of history prevail. recalling thomas kuhn, maia attributes partially to the history the responsibility of “not ‘entering’ the effective content of science as it does with other courses”, such as art history (maia 2013, 27). the problem of the “absent historians” the discussion of this problem is not exclusive to maia (2013). in different historical contexts, several other historians of science have highlighted forms of presence or absence of history (or historians). they wanted to demonstrate the relevance of history for science and the healthy approach between history and history of science by highlighting the role of historians (with or without academic training in the field) in writing the history of science. on the other hand, they also wanted to highlight the negative aspects of the distance between history and the history of science, especially regarding the non-use of the conceptual and methodological apparatus of history. this problem is present in the unfolding of the complex historical plot in which historians tout court, sociologists, philosophers and historians of science dialogue (maia 2010; 2013), which without losing sight of the role of social history for the history of science 4 for condé, “few universities have their own history of science department, such as harvard university. thus, the history of science emerges in different places: departments of philosophy, physics, education, autonomous institutes within universities, etc. we may even think that it would be natural for the history of science to emerge in a history department, but if we analyze the multiple places where it has emerged, we will see that history departments are few in number. in part, this is because this type of history aggregates science, a foreign element to the historical corpus. this seems to be one of the reasons why, according to carlos maia, the history of science becomes a ‘history of absent historians’. fortunately, this scenario is much better today. historians of science are beginning to appear in history departments” (condé 2017a, viii). (emphasis added). the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 pointed to a history of science of absent historians. between 1929 and 1962, occurred what maia (2013) called “network 33” or “historiographical hiatus”. in this period, the possibility of studying science from a social-historical perspective has weakened. works of “sociology of knowledge” represented by books as ideology and utopia of mannheim (1929) and reinforced by the ideas of the polish physician and biologist ludwik fleck (1896-1961) in the 1930s were eclipsed. since the beginning, for maia, the historical-social perspective was already downplayed by the logical positivism of rudolph carnap (1891-1970) and the “quarrel” internalism versus externalism reinforced by the context of discovery and the context of justification of hans reichenbach. in maia’s viewpoint, the duo reichenbach/carnap supported the longevity of the vienna circle’s influence. neopositivist ideas and internalism/externalism quarrel prominence lasted until 19625 with kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions. kuhn paved the way for the edinburgh “strong program” led by sociologists barry barnes and david bloor in the 1970s when they took up the foundations of manheim’s thought. according to manheim, the cognitive contents of knowledge are not acts in themselves but products of a social process. on the one hand, the “reichenbach dichotomy” served as an obstacle for a history of science with an effectively historical bias, since it “distinguishes two regions of immiscible competence: one external (either psychological or historical-sociological) provides the origin of the scientific event and guarantees nothing about its veracity/validity”, which would be the “context of discovery”, therefore external to the scientific content; “the other, internal, the only responsible for the legitimation of knowledge”, which would be the “context of justification” of scientific knowledge (maia 2013, 111 ). on the other side, carnap’s “logical positivism” also contributed to the isolation of natural sciences from any external influence on “scientific logic”, be it social or historical. together, carnap and reichenbach served as a support for the “historiographical hiatus” until, according to maia, the historical resumption of science by thomas kuhn in 1962.6 the result of maia’s investigations (2013) brings evidence about one of the possible historiographical analyses capable of explaining the absence of historians tout court or history strictu sensu in the history of science. however, a historiographical analysis of the history of science with a significant time frame leads the issue of the absence of historians to the very genesis of the founding of the natural sciences and the human sciences. in other words, it branches out to the process of the constitution of the field of history and the history of science. however, it cannot be confused with a deterministic causal relationship in such a way that the absence of the historian tout court (or of history strictu sensu) and the distance between the scientific fields of history and history of science become perennial. 5 it is certain that the lack of consensus regarding the impacts of neopositivism and the internalism/externalism dichotomy on the writing of the history of science. there is also a lack of agreement regarding the work of thomas kuhn, pointed by maia as the one responsible for reinaugurating a history of science with history. when addressing aspects of the internalism versus externalism controversy in the historiography of science, condé highlights, by referring to the historian steven shapin, that various authors have valued social aspects in modern science between the end of the second war and the end of the cold war. however, he adds that “shapin (1992, 333) suggests this demarcation and we should not understand it too rigidly. these dates would not be so precise, especially if we consider that important works by koyré and zilsel, authors who will be at the epicenter of the debate, had already been published in the late 1930s and even in the period of the second world war. as for the end of the debate, the vagueness is greater. perhaps it has been transformed rather than ended. shapin himself acknowledges that it still presents unresolved points (shapin 1992, 334)” (condé 2017, 25). 6 maia forges this concept based on his research and theoretical construction related to the specific scope of the analysis. so that besides not being a consensus in the academy, it cannot be conceived in an isolated and absolute way and should be seen as part of a process that took place over decades with the contribution of several authors. the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 the 19th century was marked by changing movements in the sciences that oscillated between approximation and distancing, such as the approximation movement of auguste comte’s positivism in defense of “social physics” since it intended to guide the human sciences by the natural sciences. with the historicists, a movement of distancing from the natural sciences emerged in search of the autonomy of the human sciences aiming to make history scientific. this movement meant the recognition of the theoretical and conceptual specificities of history through the development of its methodology for the sciences of the spirit (geisteswissenschaften) before their specificities concerning the natural sciences (naturwissenschaften) (dilthey, 2010). dilthey (2010) adopts the distinction proposed by droysen between “explaining” and “understanding”, on the one hand, the natural-scientific method is based on the “explanation” of causal connections; on the other hand, the sciences of the spirit are based on the mental “understanding” as apprehension of meaning. this dichotomy extends to the stance of some “historians of science”. citing butterfield, kragh (2007) anticipates saying that “it is the scientist and not the historian who has shown the greatest euphoria for the history of science” and that in the work of the historian of science the relationship between “historians who write about science” and “scientists who write history” has never been accessible. the problem that kragh (2007) points out is, “does science matter in the history of science?”. perhaps it would be necessary to persist with the recurrent question: is history relevant in the history of science? however, kragh (2007) acknowledges that there is still a tension surrounding this question, as some scientists “call for a completely historicized and intellectually independent history of science completely ‘free’ of the scientists’ way of thinking”. however, he warns that “in some modern contextual history of science there is, at least implicitly a danger of giving priority to the context and ignoring what it is a context of, namely the content of science” (kragh 2007, 106). the search for a balance between a history of science with an emphasis on science or a focus on history is at stake (although it does not make sense because they are not mutually exclusive). kragh admits that historians of science have the “obligation to think seriously and critically about our scientists” and “about our communities”. also, it would be “a disaster if the history of science divorced itself from science” and “proceeded purely according to its norms and toward its own goals”, since “science is an important part of society and culture, but it cannot be treated in the same way as other sociocultural components” (kragh 2007, 107). however, in the debates’ refinement, this discussion contributes to the plastering of the natural dynamics of history and science. it makes the acceptance of the history of science as history unfeasible, since history, being particularizing and relative, would compromise the idea of scientific objectivity, the results, and its universal laws and would go towards the relativism so combated by science. however, these two extremes are weakened in the face of current research that each day demonstrates the complex nature of science in which several dimensions, among them, the role of nature, the historical, social, economic, or political aspects, in dialogue or dispute, interact, intersect and interpenetrate. trends towards a historical history of science as we have seen, some causes of the distance between history and history of science may have in its genesis the positivism that led the human sciences to scientism and the historicism that sought autonomy of the human sciences in relation to the natural sciences. both historical perspectives contributed to a particular ambiguity about the methodological identity7 of the history of science, which sometimes neglected history as a scientific field and 7 “[...] the history of science is something that people produce with the most varied backgrounds, which makes it an area with definitional problems” (videira 2004, 290). thus, the “history of science the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 wrote history based on the internal logic of science itself. this viewpoint considers that the history of science does not have history and, therefore, this field of knowledge was not inserted in the large area of the human sciences. the trends of the historical history of science, humanities and nature, humanities and natural sciences arose in the first decades of the 20th century. since the beginning of the 1900s, émile meyerson advocated the “strategic use of the history of science”, which philosophical valorization gave rise to the french “epistemological tradition” (gattinara 2001). its main exponents were gaston bachelard, alexandre koyré, hélène metzger and georges canguilhem. however, in 1962, with the publication of american physicist and historian of science thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions, history will assume a decisive role in transforming the dominant image of science. kuhn shows some refinement in the approach to the history of science when he initially establishes “a role for history” (kuhn 2009, 19) and not for the history of science. he distinguished them and warned that only new historiography, that is, a new way of analyzing, narrating, and writing the history of science, would change the dominant scientific image of science. moreover, kuhn demarcates the difference between history and the history of science. although recognizing his teacher georges sarton’s relevance, kuhn points out that “there was a kind of history of science to be done that sarton was not doing. [...] but what they taught was often not exactly history [...] it was textbook history” (kuhn, 2006b, 341). or still, when referring to the case histories incorporated into the curriculum reform implemented at harvard by james b. conant, kuhn pointed out that unlike him, conant “never privileged, [i privileged], the need to mention what people had believed before the event” (kuhn, 2006, 334). this approach suggests that it was history without reference to memory and sources. finally, the crowning achievement of kuhn’s perception of the distinction and distancing between the fields comes with his article “the relations between history and history of science” (2011, [1971]). maia’s reflection about the absence of historians is old and not specific to the brazilian case, which only demonstrates that this had already been a relevant concern for the history of science more than a century ago. at the beginning of the 20th century, the article “the historian and the history of science” (barnes, 1920)8 points out the lack of dialogue, interest and cooperation between historians and historians of science, that is, keeping the “historian out of the field” of the history of science is a representative act of significant loss for scientists and historians. furthermore, barnes’ paper points out that the lack of more comprehensive training of students in the history of science deprives them of “adequate opportunity to familiarize themselves with what, perhaps, should constitute the most vital phase of history” (barnes, 1920, 122). the way forward would be the reformulation of science education, which should aim at training students in the natural sciences with a proper understanding of the “relationship of the history of science and cultural and historical evolution”. furthermore, it was necessary to enable the scientific education of the history student with a “reasonable and basic understanding of the history of science”. thus, historians and scientists should better train their students (barnes 1920, 123-124). does not seem, therefore, to constitute its identity through a coherently structured body of knowledge and methods” (videira 2004, 291). the identity problem and the sensation of “identity crisis” of the history of science (videira 2007, 112) are caused by the absence of demarcation criteria arising from the tension between at least two ways of making history of science: the way of scientists and at the same time actors (and authors) of the history of science and the approach of historians and sociologists (videira 2007, 112-114). 8 previously presented at the conference on the history of science at the american historical association meeting held in cleveland, ohio, in 1919, this article was published in 1920. the first general session of the association was entirely devoted to the history of science (barnes 1920, 112). the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 for maia (2013), the possibility of realizing the genuine and conceptually historical history of science did not represent only an ideal. the first incursions occurred in france with the foundation of the revue de synthèse historique in 1900, by the french philosopher henri berr, which “supported by the idea of interdisciplinarity, [this journal] always opened great spaces for articles on the history of science, besides being a landmark in the gestation of the annales journal” (maia 2013, 22). moreover, the journal’s publications were transferred to the interdisciplinary space of the centre international de synthèse. this center was composed of a wide diversity of members with different degrees of involvement (chimisso 2008, 89). there the semaines de synthèse took place. these events enabled the consolidation of this exchange through the seminars that allowed dialogue between different fields, including natural sciences. this movement reveals common issues resulting from interscience that would compose the final syntheses. a closer look at the administrative and organizational division of the center demonstrates this dialogue since it was a part of the “historical synthesis section”9 under the direction of philosopher henri berr and historian lucien febvre. also, there was the “natural sciences section”10 directed by philosopher and historian of science abel rey and, finally, the “general synthesis section”11 responsible for finalizing the reports of the seminars. in december 1928, henri berr had announced the creation of the “history of science section”12 that would become part of the center (vieira 2014, 44-45). maia (2013) conceives the revue as a space of approximation between history and history of science: there is perhaps one notable exception: the revue de synthèse historique, created by henri berr in 1900, whose title was changed in 1931 to revue de synthèse. the idea of interdisciplinarity supported this journal. it always opened large spaces for articles on the history of science, besides being a milestone in the gestation of the annales journal. (maia 2013, 22) another emblematic representative event of a historical history of science was the support of the historian lucien febvre for alexandre koyré’s candidacy to the collège de france in the orientation des recherches et projets of 1951. febvre identified in the koyrerian program similar bases to the one developed by the history of mentalities, reaffirming the unity and complexity of the mental tool: it is impossible to separate the history of philosophical thought into closed compartments from religious thought, which constantly bathes the first to inspire or oppose itself. (and it is) equally impossible to neglect that the study of the structure of scientific thought [...] the evolution of scientific thought [...] does not form an independent series, but on the contrary, it is very closely linked to that of transscientific, philosophical, metaphysical and religious ideas. (koyré, in zambelli 2009, 7) (emphasis added) 9 the “historical synthesis section” was divided into seven committees: history, theory and methodology, sociology, psychology, geography, ethnography, and history of ideas. 10 the “natural sciences section” was divided into committees on mathematics, astronomy, physics and chemistry, biology, and later this section was joined by a subsection on the philosophy of science. 11 the “general synthesis section” members were, among others, émile meyerson and gaston bachelard. 12 this section was published in bulletin of the centre international de synthèse, 6, dec. 1928, p. 49, revue de synthèse historique, 50, dec. 1928. a member of the “history of science section” was the chemist and historian of science, hélène metzger, responsible for introducing koyré to the group. the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 in the case of brazil, the dynamics of a historical history of science was not only part of maia’s ideals but also became a reality in at least two distinct contexts and spaces in which he participated. although the discussions sometimes remained restricted to groups, their retrieval from time to time13 reaffirmed their relevance. the history of science nucleus’ in the university of são paulo – usp was initiated by physicists maria amélia mascarenhas dantes in 1964 and shozo motoyama in 1967. in the 1968 university reform with the creation of the respective institutes, they opted for the transfer to the history department. it was the first research line dedicated to the history of science and technology in brazil in a history program. this research line was structured around the history of science tradition in a fruitful dialogue with “social history” (impacting several generations, including maia and olival freire). it was also profoundly influenced by the science studies approach. in brazil, this movement downplayed the “historiographical hiatus” in which history was eclipsed in the scientific history of science. another turning point for a historical history of science would have as a landmark the year 2010 in the “1st national meeting of researchers in history of science” – enapehc – organized by the graduate program and scientia: theory and history of science group of the federal university of minas gerais. this event intended to promote the “theory of history” as a reference to the history of science overcoming social history as the primary reference. as a reference to the history of science, social history reached its high point in the 1980s and 1990s. however, during the round table “is the history of science history? explaining a tautology”, professors carlos alvarez maia (uerj), luiz carlos soares (uff) – then president of the brazilian society for history of science – and the professor of theory of history and historiography, josé carlos reis (ufmg) presented relevant points of the theory of history for the advancement of the history of science. with the challenge of reflecting on this tautology, maia and reis were categorical in reaffirming that the history of science is “history” and has historiography. reis, however, right in the title asks: “why is it necessary to explain this tautology?” alerting us to the fact that many questions still need to be faced, such as, for example, investigating if history and history of science are built-in distinct scientific fields, if these fields dialog, how are the uses of the concepts of history by those who make the history of science, therefore, these are questions that remain. another vital space for a historical perspective of the history of science in brazil is the department of history of the faculty of philosophy and human sciences at the federal university of minas gerais – fafich/ufmg. since the 1990s, this department has served as a space of integration between history and the history of science. this space brings together science and humanities. or, as maia advocated, it considers science an object of history. in 1997, the graduate program in history launched the first initiative to create a center for history of science at the federal university of minas gerais. however, this only became a reality in 1999, with professors mauro l. condé, betânia gonçalves de figueiredo and bernardo jefferson de oliveira creating the scientia – theory and history of science group. in 2000, the graduate program began the research line “science and culture in history”. in the history undergraduate program, in 1999, the course of history of science and technology was created, having professor mauro l. condé as the first professor since its beginnings until today. the scientia group has always been active and has broadened the debate on the history of science. the group is divided into three nuclei which carry out academic productions and scientific events. the first core focuses on the historiography of science (mauro l. condé, bernardo jefferson de oliveira), the second core is dedicated to health 13 maia received his doctorate in 1996 and only published a book about it in 2013, that is, seventeen years later. the only article that directly addressed the problem was published during his doctorate in 1992 in the journal of the brazilian society for the history of science – sbhc entitled: “for a history of science effectively historical? the struggle for a sociological history”. the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 science history (ana carolina vimieiro gomes, rita de cássia marques, anny jackeline da silveira), and the third is committed to environmental history (regina horta duarte, ely bergo de carvalho, rafael scopacasa). the group also welcomes research in different fields of the history of science, such as the history of cartography (junia furtado), history of physics, history of mathematics (mauro l. condé), and history of biology (regina horta duarte, ana carolina vimieiro gomes). all the nuclei work parallel and maintain a fruitful internal dialogue with research professors in history theory and historiography (josé carlos reis, douglas atilla marcelino). there is a strong connection between scientia’s members with historians of science from other universities. so, the most frequent interlocutor was carlos alvarez maia. in 2008, he became an official member of the group. in an interview, maia stated: i believe that brazil lacks centers of collective production in this area. this is the expected role for ufmg and its research line in the history of science and its graduate program in history. ufmg has everything to, at this moment, assume the vanguard of the brazilian university research in this area. we need a hub for new researchers as usp was in the past. in latin america, esocite14 has shown a good development: colombia, mexico, argentina and brazil already present some integration in “science studies”. i hope it expands this network and offers more convincing fruits. (maia, 2011) (emphasis added). on this topic, the professor of theory of history and historiography of history, josé carlos reis, expressed himself thus: [...] the history department is the appropriate place for the history of sciences. ufmg history department is to be congratulated because it is among the pioneers in integrating these essential objects of historical knowledge, the sciences, the techniques, the environment in its graduate program and now, also with undergraduate courses. (reis 2010, 23) (emphasis added) it is important to highlight two other propitious spaces for the interlocution between history and history of science that were constituted through the initiative of graduate students in history at ufmg: the journal temporalidades and the “interdisciplinary nucleus of theoretical studies” (niet). temporalidades was created in 2009. it is a journal as a “space for the publication of original works produced by researchers in the area of history, or that dialogue with it”.15 in addition, it has several thematic dossiers on history and the history of science. niet, created in 2012,16 corresponds to an unofficial initiative of graduate students of history at ufmg “to promote the interdisciplinary debate of subjects related to the theory of history. the vocation of the nucleus of studies is the immediate theoretical questioning”, having an “interinstitutional character” currently.17 just over 15 years after the creation of the scientia group, to broaden the debates on the historical narrative of science (with the vital viewpoint of the humanities) and at the same time internationalizing the discussions, in 2016, a new space for dialogue and possibility for historical historiography of science was created, transversal: international journal for the historiography of science.18 14 esocite is a latin american association for the social studies of science and technology. https://www.esocite.la/quienes-somos/ 15 https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/temporalidades/about 16 founded by the then graduate students of history at ufmg, fernando garcia, andréa mara ribeiro da silva vieira, rodrigo bianchini cracco, fátima saionara leandro brito. 17 https://nietufmg.wixsite.com/niet 18 editors-in-chief are mauro l. condé (ufmg) and marlon salomon (ufg). www.historiographyofscience.org the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 finally, even considering that since the research developed by maia, some aspects of the debate have advanced, other measures are still necessary to affirm a historical history of science that establishes reciprocal attitudes between the fields of the history and history of science. on the side of the history of science, it is desirable that the necessary opening of the “body of its professionals who have grouped themselves in specific societies and congresses, forming a circle of researchers whose production transits through their journals” (maia 2013, 22). on the side of history, it is essential that the “scientific activity” is conceived as a historical object. in this way, this attitude avoids possible resistance from history departments concerning recognizing science as an object of research. (maia 2010, 8). in other words, on the one hand, scientists who practice the history of science should approach history, and, on the other hand, historians should approach the history of science. thus, we would be better able to write the history of science or investigate science from the historical dimension, using the conceptual and theoretical-methodological apparatus. after all, the history of science is history. the place of history in the history of science in brazil the actuality of maia’s thought concerning the problem of absent historians lies in the complexity of the issue and the changing movements of approximation, distancing and reapproximation. occurring in different ways and in different proportions, this situation leads, at certain moments, to a place and, at others, to a non-place for history in the history of science. in this article, serving as a reference for future deepening, the approach is divided into three groups: 1) graduation and scientific research; 2) undergraduate (teaching) and 3); science education. these changing movements were in maia’s thought since, at the same time, he integrated a group of historians of science whose tradition is based on social history (usp group), he could highlight the absence of history in the history of science. however, although it seems paradoxical, maia was part of one of the few spaces that produced the history of science, giving him clarity concerning most academic research and its production spaces. as a rule, by that time, the space of these academic research used to be the history of their “own historicized objects” (maia, 2010, 7) carried out in their respective natural sciences departments by physicists, chemists, and biologists. that was a history of science bias more scientific than historical, like science itself. in brazil, graduate studies, research and scientific production in the field of the historical history of science, or otherwise history, have been very active not only in the centers at usp and ufmg but also at ufrj, the oswaldo cruz foundation – fiocruz, at the astronomy and related sciences museum – mast, in associations such as brazilian society for the history of science – sbhc, brazilian society for the progress of science – sbpc, brazilian academy of sciences – abc, among others. the development of graduate studies in the history of science with “isolated initiatives at usp and other universities” in the area of history of science contributed institutionally to the emergence “in our country of a line of research entirely dedicated to the history of science and technology” starting the “formation of a roll of masters and doctors, including well-known names such as ruy gama, olival freire jr., carlos maia, francisco assis de queiroz, ulisses capozoli and many others” (magalhães, 2021). however, focusing on graduate studies is a very restricted view concerning maia’s denounce and the reference base of this work that starts from a democratic conception of science. in other words, history should integrate science education as a whole and not just circulate in an elitist way among a few scholars on the subject. it is relevant to say that scientific production in the field of the history of science, especially if it presents a historical approach, is essential for the development and understanding of science. however, it represents a concentration of knowledge concerning the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 12 the small percentage of the population or the number of people who have higher education at the graduate level. therefore, education, and scientific education in particular, that caters to the full development of the human being is everyone’s right and the brazilian state’s duty. in this sense, besides the effort to develop graduate studies and research in the history of science, it is also essential to invest in the teaching of the graduation level, especially given the brazilian constitutional principle of “inseparability between teaching, research and extension”. therefore, a broader approach to the history of science in higher education (training of teachers and undergraduates) is inevitable, considering the impacts of these future teachers in basic education. additionally, most researchers who are part of the history of science graduate programs aspire to an academic career. still, they will not always share the knowledge acquired with their students (future teachers of basic education). as we will see later, years after maia’s denounce, the not always historical history of science, therefore, more scientistic, is still predominant in the natural sciences undergraduate courses and absent in humanity’s undergraduate courses. to map the existence of “mandatory classes”19 in undergraduate courses in the following fields 1) humanities, in the departments of history and pedagogy (education), and 2) the natural sciences, in the departments of physics, chemistry, and biological sciences, a quantitative survey was carried out. we analyzed the curricular matrix, curricular structure, grid and programs in the webpages of 28 (twenty-eight) universities (26 public federal universities and two public state universities located in the brazilian state capitals),20 which resulted in the graph in annex no. 1, page 19. considering the mandatory courses in undergraduate studies (bachelor and licentiate degree)21 based on the descriptors mentioned, the results of this first phase of the quantitative research in the 28 (twenty-eight) brazilian universities surveyed in humanities and natural sciences are still predominantly as maia (2010; 2013) demonstrated a decade ago. in other words, a history of science of the “historicized objects” carried out in the undergraduate courses of the respective natural sciences departments is predominant, despite the crucial advances in research and graduate studies in the historical history of science. thus, most of the surveyed universities have only 01 (one) course offering mandatory classes (among the five courses surveyed). the most extensive offer is in the department of biological sciences, with the mandatory classes provided by 17 (seventeen) universities; followed by the department of physics with mandatory classes in 13 (thirteen) universities; in the department of chemistry in 10 (ten) universities; in the department of history in only 01 (one) university and in the department of pedagogy with no offer of mandatory classes with the descriptors surveyed. 19 the mandatory courses are likely to be spaces for discussion about existing debates in the field of the historical history of science. non-mandatory courses reduce the likelihood of students seeking them. 20 the survey methodology included the use of the following descriptors: “history of science”, “history of physics”, “history of chemistry”, “history of biology”, “philosophy of science”, and “epistemology”. the surveys were conducted in june and july 2019 and were revised in april 2020. 21 “several variables impact the result, such as the different curricula, where the campus is and shift since the curriculum grid differs on each campus and each time (morning, afternoon or evening). additionally, some universities only offer a licentiate’s degree or bachelor’s degree and not both. however, the curricular grid is different even when there is a bachelor’s degree and a licentiate’s degree for the course (which is the majority). in this research, the difference in the curricular grid between licentiate and bachelor’s degrees is not only in the classes essential to learning research (bachelor’s degree) and teaching (licentiate’s degree). the unfolding is even more impactful since it can culminate in training with completely dichotomous views of science by avoiding courses with historical, epistemological or humanities approaches” (vieira 2020, 223). the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 13 thus, a significant part of the students, future teachers, based on the quantitative criteria presented, will possibly not have in their respective training the opportunity to have access to debates around the history of science and related issues, including the historical history of science. biology students from 38% of the universities surveyed; physics students from 53% of the universities; chemistry students from 64% of the universities; history students from 99% of the universities surveyed; and, finally, pedagogy students from 100% of the universities surveyed will be deprived of this knowledge. this deficiency in the training of teachers and graduates impacts the science education taught in basic education. the national and international scientific productions demonstrate the relevance of the history of science for teacher education. in “history, philosophy and science teaching: the current trend towards approximation” (matthews 1995), based on the proposals of the british national curriculum and the recommendations of the american curriculum guidelines project 2061, matthews defends the inclusion of the history and philosophy of science in teacher training programs in this area. according to him, this would be essential in solving what he calls the “crisis in contemporary science teaching […] as evidenced by student and teacher attrition from the classroom and the alarmingly high rates of science illiteracy” (matthews 1995, 165). there is also intense academic debate about the importance of the history of science for understanding the nature of science (nos) as one of the strategies that can promote a more contextualized science teaching, humanizing the content to be taught. this inclusion of the history of science would favor a broader understanding of scientific concepts and the way science operates, and its relationship with society. in this line, roxo beltran; saito and trindade (2014), in history of science for teacher education, although they do not address the problem of the absence of history in the history of science, recognize the lack of specialized materials directed to the teaching of the history of science in higher education. for the authors, this approach is indispensable due to the specificities of the area as an interdisciplinary area. this field of knowledge has its object built at the interface of three spheres of analysis: epistemological, historiographical and conceptual. the absence of the history of science, significantly, the lack of contact with academic debates around the history of historical science, which are still concentrated in the graduation, updates maia’s thought (2013). the epistemological and politico-institutional analysis from the impacts on science education demonstrates that the weight of scientism is a reality, especially for science teaching (science education). this reality needs to be transformed. studies in science teaching and science education combat scientism. scientism “made science a territory separated from the social world, and its unfolding, the emptying of the historicity of scientific practice” (mollo 2015, 273). in the complex plot developed by maia (2013), he proposes an “other history of sciences” in which “history confronts scientism” (maia 2013, 53). this process culminated in scientism versus historicism that should be seen not as an ultimate purpose but as a fruitful space for analysis. as this analysis demonstrates, there is an urgency to create a place for the history of science in history departments. this insertion would enable the political-institutional place of history in the history of science. additionally, it would reaffirm the politicalepistemological perspective that inaugurates a new phase with the advent of law 14.038/2022 published on august 17, 2020. this law “regulates the profession of historian and establishes the requirements for the exercise of the professional activity and determines the registration in the competent body” (art. 1). “the exercise of the historian’s activity is free since provided the qualifications and requirements” (art. 2) established by law. according to article 3, “the exercise of the profession of historian, throughout the national territory, is guaranteed to: 22 http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2020/lei/l14038.htm the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 14 i holders of a degree in history, issued by a regular educational institution; ii holders of a degree in history, issued by a foreign institution and revalidated in brazil, following the law; iii holders of a master’s or ph.d. in history, issued by a regular educational institution or by a foreign institution and revalidated in brazil, following the law; iv holders of a master’s degree or doctorate obtained in a graduate program recognized by the coordination for the improvement of higher education personnel – capes that has a research line dedicated to history; vprofessionals with degrees in other areas who have demonstrably exercised the profession of historian for more than 5 (five) years, as of the date of enactment of this law. (brazil, 2020) (emphasis added) paragraph v of art. 3 represented one of the critical points during the processing of the proposal for regulating the profession of historian defended by the national association of university professors of history (anpuh), as it directly affected historians of science. furthermore, the publication of an open letter to recognize historians of science in july 2013 by the brazilian society for the history of science (sbhc) criticized the proposal. the letter criticizes the proposal that did not “clearly provide for specific cases such as those of historians of science, who have in their ranks professionals with extensive experience, but without specific degrees”, and with the new law, many of them may be excluded or harmed. also, the brazilian society for the advancement of science (sbpc) and the brazilian academy of sciences (abc), in support of the various scientific societies and professional associations, sent a letter to the national congress manifesting against the proposal. one can read in the open letter: these important tasks will become meaningless, however, if the law – and the public – do not recognize that there are historians in brazil who are no less professional than other colleagues for not holding a specific academic degree in history (as the proposal requires) – this is precisely the case of a large number of historians of science represented by the sbhc, many originally trained in natural or social sciences, philosophy, or even, more recently, in new interdisciplinary graduate programs. the very consolidation of the history of science in brazil, from the 1980s on, resulted from the joint effort of professionals with these diverse backgrounds, but who, by their practice, and not by their degrees, have earned the name of historians – which is now on the verge of being taken away from them, together with the possibility of legally exercising the activities for which they have demonstrated recognized competence. (emphasis added) at that moment, the normative place of the history of science in history was consolidated. however, it highlighted the theoretical and epistemological fissures of a field-constructed far from history tout court, which did not prevent it from being recognized as history by anpuh in the editorial of the entity’s electronic newsletter no. 5 published in april 2010: we are not against the recognition as historians, including by law, with the proposition of an amendment to the proposal approved in the senate, during its passage through the house, of those professionals with other backgrounds who have worked for a specific period, to be defined in our discussions, in the field of history, or who have notorious knowledge, acquired through years of practice, in our area of knowledge.23 23 anpuh electronic newsletter no. 5, 2010. available at: https://anpuh.org/mensagem/view2?q=ntkwotklmkmxmtmlmkmxyjexmme4ngjmmmzindizotn motm0ywjkymiyyjvlna accessed on october 12, 2021. the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 15 in an interview, the then president of anpuh, rodrigo patto sá motta, wind up the controversy by clarifying that anpuh does not want to close the space for dialogue with historians of science, who are fundamental for the advancement of knowledge. however, “many of us believe that it would be beneficial for teachers of any area belonging to the field of history to have closer contact with specific academic training (at any level)”, which already occurs among many historians of science. he argues that historians of science without a specific degree “was more common in past times when university education was weak or non-existent. nowadays, would there be any reason for someone with a vocation for research and teaching in history not to seek specific training, either at undergraduate or graduate level?” however, he warns that it will be necessary to consider the future effects. in a way, this is the proposal of this reflection. this past-future of the history of science has new contours with the advent of the “legal framework of the profession of the historian”. besides the political-institutional requirements to be observed, it also needs to consider the epistemological and theoreticalmethodological debates for a historical history of science. in other words, it needs a new moment of research and scientific production that is more and more historical. in practice, as we have seen, the few classes of history of science (or related ones) are primarily taught in the area of natural sciences (departments of physics, chemistry and biology), which, due to a legal obstacle, cannot comply with the provisions of item i of art. 3 of the law. on the other hand, according to item iv of art. 3, graduate courses in history departments should have a line dedicated to history; otherwise, they will not legally graduate historians of science either. therefore, if the history of science is history from a historiographical viewpoint, also normatively, universities, especially history departments, should prepare themselves to adapt to the current legal provisions to train historians of science. going beyond investments in graduate studies, they will also have to create courses in the history of science. for future historians of science to have the right to exercise the attributions foreseen in art. 4 of the law and guarantee their professional spaces more widespread, it will be relevant to create undergraduate courses and invest in the training of teachers and undergraduates. indeed, it will also be indispensable to adapt the selection process for university professors (responsible for the training of future teachers) in the history of science. most of them have as a requirement the graduation in courses in the area of natural sciences, which restricts the candidacy of historians of science with a background in humanities. this procedure is not justified since, after all, the history of science is history and belongs to the humanities. on the other hand, courses in the humanities do not have specific competitions for the field, and graduate students in the history of science are forced to compete for positions in the field of theory of history, for example. reciprocally, standardization also contributes to the delimitation of the scientific field of the history of science. also, the place of history in the history of science in which the perspective for a historical history of science in opposition to the history of science of the scientistic tradition requires that the dialogues, tensions and disputes inherent to the scientific field place side by side studies of key authors for the history and philosophy of science, such as georges sarton, karl popper, james bryant conant, ludwik fleck, gaston bachelard, alexandre koyré, thomas kuhn, barry barnes, david bloor, imre lakatos, paul feyerabend, bruno latour, among others. with the critical and problematized analysis of these key authors and our concepts of history, we will advance in the history of science with the tools, theories, and methodologies of history. therefore, it is no longer admissible a filed of knowledge call itself history and is legally recognized as such remains in a systematized way (i am not referring to some works carried out) unaware of the central discussions of the “theory of history”. the history of science cannot neglect debates about the concept of “historical time” that dialogue with fernand braudel, reinhart koselleck or dispesh chakrabarti. we cannot admit the historiography of the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 16 science without discussions about “narrative” involving hayden white or paul ricoeur’s triple mimesis or even michel de certeau’s writing of the history. such a subject needs to dedicate to the critical analysis of historical sources considering their extension and possibility of revisionism. a history of science cannot develop without the debate on how to view and conceive historical theories and currents, such as, for example, analyzing science under cover of the historicist paradigm of the annales, of historical materialism, among others. additionally, we cannot admit a history of science that does not promote the analysis of historical concepts to organize the world and scientific knowledge and think about reality. conclusion the problem of the “absent historians” proposed by the historian carlos maia led us to reflections that evidenced multi-causal and changing conditions involving the realization of the historical history of science. the analysis of the brazilian historiography of science in complexity demonstrated the pertinence and actuality of maia’s denounce. starting from it, one reached the strong indication of the epistemological, normative and institutional need to enlarge the presence of the history of science in history departments. this attitude would adjust the theoretical (and in brazil also normative) mismatch to equate the tautology: history of science is history? therefore, the history of science belongs to the humanities and should be performed in the history department. thus, the absence of the history of science in history departments reaffirms the “nonplace” of history in the history of science, both from a political-institutional and epistemological perspective. this attitude hinders theoretical-methodological conceptual advances and discussions proper to the science of history. moreover, it compromises higher education and the universities’ three constitutional principles (teaching, research, and extension). we should aim the certeausian “place” for history in the history of science, as a relation of stability in which the space is the practice of the place transformed by the subjects from their occupations, appropriations and experiences. therefore, it is consolidated by the political-institutional site and in the light of the theory of history. recalling michael oakeshott (2003), “practical past characterizes the past”, that of the history lived, as well as the “historical past” elaborated and constructed through the historian’s work (oakeshott, 2003, p. 62). one cannot neglect this statement when making history. these reflections about the humanities (especially history) are emergent in this historical, political, and social moment represented by scientific denialism, the growth of the antivaccine movement, and a certain contempt for the human sciences, in the case of brazil. on the one hand, the fundamental force of nature represented by the virus (covid-19) does not allow science to be only a “social construction” detached from nature (also human nature). but, on the other hand, the historical-social issues are not external to science. on the contrary, they take center stage when the economic reality of different countries and the political stances of various governments in confronting the pandemic impact research and local and global scientific development. all this means the need to (r)establish a living dialog with the complex reality that no longer allows dichotomies, such as “man versus nature”, “human sciences versus natural sciences”, “internalism versus externalism”. these divisions do not hold in a complex world. for example, the fundamental symmetry between humans and non-humans, the nondetermination of gender by biological sex, or anthropogenic human action is a reality and significantly impacts nature. they are examples of the new social-historical reality. assume this socio-historical change imposes on science the urgency to accept its complexity and multiple dimensions to avoid (or prevent) the detachment from reality. in this sense, the place of history in the history of science becomes essential to promote the unveiling of the the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 17 living reality to provoke reflection and substantial changes in the history of science and in science itself. historians, present! references barnes, harry elmer. 1920. the historian and the history of science. the scientific monthly 11 (2): 112-26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/6633. beltran, m.h.r.; saito, f.; trindade, l. s. p. 2014. história da ciência para a formação de professores. são paulo: editora livraria da física. brasil. planalto. 1988. constituição federal da república federativa do brasil. brasília, congresso nacional. disponível em: http://www.planalto.gov.br. accessed on august 20, 2021. brasil. planalto. 2020. 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centre alexandre koyré. http://www.koyre.cnrs.fr/spip.php?rubrique100. accessed on july 07, 2011. the place of history in the history of science: notes for reflections in the brazilian context andrea mara ribeiro da silva vieira transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 19 annex no. 1 chart 1 mandatory courses in the public brazilian universities [departments of history, biological sciences, chemistry, physics, and pedagogy] history of science, history of physics, history of chemistry, history of biology, philosophy of science and epistemology [b.sc. and licentiate’s degree] microsoft word 5 herrera spinelli layout 35 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 35-48 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2019 – this is an open access article special issue – women in sciences: historiography of science and history of science – on the work of women in sciences and philosophy girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera1 patrícia figueiró spinelli2 abstract: “girls in the museum” is a project aimed at school students to encourage them to explore scientific careers and engage with science. to achieve its goals, the project uses a variety of methodologies during the training sessions, always emphasizing the contributions of women to science and society throughout history. in one activity, the participants had to select 14 scientists and philosophers and compile their contributions in a talk that they presented in various museum events. 1,5 years after the first presentation, we have interviewed and analysed the impressions and memories of the girls on this activity. the results show that the participants could still remember the history of the selected scientists and understand their scientific work because they felt represented. we argue that the historiography of women in sciences is a valuable resource that can be used in all educational levels as well as museums. keywords: women in stem; science education; science communication; history education; science museums received: 18 february 2019. reviewed 10 may 2019. accepted: 20 may 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _______________________________________________________________________ introduction in the past 50 years, the access of women to education and their participation in the production of knowledge has increased substantially compared with previous epochs. 1 sandra benítez herrera [orcid: 0000-0003-4089-4216] is a astrophysicist and a researcher at the instituto de astrofísica de canarias (iac). address: c/ vía láctea, s/n e38205 – la laguna (tenerife), spain. e-mail: sandra.benitez.herrera@gmail.com 2 patrícia figueiró spinelli [orcid: 0000-0003-1449-952x] is a astrophysicist and science and technology researcher at the museu de astronomia e ciências afins (mast). address: rua general bruce, 586 bairro imperial de são cristóvão – cep: 20921-030 – rio de janeiro, brazil. e-mail: patriciaspinelli@mast.br girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 36 however, what it might seem like a definite triumph of the feminist struggles since the xix century, has unfolded three simultaneous side effects. in the first place, the realization that equal education does not lead to equal status, authority and even recognition in working environments. secondly, the prejudice against women’s intellectual abilities has not disappeared as a consequence of their more significant presence, on the contrary, women standing out in any field of knowledge must continously show their credentials to be accepted and valued within that field. thirdly, even women who achieve success and have their work recognized at a particular time, do not enter into the common imaginary and symbolic capital (marini 1993). in general, they continue to be associated with the subjective and the feminine, and not the universal, represented by the masculine (beauvoir 2016, 12). therefore, most of their production is forgotten and does not linger for the next generations. indeed, the historical contribution and impact of women in areas such as science, philosophy, politics, literature and arts, is usually explored in specific courses named as “women studies” or “women in (any area)”. while the historical significance of men is called “history” and it is learned by us all since the early stages of primary education (maggs 2017, 10). we observe this very clearly in the textbooks used in formal education systems worldwide. the references to women in didactic books account for only 13% and this number even drops to 7% when considering science textbooks (lopez-navajas 2012). other non-school spaces of education, culture and memory, such as museums and cultural centers, may also materialize through their choices of expography, reproductions and perpetuation of a specific history of women, associated with traditional roles, that quenches the contribution of women as thinkers and leaders. museums, as institutions of memory, may impose “representations on the past through the selection of what should be preserved as part of the past” (gevher 2017, 12). the awakening of the hidden figures in the last years, there seems to be a rising interest by society in the figures of female scientists and intellectuals who had been ignored or hidden in the trunk of memories for a long time. the foundations of this interest may rest on the many resources that have now addressed the obliteration of women and are oriented to various audiences. for instance, several films, books, media channels have brought the attention to the scandalous absence of women in the history of science, philosophy, literature or art, despite of having being responsible for crucial contributions (e.g. ignotofsky 2016; evans 2017). thanks to these resources some sectors of society have become aware of the invisibility process women philosophers, scientists, writers and artists have been subjected to, at the same time that demand the proper credit for them. preceding this movement that now pervades the non-academic audiences, the debate of gender in the sciences have emerged in formal (schools, universities) and informal education spaces (museums, science and cultural centres), often motivated and pressured by public policies. in this regard, the millenium goal number three of united nations that targeted the elimination of “gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015”,3 had played an important role to 3 millennium goals were signed in the year of 2000, as a commitment among world leaders to defeat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/gender.shtml. in 2015, united nations member states adopted the 2030 agenda, which replaced the 8 millennium goals for the 17 sustainable development goals. girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 37 promote the inclusion of more girls in science careers and more welcoming and equitable workplaces in universities. in december 2015, the united nations general assembly established an annual international day, 11 of february, to acknowledge and celebrate the contribution of female scientists to progress and society. implemented by unesco and the united nations – women, the celebration has the goal to promote full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls. with these spurs, universities, research institutions and scientific societies slowly started to revise their habits related to the visibility and recognition given to former and current female researchers. in 2013, the national council for scientific and technological development (cnpq, in the portuguese acronym) in brazil, launched the program pioneers in science dedicated to present the work of 19 brazilian female scientists who have contributed to the establishment of various fields of research in the country. the content of the program also gave birth to a travelling exhibition. since then, every year, cnpq posts a new series of scientists in the program webpage. another example was the last edition of the paralajes scientific magazine produced by the institute of astrophysics of the canary island (iac) in spain.4 the issue was dedicated to honoring the figures and discoveries of great female figures in the history of astronomy, such as, henrietta leavitt, williamina fleming and cecilia payne, as well as to make visible their current female employees, highlighting their scientific contributions. the history of women in the sciences: an available resource gender studies show that from the earliest years of schooling, girls are little encouraged to like science disciplines, which eventually causes the lower concentration of women in scientific careers (olinto 2011; vasconcellos and brisolla 2009; bian, leslie and cimpian 2017). stereotypes, particularly stronger in science fields, reinforce the idea that women have no equal intellectual capacity as men, logic reasoning, nor talent for scientific work. the scarcity of models to be emulated by girls in these fields stands out as another fundamental problem in perpetuating this segregation (viegas 2013). these ideas accompany girls throughout elementary and middle school and, in the crucial phase of career decision-making, many ends up choosing courses traditionally associated with a socially constructed feminine vocation, like nursing or teaching (sainz & upadyaya 2016). which, simultaneously, produces a systematic devaluation of these highly “feminine” professions in the labor market (olinto 2011). the influence of the closest environment on female teenagers also impacts their career choices. for a girl to choose to pursue a career in sciences and engineering, it is crucial that both parents have a tertiary educational level and especially, that the mother has been to university (vasconcellos & brisolla 2009). this highlights the importance of role models for girls to inspire them to become future scientists. the lack of references of female scientists and philosophers in textbooks, the difficulty for girls to meet actual scientists and mentors that they can identify with, the absence of women as important characters to society in memory spaces like museums, and the longstanding biases and gender stereotypes socially constructed that surface the science careers steers girls away from professions that will have to deal with logical reasoning. 4 http://www.iac.es/adjuntos/prensa/paralajes_mujeres_en_astro.pdf girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 38 in this paper, we discuss how we used the historiography of women in sciences and philosophy as a thematic topic in a project aimed at female teenagers ran by the museum of astronomy and related sciences (mast, in the portuguese acronym) in rio de janeiro, brazil. the project had the goal of encouraging girls to explore scientific career paths and engage with science. it was coordinated and supervised by three scientists of mast education department. the project conception was based on a broad theoretical framework in the areas of science education and gender in sciences, as well as education and communication in museums. in particular, we ascribe to the vision that science museums are institutions that have as a mission to expand society’s access to scientific knowledge and encourage the excitement of discovery. they cannot be places that legitimate the obliteration of the important contributions women have done to the science. in this context, models become important, not just models of current female scientists, but historical figures who have contributed to the construction of a particular field. in the case of mast, this is very important since the institutions is a science and a history of science museum. to assess whether the project’s goals have been met, an evaluation study was conducted during the 18 months that the project was run. various activities were evaluated, in particular, the one in which the participant girls conducted studies on the history of various female intellectuals and scientists in different periods of world’s history. in this article, we present the analysis of the discourse of the participant girls on the thematic and discuss the importance of such resources for educational activities in museums. women at the forefront: discoveries by the youth “girls in the museum” is a science education program that seeks to motivate female high school students into liking science and train them as science museum mediators.5 the project uses astronomy as a tool and a gateway to other science subjects like physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology and computing sciences to motivate and involve the participant students in scientific practices. ultimately, it aims at presenting different possibilities available to the students, who will soon have to decide about their future. the project, to achieve its goals, uses a variety of methodologies during the training meetings, from theoretical classes with renowned scientists and educators, to hands-on science activities, a museum dedicated tours and movie screenings. besides, the contributions of women to science and society throughout history has always been an active part of the sessions. concurrently with the meetings, a study was conducted to evaluate the project and verify possible changes in the students’ viewpoints and the perceptions towards science. interviews and focal groups were carried out in specific training sessions to document the relevant experiences lived and survey the attitudes of the participants. after the conclusion of the project, interviews have also been conducted to follow-up the participants. “girls in the museum” group consisted of seven female high school students from the city of rio de janeiro, with ages between 15-18 years. four of them were selected by a collaborating teacher, attending a state (public) high school, located in the central area of 5 mediators are the professionals responsible for welcoming the public and carrying out activities in museums, such as guided tours or practical activities. they allow the visitors to deepen their understanding on the themes presented and make their experience more significant. other names can be found in the literature for these professionals such as educators, monitors, presenters, guides, explainers. girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 39 rio de janeiro. two participants studied at the technical college of the federal rural university, in the western part of the city. one of them knew about the project after participating in a museum event dedicated to girls. the other student had already been a summer intern at the museum, six months before the project was launched. one student went to a private school, not very uncommon in brazil. the school was located in southern rio, the wealthier part of the city. she has learned about the project while visiting the museum with her family. the latter three students had a manifest interest in science, and in particular in astronomy, before the beginning of the project. the first edition of “girls in the museum” took place between july 2016 and december 2017. during that period, the participant students engaged in a series of talks and practical workshops not only about science, but on the social aspects of science. scientists and educators of various institutions were put in contact with the participating girls who attended the activities twice a month. along the process, the students had to design and develop their own educational activities and experiments, always supervised by senior female scientists, and present at science communication events offered to the general public by mast. they also acted as museum mediators once a month and in special events coordinated by the museum education department. one of the activities the participants were actively engaged was the talk presentation entitled “incredible unknown female scientists”, that highlighted the contributions of fourteen female scientists and philosophers from various periods in world history. the talk was fully elaborated by the participant girls and the idea for the theme came after a meeting where students became aware of the very few names of female scientists they, and their colleagues back at school, actually knew of. to help the participants to realise the activity, the supervisors of the project provided them various texts on female scientists who have worked or are currently working on different fields. choosing this reference material has proven rather challenging, provided that the historiography of many women in the sciences are restricted to academic journals. different education material compatible with the education level of the participant girls tended to highlight the same scientists. for instance, madame marie curie has her presence assured on all texts about female scientists. finally, the girls were advised to use the following references (all in portuguese): ● de melo, h. p. & rodrigues, l.m.c.s. pioneiras da ciência no brasil. [pioneers of science in brazil]. sociedade brasileira para o progresso da ciência. 2006. ● do nascimento, j. b. algumas mulheres da história da matemática. [some women from the history of mathematics]. icen/ufpa. 2016. ● tosi, l. mulher e ciência: a revolução científica, a caça às bruxas e a ciência moderna. [woman and science: the scientific revolution, the witch-hunt and the modern science]. cadernos pagu, vol 10, p. 369-397. 1998. ● sousa, l. p., sombrio, m. m. o & lopes, m.m. para ler bertha lutz. [to read berta lutz]. cadernos pagu, vol 24, p. 315-325. 2005. ● article from scientific american brazil “a história das ‘estrelas além do tempo’ reais da nasa” [“the hitory of the real ‘hidden figures’ of nasa”]. ● movie about nise da silveira: “nise: the heart of madness” 2015. girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 40 participants also looked for additional information on the internet, selecting the scientists they found life and work more interesting. later, they prepared one slide per scientist highlighting the work, professional trajectory and main accomplishments. they also included in the presentation the difficulties those women had throughout their scientific careers, having to face severe discrimination, humiliation, retaliation and sometimes even death. the selected scientists by the participants were: ● hypatia (greek mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, 5th century), ● hildegard von bingen (german abbess, writer, philosopher and anatomist, 12th century), ● marie meurdrac (french chemist, 17th century), ● laura maria caterina bassi (italian physicist, 18th century), ● mary anning (british palaeontologist, 19th century), ● rosalind elsie franklin (british biophysicist, 20th century), ● cecilia helena payne-gaposchkin (british-born american astrophysicist, 20th century), ● katherine coleman goble johnson (american mathematician, 20th century), ● vera florence cooper rubin (american astrophysicist, 20th century), ● wendy laurel freedman (canadian-american astrophysicist, 20th century) ● joana d’arc félix de souza (brazilian chemist, 20th century), ● nise da silveira (brazilian psychiatrist, 20th century), ● graziela maciel barroso (brazilian botanist, 20th century), ● bertha maria júlia lutz (brazilian zoologist, politician and diplomat, 20th century). the participants of the project selected the scientists based on their historiography. they have organised and compiled the relevant information, designed the talk and chosen the title. the “incredible unknown female scientist” talk was first presented at the “iii girls day” organised by mast and, afterwards, was replicated during the brazilian national science week in several venues, as well as at schools. it was presented to various audiences throughout the year of 2017. figure 1 shows the first presentation of the talk. girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 41 fig. 3 figs. 1, 2 and 3: iii girls’ day event organized by mast. four “girls in the museum” presents their favorite scientist to a broad audience. credits: mast. fig. 1 fig. 2 girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 42 incredible unknown female scientists: the discourse analysis as part of the study conducted to evaluate “girls in the museum”, six months after the project ended (nearly 1,5 years after the first presentation of the talk), we interviewed the participants. questions were addressed to understand how they liked the activity “incredible unknown female scientists”, how they felt about having to present to a broad audience the life and, specially, the scientific work of the selected scientists, and which of them they could still remember. the answers of the participants were transcribed and analysed based on the discourse of the collective subject methodology (lefèvre 2003). the technique uses the individual answers of each participant, grouping sentences that belong to the same idea. sentences from all participants that match the same idea are used to create a unique discourse/speech, as if it was given by the social group the participants represent (in our case, teenagers from rio de janeiro). this unique discourse/speech incorporates the beliefs and opinions on a specific topic of that particular social group. in brief, this is done by classifying the sentences of each individual answer (aka. key expressions) into conceptual categories (aka. central ideas) and quantifying the number of times that specific category appears in the discourses (aka. intensity). the answer of a participant may contain more than one central idea, for example, when there is a contradiction in the answer. the researcher is responsible for building a unique discourse to each central ideas, or the so-called, discourse of the collective subject (dsc). to finalize, the researcher may introduce a few adjustments (for instance, by inserting connectors or missing words) so to bring the dsc to fruition. the dsc is written in first-person. the discourse of the collective subject has been widely used in social sciences in an attempt to unveil the ideologies underlying the perceptions of different social groups composing our society and complement the qualitative analysis of the discourse with a way of quantifying the intrinsic ideas found in them. results in this section, we present the discourses obtained from the interviews about the “incredible unknown female scientists” activity, conducted six months after the end of the “girls in the museum” project. six of the seven female students responded to questions, as did the only male participant of the project. we have decided to include his opinions because they reflect how the historiography of women in science can inspire both girls and boys into liking science. in the following, we show the conceptual categories found for every question and their associated intensity. this number indicates the frequency with which that particular idea appeared in the answers given by the students. the discourses are then transcribed separately for each of these central ideas. the first question was: what did you think about the activity “incredible unknown female scientists” that we organized for the iii girl’s day at mast and also used at other events? in table 1 we list the five different central ideas found in the replies to this question. we observe that, in general, the activity was well-liked as well as it inspired the students, expanding their vision and even exposing their own prejudices. particular emphasis was given to the topic of the activity itself. all the participants agreed that the subject was very interesting and important to be addressed. specifically, four of the students stated the relevance of presenting these female scientists to a broad audience and to make visible the participation of women in science (in the past and the present). girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 43 table 1: central ideas obtained for the first question central idea intensity 1.1 i liked it 5 1.2 it inspired me 3 1.3 interesting and important topic 8 1.4 importance to convey to others 4 1.5 i was afraid of speaking in public 2 central idea 1.1 “i liked it” (intensity = 5) [i thought it was incredible, i really liked it. i found the talk (we have created and presented) was great, wonderful and i loved preparing the slides. best lecture ever.] central idea 1.2 “it inspired met” (intensity = 3) [i felt very motivated and excited studying about several incredible women and discovering that their lives were not easy, but that they did not give up their career. this activity opened my eyes, helped me greatly to expand my vision (since), like many, i used to believe that the great discoveries came only from men, that they were responsible for everything.] central idea 1.3 “interesting and important topic” (intensity = 8) [the two (times we have given the) talks were amazing and interesting in different ways. i found it very interesting using the opportunity to discuss such an important content, because it is a topic that is not usually addressed.] central idea 1.4 “importance to convey to others” (intensity = 4) [i found the presentation very appropriate for the public. we managed to show women over a historical perspective, from ancient times to the present day. aside from studying them, we were able to tell other people about them, which i think is great. being able to present (them) at other events allowed me to believe that our first performance was worth it. i hope (it opened) the eyes of several other people to the fact that women's participation in science was not and is not small.] girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 44 central idea 1.5 “i was afraid of speaking in public” (intensity = 2) [(it was) a somewhat challenging experience, because i had to overcome my shyness and my speaking too fast. i still had a fear of saying something out of context (but) i loved being part of some of the presentations.] two students referred to personal difficulty when speaking in front of a large audience. a fear that also appeared in the discourses derived from the second question when was asked: how was the process of preparing and studying the talk? in table 2, we can read the central ideas found for this question. four students explicitly said they struggled to remain calm before the talk, though at the end they managed to get through it and were able to present in front of the public. most of the students found the process of preparation and studying satisfactory and easy, expressing that they really enjoyed learning about female scientists. as in the first discourses, the topic again was an incentive for this phase. we observe that they actually “got attached” to the female scientists they chose to present and were genuinely interested in their lives and scientific work. this highlights the importance of having access to role models the students can identify with. table 2: central ideas obtained for the second question central idea intensity 2.1 i was afraid of speaking in public 4 2.2 satisfactory 5 2.3 easy 3 2.4 the topic helped 4 2.5 difficult 2 2.6 preparation method 1 central idea 2.1 “i was afraid of speaking in public” (intensity = 4) [the difficult part was that the presentation itself, i had to deal with my nerves. the minutes before the performances were intense, the shyness spoke louder. i was really nervous. one cannot avoid feeling the jitters and the adrenaline when talking about something, especially something that few people know about.] central idea 2.2 “satisfactory” (intensity = 5) [the overall preparation process was pretty cool and the study part was great. (it was a) good learning experience because i did not know much about the girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 45 female scientists. after presenting the talk, i was very pleased to have been able to show this to some people. and everything went very well and that's what matters.] central idea 2.3 “easy” (intensity = 3) [it was easy. studying to present (the lecture) was more enjoyable than laborious.] central idea 2.4 “the topic helped” (intensity = 4) [there was a real interest in knowing the lives of those female scientists. i got attached to them, something that helped me to know more and feel better prepared for the presentation. i got quite excited while making the slides and learned a lot by looking up about each scientist. they all did incredible findings and discoveries so i wanted to know and speak a little about them all. the theme of the talk was wonderful, (i had) the feeling of “i have to show these women to the world”.] central idea 2.5 “difficult” (intensity = 2) [the process for me was a bit difficult, as i have a slight tendency of losing focus, but the harder part was to choose which scientists to talk about.] central idea 2.6 “preparation method” (intensity = 1) [i read the texts they (the advisors) sent me and tried to find more information on the internet. (also) i rehearsed and explained my part to my mother.] two participants found some difficulty in the preparation phase, but overcame it without further problems. we also notice that one participant declared that she rehearsed her part of the presentation together with her mother, which again refers to the significance of closeby models for teen girls (especially the mother). finally, the students were asked if they remembered any of the scientists they had presented six months ago as well as if they could give names and reasons for recalling those scientists. table 3 summarizes the central ideas associated with this question. all students could remember at least one of the female scientists and three of them could remember up to three different scientists. the ones that were most cited by students were hypatia and nise da silveira, both of them being mentioned three times. joana d’arc félix de souza was cited twice and graziela maciel barroso, rosalind franklin, cecilia payne, mary anning and laura bassi were quoted one time in the interviews. among the reasons given for remembering a particular researcher, the most recurrent concerned the experiences these women lived throughout their lives and specially the struggles to pursue their dream of a scientific career and the prejudices they encountered. clearly, the tragic final of hypatia had an emotional impact on the students, since it appeared repeatedly in the answers. girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 46 furthermore, two students mentioned the personal gain in their education from having learned about these scientists. also, two students pointed out the historical relevance of these figures who deserved both credit and recognition. one mentioned that the historical epoch was of great appealing to her. table 3: central ideas obtained for the third question central idea intensity 3.1 yes, i do 7 3.2 because of their lived experience 6 3.3 because they contributed to my personal learning/background/education 2 3.4 because they were brazilians 2 3.5 because they were great women 2 3.6 because of the historical epoch 1 central idea 3.2 “because of their lived experience” (intensity = 6) [the ones that impressed me the most were because of the history that each one lived or for having suffered a lot of prejudice at the time. the story (of joana d’arc félix de souza) was one of those that moved me, the most for so many things that she endured throughout her life. (hypatia was) a woman ahead of her time who, due to the fear of the society of an independent and strong woman like her, was murdered in a terrible way. (rosalind franklin) had her research stolen (by a colleague), and the guy still won a nobel for her work.] central idea 3.3 “because they contributed to my personal learning/background/education” (intensity = 2) [they were great scientists and contributed a great deal to my education and my way of seeing the world and the people. they all helped to model the person i am today: the person who sees the greatness of women who have been killed, humiliated, and forgotten throughout history to defend what they loved.] central idea 3.4 “because they were brazilians” (intensity = 2) [they were brazilian and part of the history of our country.] we identify that three out of four of the brazilian scientists were remembered by the students. also, two students declared that the reason for remembering some of the girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 47 scientists was because they were brazilians. this shows the importance of also providing local reference models from the participants’ country in order to challenge the myth that important scientific discoveries have only been made in western countries. central idea 3.5 “because they were great women” (intensity = 2) [they made history, not just the ones i quoted or talked about in the talks. all of them contributed to science in general. all deserve recognition and respect. (for example, nise da silveira) was a great woman not only in her research but also in life.] central idea 3.6 “because of the historical epoch” (intensity = 1) [(she was) from a historical epoch that i appreciate very much.] it is also worth to mention that after the presentation at the different venues where the students participated, several teachers approached the coordinators of the project and expressed their interest about the activity and their willingness to reproduce it with their own students. also many youngsters who attended the “incredible unknown female scientists” presentation asked more about these scientists and were very interested in the subject. conclusions the absence of women’s memory and cultural heritage in human history is being gradually addressed and reversed, though we still face a considerable lack of female figures in almost every field of knowledge, particularly in scientific areas. this exclusion perpetuates the inequalities that exist in modern society and is especially negative for young generations, who are being educated without learning about women’s legacy and crucial contributions to philosophy, art, science and literature. in this paper, we presented an education project aimed at female teenagers ran by the mast in rio de janeiro, brazil. while the project had a broader scope of encouraging girls to engage with science, a central part of it related to the historiography of women in sciences and philosophy. the activity “incredible unknown female scientists” consisted on a one-hour talk on the life and work of 14 female scientists from different epochs of history. the slides were prepared by the students, who were also responsible for choosing the female figures, researching about them and presenting them to the general public attending several outreach events at mast and other venues. the project as a whole was evaluated by conducting interviews and focal groups during the full period it runs at mast (18 months). specifically, the impact of the “incredible unknown female scientists” activity was assessed via a short interview six months after the end of the project. the answers were analysed using the discourse of the collective subject methodology, that allows to extract the main ideas from the replies, create a single discourse for each of those ideas and quantify their recurrence by means of the parameter intensity. the created discourses represent the social group’s beliefs and opinions about a particular topic or central idea. our results point to a major trend: the students felt encouraged to study these scientists and understand their scientific work, because they felt represented. they girls of today and women from the past: when the history of female scientists is used to engage girls with science sandra benítez herrera – patrícia figueiró spinelli 48 repeatedly mentioned that it was very interesting learning about women doing this kind of job in the past and now, and that they felt proud to be able to present them to the public and, in their own words, “to restore” their role in science. the participants revealed that they felt represented, especially because they have analysed the historiography of brazilian and afro-american female scientists. moreover, they not only felt inspired by the history and experience of those female scientists, but they also looked up to them as models they could identify with. the impact these women had in the students’ lives can be expressed in the student’s own words: “they helped to model the person i am today”. an immense potential lays in the history of women in science to encourage new generations of students to approach and be motivated by science. we argue that the historiography of women in sciences is a valuable resource that can be used in all educational levels in schools, universities, science museums and even professional conferences. references beauvoir, simone. 2016. o segundo sexo: fatos e mitos. rio de janeiro: nova fronteira. bian, lin; 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(5): 323-347. olinto, gilda a. 2011. a inclusão das mulheres nas carreiras de ciência e tecnologia no brasil. inclusão social (5): 68-77. sáinz, milagros & upadyaya, katja. 2016. accuracy and bias in spanish secondary school students’ self-concept of ability: the influence of gender and parental educational level. international journal of educational research (77): 26-36. vasconcellos, elza da costa cruz & brisolla, sandra de negraes. 2009. presença feminina no estudo e no trabalho da ciência na unicamp. cadernos pagu (32): 215-265 viegas, sueli. 2013. a astronomia brasileira no feminino. in história da astronomia no brasil, edited by oscar matsuura, 522-548. recife: mast/mcti, cepe editora e secretaria de ciência e tecnologia de pernambuco. microsoft word 7 mochetti layout 65 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (6): 65-88 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access article special issue – women in sciences: historiography of science and history of science – on the work of women in sciences and philosophy the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti1 abstract: women have always played an important role in computer science findings, but their importance has always been overshadowed by men. nowadays, men outnumber women by 3 times on computing occupations in the us, but still women prove to be essential on the development of technological fields. this work intends to place women at the forefront of computer science’s history. in order to demonstrate that their work was essential for the development of current technologies, a broad historical overview is given. this overview is chronologically and thematically structured in several periods, from the early computer machines (before 1900) to our current digital society (after 2010). finally, an outlook on the role of women in computing is given. a detailed discussion of individual contributions by women would go beyond the scope of this work. nor can a sociological analysis of the reasons for the gender gap be provided. nevertheless, the work wants to be more than a mere quantitative enumeration of women’s contributions to computer sciences. the essay wants to plea for the integration of these women in the literature, i.e., in the historiography of computer sciences, which requires to reconsider the self-image of this discipline. keywords: women in computing; gender gap; diversity, history of computing received: 2 july 2018. reviewed 24 march 2019. accepted: 25 may 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i6.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction the role of women in computing starts long before the second world war (margolis and fisher 2003). in the 19th century, ada lovelace wrote the first algorithm to be tested on a computing machine that existed only on paper. however, through the years, women and their main contributions to the field were slowly decreasing, with the big gender gap appearing only on the 1980s. by this time, concern and follow research about this issue grew (frenkel 1990), gathering the attention of the community. nevertheless, the number 1 karina mochetti [orcid: 0000-0003-2269-1087] is a professor at the fluminense federal university – uff (universidade federal fluminense) – institute of computing. address: av. gal. milton tavares de souza, s/n, sala 423, niterói, rj – brazil e-mail: kmochetii@ic.uff.br the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 66 of women in the area is still decreasing every year, attracting researchers trying to explain this phenomenon (cohoon and aspray 2006). moreover, a great number of projects and groups were created in an effort to reverse this issue and encourage woman to engage on computer related fields (gürer and camp 2002). w ith this issue in mind, this work intends to emphasize women’s place in computer science history (tatnall 2010), telling it through the women’s eyes, not only showing specific moments and momentary discoveries, but placing women in their actual role throughout the history as equal participants of computing development when allowed. we will start in 1822 with ada lovelace, the first computer programmer, and the analytical engine, passing through all main discoveries and developments that lead us to the computer we know nowadays focusing on the female achievements. besides ada lovelace (hollings, martin, and rice 2018), grace hopper (beyer 2015) and margaret hamilton (piazza 2018), we will also talk about some not well-known woman, but equally important, such as mavis batey, elizabeth webb w ilson and beatrice worsley. therefore, the main goal of this work is to place women at the forefront in computer science history, even though men outnumber women by 3 times of all computing occupations in the us (ashcraft, mclain and eger 2016). we want to show how their work was not only one-off, but essential for the development of current technologies, also making clear the impact they have in a traditional male science field. the early computer machines (bef ore 1900) although french weaver joseph marie jacquard invented in 1801 a programmable loom that used punched wooden cards, similar to the one used years later by early computers (delve 2007), the beginning of computer history is always credited to english polymath charles babbage. he is considered “the father of computer” (halacy 2010). babbage created the first mechanical computer, the analytical engine. it was first described in 1837, and even though it is considered the greatest achievement of babbage, he never saw it completely built (bromley 1982). the analytical engine had a structure similar to modern computers: an arithmetic logic unit, control flow with conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory. henry prevost babbage, charles babbage’s son continued his father's work, but was also not able to finish the construction. only in 1991, the london science museum built a complete and working version of the machine, called difference engine no 2 (markoff 2011). while working on its inventions, babbage corresponded with ada lovelace (essinger 2014). ada was the only legitimate daughter of poet lord byron but she and her mother were abandoned by him when she was only one month old. bitter, her mother, who had studied mathematics herself, raised ada motivating her interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to keep her from becoming a poet like her father (moore 1977). ada’s correspondence with babbage began when she was still a teenager and allowed her to develop an algorithm to calculate a sequence of bernoulli numbers on the analytical engine (hammerman and russell 2015). for this creation, she is considered the first computer programmer, even though programming languages had not been invented yet (fuegi and francis 2003). as the machine was never built by babbage, ada never saw her algorithm running, although it was later proved to be correct. the late 19th century saw the construction of a punch card system that was used to calculate the 1880 census. herman hollerith, its inventor, founded the tabulating machine company that later became ibm (campbell-kelly 2018). at the same time, henrietta swan leavitt joined one of the first ‘computers’ at harvard, groups of human calculators usually composed by women, since at that time women were not allowed to operate telescopes or other machines (v ishveshwara 2015). she did calculations on measuring and cataloging the brightness of stars, discovering the cepheid variables, a type of star, that led to the the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 67 evidence for the expansion of the universe (johnson 2005). the advance during the world wars (1900 1950) the beginning of the 20th century was marked by the world wars. these events led to a great advance on several science fields, including computing. it also creates opportunities for women to participate in the process, since many men were fighting at the battlefield. women were called during the first world war to do ballistics calculations as human computers. although elizabeth webb wilson did not take part in the suffrage movement, her actions did reassure it. she had a striking talent for mathematics and refused nine job positions at washington until she was offered the position of a chief computer (grier 2013). at the same time, at the united kingdom, beatrice cave-browne-cave worked as a human computer for the ministry of munitions, carrying out research for the government on the mathematics of aeronautics (jones 2009). even after the end of the war, in 1930, nasa kept hiring women to work in their computer pool to analyze data from wind tunnels and flight tests (atkinson 2015). during the second world war, alan turing developed the main concepts of a universal machine that would be the base for most of the ideas for modern computers. also, several american women were recruited to operate the first computing machines such as the wren colossus at bletchley park (copeland 2010) and later the eniac and maniac i computers (pearson, frehill and mcneely 2015). alan turing is also known for cracking the enigma code at age 31. the enigma was a german naval cipher machine and alan’s work helped to end the war. what is usually forgotten is that mavis batey also cracked an enigma machine, the italian naval one, at the age of only 19, along with dilly knox. she worked at bletchley park and is considered one of the keys to the success of dday, breaking important messages from the germans and italians. beside the italian naval enigma machine, she also cracked the abwehr enigma and the ggg, considered unbreakable at the time (batey 2017). during the same time, actress hedy lamarr, along with george antheil, developed a radio guidance system that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to prevent radio-controlled torpedoes to be jammed. although never used by the us navy, the principles of their work were later incorporated into modern technologies, such as bluetooth and w ifi. she had no formal training and did not fit into the hollywood style. she spent her free time inventing rather than attending parties or drinking. her inventions were taken for granted and she was only recognized in the 1990s, when she was in her early 80s (rhodes 2012). regarding companies, in 1939, david packard and bill hewlett founded theirs in a palo alto garage, while a few years later, ruth leach amonette was elected the v ice president at ibm, a company with more than 30 years. she was the first woman to hold that role. by the end of the wars, women were able to keep their roles as being part of the computer developments at that time. dorothy vaughan, who left her teaching job to join langley research center as a human computer, was promoted and became the first black supervisor at naca in 1948. she later specialized in the fortran programming language by teaching herself, and other women, in order to open more opportunities for them. she raised six children while working at naca and encourage other women to grow their career (allen 2017). also, gertrude blanch led the mathematical tables project group from 1938 to 1948, a computing organizations that was part of the works progress administration (wpa), an american agency. the project was closed after the end of the war and unlike most women, gertrude blanch did not keep her position within the government. she moved to the university of california in los angeles, leading the computing office of its institute for numerical analysis. supposedly, she was not allowed to continue her work because there the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 68 was a suspicion that she was secretly a communist during the cold war, due to her never being married or having children (grier 1997). the late 1940s saw one of the greatest advances on computer history: william shockley, john bardeen and walter brattain of bell laboratories invented the transistor, a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals which are the fundamental building block of modern computers (brinkman, haggan, and troutman 1997). meanwhile, grace hopper, a united states navy officer, programmed on the harvard mark i, a large eletromechanical computer with 51 feet in length and 8 feet in height, using more than 765,000 components and hundreds of miles of wire (williams 1999). she developed the first compiler for an electronic computer, known as a-0 and was one the creators of the cobol programming language. she is also credited for popularizing the term debugging after finding a moth on a relay in the harvard mark ii computer that was causing faults on its programs (beyer 2015). at the same time, irma wyman was working on a missile guidance project at the w illow run research center when she visited the us naval proving ground, meeting grace hopper. their encounter changed irma’s life, making her an enthusiastic about new technology which led her life’s career (gilbert and moore 2012). she later joined honeywell, an american multinational conglomerate company, and eventually became the first female cio of honeywell. she, much like most of the women in this field, enjoyed passing her knowledge to young women in computer science, even endowing a scholarship at the university of michigan’s center for the education of women, her alma mater (bjorhus 2015). since the beginning, the support among women was essential for their maintenance on the field. by the beginning of 1950s, women had made some remarkable part on the development of computer science all over the world: canadian scientist beatrice worsley had ran, along with her team, the first program on the electronic delay storage automatic calculator, also known as the edsac computer in 1949 (campbell 2003); edith clarke, an american electrical engineer, had filed patents for a graphical calculator and became the first female professor of electrical engineering in the united states in 1947 (layne 2009); and austrian mathematician johanna piesch published two pioneering papers on boolean algebra, one of the fundamentals of digital computing (zemanek 1993). even proving their importance, women kept being taken for granted. german mathematician grete hermann, who finished her ph.d. under noether, published a foundational paper for computer algebra in 1926, showing her talents. she criticized john von neumann’s proof of the nohidden-variable theorem in 1935, but was only recognized by the physics community 30 years later. this fact is considered to hold back the development of quantum mechanics (crull and bacciagaluppi 2016). the born of programming languages (1950 1970) one crucial point of development for computer science was the creation of programming languages. these languages popularized computers by the use of a more accessible language, closer to humans than the machines. cobol is considered the first programming language and it was developed by grace hopper in 1953 (bemer 1971). at the same time, a team of programmers at ibm led by john w. backus created another programming language, fortran, that focused on numeric computation and engineering applications (backus 1978). this made programming simpler, attracting researchers from other fields, such as engineering and chemistry. at the early 50s, ida rhodes, which had worked with gertrude blanch on the mathematical tables project in 1940 (blanch and rhodes 1974), along with betty holberton, designed a programming language. the c-10 language was used on the univac i computer and it is considered the prototype of modern programming languages. holberton also the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 69 participated in the early development of cobol and fortran programming languages along with grace hopper (beyer 2015). she is known for being one of the six women to program the eniac along with kay mcnulty, marlyn wescoff, ruth lichterman, betty jean jennings, and fran bilas during world war ii. although they were not classified as “professionals”, they performed important calculations for ballistics trajectories electronically having a major impact on computer science (fritz 1996). later, in 1962, jean e. sammet, who also has contact with grace hopper and the univac i team, not only developed a new language, the formac programming language, but also studied the history of programming languages so far. she later became the first female president of the association for computing machinery (bergin 2009). the mid-1960s marked the first step towards the popularization of modern computers. douglas engelbart developed a machine with a mouse and a graphical user interface (english, engelbart and berman 1967). at the same time, women were struggling to maintain their opportunities in the computer science field, since men have returned from the battlefield and the cold war did not demand that from them. while sister mary kenneth keller became the first american woman to earn a ph.d. in computer science (gürer 1995), dame stephanie shirley was advocating for the involvement of women in computing. she founded a software company and employed more women than men, having only 1% of male programmers. unfortunately, that became illegal in the united kingdom in 1975 (shirley and askwith 2017). due to the extensive sexism, she suffered in her workplace, she decided to adopt the name “steve” to survive this male-dominant world. she is known to have programmed for the concorde’s black box flight recorder (tickle 2017). as shirley, more women wrote important programs. mary coombs, for example, was the first female programmer on leo, the first business computer back in 1952. at nasa, women kept important roles in the calculation, such as the orbital estimation for the explorer 1 satellite, done by a group of all-female computers. at the same laboratory at nasa, dana ulery, the first female engineer, developed real-time tracking systems using a north american aviation recomp ii, a 40-bit word size computer, and programmed nasa’s deep space network capabilities (kresser and sippel 1962). moreover, some women also achieved high positions, such as margaret r. fox who first worked at naval research lab and later changed to the national bureau of standards, where she was appointed chief of the office of computer information in 1966 (fox 1984). a great breakthrough happened in 1969, when a group of programmers from the bell labs developed unix, an operating system written in the c programming language. its main advantage was to be portable across multiple platforms and it soon became popular among companies and government entities. personal computers were rare, but unix was not the first operating system. a few years before, in 1965, mary allen w ilkes designed the first personal computer, the linc, and wrote lap, its operating system, considered the first one (clark 1987). women were not pioneers only in technical programs, though. joan ball started a computer dating service in 1964, years before social networks and dating applications (ball 2014). although not as important as in the great world wars, women also played their role in the cold war especially at nasa. in the late 1960s, margaret hamilton worked on the apollo space program, writing the code for the onboard flight software and its robust architecture. this software was crucial during the abort of the apollo 11 moon landing (hamilton and hackler 2008). she later became a director at mit instrumentation laboratory, where she came up with the term software engineering, as the application of engineering to the development of software in a systematic method (hamilton and hackler 2007). the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 70 the development of personal computer (1970 – 1980) great developments on hardware made possible to build smaller and cheaper computers, leading to their popularization. they are not those big machines anymore, only owned by companies, universities and government entities. now they became also available to consumers. two inventions from the early 1970s made that possible: the intel 1103, the first commercially available dynamic access memory (dram) chip (moore 1996) and the floppy disk, developed by alan shugart at ibm that allowed data to be shared among computers (markoff 2006). the british computer scientist sophie w ilson designed the instruction set of the arm processor, which will later be used in most smartphones (garnsey, lorenzoni and ferriani 2008). wilson is a transgender woman and also build the acorn microcomputer leading her to be named one of the 15 most important women in tech history (bouman 2011). the communication between computers was the main focus of researches at the time. in 1973, robert metcalfe developed ethernet for connecting multiple computers (metcalfe and boggs 1976), initially in a local area network and later expanded for metropolitan area and wide area networks (santitoro 2003). two years before, erna schneider hoover, a developer at bell laboratories, invents a computerized telephone switching calls method which had software to support large networks. before working for bell laboratories, hoover was a professor teaching philosophy and logic in 1951, but she was never able to win a tenure-track position, possibly due to her gender (zierdt-warshaw 2000). she worked at bell labs for 32 years and wrote one of the first software patents ever issued in 1971 (eckhart and hoover 1971). another important advance for networks was the creation of the domain name system (dns). this list of host names is still in use and can be found on most web addresses such as .gov, .edu, .org, and .com. it was created by elizabeth feinler in 1974, the director of the network information systems center at the stanford research institute at that time. feinle, who dropped out of a ph.d. in biochemistry for this position, also worked as a manager for the nasa science internet (feinler 2010). w ith the popularity of personal computers growing, several reach the market by the mid of 1970s, such as scelbi & mark-8 altair, ibm 5100, radio shack’s trs-80 and the commodore pet (reimer 2005). this encouraged ‘computer geeks’ into creating their own computers, writing their own software and starting new companies. therefore, paul allen and bill gates founded microsoft in 1975 and steve jobs and steve wozniak started apple computers in the following year (allan 2001). both companies are, still today, two of the world’s most valuable brands (badenhausen 2018). although now more famous, microsoft and apple were not the precursors startups in silicon valley. in 1972 sandra kurtzig founded ask computer systems and became one of the first silicon valley’s entrepreneurs (nemeh and kalte, 2003). in 1977, jobs and wozniak showed the apple ii at the first west coast computer faire, with color graphics and other software features for common users, marking the main feature of apple machintosh, its user interface. yet, many ideas used on this desktop environment came from adele goldberg, a researcher at the xerox palo alto research center (parc). she developed the programming language smalltalk-80 together with various concepts related to object-oriented programming. these concepts became the basis for graphically based user interfaces, replacing the command line systems, such as ms-dos and unix. steve jobs became interested in goldberg’s work and wanted a demonstration of the smalltalk system. although she first refused, her superiors at parc ordered her to do it and jobs ended up using some of goldberg’s concepts on his new system (cringely 1996). by the end of 1970s computers were even more popular due to several software releases: v isicalc, the first computerized spreadsheet software, is released in 1978 by dan the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 71 bricklin and bob frankston (grad 2007) and wordstar, a word processing program developed by rob barnaby, is released in 1979 (rubinstein 2006). computers had its usage expanded with karen spärck jones using it for natural language processing, developing algorithms essential to the modern search engines and still used today (robertson and tait 2008) and phyllis fox trying to deal with the diversity of computers and operating systems by building a portable numerical library (fox 2005). due to its popularity, computers also draw attention from several fields. in 1973, for example, susan nycum, a computer law scholar, began defining and documenting computer-related crime (parker, nycum, and oüra 1973). women kept breaking their way into computer science, with mary shaw becoming the first woman to earn a ph.d. in computer science from carnegie mellon university in 1971 (shaw 1971) and irene greif achieving the same from the massachusetts institute of technology in 1975 (greif 1975). also, christiane floyd became the first woman to work as a computer science professor in germany in 1978 (thumfart 2011), while margaret burnett became the first women hired in a management position at procter & gamble (burnett 2017). burnett is an activist and still as a student created a group for professional women at her hometown and nowadays researches methods to check how gender-inclusive a software is (beckwith and burnett 2004). the foundation of the association for women in computing (awc) by donnafaye carroll finger and diane haelsig in 1978 marks the will of women to grow professionally in computer science and to support each other in this task (gay 2000). this support was done informally until now, but showed to be crucial to some women. video games and computer as a ‘boy-thing’ (1980 1990) together with the commercialization of personal computers, the development of video games began. the console generation of the early 1980s saw its golden age with atari and the popular space invaders game. although mainly sold as a ‘boy-thing’, aiding in the computing unpopularity among female users (henn 2014), many women contributed to the development of video games. carol shaw worked for atari corporation developing games for the atari 2600 console. she later joined activision, where she designed the major hit river raid (suellentrop 2014). she is considered the first female game designer together with dona bailey and carla meninsky. bailey created the arcade video game centipede in 1981 and was the first female developer to work at atari. carla meninsky was the game designer and programmer for several atari 2600 games, such as dodge em and indy 500 (kent 2010). also, janese swanson was one of the developers of the carmen sandiego game, which had a female protagonist, something uncommon in 1983 (hocks 1999). swanson later found girl tech, a company that develops products to encourage girls to use technologies (davidson 2005). meanwhile, ibm releases its first personal computer, acorn, designed by sophie w ilson (garnsey, lorenzoni and ferriani 2008) and admits its first female fellow, frances e. allen (steele 2011). microsoft releases ms-dos operating system and apple releases lisa, a personal computer with a user-friendly operating system (edwards 2013). a couple of years later, microsoft announces windows, which also features icons and menus just like apple’s system (magid 1990). both systems are considered revolutionary due to the graphical user interface which had its original interface elements created by susan kare (gonzalez 2016). some of her icons and typefaces are still used today and her work can be seen on microsoft, ibm, pinterest and facebook software. (kastrenakes 2015). the start of the internet occurs in the mid-1980s, with the first .com domain being registered by symbolics computer company in 1985 (moore 2009) and the creation of the hypertext markup language (html) and the hypertext transfer protocol (http) by british scientist t im berners-lee. five years later he founded the world wide web as we know the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 72 today (berners-lee 1989). internet services are now becoming more common and several companies are founded, such as linksys, selling data networking hardware products. it was co-founded by taiwanese hardware engineer janie tsao and her husband victor (lansner 2015). at the same time, radia perlman invented the spanning tree protocol (stp), also contributing to internet development (perlman 1985). perlman began her interest in computers during a high school programming class and, although having fears and doubts by being the only girl in the class, she decided to follow a technological career obtaining her ph.d. in computer science from mit in 1988 (rosen 2014). besides working with networks, she is also a pioneer in teaching programming for children, developing tortis and the logo educational robot turtle (morgado, cruz, and kahn 2006). this is common for women in computing history, as they usually get involved in teaching young people, especially girls, trying to reverse the gender gap. while compaq brings the deskpro 386 into the market, women kept leaving their marks: lorinda cherry developed the dictionary for the unix spell checker and the writer’s workbench while working for bell labs (mahoney 1989). éva tardos, a hungarian mathematician, earned the fulkerson prize for finding minimum cost circulations in strongly polynomial time in 1988 (tardos 1985), and later the gödel prize for laying the foundations of algorithmic game theory (roughgarden and tardos 2002). although the number of women kept dropping during these years and computing was now known as part of the male culture, some women kept breaking through even whilst not recognized as equals. the main modern it companies emerge (1990 2000) w ith the pentium microprocessor advance of graphics and music on pcs, they start to also be used as gaming machines at the mid-1990s. the gaming industry has raised computer sales, but also help to increase the gap for the female users and programmers (andrews 2017). even so, some women kept making breakthrough discoveries, such as donna dubinsky, which in 1992 introduced the first personal digital assistant, or pda and later became ceo and co-founder of palm, inc. (marlow 2000). she is now ceo of numenta and works with machine intelligence (markoff 2005). theoretical computer science was also impacted by women, especially due to its close connection with mathematics. since computers started to be related to men, many women found their way through math. shafi goldwasser graduated in mathematics and science from carnegie mellon university and is the inventor of zero-knowledge proofs, an important advance for complexity theory and cryptography (goldwasser, micali and rackoff 1989). it led her to win the gödel prize twice, once in 1993 and once in 2001 (israel 2017). barbara liskov also earned her ba in mathematics and in 1993 along with jeannette w ing, developed the substitutability, an important principle in object-oriented programming (liskov and w ing 1994). liskov also developed two programming languages, clu and argus and has received several awards, including the turing award (weisman 2009), the most prestigious award in computer science. the year of 1996 marks an important event in computing history with the development of the google search engine at stanford university by sergey brin and larry page (battelle 2006). but it would take 3 years before they hire their first female engineer, marissa mayer (sutter 2012). she would later be named vice president of search product and user experience at google until she became the ceo of yahoo! in 2012 (chang 2012). as many women, mayer also taught computer programming at stanford and changed yahoo!’s maternity leave policy, lengthening its time allowance. she has been ranked in several lists and she was the first woman to reach the number one position on fortune magazine’s annual list of the top 40 business stars under 40 years old (morrison 2013). at the late 1990s, the internet became popular with about 8 million teens online (mccullough 2015) and w i-fi starts to become a common term since now users can connect the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 73 to the internet without wires. the system behind the internet is based on several protocols that make possible all the information to correctly reach its destination. in 1994, sally floyd, a computer scientist from berkeley, worked on the standard for tcp, the transmission control protocol still in use today (paxson and floyd 1997). she later invented the random early detection (red), a queue management scheme used by almost all internet routers (floyd and jacobson 1993). the 1990s are also marked by the creation of several awards and institutes to honor women who contribute to computer science in an effort to revert the alarming decrease of its female representation. the grace hopper celebration of women in computing conference was first held in 1994 with 500 attendees (barr 2014) and two years later the women in technology international hall of fame was established by the women in technology international (witi), founded by carolyn leighton (mardesich 1994). in 1997 anita borg, who also organized the first grace hopper celebration along with telle whitney (goyal 1996), founded the institute for women and technology (iwt), renamed anita borg institute in her honor in 2003. she worked in email communication and in 1987 started systers, the first email network for women in technology providing a private and safe space for its only-female members (borg 1999). all these organizations are still active today and have a crucial role empowering women in the field, with the grace hopper celebration having 20 thousand attendees in 2018 (morris 2018). a digital society (after 2000) the 21st century began with the development of apple mac os x operating system and microsoft w indows xp. these releases now have a great impact on the population, since computers now are the basis of society, with almost 300 million computers being sold worldwide in 2008 (bhattacharya 2017). moreover, internet usage kept growing, with the creation of mozilla’s firefox, an internet browser, in 2004 (khomh et. al 2012) and of facebook, a social networking site (boyd and ellison 2007) and youtube, a video sharing service in 2005 (gueorguieva 2008). at the same year of its creation, facebook hires its first woman engineer, ruchi sanghvi (bosker 2011). sanghvi is an indian computer engineer and became the product lead for facebook the following year, due to her work on the platform’s new feed. she left facebook to found her own company after receiving the best engineering leadership award in 2011 (peak 2012). women now are able to reach higher and more important positions: sara catz becomes the president of oracle corporation (hesseldahl 2011), carol bartz becomes the ceo at yahoo! (pepitone 2009) and meg whitman becomes ceo of hewlett-packard (yang 2011), more than 70 years after its foundation. women also contributed with some breakthrough discoveries, such as the crack of the md5, sha-0 and sha-1 data security algorithms by xiaoyun wang in 2005. she and her colleagues received a standing ovation for their work at crypto conference (randall 2005). although many human computers during the wars were composed by african american women (grier 2013), making them essential for numerous advances in computer science, only in 2006 the first african american woman was able to hold a patent for a software invention in her name (bashen, roach and moore 2006). janet emerson bashen created a software to aid with web-based equal employment opportunity investigations, after being refused to debate about equity on her previous company (lynn 2016). she started her own company and was one elected of the most 100 influential africanamericans by ebony magazine (ebony 2012). in the early 2000s, women began to finally be recognized by their contribution to computer science. in 2003, margaret hamilton received the nasa exceptional space act award for scientific and technical contributions (braukus 2003) and in 2006 frances allen earned a turing award (mcgee 2007), being the first woman to do so for her seminal work the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 74 in compilers, program optimization, and parallelization (allen and cocke 1976). she was followed by barbara liskov in 2008 (weisman 2009) and shafi goldwasser in 2012 (abazorius 2013). also, lixia zhang a chinese professor of computer science won the ieee internet award in 2009. she was the only woman at the initial internet engineering task force, an organization to promote internet standards and is one of the creators of the rsvp protocol (zhang et. al 1993). finally, in 2018 gladys west is inducted into the air force space and missile pioneers hall of fame (augustin 2018). she worked at the naval surface warfare center dahlgren division. she was the second black woman ever employed in 1956 (butterly 2018). she was a human computer, collecting data from satellites, and helped develop gps technology that is widely used today (west 1986). she was recognized more than 30 years after her discovering. the late 2000s continued the launch of software and hardware closely watched by the general population. in 2007 apple releases the iphone, bringing computer functions to the smartphones (mather 2007) and a few years later it launches the ipad, changing the dormant tablet computer segment (kiss 2010). computers begin to be the basis of our society, which can be supported by facebook reaching 1 billion users in 2012 (smith, segall and cowley 2012). at the same time, ginni rometty becomes the first female president and ceo of ibm, more than one hundred years after its foundation (metz 2011). rometty has also been involved in organizations for empowering women, such as its ibm women in technology council (sim 2018), and has been listed in important rankings, like the world’s most powerful people by forbes in 2014 (howard 2014). also, yoelle maarek founded and directed the google haifa engineering center, developing autocompletion for google search queries in 2006 (carmel et. al 2008). she is now vice president at amazon (orbach 2017). computers now are evolving into new paradigms and models. in 2016 the first reprogrammable quantum computer was created by shantanu debnath (choi 2016) and one year later the defense advanced research projects agency started developing a program that uses molecules as computers (hinchliffe 2018). women, although still outnumbered in the field, kept being pioneers such as michelle simmons that founded in 2017 the first quantum computer company in australia (davey 2016). simmons is a professor of quantum physics at the university of new south wales and her team was the first in the world to develop a working single-atom transistor, essential for building a quantum computer (fuechsle et. al 2012). the gender gap on computing science has gathered more attention since the 2010s with several groups and organizations being created trying not only to empower and maintain women already engaged in computing, but also to motivate young girls into enrolling in technological courses. in 2011, ladies learning code, an organization aimed at promoting collaborative and technological learning among women, is launched in toronto by heather payne, melissa sariffodeen, breanna hughes and laura plant (kienapple 2011) and pyladies, an organization of women who code in python, is started in los angeles by seven women (shah 2012). several other nonprofit organizations were creating focusing on encourage girls to pursue careers in software development: girl develop it (gdi) was founded in 2010 by vanessa hurst and sara chipps (shattuck 2010) and two years later girls who code was founded by reshma saujani (guynn 2014). focusing not only on the gender issue, but also in race equity, black girls code (bgc) was created in 2010 by kimberly bryant and provide technology education for african-american girls (gilpin 2014). however, one of the first organizations created was linuxchix, founded in 1999 by deb richardson to provide technical and social support for female linux users (bowman 1999). these organizations are important and although giving attention to the gender gap issue, the number of women in computer and technological courses remains low. one of the issues is the lack of representation of women in computer history. since it has been written mainly by men so far, women’s contribution has been shadowed and the most the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 75 popular and famous computer scientists are men. trying to reverse this scenario is essential for reaching equal rights, moving towards a new computing environment, one with equality not only of gender, but also race, class, sexuality and disability. the role of woman in computing the role of woman in computing nowadays is a complex problem involving several topics, such as the role of woman in society, feminism and pedagogy. women’s accomplishments in any professional field are followed by questions, doubts and hesitation. few would argue when we say that alan turing broke the enigma, although he worked with dilly knox (batey 2017), or that steve jobs founded apple, although steve wozniak and ronald wayne were also founders (warner 2012). however, many would complain if we stated that ada wrote the first algorithm, remembering of charles babbage, or that beatrice worsley ran the first program on the edsac computer, complaining that there were several other programmers on that team. women’s accomplishments carry a bias: while a man can easily achieve a goal by himself, a woman must always have some help. and, although science is usually not done by only one person, it is common to give credit to a single individual, but only when we highlight a woman’s role this becomes an issue. this leads to a misrepresentation of women in all science fields, especially in stem and computer science, and has had a great impact on the number of female newly engaged in it. one of the reasons for keeping women from computer science is that they tend to underestimate their abilities to be successful (ehrlinger and dunning 2012). this can be closely related to two factors: the lack of role models (marx, stapel and muller 2003) and the use of traditional pedagogy methods in schools (mcclure 2000). the importance of role models to students, not only corresponding to gender but to other characteristics as well, can be essential to diversity. role models can create an impact, enhancing self-confidence and decreasing stereotype expression. for computer science, this includes not only non-male scientists, but also other minority groups such as afro-americans (disalvo et.al 2011) and lgbt+ representatives (stout and wright 2016). unfortunately, diversity is rare in computer science courses, reflecting on the difficulty of recruiting and retention of these groups. this creates a vicious circle, in which there are few role models, attracting even less diverse students, creating even fewer role models and representation. therefore, there is an urgent need of highlighting women in computer science, since it creates role models to female students, helping to recruit them and later retain them in the field, creating more role models and finally, one day, breaking the circle. moreover, this lack of representation can clearly be seen on the dissemination of knowledge and websites such as wikipedia. not only more than 85% of its registered users are men (herring 1992), but also, most pages of female scientists are not complete or are frequently the target of vandalism (stratigakos 2016). men tend to write about what they know and female scientists receive less attention from editors. this contributes even more for the lack of female role models, aiding to the already stated vicious circle of recruiting and retaining women in the stem. although these editors are not historians and usually do not write papers or books, they are writing history for our digital society. wikipedia, and the internet in general, are the primary source of knowledge nowadays and women do not appear to be welcome in it (hess 2014). a simple freshmen activity done in a brazilian university can show not only how women are mistreated on this male-dominant environment but also, how prominent and famous female computer scientist, such as grace hopper and ada lovelace, are not known by most undergraduate students, either male or female (mochetti et. al 2017). it is also important to notice that this gender gap has social and political causes, not biological ones. women are as capable as men in stem and computer sciences (faustosterling 2008). teaching methods, though, can be the producers of a gender distinction. the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 76 education builds society at the same time it is built by society. thus, it is also necessary to analyze the representations of gender and how they are reaffirmed or questioned during the formation of an individual. traditional pedagogy tends to reflect all types of inequality, starting with the segregation of adults, the teachers, those who are active in teaching and are already “ready”; from children, passive beings in education who must be shaped by knowledge (mizukami 1996). moreover, traditional pedagogy can also increase the distinction by ethnicity, economic class, and even gender, offering different classes and types of knowledge to specific groups of individuals. disciplines such as gym classes have more explicit gender segregation, using biology and health to justify the division of female and male students. however, exact classes, such as math, have a more subtle process of gender distinction. a study showed that when female students have a higher math result than male students, teachers’ explanation usually states that female students have worked hard while male students have behavioral and focus problems. words like “bright” or “potential” are never used to describe girls in exact or science classes (walkerdine 1995). education and pedagogy methods have a fundamental role in the creation of the individual and the implication of power relations. it is its role to problematize this average behavior, allowing subjects to have different thoughts and views, even if this breaks the social rules of “normality” (louro 1997). in this scenario, gathering the political ideologies of the feminist movement of the 60s, feminist pedagogy was created. its main idea is to bring a new standard in the classroom addressing the power imbalances present in society. this new view of education can be essential in increasing the number of female students enrollment in stem and computer science, but it is still uncommon in most schools around the world. thus, the low representation of women in computing can be due to several social factors related mainly to the role of women in society. as pointed out by simone de beauvoir years before "representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth." (de beauvoir 1989). feminist studies, such as beauvoir’s, have analyzed the forms of oppression women suffered and the differences between men and women created by society. women did not have the same rights and opportunities than men for a long time and even when they finally begin to occupy their professional space, they had only auxiliary and collaborator roles. this becomes clear when we differentiate the role of a school teacher and a university professor. a teacher is usually related to a woman and her maternal role of raising and caring for children, while a professor is related to a man that has great knowledge in some area. for this reason, the number of women in seminal areas that are parts of elementary education, such as math and physics, are not as alarming as in engineering and computing. in society’s view, women should not have this function unless teaching and caring for children. therefore, the gender gap in computer science will only be solved with a deep change in society. women should have their own space, not only in stem but in all society’s roles. this should not be defined by men, but by the whole society. women should not be allowed to work in the stem field only when men are at the battlefields of war. furthermore, advertisements should not target only a gender such as done with computers and video games in the early 80s. gender equality is a human right, not a woman’s right. conclusion women were essential to the development of computing and their role was outshined by men, leading to the alarming number of women occupying less than one quarter of all computing occupations in the us (ashcraft, mclain and eger 2016). this underrepresentation leads to a male dominant environment, hostile to women, as can be the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 77 seen in recent issues with big companies such as google (wakabayashi 2017) and facebook (conger and frenkel 2018), affecting their development, since diversity is important in any field (hicks 2017). another problem arises from their recognition through rewards and awards. the acm turing award, for example, is an annual prize given by the association for computing machinery (acm) to individuals with a major technical contribution to the computer science field. by 2019, from the almost seventy awards given, only three were given to women: frances elizabeth allen, barbara liskov and shafi goldwasser. all were given after 2006, showing how women were erased from the history of computing until recently. in an attempt to revert this issue, several groups and organizations were created, such as grace hopper celebration of women in computing conference (gabbert and meeker 2002) or the association for computing machinery’s council on women in computing (gürer and camp 2002), with over 36 thousand members. they try to support and empower women already active in the field while encouraging girls to engage in computer science and related areas. in this work, we try to contribute to changing this scenario by not only highlighting these important women, but also showing them throughout the view and heart of a woman in computing. therefore, although still suffering from several years of shadowing by men, women in computing are fighting for their space and hopefully, with time, we may have a field with more equity. acknowledgment the author would like to thank all these incredible women for their achievements and for leading the way for so many other female computer scientists to come, as herself. references abazorius, abby. 2013. goldwasser and micali win turing award. mit news, march 13, 2013. http://news.mit.edu/2013/goldwasser-and-micali-win-turing-award-0313 (accessed january 30, 2018). allan, roy a. 2001. a history of the personal computer: the people and the technology. allan publishing. allen, frances e., and john cocke. 1976. a program data flow analysis procedure. communications of the acm 19 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this paper:  frances elizabeth allen (1932 – )  ruth leach amonette (1916 – 2004)  joan ball (1934 – )  carol bartz (1948 – )  janet emerson bashen (1957 – )  mavis batey (1921 – 2013)  dona bailey  fran bilas (1922 – 2012)  gertrude blanch (1897 – 1996)  anita borg (1949 – 2003)  margaret burnett (1949 – )  sara catz (1961 – )  beatrice cave-browne-cave (1874 – 1947)  lorinda cherry  edith clarke (1883 – 1959)  donna dubinsky (1955 – )  elizabeth feinler (1931 – )  christiane floyd (1943 – )  sally floyd (1953 – )  margaret r. fox (1916 – 2006) the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 87  phyllis fox (1923 – )  irene greif  adele goldberg (1945 – )  shafi goldwasser (1958 – )  margaret hamilton (1936 – )  grete hermann (1901 – 1984)  betty holberton (1917 – 2001)  erna schneider hoover (1926 – )  grace hopper (1906 – 1992)  betty jean jennings (1924 – 2011)  karen spärck jones (1935 – 2007)  susan kare (1954 – )  sister mary kenneth keller (1913 – 1985)  sandra kurtzig (1947 – )  hedy lamarr (1914 – 1953)  henrietta swan leavitt (1868 – 1921)  ruth lichterman (1924 – 1986)  barbara liskov (1939 – )  ada lovelace (1815 – 1852)  yoelle maarek  marissa mayer (1975 – )  kay mcnulty (1921 – 2006)  carla meninsky  radia perlman (1951 – )  johanna piesch (1898 – 1992)  ida rhodes (1900 – 1986)  ginni rometty (1957 – )  jean e. sammet (1928 – 2017)  ruchi sanghvi (1982 – )  carol shaw (1955 – )  mary shaw (1943 – )  michelle simmons (1967 – )  dame stephanie shirley (1933 – )  janese swanson (1958 – )  éva tardos (1957 – ) the impact of women in computer science history: a post-war american history karina mochetti 88  janie tsao (1953 – )  dana ulery (1938 – )  dorothy vaughan (1910 – 2008)  xiaoyun wang (1966 – )  marlyn wescoff (1922 – 2008)  gladys west (1930 – )  sophie w ilson (1957 – )  elizabeth webb w ilson (1896 – 1980)  mary allen w ilkes (1937 – )  jeannette wing (1956 – )  meg whitman (1956 – )  beatrice worsley (1921 – 1972)  irma wyman (1928 – 2015)  lixia zhang (1951 – ) microsoft word fantini gurgel layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-17 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6621-6299] ivã gurgel2 [www.orcid.org/0000-0003-4968-6907] abstract: in this article, we present the work of the french thinker michel foucault, which, it can be argued, is centred on the subject as a guiding concept and is divided into three perspectives of this concept, or axes of analysis, which also constitute crude markers of a diachronic evolution of foucault’s thought: the archaeological (being-knowledge), the genealogical (being-power) and the ethical (being-with-oneself). among these three axes, the first is more strongly linked to the study of science and is associated with the historical epistemology of bachelard and canguilhem. however, we present some recent works by historians of science who have taken scientific pedagogy as an object, making the second axis of analysis the starting point for a theoretical model of this domain of scientific practice in history. finally, we promote a potential complementation of this model by including elements of the third axis of analysis, which these other authors do not discuss. keywords: historiography; history of science; michel foucault; scientific pedagogy; subjectification received: april 22, 2022. reviewed: may 20, 2022. accepted: may 26, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ the three axes of foucault’s work michel foucault, a french intellectual (he disapproved of the identification with the disciplines with which he is usually associated, among them philosophy), is associated with a vast and original work within the humanities. it is usually classified into three major periods – the archaeological, the genealogical and the ethical. although this is the most common classification of the phases of foucault’s work, there are alternatives, such as that of veiga 1 andré fantin is a graduate student in the interunit science education program at the university of são paulo – usp. address: rua do matão, 1371 – cidade universitária, são paulo – sp 05508-090 – brazil. e-mail: andremihailov2@gmail.com 2 ivã gurgel is a professor in the institute of physics at the university of são paulo – usp. address: rua do matão, 1371 – cidade universitária, são paulo – sp 05508-090 – brazil. e-mail: gurgel@usp.br “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 neto, who identifies the centrality of the subject as a guiding concept for foucault, and thus cuts out the phases in being-knowledge, being-power and being-with-oneself3 (veiga-neto 2014). hacking (2002a, 2002b) also identifies the three axes and makes them the basis of his “historical ontology”, which seeks to investigate the historical becoming of a set of objects (what he calls “dynamic nominalism”) determined by at what degree they can be analysed from the perspective of these three axes (which excludes most objects from the natural sciences, but includes important objects from the human sciences, such as neuro divergences or the concept of child development). among these phases, it is in the first one that closely follows georges canguilhem’s school of epistemology, which in turn is influenced by gaston bachelard’s4 historical epistemology, that foucault’s most evident contributions to the historiography and philosophy of science are usually identified. in this phase, foucault seeks to demonstrate how a concept of great philosophical, especially ontological, importance (the “madman”, or “man”) emerges historically from precise scientific delimitations that emerge in discontinuous steps over time.5 his works from that time, “history of madness” and especially “the order of things”, are histories of science with embedded philosophical theses (foucault 2013, 2012b). archaeology is the method with which he constructs these histories. it starts from the presupposition that the history of thought is, in analogy to geology, marked by different strata of mentalities, worldviews, and ways of thinking (which he calls episteme) that periodise it and that precondition the form of the sciences produced in each of these periods.6 hence, the activity of historicising the sciences at this level is analogous to the archaeological task of “excavating” those structurants of thought that mark and periodise a past era. when one period gives way to another, that is, when one episteme gives way to another, much like in the metaphor of geological strata, this change is abrupt, heterogeneous, and discontinuous. the causes of these changes and why they operate in such a way that a certain episteme gives rise to a certain other (that of the classical period, which engendered linnaeus’ taxonomy and lamarck’s theories in biology, gives way to the modern period, which engenders darwin’s theory of evolution) are not explored in detail. archaeology constituted an interesting possibility for the history of science, insofar as it provided a methodological option that moved away from biography or scientific hagiography, while also avoiding more vicious versions of the internalist historiography of the sciences (such as the circular “self-generation” of theories and ideas). this project also avoids the “social” causes and explanations for scientific creation and change from extenalist historiography of the sciences, finding in a relatively autonomous object from the 3 the existence of a “pre-archaeological”, more existential and phenomenological phase of foucault can be argued, in which he suggests, based on his studies of psychiatry and psychology and his experience as a visitor in psychiatric hospitals, a first analysis of the “ madman” as a “lived experience” in the first edition of “mental illness and psychology”, which would be replaced by the archaeological analysis of “history of madness” (foucault 2008, 2013; oksala 2012c, 2012e). this transition becomes clearer when we study foucault's essays on language after his archaeological turn he finds the freedom and limit-experience of existence sought by existentialists in the creative force of language as an entity which is autonomous from the human subject (foucault 1998, 1986c; oksala 2012d). 4 for a disambiguation of the multiple meanings of “historical epistemology”, and in particular the one that should be associated with bachelard, and in part with canguilhem, see gingras, 2010 and hacking, 2002b. 5 the emphasis on historical discontinuity is a legacy of bachelard, and a sympathy with the historiographical movement of the annales. 6 we could also think of the psychoanalytic metaphor (which in turn can be thought of as a geological metaphor in itself) of the episteme as the “unconscious” of epistemology, the id of the epistemological ego. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 “superficial” domain of the scientist, his ideas, and even his society, the methodological principle of an investigation in the history of sciences. it is the episteme, which is a structurant of the “collective” thought of a time (foucault 2012b, 2012a). more contemporary proposals for the diachronic analysis of thought with some similarity to archeology are ian hacking’s “styles of reasoning” (hacking 1992). foucault’s interest in scientific discourse and its dynamics of making objects and corpora of knowledge remains in its next phase, the genealogical one. inspired by nietzsche’s work (nietzsche 2013), he guides his historiographical methodology towards, not the way in which an abstract structurant of the knowledge of an epoch give rise to sciences, theories and objects of knowledge, but how the sciences, journalistic texts, moral pamphlets – what he collectively calls discourses7 – give rise to systems of knowledge-power that, through practices defined by them, create the conditions of existence of certain subjects, which can be strongly fixed in the imaginary and materiality of society through the institutionalisation of such practices8 (oksala 2012a). interest in the sciences remains, but now less in terms of the historical development of the content of this knowledge (which distances genealogy from a stricter disciplinary identification with the history of science), but rather in how this knowledge expresses rationalities that produce and inform practices of social control that distinguishes modernity: that is, these are “histories of the present”.9 the important works of the period are “discipline and punish” and the “history of sexuality 1” (foucault 2012c, 1990). in “discipline and punish”, it is the mutual engendering of the sciences of criminology and psychiatry, intertwined from the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, with the practices of watchfulness and systematisation of prison life that, by virtue of the new idea of “reform” of the one who breaks the law, creates a new type of subject, “the one who is reformed” through the scientifically and technically informed practices of internment. the paradigm of this technique and this practice is the panopticon, the ideal prison imagined by the jurist jeremy bentham in which all the cells are visible from the perspective of an unknown point of view that may or may not be occupied by a watchman. thus, the one watched over internalises the power of watchfulness over himself and his peers when in this system. despite focusing on the prison, the internalisation of watchfulness suggested by the panopticon metaphor discussed by foucault would be disseminated in all eminently modern institutions, such as the school. some consider a weakness of the genealogical foucault to lack an explanation of why individuals would voluntarily submit to these situations of control; we will explore this topic 7 the historian of science peter galison argues that there is still an element of abstraction, nonmateriality, in the notion of discourse, which would combine an initially positivist methodology (visiting an archive, reading the documents) with a structuralist turn (identifying the pattern and laws of combination of these texts), which seems to sustain some continuity with the notion of episteme (galison and packer 2016). 8 corroborating a “continuist” perspective of foucauldian work, in which the subject is the guiding concept, analysed in different ways, we note that the sciences that take subjects as their object (and construct them) are only possible in the 19th century, after the invention of the transcendental subject of kantian philosophy at the end of the 18th century, the object to which the final analysis of “the order of things” is dedicated. 9 despite constituting diachronic narratives about the constitution of practices and knowledge in the past, their intention as a literary and scientific genre is to disarm philosophical pretensions and theses that concern the present, such as the notion of progress or humanism. thus, it is a presentist temporal regime that determines the investment of scientific work in the production of these stories and not some preoccupation more eminently derived from the past (although it is debatable how much this is not more common in the more usual historiographical genres: see chang, 2021). “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 4 and where to find analytical support in foucault’s work to look for answers to this question throughout the article. in the “history of sexuality”, foucault identifies in the multiplicity of discourses, in particular scientific (psychoanalytic, physiological and psychiatric), about sex in the victorian era, not a sign of a period marked by repression of sex and sexuality (like the era of “free love” of the 1960s and 1970s would characterise it), but of the production of modern notions of sex and sexuality that the present still makes use of (this not exclusively repressive character of power when understood as part of a knowledge-power binomial is one of foucault’s most important contributions, and will be taken up again in the article). the person who performs sexual acts becomes, in medical language, a subject with sexuality that needs to be patched up, studied, classified, discovered by a scientific practice and theory and corrected by a legal practice and theory.10 it is in the explanation of the method in this work that foucault clearly establishes his theory of power, half of the knowledge-power binomial: [...] power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of nonegaliterian and mobile relations. [...] relations of power are not in superstructural positions, with merely a role of prohibition or accompaniment; they have a directly productive role [...] there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations [...] power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective. [...] where there is power, there is resistance [...] by definition, they can only exist in the strategic field of power relations [...]. (foucault 1990, 94–96) unlike most usual marxist and liberal conceptions of power and domination, for foucault, neither power can be taken as a “substance”, a “legal currency”, nor is domination established in an absolute binary of dominant and dominated determined by socioeconomic conditions (the “class struggle”). instead, the superstructure needs to be replaced by a microphysics of power: this is like an “elastic mesh” whose limits are defined by the knowledge-power devices, especially the institutionalised ones. the subjects are arranged in different n-ary configurations (the family, work, institutions), “deforming” this mesh with different intensities and for different durations of time, depending on how “crystallised” by society a particular practice or social configuration is. thus, two types of power relations are roughly distinguished: strategies between individuals and states of domination (foucault 1988). in the first, individuals seek to lead each other’s actions toward a certain common or selfish objective in a relatively harmless way: foucault’s example is a teacher guiding his student to take certain attitudes that lead to his school success. it is in this type of power relationship in which the relative position of the subjects in it is more fluid. in the second, the relative positions of the individuals involved in the relationship are quite fixed, and there is very little room for changing the relative state of “deformation” of the power grid. this would be the type of relationship established between individuals of different social classes. it is important to emphasise that the nature of the established power relations configures a gradation between strategic relations and states of domination, which is consistent with the conceptual principles cited above. and it is in the third axis, related to the third phase of foucault’s work, that the theme of the individual’s agency in the subjectivation process will be explored, engendered by the devices of knowledge-power and modulated by the strategies of power and by the states of domination. and it is again in a genealogy that foucault finds the leverage point from which 10 in psychoanalysis, it is the subject himself who has the truth of his sexuality revealed through the psychoanalytic “confession”, and cured through his own speech, the enunciation of his own discourse. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 5 to conduct his analysis of the subject: in this case, that of a comparative analysis of christian and greco-roman morals and ethics (foucault 1985a, 1985b): “up to that point, i had conceived the problem of the relationship between the subject and the games of truth in either of coercitive practices – such as those of psychiatry or the prison system – or of theoretical or scientific games – such as the analysis of wealth, of language, and of living beings. in my lectures at the collége de france, i tried to grasp it in terms of what may be called a practice of the self [...]. in the greek and roman civilisations, such practices of the self were much more important and especially more autonomous than they were later, after they were taken over to a certain extent by religious, pedagogical, medical or psychiatric institutions.” (foucault 1988, 281-282). foucault distinguishes between two types of morality – that provided by a code of conduct, and the practice originated from the relationship of individuals with the code – and he also distinguishes both from a notion of ethics – identified, for example, in the “alcibiades”, of plato – as the forms and techniques through which an individual mould oneself into a moral subject, that is, a subject of morality (oksala 2012b). foucault draws attention to the fact that christian morality, the one that most informs our culture, emphasises the code – the moral norms of christianity are multiple and designed for each possible situation – making christian ethics one of strict obedience to the code. in the previous greco-roman culture, the code was much simpler and assumed, in the moral practice of the individual, the role of general orientation, with practical morality being more important, achieved by an ethics that corresponds to a creative activity, a “technique of the self” focused on a morality “founded on a personal choice to live a beautiful life and to leave to others memories of a beautiful existence.” (oksala 2012b). foucault again focused on presentist concerns, identifies in this morality, and in the conduction of “techniques of the self” that constitute greco-roman ethics (adequately appropriated for contemporary society, not in themselves – foucault is neither a nostalgic nor an anachronistic), an alternative to our society, which he sees as obsessed with the regimes of scientific truth and the governability of large population contingents that he saw as capable of causing the intoxication of power relations. these power relations, however, as his previous work points out, are irreducible: i do not think that a society can exist without power relations, if by that one means the strategies by which individuals try to direct and control the conduct of others. the problem is not of trying to dissolve them in the utopia of a perfectly transparent communication, but to give one’s self the rules of law, the techniques of management, and also the ethics, the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with the minimum of domination. (foucault 1988, 298) self-government, therefore, would distance itself from the instances of the powerknowledge characteristic of modernity, adopting more the éthos of the individual, making his life a work of art – an aesthetics of existence. the individual finally assumes, in foucauldian work, agency over the process in which he is subjectified. the “foukuhnian” approach in the history of science pedagogy it’s been just a few decades since historians, sociologists and anthropologists of the sciences (often grouped together as scholars of science studies) turned more seriously, albeit very timidly in terms of the amount of work developed, to studies that evidence the role of “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 6 scientific pedagogy in the concerning problems characteristic of the investigation of scientific culture – such as the constitution of properly scientific practices, the circulation of knowledge and scientific materiality, and the nature of innovation in the sciences. although some of those who have been appropriated as founders of this interdisciplinary trend, such as thomas kuhn, have taken the issue of scientific training as central (kaiser 2005a). among these, there are some already “classic” studies that, following the “tradition” of science studies, generally end up involving case studies of scientific training practices in loci that are very temporally and geographically located (kaiser 2005b; olesko 1991; rudolph 2002; warwick 2003). although the localised study is commendable in historiographical and sociological research, allowing empirical studies to guide researchers’ conclusions about the problem in question, it would be important for the development of works with more ambitious aspirations to discuss possible broader philosophical or sociological models that support and guide research beyond a microhistorical “archive fetish” (galison 2008; secord 2004). some, such as massimiliano badino and jaumes navarro, argue that an epistemology of science relevant to the history of science can be centred on the role of the pedagogical domain in the scientific enterprise (badino and navarro 2013). david kaiser and andrew warwick, two important authors in this line of studies, sought to outline an epistemology of the type, called “foukuhnian”, for being inspired by both the work of thomas kuhn and michel foucault (kaiser and warwick 2005). turning to kuhn, the authors believe in recovering the initial meaning of the widespread and controversial concept of “paradigm”, which would be an abstraction elaborated from a turn operated by kuhn in the understanding of what would be the process of “learning” in the natural sciences (in particular in physics, it is important to emphasise, the author’s mother discipline) in two movements. first, he recognises that the process is quite authoritarian and dogmatic, leaving no space for the student to question the accepted methods and theories, which are presented in this tone in textbooks and manuals. he then identifies that, rather than the student “learning” science through the process of mastering the key concepts of a discipline or the principles of a theory, which make up the “bulk” of text in textbooks, he is in fact “trained” to solve a limited number of problems of well-known solution through the use of a theory and a certain set of concepts (in the most contemporary philosophy of science literature, we would say that kuhn refers to the most successful models of a certain theory11) and to learn to identify the same problem already solved in new problems, or to develop techniques that reduce or simplify the problem to already known cases. scientific pedagogy would be, therefore, a kind of training aimed at engaging its subjects with the “puzzle-solving” activities that characterise “normal science” (kuhn 1996, 2011) the limitations the authors identify in the kuhnian model of the role of pedagogy in the development and reproduction of scientific knowledge are essentially its ahistorical character – kuhn’s account, especially in the structure of scientific revolutions, and especially because of its more structuralist character, seems to suggest that the forms of scientific training in kuhn’s present are a priori essential and reproduced in scientific history since its birth – and the mechanisms through which the training is successful, in addition to the already classic problem (which gives rise to his thesis of incommensurability) of how innovation is possible within such a narrow regime of reproduction: 11 see, for example, cartwright, 1999. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 7 in essence, he assumed that the distribution of canonical texts such as newton’s principia (or derivative textbooks) was sufficient to generate a community of practitioners engaged in a common project. he had very little to say regarding the role or form of the training regimes within which such texts and textbooks were employed. [...] on the one hand, he adduces the authoritative tone of such books when arguing for the dogmatic nature of scientific education; on the other hand, he claims that the formal explanations found in textbooks cannot teach students the very problemsolving skills he identifies as crucial to competent practice. [...] a much richer account of pedagogical resources used to train scientists and engineers is required if we are to provide a plausible account of the way training is generative of normal-science activity. (kaiser and warwick 2005, 396-397). from foucault, the authors highlight the concept of discipline, which, as we discussed, is characteristic of the author’s genealogical phase and used profusely in the work “discipline and punish” (foucault 2012c), and the foucauldian conception of power, in which it is disseminated throughout society, with its configuration determining and being determined, in a double operation, in numerous instances of dispute, being intertwined with ways of knowing and production of knowledge (foucault 1990). it is in this sense that power is exercised in social devices such as prisons and, especially for kaiser and warwick, the school; it is with human and social knowledge (savoir) that the disciplinary regimes of these institutions are constituted – the spatial arrangement of study rooms, the timetable, physical reinforcement exercises, memorisation techniques, etc – which are actively carried out by the disciplined and produce a “positive” transformation (recall here the “productive” character of power for foucault) in them as they become subjects capable of carrying out a series of tasks with a certain “effectiveness” by following this regime of discipline the main disciplinary technology that shapes the student subject, for example, is the exam – through it the individual in the school institution is identified by the teacher in their relative strengths and weaknesses regarding the execution of a certain task, whose effective resolution sets the objective of the learning process, and can thus be shaped by this teacher through specific techniques that improve their performance in solving the task. according to the authors: where kuhn’s account of pedagogy was confined to occasional and vague references to the contents of canonical treatises and textbooks, foucault’s evoke a much richer and interactive nexus of institutionalised gazes, bodies, gestures, architectures, routines, incitements, examinations, and punishments. [...] in this sense foucault points to a level of analysis at which it should be possible to historicise the processes by which specialised technical competencies became the common preserve of widely extended communities of practitioners – the phenomenon kuhn referred to as normal science. (kaiser and warwick 2005, 402-403). and here, foucault’s historicity has a great advantage over kuhn’s structuralism, insofar as we turn to the problem of how, in the last two hundred years, the conceptual, but especially technical, leap in the scientific disciplines that allowed, according to an example of the authors, for the general theory of relativity to be mastered and applied to problems of astronomy in the period of a decade, while the copernican heliocentrism took at least a hundred years to be completely mastered by the scholars of the mathematical sciences. it is at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, according to foucauldian periodisation, that the disciplinary techniques are invented and iteratively applied by the new human sciences to individuals who integrate modern institutions, such as schools. the growing subjectification of the individual as a subject of learning – a subject disciplined for learning – could explain “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 8 how much more “effective” scientific activity has become, especially with regard to the dissemination and circulation of knowledge. the strengths of the “foukuhnian” model for the history of science, and for the history of pedagogical practices in the sciences are summarised by the authors as follows: [...] in order to historicise training’s place in the sciences we need to transcend kuhn’s idealistic, global, static, and cyclic model of scientific change. we have suggested that this can be accomplished in two stages: first by noting the compatibility of kuhn’s emphasis on skill acquisition with foucault’s insight that power in the form of social relations does not inhibit or conceal knowledge but is necessary to its production; and second, by building on foucault’s claim that the minutiae of everyday training practices have the power to generate new capabilities in human beings, thereby bringing about significant historical change. (kaiser and warwick, 2005, 406) we can notice echoes of an epistemology with these characteristics in works by these two authors, both immediately before and after this text. in “drawing theories apart”, kaiser investigates how different research traditions, geographically distant, appropriated and made use of feynman’s newly discovered calculation devices for the discipline of high energy physics in the immediate post-war period – the diagrams that were named after him – effectively transforming it through this process of circulation between sub-disciplines and departments strongly modulated by their pedagogical tradition (kaiser 2005a). in “how the hippies saved physics”, the same author demonstrates that material changes in the characteristics of graduate studies in north american physics throughout the 1950s – greater investment and programs to encourage enrollment in higher and graduate education – generated an unprecedented demand for disciplines involving advanced topics of quantum mechanics, and shaped the way this physics was taught and how its textbooks were written (in the content selection, for example), emphasising, in this case, mathematical techniques of problem-solving rather than conceptual clarification – something that was seen as a fundamental part of the discipline until that moment, due to the role that conceptual and interpretive debates played throughout the construction of the theory (kaiser 2011). in these two examples, we can identify an emphasis on how pedagogical techniques generate change in the content or even in the disciplinary emphases and boundaries of a science – this is a point of interest that kaiser and warwick accuse foucault of not exploring with due attention: what is particularly important here, though foucault had little to say on the matter with respect to training, is that pedagogical reorganisation on the scale he envisage could, over time, have profound effects on the field itself. (kaiser & warwick 2005, 400) warwick seeks to explore this point in “masters of theory”, where he investigates the institutionalisation of very particular ways of training students in mathematical physics throughout the 19th century in england, specifically in cambridge, and how this shaped the very contents of the discipline of mathematical physics – in particular, the electrodynamics of maxwell, larmor, fitzgerald, etc. – and influenced the ways in which the theory of relativity was appropriated by these english mathematicians (warwick 2003). he explores the coaching mechanisms, – cambridge coaches – evaluation techniques, – the tripos, around which the coaching mechanism was established – and regimes of the discipline of the body and mind of students – the cultivation of physical and mental health, of an ideal of masculinity through the practice of canoeing, and of cognitive reinforcement through the mental exercise of solving differential equations with varying degrees of difficulty. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 9 however, both warwick and kaiser see a limitation in the foucauldian legacy of the epistemology that they propose when considering the element of the individual’s volition when engaging with pedagogical practices in the sciences that are so intense and invasive: despite his claim that training can find and exploit new capacities in those subjected to its rigours, it is invariably the teacher who is the ‘knower’ while the student remains the ‘known’. yet the purpose of technical training is not just to manipulate the student’s behaviour for the purposes of the master, but to reproduce the master’s skills in the student. for this process to work effectively the student must want to acquire the master’s knowledge and be a willing and active participant in his or her own education. (kaiser and warwick 2005, 404)12 the solution proposed by the authors is a localised investigation, in time and space, of the reasons for individuals to be subject to these regimes13. to us, however, this solution seems to compromise too much the ambition of an epistemology, or even a theoretical model for the history of science, that strongly links the content and forms of the sciences with pedagogical practices. we believe that in foucault himself, but not now through the genealogical axis, through which the concept and studies of the discipline are constructed and analysed, but through the ethical axis, the “foukuhnian” epistemology can be adequately complemented. complementing the “foukuhnian” approach: the ethical axis, or the “being-with-oneself” as anticipated, we believe that kaiser and warwick’s exposition of their foukuhnian epistemology is very rich for the historiography of science, but we also believe that some of the problems they point out, in particular regarding apparent limitations of the “foucaldian side” of the approach, can be solved without referring to intellectual elements external to the references used. in particular, that foucauldian work, in its ethical variety, can point to a solution to these “blind spots”. let us begin by recalling and emphasising the elements of foucault's work that we believe have been ignored in kaiser and warwick’s bibliographic synthesis: while foucault had insisted that resistance was always inherent in power as its irreducible counterpart, his account nevertheless left it open for the most part how, by what concrete means, subjects should form and instigate resistance. (oksala 2012b) in other words, we have to admit from the outset that foucault’s work, even in its genealogical and disciplinary phase, the one exclusively explored by the authors according 12 the terminology used by the authors in the highlighted passage seems to suggest, despite the fact that there is no direct citation of the work “pedagogy of the oppressed” or equivalent in the original text, a freirean critique of the perspective very marked by the authoritarianism of the foucauldian reading of the educational process in “discipline and punish”. we leave open this potential path of theoretical complementation. 13 kaiser, for example, explores the case of what he identifies as the typical american physicist of the first two decades following the post-war period an ambitious young man who aspires to reach the middle class of cadillacs and suburbs, constructing his identity through the media focused on this social segment. the science stimulus packages of those decades allowed the physicist career to be seen as a means to the realisation of these ambitions much more than, what was more common before, and would become again from the 1970s and 1980s, a means for the realisation of more “purely” intellectual ambitions (kaiser 2004). “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 10 to the above exposition of foukuhnian epistemology, opens a space of reflection toward the nature and possibility conditions of resistance to disciplinary power. of course, the foucauldian theory of power includes in its own structure the possibility of agency from the part of disciplined elements through practices of resistance. it is important, nonetheless, to complement the required analysis of the disciplinary regimes, for it does not explain how these resistances would occur. as indicated by the authors, that would require a specific empirical study. thus, we must refer more directly to foucault’s later work, notably in the history of sexuality, 2 and 3 (foucault 1986a, 1986b), which, we argue, suggests not only the form taken by practices of resistance, but indeed suggests, more radically, an “appropriation” of the disciplinary order by the disciplined subject for the production of an “aesthetics of existence”, which he identifies as the éthos of greco-roman ethics in his historical study, which would consist of a “practice of freedom” on the part of the disciplined. in an interview collected in a volume by paul rabinow, foucault expresses this idea: i have always been suspicious of the notion of liberation, because if it is not taken with precautions and within certain limits, one runs the risk of falling back on the idea that there exists a human nature or base that, as a consequence of certain historical, economic, and social processes, has been concealed, alienated or imprisoned in and by mechanisms of repression. according to this hypothesis, all that is required is to break these repressive deadlocks and man will be reconciled with himself. [...] this practice of liberation is not in itself sufficient to define the practices of freedom that will still be needed if this people, this society, and these individuals are to be able to define admissible and acceptable forms of existence or political society. [...] this is precisely the problem i encountered with regards to sexuality [...] this ethical problem of the definition of the practices of freedom, it seems to me, is much more important than the rather repetitive affirmation that sexuality or desire must be liberated. (foucault 1988, 282-283) from this reaffirmation of the themes present in the first volume of the “history of sexuality”, and also to a somewhat more rudimentary degree in “discipline and punish”, regarding the productive nature of power and regimes of discipline, and their inescapable nature, which seriously hinders dreams of some “liberation” utopia – a popular point of view in the 1970s – but with a fresh perspective informed by the broad historical study of grecoroman ethics, he goes on: freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. but ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection. [...] in the greco-roman world, the care of the self was the mode in which individual freedom – or civic liberty, up to a point – was reflected [se réfléchie] as an ethics. [...] what we have here is an entire ethics revolving around the care of the self; this is what gives ancient ethics its particular form. i am not saying that ethics is synonymous with the care of the self, but that, in antiquity, ethics as the conscious practice of freedom has revolved around this fundamental imperative:? ‘take care of yourself’ [soucie-toi de toi-même]. (foucault 1988, 284-285) the “care of the self” would consist of a set of techniques, usually involving some form of asceticism, employed by an individual to control his passions and will in a way that they do not control him. in other words, so that the demands of the body and of the will do not deprive the individual of his freedom, he needs to actively engage in practices that curb them: effectively, “practices of freedom”. the way in which these practices lead to an ethical stance towards others is explored by foucault below: “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 11 what makes it ethical for the greeks is not that it is care for others. the care of the self is ethical in itself; but it implies complex relationships with others insofar as this éthos of freedom is also a way of caring for others. (foucault 1988, 287) [...] the risk of dominating others and exercising a tyrannical power over them arises precisely only when one has not taken care of the self and has become the slave of one’s desires. but if you take proper care of yourself, that is, if you know ontologically what you are, if you know what you are capable of, if you know what it means for you to be a citizen of a city, to be the master of a household in an oikos, if you know what things you should and should not fear, if you know what you can reasonably hope for and, on the other hand, what things should not matter to you, if you know, finally, that you should not be afraid of death – if you know all this, you cannot abuse your power over others. (foucault 1988, 288) the following passage refers almost directly to the previous quote from the work of kaiser and warwick where they question the need of a bidirectional relationship between master and apprentice for the scientific training process to take place: éthos also implies a relationship with others, insofar as the care of the self enables one to occupy his rightful position in the city, the community, for interpersonal relationships, whether as a magistrate or a friend. and the care of the self also implies a relationship with the other insofar as proper care of the self requires listening to the lessons of a master. one needs a guide, a counsellor, a friend, someone who will be truthful with you. thus the problem of relationships with others is present throughout the development of the care of the self. (foucault 1988, 287) we see here why foucault was captivated by this perspective: we have here a conception of ethics that readily admits the existence of irreducible power relations in society, and that, from this recognition, takes as a necessary effect of this irreducible fact an éthos attuned to avoiding the constitution of states of domination (tyrannical power, in a more greco-roman language) – those that foucault identified as the toxic distortions of healthy power relations. foucault, then, gets to the point that interests us – and also him – the most, which is how we can relate this historical study of ethics in antiquity with the genealogies of institutions, governability and discipline in modernity: i would say that if i am now interested in how the subject constitutes itself in an active fashion through practices of the self, these practices are nevertheless not something invented by the individual himself. they are models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society, and his social group. (foucault 1988, 291) thus, we find the connection between the techniques and regimes of the body and mind presented by modernity and greco-roman ethics. there is the possibility of appropriating the disciplinary techniques that are cast upon us in modern society in order for us to perform certain tasks effectively if we take them as techniques of ourselves aiming at “self-care”, if they help us to subjectify ourselves to a certain extent as ethical subjects. we will conclude the argument by presenting an interpretation of the history presented by andrew warwick in his “masters of theory” in which, in addition to the interpretation of the techniques of pedagogy in cambridge as a disciplinary regime, we take students as engaged in practices of “self-care”. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 12 warwick narrates the constitution process of the mathematics teaching in the very specific flavour of cambridge university in the 19th century through the constitution of the practice of coaching and the organisation of graduation exams known as tripos, through which students were ranked; the best-ranked students applied for positions as lecturers at the university or themselves worked as coaches for the exam. the centrality of teaching mathematics to the university was designed by figures such as william whewell, who took the discipline as central to the rational and moral development of the english citizen, who would rise high in the hierarchy of that society, and william hopkins, who valued the more competitive and aggressive aspects that emerge in the context of a ranking high-level physics-mathematics exam. whewell valued mathematics (and specifically newtonian dynamics) for the selfevident truth of its premises and the absolute certainty of its conclusions. its study would have no other effect on those who submitted to it than to make them respectable citizens aware of their role in society, fair and rational in their decisions and, therefore, moral. hopkins emphasised the mystical-transcendental aspect of mathematics as an element of the divine, not human, creation, and thus the exhaustive study of it would indicate a greater fear of the moral law and god. the most fearful student would then be the most studious and devoted, which would also serve the objective of ranking well in competitive exams, making religious zeal and competitiveness strongly related in this perspective of mathematical study. it is this competitive aspect that most profoundly marked the university environment throughout the 19th and part of the 20th centuries14. at the same time, it was during the 19th century that the “analytical reform” took place in the teaching of british mathematical physics. the emphasis on the geometric interpretation of the problems of differential and integral calculus, and the formulation of differential equations from primitive “concrete” concepts, such as the notion of newtonian force, which was equated with the intuitive notion of “muscle effort”, were replaced by the introduction of more sophisticated methods of solving differential equations from the continent. the connection of the abstractions of mathematical physics with the concrete world through concepts such as force were progressively replaced by the more abstract notions of energy and “lagrangian” or “hamiltonian” functions. the whewell school of thought was particularly attached to the more traditional forms of the discipline rather than the continental sophistications and abstractions, which contributed for it being seconded by the hopkins approach to mathematical study. important figures in the history of mathematics, such as francis galton, karl pearson, james clerk maxwell, and william thomson (lord kelvin), not to mention many other “invisible” ones, passed these exams, and warwick recovers frightening accounts of their experiences with them: galton was initially exhilarated by the intellectual adventure and sheer pace of hopkin’s coaching sessions [...]. a few weeks into his third year, galton’s health began to fail completely [...] the three best mathematicians in the college in the year above him were all graduating as poll men because their health had broken down under the pressure of hard study. [...] galton concluded that the unremitting emphasis on 14 this process takes place in a period of dispute and reform in english society, in which one of the battlefronts is the education system, between the radical and the conservative wing of parliament. whewell sided with the conservatives, and his model of the british citizen sought to restore or sustain the values of an anglicanism that was being challenged. simultaneously to this dispute, it is at this moment that university education starts to be taken by young people from the middle classes with good school performance as a perspective of social growth within the rigid hierarchy of british society. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 13 competition in cambridge undergraduate studies was in desperate need of reform [...] he subsequently suffered a complete mental breakdown and had to leave cambridge for a term. (warwick, 2003, 183) the two most outstanding mathematical physicists produced by cambridge in the midnineteenth century, william thomson (later lord kelvin) and james clerk maxwell, were similarly disaffected by their undergraduate experience. more than nine months before he sat the tripos examination of 1985, the extraordinarily able and energetic thomson informed his father that ‘three years of cambridge drilling is quite enough for anybody’. during the equivalent year of maxwell’s undergraduate career, 1853, he was taken ill while working ‘at high pressure’ for the trinity college summer-term examinations. [...] during the first two years at cambridge, maxwell had resisted pressure to concentrate solely on preparations for the mathematical tripos and had continued to read and discuss literature and philosophy. upon his return to cambridge, the still weakened maxwell abandoned all but his mathematical studies, doing only what ‘hopkin’s prescribe[d] to be done, and avoiding anything more’. (warwick 2003, 185-186) having recovered from the sources these frightening accounts of the mental stress to which undergraduate students were subjected, which seems to justify warwick’s own theoretical concern in the 2005 chapter with kaiser quoted above as to finding the reasons why individuals submitted to this discipline in the first place, he tries to indicate that, for the most promising students, throughout the 19th century, along with the very strict regime of the mind, a concern with the body was also developed, and an equally rigorous regime of the body: [...] for some reasons, not entirely clear, the most ambitious undergraduates gradually transformed the traditional afternoon ramble or promenade into a daily regimen of measured physical exercise. this exercise became the recognised complement of hard study, and students experimented with different regimes of working, exercise, and sleeping until they found what they believed to be the most productive combination. as the mathematical tripos became yet more demanding and competitive through the 1820’s and the 1830’s, these regimes of exercise were transformed into a parallel culture of competitive sport. (warwick 2003, 182) one of these students was the renowned physicist james-clerk maxwell, who, on the eve of his exam, studied various combinations of study and physical exercise that would serve his objective of submitting to university discipline: “one daily routine working late at night and involved then taking half an hour’s vigorous physical exercise. [...] in the summer he exercised in the river cam [...].” (warwick 2003, 196). william thomson, another renowned physicist, also adapted the double ideal of masculinity that had been forming in cambridge – of the man who strains himself equally to the limits of his physical and mental capacities – to his “regime of being”: already an accomplished mathematician when he arrived in cambridge in 1841, thomson was recognised from the start as a potentially outstanding scholar. his father, a mathematics professor in glasgow, was soon troubled to learn that his son had bought a boat to row on the river cam and was contemplating joining the college boat club. william quelled his father’s fears by pointing out that his coach, hopkins, not only approved of rowing but actively recommended it as a means of exercise and diversion from study. by the end of his second term, thomson claimed that his general health had been greatly improved by rowing, and that he could ‘read with much “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 14 greater vigour that [he] could when he had no exercise but walking.’ [...] by the 1860’s, rowing was described as a ‘mania’ in cambridge which, together with cricket, shared the ‘honour’ of being the ‘finest physical exercise that a hard reading undergraduate can regularly take’. (warwick 2003, 182) we see here how the two greatest exponents of british cambridge-style mathematical physics sought to constitute, on a personal level, regimes of control of their own body and mind to actively engage with an externally imposed regime of discipline – of the tripos and of the coaching – given that they sought to become the type of professional objectified and valued by that institution. the british mathematical physicist, with a strong body and mind and resistant to the physical and mental hardships of earthly “hard work” to appreciate an object taken as a transcendent – mathematics. this would be the expression of a model for the victorian moral subject, object of the individual’s self-subjectification, in this case through the regular study of mathematics.15 warwick emphasises in the epilogue to his study how much this model of scientific pedagogy influenced the 20th century, and set the standard for productivity and progressive development of the discipline of mathematical physics since then. the success of the “analytic reform” is attributed in part to the pedagogical preconditions present in great britain, consisting of a productive effect of this disciplinary regime in an explicitly foucauldian description. warwick’s work concludes by emphasising the relevance of scientific pedagogy as a historiographical object that allows an investigation in the longue durée of the cultural reproduction of science and a more empirical investigation of innovation in science, case by case, through the specific study of the pedagogical biography of an outstanding scientist (his example is the british physicist paul dirac). science is a set of complex and diverse cultural practices, and an accumulated codex of knowledge as extensive as it is intensive, that understanding how it sustains itself and subsists, in its modern form, for more than three hundred years, is a problem in itself scientific. we would then suggest that the theoretical fecundity of the pedagogical approach in the historiography of sciences can be complemented by the interpretation of the sources brought to light by warwick according to foucault’s ethical axis of analysis, revealing the physical and mental exercise practices of those engaged with the scientific training in the presented context. the voluntary engagement of these individuals with the particularly dreadful regimes of discipline revealed in the sources through the practices described constitutes what foucault called “care of the self”, because they are aimed at the personal control of passions and volitions that constitute an “aesthetic exercise” of existence itself, as it aims at the proud display of self-adjustment to the economy of values of a certain society, that is, the selfconstitution of a moral subject. thus, we argue that as historians, we can always try to place the study of localised episodes of scientific pedagogy in a broader and more directed project in the longue durée of the constitution of scientific subjects and the cultural reproduction of science. if we are guided by the “foukuhnian” model, paying particular attention to two potential effects predicted by it in our historical sources, the productive effect of the specific disciplinary 15 we have already seen how there was a conflict among those who reformed the university over the way in which the teaching of mathematics would promote the victorian moral subject. this notion of the subject itself was not unambiguous either, although a specific version emerged as the “victorious” one, and it is the one we described above, combining masculine ideals of physical and mental achievement. this ideal would change in the final decades of the 19th century, entering the 20th, with a distinction between the physical and the mental emerging, with a special emphasis on the first, and contempt for the second; however, this process does not interest us here. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 15 regimes studied, and the forms of voluntary engagement assumed by historical agents as practices of the self. final remarks we began this article by presenting a panoramic view of foucauldian work, adopting a classic periodisation of it, which is also an epistemic division: the archaeological, genealogical and ethical phase. we prefer the term “axis of analysis” to “phase” mainly because it evokes the epistemic rather than the chronological meaning of this division. we emphasise the importance that the first two axes – archaeological and genealogical – had, and still have, for the historiography of science, indicating that our interest is to enable the third axis of analysis, the ethical, as a tool for this historiography. we did this by visiting historical studies focused on scientific pedagogy, each one in different times, places and regarding different disciplines, emphasising that two authors, david kaiser and andrew warwick, identified in these studies the potential of a theoreticalepistemological background. this theoretical model revolves around two structuring notions derived from the work of two important names in the human sciences who were involved to some extent with the historiography of the sciences – thomas kuhn’s “paradigm” of the structure of scientific revolutions and foucault’s “discipline” of discipline and punish (ie, that of the genealogical axis). we align ourselves with these authors, but we identify in their analysis of the foucauldian work in what would be relevant to this project of a “foukuhnian” epistemology of the historiography of the sciences, a limitation by not emphasising, and even, at least in kaiser and warwick, disregard its ethical axis, since without it the analysis of the pedagogical process seems too authoritarian and unidirectional, which is unsatisfactory for the desired theoretical model (kaiser and warwick 2005). thus, we seek to identify in warwick’s own work, “masters of theory”, in which the history of mathematical physics, and the production and reception of two of the most important physical theories in history – classical electrodynamics and the theory of general relativity – is told from a pedagogical point of view, delving into the history of the institutionalisation of mathematical physics in great britain, the modes of scientific training at the university of cambridge, and the gestures of individual’s which reveal active alignment to the harsh academic discipline, a line of interpretation inspired by foucaldian works identified with the ethical axis of analysis. we identified in the gestures of the constitution of particular regimes of the body and mind to the rigours of the discipline an example of the practices of the self for moral subjectivation that are the object of this third foucault. thus, we argue that the complementation of the “foukuhnian” epistemology proposed by kaiser and warwick with a dimension of analysis of the gestures and attitudes taken by individuals to actively engage in academic discipline processes constitutes a good theoretical model for research work in history of science that investigate temporally and geographically localised cases of scientific learning processes, which may end up serving a more ambitious project of investigation of the conditions of cultural reproduction and scientific innovation in the longue durée. acknowledgment the authors would like to acknowledge the grant conceded by the national council for scientific and technological development (conselho nacional de desenvolvimento científico e tecnológico – cnpq) for the graduate studies of the main author. “the use of pleasure” of learning: a foucauldian perspective on the role of scientific pedagogy in the historiography of science andré fantin – ivã gurgel transversal: international journal for the 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transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-8 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0568-0677] rinat m. nugayev2 [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9925-2264] abstract: foucault’s distinctive creativity is elicited as a source of modern sociology of knowledge. his significant influence on the writings of t. s. kuhn and his partisans, especially on the paradigm-change model, as well as on the strong program of sociology of knowledge (s. barnes, d. bloor et al.) is unfolded. it is contended that exactly ‘practice’ epitomizes foucault’s pivotal notion that underlies his startling impact on the sociology of knowledge. keywords: foucault, sociology of knowledge, paradigm, practice. received: january 13, 2022. reviewed: april 19, 2022. accepted: april 27, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.08 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ as is well known, just at the end of the 1970s, the transition from the classical mertonian paradigm to the so-called ‘strong program of the sociology of knowledge’ had famously happened. first and foremost, the transition consisted of not merely patterns of behavior and values, but scientific knowledge itself became the subject of relentless sociological analysis (see, for instance, mulkay 2015). the mertonian account is comprehended now not as an empirically adequate picture of science, but rather as a useful ideology concocted to promote the institutional independence of sciences. despite the fact that many scholars maintain that the blunt transition was caused by purely empirical reasons, associated with the increasing proportion of inextricable empirical material to survey, it seems that this is not entirely true. of certain importance also transpired the changes in epistemological vistas caused by the assimilation of the advances of world philosophical and sociological pundits. the aim of this paper is to exhibit the influence of michel foucault’s distinctive writings on the becoming of the modern sociology of knowledge. in particular, the purpose of the work is not only to reveal that foucault’s work actually influenced the formation of the modern sociology of knowledge, but also to underscore the alluring facets of this influence, 1 tanzilia a. burganova is an assistant professor in the department of social science at the kazan state power engineering university, 420066 kazan, krasnoselskaya str. 51, the republic of tatarstan, the russian federation. e-mail: tburganova@yandex.ru 2 rinat m. nugayev is a full professor in the department of social science and humanities at the volga region state university, 420138 kazan 35, universiade village, the republic of tatarstan. the russian federation. e-mails: rinatnugaev@mail.ru, nugayevrinat@gmail.com michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova – rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 which make it possible to salve the number of stale problems facing the domain. in order to do it and to elicit the pivotal ideas that are of a non-random nature and permeate all his work, we will contemplate the evolution of foucault’s ideas first, highlighting its main milestones, and examining the results that he received gradually during the transition from one stage to another. our research is inspired by the following foucauldian dictum: in this part of the study of the penitentiary system, as in my early works, the target of analysis wasn’t ‘institutions’, ‘theories’ or ‘ideology’, but practices […] being understood here as places where what is said and what is done, rules imposed and reasons given, the planned and the taken for granted meet and interconnect. (quoted in burchill 1991, 75; our italics) accordingly, the following basic research problems run through foucault’s manifold writings (power 2011, 35-56):  the problem of the inextricable nature of discourse and the subtle archeology of knowledge;  the historical method adequacy problem in the sociology of knowledge;  the problem of inextricable social action and its multifarious actors;  the problem of the abstruse relationship between knowledge and power. before proceeding to an inquiry of how these inextricable problems gradually arose and intertwined in his work, let us make a following reservation. michel foucault himself, apparently, did not consciously strive to build an integral and coherent system of the sociology of knowledge; therefore, the lion’s share of information about his creative ideas is proffered not only by his stupendous books, but by thought-provoking interviews that he gave to multilateral, mostly french, magazines as well (foucault 1980). it is commonly held that the first and especially widely known work of foucault, which made him a name, was his masterpiece the history of madness (foucault 2009), first published in 1961 as folie et deraison: histoire de la folie a l’age classique. already in this work, one of his pivotal ‘guiding ideas’ can be traced: the stiff tendency to withstand the enlightenment and functionalist concepts of scientific progress. in this book, he convincingly exhibited that the so-called ‘progress’ in psychiatry consisted in the relentless and callous exclusion from the sphere of the scientific discourse of experiences, opinions and values of vast groups of people – the so-called ‘insane’, whom the pundits simply ceased to regard as people at all. foucault convincingly demonstrates that in premodernist societies, on the contrary, the demarcation line between reason and madness was not as sharp and impenetrable as in modern societies; they did not strive to carry it out with the same ardor as in modern times. incidentally, foucault famously distinguished three stages in the development of any scientific discipline – pre-classical, classical and modern (for more details, see power 2011, 36). in the blissful pre-classical era, which lasted until the middle of the seventeenth century, the notion ‘madness’ was not a social category at all. but everything changed after the opening of a general hospital in paris in 1657, in which special wards for the insane people were set up. the end of the eighteenth century until the modern era was in 1794, marked by the establishment of a psychiatric hospital and a rigidly delineated dividing line between those patients who can and should be properly treated, and the ‘hopeless’ ones who should be decisively isolated from society. it is at this point that a new era in the relationship between madness and medical science starts. in his alluring chef-d’oeuvre, the birth of the clinic (foucault 1994), first published in 1963 as naissance de la clinique: une archeologie du regard medical, the author is michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova – rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 even more obsessed by revealing the hidden rules that make possible the emergence and ‘constituting’ of authorized knowledge systems; even the human body itself becomes the locus of diagnoses and expert ratings. note that foucault takes a very restrained position in relation to common, standard humanism with its inextricable struggle with the enslavement of the patient by a group of expert doctors and does not try to oppose one stage of the advancement of medical knowledge to another. on the contrary, the peculiarity of his approach consists merely in an attempt to display objectively, without excessive sentimentality, how the practices of considering the human body in the unity of medical and legal prerequisites are gradually changing. this specificity becomes even more apparent in his next epoch-making work – in the book the order of things: an archeology of the human sciences (foucault 1994), first published in 1966 as le mots et les choses: une archeologie des sciences humaines. it is this work that presents in the fullest form the basic ideas of his abstruse historical sociology of knowledge. (it is no coincidence that in the same year, the pre-eminent book by peter l. berger and thomas luckmann, the social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge was published. the book sets up a dialectical view of society both as ‘objective reality’ and as ‘subjective’ one). the gist of foucault’s work is to reveal the strangeness and randomness of the emergence of knowledge practices in the historical arena, to broach the subject of how these practices function and to examine the type of order that they constitute. as before, in drastic opposition to common historians of ideas, foucault is focused on revealing the hidden conditions of the possibility of knowledge and the randomly emerging relationships between their parts that underlie various scientific classifications. seen from this perspective, his earlier abovementioned work on insanity and medicine can be regarded as historical case studies scrutinizing how different ‘regimes of truth’ emerge, each in its own field. it is no coincidence that worldly-wise scholars could not fail to note the significant affinity between the writings of michel foucault and thomas kuhn (see, for instance, hacking 1979). nevertheless, unlike kuhn’s standpoint, foucault’s approach is much closer to bloor’s and barnes’s strong program for the sociology of knowledge, especially to its pivotal ‘symmetry postulate’ in accounting for true and false beliefs (barnes 1977; bloor 1991). foucault, on the contrary, is interested not in truth as such, but in the social and especially institutional historical conditions under which authorized statements are constituted as ‘true’. therefore, in this stupendous work, foucault recounts three realms that underwent a particularly significant transformation at the end of the eighteenth century: biology, economics and linguistics. until that time, these domains of knowledge were purely empirical, being overloaded with all sorts of notorious primitive and superficial classification schemes that were of an emphatically objectivist nature. no attempts have been made to take into account the activity of the cognitive subject in the formation of representational practices. therefore, according to foucault, the three disciplines epitomized a radical break with the past and the setup of a new ‘episteme’ in the following two important respects. (1) first, each domain of knowledge acquires an additional epistemological dimension in the form of a demand to penetrate the surface of things. for instance, there exist development processes behind the available living organisms. behind the surface properties of money functions a whole system of production and reproduction of human well-being; and, finally, under the surface of grammatical rules are subtle mechanisms for transforming and adapting languages. (2) second, foucault stresses that in each of the areas considered, the abovementioned ‘gap’ consists in focusing on a person as an object of research; in this sense, forsooth ‘man is a recent invention’ (foucault). in the order of things, foucault punctuates that the actors of modern social science are contrived and invented through knowledge-based practices that individualize their michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova – rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 4 objects in ways that we today take for granted. especially, the author of the order of things contends that the modern host of academic disciplines, including sociology, is the result of the joint emergence of the empirical field, new (kantian) forms of philosophical reflection of the subject of knowledge, and the growing weight of mathematics in the natural sciences. in his next masterpiece, the archaeology of knowledge (foucault 2002), first published as l’archeologie du savoir in 1996, foucault subjects his epistemic methods and the entire quirk conceptual apparatus to relentless philosophical reflection. in this case, he calls it ‘archaeological’. statements and propositions are the main units of analysis now, and their integrity, totality establishes discursive formations, which are the conditions for the possibility of thought and action. these specific discursive formations (or ‘epistemes’) create the positions occupied by subjects in which the latter can authorize to speak. in this respect, the connection with the works of marx (lukács) and freud (lacan) is blatant (see zizek 2009). the staggering book discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (foucault 1977), first published in 1975 as surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison’, commences with genuinely foucauldian dramatic juxtaposition of two episodes dating back to different historical epochs and particularly clearly revealing the depth and the historical gap that took place: scenes of relentless public execution and an outlook of prison as a social institution. the author applies this juxtaposition to posit how the barbarian infliction of pain has been gradually replaced by a subtle discipline of body submission – supervision, correction and training in an enclosed space. drawing on bentham’s ‘panopticon’ ideas, foucault puts forward ‘the constant possibility of supervision’ as an overwhelming principle of power over the body and coordination of human behavior in relation to other people. further, foucault generalizes the principle of the panopticon to the entire system of organization of public life in modern society, which embraces diverse and extremely sophisticated surveillance practices. it is no coincidence that this work laid the foundation for the celebrated analysis of power in society; though power relations are ‘diffused’ in society, and not simply and primitively emanate from some power center, as it might seem at first glance. note that the concept of ‘knowledge-power’ (pouvoir-savoir) reflects the fact that knowledge is stiffly embedded in the blunt practice of control, as well as in the corresponding forms of resistance to them. it is equally important that the starting point of foucauldian reflections on knowledge-power are not legal institutions, not administrative ones, but what foucault refers to as the low archival foundations of local and specific types of disciplinary knowledge, which are consistently objectified in documents. accordingly, foucault is not craving to put up a ‘theory of power’ in the sublime spirit of modern refined political theory. on the contrary, he directs his research gaze to completely mundane, common, banal rules embedded in numerous, often everyday practices – rules that determine what can be expressed, cognized and done, by someone and for someone. while foucault’s analysis of prisons, hospitals, and psychiatric wards seems intuitively fair, the situation drastically changes when he addresses the notorious issue of sexuality. though the four-volume history of sexuality (foucault 1976-2021, the first volume an introduction published in 1976), is not at all about ‘sex’ in the modern sense of the word, but about the discourse of sexuality and, most importantly, about the inextricable hidden mechanisms for the production of socially acceptable statements about sexual behavior. incidentally, in this work, foucault speaks out against the popular ‘repressive’ hypothesis that power suppresses sex, developing instead rather profound and subtle considerations about the fine dialectic of the mutual influence and interpenetration of power and sexual relations. as a result, foucault’s self-esteem of his work as a whole seems to be sufficiently fair: ‘my books are not treatises in philosophy or studies of history: at most, they are philosophical fragments put to work in a historical field of problems’ (quoted from: burchill 1991, 74). michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova – rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 5 foucault’s most conspicuous achievement seems to be the conceiving of professional knowledge not as a given, but as an integral part of certain practices designed to determine and moderate human behavior. in particular, his contemplation of formal legal systems of knowledge as an ideal facet of the practice of controlling human behavior deserves a particularly high applause. in this sense, foucault’s interest in micro-technologies of power diminishes the role of the modern state and its stiff structures. according to reiner keller’s sober dictum, foucault’s fundamental achievement was to look at discourses as socio-historically situated ‘practices’, and not as the development of ideas or lines of argumentation, and to ‘liberate’ discourse analysis from the specific linguistic issues…he addresses discourses as battle fields, as power struggles around the legitimate definitions of phenomena. (keller 2011,46) returning to the problem of foucault’s influence on the so-called ‘historical turn’ in the philosophy and sociology of science, it should be noted that his ideas had a particularly significant impact not only on kuhn himself, but on his modern followers as well. in good sooth, according to thomas kuhn and his partisans, a scientific revolution – in a far-going analogy to tragical political events, such as the french revolution or the russian one – is taken as resolutely and completely displacing the ‘ancien regime’ scientific traditions (westman 1994). and through the course of such relentless breakthroughs, new mature theories are so radicalized that they are contrived to be “incommensurable” with their fundamental predecessors. this leads to a standpoint that the great scholars like newton, maxwell, darwin, bohr or einstein, being the instigators of revolutionary breakthroughs, may be pictured as convinced adversaries of the ‘creative dialogue’ between the research traditions, including the thrilling case of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ ones. such a strong tenet (and kuhn’s startling ‘imagery of warfare’ used to depict the reception of the new ‘paradigm’) apparently punctuates the revolutionary facet of truly deep scientific change. in our view, fierce controversies around the notorious ‘incommensurability thesis’ are tightly connected with another hallmark of kuhnian epistemological doctrine. indeed, many times thomas kuhn had mentioned that external factors might help decide the outcomes of some scientific revolutions. see, for instance, sun worship in constructing keplerian sophisticated planetary models, etc. (kuhn 1962, 152-153). though he vigorously stressed the fact that during the most profound scientific revolutions – for instance, the copernican one – the scientists were responding first and foremost to the refined problems raised within science. what appealed to them in copernicus’s distinctive theory was its ability to do away with ad hoc devices in ptolemy’s system (such as the equant), to explain key phenomena in a pleading fashion (the observed retrograde motion of the planets), and to explain away otherwise inexplicable coincidences in ptolemy’s system (such as the alignment of the sun and the centers of the epicycles of the inferior planets. (bird 2018) positing himself over and over again as a ‘pretty straight internalist’, kuhn asserts that in a scientific revolution, a worthy replacement (a ‘new’ theory) must retain all its predecessor’s power to solve quantitative problems (kuhn 1962, 169). whereupon one can conclude that scientific revolutions should necessarily bring with them an overall increase in puzzle-solving power; herewith, the number and significance of the puzzles and anomalies solved by the ‘new’ paradigm should exceed significantly the number and significance of the ‘old’ one. for instance, the acme of the copernican revolution is epitomized in the creation of the differential calculus of newtonian mechanics capable of solving the sophisticated problems michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova – rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 6 of motion. furthermore, a fruitful attempt to apprehend the gist of kuhn’s concept and, successfully overcome a number of its shortcomings, to advance this concept further on the basis of foucault’s provoking writings is the british paper, “kuhn: the philosophy of scientific practice” (rouse 2002, 100-121). according to the author, the main advantage of kuhn’s concept, which favorably distinguishes it from logical empiricism, is an attempt to describe science not as a stale system of principles and rigid, logically verified rules that bind it, but as a vivid research activity as such, a sheer ‘scientific practice’. in particular, the celebrated ‘paradigms’ should be comprehended not as merely beliefs (albeit implicit ones) that ensure the unity and consent of members of the scientific community, but as a powerful means of conceptualization and intervention in specific problem situations. accepting a paradigm is more like acquiring and using many skills and abilities than gaining understanding and belief in the truth of any provisions. the skills and dexterity that put up a paradigm contain the ability to apply learned concepts to a specific situation and the capability to apply mathematical tools (the faculty not only to solve equations, but to choose the most suitable ones as well). one should apply them to a specific problem situation and be aware of the limits of their application, as well as of the possibility of bypassing them, etc.; then follows the application of corresponding measuring instruments and experimental techniques. it is important to emphasize that it is the method of analogy that is most often engaged in such a work, and not deduction, not logically correct conclusions of the particular principles from the general ones. note that scientists rather use paradigms to solve specific problems than really believe in the absolute validity of their ontological, metaphysical components. the main thing is that they understand how to really apply this knowledge as others do. at the same time, some scientists are completely ignored by their colleagues or even relentlessly excluded from the scientific community not at all because they share or do not share the beliefs of other researchers. they become sheer outcasts only when their work does not interact constructively with what others are doing. what really matters is (1) what is directly related to the work of other researchers and (2) the reliability of the results obtained. hence the fierce struggle between the old paradigm that is leaving the scene and the new one is not a struggle between the old and new weltanschauungen, but a struggle between the old and new types of scientific life. diverse paradigms reorganize the world in various ways as a field of miscellaneous possibilities, offering differently organized challenges and opportunities for further fruitful research. therefore, as a rule, scientific revolutions consist not in changing worldviews, but in the emergence of new research instruments like centrifuges, supercomputers, and electron microscopes. for instance, it is this circumstance that explains the transition from classical cytology to modern cell biology (bechtel 1993; rheinberger 1997). even the scientific revolutions which are associated with profound theoretical shifts are always connected with radical changes in instrumental and research practices. for example, as andrew pickering has ascertained, the revolution in elementary particle physics that took place in the 1970s and 1980s and consisted in the advancement of gauge transformations was engendered primarily by the emergence of novel, more powerful particle accelerators (pickering 1984). that’s why in actual scientific life, fierce controversies on the incommensurability of successive paradigms are rather rare phenomena. coming into existence of novel ways and methods of inquiring about nature opens up such fascinating research prospects that it usually outweighs the quite commendable desire to comprehend which ontologies fit reality better. if one turns even to the science of the late 17th century, s/he will find that the main drawback of phlogiston chemistry was envisaged by priestley and lavoisier’s contemporaries, not in the absence of empirical falsifiability of its concepts, but in its inability to direct further studies of new ‘air’ (i.e., gases) discovered in pneumatic chemistry. as a result, kuhn’s concept of scientific revolutions reoriented philosophers, sociologists and historians of science towards the scrutiny of manifold scientific practices, michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova – rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 7 and not of scientific knowledge itself. kuhn’s legacy encourages one to apprehend scientific understanding, not just and not so much from the standpoint of gaining scientific knowledge. accordingly, science sets as its goal not so much the production of systems of grounded beliefs as the transformation of human abilities for practical and discursive interaction with the world. it is necessary to distinguish paradigms – beliefs from paradigms-achievements, which, as models, direct further research activities. as a result, scientific understanding is more about the practical ability to deal with a variety of relevant situations than the acceptance of stable, well-proven truths. the neo-marxist analogy with social revolutions is apparent. like the social revolution, the scientific revolution consists of changing scientific production methods. the criterion for the applicability and survival of a particular theoretical concept is grounded on research practice. conclusions thus, we may conclude that foucault’s distinctive creativity substantially influenced the becoming of the modern sociology of knowledge. and it is exactly ‘practice’ that epitomizes foucault’s pivotal notion that underlies his startling impact. foucault’s major influence on thomas kuhn and his partisans consisted of taking scientific discourses as socio-historically situated ‘practices’, and not as the advancement of ideas or lines of argumentation. yet, despite the significant affinity between the writings of michel foucault and thomas kuhn, foucault’s approach is much closer to d. bloor’s and s. barnes’s strong program for the sociology of knowledge, especially to its pivotal ‘symmetry postulate’ in accounting for true and false beliefs. references bechtel, william. 1993. integrating sciences by creating new disciplines. the case of cell biology. biology and philosophy 8, 277-299. berger, peter, and thomas luckmann.1996. the social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge. garden city, ny: anchor, 1966. bird, alexander. 2018. thomas kuhn. the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (winter 2018 edition), edward n. zalta (ed.) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win 2018/ entries/ thomas kuhn / barnes, s. 1977. interests and the growth of knowledge. london: routledge & kegan paul. bloor, d. 1991 [1976]. knowledge and social imagery. chicago: university of chicago press. burchell, g. et al. 1991.the foucault effect: studies in governmentality. brighton: harvester. foucault, michel. 2009 [1961]. history of madness. translated by j. khalfa. ny: routledge. foucault, michel. 1994 [1963]. the birth of the clinic. an archeology of medical perception. translated from the french by a.m. sheridan smith. ny: vintage books. foucault, michel. 1994 [1966]. the order of things: an archeology of the human sciences. ny: vintage books. foucault, michel. 1977 [1975]. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. ny: random house. foucault, michel.1980. power/knowledge. selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. edited by colin gordon. ny: pantheon books. foucault, michel. 2002 [1969]. the archaeology of knowledge. translated from the french by a. m. sheridan smith. london and new york: routledge. foucault, michel. (1979) [1976]. the history of sexuality. vol.1. an introduction. london: allen lane. michel foucault as a forerunner of the 20th century sociology of knowledge tanzilia a. burganova – rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 8 foucault, michel. (1992) [1984]. the history of sexuality. vol.2.the use of pleasure. london: penguin books. foucault, michel. (1990) [1984]. the history of sexuality. vol.3.the core of the self. london: penguin books. foucault, michel. (2021) [2021]. the history of sexuality. vol.4.confession of the flesh. london: penguin books. hacking, i. 1979. michel foucault’s immature science. nous 13: 39-51. keller, reiner. 2011.the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse. hum. stud. 34:43-65. kuhn, t.s. 1970 [1962]. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: university of chicago press (2nd edition, with postscript). mulkay, michael. 2015. science and the sociology of knowledge. london: routledge. rheinberger, hans-jorg. 2009.towards a history of epistemic things: synthesizing proteins in the test tube. stanford: ca: stanford university press. power, michael. 2011. foucault and sociology. annual review of sociology 37: 35-56. pickering, andrew. 1984. constructing quarks. a sociological history of particle physics. chicago: the university of chicago press. rouse, joseph. 2002. kuhn: philosophy of scientific practice. in thomas kuhn, edited by thomas nickles, 100-121. cambridge: cambridge university press. westman, robert s. 1994. two cultures or one? a second look at kuhn’s “the copernican revolution”. isis (85): 79-11. zizek, slavoj. 2009. the sublime object of ideology. (the essential zizek). l.: verso. microsoft word chaves layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-6 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal obituary bruno latour (june 22, 1947 – october 9, 2022) bráulio silva chaves1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4364-5944 received: november 22, 2022. reviewed: november 27, 2022. accepted: november 29, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i13.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ bruno latour embodied the scientific controversies of which he spoke so much in his works, and his repercussions have a similar intensity to the polemics he was able to provoke. his works, covering various fields, such as anthropology, sociology, history and philosophy, contributed decisively to the so-called science studies. it was as if latour wanted to say that if we are to speak of “sciences wars”, let us make moving frontiers of these fields and potentiate their lexicons and epistemological references as arsenals. to put it another way, the combat requires bringing the allies together and enabling the opponents to decode their messages and be inclined to do battle. it is not just a matter of pushing them away. that interdisciplinary transit was not accidental, and it does not mean latour did it without criticism. quite the contrary. by bringing these boundaries closer together, as a public intellectual, latour not only broadened the resonance of his gaze to think about science as a societal project, but he made his own “blood flow”, an in-between place, exposing him to critique and projecting him into multiple spaces, including those outside academia. latour is part of a turn that in the 1960s-1970s carried out a set of strong mobilizations. as avila (2019) put it, science is an object of history and has a fundamentally political path of searching for historicity. in 1962, the publication of thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions instigated essential changes to overcome the insoluble dilemma of internalism versus externalism. since then, a set of authors and articulations have been placed in this arena of conflict. what to do with science? deconstruct, de-sacralize, impute conditionality, situate, humanize, and materialize are actions concerning it that become more palpable. however, the basis of such understanding has been the object of dispute. if the writing of history has a history, the writing of the history of science also has a history, even if it seems full of “absent historians”, as carlos alvarez maia said (maia 2013). the history of science, however, has its specificities, as it makes an object framed as a-historical, intertwined with politics, ideological contentions and social actions. the post-1970s period also inaugurated a cycle of ongoing crises and the rise of neoliberal capitalism, with the boosting of globalization, the weakening of the taylorist-fordist model and of the keynesian welfare state itself, and the 1 bráulio silva chaves is a professor in the department of social sciences and philosophy at the federal center for technology and education of minas gerais – cefet/mg and general secretary of the brazilian association for the social studies of sciences and technologies, esocite.br (board of directors 2021-2023). address: av. amazonas, 5253, nova suíça, belo horizonte, mg, brazil. cep 30.421169. e-mail: brauliosc1@gmail.com obituary: bruno latour bráulio silva chaves transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 preponderance of economic financialization and of new ways of organizing work, which has become ever more mediated by technology. the conjuncture is also a sharp criticism of the so-called modern reason. it is a “historical turn” for the sciences in the midst of a “linguistic turn”. this is because language is also repositioned as a territory of foundation and signification of the world and, of course, of science. with latour, barry barnes, david bloor, steven shapin, simon schaffer, donna haraway, isabelle stengers, and others without whom any enumeration would be incomplete, and with research groups, laboratories, institutional structuring of studies, associations, journals, and a science, technology and society studies program, sts studies began to be created on a global scale. in this sense, it is interesting to highlight the repercussion of his works in brazil; it is a good example of his translations in other territories and languages. therefore, it is essential to mention a few of his books, albeit running the risk of not quoting some important ones, considering his vast production. laboratory life: the construction of scientific facts, written in partnership with steve woolgar, and released in 1979, with its first edition, in brazil, in 1997, was the ultimate book for the so-called anthropology of science (latour and woolgar 1997). in the laboratory of neuroendocrinology at the salk institute in california, fieldwork was done for two years (1975-1977), involving studies on the chemical structure of the thyrotropin-releasing hormone (trh). the book systematizes the possibility of an anthropology of the true and the false, the central and the peripheral, the scientific and the pre-scientific, the past and the present, the laboratory being the place par excellence of all the performativity of a scientific fact. latour widened the lens of everyday attitudes and gave meaning to tedious laboratory bureaucracy, ranging from the mishaps of the institutional building to the legitimization processes that come to be naturalized. he provided another tone to funding disputes, intersectoral relationships, letter writing, repeated data collection, inter-group meetings and the search for agreements and partnerships. latour imprinted sociological intentionality on the habits of scientists when they relate to some groups to the detriment of others; when they act pragmatically in the materiality of a given society. this is how he saw the pasteurization of france, in which the notorious chemist could compose what he would also name on other occasions as the “theater of proof”, where science was made necessary to farmers, members of the 19th-century french government, and society at large (latour 1988). thus, latour contributed a positive inspiration, as one can see in the representation of pasteur in the tropics, oswaldo cruz: “yes, we have pasteur” (cukierman 2007), or in the excellent ethnographic work of rosana castro, an award-winner in the sts field and the social sciences.2 she demonstrated how randomized clinical trials could reveal the economic gears of the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, besides a robust racist component, in the brazilian context, in a work in which that author takes latour, among others, as a reference (castro 2020). despite the title, his philosophical verve is more clearly materialized in we have never been modern, with a brazilian edition published in 1994 (latour 1994). in that book, latour invigorates his principle of radical symmetry, attributing to modernity a schism that would not otherwise have been realized: that between the subject and the object. this made him also operate with the “hybrids”, symbols of that no-concreteness. in a collection of texts, these borders in movement with philosophy are also evidenced in case studies, in the present and the past, that refer to the “blood flow” of science and go as far as a dialogue with plato’s gorgias (latour 2001). 2 the thesis was the 2019 winner of the best doctoral thesis awards of the national association of graduate studies and research in the social sciences (anpocs) and the brazilian association for the social studies of sciences and technologies (esocite.br). obituary: bruno latour bráulio silva chaves transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 3 that challenging, courageous and propositional attitude was to earn him numerous epithets: (un)constructivist, relativist and metaphysician. science in action appeared in english in 1987, with the curious subtitle “how to follow scientists and engineers throughout society” and was first published in brazil in 2000 (latour 2000). the book also reveals another latournian face, the astuteness of his writing. that astuteness earned him yet another nickname: the seducer, even of the unwary, as his critics would say. latour uses the character of janus as a discursive strategy to make a somewhat unseemly invitation in the face of the hagiography of science. he makes the story of janus an act of desecration, questioning a science that wants to be shown and revealing another one that is trying to hide. one might wonder whether the intention was that of an iconoclast or someone who wanted to perceive that science is a human activity and, as such, can be narrated, accessed, appropriated, and interpreted in multiple ways with various language resources. if, as latour said, the scientific article is the place of a “literary inscription”, to some extent, science studies would be too. politics of nature: how to do science in democracy was published in french in 1999 and brazil in 2004 (latour 2004). in that book, latour demonstrates a step forward in critiquing the modern project by identifying studies showing that nature is also political. furthermore, he showed how the irreconcilable modern attitude contributed to generating a destructive posture that would be the path to climate/environmental collapse. on the anthropocene: a militant latour? latour’s most recent studies indicate a more propositional attitude towards modernity. in this regard, radicalism has become necessary due to a world in which collapse is seen as imminent a condition that is innocuously traversed in congresses, meetings, and protocols. the question seems to bother and to also tension some latournian premises regarding a science/nature/humans that would be involved in the political machinery in concrete negotiation games. environmental movements and scientific meetings started to focus on environmental devastation and its effects in the 1970s. the year of latour’s death also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the stockholm conference (1972), a turning point in the “politics of nature”, where agendas were agglutinated with desires for public policies for the so-called globalized states. that path seems to have failed! the scientific community, driven by numerous controversies such as climate scientists versus denialists has also seen the facts about climate at a crossroads. as a “fact”, global warming has been propagated, replicated, and, in a way, “normalized”. so where does the game of latournian sociological deconstruction come in? how can the “black box” be opened without creating obstacles to understanding the risks to the existence of/on earth? worse: how can the “politics of democracy” be conducted amid authoritarian setbacks, in advance of proposals that are not interested in any kind of dispute but in superimposing and disregarding the other? interestingly, this more propositional face is more evident in down to earth, published in brazil in 2020. a book that shows how to orient yourself in the anthropocene politically. it touches on recent political phenomena, such as the conservative wave in which the proposal of compromise is not on the agenda, as the elites have renounced any global project and seek to secure their share, even if it means closing in on themselves or believing that their bunker will be their salvation: obituary: bruno latour bráulio silva chaves transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 4 here it is worth remembering the clichéd metaphor of titanic: the dominant classes realize that the sinking is inevitable, take over the lifeboats and ask the orchestra to play lullabies for a long time, so they can enjoy the dark night and get out before the ship’s excessive tilting draws the attention of the other classes! (latour 2020, 5) my translations. the fall of the berlin wall (1989), the economic crises, poverty, donald trump’s victory in the usa (2016) and, we can also say, helping us to understand the phenomenon of bolsonarism in brazil, as of 2018 -, show that there is no conciliatory possibility that comes from the “ruling classes”, a term latour uses repeatedly. it is also worth reflecting on this issue: is any conciliatory possibility a reality in capitalism, given that it manufactures consensus and hides its anti-democratic bias? perhaps, this is one of the questions for the meetings and revisits with latour to come: his difficulty with what some call a “capitalocene” (moore 2022) may yield many developments. the anthropocene, in latour, is how nature was able to speak, or rather, to shout, to protest. this more “militant” side has maintained coherence with his basic assumptions. our existence means grounding ourselves in this permanent agency between humans and nature, and stems from a collective attitude and to what extent we will be able to forge other visions, cosmo-visions and cosmopoliticies. furthermore, when the academic world thinks about different epistemologies, to claim the decoloniality of knowledge, latour can instigate us to look at ourselves as brazilians. with his assumption of societal refoundation and permanence in the world, he helps us think that brazil’s crossroads which mixes popular knowledge, indigenous knowledge, “raizeras”, “quilombolas”, “terreiro” peoples, native peoples, hybridization and anthropophagy with europe and the usa can propitiate the refounding of this encounter between humans and nature. in an interview in 2020, latour said: “brazil today is like spain was in 1936, during the civil war: it is where everything that will be important in the next decades is visible” and he adds that: “if brazil finds a solution for itself, it will save the rest of the world” (latour 2020b). latour: a lyricist and polemicist at the height of neoliberalism latour’s cry that we were never modern shows how much, perhaps, even begrudgingly, he was an author in/of modernity, manifest in what modernity carries of anguish, contradictions, and inconclusions because i have doubts if its abolition, in these latournian levels, would really be possible or desirable. nevertheless, his trajectory shows that he knew how to navigate the changes that academia has undergone in the last forty years. technoscience, as a production regime referenced in the market utilitarianism of the tremendous industrial and military complexes, starts to define rationality. i dare say that latour knew how to situate himself in a context that some point out as the “bankruptcy of the intellectuals” because he managed to translate it into an editorial success in the english language, going far beyond the boundaries of the renowned french sciencepo. down to earth, for example, has been published in eighteen countries. the reach of his productions and the various translations denote latour’s capacity to materialize what he said into theory, to make his ideas important to society or a significant sector of it.3 it was not by chance that he could elicit several articles, books, and collections about himself while he was still alive. here in brazil, we highlight the recent and stimulating dossier on bruno latour, organized by geane alzamora, joana ziller, francisco coutinho (2020). like it or not, agree with it or not, latour was an intellectual capable of proposing a project of society; he was an inciter, an incendiary. yet, seeing him as a public intellectual is 3 see, for example, the systematization: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/books_and_edited_volumes.html. obituary: bruno latour bráulio silva chaves transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 5 vital because it also translates the networks he could form again, making him an example of the “actor-network” theory that made him famous. latour orbited in various circles and made a tangle of people, languages, and gazes, eager for his postulates, revolve around him. thus, to have been awarded the holberg prize in 2013, the acclaimed prize in the social sciences and humanities, seems a mere detail. his ideas have ballast and are at the interface with the subjects of the historical time to which he belonged. if the present time imposed the preponderance of academic pragmatism that neglects fields and disciplines, he knew how to impose himself, to be essential and “efficient”. he managed to follow engineers throughout society and give them another place that often worked as a representation of his doing, less in an iconoclastic manner and more as a narrative that may have sounded, for some, even as a tribute. “how can my trivial everyday life be so important?” a subject of this anthropology of the sciences might say. the allusion to walter benjamin’s materialist, dialectical, and psychoanalytic gazes on baudelaire was not random (benjamin, 1989). if baudelaire produced a synthesis of the anguishes of modernity in the middle of the 19th century making his poetics and criticism a look at the structures that were erected over the city and how it composed and decomposed subjects in capitalism -, latour put in the scene another moment of this modernity and the subject within it. he also synthesizes a time by challenging modernity itself and constituting and proposing another ontological project. bruno latour unveiled scientific action as a collective act that emerges from ordinary figures. just as it is the subjects that will operate the changes and that is in the condition of tensioning and re-founding epistemology: they are the ones who will know “where to land” (down to earth) and who can constitute themselves capable of making science within society, in which humans and non-humans, subjects and nature, would finally compose an unbreakable flow capable of sustaining us on earth. references alzamora, geane; ziller, joana; coutinho, francisco. 2020. dossiê bruno latour. belo horizonte: editora ufmg. ávila, gabriel. 2019. ciência, objeto da história. são paulo: alameda. castro, rosana. 2020. economias políticas da doença e da saúde: uma etnografia da experimentação farmacêutica. são paulo, hucitec. benjamin, walter. 1989. charles baudelaire, um lírico no auge do capitalismo. são paulo: brasiliense. castro, rosana. 2020. economias políticas da doença e da saúde: uma etnografia da experimentação farmacêutica. são paulo: hucitec. cukierman, henrique. 2007. yes, nós temos pasteur: manguinhos, oswaldo cruz e a história da ciência no brasil. rio de janeiro: relume-dumará/faperj. galison, peter. 1999. culturas etéreas e culturas materiais: a ciência tal qual se faz. lisboa: editora joão sá da costa. latour, bruno. 1988. the pasteurization of france. cambridge: harvard university press. latour, bruno. 1993. we have never been modern. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. latour, bruno. 1994. jamais fomos modernos: ensaio de antropologia simétrica. rio de janeiro: ed. 34. latour, bruno; woolgar, steve. 1997. a vida de laboratório: a produção dos fatos científicos. rio de janeiro: relume dumará. latour, bruno. 2001. a esperança de pandora: ensaios sobre a realidade dos estudos científicos. bauru, sp: edusc. obituary: bruno latour bráulio silva chaves transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 6 latour, bruno. 2004. políticas da natureza: como fazer ciência na democracia. bauru, sp: edusc. latour, bruno. 2018. down to earth: politics in the new climatic regime. medford: polity press. latour, bruno. 2020a. onde aterrar? como se orientar politicamente no antropoceno. rio de janeiro: bazar do tempo. latour, bruno. 2020b. se o brasil achar solução para si, vai salvar o resto do mundo. [interview granted to] ana carolina amaral. folha de são paulo, september 12, 2020. it is available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ambiente/2020/09/se-o-brasil-achar-solucao-para-sivai-salvar-o-resto-do-mundo-diz-bruno-latour.shtml. accessed november 19, 2022. maia, carlos alvarez. 2013. história das ciências: uma história de historiadores ausentes: precondições para o aparecimento dos sciences studies. rio de janeiro: eduerj. moore, jason w. (org.). 2022. antropoceno ou capitaloceno? natureza, história e a crise do capitalismo. são paulo: elefante. microsoft word waldschlagel layout 59 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 59-71 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open access journal special issue – historiography of physics the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel1 abstract: this paper examines an important episode in the history of early modern physics – the leibniz-clarke correspondence of 1715-16, an exchange that occurred at the intersection of physics, metaphysics and theology – before turning to questions of interpretation in the historiography of physics. samuel clarke, a disciple of isaac newton, engaged in a dispute over newton’s commitment to absolute space and absolute time with gottfried wilhelm leibniz, who criticized newton’s views and advanced a rival account. i clarify the positions at stake in the leibniz-clarke correspondence, define a variety of terms – absolute space, absolute time, substantivalism, and relationalism – endogenous to the exchange, and reconstruct key elements in the philosophical dimension of the dispute. i then use the leibniz-clarke exchange as a springboard from which to examine interpretive considerations in the historiography of physics. i argue that the history of physics can benefit from reassessing its historiographical commitments by borrowing or appropriating some of the intellectual resources used by philosophers working in the history of philosophy. this historiographical reassessment, i contend, will not only shed new light on the leibniz-clarke exchange but may also reinvigorate the history of physics. keyword: space and time; historiography of physics; history of philosophy received: 15 april 2020. reviewed: 20 may 2020. accepted: 23 june 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________________ introduction once upon a time, there was a wizard that could make objects vanish. but not merely disappear; he had the power to make objects cease to exist. he would utter his spell, and – presto – his table blinked out of existence. another incantation and his comfortable armchair was no more. one day, he got a bit drunk and began to use his non-existence spell on everything he saw. he applied his spell to his dog, his house, and the moon. more objects on earth and beyond began to blink out of existence at an astonishing rate. no more eiffel tower. so long, jupiter. goodbye, andromeda galaxy. eventually, everything vanished, 1 matt waldschlagel [orcid: 0000-0002-8699-3116] is an assistant professor of philosophy at anna maria college. address: 124 trinity hall, 50 sunset lane, paxton, ma 01612 – usa. e-mail: mwaldschlagel@annamaria.edu the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 60 including the wizard himself. had anything endured this attack? what was left after everything that previously existed was extinguished? one curious answer is that something unique, something that has a special kind of being, was spared the onslaught: space and time itself. even if the contents were to cease to exist, that which contained them – space and time, the “container” of the contents of the universe – would still be. this, i imagine, is the answer that isaac newton, the celebrated 17th century english physicist and mathematician in whose work (the traditional story goes) the copernican revolution found its conclusion, would give, if he were to have entertained this fanciful thought experiment. this paper begins by investigating samuel clarke’s defense of newton’s answer, somewhat modified by various early 18th century intellectual forces – call it newtonian substantivalism – and gottfried wilhelm leibniz’s criticism of it in the leibniz-clarke correspondence of 1715-16, a debate that occurred at the intersection of physics, metaphysics and theology. i clarify the positions at stake in the leibniz-clarke correspondence, define a variety of terms – absolute space, absolute time, substantivalism (both newtonian and newton’s), and relationalism – endogenous to the exchange, and reconstruct key elements in the philosophical dimension of the dispute. i then use the leibniz-clarke exchange as a springboard from which to examine interpretive considerations in the historiography of physics. i argue that the history of physics can benefit from reassessing its historiographical commitments by borrowing or appropriating some of the intellectual resources used by philosophers working in the history of philosophy. this historiographical reassessment, i contend, will not only shed new light on the leibniz-clarke exchange, but also reinvigorate the history of physics. the leibniz-clarke dispute: the background newton maintained and strongly advocated a view predicated on absolute space and absolute time. call such a view the absolute conception (of space and time). lee smolin observes that in “the introduction to his great principia, which was the culmination of the copernican revolution, he could not have been more direct: ‘absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always singular and immovable’” (smolin 1997, 215). also in his “scholium” at the beginning of the principia, newton provides a complimentary account of absolute time. absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible and external… measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year. (newton 1995, 13) the terms “absolute” and “relative” acquired their currency in classical physics with newton. as j. b. kennedy explains, “[t]he word ‘absolute’ means ‘independent’ in the sense that a thing is absolute when it does not depend on other things, is free from interference and makes itself what it is” (kennedy 2003, 109). the picture of space and time provided by the absolute conception is that the reality of space and time are not determined by things in or events that flow through them. newton’s commitment to the absolute conception of space and time led to him being interpreted by his contemporaries as a substantivalist about space and time. substantivalism is the view that space and time are real substances that endure despite the existence (or nonexistence) of any objects in space and time. substantivalism is controversial, metaphysically ambitious, and, like its sibling absolutism, seemingly exceeds the limits the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 61 allowed by newton’s commitment to empirical evidence2 for which he was well known. there is some debate about the extent to which newton can be said to have positively embraced substantivalism. as lawrence sklar has observed, “newton was cautious of thinking of space as a ‘substance.’ sometimes he suggested it be thought of, rather, as a property – in particular as a property of the deity” (sklar 2000, 426). furthermore, robert rynasiewicz has noted that “newton did not regard space and time as genuine substances (as are, paradigmatically, bodies and minds), but rather as real entities with their own manner of existence as necessitated by god’s existence (more specifically, his omnipresence and eternality)” (rynasiewicz 2011). irrespective of any full-throated endorsement of substantivalism, however, is newton’s unambiguous rejection of a relationalist account of space and time. relationalism rejects both substantivalism and the absolute conception of space and time. more positively, relationalism is the view that “space and time are relative, dependent upon the relations among objects and events” (seager 2000, 225). defending relationalism while subjecting substantivalism and newton’s absolute conception of space and time to scathing criticism was leibniz, the german polymath with whom newton had already sparred over credit for the invention of the modern calculus. leibniz developed his relationalist account of space and time in what is now referred to as the leibniz-clarke correspondence, where he denied that space and time existed as independent entities, distinct from bodies “in” them.3 for the relationalist, space and time are abstractions instantiated by the spatial and temporal relations of objects and events; “only the ‘contents’ exist, not the ‘container’” (macchia 2010, 123). samuel clarke, a disciple of and mouthpiece for newton, defended substantivalism and the absolute conception of space and time. even if newton himself did not go in for substantivalism, the close family resemblance between substantivalism and the absolute conception of space and time united the two in the minds of many of newton’s supporters and critics, including clarke and leibniz, respectively. as a result, newtonian substantivalism emerged. as sklar explains, “[a]ccording to a newtonian substantivalist, … even if there were no matter in the universe whatever, there would still be space with its standard threedimensional euclidean structure, and there would still be ‘instants’ of time which together form a temporal order. finally, there would still be those ordered pairs of places in space and instants in time which constituted event locations – even if there were no events at all” (sklar 1977, 161). and, for the newtonian substantivalist, space and time are proper substances that, enjoying independent existence, serve as the ground or foundation for reality. henceforth, despite the efforts made to conceptually uncouple substantivalism from absolute space and absolute time, i adopt the convention of conflating the concepts as did clarke and leibniz. so, future references to newton concern not the historical newton, who may have been reticent about substantivalism, but rather clarke’s newton (and, concomitantly, leibniz’s newton), who was not. i refer, then, to newton’s substantivalism, not newtonian substantivalism. the leibniz-clarke correspondence: a philosophical exchange in this section, i offer an account of philosophical dimensions of the leibniz-clarke exchange as they concern divergent accounts of space and time. the exchange, though, ranges 2 i take it that newton’s famous bucket argument is meant to serve as evidence for the existence of absolute space, even though the “evidence” provided by the argument is generated abductively, by means of an inference to the best explanation. i remain agnostic about the conclusion newton drew concerning his bucket argument in this paper. 3 for the purposes of this paper, i ignore leibniz’s “deeper” metaphysics developed in the monadology. the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 62 beyond the rather narrow confines of a disagreement about substantivalism and relationalism, though both would be tested and scrutinized therein. as a whole, the correspondence concerns “issues such as god’s role in the universe, the notion of miracles, the cause of gravity, and space and time” (bertoloni meli 1999, 469). the exchange, which consists of ten letters, began in 1715 and ended in 1716 with leibniz’s death; leibniz and clarke each produced five letters. i focus on the metaphysical arguments about space and time in leibniz’s third and fifth papers and clarke’s third and fifth replies, reconstructing the salient arguments. in his third paper, leibniz submits the following claim – call it the “primary doctrines” statement – which succinctly states the relationalist position. i hold space to be something merely relative, as time is; that i hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions. for space denotes, in terms of possibility, an order of things which exist at the same time, considered as existing together; without enquiring into their manner of existing. and when many things are seen together, one perceives that order of things among themselves. (alexander 1956, 25-26) section 4 of clarke’s third reply is a direct rejoinder to leibniz’s primary doctrines statement. clarke claims in section 4 of his third reply that “space and time are quantities; which situation and order are not” (alexander 1956, 32). clarke criticizes both of the main doctrines offered by leibniz; namely, that space is an order of coexistences and that time is an order of successions. in leibniz’s account, however, space and time don’t have a kind of independent being over and above that of physical objects and events. leibniz’s metaphysics, then, stands in direct opposition to newton’s account, where space and time are absolute. for newton, space and time are physical entities that exist independently of other entities. on newton’s substantivalist account, it would be meaningful to talk about space and time even if no matter existed, for, on newton’s view, space and time endure regardless of regular objects and the changes they make. newton’s account encourages the image of space as a container ready to have objects occupy it. according to the container model, “[o]bjects are ‘in’ space and events take place ‘in’ time” (sklar 1977, 162). for leibniz, however, space is just the order of relations that objects bear to each other. according to leibnizian relationalism, “god creates space in and through creating bodies and arranging them spatially in relation to each other. and he creates time in and through creating events in temporal relations to each other” (broad 1975, 57). there is, then, no actual space and time existing apart from and prior to things and events for leibniz. as already mentioned, clarke claims that space and time are quantities. however, the substantivalist position is not adequately expressed in this claim, worded as it is. strictly speaking, the substantivalist thinks of quantity as a property of space and time; in fact, clarke himself does in his fifth reply where he refers to the “quantity of space and time”. in presenting the substantivalist position, i will refer to quantity as a property of those entities called space and time. that said, clarke rejects leibniz’s primary doctrines statement on the grounds that quantity must be a property of space and time; the quantifiability of space and time, independent of any regular objects whatsoever, constitutes for the substantivalist the underlying reality that grounds all possible relations among objects. relations between objects and between events require a certain structure for their very intelligibility.4 substantivalists claim that this structural account is absent in the relationalist’s story. 4 for the substantivalist, this structure serves as the condition for the possibility of what leibniz calls situation and order. the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 63 consider, for example, the underlying structure of the solubility of salt. a piece of salt is, “even if not dissolved, possessed of the ‘possibility’ of going into solution. it is, we say, soluble. but this solubility rests upon the piece of undissolved salt having an actual constitution out of ions” (sklar 1992, 21). the substantivalist charge is that the relationalist account cannot, in principle, make sense out of the ultimate structure of space and time itself, in much the same way that explanations that do without a dispositional account cannot be good explanations.5 clarke thinks that since absolute space is “infinite in extent, euclidean and three-dimensional in structure, and persists through time” (sklar 1977, 162) unchanged, absolute space and time ground the very possibility of any relations whatsoever. these properties of space and time are what make space and time a “quantity” for clarke; since substantivalism is able to offer such a structural account, it is superior to relationalism. consider three objects – rock, paper, and scissors – that change their positions. at time slice 1, rock is one meter from paper, rock is two meters from scissors, and paper is three meters from scissors. at time slice 2, paper is one meter from scissors, paper is two meters from rock, and scissors are three meters from rock. newton claims that the distances between the objects at any time slice are quantifiable in virtue of their occupying regions of the substance of space and time, where space and time contains within itself, irrespective of any regular physical objects occupying it, regions that have distance between each other. substantivalism, in offering a means by which to quantify the changes that rock, paper and scissors manifest in occupying new positions at different time slices, grounds change in “space and time as autonomous constituents of the world” (sklar 1992, 23). the relationalist can provide no such ground, as the mere order of co-existences and order of successions do not have an autonomous and quantifiable nature. so thinks clarke. leibniz has a different story to tell. part of that story is told in section 54 of the fifth paper, where leibniz claims that “order also has its quantity; there is in it that which goes before, and that which follows; there is distance and interval” (alexander 1956, 75). in effect, leibniz argues that relationalism, in fact, does provide an account of the ground by which possible relations among objects and among events are based. the structure for the intelligibility of these relations is found in the order of coexistences and the order of successions; these orders, though, are dependent upon objects and their motions – they are not themselves the “autonomous constituents” of the world that substantivalism affirms. the relationalist, then, defines space and time according to the spatial and temporal relations that obtain between, say, rock, paper, and scissors at various different time slices; relations of coexistence and relations of succession – not absolute space and time – are the means by which events involving rock, paper, and scissors are quantified. and these relations, in fact, possess quantity; therefore, they are the ground to which leibniz refers. leibniz establishes the claim that order admits of quantity through an argument by analogy: since ratios and proportions in mathematics are relations that admit of quantity, then space and time, as a set of relations, must also, leibniz argues, “have their quantity”. clarke, however, in section 54 of his fifth reply, attacks leibniz’s argument. i consider two of the arguments offered by clarke against leibniz in the fifth reply. the first argument attacks leibniz’s argument by analogy, suggesting that that which is claimed to be analogous about the two classes of things in the stated comparison – ratios and proportions on the one hand, and space and time on the other – is, in fact, a poor comparison. clarke states in section 54 that “proportions are not quantities, but the proportions of quantities. if they were quantities, they would be the quantities of quantities, which is absurd” (alexander 1956, 105). the second argument clarke advances against leibniz in the fifth reply that i will examine requires a glance back at a previous argument put forward in the third reply. in the fifth reply, clarke claims that the “ distance, interval, or quantity of time or space wherein 5 this example assumes dispositionalism. the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 64 one thing follows another is entirely a distinct thing from the situation or order: the situation or order may be the same when the quantity of time or space intervening is very different” (alexander 1956, 105). earlier, in section 4 of his third reply, clarke provides a thought experiment to demonstrate this point. in the third reply, clarke writes that “if time were nothing but the order of succession of created things, it would follow that if god had created the world millions of ages sooner than he did, yet it would not have been created all the sooner” (alexander 1956, 32). the next premise – one that clarke wants the reader to supply for himself – is that if god had created the world millions of ages sooner than he did, then it really would have been created earlier. moreover, we would like a way in which we could, in principle, know if god had created the world millions of ages sooner than (we think) he did. time cannot simply be an order of successions, then, for time as an order of successions does not have the explanatory capability to account for such a problem. the relationalist cannot know if god created the world millions of ages sooner than (we think) he did. but the substantivalist can, in principle, know. the upshot of this thought experiment is that relationalism is flawed and substantivalism is the accurate theory. leibniz’s relationalist counter-argument is that the god in clarke’s thought experiment disobeys the principle of sufficient reason. the principle of sufficient reason, premised on the need for complete intelligibility of any and all facts and framed by leibniz as both an epistemic and a metaphysical principle, states that nothing happens without a reason. in clarke’s thought experiment, there is no possible reason for god to prefer a universe created millions of ages sooner than he did, in fact, create it. for leibniz, god never makes a decision without a sufficient reason, so the very intelligibility of clarke’s thought experiment is found wanting. smolin illustrates leibniz’s application of the principle of sufficient reason (and, relatedly, the identity of indiscernibles) by using an example about space instead of time. consider, he writes, that it is impossible to think of a reason why the universe might not have been created, in its entirety, two feet to the left. this being so, it makes no sense at all to talk about where the universe, as a whole, is. moving the entire universe two feet to the left is not going to have any imaginable effect on our perceptions, or on the future behavior of things in the universe. if it is not going to make any difference whether the universe is as it is, or two feet to the left, does it still make any sense to distinguish the two? (smolin 1997, 216) leibniz answered no. this question, smolin writes, is “exactly what separates the relational from the absolute view of space” (smolin 1997, 216). the historiography of physics and the history of philosophy: a modest proposal usually, debates in the history of science have winners and losers. some physicists have celebrated leibniz as the winner in the debate about space and time, for it appears that many advances in twentieth century physics, from poincaré to einstein, vindicate or at least share an affinity with leibniz. both the superiority of leibniz’s arguments (apart from his argument from analogy, which clarke showed to be flawed) and the happy relationship leibniz’s relationalism has to modern physics encourage many to consider leibniz the victor. and yet, as physicist brian greene observes, after the leibniz-clarke exchange ended with leibniz’s death, “[d]uring the next two hundred years, the arguments of leibniz and others against assigning space an independent reality generated hardly an echo in the scientific community” (greene 2004, 31. emphasis mine.). nevertheless, as smolin notes, it is “hard to think of an the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 65 argument in the history of science that echoes more loudly today than leibniz’s dissent from newton’s physics” (smolin 1997, 215. emphasis mine.). how could arguments that for two centuries “generated hardly an echo” serve such a resoundingly important precedent in physics today? we find the answer in the history of physics by charting the path from leibniz and newton to einstein’s special theory of relativity. but just what that path should look like – and the extent to which the path is direct or circuitous, fallow or verdant – depends on the interpretive constraints built into the historiography of physics that one selects. and the historiography of physics largely relies on the historiography of science generally. the historiography of science offers several approaches with which to interpret the salient events that led twentieth century physicists to ultimately abandon substantivalism. approaches that favor “stories about the great discoveries that present them as steps in a cumulative process by which our understanding of the natural world has expanded” (bowler and morus 2005, 12) have been largely out of favor, to put it mildly, since the publication to thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions in 1962. in kuhn’s wake, various “constructivist” considerations strongly influenced scholarship in the history of science. historian jan golinski defines “constructivism broadly as an approach that directed attention at the role of human beings as social actors in the making of scientific knowledge” (golinski 2005, vii). within the constructivist camp, the sociology of scientific knowledge or ssk, developed in the 1970s and 1980s, arguably became the most dominant school of thought influencing the historiography of science in the 1980s and 1990s. ssk interprets the establishment of scientific knowledge from within social, political and economic circumstances, effectively reducing scientific knowledge claims to power or to some other nonevidential consideration. after the eruption of the “science wars” and the sokal affair in the mid-to-late 1990s, constructivist perspectives appear to have waned. the time seems ripe for conceptualizing new interpretive approaches – or reconsidering heretofore neglected approaches – for the historiography of science. one approach to reconsider, i submit, involves borrowing some of the intellectual resources used by philosophers working in the history of philosophy. philosophers who work in this field are not typically trained as historians, though they share with historians an interest in accounting for the past, despite the divergence of their respective methodologies. it is uncommon for philosophers working in the history of philosophy (hereafter php), in accounting for philosophy’s past, to endorse a “development-by-accumulation” view of the kind criticized by kuhn. it is equally unlikely for php to adopt a constructivist approach, especially one informed by ssk that exhibits reductionist tendencies. as a result, php have not had to face the historiographical challenges that historians of science have faced. to explain what php do, i refer to don garrett’s essay “philosophy and history in the history of modern philosophy” (see garrett 2004, 44-73). garrett presents four different aims that one might have in examining philosophy’s past. garrett draws a connection between the four aims and the various hermeneutic considerations associated with them whereby each aim corresponds to a possible interpretive approach that php may employ. the first aim is to “contextualize works of the past. that is, one may seek to determine the various circumstances – intellectual, material, personal, social, and political – under which they were produced and which helped to determine their character” (garrett 2004, 57). this will include acquiring knowledge about not only the author’s education, influences, concerns, aims, and motives for writing, but also about the disputed intellectual issues of the day and their perceived impact on the author. the second aim is to interpret works from philosophy’s history. the goal here is to understand what the author meant, and will typically include “trying to specify the meanings of various questions asked and claims made in the work; how the author intended these questions and claims to be related; … what unexpressed doctrines are implicit or presupposed in the work; why the author wrote as he or she did; and what the author intended the work as a whole to convey” (garrett 2004, 58). the third aim is to “evaluate philosophical works of the past” (ibid., 58). finally, the fourth the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 66 aim is to apply works of the past. garrett entertains a myriad of different ways in which this fourth aim can be satisfied. one may simply agree with the solution to a philosophical problem that a thinker from the past has proposed and come to endorse that same solution yourself. but one may also “apply a philosophical work of the past by borrowing, criticizing, adapting, or developing questions, problems, formulations, concepts, distinctions, vocabulary, premises, arguments, examples, methods, skills, habits of mind, insights, projects, approaches, perspectives, and frameworks” (garrett 2004, 59). garrett concludes his presentation of these four aims by remarking that they do not exhaust what one might do with past philosophical works. let’s evaluate these four aims for the possibilities they may hold for the history of science, with special attention to the historiography of physics. instead of being the aims that php have in evaluating philosophy’s past, imagine they are proposals concerning what may be the aims historians have in evaluating science’s history. historians of science already satisfy the first and second aims.6 that is, historians of science, to appropriate garrett’s language, “contextualize works of the past” and “interpret works from science’s history”. however, while some historians of science meaningfully satisfy the fourth aim by “applying works of the past”, most do not.7 php can meaningfully satisfy garrett’s fourth aim by consistently applying insights of sufficient magnitude from philosophy’s past in contemporary philosophical debates.8 there is, though, no corresponding characteristic for the history of science. while some contemporary philosophers may be, for example, platonists, no historians of science are, say, geocentrists in the ptolemaic tradition. that leaves the third aim, modified for the history of science: to evaluate scientific works of the past. garrett describes this third aim as one that “will most centrally involve assessing the truth of the claims made and the strength of the arguments offered, as well as assessing the value, importance, and clarity of the questions raised, the soundness of the approaches employed, and the adequacy of the answers or solutions proposed” (garrett 2004, 58). while php routinely adopt interpretive approaches and pursue research programs that satisfy this third aim, historians of science typically do not.9 but just what the history of science could look like if it were to adopt this aim and use it to guide a new interpretive approach is, i contend, worth considering, and perhaps promising. even if it cannot properly ascertain whether a scientific claim from the past is true10, the history of science could evaluate the strengths of past scientific arguments – the evidentiary considerations – for a claim, while also examining the adequacy of competing answers or rival solutions proposed. this approach may require the history of science to forge a stronger relationship with practicing scientists, especially with scientists interested in the history of their field (see darrigol 2007, 33-34). this, in turn, could lead the history of science to pursue new interdisciplinary pursuits, perhaps leading it to rekindle its somewhat cold relationship with the history of philosophy. in collaboration with scientists and php, historians of science could generate new knowledge as they, in garrett’s words, assess the value, importance and clarity of the questions raised by science’s history. 6 in fact, to a large extent, so much of the history of science simply is the satisfaction of the first and second aims. 7 one exception is the journal studies in history and philosophy of science: part b: studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, which tends to feature articles that integrate the history of science and the philosophy of science. see also the past, present, and future of integrated history and philosophy of science, edited by emily herring et al. 8 historically-minded physicists and philosophers of physics do this, too, with respect to the history of physics. see, in particular, the work of julian barbour, harvey brown, don howard, oliver pooley, simon saunders, jos uffink, and david wallace. 9 exceptions in the history of physics include the work of alexander blum, olivier darrigol, silvan s. schweber, michael nauenberg and other “internalist” historians of science. 10 arguments against scientific realism abound. one influential account is found in van fraassen 1980. the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 67 to better anchor my proposal for reconsidering interpretive approaches in the historiography of science, i draw attention to philosopher gary hatfield’s 1990 essay “metaphysics and the new science” (hereafter mns), which appeared in the edited volume reappraisals of the scientific revolution. i contend that hatfield’s essay provides insights for how the historiography of physics may develop in the future, including considerations the application of which may further illuminate several episodes in the history of science, along with the leibniz-clarke exchange. while my applications of hatfield’s observations in this essay are limited, i encourage the more intrepid to develop them further. in mns, hatfield reminds his reader that “in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, … metaphysics was widely held to be a legitimate member of the sciences, if not the most basic science. indeed, it was a science of presuppositions, or of ‘first principles,’ [the aim of which] was to argue for, or at least explicitly to portray, fundamental or basic… concepts” (hatfield 1990, 94-95). as such, science and philosophy were intertwined in ways that professionals in these fields today would find disorienting. despite the interconnectedness of science and philosophy in the early modern period, though, some boundaries were nevertheless maintained. as hatfield observes, “huygens and newton would count as mathematical scientists. leibniz would figure as a metaphysician, who posited a sharp boundary between metaphysics and physics but regularly argued across that border” (hatfield 1990, 144. emphasis not mine.). hatfield’s characterizations of these fields in mns build on our already existing understandings of them and support a blunt assessment offered by historian john henry: that “in the exchange of philosophical letters between leibniz and samuel clarke…, the correspondence revealed two irreconcilable world-views” (henry 2008, 80). but how should we endeavor to understand the irreconcilability of these worldviews? hatfield’s answer in mns is that we should “use the wheel of history to best advantage” (hatfield 1990, 147). hatfield’s elaboration, consistent with the outlook employed by php, is a rousing salvo in defense of a reinvigorated research program for the history of science. contemporary historians of science are often leery of engaging the history of science philosophically, perhaps fearing that their historical interpretations will thereby be tainted. and so they might. but this danger does not justify a blanket supposition that the interpretation of history is inevitably prejudiced by philosophical aims and that it is impossible for the philosophically minded to learn from past texts. moreover, interpretation can be undermined by insufficient philosophy. [t]o examine metaphysics as it was historically conceived is to examine it as argument: as something put forward with conviction, in order to evoke conviction. such an approach cannot be satisfied with the charting of influence; it requires seeing how a text hangs together and develops its force. extended beyond metaphysical texts, it seeks to be sensitive to the distinctive styles of argument that philosophers and scientists have employed, whether metaphysical or not. (hatfield 1990, 147-148) hatfield’s statement, i contend, aptly coheres with garrett’s modified third aim. that is, in order to evaluate scientific works of the past, we must examine them as arguments that make claims and demand consideration. in mns, hatfield warns against the exclusive use of hermeneutic tendencies in the history of science that leave little or no interpretive space to see controversies in early modern science as living debates that we can learn from and about which we are asked to have a view. if we overlook the arguments and styles of argumentation that these authors chose to employ in their texts, we risk failing to appreciate the achievements embodied in their the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 68 works, and so failing to learn from these works as we might. for, beyond their obvious uses as historical documents, these texts stand as instances and models of argumentation, in which case they must surely be understood as arguments, if they are to be understood at all (whether or not they are emulated). to learn from such texts, we must engage them. (hatfield 1990, 148) nevertheless, hatfield readily acknowledges that historians of science satisfy what i’ve characterized as garrett’s first and second modified aims. he claims that he does not wish to deny that intellectual biography, the charting of influence, and the excavation of presuppositions are useful and important for understanding philosophical and scientific texts. nor do i claim that the rise of modern science took place independently of, or despite, [for example] neoplatonic mysticism, hermeticism, and other “nonscientific” influences… understanding such actual or possible interests can and does aid in the understanding of the texts of our authors at various points. but there is a danger in relying too heavily on such an approach… [it is] the danger of dissolving text and author into a set of background influences. (hatfield 1990, 148) the inherent risk in the dominance of constructivist approaches in the history of science is that theories and theorists, science and scientists – texts and authors, in hatfield’s language – fade away into nothing (or little) more than a “set of background influences”. fusing hatfield’s observations and proposals for the history of science from mns to garrett’s modified third aim yields a needed remedy that both guards against overreliance on constructivist approaches in the historiography of science and charts a new path for what the historiography of science can become. conclusion in the introduction, i stated that in borrowing or appropriating some of the intellectual resources used by philosophers working in the history of philosophy, the history of science would not only shed new light on the leibniz-clarke exchange, but also, perhaps, reinvigorate the history of physics. but what this new light might reveal about the leibnizclarke exchange remains to be seen. knowledge already generated about the leibniz-clark dispute is, like any topic in science’s history, a poor predictor of knowledge yet to be produced. while details about the future engagements with the leibniz-clarke dispute are presently unknown, an assessment of the engine that (i contend) should drive future engagements with the history of physics is possible. one way to operate this engine involves uniting or fusing the history of science with the philosophy of science – a new amalgamation that some call integrated history and philosophy of science or ihps. this novel compound is one form that the borrowing or appropriation of intellectual resources has recently taken. as the editors of the 2019 volume the past, present and future of integrated history and philosophy of science make clear in their introduction, “ihps has been relatively recently established as an institutionalized field of research” (herring et al. 2019, 6). interestingly, in the same sentence, the editors acknowledge that “one could trace the origins of the integration of historical and philosophical considerations about the study of nature as far back as aristotle” (herring et al. 2019, 6). using aristotle as inspiration for what ihps can become seems appropriate because the very novelty of ihps breeds methodological uncertainty. aristotle’s happy catholicity allows for the norms of historical and philosophical considerations to coexist without tearing what could be jointly produced between them, namely ihps, asunder. my earlier statement about borrowing or appropriating intellectual resources functions best, i the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 69 think, as a promissory note; the proverbial phrase “only time will tell” seems to best capture its predictive potential, even with hope for a rapprochement brokered in the spirit of aristotelian unity. i see hatfield’s argument as encouraging this brokerage. in order to make good on hatfield’s exhortation to “engage the history of science philosophically”, one more brief look at (the history of) the historiography of physics is appropriate. hatfield’s mns appeared in reappraisals of the scientific revolution roughly nine years after the publication of steven shapin’s 1981 essay “of gods and kings: natural philosophy and politics in the leibniz-clarke disputes”. in that essay’s opening paragraph, shapin observed that, regarding the leibniz-clarke exchange, recent intense concern with these controversies means that we can no longer reasonably expect the discovery of significant new facts. the emphasis has shifted to interpreting what is already known about these episodes and the setting in which they occurred. this is a highly desirable state of affairs, for the newton-leibniz controversies crystallize a number of issues of general significance. what is the proper interpretation of the relations between natural philosophy, mathematics, metaphysics, theology, and the social and political setting in which these matters were disputed? (shapin 1981, 187) perhaps shapin overstated his case in claiming that the discovery of significant new facts in the leibniz-clarke exchange is not reasonable to expect. engaging the history of science philosophically – an interpretive approach that shapin, a leading figure largely responsible for promoting ssk in the history of science, tends to eschew11 – would generate new philosophical knowledge, and, therefore, significant new facts, relevant to the leibnizclarke exchange. in the first half of this paper, i have offered a very modest contribution to the effort of producing a relevant philosophical exegesis of the leibniz-clarke dispute for the history of physics. but more voices must be heard.12 since the publications of shapin’s 1981 essay and his 1985 book, leviathan and the airpump, co-authored with simon schaffer, interpretive considerations of a distinctly constructivist bent, endorsed by shapin, have shaped the field. shapin’s question, about the “proper interpretation of the relations” between science, mathematics, metaphysics, theology, and the social and political context in which the leibniz-clarke exchange occurred, finds an answer in the history of science’s satisfaction of garrett’s first two modified aims. however, the disregard for garrett’s third modified aim, shown by shapin and others, has led to an imbalance in the history of science. for those interested in considering a new direction, the one charted by hatfield is a promising one for the history of physics. acknowledgments i would like to thank the anonymous referees for transversal and the special issue editors, ivã gurgel and thiago hartz, for their comments and suggestions (and patience!). i also wish to thank james bidwell for his suggestions. 11 see especially shapin’s remarks about his methodological commitments in the section “some historiographical issues” in the introduction to his the scientific revolution, pages 8-11. 12 there are, of course, voices already. in addition to sklar 1977, sklar 1985, and sklar 1992, see earman 1989, rundle 2009, dainton 2010 and huggett 2010. however, while these works, to varying degrees, acknowledge the role of historical exegesis, they are heavily weighted in favor of philosophical analysis. this is no criticism; they are all contributions to the philosophy of physics. what seems to be absent is a significant contribution that marries both the history of physics and the philosophy of physics in a balanced way. the leibniz-clarke correspondence as a case study for the historiography of physics matt waldschlagel 70 references alexander, h. g., ed. 1956. the leibniz-clarke correspondence. manchester: manchester university press. bertoloni meli, d. 1999. caroline, leibniz, and clarke. journal of the history of ideas 60 (3): 469–486. bowler, peter j. and iwan r. marcus. 2005. making modern science: a historical survey. chicago: the university of chicago press. broad, c. d. 1975. leibniz: an introduction. cambridge: cambridge 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space, time, and relativity. in a companion to the philosophy of science, edited by w. h. newton-smith, 461–469. malden, ma: blackwell publishers. smolin, lee. 1997. the life of the cosmos. oxford: oxford university press. van fraassen, bas c. 1980. the scientific image. oxford: oxford university press. microsoft word quiroga-villamarín layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-12 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín1 [www.orcid.org/0000-0003.4294-4379] abstract: across the humanities and the social sciences, foucault’s work has often taken wildly divergent routes. as an unexpected corollary, some of his interventions have been compartmentalized into different fields — with few attempts to read his different contributions across disciplinary boundaries. conversely, in this article, i place foucault’s early works on the history of western systems of thought (and, in particular, the order of things) with some of his later interventions on sovereignty and punishment (and, in particular, security, territory, population and discipline & punish). i draw from his early archeological explorations of the western episteme(s), which have not been comprehensively explored by legal scholars, to reread his later works as an archeological exploration of the production of knowledge relative to sovereignty. this allows placing foucault’s early epistemological and methodological concerns at the forefront of his later work on the “withering away” of public law in the western imagination. keywords: political thought; history of science; knowledge production; theory and history of sovereignty; general theory of law. received: april 15, 2022. reviewed: may 02, 2022. accepted: may 23, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ we touch here on an apparently marginal problem that i think is nevertheless important, and this is the problem of theatrical practice in politics, or again the theatrical practice of raison d’état. the theater, theatrical practice, this dramatization, must be a mode of manifestation of the state and of the sovereign as the holder of state power (foucault 2007, 347). history will cause man’s anthropological truth to spring forth in its stony immobility; calendar time will be able to continue; but it will be, as it were void, for historicity will have been superimposed exactly upon the human essence […] the great dream of an end to history is the utopia of causal systems of thought, just as the dream of the world’s beginnings was the utopia of the classifying systems of thought (foucault 1994, 262-263). introduction in the order of things, foucault (1966) offers a broad picture of what he calls the “archeological” underpinnings of modern thought, comparing this picture with the 1 daniel r. quiroga-villamarín is a phd candidate and researcher at the global governance centre – graduate institute of international and development studies. address: maison de la paix, chemin eugène-rigot 2, geneva, switzerland. e-mail: daniel.quiroga@graduateinstitute.ch l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 epistemological foundations of science in the renaissance and the classical period. in this vein, he argues that the production of scientific knowledge in the west experienced a fundamental change in the 17th and 18th centuries, as knowledge shifted from an issue of resemblance to a problem of representation. foucault is particularly interested in these transformations in three particular bodies of knowledge: general grammar, natural history, and the analysis of wealth. this enables him to argue that another epistemological shift occurred at the end of the 18th century, in which representation yielded to modern knowledge: and now, the problem of truth would be related to meaning, historicity, and the emergence of the subject. in this article, i sketch an archeological analysis of a similar body of thought: the production of knowledge on sovereignty. drawing on foucault’s later works on governmentality and punishment, i argue that the changes that occurred within the raison d´état paradigm can be understood as a response to the shift from resemblance to representation to historicity/subjectivity that occurred in the western episteme. thus, i archeologically trace the movement of the production of knowledge on sovereignty from its beginnings as a problem of the maintenance of status, to the field concerned with the expansion of the state, to the discipline that revolves around the history of the nation and its population. in this way, i offer a foucauldian reading of foucault — folding his insights unto his own work. thus, i provide an archeological reading — typical of his early works, the order of things or the archeology of knowledge (1982; see further gutting 2013) — of a subject-matter more often associated with his later works on governmentalities and punishment (elden 2016, 82-111). in this article, i focus on the already cited lectures on security, territory, population and the birth of biopolitics (foucault 2002), as well as the famous tanner lectures of 1979 (foucault 1979). moreover, i also argue that one can (and perhaps, should) read the order of things alongside the famous discipline & punish (1977), to reveal that foucault’s analysis of penal practices corresponds quite neatly with the three historical shifts detected in the former. this methodological approach would allow us not only to engage productively between works which are usually read in isolation (lemke 2007, 43-64; see conversely danica & pearce 2001, 123-158), but it also explores the tensions and discontinuities in his approach and subjects (valverde 2017, 8-13). furthermore, this approach also shows the limits and potentials or engaging in archeological inquiry into not only fields of human knowledge, but into the assemblages of power/knowledge which define the bounds of sovereign power (foucault 2008, 18-19). instead of seeing the order of things or the archeology as obsolete works (see, for instance, dreyfus & rabinow 1983, xix; garland 2014, 365-384), i argue that the historical epochs traced in the order of things continue to haunt foucault’s later work on governmentality or punishment. foucault once famously issued a call for social theorists to abandon a whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where the power relations are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside its injunctions, its demands[,] and its interests. (foucault 1997, 27) while agreeing with this premise, in this article i follow the inverse call for action: to abandon the premise that power, also, can exist without knowledge. thus, i map the archeological foundations of the body of knowledge that has served as a foundation for the practices and discourses of what we call “sovereignty” in the west. to do so, after the (i) introduction already presented to the reader, (ii) i briefly survey the order of things, attempting to read it side-by-side with foucault’s later works on governmentalities. within this section, two subsections will introduce the two fundamental epistemological break which guide the order of things: from (a) the renaissance to the classical age, and (b) from the latter to modernity. then, another section will address (iii) the relation between punishment and sovereignty, attempting to map this discussion with the order of things’ l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 three historical shifts in the western episteme. finally, i will offer some (iv) concluding remarks on the persistence of the monarchical imagination. the order of things and the history of governmentality by way of introduction, it might be worth restating foucault’s basic argument in the order of things. according to him, knowledge largely revolved around the association of things according to propinquity during the renaissance. the world was nothing else than a complex network of connections among things: acknowledging the degree of “sameness” among those things permitted men to understand the essence and the movement of these cosmos. in other words, there was no distance between those signs and the things themselves, rather, there is an unbroken surface that connects observation and language (foucault 1994, 39). language merely made “everything speak.” thus, knowledge was basically the study of signs, which enabled men to understand the hidden resemblance of matter. in other words, knowledge in the renaissance (and late middle ages) hinged upon relations of intrinsic resemblance between things and their names, along god’s long great chain of being. a. from the renaissance to the classical age: status to state however, this epistemological framework was no longer possible after the baroque, in a world in which sciences had slowly shifted from the study of resemblances to the study of order, comparison, and difference (foucault 1994, 51). knowledge no longer revolved around deciphering the inner signs of things, but rather the establishment of comprehensive systems of signs that permitted to table, dissect, and order things. the intimate link between things and language was forever broken; language no longer embodied the world, but now merely represented it (foucault 1994, 56). general grammar, natural history, and the analysis of wealth bear witness to how the classical episteme attempted to create a relation between name and order (foucault 1994, 208). language no longer made “everything speak”, but rather spoke through everything. in his own words, the whole classical system of order […] is unfolded within the space that is opened inside representation when representation represents itself, the area where being and the same reside. language is simple the representation of words; nature is simple the representation of beings; need is simple the representation of needs. (foucault 1994, 209) i argue that a similar movement occurred in the field that dealt with the production of knowledge on sovereignty: the emerging raison d’état. as foucault would later recall, at the end of the 16th century, a new theoretical — and practical — field emerged in the western tradition (foucault 2007, 316). this new field was concerned with the knowledge and techniques related to the state’s foundation, preservation, and expansion — and its corresponding drive to dominate territories (foucault 2007, 314). this field initially emerged in the italian city-states during the renaissance, and eventually became the rationality of government for all of europe (reaching its climax at the peace of westphalia) before it eventually yielded to “liberal governmentality” (foucault 2007, 316). i argue that the field of the raison d’état also experienced an epistemological shift following the pattern foucault analyzed in other (neighboring) fields. although the knowledge of sovereignty – just as the analysis of wealth – was not a pure science but rather a field related with certain institutional practices, it still relied on the epistemological foundations of its time (foucault 1994, 205). initially, raison d’état emerged as the field of questions related to the conditions that enabled a sovereign to maintain his -and rarely, herpower. that is, of course, a question of l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 4 sameness: of propinquity between the ruler and his status (golder & fitzpatrick 2009, 31). a contextual reading of machiavelli enables us to understand that the initial steps of the raison d’état paradigm were concerned with the virtues a particular prince must have to maintain his princely-hood (skinner 2018, 45-62). in other words, the sovereign embodied sovereignty: and science must guide him to maintain his resemblance to sovereignty. there was no distance between the man and the crown: language did not mediate between the sovereign and sovereignty. during the renaissance, we are to take latin (and italian) quite literally: this was the field that studied the ratio status (the reason of status, not of state): the propinquity between the sovereign ruler and his sovereign nature (bartelson 1995, 112). knowledge could be nothing more but the endless commentary on the virtues, practices, and objects that resembled sovereignty, and thus were useful for the conduct of the sovereign. as foucault puts it, far from thinking that machiavelli opens up the field of political thought to modernity, i would say that he marks instead the end of an age, or anyway that he reaches the highest point of a moment in which the problem [of sovereignty] was actually that of the safety of the prince and his territory. (foucault 2007, 93) thus, just as it occurred in the other fields of knowledge analyzed by foucault, a fundamental epistemological break occurred with the emergence of the baroque. in the flames of the european religious wars and the wreckage of the previous imperial order, sovereignty lost its intimate connection with the physical sovereign (foucault 2007, 318). now, the ruler no longer embodied sovereignty, but rather, merely represented it. in his own words, “more than the problem of legitimacy of a sovereign’s rights over a territory, what now appears important is the knowledge and development of a state’s forces” (foucault 2007, 472). in the classical age, the state became the discursive instrument that enabled the representation of the sovereign in a vast apparatus of territorial domination and population control. the state, in other words, had a theatrical function insofar as it permitted the ritual dramatization of sovereign power (foucault 2007, 347). bearing this in mind, raison d’état became the field of knowledge related to the question of how to represent the sovereign, both within and outside of its jurisdiction (foucault 2007, 139). foucault argued that this field answered with a two-fold response as it is well known. the state would be represented by the military-diplomatic assemblage (abroad), and through the police (within its own borders). as foucault put it, the logic of the classical raison d’état would be a “physics of states, and no longer a right of [individual] sovereigns.” (foucault 2007, 384). in other words, the shift from the renaissance to the classical episteme in the field of raison d’état can be seen it the movement of this knowledge from a discipline concentrated with the sameness of sovereign and sovereignty (coagulated together in the status of the ruler) to a field preoccupied with the representation of sovereignty: from the resemblance of sovereignty and status to the representation of sovereignty through the state. the irony of louis xiv’s statement (l’état, c’est moi) now becomes apparent: only in the renaissance can the ruler truly be the state. afterwards — in the classical age that louis xiv contributed to shape — the king can do nothing else but represent the state, while at the same time he is himself (and rarely, herself) represented by it (foucault 2007, 324). his banners, armies, and ships are not the sun king, but just his representation, whereas in the previous epoch, the ruler and his scepter were truly the same. since the middle ages, it had been understood that the king had, in effect, two bodies: one natural and one political. it can be argued that the shift from the renaissance to the classical age can be traced as the displacement of royal l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 5 dignity from the personal to the “suprapersonal”; from the dignity of the ruler to the power of the state (kantorowicz 2016, 446).2 later, foucault briefly summarizes his argument in the birth of biopolitics, simply adding that the state “no longer has to extend its paternal benevolence over its subjects or establish father-child relationships with them, whereas in the middle ages, the sovereign’s paternal role was always very emphatic and marked” (foucault 2008, 4-5). in this lecture, he will further analyze the internal constraints and external limitations of this logic of sovereignty. of particular relevance to our discussion are his remarks on the withering away of “public law” as a framework for sovereign practices and discourses (foucault 2008, 8).3 before, royal power based on judicial institutions and the army, serving as a historical-juridical complex. however, with the rise of the raison d’état logic in the classical age, law and judicial institutions became an external limitation to the practice of governing the state. for the sun king, juridical reason was not the source of legitimacy, but rather the external threshold that measured the permissibility of state action. within this threshold, law held no sway, only “politics as mathesis, as rational form of the art of government” prevailed (foucault 2007, 376). b. from the classical to the modern age: state to nation but the sun king’s world of representations would also, in turn, come to an end. around the years 1775 to 1825, another rupture in western episteme would occur, and the new foundations would be the basis for a “positivity from which, even now, we have doubtless not entirely emerged” (foucault 1994, 220). the previous world of order — of a system of signs that represented the world — would yield into a world of history (with capital h). whereas before knowledge was mainly the tabulation, and classification of the identity and differences of things, now science will consist of the deployment of analogies (concerned mainly with time and function) to understand how discreet things are connected with organic structures (foucault 1994, 218). the shift from natural history to biology; analysis of wealth from economics; general grammar to linguistics are merely three examples of a general trend in which “[r]epresentation [lost] its power to define the mode being common to things and to knowledge [as t]he very being of which is represented is now going to fall outside representation itself” (foucault 1994, 250). therefore, sciences would now need to refer to an object which is outside of the realm of representation, and that serves as the cornerstone of the epistemic field. often, this object would not be a new invention, but rather a concept that was coined in the classical moment that suddenly displaced itself and became independent of representation. in the modern economic theory of adam smith, for instance, this would be the role of labor. although labor, as an analytical category, already existed in classical political economy, this concept would become the new common denominator of time (foucault 1994, 225). labor would no longer be a representation of wealth (or need), but rather the basis of a whole new system of production. this system, unsurprisingly, would be anchored in a new organic structure — with its own history and functions. in the domain of natural history, a hierarchy of organic structures would play the same role as labor, allowing for the articulation of families of living beings according to the inner logic of their functions (foucault 1994, 230). finally, in the field 2 this is, of course, not the only productive way of cross-reading kantorowicz and foucault (catherine 2014, 98–106). on foucault’s own remarks on the relevance of kantorowicz’ argument for his own work, see (foucault 1977, 28). 3 to be sure, foucault was not referring to the disappearance of public law, but rather to a shift in its center of gravity. the juridical would return, eventually, in the modern ages, by the hand of two distinct trends: french juridico-deductive rights discourse and radical english utilitarianism (foucault 1977, 3940). on the possibilities of a foucauldian understanding of law (golder & fitzpatrick 2009, 55-97). l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 6 of general grammar, the first “linguistic turn” would revolve the creation of a hierarchy of organic families of languages, according to their functions and history (foucault 1994, 234). all of these processes share a fundamental common characteristic, they all bear witness to “the withdrawal of knowledge and thought outside the space of representation” (foucault 1994, 242). this, in turn, makes kant’s transcendental subjectivity possible, as knowledge can no longer be deployed against the background of a unified and unifying mathesis [but rather around] the problem of the relations between the formal field and transcendental field [and] between the domain of empiricity and the transcendental foundation of knowledge. (foucault 1994, 242. see further baumann 2017, 595-616) in other words, the emergence of the modern episteme must be understood as twofold fracturing of the mathematical world of order. on the one hand, the object of knowledge became independent of the endless logic of representations, endowing itself with an internal —historical and functional — logic of its own. on the other, the knowing subject finally emerges, aware of his own limitations (and those of representation) to achieve scientific understanding (foucault 1994, 252). knowledge will now revolve around interpreting (that is, of course, a problem of ascribing meaning) the distance between the hidden and obscure historical forces that animate objects and the subjects that superficially study them. in his own words, “[w]hat modern thought [does] is to throw fundamentally into question is the relation of meaning with the form of truth and the form of being” (foucault 1994, 208). in this light, foucault argues how the modern episteme implied a fundamental discontinuity in western thought, closing the age of natural history, wealth analysis, and general grammar to give way for the emergence of biology, political economy, and linguistics. by analyzing certain paradigmatic authors — such as smith and ricardo (foucault 1994, 253-263), cuvier and lamarck (foucault 1994, 263-280), and bopp (foucault 1994, 280294) — foucault analyzes how these disciplines were suddenly infused with historicity (see, respectively, foucault 1994, 259; 276; 292-293). finally, i sketch a similar movement in the field concerned with the production of knowledge on sovereignty. we shall return, thus, to louis xiv and the classical world of representation through the state. if the emergence of the modern episteme in the human sciences occurred around 1775 to 1825, the rupture of modern vis-à-vis classical knowledge on sovereignty must also started around 1775 (with the american revolution), incrementing its speed with the drums of 1789 until its climax in the liberal-national upheaval of the 19th century. historicity, of course, was introduced by the swift cut of the guillotine: the king neither embodied nor represented sovereignty, only the people were truly sovereign. his formerly sacrosanct political body would be dissolved amongst the general population: dignity, once a property unique to the ruler would slowly permeate all human beings (moyn 2015, 25-64). the modern political theory emerged only after the bastille had been burnt to the ground, rupturing classical political thought on two levels. on the one hand, the object of study reclaimed its independence: sovereignty was no longer a given. rather, it was a disputed power that could be taken, shaped, and twisted. on the other, the knowing subject of sovereignty also appeared, conscious of its own historical possibilities and limits. if labor became the cornerstone of modern political economy, i argue that the notion of nation would be the new axis for the analysis of sovereignty. knowledge had now to uncover the hidden layers of meaning that separated the people from their own sovereignty. as santer (2011, xv) puts it, “[p]ostmonarchical societies are then faced with the problem of securing the flesh of the new bearer of the principle of sovereignty, the people.” thus, the problem of sovereignty would shift from the resemblance of status (renaissance) passing through representation of the state to become a field concerned with the meaning of the nation. forging one of the most distinctive alliances of the 19th century, nationalism would l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 7 pair itself with liberalism, transforming the governmentality of the raison d’état (hobsbawm 1992, 14-35). the marriage between the language of liberalism and that of nationhood — stated in article 3 of the french declaration of the rights of man and citizen4 — would govern relations between states, citizens, and “civil society” up to our days. to give just one early example, the british case clearly shows how the parliament came to mean the living body of the polity (kantorowicz 2016, 447). l’état, c’est moi means something completely different now: literally, each member of the nation; each citizen; each human being has an interpretative relationship with the state. the rise of the nation has, of course, its exact parallel in foucault’s work on governmentality: population (curtis 2002, 505-533). in this light, we must understand his considerations on population as the operator (operateur) of transformations in domains of knowledge (foucault 2007, 109). the twin emergence of population and nation entails a series of shifts in the western imagination, which transformed naturalists into biologists, grammarians into philologists, and financiers into economists (elden 2016, 94). mutatis mutandis, this occurred too in the field of knowledge related to sovereignty, in which suddenly the juridical notion of the subject of right was superseded to give rise to man as a population and nation, under the gaze of the art of government (foucault 2007, 110). population and nation serve as pivot for the tectonic shift from classical to modern epistemology in the west. but, what now if the king reigns but does not govern? (foucault 2007, 106; see further whyte 2013, 143-161). now sovereignty must be imagined (olson 2016, 18-38). the “nation,” as a historical force, comes to provide the new centripetal pull that must unify the realms of men as the throne lies vacant (anderson 2006). population, in turn, becomes the nation’s field of operations. the king’s death, of course, not only has effects within the borders of his realm. this epistemological break meant that the classical framework for inter-state relations (based on the delicate balance of power between european powers, calculated mathematically) was no longer the template for modern global governance. in foucault’s words, [f]rom the eighteenth century, the idea of perpetual peace and the idea of international organization are, i think, articulated completely differently. it is no longer so much the limitation of international forces that is called to guarantee and found a perpetual peace, but rather the unlimited nature of the external market. (foucault 2008, 56) from then on, global governance could only be justified in man’s common humanity (and thus, its true mercantile nature), rather than on the maintenance of a raison d’état interstate balance of power. kant, sitting on the hinge of this epistemological change, represents the first (but perhaps, incomplete) statement of this new “modern” inter-national vision (kant 1917). even if kant discarded the notion of the “majesty of the people” as an absurd expression (kant 1917, 139), after his perpetual peace, every international project would have man (as population, as the being of nations) at its core. an interesting example of this fact is offered by foucault’s discussion of the differences between the austrian and the english objectives at the congress of vienna. while austria attempted to enshrine a “classic” system of continental balance, the english sought to impose a “modern” equilibrium, in which the pax britannica would serve as the economic mediator, guaranteeing humanity’s apparent unity through a world market (foucault 2008, 60). ever since, any rising empire must attempt to carry this mantle, in which the “guarantee of perpetual peace is therefore actually commercial globalization” (foucault, 2008, 58). progress (and not simple balance) becomes 4 “the principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. no body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it.” l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 8 a sine qua non condition of global politics in modern liberalism. the stage had been set for the “modern” empires of the 19th century. the other pertinent analysis in the birth of biopolitics for our discussion is foucault’s considerations on the emergence of the homo œconomicus. in this book, foucault describes the emergence of a particular way of understanding the problem and practice of government in modernity: liberalism (foucault 2008, 61). one of the characteristics of this framework is that the previous subject of rights (as established by juridical thought) was eventually superseded with the rise of the homo œconomicus as an actor in the economic domain. this of course, is not to say that juridical discourse disappeared, but rather that it acts as an external limitation, whereas the logic of the homo œconomicus exerts internal pressure against the governor. as foucault notes, the subject of right may well, at least in some conceptions and analyses, appear as that which limits the exercise of sovereign power. but homo œconomicus is not satisfied with limiting the sovereign’s power; to a certain extent, he strips the sovereign of power. (foucault 2008, 292) this internal limitation relates to the sovereign’s need to justify its practices based not on divine right (which, until then, had been the foundation of government), but rather on his expertise of economic management. “now, beneath the sovereign, there is something which equally eludes him, and this is not the designs of providence or god’s laws but the labyrinths and complexities of the economic field.” as it is well known, foucault would analyze the german ordoliberal tradition, which posited economic growth is the basis of sovereignty (foucault 2008, 84). in this article, however, i do not venture into contemporary neoliberal politics, but rather stay in the framework of the order of the things’ three epistemological eras. in any case, this shows how “modern liberalism” implied a fundamental shift in the archeology of sovereignty, as it subjugated the political realm to the demands of “the economy” — and its phantasmagoric companion, civil society (foucault 2008, 296-308). as he himself put it, [e]conomics steals away from the juridical form of the exercising sovereignty within a state precisely which is emerging as the essential element of a society’s life, name economic processes. liberalism acquired its modern shape precisely with the formulation of this essential incompatibility of the non-totalizable multiplicity of economic subjects of interest and the totalizing unity of the juridical sovereign (foucault 2008, 282). punishment and sovereignty what is more, we can also read these epistemic movements in foucault’s discipline & punish of 1975 (and translated into english in 1977). in this book, foucault traces the shifts in the practices and discourses that constituted the west’s penal practices. with this in mind, i argue that one can neatly fit the order of things’ three historical breaks into the foucault’s work on punishment: the age of torture corresponds with the renaissance (foucault 1977, 369), while the classical age maps with the reforms towards generalized and “gentle” punishment (foucault 1977, 73-131). finally, modern epistemology is characterized by reign of mobile systems of disciplines over bodies (foucault 1977, 135-228). the prison, of course, is not unique to any of these periods (it has stood, impervious to the passing of time, from antiquity to our days), but rather a concrete infrastructure that has been shaped by the epistemic shifts and movements analyzed throughout the book (foucault 1977, 231-308). thus, instead of reading discipline as a break between the archeological and the l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 9 governmental foucault (like garland 2014, 365-84; 371), i insist the continuities between his later nietzschean genealogy and his earlier analysis of implicit archaeologies of western thought. the spectacle of torture (or, to be more precise, supplice in the original french), despite its ambiguities, was inextricably linked with the pre-modern notion of sovereignty. before the classical age, crime was understood as a direct attack, not on the polity, but on the person of the sovereign itself. law, in turn, “represents the will of the sovereign; it attacks him [the criminal] physically, since the force of the law is the force of the prince” (foucault 1977, 47). the spectacle of supplice (that is, the imprint of physical pain upon the body of the criminal) is the ceremonial enactment of sovereignty, that restores the breached lèse majesté. every crime, as foucault reminds us, was in a way a crimen majestatis (foucault 1977, 53). unsurprisingly, the absolute crime would be regicide, which must be put down with the maximum amount of official brutality. crime, in other words, was at odds with the personal status of the prince, and, as such, its punishment was a personal prerogative of the sovereign. we see, again, the archeological underpinnings of the order of things at work; the crime presents an immediate threat to the sovereign, and it challenges its claims to resemble divine authority. when the torturer’s mace falls upon the culprit, it does not claim to represent the state (let alone the nation), but rather, the sovereign’s personal and inalienable status. in other words, “in monarchical law, punishment is a ceremonial of sovereignty” (foucault 1977, 130). the rise of the classical age in the human sciences would be accompanied by a new wave of reform proposals for criminal practices in western europe. despite their internal disputes and contradictions, these great reformers would push for a more lenient and humane form of punishment than king’s torture (foucault 1977, 74-5). superficially, they would agitate for a more generalized and gentle way of punishing criminals; in reality, they ended up laying the ground for a “more finely tuned justice [and a] a closer penal mapping of the social body” (foucault 1977, 78). in short, they would aim to convert punishment from a personal power of the sovereign into a new political economy of power (foucault 1977, 81). in other words, the “right to punish has been shifted from the vengeance of the sovereign to the defense of society” (foucault 1977, 90). suddenly, the executioner did not act on only behalf of the sovereign, but rather on behalf of an emerging society, which he claimed to represent (foucault 2003). in this new techno-politics of punishment, what mattered was not vengeance, but rather the protection of society from further offense. punishment, therefore, should stop at the threshold of the exactly necessary violence needed not only to dissuade the criminal from further breaches, but also to deter those around him from challenging the social order (foucault 1977, 93). establishing this threshold required a true mathesis of crime, an ever-lasting table that would create a reliable taxonomy of deviation, with its corresponding punishment. we know to call these instruments criminal or penal codes. again, we can see that the epistemological frame of the classical age underpinning the reformers’ proposals. the crime was a sign that represented a threat to the community. thus, punishment must also imply a sign that not only represents the reestablishment of order, but also sends coded signals to both the criminal and the larger constituency. as foucault aptly puts it, this implied a “whole technique of penalty-effect, penalty-representation, penaltygeneral function, penalty-sign, and discourse” (foucault 1977, 114-5). punishment was made visible, but not like before, when the supplice enacted sovereignty, but rather, as a veritable representation of the state’s vigor — as a pedagogical experience. thus, “[t]he publicity of punishment must not have the physical effect of terror; it must open up a book to be read” (foucault 1977, 111). as we have seen in populations lecture, this corresponds to the rise of the police in western governmental practices. as he puts it, the machinery of justice must be duplicated by an organ of surveillance that would work side by side with it, and which would make it possible either to prevent crimes, l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 10 or, if committed, to arrest their authors; police and justice must work together as the two complementary actions of the same process. (foucault 1977, 96) in sum, classical reformers managed to create a new economy of punishment, in which this act entailed a representation of the state, rather than a personal prerogative of the status of the sovereign. this was achieved through the expansion of the police, the creation of mathesis of crime, and the publicity of redemption. however, “the theater of punishment which the eighteenth century dreamed, and which have acted essentially on the minds of the general public was replaced by the great uniform machinery of the prisons” (foucault 1977, 116). unsurprisingly, this reform (“the age of sobriety in punishment”) occurred in the early 19th century, at the same time the break between the classical and the modern episteme occurred. now, it is time for the emergence of the modern disciplinary constellations. this short article does not provide me with enough space to review the emergence of the disciplines in –and beyond– foucault’s work (see instead goldstein 1984, 170-179). for the purposes of our discussion, i just note that these disciplinary formations rise in parallel with the discovery of the human body as an object of governmental intervention. of course, this is not to say human beings did not have a body before the 19th century, but rather that only until this time a truly “political anatomy” emerge (foucault 1977, 138). while these types of practices were not foreign to the classical age (or even to earlier periods, if one thinks of monastic practices), only until the emergence of the modern epistemology did they truly thrive. in this modern framework, punishment will be neither a personal prerogative of the monarch’s status, neither a representative action of the state, but rather a micro-physical intervention that shapes the individual actor so he can fit into the pattern of an organized nation (or population). perhaps due to its pastoral past, discipline works to shape and rank both the individual and the collective; omnes et singulatim (foucault 1979, 227). it is both individualizing and totalizing (quiroga-villamarín 2021, 645-646). this disciplinary turn entailed the “birth of the prison” as the prevalent mode of “modern” punishment at the concrete level. while prisons had existed for a long time, it was only at this time in which punishment was seen as a technique for the coercion of individuals; it operated methods of training the body — not signs [like in the classical age] — by the traces it leaves, in the form of habits, in behavior; and it presupposed the setting up of a specific power for the administration of the penalty. (foucault 1977, 131) in sum, we can see that the archeological framework of the order of things is everpresent in foucault’s analysis of penal practices in the west. let us remember that of the end of part two of discipline, foucault sketched three distinct models that dealt with crime in the western political imagination: (i) the force of the sovereign, (ii) the social body of signs, marks, and traces, and (iii) the body subjected to training. these three models, while overlapping until a certain extent, correspond neatly with the epistemological ages identified in the order of things: (a) the renaissance, (b) classical ages, and (c) modernity. in his own words, [t]he scaffold, where the body of the tortured criminal had been exposed to the ritually manifested force of the sovereign [renaissance], the punitive theatre in which the representation of punishment was permanently available to the social body [classical age], was replaced by a great enclosed, complex and hierarchized structure that was integrated into the very body of the state apparatus [modernity] (foucault 1977, 1178). l’état, c’est moi? towards an archaeology of sovereignty in the western episteme(s) daniel r. quiroga-villamarín transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 11 one cannot but hear the lingering echoes of the archeological approach that was once applied to the human sciences, now haunting the analysis of punishment and sovereignty. concluding remarks foucault famously claimed that, [i]n political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king. hence the importance that the theory of power gives to the problem of right and violence, law and illegality, freedom and will, and especially the state and sovereignty — even if the latter is questioned insofar as it is personified in a collective being and no longer a sovereign individual. (foucault 1978, 88-89) by applying the archeological methodological insights provided by foucault in the order of things to his later substantive histories of governmentality and punishment, i traced a broad sketch of the shifts that have occurred in the — up to now, failed — attempts of western episteme to “cut the king’s head.” by doing so, i argue that the field related to the production of knowledge on sovereignty has followed similar epistemological ruptures vis-àvis the other “human sciences” studied by the order of the thing. thus, i analyzed the political theory of the renaissance as the art concerned with the maintenance of status, by providing the ruler with the tools and virtues that resembled sovereignty. later, i suggest we understand the political theory of the classical age as the field that studied how to enhance and expand the representativity of the ruler by using the apparatus of the state. finally, i argued that modern political theory emerged with the rupture of sovereignty as a given, and explores the meaning, limits, and possibilities of the nation, as a historical (and perhaps, more precisely, a history-making) political body. again, the irony of the sun king’s statement becomes apparent. if das kapital was nothing but and exegesis of the word “value,” (foucault 1994, 298) it appears western political thought has been merely an excursus of the question: l’état, c’est moi? references anderson, b. 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(2013). “the king reigns but he doesn’t govern”: thinking sovereignty and government with agamben, foucault and rousseau. in t. frost (ed.), giorgio agamben: legal, political and philosophical perspectives (pp. 143–161). taylor & francis. microsoft word freitas freire faria layout 26 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 26-40 issn 2526 – 2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2020 – this is an open access journal special issue – historiography of physics power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics1 fábio freitas2; olival freire jr.3; iolanda faria4 abstract: pierre bourdieu challenged the notions of science when he presented it as a field of peers competing for the monopoly of scientific authority. as scientific capital equals power, science disputes become disputes for power. yet, simultaneously, those disputes occur within the internal logic and language of the scientific field. in this article, we present those ideas and examine a case study within the history of quantum mechanics, a dispute inside the ongoing controversy about the foundations of quantum mechanics. we present the wheeler-everett and bohr dialogue in terms of bourdieu’s sociology of science and discuss the insights that such ideas can bring into the history of science. keywords: pierre bourdieu; hugh everett; niels bohr; history of physics; quantum mechanics received: 15 april 2020. reviewed: 23 may 2020. accepted: 22 june 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ______________________________________________________________________ introduction it is well established in the science studies that scientific controversies are privileged moments for the analysis of scientific production (latour, 2000). this privilege is even more pronounced whenever the participants in the controversy have very unequal positions with regard to the prestige in the scientific communities involved in the controversy, as these cases can also show the existing power relations in what bourdieu (1975) called the scientific 1 this text is an expanded version of a work presented at the esocite 2008 conference. we would like to thank the editors for the invitation to publish in this special issue. 2 fábio freitas [orcid: 0000-0002-7717-475x] is a professor of physics and history of physics at the federal university of bahia (ufba). address: address: institute of physics, ufba, campus de ondina, s/n salvador – ba – 40170-115 – brazil. corresponding author, e-mail: fabiofreitas@gmail.com 3 olival freire jr. [orcid: 0000-0003-3401-8885] is a professor of physics and history of physics at the federal university of bahia (ufba). address: institute of physics, ufba, campus de ondina, s/n salvador – ba – 40170-115 – brazil. e-mail: freirejr@ufba.br 4 iolanda faria [orcid: 0000-0002-9353-986x] is a researcher in the graduate program in interdisciplinary studies on women, gender and feminism at the federal university of bahia (ufba). address: faculty of philosophy and human sciences, rua prof. aristides novis, 197, salvador – ba – 40210-909 – brazil. e-mail: iolandapintodefaria@hotmail.com power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 27 field. the case of the controversy over the foundations and interpretations of quantum physics – an episode in the history of physics that spanned throughout the 20th century – serves to discuss both the concrete circumstances of the production of science and the power relations between scientists. quantum mechanics has become one of the most fascinating themes of contemporary science outside the academic circles for two reasons: first, for the impressive technological development it allowed and, therefore, the great impact it had on the life of society and people; second, for the permanent philosophical “revolution” that went with it, which was the result of an unceasing dissatisfaction with the possible lessons that one may extract from its foundations for the understanding of its meaning. the latter reason, considered as a historical episode in its own, helps us understand the dynamics of scientific practice and social relations within science during the 20th century. quantum mechanics was established in 1925–1927, but physicists never reached an agreement about the meaning of its formalism and its underlying worldview. indeed, historical accounts seem to suggest three periods for the controversy regarding the foundations of quantum theory. the first period goes from 1925 to the early 1950s. the copenhagen interpretation – developed by niels bohr and his collaborators – was then dominant among physicists and there were just a few dissidents, among them albert einstein and erwin schrödinger. the historian max jammer called that first period the “monocracy of the copenhagen school in the philosophy of quantum mechanics” (jammer, 1974, p. 250). one of us has suggested two other periods (freire, 2003; 2004; 2015). the third and last period begins in the early 1970s and seems to continue to this day, is characterized by an institutionalized controversy, in which debates about the quantum foundations are accepted as part of mainstream physics and specialized journals and meetings guarantee the circulation of its researches. the second period – from which we will take a case study as the object of the present work – became known as a transition period, when the copenhagen monocracy began to be undermined and new attempts to interpret quantum mechanics were developing, but not without great resistance from the physics community. during this transitional period, hugh everett iii, a young doctoral student under the guidance of john archibald wheeler, developed the relative-state interpretation of quantum mechanics, now known as the many-worlds interpretation. this interpretation is so widespread that its fifty anniversary in july 2007 was the subject of nature’s – the world’s leading scientific journal – cover and editorial. however, when everett developed his interpretation, it did not arouse great interest in the scientific community. more than that, his interpretation – which seemed to bring original contributions on the nature of the quantum domain – suffered a severe blow when wheeler decided to put it, still in a first draft of the phd thesis, into discussion with niels bohr. wheeler expected to get bohr's endorsement and to publish the thesis in the proceedings of the danish academy of sciences; however, the reception by bohr and his collaborators in copenhagen was extremely negative. they did not recognize the problems that everett aimed to solve and considered that their own interpretation – the copenhagen interpretation – was already capable of covering all interpretive issues, closing the way for new candidates. we already discussed, in other articles, the historical, conceptual, and historiographic dimensions of these episodes. in this article, we want to examine how power relations in the field of physics influenced the young everett’s career and the fate of his interpretation. in fact, disenchanted with the obstacles posed to the acceptance of his interpretation, everett abandoned the physics research and went to work at the pentagon. his interpretation remained forgotten for more than ten years. an analysis of power relations in science in situations of scientific controversy suggests the use of pierre bourdieu’s notion of scientific field. coincidentally, one of the first uses of the notion of scientific field in the analysis of science discussed events closely related to our theme: pinch (1977) analyzed the challenge posed by david bohm to a famous mathematical power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 28 proof (against the existence of alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics) that had been formulated by the john von neumann.5 in section 2 of this paper, we present the notion of scientific field as formulated by bourdieu and discuss its use by trevor pinch. in section 3, we summarize the historical events that will be analyzed in the following section. in section 4, we re-read everett’s case in light of the idea of scientific field. in the last section, we discuss the importance of a clear approach to subversion strategies in science and conclude by discussing how a theory of power allows us to understand the dynamics of science, overcoming the externalism-internalism dualism. pierre bourdieu’s scientific field bourdieu elaborated his notion of scientific field in contrast with the notion of scientific community as it appeared in the works of robert k. merton and thomas s. kuhn. instead of a community of peers, bourdieu highlights one of the inherent characteristics of the scientific community: competition. for him, as a system of objective relations between positions already won (in previous struggles), the scientific field is the locus of a competitive struggle, in which the specific issue at stake is the monopoly of scientific authority, defined inseparably as technical capacity and social power, or, to put it another way, the monopoly of scientific competence, in the sense of a particular agent’s socially recognised capacity to speak and act legitimately (i.e. in an authorised and authoritative way) in scientific matters. (bourdieu, 1975, 19) thus, once unveiled the struggles inherent in the scientific community, formed by competing pairs, the term community gives rise to the “scientific field” notion, which, for bourdieu, is not an explanatory scheme designed to account only for certain aspects of scientific activity, excluding from the explanation the properly cognitive contents of science. strictly speaking, the very distinction between the historical, conceptual, and power-relation dimensions, formulated by us in the introduction of this work, would be foreign to bourdieu's thought. an analysis which tried to isolate a purely “political” dimension in struggles for domination of the scientific field would be as radically wrong as the (more frequent) opposite course of only attending to the “pure”, purely intellectual, determinations involved in scientific controversies. for example, the present-day struggle between different specialists for research grants and facilities can never be reduced to a simple struggle for strictly “political” power: in the social sciences, those who in the usa have reached the top of the great scientific bureaucracies (such as the columbia bureau of applied social research) cannot force others to recognise their victory as the victory of science unless they are also capable of imposing a definition of science implying that genuine science requires the use of a great scientific bureaucracy provided with adequate funds, powerful technical aids, and abundant manpower; and they present the procedures of large-sample surveys, the operations of statistical analysis of data, and formalisation of the results, as universal and eternal methodology, thereby setting up as the measure of all scientific practice the standard most favourable to their personal or institutional capacities. conversely, epistemological conflicts are always, 5 it is interesting to notice the influence of bourdieu’s sociology among the protagonists of the new sociology of science when it was still in its first moments. this interaction has reduced over time, as can be noticed in bourdieu’s last course at the collège de france, where he presented an appraisal of the sociology of science that was quite critical of the authors close to the edinburgh school and, as well, of more recent authors, like bruno latour (bourdieu, 2001). power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 29 inseparably, political conflicts: so that a survey on power in the scientific field could perfectly well consist of apparently epistemological questions alone. (bourdieu, 1975, 21) bourdieu denaturalizes, in this way, the most elementary procedures of scientific activity. “every scientific ‘choice’ – the choice of the area of research, the choice of methods, the choice of the place of publication – (...) is in one respect – the least avowed, and naturally the least avowable – a political investment strategy, directed, objectively at least, towards maximisation of strictly scientific profit, i.e. of potential recognition by the agent’s competitor-peers.” (bourdieu, 1975, 22-3). for bourdieu, this recognition is the symbolic, immaterial capital proper to the scientific field and, therefore, called scientific capital, which can be accumulated, inherited, or acquired, just like the economic capital. it is the accumulation of scientific capital that guides the researcher’s “choices” and expectations. prestige, understood by bourdieu (1984, 9) as “[...] one’s position in strictly intellectual or scientific hierarchies,” is the result of a successful investment and is conferred by the agents of the field, especially by those who hold scientific authority. that is, the more scientific capital an agent has, the more capital he can provide, securing other agents in the field. the initial capital (for instance, school, economic, and cultural capital), although relevant to the acquisition of scientific capital in the market for scientific symbolic goods, is not determinant in itself; therefore, the subjects’ strategies are also fundamental to obtain a symbolic profit. thus, the entry of a newly graduated scientist in a scientific field is a crucial moment in defining his career, since it implies choices that will define his struggle strategies in the field. according to bourdieu, roughly speaking, the young scientist (the “new entrant”) must choose a succession strategy or a subversion strategy. this choice will be conditioned by his previous insertion in the structure of the field itself. in the case of a recent doctor, for example, the strategy is conditioned by the prestige of the institution in which he graduated and of his advisor. these two strategies can be defined, according to bourdieu, in this way: it is the field that assigns each agent his strategies, and the strategy of overturning the established scientific order is no exception to this. depending on the position they occupy in the structure of the field (and also, no doubt, on secondary variables such as their social trajectory, which governs their assessment of their chances), the “new entrants” may find themselves oriented either towards the risk-free investments of succession strategies, which are guaranteed to bring them, at the end of a predictable career, the profits awaiting those who realise the official ideal of scientific excellence through limited innovations within authorised limits; or towards subversion strategies, infinitely more costly and more hazardous investments which will not bring them the profits accruing to the holders of the monopoly of scientific legitimacy unless they can achieve a complete redefinition of the principles legitimating domination : newcomers who refuse the beaten tracks cannot “beat the dominant at their own game” unless they make additional, strictly scientific investments from which they cannot expect high profits, at least in the short run, since the whole logic of the system is against them. (bourdieu, 1983, 138) the risky option for the use of subversion strategies brings the burden of a reconfiguration of positions in the scientific field for them to be successful. however, this possibility is more viable as the larger the scientific capital accumulated by the scientist who makes this bet. for bourdieu (1984), this choice is given to new entrants who, in addition to accepting the rules of the competitive game in the scientific field, have a symbolic capital that gives them prestigious positions. although more costly, investments in successful subversion power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 30 strategies can generate significant gains, such as the accumulation of scientific capital and, with the reconfiguration of the field, the monopoly of scientific authority. in his analysis of the implicit challenge in the alternative interpretation of the quantum theory formulated by david bohm in 1952, pinch’s focus was precisely the distinction between these two strategies (pinch, 1977). he argued that bohm successfully pursued a succession strategy after finishing his phd at berkeley under robert oppenheimer, who had been the scientific director of the manhattan project. bohm then worked as a professor at princeton university and did some relevant work in plasma physics. in 1952, however, he changed his strategy to a subversive one by publishing an alternative interpretation to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. pinch questioned whether this change was suitable for bohm, as it would necessarily trigger a succession strategy between the defenders of the dominant position among physicists, namely, the defenders of von neumann’s proof. though interesting as a pioneering attempt at a sociological analysis of the very contents of science, pinch’s analysis has its limitations, as we have pointed out (freire, 2005, pp. 26-27). his historical analysis did not realise that bohm’s interpretation represented an even greater challenge to dominant positions in the field of physics – the challenge to the von neumann’s proof was only part of a much larger challenge. after all, bohm’s proposal implied replacing a probabilistic interpretation of quantum phenomena, such as that supported by the copenhagen school, with a causal interpretation of quantum mechanics. the historical analysis, moreover, reveals that the greatest critics of bohm’s interpretation – those aligned with the danish physicist niels bohr – used little of von neumann’s proof argument when rejecting his proposal.6 case study: a summary of the dialogue between bohr and everett-wheeler7 the youngest character in our narrative graduated in chemical engineering at the catholic university of america, in washington, dc, magna cum laude. after graduating, everett decided to pursue a phd in physics at princeton university. he requested a letter of recommendation from his graduation professor, willian boone, for his doctorate selection. boone depicted everett as a true genius and added: “this is a once-in-a-lifetime recommendation for i think it is most unlikely that i shall ever again encounter a student i can give such complete and unreserved support.”8 boone goes on to state that of all the students he has ever had contact with, everett was by far the best. “everett has a better knowledge of mathematics than most of the graduate students at catholic university and probably no graduate student is his equal in native ability.” that mathematical ability allowed everett, even during his undergraduate studies, to attend several classes in advanced mathematics – some of them only as a listener, due to a university rule concerning the amount of credits hours in which students could enroll. in this way, even majoring in chemical engineering, he attended so many classes that he could have received a major in mathematics. in short, the impression we have read the letter of recommendation is that everett was a brilliant student. due to this academic record, everett received a national science foundation graduate 6 it is curious to note that years later pinch criticized bohm for defending, according to pinch, an excess of creativity in science (freire, 2019, 188) 7 the historical outline developed here is based on freitas (2007), freitas and freire (2008a; 2008b), and osnaghi, freitas and freire (2009), that was reprinted in freire (2015, chap. 3). for a biography of everett, see byrne (2010). 8 letter from william boone to hugh taylor, dean of graduate studies, april 17, 1953. alumni file of hugh everett iii, seeley g. mud manuscript library, princeton. power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 31 scholarship. 9 even though it did not grant him a free pass into the graduate program entrance exams, it certainly helped his admission. the scholarship, in attesting his quality, in other words, increased his symbolic capital, being explicitly mentioned by his selection committee. as a result, he was accepted in the princeton phd program in mathematics. about a year later, in 1954, he transferred to the physics department. john archibald wheeler then became his advisor. wheeler had received his phd in physics in 1933 from the prestigious john hopkins university. during the 1930s, he gave important contributions to theoretical physics. his 1939 liquid-drop model, developed with niels bohr, played an important role in understanding the nuclear fission process, which later was a fundamental step in the construction of the atomic bomb. as an expert in nuclear physics, wheeler worked intensively on the manhattan project, like most of the great american physicists of the time. later on, he became an important character in the construction of the american h-bomb. he joined princeton university as a professor in 1938. thus, in the 1950s, wheeler was already a renowned physicist. however, in this period he decided to change his research focus, moving from nuclear physics to general relativity, which was, at that time, a less prestigious field, without the attraction power of nuclear physics. wheeler was, in the 1950s, one of the main responsible for restructuring the research on general relativity and cosmology (blum et al. 2015; rickles, 2018). when everett approached wheeler, wheeler’s main research interest was not quantum mechanics, but rather the quantization of gravitational interaction, which aims at unifying the general theory of relativity with quantum theory. however, everett was not interested in gravitation nor cosmology, but rather in providing a new interpretation for quantum mechanics. in any case, wheeler’s style of doing physics had already led him previously to guide richard feynman in the development of a different mathematical formulation of quantum theory (the so-called path integral formulation), and thus he was apparently open to advise another student on the foundations of quantum theory. in 1954, everett’s ideas about quantum theory were not fully developed yet, which only happened a year later. in this process, it is possible to clearly identify wheeler’s style: everett’s goal was to develop an interpretation without any additional postulate, just following what the equations say, taking them to their extreme. wheeler has the same approach to the equations of general relativity. by taking these equations to their extreme, he arrived at important results, for example, with black holes. thus, even though the original idea was really everett’s, his research development bears a strong imprint of wheeler’s style, which developed in the latter a kind of father’s affection with that interpretation. in 1955, with more clearly developed ideas, everett began to put his interpretation down on paper. during the writing of the thesis, wheeler probably suggested that everett should present his ideas less technically, reducing as much as possible the mathematical formalism. in september 1955, everett delivered the first draft of the thesis to wheeler – a version that consisted of three short papers, that were never published – , whose answer could not be more direct: “i am frankly bashful about showing it to bohr in its present form, valuable & important as i consider it to be, because of parts subject to mystical interpretation by too many unskilled readers.”10 in fact, wheeler considered the work to be of great value, an assessment that he maintained throughout the process, but the important question is: why should he show it to bohr? niels bohr was one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century. he was born in denmark in 1885 and received the nobel prize in 1922, for his 1913 atomic model. after 9 national science foundation scholarships are not linked to courses, so everett would have the scholarship even if he went to a university other than princeton. 10 “probability in wave mechanics,” everett papers, box 1, folder 6. the answer is a handwritten note from wheeler to everett, september 21, 1955, everett papers, box 1, folder 5, american institute of physics, college park, md. power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 32 achieving a great prestige in the physics community, he created in 1921 the institute for theoretical physics in copenhagen, with the funding support of the carlsberg foundation. this institute soon became one of the world’s leading centers for quantum physics. during the period of establishment of quantum mechanics, between 1925-27, niels bohr had an important role, as the proponent of the complementarity interpretation of that theory, which became practically hegemonic among physicists until the 1950s. his debates with albert einstein, which lasted from 1927 to 1935, contributed to bohr’s prestige – both were then two of the greatest physicists alive. einstein opposed, in particular, one of the fundamental aspects of the new theory, the so-called uncertainty principle, using thought experiments to show that this principle was incorrect (or, more precisely, could be violated). bohr advocated the theory, pointing out the flaws in einstein’s reasonings, which made his imagined situations not feasible and showed that the new theory was consistent and adequate to describe atomic phenomena. later, in 1935, einstein and two collaborators, nathan rosen and boris podolsky, developed what later was considered his mature critique of quantum theory. he came to accept that the theory was correct, but claimed that it was nevertheless incomplete, since it did not contemplate certain aspects of the physical reality. bohr published an answer that same year. he criticized einstein for not appreciating the contextual aspect of the experimental situation. einstein did not push the discussion forward, even though he never fully accepted bohr’s answer. therefore, bohr was seen, afterwards, by the physics community as having solved all the interpretive problems of quantum mechanics. the copenhagen hegemony was so well established that the most common view among physicists, until the early 1950s, was that there were no interpretive problems in quantum theory and that the complementarity interpretation was, in fact, not an interpretation, but part of the theory itself. moreover, in addition to his contribution to physics and its epistemological problems, niels bohr was considered a great charismatic leader (beller, 1999). in addition to the reputation that bohr had in 1955 concerning the interpretation of the quantum theory, he had written, in collaboration with wheeler, that 1939 article on nuclear fission. wheeler had been a postdoctoral researcher in copenhagen in 1934, under the guidance of bohr, and they were good friends ever since. thus, it is understandable that wheeler wanted to show his student’s work to bohr: not only was bohr the greatest authority on the foundations of quantum theory, but he had been his mentor. however, wheeler did not consider that everett’s first draft of the thesis was worthy of being shown to bohr, due to the way in which certain results were presented. everett should first improve his presentation. he transformed those three short unpublished papers into a long thesis, which was sent to copenhagen in april 1956, even though it was considered still a draft by both everett and wheeler. all the results were already there. everett presented his interpretation in detail, with a long formal development, then exposed some problems with the foundations of quantum theory, and finally suggested six alternative approaches to the interpretation of the quantum theory, including bohr’s and his own. after showing that his own interpretation was formally consistent, he argued that it was also the most appropriate. in 1956, wheeler spent six months in holland, at the leiden university. just before traveling, he sent that long thesis draft of everett’s to bohr and, a few weeks later, went in person to the institute for theoretical physics in copenhagen to discuss the matter with bohr. in a previous work, we argued that this informal moment was, in fact, everett’s first phd committee (freitas and freire, 2008a). wheeler had two goals when he sent everett’s thesis to bohr: the first was to get his friend’s assessment of his student’s work, which he considered to be new and of great value; the second, and most important, was to obtain bohr’s endorsement in order to publish the thesis it in the proceedings of the royal danish academy of sciences and letters. according to wheeler, “i feel that acceptance in the danish power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 33 academy would be the best public proof of having passed the necessary tests.”11 however, this desire ended up frustrated and the thesis was not even submitted for publication in the academy. bohr, along with his collaborators in copenhagen, rejected the new interpretation from the very beginning, but the discussion process involving wheeler, bohr and everett lasted for several months. after a first conversation in copenhagen, wheeler wrote to everett indicating that the objection to his interpretation was a matter of wording and that his development of the mathematical formalism remained unshaken. wheeler insisted that everett should spend a few months in copenhagen to fight with the greatest of fighters, humbly accepting criticism, but insisting on the fundamental points that formed the core of his new interpretation. everett ended up going to copenhagen only much later, in 1959, so the discussion continued in 1956 through personal correspondences. at the end, bohr’s position remained unchanged. according to him, everett’s work did not bring novelties to quantum theory and everett himself did not fully understand several aspects of the theory. everett’s work was greatly affected. wheeler, upon returning to the united states, insisted that everett should write a new version, which was much more neutral than the original one and much less critical of bohr’s interpretation, claiming to be simply a generalization of bohr’s approach. in fact, right in the introduction of that final version of the thesis, everett is concerned with saying that his new interpretation is not a radical break with the traditional one and that it would be possible to derive the latter from the former. the presentation, as a whole, was greatly affected. the version sent to copenhagen in 1956 was about 130-page long, while the final version – that was defended in march 1957 and published a few months later with minor changes in style – was only 30-page long. the journal chosen for publication was the reviews of modern physics, which was an important journal, but was obviously a modest choice for a text that might revolutionize physics. there were other journals more suitable for unprecedented and important results, even more as it was not a review article. in addition, the article was published in a special issue, in the middle of the proceedings of a conference on gravitation, further reducing the visibility of the text. in the end, for more than ten years the text did not arouse the interest of other physicists. indeed, that was everett’s only publication in physics. although the long version of his thesis was published in 1973, his participation was limited to sending a copy to the editors of the volume, bryce dewitt and his doctoral student neill graham. everett pursued a successful career within the pentagon, having subsequently founded companies that provided services for the united states department of defense and died, in 1982, millionaire and without contact with physics. this is an unusual ending for someone who – according to both his undergraduate professor and his phd supervisor – was expected to have a bright future in his academic career. in fact, more than once, wheeler indicated that everett should take some time to transform his thesis into a more suitable version and look for an academic post that would give him the freedom to develop his valuable ideas on the foundations of quantum theory. the everettian heresy from bourdieu’s perspective following the methodological agenda outlined by bourdieu, we now analyze everett’s case from the perspective of a struggle for scientific capital and the strategies adopted to obtain it and to keep it, which in this case were unsuccessful due to the adoption by everett of a subversive strategy. before proceeding with the characterization of everett’s strategy, it is interesting to pay attention to the strategy adopted by wheeler during the period in which everett was his doctoral student. wheeler followed a succession strategy during his own career until the 11 wheeler letter to a. g. shenstone, may 28, 1956. wheeler papers, box di, series # 2, american philosophical society, philadelphia, pa. power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 34 1950s, which proved to be an excellent choice for him. having received his phd in physics from the important johns hopkins university, wheeler decided to pursue a career in physics by doing two postdoctoral research, one in the united states, at new york university, and the other at the institute for theoretical physics, in copenhagen, denmark, under the guidance of niels bohr. during this period, wheeler developed the standard physics research agenda of those times: the application of quantum theory to several domains. wheeler specialized in nuclear physics, becoming a highly prestigious scientist. at the end of his second postdoctoral research, he was hired as an assistant professor at the university of north carolina at chapell hill. shortly thereafter, following his succession strategy, he received a tenure offer, promoting his career at the same university.12 he also received a job offer from johns hopkins university, also with tenure, and, finally, an offer from princeton university, this without a tenure. wheeler decided to go to princeton, reasoning that even with a less prestigious position within the institution, he could have the collaboration of a greater number of notable scientists, which would certainly help in the development of his career, a strategy that effectively worked. wheeler stayed at princeton until shortly before his compulsory retirement, later returning as an emeritus professor. having a wellestablished career in the most prestigious area of physics in those times – nuclear physics – and doing important research of military interest was part of his succession strategy. therefore, in the early 1950s, wheeler had accumulated enough scientific capital to change his strategy. in 1953, when he was already one of the most renowned american physicists, wheeler decided to leave his research in nuclear physics to dedicate himself to a topic whose prestige among physicists was modest: general relativity and cosmology. in fact, a course on general relativity had never been taught at princeton university until 1953. that is quite surprising, since princeton was one of the most important universities in the world concerning the research in physics, and had albert einstein – the inventor of general relativity – as a member of one of its institutes, the institute for advanced studies. wheeler was the first professor to offer a course on the subject. thus, it is possible to state that his succession strategy changed into a subversion strategy, although not as radical as that which had been attempted by david bohm at the same university a couple of years before. while bohm aimed to completely reconfigure the research field of quantum theory, wheeler did not attempt to change the foundations of the field of general relativity and cosmology, but to transform it into a field of great prestige. wheeler was a leading figure in a historical movement that historians have been calling the renaissance of general relativity in the 1950s (blum et al., 2016). his academic bet was subversive because there was no guarantee of recognition and accumulation of scientific capital, and because the bet tried to reconfigure the rules for the accumulation of his scientific capital, changing the objects that have value in the market. wheeler used his own academic recognition to support his research in cosmology. there were two possible outcomes: the loss of his academic prestige, similarly to what happened to einstein, who, in the view of physicists, had moved away from the frontier of research in physics since the 1930s; or achieve a reconfiguration of the status of research in general relativity and cosmology and be recognized for its pioneering efforts, being able to dominate the new market for scientific capital. in the end, the latter happened. wheeler’s bet worked. general relativity and cosmology have gained increasing recognition both within and outside the physics community (the hubble telescope is more famous than any particle accelerator) and wheeler has continued to be recognized as a pioneer in the field.13 12 in the american academic system, tenure is equivalent to the stability of the employment contract in the institution. 13 in fact, it is possible to think if the change in strategy was really fruitful. wheeler, despite being considered a giant of the 20th century physics, was never awarded the nobel prize. that has been often considered a great injustice. this kind of reasoning is purely speculative, but with all his talent, if he power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 35 it was during this change in wheeler’s strategy that everett first met him. everett had graduated from a university not as prestigious as the one where he went to do his graduate studies, but he obtained, as we have seen, an excellent recommendation letter from his undergraduate professor william boone. he had obtained a scholarship from the national science foundation, which gave him more scientific capital. being accepted at princeton, his scientific capital increased even more, and besides he was guided by a great researcher in physics. thus, even though he was a young man entering the career, at least in principle he had sufficient institutional support to be able to choose his own strategy. institutional support would not necessarily guarantee success if he bet on a subversion strategy, but at least he would have the opportunity to make the decision himself. 14 had he been at a university with little or no academic prestige, a subversion strategy would have almost no chance of success. the epistemological form of everett’s subversive bet was the development of the formalism of quantum theory to try to grasp its meaning. he claimed that the mathematical formalism of physical theories should be interpreted in a literal way. the idea of taking physics equations to the extreme is not, in itself, a subversive strategy, but it was also not a central strategy in the research agenda of the time. 15 however, in the specific case of research on the foundations of quantum theory, the widely accepted approach, attributed to niels bohr, condemned this type of attitude. proceeding in that way, everett was aware that he would be questioning bohr’s thinking, and that, in fact, did not bother everett at all. he made explicit his dissatisfaction with bohr’s thinking both in the first version of the thesis and in his correspondence. even the way that everett decided to portrait the interpretational problems of quantum mechanics was already subversive. he adopted an axiomatizing approach, something that bohr condemned. for bohr, it did not make sense to axiomatize quantum mechanics, as its meaning would always depend on an experimental context and on concepts that could never be reduced to axioms. everett, nonetheless, considered that the main problem of the theory was to solve formal issues, as formulated by john von neumann, who also supported the axiomatization of physical theories. according to von neumann, quantum mechanics had two modes of evolution. the first one was given by the schrödinger equation, which is linear and deterministic, while the second one was the socalled projection postulate, which is abrupt and non-causal. everett tried to eliminate the second mode of evolution, analyzing only the first mode of evolution of the equation and developed a new interpretive scheme for that purpose. while the description above may seem somewhat technical, the important point is to emphasize that everett sought much more than just solving interpretive problems that existed in the copenhagen interpretation. from a larger perspective, his proposal was to reformulate the entire field of quantum mechanics, suggesting new problems and new solutions based on his own ideas and methods. thus, it is understandable that bohr could not accept those ideas. more than that, bohr, willing to maintain a monopoly on his scientific authority, used it to undermine the very had continued to follow a succession strategy, working with the main themes of the research agenda, would he have been awarded the nobel prize? the first nobel related to the research field reconfigured by wheeler came in 1978 and to date less than 10 awards have been directly related to general relativity and cosmology. at the same time, his student, kip thorne, who obtained a phd under wheeler in 1967, was one of those recipients, receiving the 2017 nobel for research on gravitational waves. 14 in fact, the greater the autonomy of the scientific field, the more only those already participating in that field will consume their products, and at the same time, provide capital for their market. therefore, in such a field, any strategy will depend even more heavily on its scientific capital. thus, even for a subversion strategy, it is essential to be part of the already established scientific enterprise. 15 we will discuss this point again in the conclusions, but it seems important to us to emphasize that the greater the autonomy of a field, the closer the succession and subversion strategies appear. power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 36 meaning of everett’s work. the characterization bohr and his collaborators gave of everett’s work was that he was unable to understand the bases of quantum theory and, therefore, was trying to solve problems that simply did not exist. in a previous work (freitas and freire, 2008b), we characterized the two approaches as incommensurable and, as such, only a subversion strategy could lead to a revolution in the field so that the new ideas could replace the old ones and thus obtain a monopoly on scientific authority.16 what was considered as a problem according to one interpretation was not to the other and vice versa. however, bohr was the holder of scientific authority at this moment and, therefore, it was up to him to define in what terms the research should take place and, therefore, what was and what was not a problem. so, the problems that everett wanted to solve were definitely not perceived as problems at that moment. everett’s work could not arouse interest in that context. it is interesting to compare this debate with the one that happened fifteen years later, in the early 1970s. in this new context, the field had been entirely reconfigured. niels bohr passed in 1962 and, in the following years, a controversy about the foundations of quantum theory took place (freire, 2015). a letter by m. hammerton published in the journal physics today in 1971 explained well that change in the physics community: the very interesting contributions to the quantum mechanics debate in your april issue, and the paper by dewitt which triggered them, exemplify the highly complex and subtle ways in which scientific opinion can change. when i was an undergraduate reading physics 20 years ago, the copenhagen interpretation was very firmly in the saddle. indeed, i recall a seminar during which i suggested that it was merely a positivist-philosophical gloss, and being denounced as a metaphysician. the copenhagen line was “scientific,” anything else was meaningless, mumbo-jumbo, or, at best, mistaken. now the curious thing is that, as far as i am aware, there has been no major finding or theoretical insight that could be held to demolish or supersede this interpretation. nevertheless, there is how considerable dissatisfaction with it, and a willingness to regard other points of view – for example, hidden variables – as being at least respectable. the considerations that have led to this change of attitude would themselves make an interesting and valuable study. (trigg; hammerton et al. 1971, 11) in this new context, everett’s interpretation was reinvigorated, finding some supporters, but was once more the target of criticism. this time, however, the criticism basically involved understanding whether everett really solved the problems he had proposed to solve. many pointed logical inconsistencies that his supporters are to this day trying to resolve, but the important thing to note here is that, at that moment, everett’s interpretation was not simply dismissed because it aimed at problems that did not exist. the interpretation of quantum mechanics had become once more an open problem. with the reconfiguration of the field – characterized by a new scientific context in which there was an 16 according to bourdieu, “scientific revolutions that overturn the tables of epistemological values overturn in the same blow the hierarchy of social values attached to the various forms of scientific practice, and thereby the social hierarchy of the various categories of scientists. the new scientific regime completely redistributes the meanings and values associated with the various scientific choices by imposing new norms of interpretation and new categories of perception and of appreciation of importance. as in those perceptual restructurings that ambiguous forms allow, what was central now becomes marginal, secondary, insignificant, while objects, problems, and methods hitherto considered minor and therefore left to minor and secondary agents, find themselves brought to the forefront, in broad daylight, bringing a sudden visibility to those connected with them.” bourdieu, 1991, 14-5. power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 37 established controversy on the foundations of quantum theory – it was acceptable to address those interpretative problems. the subversion strategy and the reconfiguration of the field although the strategy adopted by everett was a strategy of subversion, it was not presented as such in the final version of his thesis, in particular, due to the way wheeler interfered in the process, as we explained in section 3. as bourdieu explains: as accumulated scientific resources increase, the requirements for entry continue to rise, and access to scientific problems and instruments, thus to scientific competition, requires an increasingly large amount of embodied capital. it follows that the opposition between strategies of succession and strategies of subversion tends more and more to lose its meaning, insofar as the accumulation of the capital necessary for revolutions to succeed and the acquisition of the capital gained by successful revolutions tend more and more to be carried out according to the regular procedures of a career. (bourdieu, 1991, 18-9) that is, even though succession and subversion strategies are quite similar in their forms and methods, they still have different goals in the symbolic capital market. a subversion strategy should stress the differences and not hide them, especially when the proponent has little scientific capital compared to the competitor. everett, as much as he had the support of princeton and wheeler, still had no way to reconfigure the field directly against bohr, without the support of others. bohr would not be willing to give up his monopoly on the philosophy of quantum mechanics and to allow a new interpretation. however, wheeler was not prepared to face bohr, at least not directly. rather than presenting his student’s interpretation as an opposition to the existing state of affairs, wheeler decided to present it as part of that state of affairs, phrasing it as an attempt to generalize bohr’s interpretation, so it would be a particular case of everett’s approach. this strategy could have worked if bohr had been convinced that there was a need for a reformulation of the field. in that case, he would be able to maintain his scientific authority by being a pioneer in supporting the new order, maintaining his hegemony. as already mentioned, there was no indication that this was necessary, so the worst happened to everett. his bet on a high-risk strategy turned out to be fruitless and, disgusted by the very low prestige that his interpretation had in the early years, he ended up giving up his career in physics.17 had this interpretation really been presented as a subversive strategy, there would be the possibility of obtaining support from other researchers, accumulating scientific capital, which would allow for some survival and, with some chance, even if small, for a reconfiguration of the research perspectives. bohm’s case is a good example of this. even without being able to reconfigure the field, his interpretation, together with the accumulated scientific capital, was sufficient for him to continue to move within the scientific field, obtaining positions at universities and continuing within the rules of the game. 17 in this specific case, it should be noted that everett's decision to abort entry into an academic career has also been greatly influenced by social status and the high salaries paid to pentagon employees. however, several other scientists shared during part of their careers academic research with research of military interest, including wheeler. everett, even after publishing his thesis, even though he did not seek an academic post, visited copenhagen in 1959 to discuss his interpretation, but the result was predictable. bohr continued considering that everett did not understand quantum theory. everett even participated in some congresses until 1961, but with very little scientific capital and completely unmotivated for not having obtained what he expected with his bet, he abandoned physics for good. power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 38 conclusions as we have seen, the analysis in terms of power, in terms of renegotiation of scientific capital, in terms of prestige, allows us to establish an interesting perspective when examining scientific controversies. the critique of science shows that what is at stake is not the truth about nature, even though many scientists keep believing it. if neither wheeler nor everett nor bohr, from the historical point of view, sought the truth, what did they seek? in this case, they sought the monopoly of scientific capital. it is no wonder that the period when bohr dominated was called copenhagen monocracy. while, at first, this approach to the history of science – which describes science as a field of forces that compete for symbolic capital using strategies that can either try to succeed the rules of this field or, otherwise, subvert them, establishing a new order – seems to fit into an externalist perspective, such orders, rules and values have meaning only within the rules of the common language of the specific area and its terms can only be understood inside this internal logic, indicating that classification as strictly externalist does not allows one to understand the necessary steps for such analysis. bourdieu proposes an order for science that is social in nature, but with internal dynamics that take place according to that social order. paul feyerabend, in the preface to the third edition of against method, poses the following problem: in sociology, the attention to detail has led to a situation where the problem is no longer why and how “science” changes but how it keeps together. philosophers, philosophers of biology especially, suspected for some time that there is not one entity “science” with clearly defined principles but that science contains a great variety of (high level theoretical, phenomenological, experimental) approaches and that even a particular science such as physics is but a scattered collection of subjects (elasticity, hydrodynamics, rheology, thermodynamics, etc., etc.) each one containing contrary tendencies (...). for some authors this is not only a fact; it is also desirable. (feyerabend, 1993, x-xi) bourdieu thus allows the problem of the unity of science to be solved while maintaining its plurality of methods and approaches. the scientific field remains as such, as it is part of the process of accumulating power. if science split up each time that there is a revolution – that is, a successful subversion strategy – power would decrease, instead of increasing. the strength of science as a relatively autonomous field depends heavily on its unity.18 as everett’s case study shows – even if what was at stake was, in bourdieu’s terms, the monopoly of scientific authority – the understanding the historical process necessarily involves careful dissection of the internal dynamics of the scientific dispute. the 18 this answer that appears here quickly, while short and with a simple appearance, is complex on a level that is not possible to develop in this space. however, for its development, it is necessary to go further in the investigation and understanding of academic, social, and political capital as an integral part of the scientific enterprise. while the plurality of methods, languages and objects exists within science, in the dimension of political struggle, unity overlaps all of that. if research takes place in specific institutes, it is the university that fights the battle of working conditions, it is the broad societies, such as the brazilian society for the progress of science (sbpc) or the american association for the advancement of science (aaas), the academies such as the brazilian academy of sciences (abc), national academy of sciences (nas), the royal society and so on, which face the battle with other fields. thus, depending on the level of analysis and the dynamics of the object of study, the unit or separation will appear more or less strongly. power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 39 understanding of career strategies is only possible when one deeply understands the conceptual issues involved. understanding, for example, that the axiomatization proposed by everett had a meaning in the field that was quite distinct from von neumann’s axiomatization, and that they were contemporaries of the holder of the authority monopoly in these matters (namely, niels bohr) requires an appreciation of the internal dynamics of quantum mechanics. a historical analysis following bourdieu’s approach requires an understanding of the rules that are in force at the moment in the scientific field, of how these rules are being disputed, and of the significance of this dispute for the symbolic capital market. bourdieu, then, dissolves the separation of what is external to science with what is internal by unifying everything within a single dynamic that is interdependent. the fight is about power, but the logic of that power is the very logic of the scientific field. bohr, everett, and wheeler aimed at increasing their own scientific capital. that historical episode was a power struggle. simultaneously, bohr defended his contextual (pragmatic-transcendental) interpretation, wheeler approached the problem of a universal wave function for a universe without an external observer (and therefore without context), while everett developed an interpretation that did not depend on an additional postulate. therefore, a cognitive dispute. for bourdieu, despite written in different languages, both descriptions, the one around power and the one about the cognitive dimension of the problem, are similar and are a part, as a single entity, of the analysis of the scientific field. references beller, m. 1999. jocular commemorations: the copenhagen spirit. osiris (14): 252-273. (special issue “commemorative practices in science: historical perspectives on the politics of collective memory”) blum, a.; lalli, r.; renn, j. 2015. the reinvention of general relativity: a historiographical framework for assessing one hundred years of curves space-time. isis 106 (3): 598620. blum, a.; lalli, r.; renn, j. 2016. the renaissance of general relativity: how and why it happened. annalen der physik 528 (5): 344-349. bourdieu, p. 1975. the specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason. social science information – sur les sciences sociales 14 (6): 19-47. bourdieu, p. o campo científico, p. 122-155. in ortiz, r. (org.) 1983. pierre bourdieu. são paulo: ática. bourdieu, p. 1984. homo academicus. stanford: stanford university press. bourdieu, p. 1991. the peculiar history of scientific reason. sociological forum 6 (1): 3-26. bourdieu, p. 2001. science de la science et réflexivité. paris : raisons d’agir. byrne, p. 2010. the many worlds of hugh everett iii: multiple universes, mutual assured destruction, and the meltdown of a nuclear family. new york: oxford university press. feyerabend, p. 1993. against method. 3.ed. london: verso. freire jr., o. 2003. a story without an ending: the quantum physics controversy 1950–1970. science & education (12): 573-86. freire jr., o. 2004. the historical roots of ‘foundations of quantum physics’ as a field of research (1950-1970). foundations of physics (34): 1741-1759. freire jr., o. 2005. science and exile: david bohm, the cold war, and a new interpretation of quantum mechanics. historical studies in the physical and biological sciences 36 (1): 1-34. freire jr., o. 2015. the quantum dissidents: rebuilding the foundations of quantum mechanics (1950-1990). berlim: springer. freire jr., o. 2019. david bohm – a life dedicated to understanding the quantum world. cham: switzerland, springer. freitas, f. h. a. 2007. os estados relativos de hugh everett iii: uma análise histórica e conceitual. dissertação: mestrado. programa de pós-graduação em ensino, filosofia e power relations in science: the bohr and wheeler-everett dialogue on the foundations of quantum mechanics fábio freitas; olival freire jr.; iolanda faria 40 história das ciências. salvador: universidade federal da bahia; feira de santana: universidade estadual de feira de santana, 80 p. freitas, f., freire jr., o. 2008a. para que serve uma função de onda?: everett, wheeler e uma nova interpretação da teoria quântica. revista da sociedade brasileira de história da ciência 1 (1): 12-25. freitas, f., freire jr., o., 2008b. a formulação dos ‘estados relativos’ da teoria quântica. revista brasileira de ensino de física 30 (2): 2307. jammer, m. 1974. the philosophy of quantum mechanics: the interpretations of quantum mechanics in historical perspective. new york: john willey. latour, b. 2000. ciência em ação: como seguir cientistas e engenheiros sociedade afora. (trad. de ivone benedetti). são paulo: unesp. osnaghi, s.; freitas, f.; freire jr., o. 2009. the origin of the everettian heresy. studies in history and philosophy of modern physics (40): 97–123. pinch, t. what does a proof if it does not prove? a study of the social conditions and metaphysical divisions leading david bohm and john von neumann failing to communicate in quantum physics, p. 171-218, in mendelsohn, e., weingart, p., whitley, r. (orgs.) 1977. the social production of scientific knowledge. dordrecht: d. reidel. rickles, dean. 2018. geon wheeler: from nuclear to spacetime physics. european physical journal h: historical perspectives on contemporary physics (43): 243-265. trigg, g. l.; hammerton, m. et al. 1971. still more quantum mechanics. physics today, 24 (10): 11. microsoft word batan layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-6 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal obituary luis salvatico (october 23, 1963 – december 24, 2022) marcela renée becerra batán1 – http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0201-3190 received: may 17, 2023. reviewed: may 30, 2023. accepted: may 30, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.14 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ last december 24, 2022, the academic community of philosophy and history of science in argentina and south america was shocked by the sad and unexpected news of the death of luis salvatico. despite the mourning a few months after his departure, writing a few lines in his memory in this journal is necessary and opportune. the formative years coming from the city of san francisco (córdoba, argentina), salvatico entered the faculty of philosophy and humanities (ffyh) of the national university of córdoba (unc) in 1985. this is how salvatico himself referred to this event: when i began my philosophy studies, argentina was in the process of returning to democracy after a dictatorship that had decimated critical thinking in general and philosophy in particular. also significant were certain institutional changes in the philosophy career that were made since 1986. a few years earlier, víctor rodríguez had returned from a research stay in the department of history and philosophy of science at the university of pittsburg, and somehow, he brought a wealth of experiences that we tried to reproduce in córdoba. these experiences materialized in a new curriculum with an area of specialization in epistemology and the history of science.2 salvatico highlights here the historical context in which processes of democratic normalization began in the national universities and the institutions and practices of teaching and research in philosophy began to be recreated after all that the last civil-military dictatorship in argentina had violently destroyed. in this context, salvatico underlines the name of víctor rodríguez, who in 1986 promoted the creation of the logical-epistemological area of the school of philosophy as one of the areas of specialization of the new plan of studies of the philosophy career in the ffyh-unc. salvatico would always recognize his training debts with victor rodriguez, who was initially his professor in the two courses of history of science of that new plan of studies and 1 marcela renée becerra batán es vicedirectora del instituto de ciencias humanas y sociales (iichs), facultad de ciencias humanas, universidad nacional de san luis (unsl). address: 950, ejército de los andes av., p. c. 5700-san luis, san luis, argentina. e-mail: iichsunsl@gmail.com 2 luis salvatico, personal communication, email to author, november 14, 2018. obituary: luis salvatico marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 later, the director of his thesis of bachelor of philosophy (unc, 1989) and his ph.d. thesis in philosophy (universidad nacional de la plata – unlp, 2003). both theses expose a singular style of thinking and doing the history of science closely linked to philosophy in general and epistemology in particular. or one could also say a style of thinking and doing philosophy/epistemology inseparable from the history of science and historical cases. in salvatico (2006) – a book that presents a reworking of his doctoral thesis –, salvatico refers first of all to moments and teachers that marked the path toward his thesis: as an undergraduate student, the history mentioned above history of science courses taught by víctor rodríguez, in which dazzling readings and discussions were proposed; as a graduate student in the doctoral program in philosophy at the complutense university of madrid, josé miguel gambra’s classes on aristotelian philosophy of science; at the uned (spain), the lectures directed by manuel sellés on cosmology from newton to herschel; and upon his return to argentina, the suggestions of guillermo ranea, co-director of his doctoral thesis, on the “cleanliness” of the concept of mechanicism. to meet this challenge, salvatico plans a strategy: to propose the theoretical notion of “pure mechanicism” and use it to reconstruct and evaluate particular cases of natural philosophies of the seventeenth century and demonstrate some of the transformations that occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. encouraged by his “conviction that an important group of seventeenth-century natural philosophers was guided in their scientific work and philosophical systematization by a set of common intuitions” (salvatico 2006, 167), salvatico elaborates the aforementioned theoretical notion, knowing that it is one of those “anachronistically imposed structural categories, constructed to order complexity” (machamer 1998, 71). this book clarifies and stimulates debates on the complex subject of mechanicism, which the history of philosophy, the history of science and the philosophy of science have treated. the epistemology and history of science conferences (las jornadas de epistemología e historia de la ciencia) salvatico has been fully committed to the jornadas de epistemología e historia de la ciencia since its first edition in 1989. organized by the logical-epistemological area of the school of philosophy and the research center of the ffyh-unc, these conferences have promoted exchanges, the formation of groups and networks, the production of knowledge in history and philosophy of science, and the transformation of research and teaching practices. many researchers from argentina and other latin american countries have participated in these conferences for three decades. and from them, the volumes of “selected papers” of each edition of the jornadas emerged, which from 2016 would become the current journal epistemología e historia de la ciencia. salvatico was an active and enthusiastic organizer and participant in practically all the conferences, editor of volumes of “selected papers”, and later, member of the editorial committee of the referred journal. when asked about how the jornadas contributed to the constitution and growth of lines of research in epistemology and history of science in argentina, salvatico responded: i consider that the jornadas contributed to consolidating the specialty of philosophy of science with a historical approach. of course, one should not forget that during many years of logical empiricism, philosophers devoted themselves to the task of making logical reconstructions of scientific theories (...) but scientific activity observed through the prism of history offers an entirely diverse and varied perspective; the image offered by this prism shows many details that the ‘big picture’ (kuhn, lakatos, laudan, etc.) does not manage to show. for this reason, and at the price of observing details and at the expense of describing the landscape, history has much to say about obituary: luis salvatico marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 how the scientific enterprise develops. the jornadas of epistemology were and are a space to delight in some of the many details found in scientific activity.3 teaching after a valuable undergraduate and graduate teaching career, salvatico became a full professor at unc. his last undergraduate teaching activity was the teaching of “two subjects in two faculties: history of science ii in the bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the faculty of philosophy and humanities (ffyh) and epistemology of social sciences and social work in the social work career at the faculty of social sciences (fcs)”.4 it is worth briefly referring to the 2022 programs of these two subjects since they demonstrate the persistent philosophical stakes of salvatico’s teaching practice and its close relationship with his research practice. salvatico always emphasized the distinctive seal of the plan of studies of the bachelor’s degree in philosophy of the ffyh-unc, in which two mandatory history of science courses are within the logical-epistemological area. in this sense, in the rationale of his 2022 “history of science ii” program, he expressed the following: in the second historical module of the logical-epistemological area, we try to continue with the basic training in the history of science, both in methodological aspects and in contents (...) in addition, a sensitive approach to philosophical issues in general and epistemological issues, in particular, is attempted, trying to show various relationships between science and philosophy from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.5 in terms of content, this program proposes six thematic nuclei: historiography of science; 2. darwin and darwinism; 3. the young einstein and his context; 4. the revolution of the microworld; 5. the road to dna; 6. the role of models and the evolution of simulation in social sciences are all accompanied by epistemological reflections. in particular, the thematic nucleus 56 is a sample of the mutual enrichments that occurred between this program and the one considered below. in the rationale of the “epistemology of social sciences and social work” program,7 salvatico emphasizes the unavoidable task of epistemological analysis and evaluation of the knowledge assumed, borrowed, produced and validated in the field of social work, the usefulness of epistemology as a critical tool in the training of social workers, useful both for their research practices and for their intervention practices. a “case analysis” corresponding to the epistemological approach addressed in each of the five units is proposed. throughout the program, an epistemology attentive to the specificity of theories and practices in social work is provided. in particular, unit 4, which deals with the emergence, expiration and transformation of classifications in the social sciences, is closely linked to several of the cases studied in the last research project directed by salvatico. 3 luis salvatico, personal communication, email to author, november 14, 2018. 4 luis salvatico, personal communication, email to author, september 2, 2022. 5 https://blogs.ffyh.unc.edu.ar/escueladefilosofia/files/2022/08/18.-historia-ii.pdf 6 with the titles referring to the creation of biosocial groups: autism, alzheimer’s disease, etc., in which the questions of the creation and changes of concepts in human and social sciences and, in particular, the “looping effect” (hacking 1995) of the classes of such sciences are dealt with – 7 https://sociales.unc.edu.ar/asignaturas/545-epistemolog-de-las-ciencias-sociales-y-el-trabajo-social obituary: luis salvatico marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 research after having integrated different projects for more than a decade, from 2006 onwards, salvatico served as director of the following research projects: “the development of mechanical philosophy from the publication of principia mathematica (1687) to the emergence of field theory” (years 2006-2007); “natural philosophy in the seventeenth century concerning the cultural context: case studies and historiographical evaluation (years 2008-2009 and continuation in 2010-2011); “embodied science: an ambiguous idea for the contextualization of science. case studies” (years 2016-2017) and finally, “materiality and stability in human and natural sciences. case studies” (years 2018-2022).8 from these projects, salvatico presented research results in publications and national and international scientific meetings,9 as well as trained researchers, thesis students, scholarship holders and graduate and postgraduate trainees. the co-director of the last two mentioned projects: hernán severgnini, points out that, although luis salvatico always directed projects from the perspective of “a philosophy of science very sensitive to the history of science”, since 2016, there has been “an expansion in the research topics”. in this regard, salvatico’s new tasks in teaching and management in the faculty of social sciences and the interactions in that context led him to “update his research in the field of human and social sciences” to “produce philosophical reflections in that field” and to include human and social science topics in his project.10 this is especially visible in the latest project, completed in 2022. at the beginning of the presentation of this project, it is stated that the history of science is not used to present “instances that illustrate philosophical conceptualizations of science”, but rather it is the concrete scientific practices, the cases in the history of science, that “dictate the path of philosophical reflection. the a priori philosophical parameters we use in the research are only heuristic and may be modified in the course of inquiry into the cases”.11 here is the abstract: in this project, we continue to investigate the ‘embodied’ character of science; by the expression ‘embodied science,’ we refer to the implicit material character of many of its scientific practices (which we consider present in both natural and human sciences), to its technological pretension and its social and economic context (situacionalidad), among other factors. in this project, we assume that scientific research, in its attempt to stabilize itself, shows in its concrete practice aspects of this materialization. the standardization of conceptual and material technologies will be seen as one of the goals of scientific activity. the diversity of cases chosen is pertinent since it allows the game greater flexibility in producing philosophical reflection. we are guided by the assumption that these aspects of scientific practices give rise to a novel epistemology as a philosophical approach while serving as a heuristic for analyzing historical cases.12 8 the unc’s secretariat of science and technology (secyt) evaluates and funds all projects. 9 luis salvatico’s last participation in a scientific meeting was as a lecturer at the “ii jornadas latinoamericanas de epistemologia histórica/ i escola de história das ciências da unb”, organized by the research group epistasthai – epistemologia e história comparada das ciências humanas (cnpq) –, in the department of history, graduate program in history at national university of brasilia (unb). at this event, which took place from november 29 to december 2, 2022, in brasilia (brazil), luis salvatico delivered the opening lecture: “considerations on the inclusion of alexandre koyré in the bachelor’s degree in philosophy (unc). analysis of the case of the logical-epistemological area”. 10 hernán severgnini, personal communication, meet with the author, march 31, 2023. 11 presentation of the consolidate research project type i: “materiality and stability in human and natural sciences. case studies”, sent from secyt-unc to an external peer reviewer, september 17, 2018. 12 https://ffyh.unc.edu.ar/secyt/convocatorias/proyectos/ obituary: luis salvatico marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 the aforementioned “extension” of the project now led to the analysis not only “a) the technical and socio-economic context before the industrial revolution; b) the emergence of the steam engine and its relationship with the thermodynamic theory”,13 but also the following historical cases: c) the increase of autism spectrum disorder diagnoses in argentina in the last decades; d) the tensions involved in alzheimer’s disease as a human class c) the history of intersexuality as a self-ascriptive class (hacking), d) the origins of the ‘migrant’ class in the social-scientific treatment of the migration problem; e) the interactions between the classified and the concrete interventions that the ‘science of migration’; f) the methodology of work in the studies of molecular medicine, attending to the in vitro-in vivo materializations; g) the processes of stabilization of the social histories of childhood in the context of education in psychology; h) the conceptions of childhood as material operators in the theories of psychological development.14 management as severgnini emphasizes, “much of luis’ activity was management, both in the faculty of philosophy and humanities and in the faculty of social sciences. he was called to many management positions because of his personality, people skills, and ability to connect, reconcile disputes and work with very different people”.15 among these, the following stand out: secretary of coordination of the ffyh-unc from 2008 to 2011; secretary general of the board of directors of the ffyh-unc from 2009 to 2011; director of the maría saleme burnichon research center of the ffyh-unc from 2011 to 2015; secretary of research and graduate school of social work of the fcs-unc from 2013 to 2016; counselor of the fcs-unc from 2018 to 2021; coordinator of the logical-epistemological area of the school of philosophy in 2022. it is also worth mentioning management positions in the philosophical association of philosophy and history of science (afhic), where he was pro-secretary from 2009 to 2011 and director of scientific dissemination from 2010 to 2012. commitment and legacy as soon as the news of luis salvatico’s death was received, institutional mourning was declared at the ffyh-unc,16 the organizing committee of the conference on epistemology and history of science sent an email to the community, the journal epistemology and history of science published an “editorial in memoriam...”17 in its last issue, and the department of history of the national university of brasilia unb issued a “note of mourning”.18 under the emotional impact of this surprising and sad event, one of the words that appeared recurrently was “commitment”. with this word, how salvatico assumed the challenges and responsibilities of university management and teaching, research and communication in philosophy and history of science, in the times and spaces in which he lived and acted, was synthesized. in this regard, it can be said that luis salvatico embodies the commitment of that youth who, after the last civil-military dictatorship in argentina, was fully involved in the return and consolidation of democracy in national universities and particularly 13 luis salvatico, personal communication, email to author, november 14, 2018. 14 ibidem 15 hernán severgnini, personal communication, meet with the author, march 31, 2023. 16 https://ffyh.unc.edu.ar/noticias/12/2022/duelo-institucional-por-el-fallecimiento-de-luis-salvatico/ 17 https://revistas.unc.edu.ar/index.php/afjor/article/view/39983/40266 18 http://www.his.unb.br/noticias/161-nota-de-pesar-prof-luis-salvatico obituary: luis salvatico marcela renée becerra batán transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 in the cultivation of a way of teaching and research in philosophy inseparable from the history of science. therefore, it is time to assume and recreate his legacy19 to continue making the way forward. references hacking, ian. 1995. the looping effects of human kinds. causal cognition: a multidisciplinary debate. ed. dan sperber, david premark and ann james premark, chapter 12, 351-383. machamer, peter. 1998. galileo’s machines, his mathematics, and his experiments. in the cambridge companion to galileo, edited by peter machamer, 53-79, cambridge: cambridge university press. salvatico, luis. 2006. depurando el mecanicismo moderno: análisis de filosofías naturales del siglo xvii a partir de una noción teórica. córdoba: encuentro grupo editor. 19 hernán severgnini is currently facing the challenge of the academic design of “history of science i” and “history of science ii”. he expresses that, in doing so, he asks himself: “what would luis be telling me...?” and also that he tries to continue cultivating “a history of science that puts philosophical conceptions in a crucible and in evaluation” and “a philosophy of science inseparable from historical cases” (hernán severgnini, personal communication, meet with the author, march 31, 2023). luis salvatico’s opening lecture, “considerations on the inclusion of alexandre koyré in the bachelor’s degree in philosophy (unc). analysis of the case of the logical-epistemological area”. at the national university of brasilia (unb), brazil, november 29, 2022. microsoft word martinez layout obituary: ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-5 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal obituary ian hacking (february 18, 1936 – may 10, 2023) maría laura martínez1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0011-0472 received: may 26, 2023. reviewed: june 02, 2023. accepted: june 02, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.12 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ on may 10, 2023, at 87, ian hacking, professor emeritus at the university of toronto, passed away. a contemporary philosopher who successfully reconciled the analytic and continental traditions, hacking was the first english-speaking philosopher to obtain a permanent professorship at the collège de france (2000-2006). throughout his prolific intellectual life, he worked on a wide range of topics, including, to mention only a few, probability, scientific experimentation, the creation of phenomena, language, the problem of induction, proof and deduction in mathematics, statistics and chance, classifications in natural and human sciences, transient mental illness, social construction, theories of meaning, truth, the realism/constructivism controversy, and styles of scientific reasoning. he published over a dozen books and numerous articles about these themes. but the breadth of his interests goes back to his formative years. first, he studied mathematics and physics at the university of british columbia. he then moved to cambridge university. there he earned a b.a. and ph.d. in moral science with two separate papers: one proving some theorems of modal logic and another, derived from the wittgensteinian philosophy of mathematics and entitled “proof”, a reflection of his early interests in philosophy and a forerunner of his book why is there philosophy of mathematics at all? (2014). hacking characterized his work as the result of “looking at the rich complexity of the world.” his insatiable curiosity and the idea that the objects about which philosophy reflects must be sought outside the philosophical realm led him not only to do philosophy “in many different ways” but to make his work relevant and exciting not exclusively to philosophy but to various disciplines. in addition, his talent for storytelling made him a public intellectual whose articles can be read, among others, in the globe and mail, new republic, the new york review of books, the london review of books, etc. bridging the gap trained as an analytic philosopher with an emphasis on philosophical logic, hacking always considered himself within that tradition. however, several of his works have a prevalently historical mood, and he acknowledged the profound influence exerted on much of his work 1 maría laura martínez is an assistant professor in the history and philosophy of science department, facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación, universidad de la república, uruguay. address: edificio central – avenida uruguay 1695 – 11.200 montevideo – uruguay. e-mail: marialauramartinez1@gmail.com obituary: ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 by philosophers in the continental tradition, notably michel foucault. hacking noted that his reading of the order of things changed his view as an analytic philosopher to whom it did not occur that context could have the slightest relevance for philosophy. however, hacking did not consider himself, nor was he, a disciple of foucault; instead, he adopted and adapted foucauldian ideas for his purposes. hacking set out to bridge the gap between analytic and continental philosophies without losing its potential, to show that analytic philosophy and historical sensibility need not be antithetical but can be convergent. his reading of philosophical texts from the past by analyzing, as he argues in historical ontology (2002, 34-39), the words in their sites to understand how we think and why we seem compelled to think in specific ways is an exercise in that reconciliation of traditions. hacking considers that foucault’s history of the present is vital to understanding the general concepts and the root of their issues. it is necessary to consider the prehistory of concepts and what has made them possible to grasp the nature of philosophical problems. of course, this understanding will not prevent the problems from continuing to trouble us, and it will not make them disappear, but analyzing the words in their sites will allow us to reveal the mutations that occurred in thought that made them possible and the real historical articulation with the schemes of concepts and practices already superseded. the point is not to understand the world but to change it perhaps the work that gave hacking the most visibility, at least in the anglo-saxon philosophical sphere, is representing and intervening (1983), considered fundamentally a defense of scientific realism. however, in scientific reason (2009), hacking wonders: is realism important? no. was it then (in 1983), and has he changed his mind now? again, no. it turns out, says hacking, evoking the beginning of that work, that: disputes about reason and reality have long polarized philosophers of science [...] is either kind of questions important? i doubt it. we do want to know what is really real and what is truly rational. yet you will find that i dismiss most questions about rationality, and i am a realist on only the most pragmatic of grounds. (2009, 146) his realism had a pragmatic basis. the book discussed the experiment and aimed to claim its independence from theory. at that time, scientific realism was in vogue, while philosophical interest in experiments was still shy. hacking used the controversy about scientific realism as a strategy for his fundamental purpose: to reverse the traditional hierarchy of theory over the experiment and show that the latter has a life of its own, independent of the former. to that end, he intended, through the treatment and defense of a scientific realism of entities, to show the importance of experimentation, of doing in science. the overemphasis in the philosophy of science on the analysis of theory and representation has, according to hacking, contributed to the fact that most of the philosophical debate about scientific realism has been in terms of theory, representation and truth but has said almost nothing about experiments, technology or the use of knowledge to modify the world. where does this obsession with representation come from? according to hacking, human beings are representers. not homo faber, but homo depictor. different theories are different representations of the same reality. but, if the realism debate is presented solely in terms of theories and their representational capacity or function, at best, a realist position can be established concerning them, and anti-realism will always be lurking. hacking seeks an argument at another level of discussion, in which the central notion is not that of reference but that of manipulation. hacking does not claim that this experimental argument is the only evidence about the reality of an entity, nor that reality is constituted by the human ability to manipulate. obituary: ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 however, he believes that manipulation is the more convincing argument in that scientists not only feel the entities they use are as real as their hands but can do something else with them. it is a practical skill that breeds conviction. experimenting is more than testing theories: it interferes with the course of nature. the important thing is to make, intervene and create phenomena because “the point is not to understand the world but to change it” (hacking 1983, 274). making up people parallel to his work on the natural sciences, hacking, from the 1980s onwards, also tackled the study of the human sciences. in the first pages of the taming of chance (1990), he introduces us to them by syndicating statistics as a trigger for notions such as making up people. statistical bureaucracy imposes itself not only by creating rules but by determining the classifications within which people can think of themselves and the actions they are allowed to take. statistics are not mere reporting; each new census creates new kinds of people and, consequently, new ways of being and behaving. the exciting thing about human action, hacking argues, is that what is done depends on the possibilities of description. hence, if new modes of description appear, new possibilities of action appear as a consequence. if the description does not exist, an action could have occurred but not under that description. as a result, the past is often reorganized and reinterpreted. old actions under new descriptions can be re-experienced in memory. that is what has happened, according to hacking, for example, with child abuse, which has expanded so that more and more situations fall under its description, and more and more people end up retrospectively seeing themselves as abusers and/or abused. often, creating a human kind provides the space for certain beings to fit into it and, in a sense, to be. a trivial example, as hacking says in the social construction of what? (1999, 25-29), is that of the television-viewing child. although children watched television from the invention of the set, there was no particular kind of children who were television children until the television child came to be regarded as a social problem. but one does not first form the concept and then discover the regularities or laws of the objects that fit into this category. the process is interactive; the kind of people emerges at the same time that the class itself is invented. postulating a classification and applying it to people produces effects on the individuals so classified, inducing changes in their self-conception and behavior, which in turn produce modifications in the existing classification. while people tend to behave according to the way they are classified, hacking argues in rewriting the soul (1995), they often “take matters into their own hands” (1995, 38) and develop their ways, requiring revisions of classification and theories, of causal connections and expectations, to adapt to the new characteristics of their members. this feedback process, or looping effect of human kinds, makes the phenomena studied by the human sciences unstable and moving targets. their objects have a historical ontology referring to “[...] the ways in which the possibilities for choice, and for being, arise in history” (hacking 2002, 23) based on distinct possibilities. hacking continues foucault’s path by thinking of the constitution of subjects not in universalizable terms but as a process that occurs in time and place, in specific local and historical forms. his ontology is not concerned with being in general terms but with its particular trajectories and affirms – in a vision that he defines as almost existentialist – that there is no wholly fixed human nature to discuss. genealogy of scienti ic reason: investigating how we do research statistics – from which new kinds of people are created – constitute the background and, simultaneously, an example of what hacking first proposed as styles of scientific reasoning obituary: ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 and, later, as styles of scientific thinking & doing. this meta-concept, which hacking developed over more than three decades and which owes much to the work of the australian historian alistair crombie but also, and perhaps more so, to michel foucault, was the result of trying to resolve and generalize questions that had arisen from the study of such exemplars as probabilistic and statistical styles. from his earliest works, hacking shows interest in investigating how we came to live in a universe of possibilities in which everything is thought of in terms of probability. a world that did not exist until the 17th century. his books the emergence of probability (1975) and the taming of chance attempt to tell that story, not pretending to explain questions about the foundations of statistical reasoning, as they are addressed in the logic of statistical inference (1965) or an introduction to probability and inductive logic (2001), but by performing another kind of exercise: what foucault called archaeology. in the emergence of probability, hacking resorts to historical detail, putting under the magnifying glass and reconstituting probabilistic thought from its origins to show how during the 17th century, and as a result of a radical change that occurred very quickly from preceding renaissance conceptions, probabilistic reasoning developed in opposition to a deterministic view of reality. its central idea is that the specificity of probability is the duality and recurrent tension between two aspects of something like a “double janus head”. on the one hand, in epistemic terms, probability aims at assessing reasonable degrees of belief and on the other, in statistical terms, it is connected with the tendency exhibited by some devices to produce stable relative frequencies of long duration. hacking pursues the trace of this idea of duality through the major stages enumerated between 1654 and 1678, defending the idea that the notion of probability that emerged in the seventeenth century preserves this initial duality up to the present day. the emergence of probability shows how style generates a priori, but in history, the possibility that, in this case, the concept of probability becomes thinkable. but style is also a condition of possibility for the emergence of particular objects. the taming of chance illustrates, for example, how adolphe quetelet, based on his statistical studies of the thoracic diameter measurements of scottish soldiers distributed according to average, creates a new type of object: the population characterized by an average and a standardized dispersion (1990, 105-114). each style postulates a set of novelties that includes new types of objects that are individualized from the style itself and are not previously evident; elements of proof and demonstration of its own; new laws and possibilities; new types of classification and explanation; statements that before the existence of the style could not be uttered. this hacking project aims to perform a genealogy of scientific reason, to investigate how we investigate, to analyze the various general methods of scientific work that can be recognized from antiquity to the present, and the different ways of investigating that have enabled humans to dominate the planet. each style is based on evolutionary innate human capacities, which are discovered, exploited and developed in specific historical situations, being used in different ways in different historical contexts. thus, styles are the product of cognition and culture. as human culture develops, we learn to use these skills in entirely new ways. as a result, we learn how to investigate. a philosophical use of history for hacking, the concepts, the objects of human sciences, the ways of telling the truth, investigating, etc., have history. despite defining his intellectual project as philosophical, hacking bases and defends his philosophical reflections historically, in a perspective that is not a mere conflation but an integration of history and philosophy. “the history that i want is the history of the present” (1992, 5), says hacking, and this entails “[...] that we recognize and distinguish historical objects in order to illuminate our own predicaments” (1992, 5). if the present condition is the product of historical obituary: ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 developments, then its understanding cannot be but historical. however, as simos and arabatzis (2021, 154) have pointed out, hacking does not limit himself to using historical data philosophically but using philosophy; he elaborates historiographical concepts, metahistorical ideas, narratives and facts. in his works, philosophical ideas are historically informed, and historical facts are philosophically charged. thus, according to daston (2007, 802), in the emergence of probability, hacking poses a new kind of question: “what are the conceptual preconditions for the emergence of a concept so apparently simple, so useful, indeed indispensable – and yet so strangely absent before circa 1650 – as the modern notion of probability?” this question arises in the canadian philosopher from the interest that i consider underlies, in general, all his work: the question about the historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of scientific concepts and objects (martínez 2021). the diversity of themes and problems hacking addressed could lead us to mistakenly think of his work as characterized by a certain dispersion. however, and even though he declared not to have felt the need to unify his work, a more profound and more systematic approach to his thought shows us the persistence of certain central interests that appear from the beginning and that, with greater or lesser visibility, were always present in his research. hacking was interested, fundamentally influenced by foucault, in analyzing the historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of scientific concepts and objects such as probability, objectivity, memory, chance, multiple personality disorder, trauma, child abuse, transient mental illness, and fugueurs, among others. under this general framework hacking dedicated his work (and his life) to “take a look at the rich complexity of the world”. indeed, that is why it is not easy to find any significant philosophical debate in the last fifty years to which hacking has not tried to make a profound contribution in some way. that is also why his ideas will undoubtedly continue to guide many of us who work in the field of the history and philosophy of science. references daston, lorraine. 2007. the emergence of probability: a philosophical study of early ideas about probability, induction, and statistical inference, by ian hacking. isis 98(4): 801808. hacking, ian. 1965. the logic of statistical inference. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1975. the emergence of probability. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1983. representing and intervening. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1990. the taming of chance. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1992. ‘style’ for historians and philosophers. studies in history and philosophy of science 23: 1-20. hacking, ian. 1995. rewriting the soul. multiple personality and the sciences of memory. princeton: princeton university. hacking, ian. 1999. the social construction of what? cambridge: harvard university. hacking, ian. 2001. an introduction to probability and inductive logic. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 2002. historical ontology. london: harvard university. hacking, ian. 2009. scientific reason. taiwan: national taiwan university. hacking, ian. 2014. why is there philosophy of mathematics at all? cambridge: cambridge university. martínez, maría laura. 2021. the texture in ian hacking’s work. michel foucault as the guiding thread of hacking’s thinking. synthese library, vol. 435, springer nature. simos, manolis. and arabatzis, theodore. 2021. ian hacking’s metahistory of science. philosophical inquiries 9(1): 145-165. microsoft word martínez layout number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-17 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0011-0472] abstract: ian hacking has repeatedly pointed out the influence that the work of michel foucault had early in his work, an influence that came mainly through his reading of foucault’s les mots et les choses (1966). in this sense, it is reasonable to trace the foucauldian lineage in many of the notions hacking proposes for “how we found out how to find out” (hacking 2010, april 21, 3), and, more particularly, in the latter’s assessment of how to work in the human sciences is carried forth. however, i argue that foucault exerted an even more fundamental influence that underlies the totality of hacking’s work: namely, having stimulated hacking’s interest in analyzing the historical conditions of possibility of the emergence of scientific objects and concepts. to show this, in this article, i first focus on two works by hacking—the emergence of probability (1975) and why does language matter to philosophy? (1975a)—in which he adopts an archeological perspective which, i argue, clearly adumbrates foucault’s influence. i then turn to the taming of chance (1990), rewriting the soul (1995) and mad travelers (1998), where i contend that, added to the archeological contributions, it is possible to identify traces of foucault’s genealogical period. keywords: influence of michel foucault in the thinking of ian hacking; archeology; genealogy; human sciences; styles of scientific reasoning; historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of scientific concepts and objects. received: march 7, 2022. reviewed: april 13, 2022. accepted: april 27, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ early texts: preeminence of the archeological influence in the preface to les mots et les choses (1966) (the order of things, 2005), foucault presents the text as an archeology rather than as a ‘historical’ text in the traditional understanding of the concept. that is, foucault understands his approach as a history of the historical conditions of possibility of knowledge which depend on the experience of an order that is 1 maría laura martínez is an assistant professor in the history and philosophy of science department, facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación, universidad de la república, uruguay. address: edificio central – avenida uruguay 1695 – 11.200 montevideo – uruguay. e-mail: marialauramartinez1@gmail.com number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 […] anterior to words, perceptions, and gestures, which are then taken to be more or less exact, more or less happy […] more solid, more archaic, less dubious, always more ‘true’ than the theories that attempt to give those expressions explicit form, exhaustive application, or philosophical foundation. (foucault 2005, xxiii; 1966, 12) according to foucault, every mode of thought involves implicit rules that materially restrict the range of thought, and that do not define the existence of reality nor the canonical use of a vocabulary. rather, these rules define the ‘order of things’. discovering these rules allows one to see that an apparently arbitrary constraint actually has meaning within the scheme defined by such rules. the analysis of what cannot be controlled by individuals that live and think within a determinate epoch is key for understanding the constraints within which these individuals think. archeology does not deal with textual analyses or with specific matters regarding, e.g., the meaning of particular words or the logical and rhetorical connection between determinate utterances. instead, archeology positions itself behind the manifest level of a specific linguistic use. the order of things is not the only work by foucault that illustrates this methodology. in the same way in which this work asks about the acts that make possible the emergence of the object named “abstract humanity,” histoire de la folie (1961) (history of madness, 2006) and naissance de la clinique (1963) (the birth of the clinic, 2003) ask about the what makes possible the emergence the objects named “madness” and “illness”, respectively. beyond the different perspectives which, in the first case, ask about the constitution of forms of enunciation—the human sciences—in the second about an object—madness—and in the third about the constitution of a subject-gaze—the doctor and the clinic—the three texts find common ground in their intentions, and constitute a single project (morey 1983, 33). similarly, in the emergence of probability (1975) hacking wonders about the historical conditions of possibility that gave rise to the science of probability: we should not ask, why did people fail to study these objects? we should ask instead, how did these objects of thought come in to being? all the conjectural explanations i have described try to locate something lacking in prepascalian times. no one denies that arithmetic and nascent capitalism were lacking, nor that one or the other may be essential to the development of probability theory, once probability is a possible object of thought. we should, however, try to find out how probability became possible at all. (hacking 1975, 9) the text’s central claim affirms that many of the philosophical conceptions of probability were formed following the nature of conceptions from the renaissance, which immediately preceded a mutation that took place in the field around 1660. this reference has to do, on the one hand, with how the space of possibility is structured so that the concept of ‘probability’ can emerge, here understood as our current concept of a ‘dual probability’. this is something that hacking addresses in the first chapters of the book. on the other hand, the reference has to do with affirmations such as the ones made by foucault in the opening pages of the order of things, where he contends that “[…] it is rather an inquiry whose aim is to rediscover on what basis knowledge and theory became possible; within what space of order knowledge was constituted [...]” (foucault 2005, xxiii; 1966, 12). according to castro (1995, 91), the intention behind foucault’s texts is 1) to show that the different fields of knowledge studied are isomorphic between them and they depend on the same historical conditions of possibility, and 2) to demonstrate that neither philology, political economy, nor biology existed before the mutation that took place in western thought toward the end of the 18th century. relatedly, in the emergence of probability number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 hacking aims to 1) show that there is a space for possible theories of probability, and 2) to demonstrate that the field of probability is a product of the transformation of a certain conceptual structures that differ substantially from the field itself. even if he never explicitly states it as such, when hacking explains the methodology he uses in the aforementioned book to achieve these objectives, it is clear that he is following foucault’s archeological method. indeed, hacking practically paraphrases the characteristics of such a method when he asks the reader to imagine that there is a space of possible theories of probability, which has been stable since 1660 and until today. this space is the result of a radical transformation of preceding conceptions. he also proposes that an understanding of our space and its preconditions might free us from a cycle of theories of probability which has kept us tied for a long time. but hacking’s analysis is neither interested in authors nor possible predictions. it does not focus on the irregularities that can be found in the prehistory of a concept, but rather concentrates on its commonalities (1975, 16-17). in the paragraph above, one can identify several of the characteristics of the foucauldian archeological method. not only do hacking and foucault share the fundamental aim of studying the historical conditions that make possible the emergence of a determinate knowledge, of a concept, or of an object. they also share the idea that, in the case of probability, this space is derived from a radical transformation, following the notion of a ‘mutation’ or a ‘discontinuity’ in thinking—a fundamental category of the history and method of foucault’s archeology. ‘discontinuity’ is part of discursive functioning. it designates the set of breaks, dispersions, and interruptions that take place inside a determinate episteme. nevertheless, these breaks are not total, because practices and theories are never independent of what took place before them. the emphasis on discontinuity is a strategy that serves the aims of archeology, which deals with changes that take place when moving from one discursive formation to another—changes that take place, however, on a background of significant continuities. archeology does not differentiate itself from the traditional history of ideas because it ignores change or continuity, but because it takes discontinuities as seriously as continuities, instead of trying to reduce the former to a series of gradual changes that contribute to a final illumination. in the emergence of probability, hacking, for his part, refers to a radical mutation that took place rapidly parting from preceding conceptions from the renaissance, and which resulted in the emergence of probability: “the preconditions for probability will consist in something that is not probability but which was, through something like a mutation, transformed into probability” (hacking 1975, 9). the undermining of this type of continuity has been a necessary part of this new way of making history of ideas, in which the privileged role of the human subject is questioned— a presupposition that was part of the traditional approach. contrary to the latter, the former turns away from the subject and toward the conditions that define the discursive space in which speaking subjects exist. this encompasses a fundamental difference between the archeology and the traditional history of ideas, and which translates into different attitudes toward tradition and innovation. even while foucault does not rule out speaking of how philosophers, scientists, or other thinkers develop and transmit key concepts and theories to their successors, he considers that the viewpoints that center on the subject can lend themselves to distortions. foucault is not looking for the expressions of individuality or of society—the creative entity behind the works—but rather defines the discursive practices that pass through them. he is not interested in what humans have thought, wanted, attempted or wished to have spoken, but on what is written, that is, on the exteriority of discourse (foucault 1969, 182183). the objective of reading is not to discover the authors underlying intentions, but the deep structures of language itself, to go beyond individual consciousness and reveal the number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 4 unconscious episteme that defines and makes knowledge possible. that is why archeology does not construct the meaning of statements in terms of the intentions of the speaker, but contends that such meaning is to be found in the role that the statement plays within the discursive system. he emphasizes that the state upon which history is represented is established independently of our thoughts and actions. his project offers an internal analysis of thinking without granting the thinker a privileged position, as well as an analysis of the written word that does not center on the role of the writer. moving in the same direction as foucault, hacking contends: “our study is not of great men but rather of autonomous concept” (hacking 1975, 56). probability has a life of its own, it is autonomous, it exists in discourse, and not in the mind of the speakers. hacking is not interested in the authors but in the statements that they left behind. what matters, that is, is not who wrote what, but what was said. hacking worries about how and when can a same idea flourish in different places, in the commonalities, in how a family of ideas emerges permanently within discourse. this is why he tends to overlook anticipations, and people that can be presented as precursors of a modern way of thinking. according to foucault, archeology is not interested in foreshadowing ideas, but in the regularity of statements, in looking for the common structures within the texts and practices of an epoch that lie deeper than the level of signification. hacking speaks to this when he affirms: “whether motivated by god, or by gaming, or by commerce, or by the law, the same kind of idea emerged simultaneously in many minds” (hacking 1975, 103). it is within this framework that, in the order of things, foucault analyzes the periods that he names ‘renaissance’, ‘classical epoch’, and ‘modernity’, and tries to show how in each of these periods the disciplines that act as counterparts to the actual human sciences can be understood in terms of a unique episteme that is common to all of them. “in any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice” (foucault 2005, 183; 1966, 179). in this way, it is possible to define the classical episteme in relation to the articulated system of a genesis, a taxonomy, and a mathesis, in the same way, that “[…] then one sees that knowledge of nature, and reflection or practices concerning money, were controlled during the renaissance by one and the same configuration of the episteme.” (foucault 2005, 187; 1966, 183). ‘life’, ‘work’, ‘language’, are crucial concepts of knowledge that have no contact between them but that archeology aims to relate and articulate, asking for the similitudes between these three domains and whether these could have been affected by the same type of transformation. the heterogeneity of discourses vanishes in the face of a more basic homogeneity that reveals the compatibilities and coherences of one epoch, as well as the mutations and incompatibilities between different ones. according to the hypothesis that orients the order of things, “[…] in every culture, between the use of what one might call the ordering codes and reflections upon order itself, there is the pure experience of order and of its modes of being” (foucault 2005, xxiii; 1966, 12-13). in line with this, foucault attempts to find that which has made knowledges and theories possible—the ordering of space upon which knowledge has been constituted—and to discover upon which historical a priori and which elements of positivity have ideas, sciences, and rationalities been constituted. he tries to adumbrate the episteme in which knowledges burry their positivity and manifest a history of conditions of possibility. the order of things can be read as an archeology of the modes of being of language. it is from this historical analysis that foucault will define what he understands as ‘discourse’ number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 5 and ‘discursive practices’.2 in this work, foucault distinguishes four moments: language as commentary (the renaissance), language as discourse (classical period, 17th and 18th centuries), the fragmentation of language (modernity, 19th and 20th centuries), and the reappearance of language (the death of mankind). the episteme of the renaissance presents itself as ordering the world in terms of relations of similitude, and in it signs appear as constituted through their similarity with what they signify. language itself becomes a part of the world, a subsystem of similitudes: it participates in the great distribution of similitudes and signatures. knowledge, for its part, is understood as nothing more than a way of relating one of the forms of language with another, as a restitution of the great and uniform valley of words and things. it is giving birth, on top of all the marks, to the second discourse of commentary: interpretation. in the passage from the episteme of the renaissance to the classical episteme the living being disappears from language. the deep belonging of language and world is undone, and writing comes to the fore. words and things, that is, are torn apart. in this case, discourse has as its task to say what is the case, but it will not be more than what it says. just as the episteme of the renaissance was dominated by similitude, thus, the episteme of the classical period is dominated by representation. from this period onwards, the sign is the representativity of representation to the extent that this is representable. the solidity of language as a thing inscribed in the world dissolves into the functioning of representation. the art of language is a way of making a sign, of signifying at once a thing and making signs available around it. an art of naming and, at the same time, of capturing the name, of locking it and safekeeping it, of giving to it other names which are its differed presence. foucault studies meticulously the particular domains of the knowledge of this period: grammar in general, natural history, and the analysis of wealth. in the case of grammar, the goal is to establish a taxonomy of each language, a system of identities and differences that defines its particular mode of representation and provides the base for the possibility of discourse in each one of them. any grammar can be comprehended in terms of four key aspects of the representative function of language: attribution, articulation, designation, and derivation. these four functions can be organized as the apices of a quadrangle in whose center, where the two diagonals intersect, one finds the element around which the theory of language of the classical period is organized: the name. with the decline of representation and the resulting fragmentation of knowledge, between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, discourse stops playing the organizing role that it had for classical knowledge, and language loses the central position that it had occupied in the period’s episteme. things retract on themselves outside of an ordered representation. languages with their own history appear, as does life with its organization and autonomy, and labor with its own capacity for production. in the space left by discourse, man makes its appearance. language becomes just another object of language among others, even while this does not mean that it will not have a special place for modern thought. this is because language continues to be the medium through which any knowledge must be expressed. this foucauldian periodization partially coincides with the one performed by hacking in another of his early ‘archeological’ works, why does language matter to philosophy? 2. to the extent that his work sees itself redirected toward the study of dispositifs and practices, rather than toward epistemes, it situates discursive practices in the framework of practices in general—something that includes non-discursive practices. the central role is no longer occupied by the being of language but by its use and its practice in the context of other practices that are non-linguistic. that is to say, the theme of the being of language is substituted in posterior works by ‘what is done’ with language, in the perlocutionary sense of language as a medium that leads to concerted action. number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 6 (1975a), in which we can clearly see a historical dimension in the way hacking analyzes language, an interest—usually foreign to analytic philosophers such as hacking—for contextuality, which are fruit of his lectures of foucault. even while hacking is interested in the present situation of language, he considers necessary to provide a historical perspective that allows him to understand the actuality. in this way, he presents his analysis of the sequential changes in western philosophical practices concerning the relationship between cognitive representations and the world in three stages: 1) the heyday of ideas (17th century), 2) the heyday of meaning (early 20th century), and 3) the heyday of sentences (starting halfway through the 20th century). the heyday of ideas makes reference to the period in which mental language takes precedence over public language. the ideas of reality are the result of the actions of the ego’s experience and, at the same time, the cause of experience. there is no knowledge of externality that is not mediated by the ideas that are inside oneself. it is the cartesian ego that fixes the framework. the ego is capable of contemplating what is inside man and of taking into consideration what is outside. according to hacking, during this heyday, there is no theory of meaning as we understand it today. there is no preoccupation with meaning, to use fregean terms. the representatives of this heyday worked in something structurally similar to the current problems, even while the place now given to what is public was occupied by something private. particularly in the analysis of this period, there is a clear influence of the way foucault deals with grammar in general and with the port royal philosophers in the order of things. the problem of grammar in general—for hacking as much as for foucault—has to do with the “articulation” and it is in this sense that the former contends: “the problem of general grammar is to explain how articulated language effects the representation of a non-articulated part of the world” (hacking 1975a, 87). that is to say that the central problem of the metaphysics of the epoch has to do with the relation between ideas, words, and things; with the way in which representation really functions by means of words when these are presented in an articulate sequence, while things in the world are not. during the heyday of meaning, the second period pointed out by hacking, there is a need for meaningful sentences to be supported by existing meanings, which are the effective bearers of belief and knowledge. there is, thus, something below the level of what is said: what one wants to say. meanings make public discourse possible. following frege, hacking affirms that a theory of meaning is a theory of the possibility of public discourse. the last period, the heyday of sentences, starts with the failure of the verificationist process and the frequent doubts about the precision of meaning. in spite of their differences, in this period, hacking associates quine with feyerabend, considering that both object to the same elements of the positivist methodology and carry forth a similar positivistic movement by taking distance from meanings and converging in sentences. sentences have replaced ideas. knowledge has become sentential.3 this text by hacking reminds us of other works by foucault, such as the birth of the clinic. in the analysis of the heyday of ideas, for example, hacking practically reproduces the ideas of the french philosopher when referring to the idea of perception as described by descartes and malebranche—for whom seeing with the eyes is perceiving with the mind— and to the understanding same idea during the end of the 18th century—when objects become opaque and resist the physical light, instead of giving way to the mental light (hacking 1975a, 32-33) (foucault 2003, xiii; 1963, ix-x). even while this work by hacking is conceived in terms of philosophical analysis, it is not an analysis of concepts taken abstractly and atemporally, but of situated concepts, that is, 3. hacking returns to this topic in his book representing and intervening (1983, 181). number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 7 concepts considered within the statements in which they appear and, in a broader sense, considered in the context of the institutions, authorities, and languages from which they are expressed (hacking 1990a, 68). the reference to situated concepts is constant in hacking’s work. concepts are situated words (1984, 35). words that can express different concepts through changes, revolutions, breaks, mutations or epistemological cuts such as the ones that take place within bodies of knowledge. hence the importance of knowledge and of understanding their prehistory and the way they are used, in order to avoid conceptual misunderstandings. to investigate the principles that make them useful or useless or, eventually, problematic. because of this, it is important to comprehend, for example, the prehistory of probability: i guess […] that conceptual incoherence which creates philosophical perplexity is a historical incoherence between prior conditions that made a concept possible, and the concept made possible by those prior conditions. many of the fundamental problems about probability, chance and determinism may be of this sort. (hacking 1981a, 184) an adequate analysis of concepts demands giving account of their origin, trajectory and of their previous uses, because whoever does not comprehend the history of their own organization of ideas is condemned to miscomprehend how these are used (hacking 1999a, 8-9). later texts: archeology and the incursion into genealogy as i have pointed out, in the works by hacking that followed those two analyzed above, besides the archeological influence, it is possible to find traces of foucault’s ‘genealogical’ method. this is the case, for example, in the taming of chance (1990), a text in which hacking retakes the idea that concepts have memory and are situated, and applies it to study the erosion of determinism and the emergence of chance. in the emergence of probability, hacking’s objective was to assess the situated and historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of probability. in the taming of chance, he does the same with the current conceptions of chance, determinism, information and control—studying their formation and the way the conditions of their construction limit the present way of thinking. this type of analysis is what hacking (1990a, 70) understands as a philosophical analysis, and he affirms that he knows of only one philosophical model that can be used for this type of investigation: the work on foucault. under the model of history of the present, one can manage to understand the specific details about the origin and transformation of concepts such as chance, normality, criminality, dementia, or perversion. furthermore, both books provide a historical illustration of one of the crucial concepts proposed by hacking: the notion of a ‘style of scientific reasoning’, coined to answer and generalize theoretical issues that emerged from the study of these examples. in the text from 1990, hacking attempts to show how, from the statistical style, it is possible to derive new concepts (such as population), new techniques (such as taking representative samples), new objects, new laws, new authorities, and so forth. even while the idea can be found in earlier works, the explicit notion of style of scientific reasoning (which he later called ‘style of scientific thinking & doing’ (hacking 2010 april 21, 3)) first appears in his 1992 articles, and is there characterized as “a new analytical tool that can be used by historians and philosophers for different purposes” (hacking 1992, 1). his interest lies in doing a genealogy of scientific reason, in the manner of “how we found out how to find out” (hacking 2010 april 21, 3). number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 8 the notion of ‘style’, tantamount to other meta-concepts such as that of the ‘paradigm’ by thomas kuhn, the ‘style of thinking’ by ludwik fleck, ‘programs of investigation’ by imre lakatos, among others, has two clear antecedents: the idea of a ‘style of scientific thinking’ developed by the australian historian alistair crombie (1994); and the idea of a ‘discursive formation’, from foucault. in this sense, it can be said that, in the same way, that foucault characterizes discursive formations as systems of anonymous and autonomous thought, that are not constituted by one person’s or school’s beliefs, style is an impersonal and durable social unit, it is the intellectual background or availability of a particular way of seeing and acting. the notion of style brings with it a series of novelties: objects, statements, possibilities, types of classification and explanation, characteristics of which we can also find precedents in the foucauldian notion of discursive formation. the discursive formation also produces the objects of which it speaks of. the regime of existence of objects of a discourse, according to foucault, is created by avoiding every anthropological subjection, respecting the degree of discursive analysis; referring them to the set of rules that allows for their formation as objects of discourse. but the discursive formation also determines which statements can be said. statements are propositions considered from the perspective of their conditions of existence, and not from the logical or grammatical point of view. a statement is the modality of existence of a set of signs that enables making reference to subjects and objects and to relate to other formulations. nevertheless, it should be said that hacking takes a step beyond foucault in that he attempts to underline that each style, besides proposing statements that cannot be pronounced before the existence of the style itself, establishes if these statements can be candidates for having a truth value; it determines the adequate truth conditions for the domain in which it can be applied; and it has its own stabilizing techniques. in contrast, according to foucault, archeologists do not occupy themselves with whether statements are true or false. furthermore, foucault describes a logical space that is open, and in which a certain discourse takes place. and while hacking is also interested in those spaces in which a certain discourse is possible, he also focuses on the style which establishes whether those enunciations are candidates to be evaluated as true or false. hacking’s use of the metaphor of ‘crystallization’ (hacking 2009) with respect to the styles of reasoning is inspired by the breaks in the systems of thought exposed by foucault in the order of things. this can be seen when considering that, according to hacking, styles allow to comprehend that, to understand scientific reasoning, it is more important to consider the breaks than to focus on the long histories of the preceding styles. in spite of this, hacking departs from the foucauldian proposal and instead holds on to a braudelian conception of style: while foucault’s episteme is born and dies, in two moments of transformation, style is evolutionary and can even persist eternally. what is more, styles can be abandoned without being substituted by other styles, in contrast to the epistemes, that must necessarily be replaced. it is important to note that the style of scientific reasoning is not identified nor is exclusive of a particular science or scientific community, but cuts through them and can be shared by several of these. but contrary to discursive formations, sciences do not emerge from the previous form. likewise, style is not proper to a determinate epoch, as are the foucauldian epistemes and discursive formations. another foucauldian idea in hacking’s work is that of ‘positivity’, perhaps one of hacking’s most frequent references when pointing toward his debt to foucault. archeological history allows to establish what foucault calls a positivity, a space in which it is possible to establish, e.g., whether buffon and linnaeus “were talking about ‘the same thing’, by placing themselves at ‘the same level’ or at ‘the same distance’, by deploying ‘the same conceptual field’, by opposing one another on ‘the same field of battle’” (foucault number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 9 1972a, 126; 1969, 166). in the same way, hacking’s style of scientific reasoning produces the possibility that, for example, the concept of probability is thinkable, but also that certain kinds or objects emerge, as is illustrated by the analysis of statistical style performed in the taming of chance. in the first pages of this book, hacking outlines his philosophical project: to apprehend the conditions that made possible the current organization of concepts in two domains which are, first, that of physical indeterminism, and second, that of statistical information, developed with the goal of having social control. [...] i claim that enumeration requires categorization, and that defining new classes of people for the purposes of statistics has consequences for the ways in which we conceive of others and think of our own possibilities and potentialities. (hacking 1990, 5-6) one of the objectives of the book is to show how the gathering of numbers and the growth of statistical analysis led some philosophers of the 19th century to abandon a mechanisist view of the world and to adopt another one based on chance, insisting on the influence of statistics over human sciences. statistics have helped in the formation of laws about society and the character of social facts and have engendered concepts and classifications in such sciences. as foucault contends, statistics can be viewed as mere providers of information, but they can also be seen as part of a technology of power of the modern state, a perspective that is much more interesting. it is from them that something akin to a power over life starts to develop (foucault 1980, 226). in this regard, foucault’s proposal that starting in the 17th century, a new form of power, called biopolitics, emerged is well known. this form of power differs from anatomopolitics, which focuses on the body qua machine, since it focuses instead on the body-species (foucault 1978, 139; 1976, 183). the body-species pole refers to the way in which, starting in the 17th century, there was an attempt to rationalize the problems posed to the state by phenomena proper to populations in matters of health, hygiene, birthrates, life expectancy, or race, to name a few. in this sense it is not difficult to see that statistics of populations and their deviations constitute an integral part of the state, insofar as many of the categories through which persons and their behaviors can be thought are themselves created out of the collection of data. surveys and other similar bureaucratic devices create infinite ways to count and classify people, as well as new ways of structuring social classes. hacking addresses this issue in his 1990 book from the perspective of a philosopher and, because of this, his biggest interest lies in indeterminism and the ‘taming’ of chance. chapter after chapter he shows how a sustained and firm erosion of metaphysical determinism takes place, and he analyses a series of events that mark that hacking calls the style of statistical reasoning, within which one can find laplace’s theory of probability, de moivre’s doctrine of chances, the theory of error, the avalanche of big numbers, quetelet’s objectivization of the meaning of a population, durkheim’s suicide, among others. hacking concludes that there was practically no domain of human research that was not touched by events such as the aforementioned ones. however, nothing is more anonymous than the bureaucracy of statistics, in the same way in which nothing is more anonymous than power, according to foucault. populations are classified, reordered, and administrated by principles, each of which is presented “innocently” by some bureaucrat. tactics take shape progressively without anyone knowing exactly what they mean. finally, one obtains a complex game of supports and different mechanisms of power: number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 10 let us not, therefore, ask why certain people want to dominate, what they seek, what is their overall strategy. let us ask, instead, how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc. in other words, rather than ask ourselves how the sovereign appears to us in his lofty isolation, we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. we should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects. (hacking 1981, 82) (foucault 1980, 97) the taming of chance (1990, 3) introduces us in this way to a notion that, according to hacking, is central to the analysis of human sciences: the idea of ‘making up people’. statistics determine classifications among which people must think of themselves and of the actions which they are allowed to perform. it is through this approximation to the theme of power and control—arguably more suggested than analyzed in depth as a mechanism—that i consider this text to be influenced by foucault’s genealogical period, which he devotes to the analysis of the forms in which power is exercised. works such as history of madness, the order of things, and l’archéologie du savoir (1969) (the archaeology of knowledge, 1972a) showed the inadequacy of totalizing categories to carry forth historical work, because the formation of knowledge requires taking into consideration, along discursive practices, non-discursive ones, as well as paying attention to the entwinement between both of these types of practice. in the archeological method, discourse is analyzed in terms of the conditions in which statements have a defined truth value and, because of this, are susceptible of being enunciated. those conditions, which reside in the knowledge of an epoch, are far, according to hacking, of the material conditions of the production of statements (hacking 1981, 79). it is not that language does not matter to foucault, but the issue of power expanded the field of interest and noted that it was necessary to introduce an analysis that was capable of explaining how do the discursive and non-discursive practices, as well as statements and institutions, act and interact between them. there is no discourse without power. power has therefore a positive epistemic role, since it does not only constrain or eliminate knowledge, but also produces it. the step from archeology to genealogy can be considered, therefore, an expansion of the field of research that permits the inclusion of the study of non-discursive practices, and the analysis of knowledge in terms of strategies and tactics of power. even while hacking does not—in this or any other text—analyze power as foucault does, i consider that what the latter points out regarding power and control can be perfectly used in the making of people and their classifications (martínez 2021, 117-134). statistics are no mere factual report, but create new kinds of people and, consequently, new modes of being and behaving. a new scientific classification can make a new kind of people appear, be conceived, and experienced ad a way of being a person. given a label, there exists a concrete kind of people to be labeled or, in other words, there is a kind of people that ends up being reified (hacking 1999, 27). the phenomenon of making up people owes much to the idea of the constitution of subjects to which foucault refers: “[the] subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. (foucault 1980, 97) (hacking 1981, 82). take the example of multiple personality, analyzed by hacking. in 1955, he contends, multiple personality was not a way of being a person, and people did not experiment themselves in this way nor did they interact as such with friends, family, and so forth. however, in 1985 multiple personality became a way of experiencing oneself, and living in society (hacking, 2007, 299). number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 11 the interesting point here is that in the field of human action, when new modes of description appear, new possibilities for action simultaneously arise. the possible forms of being for people appear and disappear. human actions are actions under descriptions. courses of action that are chosen by people and their ways of being depend on the available descriptions. if the description does not exist, neither can intentional actions. the making up of people refers to the space of possibilities for personality. descriptions, that is, do not only affect what an individual is; they also affect their projects, the type of person they want to be, their present, past and future. according to hacking, even if we cannot speak of ‘making up people’ as a general theory, two common vectors can be named: 1) the labeling, by a community of experts, that creates a reality that certain people make their own; and 2) the autonomous behavior of the labeled person, that impels to create a reality that the expert must confront. the histories of the kind of people are different than natural kinds because the former are formed and shaped in the interaction with individuals and by altering them as well as the types of behavior to which they are applied. hacking is interested in knowing how this idea of making up people affects the true idea of what an individual is. frequently, the creation of a kind provides the space in which certain beings are adjusted in it and, in a sense, where they can be, enabling in this way the making up people. it is not the case that a concept is formed, after which regularities or laws about the objects that fall into the category are discovered. the process, instead, is interactive. the items are grouped because it is believed that a classification helps comprehension, explanation, judgment and prediction of the characteristics of the classified items. interactivity refers to a concept that is applied to classifications, to kinds, and to the kinds that can influence what is being classified.4 the postulation of classification and its application to persons produces effects in the classified individuals, which react to the description that is made of them, thereby modifying their behavior and producing a change in the existing classification, so that it adapts to the new characteristics of its members. the new classification and theorization induce changes in the self-conception and the behavior of the classified persons. these changes, for their part, demand revisions of the classification and the theories, of the connections and causal expectations. this feedback process, or ‘looping effect’ of human kinds, makes the phenomena studied by the human sciences unstable, in contrast to the stability found in natural phenomena. knowledge and classification are intimately linked here. the invention of classification for persons—and its application—produces multiple effects, affects the way one thinks, deals, and controls the individuals being classified. it affects how these see themselves and has to do strongly with evaluation, i.e. with the creation of values. hacking’s reflections on the classification of people are, as he himself admits, a form of nominalism. they are what he calls a ‘dynamic nominalism’ which he situates in the line of the foucauldian historical nominalism. while hacking does not make reference to any specific passage to exemplify foucault’s nominalism, he is clear when pointing out what he means by this: “foucault propounds an extreme nominalism: nothing, not even the ways i can describe myself, is either this or that but history made it so” (hacking 1981, 83). foucault starts from history, from which he takes samples that detail his discourse and, from this, he infers an empirical anthropology. ontologically, there is nothing but variations, singularities, events such as speech acts, written or spoken acts, particular persons, objects in which history plays an essential role. 4. in his last works hacking (2007, 293, fn. 21) denies that one can speak of interactive kinds, but claims that one can speak of interaction. number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 12 as a dynamic nominalist, hacking (1999a, 2) is interested in how the practices of denomination interact with the things that they name. naming has real effects in people, and the changes in them have real effects in posterior classifications. according to hacking (2007, 295), one could see foucault as a defender of dynamic nominalism. this is clear, for example, in foucault’s understanding of homosexuality as a specific way of being that exists only from a determinate historical and social moment. in this case, foucault wishes to show how the subject is constituted through a certain number of practices. it is the concretion of singularities (foucault 200o, 290; 1984a, 1537). the subject is shaped in each epoch through the dispositive and the discourses of the moment, through the reactions of their individual freedom and its eventual aestheticization. it is not enough to say that the subject is constituted within a symbolic system, since it is not only in the game of symbols that they are constituted, but in real, historically analyzable practices. hacking, for his part, characterizes dynamic nominalism as a nominalism in action, where history plays an essential role in the constitution of objects (such as persons and their behaviors). our domains of possibility and our own being are, in a sense, composed by the names and what is related to them (institutions that surround the subject matter; both specialized and popular knowledge; the experts and professionals that produce such knowledge, judge its validity and use it in their practices, that work in the aforementioned institutions, and so forth). how does dynamic nominalism affect the concept of ‘individual person’? the creation of a new classification, or the modification of criteria that allow applying a previous classification, can have effects on the classified individuals who accept or reject the attributes that characterize the new type. in other words, the creation of new kinds gives rise to new choices or enables new forms of existence. the objects of the human sciences, that is, have what hacking calls a ‘historical ontology’. in 1999 hacking proposed this notion of historical ontology, which he relates to “[…] the ways in which the possibilities for choice, and for being, arise in history” (hacking 1999a, 23). this ontology deals with objects classifications, ideas, persons, kinds of people and institutions that emerge throughout history in relation to certain possibilities: “[…] objects or their effects which do not exist in any recognizable form until they are objects of scientific study” (hacking 1999a, 11). influenced by foucault’s thinking, this notion is linked to the three axes referred to by the french philosopher: knowledge, power, and ethics. the historical ontology of ourselves has to answer to an open series of questions: how have we been constituted as objects of our own knowledge?; how have we been constituted as subjects that exercise or are victims of power relations?; how have we been constituted as moral subjects of our actions (foucault 1984, 48-49)? hacking follows foucault’s path when thinking of the constitution of subjects not in universalizable terms, but as a process that takes place in a certain time and space, in local and historically specific forms, and utilizing materials that are organized in a historically determinate way. contrary to kant, both foucault and hacking consider that […] the task is not that of fixing an ontologically primitive, definitively ‘real’ stratum of historical reality, but in tracing the mobile systems of relationships and syntheses which provide the conditions of possibility for the formation of certain orders and levels of objects and of forms of knowledge of such objects: the uncovering of what foucault terms a ‘historical a priori’. (foucault 1980, 236) their method does not lead to an ontological pursuit of a determination in the last instance, but rather to an analysis of the multiplicity of political, social, institutional, technical and theoretical conditions of possibility, and to a reconstruction of a heterogeneous system of relations and effects whose contingent interlocking builds what foucault calls the number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 13 ‘historical a priori’. foucault studies those characteristics of human beings that are usually considered as static, but which, through a historical approach, are revealed as malleable. similarly, hacking’s ontology does not deal with being in general terms or with grand abstractions, but with particular trajectories of being. it refers to the space of historical and situated possibilities that surround a person and enable the formation of his character, and that create the potential of individual experience. it cannot be otherwise, insofar as he repeatedly highlights that the formation of persons does not take place in general terms, but happens through particular and specific processes. furthermore, in a claim that he defines as quasi-existentialist, hacking affirms that there is no completely fixed human nature to be discussed. guided by this interest in making up people, and by his preoccupation with the way in which kinds of people emerge and how knowledge systems interact with the persons known under these kinds, in rewriting the soul. multiple personality and the sciences of memory (1995), hacking analyzes the case of multiple personality. in this text, hacking goes back to the archeological strategy of his previous works,5 but adds to the influence of the order of things a clear reference to the archaeology of knowledge. added to this is an explicit relation with foucault’s genealogy based on the latter’s work with the poles of anatomo-politics and biopolitics. hacking’s objective is to analyze the historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of the sciences of memory, of the new meaning of the concept of ‘trauma’, and of the emergence of the ideas of multiple personality and child abuse both as concepts and as objects of knowledge. hacking follows foucault’s idea about the existence of acute mutations in the thought systems that result in a redistribution of ideas and that establish what later will be conceived as unavoidable, unquestionable, and necessary. this allows him to explore what was thought and said regarding memory in the second half of the 19th century and what is thought and said in the present. to do so, he studies how and why trauma and memory appear to be unavoidable by observing what happens with memory and multiple personality in france between 1874 and 1886, the period when the structure of the modern sciences of memory makes its appearance and strengthens itself. the occurrence, during these two decades, of important changes in ideas in the field convinced hacking that this period was a radically formative moment vis-à-vis the idea of ‘memory’. his interest lies in answering the question— suggested by foucault’s historicized kantianism—of how this configuration of ideas emerges. hacking shows that what made possible many of the developments in the trajectory of multiple personality is closely related to crucial aspects of the field that studies memory, a field that emerged during the second half of the 19th century with new kinds of true statements, new kinds of facts, new objects of knowledge, and so forth. the new sciences of memory, positive and empirical, emerged in order to secularize the domain of the soul, a domain from which science had been excluded until that day. based on the model of the anatomo-politics and biopolitics devised by foucault, hacking proposes a third pole— ‘memoro-politics’—from which knowledge can be triangulated: what is missing is pretty obvious. it is the mind, the psyche, the soul. foucault spoke of ‘two poles of development linked together by a whole cluster of relations’ [...] what i call memoro-politics is a third extreme point from which (to continue the metaphor of mapping and surveing) we can triangulate recent knowledge. (hacking 1995, 215) 5. “as a research strategy i have always been much taken by what michel foucault named archaeology” (hacking 1995, 4). number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 14 memoro-politics is, first and foremost, a politics of secrecy, of the forgotten event that, when is brought to light, can be memorized within a narrative of pain. the background of memoropolitics is pathological forgetting (1995, 214). the set of the main notions that hacking proposes in order to analyze the human sciences is completed with the idea of an ‘ecological niche’, which he defines in mad travelers. reflections on the reality of transient mental illnesses (1998) as the space of possibilities for the emergence of certain diseases. hacking studies the surge of transient mental illnesses,6 and of a new kind of people—the fugueur—through the analysis of the case of jean-albert dadas (1860-1907, who was the first fugueur). the medical reports of albert highlight a small epidemy of compulsive travelers whose epicenter, in the 19th century, was in bordeaux, but which soon extended to paris, and then to the whole of france, italy, and ultimately to germany and russia. hacking’s objective with this work is “[...] to provide a framework in which to understand the very possibility of transient mental illnesses” (hacking 1998, 1), and in so doing, to give an account of how albert and his doctor established the possibility of using an ‘escape’ (a ‘fugue’) as a diagnostic. hacking’s goal, that is, is to account for the formation of a space of possibility for the emergence of this illness, a space of possibility that also allows thinking of a whole group of present diseases such as anorexia, hyperactivity, or attention deficit disorder. within this framework, the most important contribution of the text is the metaphor of the ‘ecological niche’, inspired in foucault’s idea of a discursive formation but which goes beyond it insofar as the niche is not only a discourse but also includes what people do, how they live, and the material reality which they inhabit. niches are formed through different types of vectors that point in various directions and of which hacking highlights four: 1) the medical vector—every illness is fitted into a diagnostic scheme, a taxonomy of diseases. 2) the cultural polarity—the polarity between good and bad. this second vector accounts for how sickness is situated between two extremes of contemporary culture, one of them virtuous and another one vicious and tending toward criminality. what counts as a virtue and what as a vice is also a social characteristic, since virtues are not fixed in time. 3) observability—disorder must be visible as such, as suffering, as something from which to escape from. 4) liberation—the disease, in spite of the pain it produces, also promotes a certain liberation that is unavailable in other realms of the culture in which it thrives. when these vectors are challenged or deviated niches are destroyed and transient mental disorders disappear, because there is no stable site for their emergence and manifestation. final considerations the objective of this article has been to provide a brief overview of the influence of foucault’s work on crucial aspects of the work and thought of hacking. this overview makes it possible to show that, besides the influence in hacking’s methodology and in a series of concepts put forth by him, foucault also exerted a more extensive and fundamental influence in hacking’s research, an influence that is related to the canadian philosopher’s general interest in the analysis of historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of scientific concepts and objects. this interest, stimulated by his reading of foucault’s work, is perceived throughout all of hacking’s work, and can even be seen to function as its guiding thread (martínez 2021). thus, the article shows, through the analysis of some representative texts, hacking’s interest in analyzing what historical conditions make possible the emergence of, e.g., probability, 6. hacking defines transient mental illnesses as those illnesses that appear in certain times and places in order to later disappear. number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 15 kinds of people, multiple personality, child abuse, sciences of memory, and transient mental illnesses. moreover, these conditions of possibility can be located in line with kant’s and foucault’s investigations. in hacking’s work, however, even if they hold a historical character (as is also the case in foucault’s work), the conditions attend more to the singularity of each history than to the regularity of an epoch. the history of scientific concepts and objects provided by hacking is the history of specific trajectories, even when their emergence takes place within a determinate context or style of reasoning. in this vein, his analysis is not restricted to the limits of an epoch but takes an interest in what he calls the prehistory of concepts and objects. regarding methodology, hacking acknowledges, in general terms, the imprint left by foucault’s archeology upon his work, most crucially in his early texts (martínez 2016), to the extent that he even affirms that the emergence of probability could have been named the order of things, the footnote (2005, 4). nevertheless, the use of such a methodology is not restricted to this period, but can also be seen in later works. it is important to note, in this regard, that in those works one can also find traces of foucault’s genealogical period, as it can be observed, for example, when revisiting the emphasis on statistics and biopolitics of the taming of chance, or the use of the idea of the poles of anatomo-politics and biopolitics of rewriting the soul. notwithstanding, the influx of genealogy is peculiar in hacking’s case, since he does not work explicitly nor critically with one of the fundamental elements of genealogy: namely, power. this does not mean that hacking denies the relation between power and knowledge established by foucault. on the contrary, hacking sustains that foucault’s work are useful “[...] to grasp the interrelations of power and knowledge that literally constitute us as humans beings” (hacking 1984, 50). moreover, i am convinced that even if hacking decides not to deal with the issue of power, this is a subject that has not only influenced his assessments, but it is possible to see how power and resistance play an essential role in his proposals regarding making up people and the looping effect between classifications and the persons classified (martínez 2021, 117-134). foucault’s imprint has also been exposed in many of the notions proposed by hacking, especially in relation to his research on the styles of scientific reasoning and the field of the human sciences. in this respect, it is important to point out that even while hacking appropriates certain ideas by foucault, these are adapted to fit hacking’s own interests. hacking himself has repeatedly affirmed that he takes foucault’s ideas, but does not copy his vocabulary he aims to give those ideas his personal stamp. hacking has been one of the main figures responsible for the diffusion of foucault’s ideas within anglophone philosophy of science and analytic philosophy. in the spring of 1974, hacking gave a series of talks on foucault’s works and, as he himself tells, one of his colleagues would have said to a visitor: “if you wonder why the bookshops have copies of foucault in their front windows, it is all hacking’s fault” (hacking 2005, 3). but hacking has not only been spreading foucault’s work. he also recognizes how much did he himself learn when reading foucault and when using some of his ideas. as i understand it, in some respects hacking can even be said to complete foucault’s thought, as is the case with the notions of the looping effect, which complements some of the aspects of foucault’s proposal, insofar as it explains one of the particular mechanisms (the interaction between classification and classified) through which certain changes happen—changes that the french philosopher only studies in general terms. however, in other respects, hacking himself notes that he did not go as far as foucault, as is the case when he acknowledges that he never intended to commit politically or to achieve social changes, as foucault did. one of the stated—and achieved—goals of hacking has been to build a bridge between analytic and continental philosophy without losing the explicative power of neither of them. he has also shown that analytic philosophy is not at odds with a historical sensibility, number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 16 and that the two can actually converge. this achievement, without a doubt, has been mostly the result of the influence that foucault had on hacking’s way of thinking and his analytical training. as hacking has said—in words that, i believe, better describe hacking himself than the french philosopher—foucault “[...] had an original analytical mind with a fascination for facts” (hacking 1981, 73). acknowledgments i am very grateful to the editors of transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, especially mauro condé. references castro, eduardo. 1995. pensar a foucault. interrogantes filosóficos de la arqueología del saber. buenos aires: biblos. crombie, alistair. c. 1994. styles of scientific thinking in the european tradition. the history of argument and explanation especially in the mathematical and biomedical sciences and arts. london: duckworth. foucault, michel. 1963. naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical. paris: presses universitaires de france. foucault, michel. 1966. les mots et les choses. une archéologie des sciences humaines. paris: gallimard. foucault, michel. 1969. l’archéologie du savoir. paris: gallimard. foucault, michel. 1972. histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. paris: gallimard. foucault, michel. 1972a. the archaeology of knowledge and the discourse of language. new york: pantheon books. foucault, michel. 1976. la volonté de savoir. paris: gallimard. foucault, m. 1978. the history of sexuality. volume i: an introduction. new york: pantheon books. foucault, michel. 1980. power/knowledge: selected interviews & other writings 1972-1977. new york: pantheon books. foucault, michel. 1984. ¿what is enlightenment?, in the foucault reader, edited by paul rabinow, 32-50. new york: pantheon books. foucault, michel. 1984a. l’éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la liberté. in dits et écrits. (vols. 1-4) édités par d. deferí & f. ewald. 1994, 1527-1539. paris: gallimard. foucault, michel. 2000. ethics, subjectivity and truth. essential works of foucault 1954-1984. (vol. 1). new york: penguin books. foucault, michel. 2003. the birth of the clinic. an archaeology of medical perception. london: routledge. foucault, michel. 2005. the order of things. an archaeology of the human sciences. london and new york: routledge. foucault, michel. 2006. history of madness. london and new york: routledge. hacking, i. 1975. the emergence of probability. a philosophical study of early ideas about probability, induction and statistical inference. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1975a. why does language matter to philosophy? cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1981. the archaeology of michel foucault. in historical ontology, edited by ian hacking. 2002, 7386. london: harvard university. number and things: foucauldian contributions to the work of ian hacking maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 17 hacking, ian. 1981a. how should we do the history of statistics? in the foucault effect. studies in governmentality, edited by g. burchell, c. gordon & p. miller, p. 1991, 181-195. chicago: chicago university. hacking, ian. 1983. representing and intervening. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1984. five parables. in historical ontology, edited by ian hacking. 2002, 27-50. london: harvard university. hacking, ian. 1986. making up people. in historical ontology, edited by ian hacking. 2002, 99114. london: harvard university. hacking, ian. 1990. the taming of chance. cambridge: cambridge university. hacking, ian. 1990a. two kinds of new historicism for philosophers. in historical ontology, edited by ian hacking. 2002, 51-72. london: harvard university. hacking, ian. 1992. “style” for historians and philosophers. studies in history and philosophy of science 23: 1-20. hacking, ian. 1995. rewriting the soul. multiple personality and the sciences of memory. princeton: princeton university. hacking, ian. 1998. mad travelers. reflections on the reality of transient mental illnesses. virginia: university of virginia. hacking, ian. 1999. the social construction of what? cambridge: harvard university. hacking, ian. 1999a. historical ontology. in historical ontology, edited by ian hacking. 2002, 1-26. london: harvard university. hacking, ian. 2002. historical ontology. london: harvard university. hacking, ian. 2005. les mots et les choses, forty years on. for humanities centre, columbia university: 1-24. hacking, ian. 2007. kinds of people: moving targets. proceedings of the british academy 151: 285-318. hacking, ian. 2009. scientific reason. taiwan: national taiwan university. hacking, ian. 2010, april 21. lecture i. methods, objects, and truth”. [unpublished]. méxico: unam. martínez, maría laura. 2016. foucauldian imprints in the early works of ian hacking, international studies in the philosophy of science 30 (1): 69-84. martínez, maría laura. 2021. the texture in ian hacking’s work. michel foucault as the guiding thread of hacking’s thinking. synthese library, vol. 435, springer nature. morey, miguel. 1983. lectura de foucault. madrid: taurus. microsoft word rocha layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-14 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8230-6905] abstract “noble sciences” was a term sometimes used by michel foucault to refer mostly to mathematics and physics (and, to a lesser extent, chemistry). this article explores this notion, based on dits et écrits, understanding that there is a strong connection between this term and a reflection on “enlightenment”, or aufklärung. but how has this heritage unfolded in our days? we will discuss this theme, advancing to the text “la vie: l’experience et la science”, where another important associated question will appear: how to understand what can give philosophy “dignity” amid the extension of that kantian tradition? keywords: foucault; sciences; aufklärung; dignity; philosophy. received: april 15, 2022. reviewed: may 02, 2022. accepted: may 23, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction to the theme what did michel foucault understand by “noble sciences”? in some cases, like in the important dits et écrits,2 he sometimes mentions this, relating the term to mathematics and physics (and chemistry, in certain instances).3 first of all, he would have the same concept to refer to several sciences (two or three, as mentioned above), whose repercussions distinguished them from the others for a long time. as seen in “la vie: l’experience et la science” (foucault 1994, iii, 768), their “high degree of formalization, [their] aptitude for mathematizing” and the privileged position they used to occupy in the “positivist hierarchy of sciences” would be important characteristics of these sciences. 1 jorge alberto rocha is a professor in the department of philosophy at the state university of feira de santana. address: avenida transnordestina – feira de santana, ba. 44036900 – brazil. e-mail: jorgeacr@terra.com.br 2 it is a collection of his prefaces, interviews, lecture summaries, etc., collected by gallimard, and articles whose importance deleuze made direct reference to his observations about our present appeared in his books, but “even better in the interviews he gave the newspapers. [... and:] this is why foucault's complete interviews are an integral part of his work” (deleuze 1990, 143). 3 important texts can be mentioned here, such as “le grand enfermement” (foucault 2001, i), “préface à l’èdition anglaise” (foucault 2001, i), “entretien avec michel foucault”, (foucault 1994, iii), “postface” (foucault 1994, iv), “le sujet et le pouvoir” (foucault 1994, iv) “réponse à une question” (foucault 2001, i) and “la vie: l'experience et la science” (foucault 1994 , iv). foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 can we say that foucault is seduced by this, or wouldn’t such “nobility” imply a necessarily high axiological position? this is what we seek to understand further on, as foucault himself referred to mathematics and physics as, perhaps, having a “stronger epistemological structure” (foucault 1994, i, 688).4 “strength” which in kant’s work made these sciences the models to be followed, including metaphysics; or “strength” that made comte announce as a mature phase of reason (not “adolescent”, therefore) the primacy according to which it is recognized, “as a fundamental rule, that every proposition not strictly reducible to the simple statement of a fact, be it particular or general, cannot offer any real and intelligible meaning” (comte 2016, 29, author’s emphasis). against those sciences, with a “stronger epistemological structure” (foucault 2001, i, 688)5 foucault will focus on those that would have a “denser and more complex” character. then, at an opportune time, we will seek to demonstrate this. in any case, the initial steps of our work will aim to show the connection between the “noble sciences” and the theme of “enlightenment”, or aufklärung. research on this brings us closer to kant (and mendelssohn, a little), insofar as foucault attributes to such an undertaking a novelty in philosophy: for the first time, a thinker sets himself to the task, henceforth extended to the present day, of “diagnosing the present”. it is not difficult to associate this reference by foucault to aufklärung, often linked to questions about power and ethics. how can we not be so governed, following the primer of christian pastoral care that states have adopted? how can we engender new or creative, ethical-aesthetic ways of living? such questions will animate foucault’s research in the 1970s and 1980s. however, we identify as present, though to a lesser extent, a relationship between the aufklärung and an epistemological approach in foucault. that is, he also mentions a kant focused on a critical problem and that, in the midst of this, he cannot obliviate the presence of mathematics and physics, which are fundamental for the relocation of metaphysics in the order of knowledge. the various foucauldian readings about the kantian newspaper article “answer to the question: what is ‘enlightenment’?” (kant 2005)6 in very specific and, as we said, smaller instances, can nevertheless lead us to that. later, we will also need to explain the reasons for foucault’s little emphasis on the “noble sciences”, which in kant are an important part of the “first revolution” of knowledge. according to the line of argument that we have adopted, another fundamental text to investigate more recently the developments of the kantian enterprise is the re-editing of the preface that foucault presided while still alive, in 1984, to canguilhem’s fundamental work, the normal and the pathological (foucault 1994, iv).7 here, too, it is not a matter of proposing a comparison between the two authors, that is, between a canguilhemian epistemology and foucauldian archeology, for example8, but to highlight some points and questions that this text raises. thus, michel foucault claims to have been linked to a tradition related to french epistemology, which began by adopting (with cavaillès) a more “ruled” or more “scientific” 4 due to the fact that “dits et écrits” contains numerous foucauldian texts, from now on we will mention the one used in the footnote. in the case now: “reponse à une question”. 5 “réponse à une question”. 6 this text by kant was written at the invitation of the newspaper “berlinische monatsschrift” on december 12, 1784, whose question “what is the enlightenment?” had also been answered by philosopher moses mendelssohn three months earlier, on september 9. apparently, kant did not know the answer given by mendelssohn. 7 “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. 8 there are already good studies close to us on this, such as those by portocarrero (2009) or roberto machado (2006), in addition to rabinow and dreyfus (1995). but we also believe that comparisons are always complicated, as deleuze and guattari warned us, given that each thinker engenders their own peculiar “abstract machines” (deleuze and guattari 1996). foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 kind of investigation in the footsteps of the pioneer husserl. but this would not be the only aspect to be taken into account. amid scathing criticism towards phenomenology and, elsewhere (but taking the same period into account), marxism, two hegemonic trends in his undergraduate days, foucault is mostly dedicated to canguilhem. and it has nothing to do with the “noble sciences”. on the contrary, there are other criteria to be taken into account, including understanding how foucault, who does archeology, not epistemology, understood the term and the conditions necessary for knowledge to rise to the position of philosophical “dignity”; an understanding that might be drawn or sketched, despite the countless gaps left by “la vie: l’experience et la science”. an epistemological reading of kant in 1970, in “préface à l’èdition anglaise” (foucault 2001, i) of the order of things,9 foucault emphasizes that he did not seek in his book what he himself would call “noble sciences”, “rigor” or “necessary sciences”. nothing more natural if he did. after all, “one can observe in their history the almost uninterrupted emergence of truth and pure reason” (foucault 2001, 875).10 in this foreword, as in other places we will have the opportunity to visit, foucault is referring to mathematics and physics (at other times, he includes chemistry), whose method of research and influence were so cherished by the sciences of the 19th century and first half of the 20th (at its most overt slant, at least).11 this becomes evident when he considers psychology, a science extensively researched by him from the late 1940s to the 1960s and places it as aufklärung’s heir. what does that mean? to align oneself “on the sciences of nature [and...] to find in man the extension of the laws that govern natural phenomena”. the “destiny of this psychology”, in its eagerness to want objective knowledge, was therefore linked to the aspiration of a path according to which “all scientific knowledge must go through the determination of the quantitative relationship, the construction of hypotheses and experimental verification”. (foucault 1994, i, 120).12 the failure of this undertaking had made psychology not so much “revived” as a science throughout its history but rather constantly faced with an “incomplete task”. more recently, foucault said in 1957, it sought to establish “new relationships with practice: education, mental medicine, organization of groups”, intending to be its “rational and scientific foundation”. thus, it should answer questions such as school success or failure, social integration, and adaptation of man to work. but, in addition to genetic psychology or psychopathology, the “choices” made by psychology were evident: it was a study whose goal was the abnormal, the conflicting or the pathological, a study on, in short, the “contradictions of man with himself” (foucault 1994, i, 122).13 these are choices that, as reaffirmed by foucault in the next article, “la recherche scientifique et la psychologie” (foucault 1994, i, 139), bring the idea of this binary quest of psychology when it wants to be scientific research or not, of seeking it through the 9 this work was originally published in 1966 with a slightly different title, les mots et les choses [words of things]. 10 as dits et écrits contains numerous texts, we will always put the corresponding text in a footnote, in this case, the “préface à l’èdition anglaise”. 11 soon after, he questions: that he dared to go through a different, risky undertaking, witness, perhaps, to a “state of mind, an intellectual fashion, a mixture of archaism and daring appreciation, of intuition and blindness”, but, and if “empirical knowledge, in a given time and culture, actually had a clearly defined regularity? if the very possibility of recording facts, of letting oneself be convinced by them, of deforming them into traditions, of making a purely speculative use of them, even if that were not left to chance” (foucault 2001, i, 875) 12 “la psychologie de 1850 à 1950”. 13 “la psychologie de 1850 à 1950”. foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 4 objectivity of possible knowledge. but is the physicist asked if his physics is scientific? then why is it appropriate to ask the psychologist if the questions he poses to me and perhaps brings an answer to have the weight of that objectivity? foucault tries here to highlight the peculiarities of psychology, of course, but it was undeniable that the other sciences, in general, would venture there; that is, the humanities born in the 19th century and the other sciences tended to align themselves with a supposedly successful tradition, led by mathematics and physics, something that lasted until much of the first half of the 20th century. this point brings us back to an important topic: the tradition of western knowledge, the tradition of the aufklärung, target of foucauldian criticism for better and worse if we can put it like that. let us explain: in “postface” (foucault 1994, iv, 37), set in 1980, foucault said that the aufklärung is our “most ‘recent past’”, repeating an idea by canguilhem. at another time, however, he now reports that the aufklärung heritage had become “sterile” (foucault 1994, iv, 225).14 we will try to tread these trails a little below, always seeking to make connections with the “noble sciences”. in “postface”, it was a matter of touching on the theme of the “abominable” social practices that, at a certain moment, go beyond the “limits of intolerance” (foucault 1994, iv, 35). but, at the same time, that in no way allowed us to put reason itself in check, since everything that comes for good is from it, and everything that comes to bad is not rational at all. so, finally, foucault suggests to agulhon and his collaborators that they set themselves to the task of carrying out “a major historical investigation into the way in which the aufklärung was perceived, thought, lived, imagined, conjured, anathematized, reactivated in europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.” (foucault 1994, iv, 37). now, foucault himself had already started this study, and it would be up to us to see along with him how a certain hegemonic tendency could be established, with kant in a central position in this debate. in fact, this philosopher’s foucauldian forms of appropriation were numerous, and it is not the case here to mention them.15 we are only interested in pointing out his undeniable delay in reading the small, but, for him, a very relevant kantian newspaper article “answer to the question: what is ‘enlightenment’?” (kant, 2005), published in december 1884 and which foucault discusses in numerous texts and lectures, whose understanding is only completed by relating them all.16 from these texts, we intend to initially highlight the epistemological question present there, hidden, so to speak, under the veil of a reflection on power and ethics, the predominant themes of foucault in the 1970s and 1980s. in other words, a path that leads us towards mathematics and physics, fundamental sciences for the construction of an 14 “le sujet et le pouvoir”. 15 it is known, for example, that kant was the object of study of his complementary doctoral thesis and cannot be removed if one takes criticism of the anthropological tendency of the west. in les mots et les choses (foucault 2002) the man who knows is also the object of knowledge, and this trait would certainly make the human sciences problematic. the somewhat recent book by celso kraemer (2011) addresses precisely the different readings that foucault makes of kant, although at times we do not agree with him (which can also be a matter of interpretation), for example when he says: “from 1966 to 1978 there were no references by foucault to the aufklärung (kraemer 2011, 265). but the “postface” mentioned above does so, in 1980; furthermore, we are working with the idea that the acceptance in life of republishing the preface to canguilhem's book attests, at the very least, to an agreement and/or a manifestation of the presence of that term in foucault. 16 namely, mainly: “qu’est-ce que la critique? [crítique y aufklärung]”, lecture given in 1978; in the article “qu’est-ce-que les lumières?”, from 1984, published in the “pantheon books”, in new york and in the “magazine littéraire” (foucault 1994, iv), both dealing here or there with different contents, although along the same line of argument; in “la vie: l'experience et la science (foucault 1994, iv), in addition to courses given at the “collège de france”, especially “le gouvernement de si et des autres”, in the lesson of january 5, 1983 (foucault 2008). foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 5 objectivist/positivist idea of knowledge, although in the end, we are led back to point that only touches on the theme of the “formality of knowledge” or either a connection to reality from a very generic position of foucault. speaking about “enlightenment”, according to kant’s newspaper article, foucault seeks to show that it leaves everything open: the departure of man from his minority is not specified, each one having only the courage to think for himself. “sapere aude!”; for kant this means: i can use a guide text, a spiritual teacher or any method; i can therefore – this was what many still did – make use of the “convenience” of this practice, revealing here a spirit that does not want to have the trouble of thinking (kant 2005, 64), or a thought that one accepts to be tutored. think for yourself, though! looking over other moments of foucault about aufklärung in kant, the latter leads us to think of something like a “teleology immanent in the very process of history” (foucault 1994, iv, 679),17 because for the first time, a thinker starts to talk about the present. many are the philosophers cited who seem to have also done this: plato, augustine, descartes, given his philosophical autobiography, discourse on method; vico or hegel, in their own way. but, for foucault, no other in the same way; no one else had sought to understand or question what this present to which i belong is, a problem that could grant me the second step, reactivating an old kantian questioning: after all, what should i do? in this way, kant, for foucault, circumvents the question of some kind of revolution, which by itself would not respond to the progress of humanity. instead, what should be highlighted is the “disposition” (the “will”) of the new aufklärer, of the new subjects capable of the process of “enlightenment” through autonomous and self-conscious reason (foucault 1994, iv, 680-685).18 that is, in this way kant, in addition to referring to a historical moment in the west, the enlightenment, engraves in our hearts the problem of a perennially selfquestioning history of reason, namely, “in the development and establishment of forms of rationality and of technique, [in] the autonomy and [in] the authority of knowledge” (foucault 1994, v, iv, 686).19 ontology of the present and ethics: this will be a priority target of foucauldian discussions from the second half of the 1970s to the 1980s.20 “qu’est-ce que la critique? [crítique y aufklärung]” is about leading us to a historical-philosophical plan of that kantian tradition, from the perspective that there was a certain secularization of the christian pastoral, giving rise to a new type of “governmentalization”. then, the forms of government of men over themselves and over others exploded: children, beggars or the poor, “a family, a house, armies, cities, states, their own body, their own spirit” (foucault 1995, 3). michel foucault’s departure from this conference consisted in dividing the historicalphilosophical investigation into an archaeological, genealogical procedure and the imbrication of both. from now on, knowledge-and-power will no longer be dissociated and the pertinent strategies to be carried out will consist of this recurring suspicion of the “acceptability of a system”, based on the starting idea according to which everything is arbitrary and contingent (foucault 1995, 15). but we are advancing this question very quickly because, precisely, the question is: why keep insisting on the “analytic of truth” present in kant, if what foucault does is only pointing to this ethos to be assumed? following the same line as temple (2009), we find it perfectly possible (because of the main texts that we have listed about the aufklärung in foucault) to identify his mention of kant’s aspect of the problem of knowledge, or “analytic of truth”, as he calls it. in michel 17 “qu’est-ce que les lumières?”. 18 “qu’est-ce que les lumières?”. 19 “qu’est-ce que les lumières?”. 20 there is a lot of bibliography available, dealing with subjects related to foucauldian ethics. some of these are gathered in the edition edited by vera portocarrero and guilherme castelo branco, portraits of foucault (2000). foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 6 foucault, this appears clearly in the pantheon books edition of the text “qu’est-ce-que les lumières?” and in 1984, in the slightly modified reprint of his preface to canguilhem. thus, says foucault in that first text: “criticism is somehow the logbook of reason made greater in the aufklärung; and, conversely, the aufklärung is the age of criticism” (foucault 1994, iv, 567). now, what does the kantian critique say? furthermore, is there any important reference by kant concerning mathematics and physics? without trying to delve too deeply into this issue, which others have already done,21 there is undoubtedly a clear reference to this. we only have to look at the rather illuminating “preface to the second edition” of critique of pure reason. kant establishes in it very clearly the privileged place that knowledge occupied, saying that it was only mathematics, since the greeks, and physics, around the 17th century, that walked the safe path of science (kant 1985). for him, if metaphysics had not been successful, it was because it had not observed three very important prerequisites: not falling into difficulties after reaching its goal, not needing to turn to postulates established before constantly, and, finally, reaching “unanimity” among the various collaborators” (kant 1985, 15). further on, kant reinforces this: the dogmatic procedure of reason acts “without a prior criticism of its own capacity” (kant 1985, 30, emphasis added). paying attention to this would lead us to the safe path of science, namely, the universal and the necessary. kant takes his reader to the fabulous feats of modern physicists (for example, when galileo imprinted the speed he wanted on a sphere on an inclined plane, he revealed that it was not the “nature” of things, their substantial being, that imposes their dynamics on us) and these feats were exemplary. nevertheless, they made the theoretical-metaphysical “imagination” take a step back, giving way to an external nature that now shows itself, or is forced to show itself, more by the data of the experience my work provides than by the arrogance – in the kant’s words, by the “dogmatism” – of a reason that insists on going beyond the limits of “possible experience”: criticism is not opposed to the dogmatic procedure of reason in its pure knowledge as a science (since it is always dogmatic, that is, strictly demonstrative, based on safe a priori principles), but rather to dogmatism, that is, to a presumption of going forward only with a knowledge of pure concepts (philosophical knowledge) (kant 1985, 30, author’s emphasis).22 this epistemological dimension in kant also appears in the foucauldian lecture of january 5, 1983, at the college de france. an interesting position by foucault is that we think not about the question of modernity but rather about “modernity as a question” (foucault 2008, 15). what did that mean? always keeping a transversal position, without wanting to fit into any rigid scheme of current of thought and without announcing any kind of enunciative 21 it is known that kant sought to give an answer to rationalism and empiricism and that the way out of the “dogmatic slumber” awakened by hume was the establishment of synthetic a priori judgments, the object of extensive discussion later. authors such as popper, for example (1972), will not accept the kantian approach. for a more general study of kant, the doctoral thesis by lebrun, kant and the end of metaphysics (2002) is fundamental. 22 for kant, there would still be a “second revolution” in this process in search of the right paths of the sciences: the understanding of human a priori and transcendental conditions – in contact with nature, it is the internal forms of sensitivity and understanding that regulate knowledge (kant 1985, 20), but the important thing here is to retain the emphasis given to mathematics and physics. foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 7 arrogance,23 foucault suggests two philosophical options in which we are confronted today: either a critical philosophy that will present itself as an analytical philosophy of truth in general or a critical thought that will take the form of an ontology of ourselves, of an ontology of the present. and it is this form of philosophy that, from hegel to the frankfurt school, passing through nietzsche, max weber, etc. founded a form of reflection to which, of course, i relate as much as possible. (foucault 2008, 22) on “dignity” in philosophy it is not intended here to deny that foucault’s relationship with the aufklärung, in the wake of kant, tried to emphasize a certain notion of “criticism” that, in foucault, must go beyond an epistemological inquiry.24 how not to be governed and, extending this to michel foucault’s reflections in the 1980s, how to develop their own ethical-aesthetic ways of life will, of course, be what our thinkers will want to emphasize more. our exercise here only intends to demonstrate that an epistemological dimension did not fail to insinuate itself in the treatment given by foucault to the aufklärung, and that this appears more vigorously on the occasion of his last publication before his premature death in 1984: “la vie: l’ experience et la science” (foucault 1994). it was this work that introduced the reader to the fundamental work of his master canguilhem, o normal e o patológico, in the preface to the american version, in 1978, later inserted in volume iii of dits et écrits, in the 1994 edition, and which now reappears conserving the fundamentals, almost everything, in short, of what he had written before. where do mathematics and physics insinuate themselves in this new text? based on an analysis of the repercussions of the aufklärung in france and, more specifically, on some fundamental authors, while others were not. this point of view made foucault rescue the “strange 60s” in which he had lived and reputed a good part of the influences suffered by students, teachers, and researchers in canguilhem’s classes or books. well, michel foucault also includes himself here, given that he circumvented some strong trends of his time, linked either to a position on marxism, to freudians, philosophers, specialists, politicians, theorists, academics or not, or, as another possible classification that he gives us, to “a philosophy of experience, of meaning, of the subject”, as opposed to a philosophy of the concept and rationality (foucault 1994, iv, 764).25 everything would have to do with the “reception” in france of the cartesian meditations (2006), pronounced by husserl in 1929 and later published. therefore, if one direction was towards that philosophy of experience, of meaning, of the subject, another would also emerge, this time related to the works of epistemologist cavaillès. foucault will point to the publication of his theses on the axiomatic method and in the formation of set theory, a reading of husserl made “more theoretical” or “more regulated” speculatively speaking; and, apparently, but only apparently (!), less linked to “immediate political questions” (foucault 1994, iv, 765). for he is going to question two 23 foucauldian thought demands that its reader preferably remake these ideas or even explode them. thought is made to move ideas and must constantly “carbonize” (foucault 2001, i, 1591). in fact, michel foucault himself did this throughout his life, turning his writings into “fireworks”. this is what roberto machado’s (2017) beautiful writing shows us, his “impressions” after his direct contact with foucault, obviously in an entirely positive sense: a thinking that is constantly created and recreated. in other words, the act of an “experiencer rather than a theorist”, one who writes to change himself; although he says that it is necessary to meet criteria of academic and historical truth, but “the essential thing (...) is rather in the experience that the book allows to do”; “i do not teach, but gestures made in public do” (foucault 1994, iv, 42, 45 and 47, respectively). 24 this is what costa (2018) tries to show, for example. 25 “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 8 things at this very moment: first, what, in fact, characterizes a more or less political knowledge? the question about the conditions of existence of rationality in the midst of war was the best form of combat at the time.26 a similar question, which took place within the universities, was about the “statute and role of knowledge” (foucault 1994, iv, 765) that were insinuated, so they say, through that epistemologist. in this, merit of cavaillès, when reading a more formalist and intuitionist husserl, although foucault does not explain to us in what way he thought this, or to what extent he understood the presence of mathematics in husserl, for example.27 the important thing to be highlighted here is that the reactivation of the kantian questioning, the “symbol” of the attempt to understand the present, to foucault cannot appear everywhere and all at once. thus, in germany, a historical and political reflection on society was the tail of that tradition, in the likes of feuerbach, marx, nietzsche, max weber, luckács and the frankfurt school. but foucault specifies more the tradition of aufklärung in france, and the curiosity of the text “la vie: l’experience et la science” is that currents such as phenomenology, for example, did not dignify (! – and the word is really hard) by themselves that tradition. only the history of the sciences did it: foucault cites saint-simon, the positivism of comte and his followers – soon after including the aforementioned cavaillès, plus koyré, bachelard and canguilhem (foucault 1994, iv, 766-767). phenomenology, therefore, is left out, and “la vie: l’experience et la science” reaffirms the foucauldian position contrary to this current that took the subject, his experiences and their meaning as the object of its research. in our author’s view, phenomenology never wanted to be a science,28 much less share the husserlian formalist inclination, which shows 26 elsewhere he will say that it is useless to come up with a totalizing philosophy (like sartre, sometimes), insofar as it ends up distancing itself from reality. in “le grand enfermement” he says: “everywhere sartre totalizes, he moves away from reality. and every time he takes hold of a specific problem, for which he has a specific strategy, for which he fights, he approaches reality" (foucault 2001, i, 1173). 27 although, in his fundamental text on phenomenology, husserl was not seduced by mathematics in the same way that descartes was, and he did not exclude it from the epoché. as we can see (rocha 2020) regarding the husserl/descartes relationship, a passage by him announces his intentions: “it is through the study of his meditations that the phenomenological source has been transformed into a new type of transcendental philosophy. we could almost call it neo-cartesianism, even though it was forced to reject almost all the known doctrinal content of cartesianism” (husserl 2001, 19). regarding the inclusion of mathematics in the epoché, husserl says: “i therefore remove from the circuit all the sciences that refer to this natural world, however firmly established they may be for me (husserl 2006, 81, emphasis added). 28 this is also what matthews (2011, 17) points out: “thus, an important part of phenomenology, as the study of how things appear to consciousness, is the study of the different ways in which the same things appear to different modes of consciousness, as thought, perception, fear, love, imagination, and so on (…) and much of the phenomenological literature is, in effect, concerned more with the essences of the different modes of consciousness than with the essences of different modes of consciousness. of the different objects of consciousness”. but, although husserl himself wanted to place mathematics and physics, no matter if they were exemplary knowledge until his time, below philosophical knowledge, it was for the constitution of a fully scientific knowledge, a more original and fundamental knowledge: phenomenology. thus, mathematics will not be exempt from the phenomenological “reduction”, since everything in husserl must remain “in parentheses”, until the first truth/evidence/intuition can emerge (the “ego”). in the same way, physics and, we would even say, the experimental sciences as a whole, do not answer apparently simple questions that the philosopher can ask: for example, how to justify statements such as “all valid thinking is founded on experiences, as the only donor intuition” (husserl 2006, 63)? how, questioned husserl, can direct and singular experiences generate generalities and laws? these are questions that only the philosopher can ask, and only him, inverting the entire polarity of nobility of the sciences now prevailing: we (philosophers) “not letting ourselves be overshadowed by prejudices [we are] the authentic positivists” (husserl 2006, 64). foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 9 how foucault was not seduced by the healthy exercise of surrounding each question with a concept certainly typical of philosophers in general since just this wouldn’t guarantee the legitimacy of the current of thought. thus, (asking for support in some other texts), the phenomenologist is concerned with the “meaning” of what is perceived (foucault 1994, i, 62),29 seeking to investigate the “intentionalities of the speaking subject” (foucault 1994, iii, 465)30 and , in general, wanting to map the lived experiences of each one, the problem was basically in relegating to lower planes precisely what should precede everything: the subject, what i “aim,” and what i do, all of this is not sustainable if the dimension of history does not precede them; if we do not “historicize” that subject of the phenomenologists (hence foucault speaks of “processes of subjectivation”),31 giving it “a consciousness that is transformed through history”, and that cannot be translucent of itself by itself (foucault 1994, iii. , 147).32 anyway, foucault says he shared that “more regulated” path, as we said above, in a clarification that can be found later, still in the text “la vie: l’experience et la science”, when he compares phenomenology to canguilhem’s perspective. namely, the difference in treatment between the lived [vécu], with the search for a certain “originating meaning of every act of knowledge”, and the living [vivant], which, in canguilhem, is tied to a historical concept of life (foucault 1994, iv, 773).33 “la vie: l’experience et la science” does not highlight the foucauldian university period in detail, but the currents from which he cites imply this and can give us the dimension of how the aufklärung tradition is capable of being reactivated or not. thus, elsewhere foucault tells us that the interest in phenomenology, typical of french universities from 1945 to 1955, had to be over (foucault 1994, iv, 432),34 and already from 1950 onwards, he confirmed it, gradually entering the scene of psychoanalysis and authors such as lévi-strauss (foucault 1994, iii).35 but we should not move on that quickly, because there was an equal interest in marxism, which only began to wane after the french movement of may 1968, when its dogmatism was called into question (foucault 1994, iii, 61).36 an answer to this current also needed to be given since one of its weapons consisted in claiming for itself the status of a current in tune with the rigors and objectivity of the “noble sciences”.37 that is, giving importance to economics and the “game of superstructures and infrastructures” (foucault 1994, 147),38 an immediate question that remained was how he could, reconstituting a history of society with its schemes, account for the history of sciences, the nature and development of mathematics, theoretical physics, etc. and this was generally 29 “qui êtes-vous, professeur foucault”. 30 “dialogue sur le pouvoir”. 31 we have discussed this elsewhere (rocha and rocha, 1990). 32 “entretien avec michel foucault”. foucault said that, in practice, it was the concern for the meaning of history, namely, the “conditions according to which a scientific object could be constituted” (foucault 1994, i, 602) that made him write the works histoire de la folie (1976) and naissance de la clinic (2003). 33 “la vie: l’experience et la science”. portocarrero (2009, 11) explains this: to a “conceptual, historical and discontinuous analysis, but without considering its questioning of the truth value of the knowledge of life”. 34 “structuralisme et poststructuralisme”. 35 “le pouvoir, une bete magnifique”. on the entry into the scene of these authors and currents, in a more general perspective, not necessarily foucauldian, see the two volumes of history of structuralism (dosse 1993 and 1994). 36 “entretien avec michel foucault”. 37 michael löwy makes a good synthesis of how this objectivity could be thought of, from a comte statement: “society is governed by natural laws, that is, invariable laws, independent of human will and action [and...], therefore, it is epistemologically assimilated by nature (what we will classify as ‘positivist naturalism’)” (löwy 2000, 17). 38 “entretien avec michel foucault”. foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 10 the problem at the time he lived, and which authors such as althusser or desanti, foucault’s professors, addressed themselves (foucault 1994, iv, 53-54).39 marxism wanted to separate what was science from what was ideology (foucault 1994, 53).40 but the current notion of ideology, for foucault, presupposed bringing with it the idea of a hidden truth to be exposed. and intellectuals attentive to this, therefore, needed to separate the scientific and objective contents from the ideological ones, “changing people’s conscience”, contaminated by false ideas. foucault points out that many problems exist there and, for example, if we took this seriously, it would be difficult to assess the question of a supposedly racist scientific ideology: the biological concept of degeneration, says foucault, and “racism itself was not initially a political view”; moreover, modern anti-semitism would not have started with that concept (foucault 1994, iii, 324-325).41 but the fundamental thing is to understand that, if marx certainly represented an important moment for western thought (but foucault warns us: we cannot dissociate him from the context of the 19th century!), reactivating that tradition of aufklärung, the same could not be said of marxism. on the contrary, this represented the phase of a “political impoverishment”, tied to varied “power dynamics” and always under the banner of scientific rationality that legitimized its “coercive propositions” (foucault 1994, iii, 600).42 and it is this same rationality that is at the core of communist parties (marx’s theory could not assert itself without the existence of these parties), joining everything to “prophetic” elaborations that, by the way, were the part foucault didn’t like in marx (foucault, 1994, iii, 612).43 in “la vie: l’experience et la science” (foucault 1994, iv), in line with what we are dealing with here, it is important to highlight that foucault points out the fact that the history of science, preferably or almost exclusively, had been in charge of the “noble sciences”, unlike canguilhem.44 what did he do? he chose a completely different scientific region, the “sciences of life”, or the history of biology and medicine (anatomy and physiology, in particular), whose knowledge was “much less deductive” (foucault 1994, iv, 768). canguilhem’s merit was not only in electing “regions” of knowledge that were foreign to the routine habits of historians of science. it is also a matter of seeing how he “relocated” a series of concepts then used, from which he cites and emphasizes the one of “‘discontinuity’”. for foucault, this “discontinuity” at times highlighted the “history of ‘true discourses’”, scientific discourses constantly subjected to rectifications and corrections; at other times, it sought to show that there was no scientific unit where pathologies appeared “under a background of normality”. at the heart of this question was the idea, absolutely interesting (!), of not only relying on “‘normal science’”, but also seeking “the internal normativity of different scientific activities” (foucault 1994, iv, 771). and that between truth and falsity, notions typical of the sciences until then, canguilhem places “error” (foucault 1994, iv, 772).45 therefore, we were not faced with too evident and demarcated relationships, where options “t” and “f” await to be chosen. canguilhem showed, in a transversal exercise, so to speak – an exercise that could not be tied to the science-object relationship and the fixed region of research. this is seen when canguilhem shows in his investigations, according to 39 “entretien avec michel foucault”. 40 “entretien avec michel foucault”. 41 “le jeu de michel foucault”. 42 “méthodologie pour la connaissance du monde: comment se débarrasser du marxisme”. 43 “méthodologie pour la connaissance du monde: comment se débarrasser du marxisme”. 44 the case of bachelard is exemplary. in his book, the formation of the scientific spirit (1996), the development of the notion of “epistemological obstacle” seeks to show how knowledge rises from common sensory experience to formal and abstract concepts, where mathematics, physics and chemistry rest. 45 “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 11 foucault’s words, that “life and death are never matters of physics themselves (...); it is for him a question of morals, or politics, not a scientific question” (foucault 1994, iv, 773).46 now we are in a position to insert that old difference between strong sciences and dense and complex sciences. the “density” of these sciences would characterize the problems around the “status, conditions of exercise, functioning, the institutionalization of scientific discourses” (foucault 1994, i, 688).47 how can we not understand the need for the difference in importance given by a kant in his time, concerned with establishing the status of the sciences, in relation to what happened in the few years that followed his undertaking, when the phenomenon of population intensified? now, social and governmental reasons emerged (foucault 1994, iii, 13-14),48 new demands, therefore, and it is because we are in this ever-changing historical ground that made foucault understand that “theory” cannot be opposed to practice, as much has been said in philosophy. in fact, in itself every theory “is already” a “practice” (foucault 2001, i, 1176).49 thus, the text “la vie: l’experience et la science” continues to give little clarification to its reader and ends up resuming in more detail the distance between phenomenology and canguilhem: “this philosophy of meaning, of the subject and of the lived experience that [he] opposed to a philosophy of error, of the concept of the living, as another way of approaching the notion of life” (foucault 1994, iv, 776).50 but is it from this more pertinent development of french epistemology with canguilhem that the kantian tradition will find a final safeguard? yes and no. this answer, from our perspective, would have a double understanding, each, obviously, from a certain point of view. yes: insofar as foucault emphasizes, generically (!), successful traits of a good extension of the kantian diagnosis embraced by all those epistemologists: a more regulated and “scientific” thought was what he spoke about cavaillès, no: if we understand that, although one can see “interesting approximations” between “[foucauldian] philosophy and the sciences” (machado 2006, 8), and foucault himself reports elsewhere the good surprise in learning that canguilhem was also a reader of nietzsche (foucault 1994, iv, 434),51 one cannot ignore significant differences between them, see the “progressive distancing from epistemological theses” made by foucault (machado 2006, 8). in fact, machado goes on, not even his archeology “is guided any longer by the same principles that guide epistemological history” and point to the sciences, in any case, as a beacon for philosophy or the privileged place of rationality (2006, 9). only generic positions are left for the understanding that we want about the “seal” of the dignity of authors and currents about that kantian tradition. the first has to do with a “questioning of rational thought, not so much regarding its nature, its foundation, its powers and rights, but about its history and geography, about its immediate past and its conditions of exercise, about its moment, place and present” (foucault 1994, iv, 765).52 and that explains a lot, this time. now, if the epistemological aspect of the problem of “enlightenment” in kant appears little in foucault’s readings about him, it does not mean to say that foucault did not see it. for example, that kant “took for granted”, so to speak, mathematics and physics, which would be incorrect, given that this author speaks of the “first revolution” of knowledge related to them, as we said when he replaced the imagination by direct confrontation with nature (in the case of physics). however, it was important for foucault to emphasize research that took into account history and geography; 46 “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. 47 “réponse à une question”. 48 “la politique de la santé au xviii siècle”. 49 “les intellectuels et le pouvoir”. 50 “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. 51 “structuralisme et poststructuralisme”. 52 “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 12 that is, at what moment and in what place was the emergence of a knowledge-and-a-practice noticed? the foucauldian reader could certainly understand a little what he meant there, but even so, he would need to visit other places to delve into it. a second general position that endorses that kantian tradition – and, moreover, that does not find borders in countries and their tendencies – is now in the sense of examining “a reason, whose structural autonomy brings with it the history of dogmatisms and despotisms – consequently, a reason that only has a liberating effect as long as it manages to free itself from itself” (foucault 1994, iv, 767).53 but, again, this points to the dangers of rationalities with universalizing pretensions, whether placed at the center of a certain culture, science or social organization. by way of conclusion what can be understood about the notion of “noble sciences” sometimes used by michel foucault? the present work aimed at this, taking as support dits et écrits, which, in their two or four volumes (2001 or 1994 edition, respectively) here and there refer to the term. firstly, mathematics, physics and sometimes chemistry appear under that rubric, and it is not important to specify each one of them, but the general characteristic that animated them: being more deductive, objective knowledge and with a high value in the hierarchy of knowledge. in taking this route, we notice a very close connection between “noble sciences” and aufklärung, because kant, to foucault, was the “symbol” not so much of “enlightenment”, but of a different and more fruitful activity for philosophy: thinking of the present – the breadth of those sciences was inserted there. we have seen that foucault is not unaware of this, and at times he was able to point to the fact; he didn’t do it much, however, because it didn’t interest him, according to his reading of kant. it was less a matter of highlighting the question of the “nature” of the sciences than of perceiving the geography and history of knowledge. this was the first fundamental conclusion of the text “la vie: l’experience et la science”. the second has to do with a reason that should not seek universality, a sign, of course, that such reason leans there towards a despotism of some order. only with this awareness can one speak of rationality without it already implying some pure and simple freedom. the dignity [dignité] of philosophy was another aspect that we wanted to highlight in “la vie: l’experience et la science”. we tried to show that not each and every thought can claim to be a legitimate heir of the kantian aufklärung, to foucault, unless those that followed the directions mentioned above. cavaillès’ formalism met the criterion of a more regulated knowledge, and the new regions of science explored by canguilhem emphasized the historicity of knowledge. finally, at all times, we consider the preface addressed to canguilhem, published in 1978 and republished in 1984, as too incomplete or too generic. as the reader would know, for example, see the “entretien avec michel foucault” (foucault 1994, iv, 57) that an “enlightenment” that did not pay attention to man’s “limit experiences”, such as death, madness, disease, crime, sexuality, should we, therefore, operate a historical retreat in relation to the 18th century, kant’s century? that these gaps could be easily found, it was not difficult to imagine reasons and conjectures for it: perhaps foucault wanted to keep what he had written to canguilhem and to his other readers as fundamental; perhaps he was already tired, with the worsening of his illness (this re-edited preface was published in april 1984 and foucault died on june 25 of that year), to propose new writings that would also signal the line of his innovative thinking. or, even more important than demarcating some difference between them, between the 53 “la vie: l’expérience et la science”. foucault and the “noble sciences”: from aufklärung to “dignity” in philosophy jorge alberto rocha transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 13 student (already famous) and the former teacher, talking about it in 1994, in the text “la vie: l’experience et la science”, would overshadow the historical merits of canguilhem and would not be an act of gratitude and not of kindness. let foucault take the risks of his hiatuses, for the sake of elegance... references bachelard, gaston. 1996. a formação do espírito científico: contribuição para uma psicanálise do conhecimento. translation of estela dos santos abreu. rio de janeiro: contraponto. comte, auguste. 2016. discurso sobre o espírito positivo: ordem e progresso. translation of walter solon. são paulo: edipro. costa, helrison s. 2018. “crítica e aufklärung no projeto filosófico de foucault”. kínesis. 10 (28) : 123-135. deleuze, gilles. 1990. pourparleres. paris: 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(1): 148-162. http://dx.doi.org/10.13102/ideac.v0i0 rocha, j. a.; rocha, aline s. s. 2019. objetivação e poder: das “práticas divisoras” do sujeito à “crítica” em michel foucault. revista de filosofia moderna e contemporânea (7): 3160. temple, g. c. 2009. aufklärung e a crítica kantiana no pensamento de foucault. cadernos de ética e filosofia política, 1 (14): 225-246. microsoft word biacino layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2019 (7): 1-24 issn 2526-2270 www.historiographyofscience.org belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2019 – this is an open access article article contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 1 abstract: in (biacino 2018) the evolution of the concept of real function of a real variable at the beginning of 1900 is outlined, reporting the discussions and the polemics, in which some young french mathematicians of those years as baire, borel and lebesgue were involved, about what had to be considered a genuine real function. in this paper, i consider in particular the contribution to real analysis theory done by some italian mathematicians as volterra, peano, ascoli, arzelà, etc., in the last decades of nineteenth century before the introduction of measure and integration theory by lebesgue. keywords: integrable functions in riemann’s sense; nowhere dense subsets; outer content; peano-jordan measure; reduction of double integrals; term by term integration received: 03 september 2019. reviewed: 02 november 2019. accepted: 30 november 2019. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2019.i7.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction one of the most interesting problems many mathematicians were faced in the second half of nineteenth century can be outlined as follows: there are two ways to define the integral, in order to calculate an area. one way gives the definite integral and was introduced first by mengoli, found again by cauchy and perfected by riemann. riemann had met in berlin the italian mathematicians betti, brioschi and casorati in 1858 and had established friendly relation with betti and beltrami, at that time professors at pisa, living for one year in that town in 1864. in order to calculate the area of a trapezoidal figure that is a rectangular trapeze whose oblique edge is the diagram of a bounded function f(x) with respect to the xaxis, riemann substituted this figure by another one where the curve is a scale whose steps are segments parallel to the x-axis. the area of this last figure is then given by ∑ (𝑥 − 𝑥 )𝑓(zi), where f is defined in the interval [a,b], a = xo<x1< ... <xn = b and, for every 𝑖 = 0,1, … , 𝑛, the point zi belongs to [xi, xi+1]. if the limit of this sum exists when the maximum width of the intervals tends to zero and it is finite, then it is the definite integral. in his famous dissertation of 1854, published only in 1867, riemann called the functions for which the operation of definite integral has a meaning as integrable functions. 1 loredana biacino [orcid: 0000-0001-7035-3993] is a former associate professor at the d. m. a. of university “federico ii” of naples. address: via blundo, 42, 80128 napoli, italy. e-mail: loredana.biacino2@unina.it contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 2 another way, the classical way to define area, consisted in considering integration as the inverse operation of derivation, that is, if a function f(x) is given in an interval [a,b], we can consider a new function f(x) whose derivative in every point is f(x), called a primitive of f(x). then the integral is given by definition by: ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 =f(b)-f(a). if a function has a primitive does it have also a definite integral in riemann sense? for very regular functions it is so. but the doubt that the two properties were not equivalent for general functions was posed already by dini. u. dini (1845-1918) was a disciple of betti interested at first in differential geometry; permeated by the new ideas, he was able in few years to give very important contributions to integration theory and real analysis and to create an important mathematical school operating in this field; it is why the theses of baire, in 1899, and lebesgue in 1902 were published on the annali di matematica, directed by dini. indeed, in 1878, the important italian mathematician had already developed in his famous treatise fondamenti per la teorica delle funzioni di variabili reali significant ideas in the study of the functions of a real variable in a very general context; there he gives the notion of indetermination limits in a point, on the left and on the right, for oscillating functions and the consequent definition of derivative numbers, the proof of the hankel condensation principle and so on. as we will see, some followers of his school continued his researches about real analysis giving many interesting contributions. for example, rodolfo bettazzi (1861-1941) in 1884 postulated, in order to define the integral of a function of more variables in a very general setting, some property of measurability of the domain of integration before the papers by peano and jordan had come to light (bettazzi 1884). in the same years also the german mathematician c. g. a. harnack (1851-1888) was working about this topic, assuming in his book about derivation and integration that the boundary curve of a plane domain was such that it could be enclosed in a plane domain whose magnitude was arbitrarily small, the same holding also for the curves by which the region was portioned (hawkins 2002). we are not surprised at that, since, as we have already said, the work of some italian mathematicians is strictly linked in the last decades of nineteenth century to the investigations born in germany with the development of riemann theory of integration, as the problem of characterization of the riemann integrable functions, or the generalization of some properties of cauchy integral to riemann integrable functions such as integration by parts or the extension of the integral to functions of more real variables, and the problem of the reduction of multiple integrals, etc. in this period the most important exponent of the german school of weierstrass was hermann hankel (1839-1873). like his master riemann and dirichlet, he conceived functions as very general entities. in order to characterize riemann integrable functions in 1870, in a long essay, untersuchungen �̈�ber die unendlich oszillierenden und unstetigen funktionen, he had introduced the local concept of jump (a forerunner of the concept of oscillation in a point) in the following way: given >0 a function f is said to make jumps greater than  in a point x if for every >0 there exists >0 such that ||< and |f(x+)f(x)|>. the jump in the point x is then defined as the least upper bound of the set of  such that f makes jumps greater than  in x (dini will call it salto). then he called a function a pointwise discontinuous function (punkiert unstetige funktionen), if, for every  the set s of the points x such that the jump of f in x is greater than  is nowhere dense, that is it is a set whose closure has no interior points. his most important theorem claims that a function is riemann integrable if and only if it is a pointwise discontinuous function. as we will see this condition is only necessary but this is the first time that an integrable function is characterized by means of the set of its discontinuity points. among other things hankel proves that: contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 3 if f is pointwise discontinuous in (a,b) then its points of continuity constitute a dense subset of (a,b). indeed let f be pointwise discontinuous: then for every >0 and for every interval i(a,b) there exists an interval i1i that is free from points of s. hankel iterates the previous consideration: there exists an interval i2i1that is free from points of 𝑆 and so on for every nn there exists in+1in that is free from points of 𝑆 . hankel implicitly assumes the intersection in is nonempty and claims that it contains points of continuity of f. thus the theorem is proven. this proof is given also in (dini 1878, 63), where at every step the width of in+1 is less than the half of the width of in, in such a way that the limit of the increasing sequence of the inferior extremes and that of the decreasing sequence of the superior extremes of the intervals coincide and the common limit is a point of continuity. in what way did hankel attain his most important theorem? he considered in his essay some singular functions whose discontinuities did not fill any interval: their set could be enclosed in intervals of arbitrarily small total magnitude. such functions perhaps suggested him that a function is pointwise discontinuous if and only if its discontinuities form a set that can be enclosed in infinitely many intervals whose total length could be made arbitrarily small. now such a set is an enumerable union of nowhere dense sets, but the converse does not hold. then the proof of the main theorem is erroneous. indeed, hankel mistook nowhere dense subsets (whose outer content may be also positive) with first species sets, that is with sets that have a derivate set of finite order equal to the empty set: the outer content of these latter sets is obviously zero. but we have to notice that the idea of a measure of a set was foreign to hankel’s thinking. the irish mathematician h. j. smith since 1875 proved that there are nowhere dense sets (nowadays known as generalized cantor sets), whose outer content is positive, but his work passed unnoticed in the continent. and in those years many authors often confused the concepts of nowhere dense subsets, first species sets and sets that can be covered by a finite number of intervals whose total sum can be made arbitrarily small (the so called negligible sets), as we can read for example in (letta 1994) or (hawkins 2002). nowhere dense sets with positive content and derivatives that are not integrable with regard to hankel theory of pointwise discontinuous functions dini pointed out that if a function f is riemann integrable then it is pointwise discontinuous (dini 1878, 250) that is it has infinitely many discontinuities but in every subinterval of the interval where it is defined there is at least a point of continuity for f (dini 1878,62); but he claimed also that he believed that the converse in general does not hold. he was not able to construct an example showing that there exist nowhere dense sets whose content is positive to prove the partial fallacy of hankel proof. however, he proved that every pointwise discontinuous function obtained by the principle of condensation of singularities is integrable, and in general: given a function defined in the interval (a,b), if it possesses only first species discontinuities, or, if it possesses second species discontinuities, these form a set of first species then the function is integrable. (dini 1878, 246) the proof is obtained using the fact that in the present hypotheses the set of the discontinuities of second species can be enclosed in a finite number of intervals whose length can be made as small as we want. observe that it is evident from this proposition that it was not clear yet that measure theoretic concepts, instead of topological ones, had to be contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 4 introduced in order to characterize the set of the discontinuity points of an integrable function. in 1881, an example of a nowhere dense set that is not negligible was furnished by a disciple of dini, a twenty aged student at the scuola normale of pisa, vito volterra (1860-1940) (volterra 1881a). in the same year, volterra proposed also the first example of a derivative function that is not riemann integrable, but pointwise discontinuous (volterra 1881b). he begins the first paper proving that given two pointwise discontinuous functions defined in the same interval there exist in every subinterval points where the functions are both continuous. for the proof he borrows from hankel the method used to prove that the points of continuity of every pointwise discontinuous function are dense. therefore, the sum of two pointwise discontinuous functions is pointwise discontinuous;2 as a consequence he obtains a generalization of the following theorem by hankel and dini: if a function is discontinuous in every irrational point of a given interval then it is totally discontinuous. (dini 1878, 63) at this point, volterra gives his famous counterexample of a nowhere dense set whose outer content is positive. he exhibits a function (volterra 1881b) with bounded derivative which is not integrable. we give here his proof revisited by lebesgue (lebesgue 1904a, 43). consider a sequence of real numbers tn such that the infinite product t= ∏ 𝑡 is convergent (not null); then from the middle part of the real interval (0,1) remove the open interval of length 1-t1, obtaining two intervals each of length t1/2, from the middle parts of the two remaining parts remove two intervals as before with t2 in place of t1, each one having length t1/2(1-t2), obtaining four intervals each of length t1t2/4 and so on. let r be the generalized cantor set obtained after all these operations are performed. observe that if tn=2/3 we obtain the cantor set, but in this case t=0; for our purposes tn could be for example equal to . now r has outer measure equal to t, while the inner measure is 0. so it is a closed, nowhere dense, not measurable set. consider the function f(x) in the interval (0,1) that is zero in all the points of r and is defined in the following way in every removed interval (a,b): f(a)=0, f(x)= (x-a)2sen if a<x<a+c, f(x)=c2sen if a+c≤x≤b-c, f(x)=-(x-b)2sen if b-c<x<b, f(b)=0, where c is a suitable number 0<c<(b-a)/2. the function f(x) is continuous, obviously it is derivable in the points not belonging to r. if xor it coincides with the extreme of a removed interval (a,b) and therefore | ( ) ( ) |= | ( ) | ≤|h| whence f’(𝑥 )=0. so f(x) is derivable everywhere. the derivative f’(x) = 2(x-a) 𝑠𝑒𝑛 ( ) cos ( ) for a<x<a+c, that is near a point a of a removed interval (a,b), is bounded and the maximum and minimum limit for x→a are 1 and 1; therefore f’(x) is discontinuous at all the points that are extremes of removed intervals, that is at the points of r, whence it is pointwise discontinuous: since the measure r is the number t>0 it follows that f’(x) is not riemann integrable. but, after the appearing of lebesgue’s theory of integration, it will be clear that volterra’s derivative function is lebesgue integrable, since, by baire (1899, 64), every 2 in (baire 1899, 66) and (lebesgue 1904b), volterra’s proposition is generalized for the case of infinite enumerable functions. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 5 derivative is measurable, and a bounded measurable function is lebesgue integrable. this function is a pointwise discontinuous function, but it is not riemann integrable. the previous example by volterra proves that dini was right: pointwise discontinuous functions exist whose set of discontinuities has positive outer content. mainly it proved the inadequacy of riemann integral to solve the problem of the research of the primitives of a given bounded function, the problem we start with, and justified the introduction of lebesgue integral, as lebesgue himself notices in (lebesgue, 1904a). some years after, l. tonelli in an early paper of his (tonelli 1907) determined a necessary and sufficient condition in order a derivative function in an interval (a,b) is riemann integrable.3 he proved also that: if a derivative is a function of bounded variation then it is continuous, and a function of bounded variation is a derivative if and only if it is continuous. the young tonelli in 1908 gave another complement to dini’s study about the singularities of a function. he proved that a function of a real variable has at most enumerable many 1st species discontinuities (tonelli 1908). therefore, every function without 2nd species discontinuities, by the result by dini quoted before, is riemann integrable. moreover, such a function is pointwise discontinuous on every perfect set and therefore representable as the sum of a polynomials series, uniformly continuous on every closed interval contained in an open continuity interval, if such intervals do exist (and riemann function proves that may be that such an interval could even do not exist). this was in accordance with an early work by c. severini written in 1897 where the weierstrass approximation theorem is extended to a class of integrable functions. a new characterization of integrable functions by ascoli and du bois-reymond: the definition of outer content let us come back to the problem of the characterization of an integrable function. an important contribution was given by the italian mathematician g. ascoli (1843-1896) in (ascoli 1875). he defines the oscillation of a real function f(x) in a point y as the difference between the maximum and the minimum limit of f(x) in y. moreover, on the basis of such a punctual definition of oscillation, he furnishes the following condition (for the proof see (ascoli 1875) and (letta 1994)): a function is integrable in (a,b) if and only if for every >0 and for every sequence of decompositions of (a,b), g1, g2, g3, ... in partial intervals such that the maximum width of the intervals of the decomposition gn tends to 0, the sum of the measures of the intervals containing points where the oscillation is equal or greater than  tends to 0 when n tends to . the preceding condition is in general referred to as a criterion established in 1882 by du bois-reymond, a disciple of weierstrass at berlin and one of the most enthusiastic 3 tonelli in this paper considers an infinitesimal sequence h1, h2, … ,hn, … of real numbers and the corresponding sequence of functions: ( ) ( ) , ( ) ( ) , …., ( ) ( ) , …. . then f’(x) is riemann integrable if and only if there exists l>0 such that | ( ) ( ) | < 𝐿 for every nn and for every x(a,b)-f, where f is at most an enumerable set, and the sequence is almost uniformly convergent in the sense of arzelà. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 6 exponents of riemann’s theory of integration, familiar in the early 1870 with the work of riemann, hankel, heine and cantor. du bois reymond considered “assumptionless functions” that is functions in their most large sense, defined as whatever correspondence between sets in the sense of dirichlet, whose only restriction was to be riemann integrable (bottazzini 2003). here is the criterion established by him: a real bounded function f(x) in the interval (a,b) is integrable if and only if for every >0 the set of the points where the oscillation is greater than  is an integrable set. in the terminology of du bois-reymond an integrable set is just a set that can be covered by a finite number of intervals the sum of whose lengths is less than . both ascoli and du bois-reymond considers the points where the oscillation is greater than . du boisreymond was the first to define the indetermination limits in 1870 and consequently the oscillation as the difference between them (hawkins 2002). the paper by ascoli is written in italian and is difficult to read, perhaps this is why it passed unnoticed. lebesgue and also the italian vitali will refer always in their works to du bois-reymond criterion and will not quote it. it is also worth noticing that in the same year in which the memoir on discontinuous functions by darboux appears, the existence of upper and lower integrals of a bounded function is proved in (ascoli 1875). the studies about the integrable functions stimulated researches about the kind of the set of their discontinuities and in few years, it became clear that not topological but measurability conditions were adequate in order to try to solve the problem. in 1884 the austrian professor at the university of innsbruck otto stolz (1842-1905) was the first to introduce in a paper on math. ann., the journal directed by klein, the definition of the outer content of a set e enclosed in an interval (a,b) as a number l such that for every >0 there exists >0 such that for every finite partition p of (a,b) in intervals with maximum length of the intervals less than  it is |l(p)-l|<, where l(p) is the total magnitude of the intervals of p that cover e. some months after, in 1884, cantor gave a different but equivalent definition of content. in 1885, also harnack gave independently a definition very similar to stolz’s one: he pointed out that the starting point had been the fact that some sets can be covered by a finite number of intervals with arbitrarily small total length: harnack called them discrete since they have a behavior similar to finite sets. he also considered countable sets; it may be that the example given by hankel of the set whose elements are the infinitely many points suggested to him that countable sets also could be enclosed in intervals such that the sum of their lengths is as small as we want. indeed if a1, a2, ... are the elements of a countable set e, given >0, it is possible to enclose every element an in an interval whose length is n in such a way that  n <. perhaps these considerations suggested to borel some years after the introduction of borel zero measure sets to define his measure theory. but harnack did not introduce a measure for countable everywhere dense sets. perhaps this is because, while he was well informed that nowhere dense sets could have not negligible measure, he believed however that countable everywhere dense sets were too large from a topological point of view to be considered negligible. hawkins thinks that the fact now so familiar to appear commonplace that certain everywhere dense sets can be enclosed in intervals of arbitrarily small total length must have seemed too paradoxical to serve as the basis for a theory of measure (hawkins 2002,64). for many mathematicians the definition of content was not related to the concept of integral: this relationship became clear with the work of giuseppe peano (1858-1932). since the notion of area for a region with a curvilinear boundary had not yet received a precise and suitable meaning, peano thought that it was necessary to perform a complete theory for that (peano 1883). for a bounded region e in the plane he considered two classes of polygons: those entirely enclosed in e and those including e. the areas of the polygons of the first class contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 7 have a least upper bound, the areas of the polygons of the second class have a greatest lower bound. if these two numbers coincide then their common value is by definition, the area of e, but if they differ the concept of area does not apply. it is clear by his own words that peano was led to the previous definitions by the analogy with the definition of the integral and by the specification of the definition of l.u.b. and g.l.b. these ideas were generalized and exposed for sets of one, two or three dimensions in chapter v, geometrical magnitudes, of (peano 1887). here peano gives rigorously the definition of interior, exterior and limit point (nowadays boundary point) for a given set; he considers as an example the linear set a whose abscissas are rational numbers greater than 0 and less than 1. this set has no interior points but all the points of the closed interval are boundary points, while all the other points are exterior. perhaps motivated by volterra which had used the names of lower integral and upper integral (volterra 1881b), peano introduces the concept of internal and external length for a linear set e respectively as the l.u.b. of the lengths of the finite unions of the intervals contained in e and the g.l.b of the lengths of the finite unions of intervals containing e. in the case of the set a whose abscissas are rational numbers greater than 0 and less than 1 he observes that the internal length of a is 0 while the exterior length is 1 and therefore the set cannot be given a length. if from a set formed by a finite number of segments and containing a set a we take away a set formed by a finite number of segments contained in a, we obtain a finite number of intervals whose union contains the boundary of a. peano observes that a has length if and only if the sum of the widths of these intervals is as small as we want, that is: a set a is measurable if and only if its boundary has null measure. in every case the difference between external length and internal length of a linear set is the external length of the boundary. similar definitions and theorems peano gives for the area and volume of the plane and tridimensional sets. peano was probably led to such a general approach by the reading of the papers on acta mathematica 1883-84 that georg cantor (1845-1918) dedicated to the infinite and linear sets of points and the general notion of volume of whatever n-dimensional set. but cantor measure is an outer content and therefore it is not additive. in (peano 1887) there is a strict connection between measure theory and integral theory: if the function f is nonnegative and e denotes the figure under its graph, then the lower integral coincides with the internal area of e and the upper integral coincides with the external area of e, in such a way that f is integrable if and only if e is measurable. five years after the concept of measurability will begin central in the theory of integration for the treatment given by jordan in the second edition of his cours d’analyse (jordan 1893), where it will assume a determinant role in the definition of multiple integrals. other contributions to real analysis by peano: another definition of limit it is interesting the contribution peano gave in the first years of his activity to (genocchi 1884), an internationally known treatise, that was translated even in russian. in april 1882 angelo genocchi (1817-1889), which was teaching infinitesimal analysis at the university of turin, had fractured one of his knees. in that period the young peano (1858-1932) was his assistant (until 1890 when begun teaching as an extraordinaire professor, full professor from 1895) and substituted his professor during the time he was ill, that is from may 1882 until march 1884). one of the first lessons peano gave (may 1882) was about the area of a surface. at that time the precise definition was not yet enough clear even if lagrange had calculated contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 8 such an area in 1756 by a double integral. serret in his cours de calcul diffèrentiel et integral had given a definition similar to that of the length of a curve, calling area of a surface s limited by a curve g the limit of the area of a polyhedral surface, whose faces were triangles, inscribed in the surface and bounded by a polygonal line tending to g. to make this definition sound it was necessary to prove that the limit exists and is independent from the rule by which the triangular faces decrease. peano found a counter example proving that the previous theorem is wrong and sent it to genocchi, being in the dark about the fact that in december 1880 also schwarz had sent two letters to genocchi for the same reason, enclosing a paper model, and in january 1881 he had sent also a description of his counter example. ugo cassina exposed this singular fact of the almost contemporaneous discovery of the counter example in (cassina 1950), where the correspondence of genocchi with schwarz and hermite about this topic is published. the example was published only after some years by schwarz in the second volume of his gesammelte matematische abhandlugen in 1890; also peano inserted several years after an abstract with his counter example in the tome iv of his formulaire mathèmatique (1901-03). this episode (borgato 1991b) shows how teaching and researching were linked in peano’s activity and how a great maker of counter examples he was. after he had substituted genocchi, peano thought to publish genocchi’s lessons supplemented with his own explications (genocchi 1884): in particular for this book he wrote the preface and the notes (annotazioni) where he gives for every paragraph a great deal of historical and bibliographical notes about the theorems and their exposition in preceding treatises, quoting almost all the bibliography that in those years was available with regard to real analysis, from cauchy, weierstrass, heine, darboux to dini, dedekind, cantor, harnack, du bois-reymond, stolz, jordan, etc. peano gives a fundamental importance to the functional point of view, so draws attention to many imprecisions and mistakes some of which were reproduced in the texts even after the fact that they were erroneous had been proven: such as the incorrect definition of continuity, given in some treatises and already underlined in (darboux 1875); the geometrical proof of the zeros theorem for continuous functions by cauchy: for it peano observes only an algebraic proof of the theorem allows the geometrical intuitive considerations. moreover he underlines the wrong enunciation, given in some treatises, of the theorem of de l’hospital, or the theorem about the continuity of a function of two variables partially continuous with respect to both variables, or about the derivability of a compound function of more variables whose partial derivatives are not continuous etc. peano observes that, in order to formulate lagrange’s theorem about finite differences, it is not necessary to add the condition that the derivative is continuous as jordan had done, and he adds a famous generalization to three functions of it; gives the example of a function whose second derivatives do not commute, and many other examples and counterexamples. there are also many other interesting observations, due to the original peano’s way to do mathematics: for example, in annotazione n.7 he gives another formulation of the definition of limit, that is equivalent to the classical one, but differs from it. peano considers for simplicity the case that the independent variable x tends to infinity and says that a function f is greater (respectively smaller) than a number a when x increases indefinitely if for x greater than a certain value it is f(x)>a (respectively f(x)<a). peano then divides the numbers in three categories: 1) the numbers a such that f(x) is greater than a when x increases indefinitely; 2) the numbers a such that f(x) is smaller than a when x increases indefinitely; 3) the remaining numbers. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 9 he then proves the theorem: the function f(x) tends to a limit a if and only if there exist numbers of the first and the second category but there is only one number of the third category or there is none. in other words, if we denote by a and b the sets of numbers of first and second category respectively, then a and b are two unbounded intervals, on the lower side the former, on the upper side the latter, and are separated. then f(x) is convergent if and only if a and b are contiguous and in this case the limit coincides with the unique separation element. if a= and b=r (a=r and b=) then f(x) is negatively (positively) convergent. this is peano’s reasoning strictly linked to the fact that real number theory had been introduced only twelve years before. simplifying a geometrical definition of a derivative. it seems so quite natural peano’s interest in the definition of fluxion given in (maclaurin 1742, 579), where general rigorous geometrical principles that seem immediately applicable to algebraic quantities are used, without considering the fluxion generated by the motion or considering the first or last ratios of evanescent increments, but using algebraic inequalities:4 we refer the translation of them in few words as peano does in his annotazione n.32. a fluxion of a quantity with respect to another quantity is any measures of their respective rates of increase or decrease while they vary, or flow, together. maclaurin uses the expression: a quantity increases by differences that are always greater than the successive differences by which another quantity increases. therefore if f(x) and g(x) denote quantities, if f(x)=g(xo) and h>0, then from f(xo+h) f(xo) > g(xo+h)-g(xo) and f(xo)f(xo-h)>g(xo)-g(xo-h) it follows f(xo-h)-g(xo-h)<0 and f(xo+h)-g(xo+h)>0; maclaurin makes also clear that small values of h are to be considered. precisely, peano translates the preceding words saying that a function f(x) increases more rapidly than a function g(x) for x=xo, if f(x)-g(x) is (strictly) increasing in x=xo. in this case peano says also that g(x) increases less rapidly than f(x). for a 4 this way as a basis for the definition of limit can be found in d’alembert, l’huilier, lacroix, that all quote maclaurin. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 10 linear function the ratio of the increments of the dependent and independent variables is constant and maclaurin gives such a constant the name of derivative of the linear function in every point. for a not constant function f(x) peano translates maclaurin’s words writing that it has derivative equal to f’(x0) if: for x=xo, f(x) increases less rapidly than every linear function having a derivative greater than f’(xo) and more rapidly than every linear function having a derivative lower than f’(x0). we can conclude peano’s reasoning saying that f’(xo) is a number (if it exists) such that: for every k>f’(xo) there exists a neighborhood i of xo such that: (x,yi, x≠y, x≤ 𝑥 ≤ y) k> ( ) ( ) ; for every k<f’(xo) there exists a neighborhood i of xo such that: (x,yi, x≠y, x≤ 𝑥 ≤ y)  k< ( ) ( ) . therefore f’(xo) is a number (if it exists) such that for every >0 there exists a neighborhood i of xo such that: xi, x≠xo  f’(xo)- < ( ) ( ) < f’(xo)+. in this way peano was able to allow the simplification and the translation into the rigorous weierstrass formulation of limit of the vague but very interesting geometric definition written in the treatise of maclaurin. from peano’s formalization of maclaurin process we can also deduce that f’(xo) is a number, if it exists, such that the following equivalent definition holds: f’(xo)=𝑙𝑖𝑚 , → ( ) ( ) where x<xo<y. different kinds of derivative and the mean theorem if in the previous relation we do not require that it is x<xo<y, we obtain a more restrictive definition of derivative than the classical one, since it implies the continuity of the derivative, so for example the function: contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 11 f(x)=0 if x=0 and f(x)= x2sin if x ≠ 0 (*) is derivable everywhere in the classical sense, but it is not derivable in x=0 in this new sense.5 in 1882, october 7, the young assistant peano, while teaching analysis in the course of his professor genocchi, writes to him and submittes some of his ideas. among other things he proves that: if f(x) is a function having a finite derivative for every x of an interval (a,b) and if for every  there exists >0 such that for every h≤ and for every x(a,b) it is ( ) ( ) − 𝑓′(𝑥) ≤, then f’(x) is a continuous function in (a,b) (borgato 1991, 68). in (genocchi 1884, 50) he will observe that this condition is equivalent to the continuity of the derivative. it is also very interesting to remember that in a letter to the review “nouvelles annales de mathématiques” published in january 1884, peano corrects the demonstration in the first volume (jordan 1882-87, 21) of a weak form of the mean theorem, where the derivative is supposed implicitly continuous. in the letter peano considers the function (*) and observes that, if an= , then the difference: ( ) ( ) – f’(a2n) = 0-(-1)=1, similar to differences considered by jordan and by him thought infinitesimal, is obviously not infinitesimal since f’(x) is not continuous in the origin. he adds also that it is possible to prove the mean theorem: if a function f(x) is continuous and derivable in an interval (a,b), then if x and x+h belong to (a,b) there exists  such that 0<<1 and f(x+h)-f(x)= hf’(x+h), even if f’(x) is not continuous in (a,b). before publishing the letter, the director of the review sent a copy of it to jordan, who answered saying that he agreed completely with peano’s criticism; jordan asked peano also for a proof of the mean theorem. then peano sent privately a letter to jordan where he proved the mean theorem exactly as it is demonstrated nowadays in the analysis texts for students6 (borgato 1991a, 70-71), (bottazzini 1994, 170-72). only some years after, in 1892, in a brief note on the belgian review mathesis, peano will give a new definition of derivative in a point x as the limit of the ratio ( ) ( ) where x1 and x2 both tend to x. in this way: a derivative of a function f(x) in an interval is continuous if and only if the incremental ratio ( ) ( ) tends to 0 when h tends to 0 uniformly with respect to x; and if and only if the ratio ( ) ( ) tend to f’(x) when x1 and x2 both tend to x, for every x belonging to the interval. these conclusions are strictly linked to the attempt made in the fifth chapter of (peano 1887) in order to elaborate a theory of set additive functions: peano considers coexistent magnitudes, as for example mass and volume of a body, and considers, starting for example from the mean density of a body, its density in its points, considering a process of punctual derivation of a set function. although this pioneering work was not recognized a long time 5 indeed if we consider y= we obtain x-y = and ( ) ( ) = ( ) ( ) sin whence we deduce that 𝑙𝑖𝑚 , → ( ) ( ) does not exist. 6 in a subsequent letter to gilbert peano declared he had heard the proof from genocchi but the demonstration had been given first by bonnet and had been published after by serret in his cours d’analyse. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 12 in any way, f. a. medvedev in 1975 observed that it was more noteworthy than lebesgue’s paper of 1910 that is generally recognized as the source of the modern research on the set additive function theory (kennedy 1983, 40). at page 171 of (peano 1887) the author proves the following theorem: the ratio of two coexistent quantities in a point is a continuous function of the point. and in 1914 he writes: for the real functions of a real variable, the derivative can exist and be discontinuous. but the derivative in this case is the limit of the incremental ratio, where one extreme is fixed, and the other mobile tending to the first. if by derivative we mean the limit of the incremental ratio where both values given to the variable tend to the same value, as is done for the coexisting quantities, then this derivative, supposed to exist, is a continuous function. (peano 1914-15, 795)7 peano and genocchi genocchi-peano treatise was a clear and penetrating look on the analysis, completely in line with the contemporary rigourism period. not only the preface and the annotazioni but the most part of the book owes very much to peano,8 as he himself admitted in 1889 (peano 1959): using the summaries made by the students to his (genocchi’s) lectures, i compared them point by point with all the main treatises of calculation, and with original memoirs, thus taking into account the work of many. i made many additions and modifications to his lessons. (peano 1959, vol.3, 319)9 anyway, his words did not fail genocchi’s thought. genocchi,10 as peano, was a follower of weierstrass german school; since 1865, when he started his teaching of 7 per le funzioni reali di variabile reale, la derivata può esistere ed essere discontinua. ma la derivata in questo caso è il limite del rapporto incrementale, ove un estremo sia fisso, e l’altro mobile tendente al primo. se per derivata si intendesse il limite del rapporto incrementale ove ambo i valori dati alla variabile tendono a uno stesso valore, come si fa per le grandezze coesistenti, allora questa derivata, supposta esistente, risulta funzione continua. 8 genocchi was in dispute with peano for this fact. the causes are explained in (kennedy 1983, 31-34) and (bottazzini 1994,162-163); in (carbone, gatto, palladino 2001, 211-212) the letter of genocchi to cremona dated november 23, 1884 concludes the question, with the affirmation from genocchi of his high esteem for peano. 9 “io, servendomi di sunti fatti dagli allievi alle sue (di genocchi) lezioni, li paragonai punto per punto con tutti i principali trattati di calcolo, e con memorie originali, tenendo così conto dei lavori di molti. feci in conseguenza alle sue lezioni molte aggiunte, e qualche modificazione”. 10 the young peano was taught by genocchi not only in a strictly mathematical sense, but also he learnt to share genocchi’s interest in the work of famous mathematicians of the past, in particular of lagrange: an example is given by the following papers by genocchi: di una formula del leibniz e di una lettera di lagrange al conte fagnano, 1869, stamperia reale torino; intorno ad alcune lettere del lagrange, 1874, stamperia reale paravia; sopra la pubblicazione fatta da boncompagni di undici lettere di luigi lagrange a leonardo eulero, 1877, roma, bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze mat. e fis. tomo x. genocchi exposed also the controversy, born in 1846 at turin academy and ended in france, after the young professor chiò had published a paper about the approximation of the roots of a numerical equation that clashed with a theorem by lagrange: two conceptions of mathematics were faced, the algebraic conception by lagrange on one side and the conception of the modern analysis, the analysis contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 13 differential calculus he had written the notes in his own hand, and continued writing still 1885.11 inspired to the cours d’analyse by cauchy, they reveal a deep interest in a rigorous approach to mathematics. since genocchi was informed about the existence of continuous functions without derivative only in 1875, they begun one of the subjects of his seminars in 1878, as peano points up (peano 1959, 318). for few years, peano was interested in analysis, before dedicating all his efforts to his famous formulario, but he gave many other original contributes. for example, in 1890 he published the first example of a fractal, a curve that fills all a plane area; this example was very sensational in the history of the dimension concept. cantor had proved that it is possible to establish a bijection between an interval and a square but in that period, it was also proved that this bijective application could not be continuous. now peano in a short paper on the mathematische annalen (peano 1890) proved that it is possible to establish a continuous mapping between an interval and all the points of a square, the mapping being obviously not injective. peano gave only an arithmetic description of the curve; only many years after, in 1908, he suggested the geometric construction of it and of other analogous curves in the formulaire mathèmatique. the first analytical representation of peano’s curve was given by cesaro in 1897 (borgato 1991b). in 1892, among other things, peano considered examples of functions always increasing and discontinuous in every interval, a topic strictly related to the study of pathological functions as the problem of the derivability of a continuous function (peano 1892a); he wrote also a paper on the definition of the limit (peano 1892b), where he proved that the study of the behavior of a function f (x) in a point xo, in the case it does not admit a limit, could be simplified considering that in every case, if the function is bounded, a point l exists such that for every  and for every  there exists at least one x such that 0<|x-xo|< and |f(x)-l|<: a point as l is nowadays called a cluster point and minimum limit and maximum limit in xo are respectively the least cluster point and the greatest cluster point.12 as beppo levi observed in (levi 1955), peano’s contributions to the theory of functions of real variable is in the first years of his work more didactic than essential, interesting more for the research of simplicity and clarity than for his originality. however, b. segre claims that the directives of bourbakism towards a critical revision and unification of mathematics under the ideas of abstractness and axiomatization were of cauchy, supported by genocchi on the other side: di una controversia intorno alla serie del lagrange, 1872, stamperia reale torino. in 1884, date of publication of the denied calcolo edited by peano, the following note appears: due lettere di c. f. gauss pubblicate dal principe boncompagni, reale acc. sci. torino. in the memory: sur un mémoire de daviet de foncenex et sur les géométries non euclidiennes, reale acc. sci. torino,1887, genocchi compared lagrange’s analytic foundation and the functional formulation of mathematics, with great attention also for non-euclidean geometry. but since the examples of non-euclidean geometry, pointed out by professor beltrami, were given within the euclidean space, he concluded that the ancient euclidean geometry is enough for all. in this way a free field was left to analysis. 11 see (bottazzini 1991) and (bottazzini 1994), where the notes by genocchi are exposed. 12 “[...] the definition of limit now commonly used in the treatises of analysis for which each function has one limit only, or lacks limit, is a special case of the concept of limit found in cauchy, abel and others, according to which each function has some limit values. if these are reduced to one, the particular ordinary definition is given; if there are more, among them there is always the minimum and maximum […]. thus generalizing the concept of limit, a vast field is presented open to scholars; it is a question of examining the various propositions known in the particular case of the single limit, and of seeing with what modifications they exist, since they are limits in general” (peano 1894, 20). for example peano proves that, given a sequence of real numbers, then the minimum and the maximum limits of the sequence of the arithmetic means lie between the minimum and the maximum limits of the given sequence; the same holds also for the minimum and maximum limit of the sequence of the geometric means (peano 1894, 21-28). contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 14 inspired directly or indirectly by the philosophical convictions of peano, which were present in all his work and induced him to write his formulario mathematico (segre 1955). contribution of peano to differential equation theory in the years 1886-90, peano gives new contributions to the study of ordinary differential equations besides the aforesaid discovery of a curve that fills an area. in the note sull’integrabilità delle equazioni differenziali del primo ordine presented in 1886 to the reale accademia delle scienze di torino, peano was the first to prove that the cauchy’s problem for the equation y’=f(x,y) has solution also if the function f(x,y) is only continuous, by means of a new conception of the problem. perron some years after went back to peano’s proof again and for a long time peano took the credit for it. in 1890, peano faced the same problem from a quite different point of view, first of all considering a system of first order equations. three years after, a free re-exposition of peano’s memory was given, removing the obstacle to the reading posed by the use of the logic ideography and the excess of precision peano had introduced in his exposition; then the demonstration procedure was universally esteemed and motivated new studies by de la vallée poussin, arzelà and osgood. beppo levi remembers also the note: integrazione per serie delle equazioni differenziali lineari, on the reale accademia delle scienze di torino, (published in 1888 on math. ann.) where peano considered a system of n first order differential equations in n unknown functions: (*) = ∑ 𝑟 𝑥 ; in this paper he exposed an integration procedure alike to that presented by picard four years after; picard considered a more general not linear system = 𝑓 (𝑥 , …, 𝑥 ,t) and applied a method he called subsequent integrations method. peano claimed some years after, in 1897, his partial priority. as beppo levi observes it is difficult to compare the origins of the methods used by the two authors. it is more significant to remember how peano relates his method to the linear operator calculus: indeed if x=(𝑥 , …, 𝑥 ), by (*) we can say that is obtained from x by means of a linear substitution r, function of the real variable t, that is: = rx. the integration by series can be seen as the analogous integration of the simple equation, for n=1, =rx obtained by posing x(t)=x(to)𝑒 ∫ ( ) , whence we can write x(t) as a sum of a series (see cassina 1933). peano was a friend of ernesto cesaro (1859-1906), favourite disciple of the belgian professor eugène catalan and professor of analysis at the university of naples. their friendship begun with a letter of january 20, 1892 with some observations by cesaro about the genocchi-peano treatise. the correspondence continued with an exchange of ideas and manifestations of mutual esteem; it is also interesting for the notes and the books cesaro sent with regularity. for example, in the letter october 31, 1894 peano thanks cesaro for his note sulla geometria intrinseca delle congruenze and for the book introduzione alla teoria matematica dell’elasticità. in the letter of november 5, 1896 peano thanks cesaro for the book lezioni di geometria intrinseca he finds very interesting and writes he is very busy since the second volume of his formulaire de mathèmatiques is in press; only two years after, letter of november 22, 1898, peano writes he has received cesaro’s treatise elementi di calcolo infinitesimale, a noteworthy book, where the last researches of cesaro are exposed with rigour and elegance. and one year after, letter of december 10, 1899, peano writes: “your contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 15 works lend themselves very well to translation into symbols, due to their precision and clarity” (“i suoi lavori si prestano assai bene alla traduzione in simboli, a causa della loro precisione e chiarezza”); and proposes to cesaro to translate some propositions of his treatises in the symbology of the formulario (palladino 2000). e. cesaro, even if it is not enough mentioned today (only by his famous theorems about series, the media theorem known as cesaro stolz theorem) is another example of the interest shared by some italian mathematician in the new conceptions about functions and mathematical objects, and was very much esteemed by others contemporaneous mathematicians as volterra, segre, beltrami, hermite [...] (palladino 2000). in the same year of the second edition of his elementi di calcolo infinitesimale, in 1905, cesaro published also a paper where he gave a new construction of the koch curve, one of the first examples of fractals, another testimony of the similarity of his interests and even perhaps of character with his friend peano. term by term integration and reduction of double integrals in 1970 heine had introduced uniform convergence as a sufficient condition in order the limit of a convergent sequence of continuous functions was continuous too. the italian mathematician c. arzelà (1847-1912), another student at the scuola normale of pisa in the early seventies, thought at first that the uniform convergence was not only a sufficient but also a necessary condition, however by means of counterexamples he convinced himself that this was not the case and he faced the problem of the determination of the weakest type of convergence of a sequence of real continuous functions in order that the limit was continuous too. in 1883-84 he characterized this type of convergence. in 1885, in a series of four papers published on the rendiconti della accademia dei lincei he introduces a fundamental lemma, he uses to establish the required necessary and sufficient condition (arzelà 1885a). lemma suppose that for every nn there exist intervals in (a,b) in finite number whose union un has length equal to bn; then if for every n it is bn≥d, where d>0 is a fixed number, there exists xo(a,b) that belongs to infinitely many un. accordingly, given the sequence fn converging to f in (a,b) and >0, arzelà considered the set: e(n,)={x: |fn(x)-f(x)|>} and proved that if e(n,) is a finite union of intervals then for every >0 it is (*) limn∞ ce(e(n,))=0, where ce stands for the total length (arzelà 1885a, 267). indeed if there exists >0 such that (*) does not hold there exist d>0 and infinitely many n such that ce(e(n,))>d and therefore by the lemma there exists xo that belongs to infinitely many e(n,), that is in contrast with f(xo)=lim fn(xo). so arzelà proves something similar to the theorem that if a sequence of measurable functions almost everywhere converges in a bounded interval (a, b) then it converges in measure in (a, b), even if arzelà did not use a general concept of measure yet. perhaps he was inspired by the fact that the requirement of something similar to convergence in measure, with respect to outer content, had appeared briefly for the first time in 1878 in a paper about the problem of term-by-term integration by kronecker (hawkins 2002, 111-2). in any way we will encounter only in 1903, after the fundamental concept of measure will be given by lebesgue, the modern definition of convergence in measure in (lebesgue 1903), contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 16 and the implication a.e. convergence implies convergence in measure will be proved in the book by lebesgue on trigonometric series (lebesgue 1906, 6) and also in (borel 1905, 27). then arzelà proves the following theorem about the continuity of the limit of a sequence of continuous functions (arzelà 1899-1900,142): theorem 1. let fn(x) be a converging sequence of functions defined in the interval (a,b), all continuous in xo(a,b). then the limit f(x) is continuous in xo if and only if for every >0 there exists n such that for every n≥ there exists >0, depending on n, such that |fn(x)-f(x)|< for every x]xo-, xo+[. arzelà proves also (arzelà 1899-1900, 150-513): theorem 2. let fn: (a,b)r be a converging sequence of continuous functions and let f(x) its limit. then f(x) is continuous if and only if for every >0 and for every n, there exists a finite set of indices n1,…, ns>n and corresponding sets 𝑈 , i{1,…,s}, everyone being a finite union of intervals, such that 𝑈 =(a,b) and for every x(a,b) there is i{1,…,s} such that x𝑈 and |𝑓 (x)-f(x)| <. in this theorem the sequence converges in a particular way arzelà defines step-by-step uniform convergence. arzelà considers some examples: 1 – the sum of the series (1-x)+ (1-x)x+ …+ (1-x)xn+ …, 0≤ 𝑥 ≤ 1, is the discontinuous function s(x)=1 for 0≤x<1, s(1)=0. it is sn(x)=1-xn, a sequence not uniformly convergent in [0,1]; also arzelà’s theorem does not apply. indeed let (0,1) and (0,1). let ’=1-: then in the interval (1-, 1] there exists x such that for enough large n it is x< √𝜎′ since limn∞ √𝜎′ = 1. then 𝑥 <’ and sn(x)-s(x)=1-xn >1-’=, in spite of theorem 1. 2. let, for x(0,1): un(x)= ( ) ( ) . then the sum is s(x)=∑ 𝑢 (𝑥) =0, a continuous function, even if the convergence is not uniform. and in this case arzelà’ theorem 1 applies: indeed for every nn it is rn(x)= > for every x belonging to ( √ , √ ) (<1/2). therefore for every 1/2>>0 and for every nn there exists an interval whose length is √ in which rn(x)>. since limn∞ √ = 0, we conclude that for every xo>0 and <1/2 it is possible to determine n such that for every n> there exists >0 such that rn(x)< for every x]xo-, xo+[; if xo=0, for every n there exists >0 such that [0, [ is disjoint from ( √ , √ ) and therefore for every x [0, [ it is rn(x)< ; so, in accordance with arzelà’s theorem 1, s(x) is continuous for every xo. arzelà faced also the problem of the determination of the necessary and sufficient condition in order that the limit of a sequence of integrable functions is integrable (arzelà 1885b). if the sequence is uniformly convergent then the limit is integrable too, but if the convergence is not uniform it may be so or not. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 17 example 1 baire in his thesis, some years after, in order to give an example of a function of class 2, considered the following example of uniformly bounded functions (baire 1899, 69). let fn: (0,1)  (0,1) be such that fn(x)=0 if x=p/q, with coprime p and q, q≤ n; fn(x)=1 otherwise. then for every n it is fn(x)=1 for every x except finitely many points and therefore fn(x) is integrable. the limit function, a dirichlet function, assumes the value 0 if x is rational, 1 if x is irrational, thus it is totally discontinuous and therefore not integrable. observe that in the previous example (*) is not true for every , accordingly with the fact that, as arzelà proves, if a convergent sequence of integrable functions is uniformly bounded then if the limit is integrable (*) holds. arzelà thought that in general (*) does not hold, and therefore the limit is not integrable, as in example 1, but he did not give any example. condition (*) allows to obtain a condition exposed in (arzelà 1885 b, 325-326) we can summarize in the following way: theorem 3. let fn:(a,b)r be a convergent sequence of integrable functions and let f(x) its limit. then f(x) is integrable if and only if for every  >0, for every >0 and for every nn it is possible to remove from (a,b) a finite number of intervals whose union d has length < and there is a finite set of indices n1,…, ns>n and corresponding sets 𝑈 , i{1,…,s}, everyone being a finite union of intervals, such that 𝑈 =(a,b)-d and for every x(a,b)-d there is i{1,…,s} such that x𝑈 and |𝑓 (x)-f(x)| <. arzelà calls general step-bystep uniform convergence this type of convergence (arzelà 1885b, 326). clearly it is weaker than uniform convergence but stronger than the convergence that after lebesgue will be said a.e. uniform convergence. note 1 let fn: (a,b)r be a convergent sequence of integrable functions and let f(x) its limit. then if f(x) is integrable the sets e(n,) are all peano-jordan measurable by (biacino 2015) and therefore it is not restrictive, in order to prove (*), to suppose they are unions of a finite number of intervals. indeed for every nn and every >0 there exists a finite union of intervals, pn,e(n,) such that (e(n,)) <(pn,)+1/n, ( peano-jordan measure), whence (*). indeed if limn (e(n,))>0 then there exist d>0 and infinitely many nn such that (e(n,))>d, therefore (pn,) +1/n>d and for enough large n, (pn,)>d/2; then the proof follows as above. this simplifies the very complex proof by arzelà that if f is integrable then e(n,) is a finite union of intervals and therefore (*) holds (arzelà 1885b, 321-323). observe also that “integrability” stands in this case in place of “measurability” in the classical implication of lebesgue measure theory. note 2 if f is integrable then (*) holds and by this fact arzelà is allowed to prove that the condition in theorem 3 is necessary. but (*) does not make sure that the same condition is also sufficient if the sequence is not uniformly bounded. there are convergent sequences of integrable functions for which (*) holds but the limit is not integrable, as in the following example (not given by arzelà): example 2 let fn(x)= 1/(x+1/n) if x(0,1). these functions are all integrable, their limit is the function f(x)=1/x for x(0,1), that is not integrable, but limn ce(e(n,))=0. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 18 now there are examples proving that even if the limit of a sequence of integrable functions is integrable, it can be not true that it is possible to integrate term by term (see the following example 3). in (arzelà 1899-1900) two different cases are considered. in the first case the functions are supposed uniformly bounded and the following proposition is established: theorem 4. if the functions fn and f are uniformly bounded and are integrable then if (*) holds it is possible to pass to the limit under the integral sign. indeed if (*) holds then for every (𝑥 ,𝑥 ) contained in (a,b): |∫ (𝑓 − 𝑓)| ≤ ∫ |𝑓 − 𝑓| ≤ ∫ |𝑓 − 𝑓| ( , ) +∫ 𝜎 ≤ 2mce(e(n,))+(b-a), where m>0 is such that |𝑓 (𝑥)|≤m for every nn and for every x (a,b). given >0, let < ( ) and let  be such that for n> it is ce(e(n,))< . then for per n> it is |∫ (𝑓 − 𝑓)|<, that is limn∫ 𝑓 =∫ 𝑓 (arzelà 1889-1900, 722-24). if the functions are not uniformly bounded the preceding argument does not apply. first arzelà thought that if the sequence of integrable functions fn(x) is not uniformly bounded in the interval (a,b) but its limit f(x) is integrable then it was possible to pass the limit under the integral if and only if limn∫ 𝑓 (𝑡)𝑑𝑡 was a continuous function (arzelà 1885c, 532-33). but the american mathematician william fogg osgood (1864-1943) was in that period working about the same argument and two years after he published an important paper (osgood 1897, 167170) where among other things he gave a counter example about the previous question: in fact in that paper a series is considered such that the series of the integrals is everywhere zero and therefore continuous but it does not coincide anywhere with the integral of the sum except in one point. thus in (arzelà 1899-1900) the question is considered again; osgood’s example is quoted and at page 169 the sequence of the elements of the series considered by osgood is proved to converge uniformly step by step. the theorem partially erroneus is corrected and the theorem by (osgood 1897, 188) about a sufficient condition for the integrability of a series term by term, slightly improved (osgood considers only continuous functions), is fundamentally reported as follows (arzelà 1899-1900, 733). theorem 5 . let un(x) be, for every natural n, an integrable function in the interval (a,b) and let fs(x)=∑ 𝑢 (𝑥), f(x)=∑ 𝑢 (𝑥). then it is a sufficient condition for the integrability of the series term by term that: the series ∑ ∫ 𝑢 (𝑡)𝑑𝑡 is an integrable function of x and the set g of the points x’ such that it is impossible to determine a real number l>0, a neighbourhood (x’-, x’+) and a natural number n such that |∑ 𝑢 (𝑡)|| <l for every t(x’-, x’+) and for every natural m, is enumerable. in the example by osgood the points x’ as in theorem 5 constitute a set of the power of the continuum. but arzelà at page 731 observes that the condition that g is enumerable is not sufficient. we conclude this exposition exhibiting the following example in which a step by step uniformly convergent sequence is studied. example 3 – in (arzelà 1899-1900, & 4) the not uniformly bounded functions fn(x)= -2n2xexp(x2n2) are considered, re-examining an example already given in (darboux 1875). the sequence is convergent to the integrable function f(x)=0 for every x, it is not uniformly convergent, but contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 19 it is step by step uniformly convergent. arzelà studies the functions with a fixed n in an interval (-b,b) ( the figure is clipped from (arzelà 1899-1900, 163): here it has been partially corrected). consider the interval en= (, ) where the function fn is decreasing. since |fn( )|< , we have that (**) |fn(x)|< for every x(, ) if n> . it is not difficult to prove that inequality (**) holds also for x≥ + √ and for x≤ − √ if n=m is sufficiently large. then for n=m sufficiently large we have two intervals (-b,− √ ), ( + √ , b), such that in every point of their union, dm, (**) holds. it is easy to see that it is possible to determine p such that emdm+p= (-b,b) and therefore for every x (-b,b) it is xem or xdm+p: in the first case |fm(x)|<; in the second case |fm+p(x)|<, that is the sequence is step by step uniformly convergent to 0: this fact is obviously implied also by the continuity of the limit, thanks to theorem 2. observe that if f(t)= limn∫ −2𝑛 𝑥 𝑒 𝑑𝑥, then f(0)=0 and f(t)=-1 for t≠0, that is f(t) is not continuous in accordance with the fact that it is not possible to pass to the limit under the integral sign; even though (*) holds. a great merit of lebesgue integration theory was to give a simple general sufficient condition in order to integrate term by term; and vitali characterized completely, in the framework of lebesgue integration theory, the series for which it is possible to pass to the limit under the integral sign. c. arzelà was interested in the integration of the functions of two variables in 1891 (arzelà 1891). he requires that the domain e of integration is bounded by a continuous closed simple and rectifiable curve; the last hypothesis is added since in the preceding year peano has discovered continuous curves that pass through every point of a square of the plane. peano himself has claimed that some other hypothesis had to be added on the boundary in order it can be enclosed in a region of arbitrarily small area. now in order that a double integral can be calculated by two iterated simple integrations it is necessary that the intersections ec of e with the straight lines of equation y=c are suitable for integration. this is why at first harnack postulated that they were intervals and subsequently, in a paper on mathematische annalen, in 1886, thought that it was enough that ec were equal to the union of a finite number of intervals. for this reason, it may be arzelà requires that the boundary is contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 20 not only a continuous closed and simple curve, but also a rectifiable one. now it can be that the boundary is a continuous rectifiable simple closed curve but the ec are not the union of a finite number of intervals. indeed consider the volterra’s function y=f(x) and the set e={(x,y): 0≤ x≤ 1; -1≤x≤f(x)}; since f’(x) is bounded, f(x) is of bounded variation and the hypotheses of arzelà are verified. if we consider y=0 the set e0 coincides with the union of the nowhere dense subset r, considered before, and an infinite set of points in the interior of the complement of r: this set therefore is not the union of a finite number of intervals as arzelà thought. the question would be solved by introducing the concept of measurable set: as we have already seen peano claimed in 1887 that in this case the boundary has null content. jordan in 1893 would close the question. in 1891 arzelà is concerned with the problem of the reduction of a double integral into two consecutive simple integrations: in that period this problem was the object of some controversies between harnack and stolz, on the mathematische annalen. arzelà remembers thomae example on zeitschrift für mathematik und physik, of the function: f(x,y)=1 if x is a rational number, f(x,y)=2y if x is irrational. it is clear that ∫ 𝑑𝑥 ∫ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑦=1 but ∫ 𝑑𝑦 ∫ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑥 does not exist. in order to solve the question arzelà gives a particular definition of a function that is uniformly integrable with respect to x and uniformly integrable with respect to y and proves that under these hypotheses the two iterated integrals do exist and are equal. conclusion as we have seen in the preceding pages, in the last decades of nineteenth century the new generation of italian mathematicians, who had mainly formed at pisa, with the fundamental guidance of dini and betti, at pavia with the guidance of brioschi and casorati and at turin under the guidance of genocchi, begun to produce important results at an international level in real analysis, measuring themselves mainly with the disciples of dirichlet, riemann, weierstrass. besides the results considered in this paper they gave very many other important contributions. arzelà after giving a systematic exposition of his results about the minimal condition assuring the continuity of the sum of a series of continuous real function or the possibility to integrate term by term a series of integrable functions, as we have exposed, continued his research in his memory: sulle serie di funzioni analitiche, published in 1903 on the rendiconti accademia delle scienze di bologna: also in this case the problem, on which also vitali, osgood and montel worked, was to determine the minimal conditions under which a series of analytic function in some field of the complex plane converges to a holomorphic function. using arzelà’s techniques vitali obtained a famous theorem of compactness that was successively generalized by montel. also for another question great achievements were gained by italian mathematics at the end of nineteenth century. volterra, after the interesting papers he wrote in 1881 with the guidance of dini, when he was still a student at pisa, and after the degree in mathematics, did not follow dini’s direction any more, but fascinated by the courses of mathematical physic and mechanics of e. betti, he became extraordinaire professor of mechanics in the same university in 1883, and begun to make important pioneering researches in the framework of applied mathematics, integral and differential equations. he observed that in many problems of physic and mechanics one has to consider some quantities that depend on all the values one or more functions assume in a given field. for example the temperature in a point of a conducting thin layer of metal depends on all the values the temperature has at the boundary; also the area of a region bounded by a curve depends on the particular curve, the length of a rectifiable curve depends on the curve and so on. if with every curve lying in the contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 21 given field a real number is associated then a new type of function arises, for which volterra, used the words “function of line”. he exposed his researches about this topic in (volterra 1887) that is considered unanimously as the birth certificate of a new field of mathematical research: the functional analysis. in it volterra extends all the notions of infinitesimal calculus, defines the concept of continuity for a function of line, he studies its variations and also defines the derivatives of whatever order, the taylor series, extends the theory of implicit functions and so on. the following step was made by frechet, inspired by volterra, and consisted in considering as a variable no more a line, but whatever element to be defined as a point. the field of these points was called space, or also, for its nature, abstract space. also the paper of 1883 by giulio ascoli would be fundamental some years after for functional analysis (ascoli 1883): it is the study about the limiting curve of a given family of curves, were, given an aggregate f of functions all defined in a closed and bounded interval [a,b], he called them uniformly equi-continuous if for every >0 it is possible to find >0 such that |f(x+h)-f(x)|< for every |h|<, for every x[a,b] and for every ff. the functions are called also uniformly bounded if there exists m>0 such that |f(x)|≤m for every x[a,b] and for every ff (see also (cinquini 1970)). the following theorem was found by ascoli (ascoli 1883, 547-549). if f is an aggregate of uniformly equi-continuous and uniformly bounded functions defined in the interval [a,b], then it is possible to extract from f a uniformly convergent sequence. the subsequent treatment by ascoli is very complex and general. he considers, in the hypotheses that the functions of the family f are equi-continuous and uniformly bounded, the family of the limit points, he calls prime derivative of the given family, which constitute in general a family of equi-continuous and uniformly bounded functions and therefore possesses in general limit points and so on until the pth derivative. if the pth derivative consists in a finite number of curves, the family f is of order p. if for any p this does not happen the family has no order. if a family has order p then it can be enclosed in an arbitrarily small space (ascoli 1883, 551). subtle considerations of topological character mingle continually. then ascoli considers some particular family of functions: for example he considers the family of the functions derivable in an interval (a,b) and such that the derivatives are positive and increasing and he shows that such derivatives are uniformly bounded in every closed interval contained in (a,b). he proves that consequently the previous derivatives are also equicontinuous. let v be the set of the derivatives we are considering, if r is its order, let k be a limit curve of the aggregate of the (r-1)th derivative of v: let y=h(x) be the equation of k. ascoli proves that h(x) can be always increasing, always decreasing, first constant and after increasing or decreasing and also before decreasing or increasing and after constant and not for example first constant, then increasing and after constant again (ascoli 1883, 558). similar properties are determined for other families of derivatives. the proof depends on the following theorem: let fn(x) be a sequence of functions all continuous in an open interval (a,b); let fn(x) be always increasing, decreasing or constant, with constant sign and let limn∫ 𝑓 (𝑡)𝑑𝑡 =0 for every x]a,b] (and therefore all the functions are cauchy integrable); then limnfn(x)=0 for every x]a,b[. ascoli proves,among other things, in nota iii, that the diagram of an increasing and continuous curve is rectifiable; it is an original result, since the studies about the rectification of curves begin with ludwig scheeffer in 1884 with a paper on t. 5 of acta mathematica and continue with jordan in 1893 on the second edition of his cours d’analyse (but these authors study general plane curve also not continuous). contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 22 in (arzelà 1899-1900, 171 and following) we can read in a more concise manner the definition and demonstration of ascoliarzelà theorem. moreover in (arzelà 1899-1900, 182) a sufficient condition is also given. the functions of a family f all defined in an interval (a,b) are uniformly equi-continuous if there exist two numbers l and l such that: l< ( ) ( ) <l for every ff and for every 𝑥 and 𝑥 (a,b). arzelà would use all the previous considerations in the framework of the functions of line: in his studies about the so called dirichlet’s principle (if a function increases and then decreases or viceversa then it has a maximum or a minimum) he proved that given a functional g defined in an aggregate f of uniformly equi-continuous and uniformly bounded functions, if g is continuous then, as in the weierstrass theorem for the ordinary functions, there exist functions hf and kf such that g(h)≥ g(f) and g(k)≤ g(f) for every ff. this would be considered as the starting point for the direct method of variational calculus which would have his modern develop in twentieth century. then we have seen that at the end of nineteenth century many professors of mathematics of the most important italian universities: pisa, turin, padua, pavia, bologna, naples, milan, were men open to the new trends of research and actively integrated in the international community of mathematicians. the successive generation, the generation of vitali, fubini, beppo levi, tonelli, severini, …, would give in turn very important results in real analysis and its applications, which would grant them a respected place in the history of mathematics. references arzelà, cesare. 1885 a. un teorema intorno a una serie di funzioni. rend. acc. dei lincei, 4 (1): 262-67. arzelà, cesare. 1885 b. sulla integrabilità di una serie di funzioni. rend. acc. dei lincei, 4 (1): 321-26. arzelà, cesare.1885 c. sulla integrazione per serie. rend. acc. dei lincei, 4 (1): 532-37, 566-69. arzelà, cesare. 1891, sugli integrali doppi. mem. acc. sci. bologna, 5 (2): 133-47. arzelà, cesare. 1899-1900. sulle serie di funzioni. mem. acc. sci. bologna, 5 (8): 131-86, 701-44. ascoli, giulio.1875. sul concetto di integrale definito. rend. r. acc. lincei, 2 (2): 863-872. ascoli, giulio. 1883. le curve limiti di una varietà data di curve. memorie r. accademia dei lincei, vol. xviii, 521-586. baire, renè. 1899, sur les fonctions de variables réelles. annali di matematica, 3 (3): 1-123. bettazzi, rodolfo. 1884. sui concetti di derivazione e di integrazione delle funzioni di più variabili. giorn. mat, (22): 133-67. biacino, loredana. 2015. una caratterizzazione delle funzioni integrabili secondo riemann. per. math, (1): 75-79. biacino, loredana. 2018. the concept of function at the beginning of the 20thcentury: a historiographical approach. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, (5): 171-192. borel, emile. 1905. leçons sur les fonctions de variables réelles et leur développements par des séries de polynomes. paris, gauthier – villars. borgato, maria teresa. 1991a. alcune lettere inedite di peano a genocchi e a jordan sui fondamenti dell’analisi. angelo genocchi e i suoi interlocutori scientifici, a cura di alberto conte e livia giacardi, università di torino, 61-97. borgato, maria teresa. 1991b. giuseppe peano: tra analisi e geometria. atti convegno peano e i fondamenti della matematica. modena 22-24 ottobre 1991, 139-169. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 23 borgato, maria teresa. 2009. continuity and discontinuity in italian mathematics after the unification: from brioschi to peano. organon (41): 219-231. bottazzini, umberto. 1991. angelo genocchi e i principi del calcolo. angelo genocchi e i suoi interlocutori scientifici, a cura di alberto conte e livia giacardi, università di torino, 31 60. bottazzini, umberto. 1994. và pensiero. immagini della matematica nell’italia dell’ottocento. il mulino. carbone, luciano; gatto, romano; palladino franco (a cura di). 2001. l’epistolario cremona genocchi (1860-1866). olschki. cassina, ugo.1933. l’opera scientifica di giuseppe peano. rend. sem. mat. fis. milano, (7): 323 389. cassina, ugo.1950. l’area di una superficie curva nel carteggio inedito di genocchi con schwarz ed hermite. rend. ist. lombardo (83): 311-328. cinquini, silvio. 1970. giulio ascoli, cesare arzelà e le funzioni egualmente continue. rend. parte generale ist. lomb. acc. sci. lett (104):3-12. darboux, gaston. 1875. mémoire sur les fonctions discontinues, ann. 𝐸cole norm., 2 série, iv, 55-112. dini, ulisse. 1878 [1990]. fondamenti per la teorica delle funzioni di variabili reali. nistri, pisa, edizioni u.m.i. genocchi, angelo. 1884. calcolo differenziale e principi di calcolo integrale pubblicati con aggiunte del dr. giuseppe peano. roma-torino, fratelli bocca. hawkins, thomas. 2002. lebesgue’s theory of integration. its origins and developments. ams chelsea publishing. jordan, camille. 1882-87. cours d’analyse de l’ecole polytecnique. 1st ed. 3 vols. paris: gauthiervillars. jordan, camille. 1893-96. cours d’analyse de l’ecole polytecnique. 2nd ed 3 vols. paris: gauthiervillars. kennedy, hubert .1983. peano. storia di un matematico. boringhieri. lebesgue, henry. 1903. sur une propriété des fonctions. c. r. acad. sci. paris, vol. 137, 12281230. lebesgue, henry. 1904a [1928]. leçons sur l’intégration et la recherché des fonctions primitives. paris, gauthiervillars, deuxiéme édition. lebesgue, henry. 1904 b. sur une proprieté caracteristique des fonctions de classe 1. bull. soc. math, 229-242. lebesgue, henry. 1906. leçons sur les séries trigonométriques. paris : gauthier – villars. lebesgue, henry. 1910. sur l’intégration des fonctions discontinues. ann. e.n.s. (3), t.27, 361450. letta, giorgio. 1994. le condizioni di riemann per l’integrabilità e il loro influsso sulla nascita del concetto di misura. rend. acc. naz. sci., detta dei xl. serie v, vol. xviii, parte i, 14369. levi, beppo. 1955. l’opera matematica di giuseppe peano. in memoria di giuseppe peano,celebrazione di giuseppe peano, liceo scientifico di cuneo, 9-21. maclaurin, colin. 1742. a treatise of fluxions. vol.ii, edinburgh: ruddimans. osgood, william f. non-uniform convergence and the integration of series term by term. am. journ. of math., 19 (2): 155-190. palladino, franco. 2000. le corrispondenze epistolari tra peano e cesaro e peano e amodeo. quaderni p. ri. st. em. peano, giuseppe. 1883, sulla integrabilità delle funzioni. atti acc. sci. torino. (18): 439-46. peano, giuseppe. 1887. applicazioni geometriche del calcolo infinitesimale. torino: bocca. peano, giuseppe. 1890. sur une courbe qui remplit une aire. math. ann. (36): 157-60. peano, giuseppe. 1892 a. esempi di funzioni sempre crescenti e discontinue in ogni intervallo. rivista di matematica. (2): 41-2. contribution of italian mathematicians to real analysis in the last decades of nineteenth century loredana biacino 24 peano, giuseppe. 1892 b. sulla definizione del limite di una funzione. rivista di matematica. (2): 77-9. peano, giuseppe. 1894. estensione di alcuni teoremi di cauchy sui limiti. atti r. acc. sci. torino, (xxx): 20-41. peano, giuseppe. 1914-15. le grandezze coesistenti di cauchy. atti acc. scienze torino. (50): 786-795. peano, giuseppe. 1959. opere scelte. vol. iii, cremonese. 317-20. segre, beniamino.1955. peano e il bourbakismo. in memoria di giuseppe peano, celebrazione di giuseppe peano, liceo scientifico di cuneo, 31-39. severini, carlo. 1897. sulla rappresentazione analitica di alcune funzioni reali discontinue di variabili reali. rend. acc. sci. torino. (33): 1002-23. tonelli, leonida. 1907, sulle funzioni derivate. rend.r. ist. lomb.sci. lett. ii, vol. xl (opere di tonelli 1960, u.m.i. vol. i, 45-51) tonelli, leonida. 1908. discontinuità di 1a specie e gruppi di punti. rend. r. ist. lomb.sci. lett. ii, vol. xli. 773-78 (anche in opere di tonelli 1960, u.m.i., vol. i, 69-74) volterra, vito. 1881a. alcune osservazioni sulle funzioni punteggiate discontinue, giorn. mat. (19): 76-86. volterra, vito. 1881b. sui principi del calcolo integrale, giorn. mat. (19): 333-72. volterra, vito. 1887. sopra le funzioni che dipendono da altre funzioni. rend. acc. dei lincei, serie iv, (3): 97-105; 141-146; 153-158. microsoft word filgueiras layout carlos a. l. filgueiras – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-3 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal book review zaterka, luciana and mocellin, ronei clécio. ensaios de história e filosofia da química (essays on the history and philosophy of chemistry). são paulo: editora ideias e letras, 2022, 328 p. isbn 978658729531-2 carlos a. l. filgueiras1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9347-797x] received: february 21, 2022. reviewed: may 27, 2022. accepted: may 30, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.09 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ this just-published book is like a blast of fresh air in the brazilian intellectual milieu, which still lacks works bringing together chemistry and philosophy. thus it is quite welcome in filling in a positive way a gap in our academic literature. the book is divided into an introduction and five chapters, followed by final considerations, references and indexes. the text is preceded by a preface by the historian and philosopher of chemistry bernadette bensaude-vincente, from the university of paris. the introduction brings forth a series of relevant discussions, which are worth mentioning here, even though only in part. beginning with the rhetorical question “would chemistry present any interest for philosophy in general and the philosophy of science in particular?”, there follow pertinent queries and reflections. an initial observation is the relative unimportance generally conceded to chemistry in the philosophical treatment, which is so present as regards physics, and to a lesser degree biology, in contrast with the modest role reserved to chemistry in this respect. however, so goes the authors’ argument, this is a posture much more present in the english-language literature, contrarily to other intellectual traditions. the authors argue that this difference is visible in the preference for the expression philosophy of science in english, in contrast with the french form philosophie des sciences. the french expression is more encompassing by the use of the plural, which comprises all the sciences. the relative disdain to philosophize in chemistry is thus more present in english than in french. they also point out how the more recent historiography, along the last 50 years, had a relevant role in many discussions involving the philosophy of chemistry. in contrast with the little emphasis given to philosophical studies of chemistry in a good part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in previous periods things took place in a different manner. it suffices to remember the influence exerted by francis bacon on boyle or by étienne bonnot de condillac on lavoisier. in her 1965 book robert boyle on natural philosophy, marie boas hall says: “though it was bacon who mainly inspired boyle, he was influenced by descartes as well” (hall 1965, 63). further on, the same author emphasizes that boyle’s actual contribution to the development of chemistry consisted in 1 carlos a. l. filgueiras is a professor in the department of chemistry at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais – ufmg). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: calfilgueiras@gmail.com carlos a. l. filgueiras – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 “that he did successfully deal with chemical experiment and theory as a part of natural philosophy, and that by precept and example he persuaded others to do the same” (hall 1965, 85). in the case of lavoisier, it is noteworthy that the french chemist opens up the first page of his main work, the traité élementaire de chimie, relating the importance received from his philosophical mentor, condillac. lavoisier openly avows that he “felt the evidence of the principles established by the abbé de condillac in his logic and in some of his other works”. the two authors mentioned, boyle and lavoisier, belong to different centuries, but confess their debt to the philosophical teachings of their predecessors. lavoisier’s treaty is traditionally described as a sort of fountainhead of modern chemistry, that new chemistry which came to develop so extraordinarily in the nineteenth century. how many chemistry texts can we cite, starting from the nineteenth century, which so openly acknowledge the union between chemistry and philosophy? this divorce between the two lasted for a century and a half. a non-negligible aspect of this phenomenon is perhaps linked to the manner how chemistry came to develop during the nineteenth century. the progress of chemistry along that century constitutes an outstanding case of a science of the group of the so-called “exact” sciences, which grew and expanded throughout the century with hardly any use of mathematics, in opposition to thermodynamics, optics, astronomy, and several other sciences. in the nineteenth century, the majority of chemists did not use any mathematics beyond elementary arithmetic in order to perform stoichiometric calculations or to determine the yield of reactions. it was a highly empirical science, focused on the increase in the scope of topics comprising the nature, properties and transformations of matter. i have witnessed a certain air of perplexity many times, moreover in physicists, when i call their attention to this point. then, they ask me, how does chemistry intend to be scientific? well, mathematics is an instrument, and amongst the most important in science, but it is not chemical science. evidence that the development of chemistry in the nineteenth century occurred in an absolutely rational and logical way, which are qualities inherent to science, was that chemistry gave birth to the industrial revolution in germany. that country was disunited until 1870, forming a myriad of independent states, and arrived late at the industrial revolution that had taken place above all in britain and in france. germany in the second half of the nineteenth century contrived to “invent” a new industrial specialty, the chemical industry, which took the country to the forefront of industrial nations. even today the socalled “five sisters”, the conglomerates represented by basf, ig farben, hoechst, merck and bayer make up the biggest industrial group in chemistry in the world. at the end of the nineteenth century, however, the situation began to modify, and mathematical analysis came to play a growing role in chemical science. it had been necessary first to accumulate an enormous set of empirical knowledge about millions of compounds, their composition, chemical arrangements, and behaviour. possibly, the historic development of nineteenthcentury chemistry, above all utilitarian and pragmatic, has contributed to the phenomenon by which philosophical studies of chemistry have remained in second place. another aspect to be considered is also the significant increase in chemical education that started to take place from the end of the nineteenth century. here it is important to point out that chemistry is perhaps the science that causes the greatest perplexity, for what many call its “esoteric” language, which is seen by many laypeople as impenetrable. in spite of the great effort to create a rational and logical system of nomenclature for chemical compounds, one must acknowledge that the subject is still quite thorny, both to laypeople as well as to professional chemists, in view of the gigantic number of compounds which ought to have an unambiguous name, around 15 million. here another topic must also be pointed out, and it is the notable fact that the number of synthetic compounds may have outnumbered that of natural compounds. this fact contains an important philosophical interest, for it shows that chemistry is a science capable of creating its own object of study, in synthetizing compounds which do not exist in nature. carlos a. l. filgueiras – book review transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 during the last decades of the twentieth century philosophical studies regarding chemistry acquired particular importance, as the authors of the present book are keen to say, and this was due “not only to the need to build the concepts used in the teaching of chemistry, to the particular ‘chemical vision’ of the world and its place in the spectrum of scientific knowledge, but also to the manner by which chemists have defended the epistemic identity of their science along its history and in discussions of ethics in chemistry, a discussion of paramount importance in the present historical moment, when many anathematize chemistry as the source of countless evils of humankind, often condemning it without any profound knowledge of chemical science or of its idiosyncrasies. the theme of ethics, of enormous actuality, is retaken in other passages of the book, as well as the relation between the philosophy of chemistry and the teaching and the learning of the science. there is a very competent discussion of the contradiction in our present society between the easy demonization of chemistry, and the gluttonous desire to savour all of its conquests and achievements. this is a contradiction which gives way to many philosophical inquiries, which can be amplified when one considers the already mentioned aspect that the number of artificial compounds outnumber that of natural ones, making chemistry a particularly interesting science in that it can fabricate its object of study, in contrast with other sciences. this topic can lend itself to many philosophical discussions of different degrees. as one sees, the problems pointed out and discussed in the introduction are sufficient to judge how opportune was the publication of this book. the chapters follow, discussing themes of great pertinence and relevance. they are: 1. alchemy and chemistry: permanence and rupture, with a distancing from traditional historiography when dealing with the topic; 2. natural history, experimental philosophy and the emergency of chemistry; 3. chemistry and medicine: blood, longevity and the emergency of modern chemistry; 4. chemistry and the biography of its materials; 5. agricultural chemistry, genetically modified organisms and human responsibility; 6. final considerations – chemistry, society and responsibility. the present essays are so rich in the questions discussed and in the way they are treated that it is difficult to mention here more than a few cursory points. the chapters follow one another catching the reader’s attention, in an always captivating text. however, i think it important to repeat part of the preface, written by professor bernadette bensaude-vincent, which summarizes well the book’s aim: “in the twentieth century, chemistry shone by its absence in the philosophical field, although its products, omnipresent in daily life thanks to the replacement of traditional materials by synthetic materials became the driving force of economic prosperity. why philosophers of science only talked about physics, when chemistry, in the heyday of its glory, shaped modern culture, impregnating it with values associated with artifice and progress? would the philosophers go against the flux of public opinion and prevailing culture?” the french researcher concludes that “this book suggests exactly the opposite. it shows that the philosophy of chemistry can help us to think about the disruptive world in which we live”. references hall, marie boas. 1965. robert boyle on natural philosophy. indiana university press, bloomington. lavoisier, antoine. 1789. traité élementaire de chimie. paris : cuchet. microsoft word hoyningen-huene layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-5 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2022 – this is an open-access journal interview: paul hoyningen-huene1 paul hoyningen-huene was born in pfronten/allgäu, west germany, in 1946. he studied physics and philosophy in munich (1966-1971), mathematical physics in london (1971-72) and theoretical physics in zurich (1975). the theoretical physicist and philosopher taught in switzerland (1976-1998) and was a visiting scholar at the massachusetts institute of technology with thomas s. kuhn (1984-85). afterward, he published reconstructing scientific revolutions: thomas s. kuhn’s philosophy of science (1993), an original neo-kantian interpretation of thomas kuhn’s ideas. his numerous articles focus on logic, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of physical sciences and the general philosophy of science. throughout his career, hoyningen-huene also wrote about paul feyerabend’s thesis concerning the rationality of scientific development and theory comparison, scientific realism, reductionism, ethics of science and historiography of science. the german thinker founded the center for philosophy and ethics of science at the leibniz universität hannover (germany) and intended to summarize his main ideas on the nature of scientific knowledge in the book systematicity: the nature of science (2013). interviewed by luiz henrique de lacerda abrahão2 and mauro l. condé,3 in november 2022 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i13.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ luiz henrique de lacerda abrahão (lhla) and mauro l. condé: in reconstructing scientific revolutions: thomas s. kuhn’s philosophy of science (1993), you analyze kuhn’s thought from a neo-kantian perspective. what were your primary philosophical readings before that? how was your path within philosophy? 1 paul hoyningen-huene [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0422-8806] is a german philosopher of science and a retired professor at the university of hannover, germany. he teaches philosophy of economics at the economics faculty of the university of zurich. e-mail: hoyningen@ww.uni-hannover.de 2luiz henrique de lacerda abrahão [https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7294-8576] is a professor at the federal center of technology and education of minas gerais – cefet/mg. address: av. amazonas, 5253 – sala 314, nova suíça, belo horizonte, mg, brazil. cep: 30421-169. e-mail: luizpaideia@hotmail.com 3 mauro l. condé [http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br interview: paul hoyningen-huene transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 paul hoyningen-huene: already in high school, i had contact with philosophy, exclusively of the continental brand. in my second year of studying physics at the university of munich, i came in contact with wolfgang stegmüller and his assistants. at that time, analytic philosophy seemed wonderful to me, because suddenly i could understand philosophy and at the same time, it was comparatively easy. when you have enough mathematical skills to do a ph.d. in theoretical physics (which i did), the sort of logic used in analytic philosophy at that time is a piece of cake. and due to stegmüller’s, i would say, manipulative influence i gained contempt for the continental tradition. in his (and the other logical empiricists’) view, it was all nonsense, small wonder that i had difficulties understanding, for instance, schelling’s ideas on human freedom that i had read in a philosophical reading group in high school. however, things changed dramatically when i went to zürich university in order to finish my ph.d. in theoretical physics. at the philosophical seminar, there was a hegel research group, and i had anticipated, given my training with stegmüller, that this must be a bunch of idiots. however, much to my surprise, these were intelligent people, one could very meaningfully discuss with them, and they made me realize that i had not learned how to read difficult philosophical texts. now i had to get to the bottom of that, and i founded a reading group in which we read, apart from hegel, also fichte and kant. this finally freed me from the deep dogmatism of much of analytic philosophy where people, without having seriously read anything, just know that heidegger, hegel, schelling, and the like are not worth anything. to keep balance, you find the same sort of dogmatism in parts of continental philosophy where people just know that carnap or quine are not really philosophers. in zürich, for instance, being a realist implied for some that you hadn’t really entered philosophy. to come back to the original question: when i started to work on reconstructing scientific revolutions in 1982, i had some familiarity with kant and could therefore discover traces of kant in kuhn that many analytic philosophers had overlooked (apart from gerd buchdahl, who had published on kant). lhla and mlc: how the physicist who studied in munich when he arrived in switzerland, is already working with the philosophy of science? paul hoyningen-huene: after a year in london at the imperial college doing a postgraduate course in theoretical physics and working on my dissertation (1971-72), i moved to zürich, where i finished my ph.d. in theoretical physics in 1975. i may note that all my work in physics concerned the asymmetry of time. i treated that problem in electrodynamics in my master thesis, and in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics in my ph.d. thesis. so, in a way, i dealt with philosophical questions already during all my time in physics. as i had had some training in philosophy of science in munich and had even a philosophy of science chapter in my diploma thesis in physics, one of the zürich philosophy professors, hermann lübbe, hired me as an assistant in 1975. he needed someone with my competence at his chair. lhla and mlc: in your book systematicity (2013), you seek to answer a classic question in the philosophy of science, “what is science?” in comparison to various positions, from aristotle to contemporary thinkers. but the thesis developed in the book points to the fact that science distinguishes itself from other forms of knowledge by presenting greater systematicity at different levels, namely: descriptions, explanations, predictions, the defense of knowledge claims, critical discourse, epistemic connectedness, an ideal of completeness, knowledge generation, and the representation of knowledge. what path led you to formulate this position, and what reception has this proposal had in academic circles? interview: paul hoyningen-huene transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 3 paul hoyningen-huene: i had the idea of systematicity very early in my philosophical career, in 1979 or 1980, when i had been invited by the geographical institute of the university of zürich to give a talk on the scientific character of geography. geography at that time had many methodological/ideological controversies, and the institute ran a seminar on these issues in the winter term 1980-81. there was one position on the foundations of geography developed by geographer hans carol that was usually heavily criticized. i thought that this position was underrated. in my paper, i had to say something general about science, and i stated, “science is systematic knowledge”. i added that there are three different meanings of “systematic” involved, the defense of knowledge claims, that scientific knowledge is structured, and that scientific knowledge aims at completeness (see hoyningen-huene 1982). after that talk and its publication, systematicity stayed dormant for more than a decade. i started to work on systematicity again in 1993. at that time, i worked on many different projects at the same time, and systematicity was just one of them. the decisive turn came in 1998 when i became involved in the preparations of the world conference of science that was organized by icsu (international science council) and unesco; the conference took place in 1999 in budapest, hungary. i was member of several ad hoc committees and was finally invited to give the first keynote speech in the first thematic session of the conference. the topic assigned to me was “the nature of science”. thus, i presented the first sketch of systematicity theory in 1999 (see hoyningen-huene 2000). the reception of systematicity theory has not been very intense, but very diverse. one can distinguish two main applications: retrospectively or contemporarily. retrospective applications try to elucidate the science status of established or neglected disciplines or positions. examples include clinical medicine, the medical anthropology of fritz hartman, and the music theory of heinrich schenker. contemporary applications aim at understanding and/or improving the scientific status of a discipline or even transforming a discipline into a science. examples include design science, comparative and international education, medicine in general, disaster science, conservation and restauration, organizational research, spatial planning, psychology, economics, music didactics, and archeology. other applications concern the identification of pseudo-science or the general or educational “nature of science” discussion. i participate in some of those applications, partly in collaboration with the respective disciplinary specialists. lhla and mlc: unfortunately, brazil presents itself to the world with one of the worst indices when facing the covid-19 pandemic. before the production of vaccines, the brazilian government encouraged the population to “preventively” use drugs with no proven efficacy to treat the disease (the presidency of jair bolsonaro. inauguration on january 1, 2019, ended on december 31, 2022). a recent text by berlivet and löwy addressed the dispute (known as the “hydroxychloroquine controversies”) surrounding the issue and mentioned that didier raoult, the first scientist to defend such use of the medication, claims to have epistemological bases for this. see this excerpt from berlivet and löwy: those who criticized his clinical experiments, raoult claimed in an interview aired on radio classique, on april 17, 2020, were simply not familiar with the teaching of karl popper, thomas kuhn, and paul feyerabend, who had shown that science is never static, and that—consequently—research methods are bound to be outdated sooner or later. this was precisely what had happened interview: paul hoyningen-huene transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 4 to randomized clinical trials: science had moved to a very different place, and the growing strings of unfair attacks leveled at his clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine merely revealed the depth of epistemological ignorance on the part of his detractors. (berlivet and löwy 2020, 7) how do you think the appropriation that scientific denialism can make of the ideas of philosophers of science like kuhn or feyerabend? paul hoyningen-huene: it is inappropriate to use kuhn and feyerabend for such purposes; they do not support such denialism in any way. however, one should note that many of the provocative formulations of feyerabend may be easily (mis-)read in such a way. in addition, one should critically note that also within the (social) sciences, kuhn and feyerabend have been used for various absolutely inappropriate purposes. one finds hundreds, if not thousands, of papers in which something is claimed about science with the reference, for instance, “see kuhn 1962”, with no connection between the claim and kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions. lhla and mlc: is it possible to confront the irrationalism of the anti-vaccination or the flatearth movements without going back to the view of science as neutral, rational, objective knowledge guided by a single method? paul hoyningen-huene: if you want to claim that the anti-vaccination or the flatearth movements are irrational, you must argue that science is much more neutral, rational, and objective than those movements, otherwise you do not have the basis to judge them as irrational. how to argue that science is so much superior? reference to the (single) scientific method does clearly not work, because this single scientific method does not exist. but this situation was exactly the motive why i wrote systematicity! what makes the difference between scientific knowledge and other kinds of knowledge, like everyday knowledge or professional knowledge? the higher degree of systematicity of the former, in nine dimensions. lhla and mlc: a collection of your writings about kuhn’s and feyerabend’s views on incommensurability was published in portuguese about a decade ago (hoyningen-huene, 2014). around the same time, the translation of your article “on thomas kuhn’s philosophical significance” came out (hoyningen-huene, 2013). we can also find in this language your text “the incommensurability of scientific theories”, written with eric oberheim for the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (hoyningen-huene and oberheim 2012). tell us a bit about how you see the relation of your philosophical production with countries from the global south. paul hoyningen-huene: when i began to come to south america more regularly, one of my ideas was to support philosophers of science to find better connections to the international philosophical scene. i know how difficult it is to start from a less advantageous point of departure to get into the international scene in philosophy: in the late 1970s, the philosophy of science in germany and switzerland was fairly provincial, at least in comparison to theoretical physics, where i was socialized. as i was privileged to get support by international scholars like feyerabend and kuhn which made my entering the international scene possible, i have been very open to support philosophers living in the periphery of international philosophy. so, i thought i might have some suggestions to south american philosophers of science. i was very shocked when i heard that the german structuralist school (stegmüller and sneed) had an immense influence in south america (probably due to moulines) because, in the rest of the world, this movement was practically dead, including in interview: paul hoyningen-huene transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 5 germany. apparently, this was not really seen in south america, so i tried to persuade my colleagues to discontinue this path because it is an impasse, alienating and isolating those philosophers from contemporary world philosophy. lhla and mlc: what role would the history and philosophy of science play nowadays? how do you envision the future of this field of knowledge? paul hoyningen-huene: i see history and philosophy of science mainly as a part of culture, less as an enterprise that demonstrates its usefulness by its productive function for the sciences and humanities themselves. it is like other parts of culture like a beautiful public garden, an opera performance, a heavy metal concert, or the science of cosmology. they should not be assessed by their – roughly speaking – contribution to the gross national product (gnp), but by their aesthetic or cognitive contributions to a meaningful life. in addition, there is an important function of history and philosophy of science that is, however, not really served well in the present. our societies around the globe are deeply shaped by science and technology, and especially in the democratic counties the citizens who vote should be able to understand the fundamentals of this influence. there is only one source for a deeper understanding of the sciences and technology: not the sciences themselves, but a high-quality history and philosophy of science and technology. this is where i see a very important part of the mission of our field. for me, this is one of the very rewarding parts of my professional life: when a newspaper, a television station, an interdisciplinary panel, or any scientific or political institution asks me to contribute to the understanding of science and technology in general, or to specific problems arising in their fields. if we are willing in such situations to learn enough about the specifics of the respective disciplines and their problems, we can greatly contribute in a way that nobody else can. lhla and mlc: thank you! paul hoyningen-huene: thank you! references berlivet, luc and löwy, ilana. 2020. hydroxychloroquine controversies: clinical trials, epistemology, and the democratization of science. medical anthropology quarterly, (0): 1–17. doi: 10.1111/maq.12622 hoyningen-huene, paul, 1982. “zur konstitution des gegenstandsbereichs der geographie bei hans carol”. geographica helvetica 37 (1):23-34). hoyningen-huene, paul, 2000. “the nature of science”. in: world conference on science. science for the twenty-first century: a new commitment, ed. by ana maría cetto. paris: unesco, pp. 52-56. hoyningen-huene, paul and oberheim, eric. 2012. a incomensurabilidade das teorias científicas. trans. l. nascimento and r. severo. investigação φ filosófica: vol. e2, artigo digital 1. https://investigacao-filosofica.blogspot.com/2012/05/traducao-de-incomensurabilidade-das.html hoyningen-huene, paul. 2013. sobre a relevância filosófica de thomas kuhn. in. condé, mauro l. and penna-forte, marcelo (ed.). 2013. thomas kuhn: a estrutura das revoluções científicas [50 anos]. belo horizonte: fino traço. hoyningen-huene, paul. 2014. kuhn, feyerabend e incomensurabilidade: textos selecionados. abrahão, luiz henrique da lacerda. (ed.). são leopoldo: unisinos. microsoft word donat layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-12 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue – wittgenstein and the sciences: history and philosophy of science and science education the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat1 abstract: this article evaluates wittgenstein’s possible contributions to an epistemology of psychology. although the author admittedly neither proposes an epistemology nor examines specific issues of psychology as a science, we understand that his reflections on the meaning of psychological concepts may contribute to a better understanding of psychology as a science, which involves understanding its object and methods. with that goal in mind and based on the concept of language developed in his second phase, especially in his work philosophical investigations, we retrace his efforts to obtain a picture of the grammar of psychological concepts, emphasizing two of its aspects: first, the place and role of first‑person expressive propositions in the psychological language-game and second, how this understanding of the perspective of the first person implies in refusing to reduce explanations of human behavior to causal explanations in favor of explanations based on reasons. keywords: language; psychology; grammar; objectivity; subjectivity received: 01 march 2021. reviewed: 03 may 2021. accepted: 12 may 2021. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction after returning to cambridge in 1929, wittgenstein developed a growing interest in questions related to the philosophy of psychology which lasted until he died in 1951. his reflections reached maturity in the mid-1940s and are part of the texts posthumously published as remarks on the philosophy of psychology i and ii (1980) and last writings on the philosophy of psychology i and ii (1982). in addition to these texts, essential observations in the form of lecture notes were later published as lectures on philosophical psychology 1946-1947 (1988), in addition to notes scattered throughout his vast work. these observations on psychology took place at a time when wittgenstein had already developed his new concept of linguistic significance, which takes shape in philosophical investigations published two years after his 1 mirian donat [orcid: 0000-0001-5154-2959] is a professor in the department of philosophy at the state university of londrina. address: rodovia celso garcia cid pr 445 km 380, cx. postal 10.011 – londrina – pr, cep 86.057-970 – brazil. e-mail: donat@uel.br the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 2 death and opposes in several ways his “old way of thinking” of the tractatus logicophilosophicus. until recently, wittgenstein’s studies on the philosophy of psychology were overshadowed by his observations on language, but this has changed considerably, and they are now the subject of increasing interest.2 on the other hand, the historical context of wittgenstein’s analyses is a movement that tries to establish psychology as a science and started in the nineteenth century with wundt’s introspectionist psychology. it suggests that the object of psychology is consciousness, including its processes, events and states, which are to be investigated by means of introspectionist methods. according to these, data used in investigations are to be collected from reports by subjects about their own processes, events and states. this kind of investigation focuses on what is seen or perceived by the subject himself, inside himself when he feels a sensation, a conscious state, a thought, which are only indirectly perceived by the researcher/observer by observing the subject’s behavior. in the nineteenth century, a large number of psychologists felt uneasy about the introspectionist method. they deemed it unreliable, subject to many distortions and above all, subjective. at the beginning of the twentieth century, this discontent took shape in watson’s first version of behaviorism, who considered that the introspectionist method lacked objectivity as it depended on individual accounts, unlike the methods of physics and chemistry, which should guide psychology if it intended to become a true science.3 the science of psychology had to abandon consciousness as its object and all associated terms, such as mind, mental states or images, conscious content, etc., as well as the introspectionist method. the object of psychology was now objectively observable behavior, which would help psychology walk a safe path, just as physics, chemistry or biology, eventually making it a science of behavior. however, according to wittgenstein: “the confusions and barrenness of psychology are not to be explained by calling it a ‘young science’; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings [...] for in psychology, there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion” (pi § 232).4 given this diagnosis, the question is what could be wittgenstein’s contribution to an epistemology of psychology, considering that he repeatedly stated that he, as a philosopher, was not concerned with either epistemology or philosophy of science and, more precisely, was neither interested in the procedures and methods of psychology as such. wittgenstein’s challenge here is the problem science of psychology faces in defining its object and method of investigation, as stated in the quote above, but also in a wide range of other observations, such as in this excerpt from lectures and conversations: when we are studying psychology, we may feel there is something unsatisfactory, some difficulty about the whole subject or study – because we are taking physics as our ideal science. we think of formulating laws as in physics. and then we find we 2 examples: cometti (2004) ludwig wittgenstein et la philosophie de la psychologie; gil de pareja (1992) la filosofía de la psicología de ludwig wittgenstein; harré and tissaw (2005) wittgenstein and psychology: a practical guide; hacker (1993) wittgenstein: meaning and mind; schulte (1993) experience and expression: wittgenstein philosophy of psychology; marques (2002) o interior: linguagem e mente em wittgenstein; schroeder (2001) wittgenstein and contemporary philosophy of mind. 3 according to hacker, “there is no evidence to suggest that he [wittgenstein] read watson’s book, but he certainly read russell’s analysis of mind in which watson’s ideas are discussed” (hacker 2001, 105). we will not historically retrace how wittgenstein came across the problems discussed in this article. regarding this matter, we suggest reading hacker’s works wittgenstein: meaning and mind, and wittgenstein: mind and will. 4 in this article, we use the abbreviation pi to refer to philosophical investigations, followed by the corresponding paragraphs for the first part and the page number for the second part. lectures and conversations will be referred to by the abbreviation lc, followed by the page number. the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 3 cannot use the same sort of ‘metric’, the same ideas of measurement as in physics. [...] and this sort of trouble goes all through the subject. or suppose you want to speak of causality in the operation of feelings. “determinism applies to the mind as truly as to physical things.” this is obscure, because when we think of causal laws in physical things, we think of experiments. we have nothing like this in connection with feelings and motivation. and yet, psychologists want to say: “there must be some law” – although no law has been found. (lc, 42) wittgenstein does not intend to provide answers about what should be the object or method of psychology. he rather aims to clarify the concepts of psychology grammatically so that it may find its object and method by itself. he is only interested in describing the concepts of psychology, i.e., in performing an analysis of its meaning as constituted by our ordinary language, excluding any phenomena, since philosophy “leaves everything as it is”. the kind of investigation philosophy is in charge of concerns the possibilities of the phenomena, i.e., a grammatical investigation: “such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language” (pi § 90). wittgenstein’s investigation is, therefore, a philosophical investigation, which – in his own terms – is a grammatical investigation of the concepts of psychology. although he uses concepts of psychology to develop his investigation, this does not mean that he is doing psychology since: “an investigation is possible in connection with mathematics, which is entirely analogous to our investigation of psychology. it is just as little a mathematical investigation as the other is a psychological one” (pi § 232). this is an eminently philosophical investigation, as far as he understands, the philosophy and its task as an investigation of the conditions of the possibility of meaning. this investigation is not concerned with phenomena, as philosophy is not meant to investigate them. it rather examines what makes sense and does not make sense to say about phenomena, i.e., “our investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena” (pi § 90). if we think about science with its own grammar and the various sciences with their own grammars, we find that the confusion pointed out by wittgenstein was precisely the attempt of psychology in following the methods of other sciences, especially physics. this distinction shows that wittgenstein’s work is, as it were, prior to scientific procedures, since he is not directly interested in scientific activity, but rather in the conceptual confusions that could prevent science from successfully performing its activity. regarding psychology, wittgenstein feels that this approach is urgent because the very language of psychology is confusing, as it uses both descriptive and referential language to deal with the psychological phenomenon, i.e., an undue analogy in different regions of our language. this confusion is caused by a certain image of the mind, the cartesian image, which results from an analogy between different domains of our language. to solve that confusion, this erroneous image needs to be rectified by revealing the effective use of psychological concepts, which is achieved by analyzing and describing the language game of psychology, referring to the use of these concepts in our ordinary language that is, after all, the place of origin of psychological concepts. psychology as a science is in charge of making true statements about psychological phenomena, which can only achieve if it clearly defines its own object. this is where philosophy can help, since achieving that clarity depends on clarifying the concepts of psychology. on the other hand, such an undertaking may provide important epistemological contributions for the development of psychology since it involves issues like the objectivity of explanations in psychology, which in turn influence the validity and truth of theories. the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 4 this article analyzes an aspect that wittgenstein apparently emphasized, i.e., the language of psychology cannot do without the first-person perspective; otherwise, psychology runs the risk of losing its own object. in terms of a psychological phenomenon, the first-person perspective allows reconsidering the explanations of these phenomena, which cannot be reduced to causal explanations but need to contain the motives and reasons that allow understanding the meaning of these phenomena. the reasons cannot be conveyed without a first-person perspective and this was precisely the kind of perspective that was considered non-objective by the first criticisms of introspectionism, which demanded its removal. however, that criticism went so far that, according to wittgenstein, it risked eliminating the very object of psychology. the proposal precisely aims to emphasize that the use of the first person is indispensable to constitute the object of psychology. the question is: how shall one proceed without lending oneself to the subjectivism of mentalist and introspectionist conceptions? the grammar of psychology according to wittgenstein, one of the fundamental issues for establishing the object of psychology, especially of behaviorism, was the idea that its objectivity should be achieved by an investigation of human behavior that would dismiss looking to the interior and would base such an investigation exclusively on observing behavior. in such an investigation, every firstperson account is considered tainted with subjectivity and should be discarded. however, wittgenstein insists that the analysis of the psychological language game reveals that the elimination of first-person reports causes the loss of the very object of psychology since those reports are part of the very constitution of the meaning of what we call human behavior. however, as the argument of private language5 shows, the way out of confusion is to understand that these reports do not describe private and subjective objects and events according to mentalism and introspectionism. the analysis of psychological concepts is based on wittgenstein’s reflections on language developed in his work philosophical investigations,6 which he uses to start his investigation of the “conceptual confusion” he believes is present in psychology of his time and which needs to be solved so that psychology may develop as a science. thus, his investigation starts with an attempt to understand the language game of psychological terms and concepts and then clarifies the confusions that psychologists are prone to if they do not consider that use in their own activities. careful consideration of the uses of psychological concepts in our ordinary language may thus help us to clarify the very object of psychology as a science. according to the understanding that grammatical analysis “leaves everything as it is”, wittgenstein’s goal is not the kind of investigation that implies any kind of interference in psychology itself. rather, he aims to clarify the linguistic origins of problems and confusions that hamper the development of the science of psychology. similarly, he does not analyze every single psychological term since what matters is to reveal the common origin of difficulties.7 the conception of language in philosophical investigations, anchored in the conception that the meaning of words depends on how they are used in different language games, 5 excerpt of philosophical investigations (paragraph 243 to 315), commonly referred to as the private language argument, in which wittgenstein demonstrates the incoherence of privatist conceptions of the meaning of psychological concepts. 6 this means that the changes in perspective made by wittgenstein during the period of return to philosophy will not be taken into account. 7 although a large part of his writings on psychology try to clarify specific terms and even contain a proposal for the elaboration of a “genealogy of psychological concepts”, wittgenstein understands that it is quite an impossible undertaking, considering the enormous plurality and multiplicity of meanings and uses of psychological concepts. the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 5 implies that meaning cannot be generalized, and this attempt is based on a referentialist8 conception of language, which reduces the meaning of a word to its relationship to objects they refer to. in dealing with the concepts of psychology, or with any concepts of any other language game, wittgenstein shows that since they are connected to their use, they are intricately connected with human practice in the world. if we consider that the understanding of the meaning of a particular word or expression requires to understand the practices and activities interconnected with language, then it is also essential to reveal, in psychology, the background of the practices with which that language is intertwined. one of the misconceptions of psychology, according to wittgenstein, is precisely to lose sight of this aspect of psychological language, trying to treat the phenomenon in an isolated and onesided way. in practice, this resulted in attempts to explain psychology through descriptions of its own objects and facts, which were isolated and investigated by means of methods that allowed to define its features and properties, the result of which wittgenstein considered a misleading parallel, as he stated that: “psychology treats of processes in the psychical sphere, as does physics in the physical” (pi § 571). however, psychological concepts do not acquire their meaning through a process of recognition from a rigid and fixed referent which establishes it in an entirely determined way, as introspectionism proposed, on the one hand, taking consciousness and its processes as a referent and, on the other hand, as behaviorism proposed, whose referent is based on observable external behavior. according to wittgenstein, psychological concepts are immersed in the vast complexity of human practices and this implies that the use of these concepts is related to a plurality of phenomena that are part of these practices, which makes it impossible to isolate something within this complexity, such as that ultimate referent that would ensure the meaning of a concept. it is precisely the diversity and plurality of human experiences and practices in the world that constitute the meaning in the language game of psychology and making attempts to overcome diversity and plurality is an unnecessary, useless, and misleading attitude. wittgenstein’s argument of private language dismantled the privatist and subjectivist assumptions of mentalist conceptions, which led many to place him in the ranks of behaviorism. however, wittgenstein also refuses the behaviorist attempt that tries to explain the psychological phenomenon through a mere description of observable behavior. his refusal is based on the understanding that psychological language has a feature that is not shared by sciences such as physics or chemistry. psychological language involves taking into account a psychological subject who expresses himself by using the first person of that language. this use has to do with the fact that psychological phenomena involve the manifestation/expression of subjective states in the form of first-person propositions, such as “i feel pain”. that does not mean that these manifestations express something that lies beyond behavior or accompanies it. the proposition is not something external that allows us to infer what takes place internally, it is rather a constituent part of what we call the “interior” or, to avoid this term, of subjective experience. the relationship is internal, i.e., it is part of the meaning of “pain”, for example, its possibility of expression in behavior, in an intrinsic connection between the internal and the external. learning this language is also learning how to express one’s subjective experiences in an expressive language by using firstperson sentences. thus, expressing does not mean taking something from the inside to the outside; expressing is a way of acting. when i use the proposition “i feel pain”, i am expressing my pain, what i do is expressing my pain. thus, the subject or the first-person perspective cannot be eliminated because if we do so, no one else may act in my place, no one else may express 8 this conception is generally referred to as the augustinian vision of language, but wittgenstein aims to criticize a certain image that he believes has always been present in philosophy and even in common sense. his book tractatus logico-philosophicus represents that image of language. the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 6 my pain for me. however, in a description, that exchange takes place in a normal way. it makes no difference who describes it because the descriptive proposition lacks this privileged first-person perspective.9 it is always the relation of the proposition to something else, in the present case a fact, and any language user may perform this relation without losing any of its meaning. this is why: seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, willing, are not the subject of psychology in the same sense as that in which the movements of bodies, the phenomena of electricity etc., are the subjects of physics. you can see this from the fact that the physicists see, hear, think about, and inform us of these phenomena and the psychologists observes the external reactions (the behavior) of the subject. (pi § 571) external reactions, including first-person accounts, constitute what we call human behavior, in a sense that does not take place with physical phenomena. this does not eliminate the interior, but it is reconfigured based on language. expressiveness is an ability that human beings develop to exteriorize their subjective experience. what is called into question is the concept of interior and its role in the psychological language game, since we have a certain image of the interior that we use to interact daily. there is nothing wrong with the common image of the interior, it does not need to be corrected. the problem is the image of the interior made by philosophy, which confuses us and does not allow us to understand the place it occupies in our lives.10 clarifying the concept of interior, wittgenstein shows that it organizes the language game of psychology, it is the rule for the functioning of this particular language game, just as time11 and the physical object are the rules for the functioning of other language games. propositions that contain those terms are not descriptions of facts, since those expressions are not names of supposed objects, but rather rules for the functioning of the language game. the word “interior” does not designate a region of reality, a world populated by objects and processes that are accessible exclusively to the subject himself, it is rather a rule for the functioning of psychological language. if behaviorism was right in denying that the interior could be accessed and described by means of introspectionist methods, it was wrong to dismiss any role for subjective experience in the explanation of human behavior because if the sensation is not something, it is neither a nothing (pi § 304), it has a place in our lives and experiences and as such, it plays a role in explaining human behavior. hence, expressiveness is a function of language that is associated with the natural expressiveness of human behavior; expressiveness concerns man as a whole and his actions in the world. thus, the meaning of these sentences has no relation to supposed objects or internal events, it is rather the result of the actual practices of man. by defining expressiveness in this manner, wittgenstein eliminates the distinction between the inside and the outside as two different regions of reality that have their own ontology. subjective experience contains the totality of the individual, which implies to say that there is only an interior if it can be expressed on the exterior: expressiveness is constitutive and inseparable from subjective experience. thus, in this expressive function, the role of first-person 9 the authority of the first person is not related to a privileged perspective of access to its own alleged internal processes, but rather to that use where the subject cannot be replaced by any other. 10 the analogy of sensations introduced by the beetle in the box presented in paragraph 293 of the philosophical investigations reveals that confusion. 11 according to arley moreno: “as agostinho would say, we know intimately what time is. wittgenstein would add that we have an empirical conception of its nature based on the image of water flowing in a single direction with no return. based on that, we build instruments to measure it and the results define, or don’t, our conception of its essence, which will then become public and operational; the interest that these results arouse in us will define the essence of time” (moreno 2001, 13). the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 7 sentences that manifest subjective experiences is fundamental, because the first person cannot be replaced by third-person propositions. attempts to eliminate the interior through a descriptive language of behavior in the third person inevitably lead to the elimination of the subject and of an unwanted (private) subjectivity. however, something fundamental for the very understanding of man as such is removed as well: his humanity is lost if the fundamental part of his way of acting in the world is removed. this subject, which we call a unit, is a living human being “in the flow of life” rather than a being composed of a body and a soul, of an interior and an exterior whose relationship would require an explanation. this is precisely what we deduce from the paragraph in which wittgenstein deals with his attitude towards the soul:12 this particular being is a living being, an inseparable unity between body and soul, between the internal and the external. thus, we become aware of the fact that all these terms become unnecessary if we use the term “living human being” and that those distinctions do not occur in common situations of interaction and communication. in these situations, there is no question about what belongs to the body or the soul, to the interior or the exterior. when we talk about the experience of a subject, we do not question whether this experience belongs to either the body or the soul, or whether it concerns an interior we cannot access, because we speak of a human being, not of his body or soul. the subject uses the first person to express his beliefs, desires, and feelings, but that does not mean that this kind of use depends on a relationship of the subject with his own beliefs, desires or feelings as mental states that are referred to by expressions. this kind of use does not depend on the relationship of expressions with any type of entity, it is rather the result of learning common and everyday practices in which it is involved since birth. similarly, attributing a belief, desire, or feeling to someone else is not a statement about something that is going on in that person’s mind, which would be the result of observing that person’s behavior from which a corresponding mental state is inferred. the use in first and third persons are places in the psychological language game and their learning does not depend on a relationship with supposed mental states, but exclusively with the rules that establish these uses in this language game. learning them involves developing the ability to occupy the distinct places of the first and third person, which are interchangeable in the psychological language game. the first person seems to have a privileged place, as it is the result of direct access to the private and so-called “inner world” and its objects and, in particular, to the one that is referred to by the expression “i”, which has led to a picture of the interior in which subjectivity becomes a kind of substantiality, as in cartesian philosophy, promoting an investigation into what is, after all, that entity this word refers to. in wittgenstein’s perspective, however, the subjective, the internal, has no substantiality, it is not a dimension of reality, but rather a place in the language game that regulates a special possibility of organizing human experience in the world, including its expression in first-person propositions. introspection does not play any role in the constitution of the meaning of these expressions, because the meaning is not given by something that is “seen” either internally or externally, but rather by the rules of the language game. when wittgenstein refers to the interior, he insists that we have an image of the interior and that this image is the basis of the functioning of psychological language. he aims to clarify this image, which is present in common everyday language and has been distorted by cartesianism and its ramifications, including behaviorism, which intended to be critical of this current, but which ended up making the same mistakes. this image, if correctly 12 according to wittgenstein, for a soul, this attitude is the result of a certainty found in our image of the world, which does not require any kind of proof or explanation, since it is part of a set of propositions that we accept without question: “my attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. i am not of the opinion that he has a soul” (pi ii 178). the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 8 understood, rehabilitates the concept of the interior. thus, “interior” is a concept that appears in grammatical propositions that form a certain image and allow this language game to function. this is how a subject and subjectivity are revealed in language. they are concepts that have an expressive role, when one is expressing his or her own inner states. explanations based on reasons and the problem of objectivity the notes on the mistakes of trying to reduce psychological language to the referentialist conception of meaning has impacts and consequences for the consideration of psychology as a science, since, as we have seen, wittgenstein thinks that it is also trapped in this onesided view of language, which affects the very possibility of psychology to adequately think its object. in addition, reducing psychological language to the referential conception of meaning implies reducing psychology to the methods of natural sciences, assuming that explanations of human behavior should be established through causal laws of behavior. the problem arises as behaviorism refused the methodology of introspectionism, which led to a general refusal of resorting to subjectivity to promote scientificity of psychology. that effort aimed to eradicate any trait from the psychological discourse that would bring back the subject, even if surreptitiously, to the investigation. thus, it became a priority to eliminate any first-person account from the search for objectivity of the discourse and from psychological investigation, since it would certainly be contaminated with subjectivity. what wittgenstein shows is that we have other procedures to ensure the objectivity of these reports, other than those offered by introspectionism, which he also rejects. the objectivity of these reports is associated with the objectivity of reasons, as we will see. an important consequence of the unavoidable first-person perspective in the grammar of psychology is its place in the explanations of human behavior. wittgenstein refers directly to this question in the above-mentioned paragraph of lectures and conversations in which he describes the difficulties of psychology in finding an adequate method that would result from the attempt to reduce the methods of psychology to the methods of physics and thus establish causal laws for human behavior, such as in physics, where causal laws explain physical phenomena. wittgenstein emphasizes that no such laws apply to human behavior and rejects methodological reductionism found, e.g., in proposals as diverse as behaviorism and freud’s psychoanalysis. in this paragraph, wittgenstein focuses on showing what a mistake it would be to look for causal laws of human behavior: “there are no such laws”, and therefore, such an undertaking on the part of psychology is doomed to failure. human behavior cannot be subjected to observations and experiments like objects of physics, chemistry, or biology. psychological phenomena are not phenomena in the same sense as physical or chemical phenomena. attempts to reduce psychology to a natural science root in the notion that to be considered a science, psychology has to eliminate any trace of subjectivity from its object. to achieve that, psychology considers instead observable external behavior as its object, which needs to be observed and described using a kind of language that does not involve subjective aspects. explanations of a given phenomenon need to occur from a perspective of the causal processes that produce it, observed and described in the third person, which would allow their generalization in the form of laws. however, as we have seen, wittgenstein questions if this is still what we consider human behavior, if it is, e.g., a sensation or motivation. the answer is no because by eliminating the first person’s perspective, we eliminate a relevant part of the very constitution of the sense of sensation or motivation. as such, the first-person perspective is part of the explanation of what it is. in other words, to understand what a sensation is, one necessarily has to consider the role that such concepts play in psychological language, which reveals what the analyzed phenomenon is. the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 9 however, an explanation that contains a first-person perspective is not a causal explanation, but rather an explanation based on reasons. the difference between explanations of human behavior and explanations of natural events is that the latter try to discover a general law that applies to these events, while the former seek to understand the meaning of human behavior in relation to the whole of human life. to achieve that, explanations provided by the subject play a fundamental role. however, reasons do not work in the same way in explanations if they explain in such a way as to provide generalizations. reasons always depend on the way the subject himself justifies his action before others. they function as a criterion to judge the correctness or incorrectness of actions, to evaluate if actions are acceptable or not. the fact that reasons are justifications presented by the subject and thus provide his behavior with meaning is not the result of observation through experiments, but simply the result of observation and description of how the language game functions, of what man actually says and does. we do not need any further explanation than the one that explains the very functioning of the language game, neither anything in addition to the practices involved, nor something else that explains why man acts the way he does. the explanation involves asking him why he acts the way he does and the answer we receive in the form of reasons for his acting is the justification, i.e., the explanation, which makes the need for any additional explanations obsolete. these explanations seem insufficient and require complementation, as if something outside the language game should provide this explanation, since we feel that the reasons provided by the subject cannot be the “true causes” of what he does. as these reasons are provided by an acting subject, they may differ among subjects. identical reasons may cause different behavior in distinct subjects, which seems to make reasons less efficient to explain behavior. apparently, an adequate explanation of behavior can only be given by a description of a fact produced by some kind of observation and experiment, which cannot be provided by reasons, since these, in a wrong analogy, are considered descriptions of internal events. this is not accepted as an explanation due to their private and inaccessible nature, because that which they would have to describe would be so-called subjective experiences, which would be their meaning. considering that only descriptions can be true or false and that only true propositions can explain something, only propositions describing observable external behavior can be accepted as explanations for behavior. however, this clearly shows how a false analogy may lead to misleading issues and confusions, since propositions do not all have the same criteria of meaning. these criteria are the rules that establish the correctness of the use of language in its different contexts. the rules are not causal explanations of that use, but reasons which are presented by the subject who uses the language. it is a movement within the language game that does not depend on a relationship with something external so that it may be accepted as a criterion. however, what allows us to accept reasons as explanations of behavior is that the expression of experience is a feature of certain sentences regarding their use in a language game, from which we conclude that they must follow public rules of meaning, just like any other word or sentence of our language. in other words, for a reason to become a justification of an action, it has to meet the criteria that have been established for their use in a specific language game. it is not a relationship between what the subject says and what – actually – takes place inside him, but the relationship between what he says and the totality of the situation in which he is inserted, such as the relationship between what he says and the way he behaves subsequently. accepting first-person propositions as a criterion for the attribution of a subjective experience does not mean accepting them as external evidence of what takes place internally, but rather as part of the subjective experience of man. the subjective human experience is related to language, especially to first-person propositions through which it is the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 10 expressed on the one hand, and which, on the other hand, allows to give them a meaning and even to develop new possibilities, since certain experiences depend on a linguistic articulation so that they may exist.13 psychological concepts do not refer to a specific property or feature, they are an articulation of many aspects of human life and experience. at this point, the following objection could come up: if psychology, in its practice, needs to take into account forms of explanation that differ from those provided by causal laws, how can we still consider that these explanations are objective? was not behaviorism’s revolt against introspectionism precisely caused by the fact that resorting to the inner state and its description lacked objectivity? do reasons have some kind of objectivity in explaining human behavior? from wittgenstein’s perspective, the answer is once again based on considerations on the foundations of linguistic significance, which influence the understanding of the very possibility of objective knowledge. the difficulty of accepting that reasons can be objective explanations of human behavior is consistent with the notion that explanations need to be given on the basis of ultimate foundations that ensure the truth of the propositions that result from these explanations. these foundations need to be universal, i.e., they have to be valid regardless of time or place. in psychology, all actions and behaviors should be explained uniformly and based on general laws of human behavior to provide propositions that constitute true knowledge about human behavior. now, explanations based on reasons do not feel objective because they relate to the subject who expresses them. therefore, they are particular and diverse explanations and cannot be used to create actual knowledge, which, on the contrary, would require uniformity of behavior and explanation. once reasons have been admitted as a possibility of justifying knowledge, to what degree can they be objective? would objective knowledge not become impossible, due to the lack of the objective safety of causal laws? this question dissolves when we look at the way wittgenstein repositions the foundations of the recognition of our “common way of acting”: what lies at the end of the chain of reasons is our acting. reasons have a goal, but this goal is not an ultimate foundation in the form of an absolutely true proposition, but our way of acting. when we no longer have any reasons to provide, what we can show is the way we act, which appears as a “bedrock where the spade is turned”.14 it is the end of the chain of reasons and the place where our questions stop. it is part of that common way of acting that, as we act, we provide reasons for the way we act. this way of explaining our actions to each other through reasons plays a decisive role in our interactions. it is part of our common way of acting that we think about why we act the way we do, that we ask each other why, and that we provide those reasons to others when asked to. according to the reasons that arise intersubjectively in these practices of providing and receiving reasons, we create a sense for our actions, and this sense can only be understood from a wider perspective of human action in the world, which involves the totality of the context in which those actions take place. the reasons for behavior are objective as they arise from common and public practices. these are shared intersubjectively and therefore provide public criteria for understanding behavior. these criteria are being established like a grammar that guides practice either at the level of human actions in the world or of scientists who aim to understand and explain them. 13 the perception of aspects, as presented by wittgenstein in the second part of his philosophical investigations, is an example of such an experience. however, it can only take place if we relate the experience of seeing to language, which results in a new experience. 14 “if i have exhausted the justification, i have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. then i am inclined to say: ‘this is simply what i do’” (pi § 217). the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 11 final considerations wittgenstein’s considerations on psychology are thus reflections on the meaning of psychological terms and concepts, which implies investigating how these terms and concepts are used in the psychological language game. this means that wittgenstein was not directly interested in the problems and questions of psychology as a science, but rather in the correct understanding of the functioning of this particular language game. although his research does not concern psychological phenomena directly, it is of extreme importance for psychology as it helps it define its object and methods by itself. it is exceedingly difficult for psychology to progress as a science without an adequate understanding of psychological concepts. the findings of the analysis of psychological concepts made wittgenstein refuse to reduce the explanation of human behavior to causal relations presented in the form of general causal laws. psychology cannot be reduced to the methods of natural sciences, to the molds of physics, without losing the significance of its own object. the psychological phenomenon involves aspects that need other models of explanation, such as explanations based on reasons in which the role of first-person propositions – which express the mind – play a leading role. behaviorism tried to eliminate any remnants of subjectivity from its explanations, which was typical of introspectionism, and it thereby eliminated the first-person perspective from its methods. however, according to wittgenstein, this eliminates the very object of psychology, i.e., human behavior, which can only be adequately understood in a totality that also involves expressive first-person propositions. specifically, human behavior cannot be disconnected from language, which is what provides it with its meaning. language magnifies human experience in infinite ways. it provides a wide range of experiences that beings without language would not be able to develop. if psychology deals with human behavior, this qualifier, human, cannot be understood without the language man uses to constitute his experience in the world, making it impossible to reduce it to purely physical and biological aspects. human behavior is shaped by language, which in turn is part of human experience in the world, thus constituting its nature. any attempts at reductionism, especially those that try to eliminate the concepts related to the subjective experience of investigations on human behavior, would thus be doomed to failure, because by doing so, they would eliminate the object of the investigation itself. hence, we could conclude by stating that wittgenstein does not simply reject causal explanations of human behavior. however, he does not admit that they are all one has to say about human behavior. human behavior is complex. it consists of a multitude of aspects that may not be reduced to a single type of explanation. if psychology intends to be a science of human behavior, it needs to consider that this knowledge also implies global knowledge about the human subject, about man, rather than a partial one. psychological terms do not allow breaking up man into parts, as they would lose their meaning. since psychological language is deeply rooted in human practices and experiences in the world, a psychological investigation needs to consider the totality of human language, experience and action in the flow of life. references cometti, jean-pierre. 2004. ludwig wittgenstein et la philosophie de la psychologie. paris: puf. gil de pareja, j. l. 1992. la filosofía de la psicología de ludwig wittgenstein. barcelona: ppu. the epistemology of psychology from a perspective of wittgenstein’s grammatical analysis mirian donat 12 harré, rom and tissaw, michael. 2005. wittgenstein and psychology: a practical guide. ashgate. hacker, p. m. s. 1993. wittgenstein: meaning and mind. oxford: blackwell. hacker, p. m. s. 2000. wittgenstein: mind and will. oxford: blackwell. marques, antônio. 2002. o interior: linguagem e mente em wittgenstein. são paulo: loyola. moreno, arley ramos. 2001. wittgenstein e os valores: do solipsismo à intersubjetividade (wittgenstein and values: from solipsism to inter-subjectivity). natureza humana. 3 (2): 233-288. schroeder, severin. 2001. wittgenstein and contemporary philosophy of mind. palgrave: new york. schulte, joachim. 1993. experience and expression: wittgenstein philosophy of psychology. oxford: clarendon press. stern, david. 1995. wittgenstein: on mind and language. oxford: oxford university press. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1958. philosophical investigations. oxford: blackwell. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1970. lectures and conversations on aesthetics, psychology and religious belief. oxford: blackwell. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1980. remarks on the philosophy of psychology. oxford: blackwell. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1982. last writings on the philosophy of psychology. oxford: blackwell. microsoft word silva layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-9 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal bruno latour – special issue bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3388-6381 abstract: andré kukla has argued that both bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism should be regarded as anti-realist approaches. in order to support his own claim, kukla brought forward three parallels between them, namely: i) the observable/unobservable distinction in bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism may be found at bruno latour’s constructivism, too; ii) the constructivist’s emphasis over the social construction of facts could be (although it was not) acknowledged by van fraassen; iii) both constructive empiricism and constructivism are approaches about scientific practice. the aims of this paper are, firstly, to introduce and criticize the support gave by kukla regarding his own conception, and, secondly, to argue for that there is, instead, a stronger relationship between constructivism and realism than constructive empiricism and constructivism. keywords: constructivism; andre kukla; scientific realism; bruno latour, bas van fraassen received: december 26, 2022. reviewed: april 20, 2023. accepted: may 05, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________ introduction since its emergence, the concept of constructivism, introduced by the sociologist of science david bloor in 1976,2 has been strongly criticized by philosophers who support scientific realism.3 the argumentative core of these criticisms is underlain from an interpretation about bloor's constructivism (and other constructivists, as well): for realists, bloor suggested that science ought to be explained only by social factors. after they had put this interpretation, realists right 1 marcos rodrigues da silva is a professor of philosophy at the state university of londrina (universidade estadual de londrina). address: rodovia celso garcia cid, pr-445, km 380 – campus universitário, londrina pr, cep: 86057-970. email: mrs.marcos@uel.br 2 although there is a tradition of constructivism approaches starting from authors like fleck and mannheim, for instance, bloor’s strong program undoubtedly brought about many reactions. 3 the scientific realism is understood in this paper in its well-known standard way: the concept that the success of scientific theories ought to be understood through the convergence between a successful theory and reality since i) scientific terms have reference (even the terms that refers to unobservable entities) and ii) a successful theory provides quite strong reasons for our belief in its scientific propositions, which must be counted as true ones. bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 away took a second step: the critique of constructivism, which can be introduced by the following argument:4 either science is explained only by epistemological criteria or is explained only by social factors; it cannot be explained only by social factors, since, if science is explained only by social factors, then our scientific productions are not convergences to reality, but merely constructions made by groups of people who rule the scientific world; therefore, science ought to be explained only by epistemological criteria.5 there are many problems concerning this argument – but i will not debate them in this paper. my primary purpose (section 1) is stressing its original source: how did this interpretation arise? for realists, constructivism is both a philosophical and sociological view that put epistemological criteria of assessment of science aside (or at least regards such epistemological criteria much less significant than social factors). however, as far as the debate had been developed (and, also, from the conceptual development of constructivist framework itself), it became clear that this interpretation hardly matches to constructivist literature.6 in the long run constructivists have shown that their approach neither suppresses epistemological criteria nor even places social factors in a higher position than epistemological criteria. happily, this new way of grasping constructivist ideas has not been neglected by philosophers who, although cannot be called “constructivists”, do not evaluate constructivism as realists did. several recent accounts by non-constructivist philosophers have supported a new reading of constructivism, a new one that makes possible that constructivism can be understood in the light of those new remarks. among these studies, stands out the book social constructivism and the philosophy of science, by andré kukla (2000). at chapter 9 of his book, kukla seeks to show the relationship between constructivism and a doctrine, for kukla, seemingly near to it: bas van fraassen's constructive empiricism. at this challenging chapter, kukla points out convergences between bas van fraassen's constructive empiricism and constructivism, especially with bruno latour's constructivism. kukla sees that these two approaches are anti-realists. despite, to kukla, van fraassen to be careful and to have many points of disagreement with regard the constructivists, kukla argues that such differences are not greater than those that can be found between constructivists themselves (2000, 57). furthermore, kukla signals meaningful differences between constructive empiricism and constructivism. however, for him, it is possible to get parallels between them, namely: i) van fraassen’s observable/unobservable distinction may be found in latour, too; ii) the constructivists' emphasis on the social construction of facts could be (although it was not) acknowledged by van fraassen; iii) both constructive empiricism and constructivism are approaches about scientific practice. in the second section of this paper, i introduce kukla's claims and then i propose an evaluation of its. i am going to suggest that the parallels pointed by kukla do not support the claims because a) when latour talks about observables, this talk concerns an issue about methodology of the constructivist approach itself instead about scientific propositions; b.1) van fraassen might get along with constructivism by means of his theory of scientific explanation, 4 this way of driving the debate was remarkable described by james ladyman in his understanding philosophy of science, by means of an imaginary dialogue between a realist and an anti-realist (2002, 11-13). 5 one of the clearest expressions of this interpretation can be found in kitcher (1993, 162): “the deep point of the sociological critique is that the social forces (…) may be sufficiently powerful that the effects of nature are negligible”. other similar statements can be found in nola (2014, 297-298), niiniluoto (1991, 152), nelson (1994, 541), laudan (1981, 194), leplin (1997, 4) and siegel (1986, 241). 6 for developments on david bloor's initial proposal, see latour (1987, 142), stengers (2000, 104), herrstein smith (1997, chapter 8), millstone (1978, 120). however, it is significant to emphasize david bloor's own initial proposal made already clear that epistemological criteria are as very useful as social factors (bloor 1977, 4-5). bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 however, van fraassen himself did not suggest such a convergence; b.2) although van fraassen could be seen as a philosopher who does not deny the significance of social factors, only this lack of opposition (for social factors) without any further statement in favour of social factors is understood in this paper as a weak evidence for supporting the relationship between constructive empiricism and constructivism; c) unlike constructivism, constructive empiricism cannot, in a broad sense, be understood as a conception about scientific practice (although it may be in a weak sense – but again it is also a weak evidence for establishing the relationship between the two philosophies). in the third section, i argue that, although kukla is not thoroughly wrong in placing van fraassen and latour in the same anti-realist tradition, sometimes it seems quite the opposite: latour and realists can share some theses about science. at “concluding remarks”, i shall develop the third section and try to show that latour is closer to realism than to anti-realism. andré kukla and the relationship between constructivism and constructive empiricism the first relationship put by kukla is that van fraassen’s observable/unobservable distinction may be found in latour, too (in a paper of him with michel callon) (kukla 2000, 60-61). among other reasons, van fraassen's constructive empiricism is well-known because his deeply explored distinction between observable and unobservable entities (van fraassen 1980, p. 15). this distinction, however, does not have a pragmatic dimension – since, for a scientific explanation, theories (when necessary) must use such unobservable entities (van fraassen 1980, 53-54) –, but only an epistemological one: unlike propositions concerning to observable entities, we cannot believe in the truth of propositions regarding unobservable entities (1980, 53-54). thus, from an epistemological point of view, propositions about observables are privileged over those about unobservable. according to kukla (2000, 60-61), latour, although had not argued for a distinction between more privileged and less privileged statements in a scientific theory, actually suggested a distinction between observables and unobservable which can be found in a short statement in a paper with michel callon. kukla, however, did not make clear to the reader the context in which this distinction emerged in that paper. the paper referred by kukla is a reply from latour and callon to harry collins and steve yearley about a metamethodological issue on the sociology of science’s methodology. according to latour and callon (1992, 350-351), collins and yearley's model determines that both nature and society are causes of the stabilization of a scientific production. however, according to latour and callon, natural objects (nature) and social movements (society) are unobservable. to latour and callon when it comes to observable these are “(…) traces left by objects, arguments, skills, and tokens circulating through the collective” (latour e callon 1992, 351). then we see, by this quote, that indeed there is a distinction between observable and unobservable. nonetheless, the distinction promoted by van fraassen concerns scientific statements like these ones: electrons are unobservable; the volume of a gas is observable, and so forth. thus, van fraassen deals with scientific statements. latour and callon, on the other hand, are not dealing (in the context of the referred paper) with scientific statements but with statements that compose the material of analysis of science that ought to be taken into account by sociologists of science. therefore, the latour/callons’s distinction has no bearing on any relationship with the one promoted by van fraassen. furthermore, it ought to keep in mind that, when latour deals with scientific statements (and not with statements of sociological studies about science), the distinction just do not arise. bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 the second argument by kukla is that the constructivist’s emphasis on the social construction of facts might be (although it was not) undertaken by (and with no loss for) van fraassen. van fraassen has devised a theory of explanation whose emphasis was on what he called “why-questions”. typically, a scientist asks why a particular phenomenon comes about (van fraassen 1980, 134). van fraassen fairly sees that a scientist can ask a quite lot of questions about a phenomenon. however, this scientist chooses something particular for guiding investigation. this choice, according to van fraassen, is set up by the researcher's context (van fraassen 1980, 112). when a scientist is answering a why-question, he assumes that what ought to be explained is a genuine scientific issue. however, such an entitlement occurs also due to scientist’s “desire” (van fraassen 1980, 156) of explaining such issue. thus, for example, explaining why metals gain weight in combustion used to be a legitimate issue while antoine lavoisier had been developing his chemistry system, but it was not scientifically sound in the qualitative chemistry of phlogiston; so, there were two different traditions who held likewise different “desires” for different kinds of explanation. as kukla points out, on bruno latour's constructivism there is a defence that the context of the production of scientific knowledge appoints (to some extent, at least) the very existence of what scientists assume to. therefore, both van fraassen and latour understand that human action is fundamental to define a subject matter for scientific theories, because to explain is “something quite pragmatic” (van fraassen 1980, p. 100): it is not sufficient only to take into account the relationship between theory and facts, but also the relationship between theory and facts and the context: “related to the concerns of the user of the theory and not something new about the correspondence between theory and fact” (van fraassen 1980, 100). it turns out, however, that “context” is a word that suggests something broader than meant by van fraassen. let us look at a hypothetical example (given by van fraassen) and then i will give an example from the history of science. let us suppose the following question (van fraassen 1980, 127): “why did adam eat the apple?”. to van fraassen, different demands stem themselves from this issue. one can, from the original statement, asks the following three questions: why did adam eat the apple / why did adam eat the apple? / why did adam eat the apple? the use of italic types in these statements makes clear the precise shape of the demand of the question. at the first version, we wish to know why adam (and not another person) ate the apple; so, an answer such as "because adam was hungry" would not be a good answer. at the second version, adam's own act (eating) is asked, and that possible answer now may be sound: “because he was starving”. finally, at the third, we want to understand why adam ate that apple and not another fruit or food; so, this last answer must take into account, for example, adam's taste for apples and not for another fruit or food. it becomes clear that the first problem we face is to know which of the three versions of the issue we should choose. to van fraassen, the answer is pretty clear: the context will determine the choice. standing still in his example, eve would choose the first version if she told adam to keep the fruit for herself; she would choose the second one if she told adam to store the fruit for dinner; and she would choose the third if she wanted to tell adam that apples are damaging for him, and therefore it was better for him eating grapes. so, in a context of an everyday conversation like this one, when eve asks adam – "why did you eat the apple?" –, he must give the kind of answer expected by her. van fraassen's suggestion is that the same is true, of course, in scientific practice. a scientific issue opens itself for so many possible answers, too – a myriad of investigative lines, as it were. let us look at an example from the history of biology. until near to the end of the 19th century, the scientific problem of explaining the cause of resemblance between parents and their offspring took into account issues linked to the relationship between parents and the environment (stanford 2006, 62; bowler 1989, 23, 58; olby 1963, 251); that is: what parents did bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 during their life could get in on the explanation of why their offspring are as they are (soft heredity). nevertheless, since the beginning of the 20th century the scientific problem had changed and it was assimilated in another context, the context of classical genetics. and, in this new context, it does not matter what parents do throughout their lives, but only their genetic heritage and what they can transmit of such fixed heritage to offspring (bowler 1989, 3) (hard heredity). in other words, as van fraassen put it, the context entails the direction of the research. the problem, however, is that at nowhere van fraassen links his concept of “context” to scientific contexts. van fraassen, as it were, had restricted himself to asserting the existence of a context, and he did not give any examples like this of the history of genetics, or, at least, examples taking in account a wider context. a second problem is that an ordinary assertion of the existence of a context is highly weak to support kukla's thesis. actually, no one believes that any philosopher of science denies the very existence of a context. larry laudan (1977, 198) and paul thagard (1978, 92), for example, are assertive about the existence of a context that guides research. but, like van fraassen, none of them (unlike latour) explores historiographically the causal meaning of this context for the establishment of a scientific production. thus, kukla's claim that van fraassen could accept the concept of social construction of facts is a weak thesis (and this could even be applied to many other philosophers). finally, the third relationship established by kukla: both constructive empiricism and constructivism ought to be considered approaches about scientific practice (kukla 2000, 63). whoever be the philosopher of science, the more abstract his approach may be, he or she thinks that it does not (albeit roughly) have a relationship with scientific practice. but what does “relationship with scientific practice” mean for a philosophical approach to science? it is not enough, for a philosophical approach, to bring forward historical examples; a philosophical approach that really deals with scientific practice ought to bravely interplay with historical records and to comprehend philosophical categories in order to explain these historical records. in other words: scientific practice must intervene in the philosopher's approach. thus, a philosopher who deals with scientific practice and sustains the thesis (t) about a scientific theory should modify t if her approach concerning this theory does not match with the historical record. in this case, contrary to what kukla argues, van fraassen did exactly the opposite. let us see how this happened. according to many scientific realists, scientists proceed through what is called inference to the best explanation: in face of one phenomenon, and assuming the existence of some rival alternatives, the hypothesis that best explains this phenomenon gives a good support for the belief in truth of its own explanation (harman 1965, 89). van fraassen has pinpointed several challenges to the inference to the best explanation, and the most famous is called “the argument from the bad lot” (psillos 1996, 36-37) (also called “underconsideration argument” (lipton 1993, 89-90)): did the lot of rival hypotheses include all possible hypotheses for the explanation of the phenomenon? we cannot know that it included; so, we can ask: the hypotheses chosen as the best explanation would not be out of the lot? van fraassen said: “it is possible”; so, it is not impossible that the hypothesis chosen as the best one could be picked out from a bad lot (van fraassen 1989, 142-143). trying to rejoinder to van fraassen it is a hopeless task. his framework is quite abstract and impose itself to whichever episode in the history of science. no matter how much scientific practice reveals through historical records, van fraassen can still argue from the argument from the bad lot; even we would change the lot and would include new hypotheses, the lot still could be a bad one. this means that scientific practice, as prescribed in this paper, does not affect van fraassen's philosophical approach. bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 once introduced the three components of the relationship set forth by kukla between van fraassen and latour, i understand that this relationship does not take place –at least not by means of the reasons put forward by kukla. it is useful to make clear kukla is trying to set up such a relationship in order to place van fraassen and latour in the same anti-realist tradition. i believe that the relationship can be supported, although not by means of kukla’s conditions. however, it seems the opposite comes about: latour and the realists can share some theses about science. the next section of this paper deals with this point. latour and scientific realism after van fraassen had launched his argument from the bad lot, realists replied to the argument. according to psillos (1996, 39) and lipton (1993, 99),7 it is possible to rebut the argument from the following counterargument: as far as the scientists, while are formulating their hypotheses, usually take into account the background knowledge, then, the lot would not be bad, since it already excluded hypotheses which had not relate to some background knowledge. it is not necessary to feel that scientific realism has a strong relationship with scientific practice in order to understand that its appeal to background knowledge is a bit closer to scientific practice than the argument from the bad lot: a scientist sets out hypotheses from their relationship with some background knowledge, which provides a constrain for the proliferation of hypotheses (a constrain which, as it has been seen, was not found in van fraassen's critique of the inference to the best explanation). furthermore, as peter lipton argues, background knowledge, for realists, ought to connect realism itself with scientific practice (lipton 1993, 9697). this very idea of proliferation of new hypotheses due to background knowledge is quite homely to latour. for him, scientists, when propose novelties, do not hesitate to connect such novelties with some consolidated knowledge, knowledge that as whole he encapsulates in the phrase “black box”. such a connection provides reliability and plausibility to the novelty that will be submitted to scientific community. also, to latour, as scientific statements do not stand on their own – but need the help of other statements –, the meaning of the concept of background knowledge is pretty clear: “a sentence may be made more of a fact or more of an artefact depending on how it is inserted into other sentences. by itself a given sentence is neither a fact nor a fiction: it is made so by others, later on” (latour 1987, 24). so, in this case – the relationship of a philosophical approach to science with the scientific practice –, latour seems quite fitted in a realist environment. moreover, latour stresses the relationship with consolidated knowledge for the same reason above: statements are not analysed alone; for working out, they need a broader context: “by themselves, a statement, a piece of machinery, a process are lost. by looking only at them and at their internal properties, you cannot decide if they are true or false, efficient or wasteful, costly or cheap, strong or frail. these characteristics are only gained through incorporation into other statements, processes and pieces of machinery. these incorporations are decided by each of us (…)” (latour 1987, 29). winding up this section, let us recall the realists' interpretation of constructivism: either science is explained only by epistemological criteria or is explained only by social factors; it cannot be explained only by social factors, since, if science is explained only by social factors, then our scientific productions are not convergences to reality, but merely constructions made by groups 7 see also boyd (1985, 6-7; 1991, 206), leplin (1997, 116) and giere (1999, 193). bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 of people who rule the scientific world; therefore, science ought to be explained only by epistemological criteria. in his book science in action, latour has addressed the methodological issue of how about understanding the emergence of a scientific production at the end of some controversy. from the historical record of science, latour, after had developed each stage of his argument, launched one methodological rule for the understanding of scientific productions. rule 3 lay down the following guideline: after a controversy had been closed, it could not be said that nature is the cause of such closure; in fact, what is called "nature" is the consequence of a closure of the controversy. well, if nature is not the cause, who might play its role? in the realist interpretation about constructivism, society replaces nature. however, after had introduced rule 3, latour proposed another line of argument, this time to show, first, that nature is not the cause, and, second, by means for another rule, rule 4, that society cannot play the role of nature as the cause. rule 4, in fact, has the same words as rule 3, except that, at rule 3, latour uses “nature”; instead, at rule 4, latour uses “society”. the upshot is quite clear: neither society is the cause, nor nature is the cause (of the closure of a controversy), as long as scientists do not know deeply nature, but they also do not know deeply social context. so, one cannot speak of only social factors as causes of scientific productions (latour, 1987, 142). that is why latour triggers rule 5: the actual understanding of the closure of a controversy – a closure that peaks with the “stabilization” of some knowledge8 (latour, 1987, p. 42) – comes about only if we follow what scientists actually do: “our fifth rule of method will thus be the following: (…) we should follow the two sides [of controversy] simultaneously, making up a list, no matter how long and heterogeneous, of all those who do the work” (latour 1987, 176). and, as far as we follow two rivals in a controversy, we will see them both performing politically and socially and working in their labs. closing remarks perhaps due the label “constructivist”, it hardly ever takes up in the literature that latour sometimes argues for a kind of scientific realism in his analysis of science.9 according to latour, there are two stances about science that can be assumed by the philosopher/sociologist of science: either one can look at “science in action” (latour 1987, 15) or can look to “final products” (latour 1987, 21). on science under construction, scientists, according to latour, joined themselves in order to put their knowledge beyond any doubts (latour 1987, 142). at this moment, the philosopher/sociologist of science should be relativist, or else there not will be an understanding the complexities tackled by scientists. however, once some knowledge has consolidated itself (that is, it has become itself a “black box”) the philosopher/sociologist of science must be realist, or else there not will be the acceptance the outcomes of science: “this division between relativists and realist interpretation of science has caused analysts of science to be put off balance. either they went on being relativists even about the settled parts of science – which made them look ludicrous; or they continued being realists even about the warm uncertain parts and they made fools of themselves. (…) we do not try to undermine the solidity of the 8 on this concept, see also pickering (1990), especially page 222, and lenoir (1999), especially the chapter “the discipline of nature and nature of disciplines” and specifically page 47. 9 there is a paper by tim lewens (2005) (although he has not used latour as a reference) that is very close of direction which i am suggesting in these concluding remarks. lewens argues that the truth of scientific theories could be explained both epistemologically and by social and political factors (lewens 2005, 562), since fulfilled some conditions (lewens 2005, 567-568). bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism and bruno latour’s constructivism: the andré kukla’s approach marcos rodrigues da silva transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 accepted parts of science. we are realists (…). but as soon as a controversy starts we become as relativist (…)” (latour 1987, 100). thus, i finish this paper with two conclusions. first, the relationship argued by kukla between van fraassen and latour – a relationship introduced to place both in the anti-realist tradition – does not take place, or at least not for the reasons provided by kukla. second, conversely, there is a relationship between latour and the realists. as i have put at the abstract, kukla tried to find three parallels between van fraassen and latour: i) the observable/unobservable distinction in bas van fraassen’s constructive empiricism may be found at bruno latour’s constructivism, too; ii) the constructivist’s emphasis over the social construction of facts could be (although it was not) acknowledged by van fraassen; iii) both constructive empiricism and constructivism are approaches about scientific practice. i hope i have established kukla’s claims do not support those parallels, since i) the term “observable” is employed in one sense by van fraassen and another one by latour; ii) even tough van fraassen does not prevent a talk of social factors, he has never carried on such a talk; iii) unless we accept that every philosopher of science deals with scientific practice (because they analyse science), so van fraassen would be a philosopher who would deal with scientific practice; but, as we have seen, handling with scientific practice demands one approach which we cannot find in van fraassen’s work but even tough, in this paper, i have been criticizing kukla’s approach, i would like to highlight i recognize that, in the first place, his book is a remarkable contribution both to change the traditional realist interpretation about constructivism and to weak this traditional but wrong interpretation. also, in the second place, kukla, at several parts of his book, cleared up other subject matters concerning constructivism. references bowler, peter. 1989. the mendelian revolution. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. bloor, david. 1977. knowledge and social imagery. chicago: chicago university press. boyd, richard. 1985. lex orandi est lex credendi. in images of science, edited by paul. churchland and clifford hooker, 1-15. chicago: the university of chicago press. boyd, richard. 1991. on the current status of scientific realism. in the philosophy of science, edited by richard boyd, phillip gasper and j. trout, 195-222. cambridge: mit press. callon, michel; latour, bruno. 1992. don’t throw the baby out with the bath school! reply to collins and yearley. in science as practice and culture, edited by andrew pickering, 343-368. chicago: the university of chicago press. giere, ronald. 1999. science without laws. chicago: the university of chicago press. harman, gilbert. 1965. the inference to the best explanation. the philosophical review (74): 88-95. herrstein smith, barbara. 1997. belief and resistance. cambridge: harvard university press. kitcher, phillip. 1993. the advancement of science. oxford: oxford university press. kukla, andré. 2000. social constructivism and the philosophy of science. london: routledge. ladyman, james. 2001. understanding philosophy of science. london: routledge. latour, bruno. 1987. science in action. cambridge: harvard university press. laudan, larry. 1977. progress and its problems. london: routledge. laudan, larry. 1981. the pseudo-science of science? 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(translation by daniel smith.) minneapolis: minnesota university press. thagard, paul. 1978. the best explanation: criteria for theory choice. the journal of philosophy lxxv (2): 76-92. van fraassen, bas. 1980. the scientific image. oxford: clarendon press. van fraassen, bas. 1989. laws and symmetry. oxford: oxford university press. microsoft word calazans layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-11 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal bruno latour – special issue ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8274-5935 abstract: bruno latour’s line of thinking is marked by the actor-network theory (ant), which contemplates the relationships between humans, non-humans and other actors. among the non-human elements are the technical artifacts or, in other words, technical objects. in latour’s thought, this article aims to explain what concerns the ontology of such objects. through the analysis of some of the texts that the author dedicated to this topic and by comparing it with simondon’s ontology of technique, we arrive at the hypothesis that, in bruno latour’s line of thinking, the question of ontology does not directly apply to technical objects, but to the relations that establish them and by which they affect the other elements of the network. keywords: bruno latour; gilbert simondon; technical object; relational ontology received: may 1, 2023. reviewed: may 24, 2023. accepted: june 19, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction the actor-network theory (ant),2 assumed by bruno latour as the theoretical foundation of his concept of collective, establishes that non-human elements are also active3 in this network. it should be noted that even non-material elements are admitted, such as theories, arguments and concepts. that is, what we commonly consider as “social” goes far beyond the set of human individuals. thus, the complexity of the various relationships is significant. we do not intend to consider it in its entirety but to shed light on one of the aspects of the great network: the participation of technical objects and non-human actors of the collective. it is an attempt to extract, from the author’s work, the particularities of the insertion of technical objects in the network, and, therefore, it is characterized as a task that touches the field of ontology. to achieve this goal, we will focus mainly on two texts. the first is an article published in 2010, “prendre le pli des techniques”. the second is the well-known book pandora’s hope, 1 veronica ferreira bahr calazans is a professor at the federal university of technology – paraná – utfpr. address: av. sete de setembro, 3165 – curitiba – pr. 80.230-901, brazil. e-mail: calazansveronica@gmail.com 2 we do not dedicate part of the text to bruno latour’s ant, as we consider it to be the common basis of the author’s thought. for an in-depth look at this topic, cf. harman, 2009. 3 latour uses the term “actant”, for non-humans, in the sense of “actor”, for humans. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 published in 1999,4 in particular the chapter entitled “a collective of humans and nonhumans. following daedalus’s labyrinth” (author’s translation). when selecting these texts, we aim to explore latour’s thought regarding the ontology of technique, considering, initially, the technical objects and the relationships they establish in the collective.5 by comparing his project with other authors, such as gilbert simondon and étienne souriau,6 bruno latour offers us some essential elements to systematize his line of thought regarding the ontology of technical objects. in this way, the task of going through the central points of this comparison constitutes an intermediate objective, and quite relevant, of the route proposed here. it is, therefore, not a question of establishing a symmetrical dialogue between the authors considered here but of resorting to specific elements that, by comparison, make latour’s approach more explicit. the central concept evoked by latour to deal with technical objects is the already established mode of existence. according to the author (latour 2010), there is a tradition around this term called “relational ontology”. in this tradition, the non-reductionist perspective stands out because it does not simplify reality in the binomial subject and object. however, latour does not take this approach in its entirety and makes his ontology of technique explicit by identifying and criticizing the limitations he attributes to simondon’s work, for example. thus, even though he recognizes the merits of this tradition and, in some way, considers himself a participant in it, latour intends to extrapolate his predecessors. our main reading hypothesis is that, although latour and simondon share a commitment to what could be called a “relational ontology”, the radical nature of latour’s thought leads to displacing the issue of ontology. we hope to show that, in latour, the question cannot be about the mode of existence of the technical object, as in simondon’s line of thought, but about the mode of existence of the technique itself. on the mode of existence of technical objects and technique: a dialogue between latour and simondon the dialogue between latour and simondon regarding the mode of existence of technical objects is permeated by agreements and criticisms. there is a common commitment to an ontology that, instead of reducing the understanding of the world to a reality divided between subjects and objects, considers a plurality of modes of existence and establishes the need to respect each one of them “by itself”. simondon understood that the ontological question could be separated from the research of a substance, the fascination for a single knowledge, the obsession with the bifurcation between subject and object, and rather be put in terms of vectors. for him, subject and object, far from being at the beginning of reflection like two indispensable hooks to which it is convenient to attach the net that could put the philosopher to 4 even though it is a text prior to the article mentioned above, chapter 6 of pandora’s hope (1999) can be read as a text that concentrates latour’s thoughts on the role of technique in the collective. we subvert the chronology of publication of the texts by understanding that the 2010 article provides the theoretical, ontological bases to understand the 1999 chapter, which presents a more general scope of latour’s thought on the technique. with this, we intend to highlight the conceptual unity, present throughout bruno latour’s work, regarding technique. 5 we will also resort to the book enquête sur les modes d’existence. une anthropologie des modernes. (2012), in which latour resumes and deepens elements presented in the 2010 article. 6 souriau published, in 1943, les différents modes d’existence (the different modes of existence; authors translation), which did not have an external repercussion in france, in the same proportion as simonon’s works, but influenced several french authors, among them bruno latour. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 sleep, are just the very late effects of a true history of modes of existence. (latour 2010, 16) (author’s translation) however, latour assesses that this plurality – in the way it is considered by simondon – through the genetic method, is ultimately misleading: “multi-realism, deep down, would be just a long detour to return to the philosophy of being” (latour 2010, 16) (author’s translation). in view of this, it is first necessary to explain the content of the criticism toward simondon to lay the foundations of bruno latour’s proposition regarding the mode of existence of technical objects. the central point of the criticism concerns the notion of unity: both the original unity, magic, and the future unity, becoming. simondon considers a primordial magical unit in which the subject and the object would be unified. as the subject manages to perceive itself as something separate from the world, it also starts to highlight some objects. the magical unity begins to break down when the figures start to be detached from the background, that is, the objects are different from the subject and also different from the world, dividing reality into these three categories: the world, the subject and the object. the first objects to stand out are the technical objects. based on this aspect, latour questions simondon’s supposed multi-realism. there is a commitment to a notion of unity, and reality receives a very restricted categorization (world, subject and object), even if only initially. the various modes of existence of being are deduced from the original mode, which does not eliminate the restriction, it just postpones it. to define the contours of this critique, latour resorts to another author who precedes simondon and who treats the ways of existence in a perspective that would be, effectively, multi-realist: étienne souriau. according to latour, souriau has the merit of shifting the issue from “ways of existence” to “ways of being” (latour 2010, 16), almost in the sense of “good manners”, “protocol”, “etiquette”. although the assumption of a “being” is assumed, it is not the nature of being that the question is directed at, but relations: [...] we can seriously ask about relationships, as has been done for much time on the sensations without forcing them to line up immediately in the same and only direction of having to lead either towards the object (away from the subject), or for the subject (moving away from the object)? (latour 2010, 17) (author’s translation) in this perspective, souriau adopts the concept of “instauration”, and latour opposes it to the concept of “construction”: the establishment can abdicate the metaphorical character that associates construction with a single act of creation and extrapolate to a broader and more complex vision. this concept, initially thought of in the context of the arts, reaches a more general level. when we say that a work of art has been established, it does not just mean that it was created but that it was welcomed, prepared, explored, and invented. the role of the one who establishes it is not to create ex nihilo, especially not to create by an isolated act. on the contrary, it is a dynamic process in which numerous factors interfere (the artist himself, the material, the public, and the cultural context). the question about this network of relationships, set in the establishment process, is more important, for latour, than the questions that intend to investigate the being as something presupposed or prior to the thing itself. likewise, this approach does not depend on establishing an originating unit or any equivalent principle. the multiplicity of relationships becomes the most relevant element for the analysis so the question about the supposed principles loses its importance. however, by adhering to souriau’s approach, latour does not completely distance himself from simondon. on the contrary, these authors share a central point of their respective thoughts about technology: the diagnosis that modernity largely ignores technology. furthermore, they agree on the main reason for this abandonment: the reduction of technical objects to their functions. in his complementary thesis, on the mode ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 of existence of the technical object7 (1958), meot, gilbert simondon presents the opposition between culture and technique that, according to him, was established within the culture from the industrial age: culture starts to consider technical objects as foreign, in which it recognizes nothing human. historically, during a process of alienation, the human individual, as a technical individual, loses his centrality in technical action and begins to play the role of servant of the machine that replaced him. this human individual who, before, was the bearer of the tools and kinesthetically passed through himself, in a kinesthetic way, the technical action, sees himself alien to the new technical action and, consequently, starts to understand the technical progress only by an abstraction based on the exteriority, regarding the technique itself. in summary, technique ceases to be an integral part of the culture, in a homogeneous way, to elicit different relationships and reactions. the worker is no longer the one who dominates technical action and therefore experiences technical progress. appears then the figure of the engineer, who, although he does not operate the machine, is capable of theorizing about technical progress since only he understands its operation. in this way, most of the culture becomes alienated from technical progress. the simondonian diagnosis exposes this culture’s attitude, which is positioned in a dubious and contradictory way, in relation to the technical object. the human individual, alienated from technical action, without adequately understanding technical progress, interprets the machine sometimes as a mere material arrangement that provides a utility, sometimes as a being endowed with intentionality, capable of rebelling against human beings. this imbalance, endowed with two faces, ranges from a significant reduction to a mythical interpretation. the technical object gains interiority in the representation of the robot, and at the same time, raises fear in the face of a foreign object – on the part of a large part of the culture that is unaware of its functioning – and the impetus for expanding power, projecting onto the machine the desires of domination – especially in the case of those with technical knowledge. according to simondon, the objective of meot is to raise an “awareness of the meaning of technical objects” (simondon 1989, 9) (author’s translation), precisely with the purpose of undoing this imbalance established in culture, in relation to technical objects. “easy humanism”, which ignores the human reality contained in technology, gives rise to this false and unfounded opposition between culture and technology, between man and machine: the opposition brought between culture and technique, between man and machine, is false and baseless; it just covers up ignorance and resentment. she masks behind an easy humanism a reality rich in efforts human and natural forces, and which constitutes the world of technical objects, mediators between nature and man. (simondon 1989, 9) (author’s translation) by neglecting technical objects in its world of meanings, culture reduces its scope, as it leaves out an important part of the human enterprise. the technical objects, characterized as mediators between the human being and the environment he inhabits, are the result of the efforts and history of this same humanity that, alienated, sees them as foreigners and feeds xenophobic feelings against them. thus, culture suffers from a self-amputation that makes it inconclusive, incomplete. the de-alienation movement, proposed by simondon, does not simply intend to change culture, but to expand it, so that it resumes the completeness that belonged to it. 7 original title: du mode d’existence des objets techniques (mode of existence of the technical object; author’s translation). the 1989 edition in french is used here, with its own translation of the quoted passages. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 from what was exposed above, an important question emerges: why is this awareness so necessary for the author? why is it so important for culture to reincorporate technical objects into its universe of meanings? the answer lies in the way in which simondon defines and characterizes the concept of culture, namely, eminently, in terms of its regulatory role. culture regulates the relationship between human individuals and, more broadly, regulates relationships in a society composed of a set of human individuals, added to technical individuals (machines). even though alienation is present regarding technical objects, culture remains regulatory. however, alienation does not allow the regulatory function of culture to be exercised in a balanced way. for this reason, simondon focuses the purpose of his philosophical project on this movement towards awareness of the meaning of technical objects; therefore, only by reconstructing the integrality of culture can it reestablish its balanced regulation. while this project is not carried out, technical objects continue to play their structural role as mediators between man and his environment. on the contrary, this mediation takes care of all aspects of human life, especially in its social relations. we conclude, therefore, that culture not only regulates technical objects – as well as all other elements of human life –, but regulates through technique, understood as a privileged scope of mediation. this means that the technique serves the interests of the groups that hold power over it and, in the context of the characteristic imbalance of alienation, its representation incorporates the impetus for domination and the will to power, elements of the so-called “technocracy”. still, in his text “prendre le pli des techniques”, bruno latour presents a development very close to simondon’s, regarding the false opposition between technique and human realities. the expression that marks latour’s critique of modernity’s disregard for technology is “lack of ontological generosity” (latour 2010, 22). the idea of a homo faber, who transforms his needs into tools, molding them through an “effective action on matter”,8 leads to the reduction of technique to a materialization of functionalities. this reduction can be exploited in several aspects that, however, are interconnected. first, the reduction prevents the identification of the knowledge that permeates the technique. it promotes an emptying of the term “technology”, which, in its original meaning, should designate this knowledge about technique, like “epistemology”, a word that designates knowledge about knowledge: we have no hesitation in asserting, of the humblest machine, full of chips, that she is a “technology”, but we don’t expect any lessons from her; to one “technologist”, we only ask him to come and repair this machine, but not that he offers us a knowledge. what would we do with it [knowledge]? there is nothing to think about in technique. she is just one heap of complex media. everyone knows this. (latour 2010, 20) (author’s translation) this reduction manifests itself as mutilation.9 it is about denying the transformation that goes beyond the mere function of technique. the function of a technical object is, supposedly, the invariable element, carried with the object. however, according to latour, everything indicates that the technical act does not support a simple transport of identity, without transformation (latour 2010, 21). by stating, for example, that the identity of the car corresponds to its function (displacement), all the technical transformations that took place 8 latour regrets that this expression is authored by leroi-gourhan, whose work, in general, helps to recognize, in technique, its intrinsic value. 9 latour resorts to the myth of procrustes, who imposed the penalty of being able to fit in his bed, so that the bigger ones were cut, and the smaller ones stretched out. in the same way, we mutilate the technique so that it corresponds to the place we assign to it. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 to make this usefulness possible are forgotten and emptied by simplification. this is, in general terms, the lack of ontological generosity, pointed out by the author. a single emblematic passage would be enough to summarize this point: “it is not the technique that is empty, it is the philosopher’s gaze” (latour 2010, 22) (author’s translation). this statement concentrates on a position very similar to simondon’s, considered above: modernity let escape the humanity present in technology. in this way, that occultation, once attributed to nature, fits perfectly into technical reality. it is there, in front of us, but we do not attribute to it any meaning in terms of its being, only in terms of its function. the being of the technique remains hidden. however, even though their respective diagnoses regarding the concealment of the technique present such similarities, the referral for overcoming this concealment finds different developments in each of the authors. naturally, the main difference is related to the radical commitment to what latour calls multi-realism, as already pointed out above. we will see, then, that this radicalism calls into question the very conception of the object. therefore, it will be necessary to investigate the ontological status of technical artifacts. the technical object and the collective: between the black box and pandora’s box from what was developed above, we can conclude that latour’s criticism of simondon does not exactly reach the simondonian10 project – to a large extent, shared by latour –, but what he considers as a limit. in the book pandora’s hope,11 the question of realism in traditional ontologies is approached: plato, aristotle, kant... what is characterized as substance, or equivalent, is considered as an ultimate stratum of reality or, using latour’s analogy, a black box that cannot be opened. although simondon also criticizes such ontologies and shares with latour the claim to escape the subject-object scheme, the adoption of an originating unit is considered, as in the case of other philosophers, a limit.12 thus, the radical nature of the criticism of simondon offers the parameters to analyze the radical nature of latour’s proposal regarding ontology, in general, and, specifically, to the ontology of the technical object or technique. traditional realism considers that there is an ultimate reality in the world, such that it is possible to separate it, without mistake, from the perception of this reality or from the thought about it. such separation does not take place in ant. this does not mean that latour is an anti-realist, but that his conception of reality is based on relations and not on things, properly speaking13: each actor is not constituted as a previous unit that will then be put in relation, but his constitution – or establishment, to use souriau’s term – takes place in/through the relationship. all actors, whether human or not, material or not, are in a constant resistance test with the others. this “tension game” between the actors depends on the premise that there is no hierarchy that submits them. for example, there is no ontological distinction between objects given in experience and those that are conceptual elaborations. when trying to divide reality and relationships, one arrives at the division – wrong, according to the author – between human and world, nature and culture, as well as other similar binomials. for latour, such divisions would reserve for man the exclusive power to interpret and assign values since objective reality is exclusive to the world. thus, we arrive at one of the most striking elements of latour’s ontology: the non-centrality of the human. if each actor is not constituted as a substance but as a game piece that tests the resistance of the others (exploring what resists and what does not resist their actions), the 10 on simondon’s relational thinking, cf. (debaise 2004). 11 this book brings together some articles that were reformulated, written between 1993 and 2001, in addition to unpublished texts. 12 for a “defense” of the criticisms leveled at simondon by bruno latour, cf. (ferreira 2017). 13 cooren (2018) deals with this point using, directly, the term “relational ontology”. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 technical objects are inserted in such dynamics. as stated above, when dealing with nonhuman actors, latour prefers to use the term “actant”. the sixth chapter of pandora’s hope describes the complexity of the relationships between actors (and actant), with regard to technical objects, initially resorting to an analogy with the greek myth of daedalus14. the central idea of reading this myth concerns the type of intelligence, or subtle cunning, typical of the engineer. through this cunning, daedalus is able to deceive even his king. in one of his ruses, he solves the challenge of threading a thread through a shell. the nonlinearity of the shell will serve as an image for latour to refer to the complexity of the technique. for the same reason, the author will criticize the attempt to reduce the technique to linear explanations. the text begins by pointing out two of these reductions, distinct and diametrically opposed. the case of firearms is just an illustration, but the same explanatory patterns could be applied to other technical objects. on the one hand, those who defend the control of the sale of guns claim that they kill people. on the other hand, those who support the sale of weapons say that they are neutral objects and that only people are capable of killing other people. in both cases, it is a reduction because, for bruno latour, neither the weapon, by itself, nor the unarmed person, manages to complete the action: it is necessary that the two elements are united. with this simple example, latour presents the bases for thinking about technique based on the actor-network theory, and the concept of technical mediation is central in this path. it is important to note that, although technical mediation has its peculiarities, the category of “mediators” is not, for latour, exclusive to technical objects. on the contrary, in a certain way, every relationship is a mediation. however, regarding technique, the author specifies four distinct but complementary meanings of this concept: interference, composition, interweaving of time and space and crossing the border between signs and things (delegation). at this point, it is worth returning to the notion of concealment attributed by latour to the technique mentioned in the previous section. the consecrated term “black box” refers to forgetting its configuration and the objectives there involved, reducing the artifact to its function. the more developed the technique in question, the more this forgetting becomes the pattern of the relationship with the artifact. but what is it that we ignore or forget about technique? this question could be reformulated in another way: what does the ontology of technique consist of for bruno latour? it seems that these questions are linked to another: what does this cleverness of the engineer, described in the figure of daedalus, which is present in the artifacts, consist of? in other words, what we ignore in the technique goes as much through artifacts as through technical knowledge. mainly, according to latour, we ignore the symmetry between the human and non-human elements involved in the technical action which, like the shell of the challenge carried out by daedalus, in the myth, is far from being constituted in a linear way. to consider the technique in its complexity, latour presents the concept of technical “mediation” based on its multiple meanings. in the example of weapons, the human element can be considered agent 1 and the weapon, agent 2. a third agent appears, agent 3, which is the result of the fusion of the others. responsibility for killing is not attributed to either of the first two agents – which could be understood in the traditional subject-object dichotomy –, but to the hybrid agent. depending on the perspective, it is the actor (object, agent 2, weapon) who acts as a mediator for the actor’s objective (human, agent 1, shooter). this is the most common view; it even matches the simondonian classification. however, latour presents the possibility that 14 daedalus was the architect of king midas, who built his labyrinth. both the labyrinth itself and the challenge (issued by the king and resolved by daedalus) of threading a thread through a shell serve as a metaphor for the technique in this chapter of pandora’s hope. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 the opposite may occur, that is, that the shooter is the mediating element to fulfill the objective (script) of the object. a third approach could assume that there is a new objective when considering the hybrid agent. extending the analysis further, it is possible to consider objectives that go beyond the agents in question. for example, there are objectives of the institutions involved (government, arms industry). this is the meaning of technical mediation as interference. this change, considering the variety of objectives involved in technical action, is “translation”. the second meaning of mediation concerns the composition of these objectives. the objectives are also called “program of action”, which can be divided into subprograms. some technical actions can only be carried out by an association of agents, as there are several action programs and subprograms involved, which presupposes the composition of objectives. the example evoked by latour is that of aviation. the action of flying cannot be attributed to either the human actor or the plane in isolation. flying can only be owned by an association of actors, which comprises not only the two elements mentioned but a complex network. the third meaning of technical mediation is the one that points most directly to the question of obscuration. it is about the interweaving of time and space. the internal complexity of a machine, for example, is forgotten when it works properly. the projector used in the lecture is reduced to its function of projecting images until, without warning, it stops working and, as a result, promotes the engagement of technicians who are committed to repairing it. at that moment, the parts that make it up “come into existence again”, as the relationship between them is called into question, as only the part responsible for the defect will be replaced. so, this obscuration is reversible. the numerous artifacts that remain “invisible”, however, continue to play their role as actors and mediators. finally, the fourth meaning of mediation is presented as “crossing the border between signs and things”, or, to use the consecrated term, “delegation”. here, an example is a speed bump on a university campus. initially, its objective could be thought of as slowing down so as not to run over the students. however, for the driver, it is shifted to the goal of not damaging the car’s suspension. differently, from the example of the weapon, this displacement of objective manifests itself in a concrete object since a sign, for example, could have the same initial objective (to reduce speed). in order not to use a term that would emphasize human action in building the speed bump, latour calls this special type of translation “delegation”: in the case of speed bumps, the displacement is “atorial”: the “sleeping guard”15 is not a traffic cop, or at least he doesn’t look like one. displacement is also spatial: the campus streets now house a new actuator that slows down cars (or damages them). finally, displacement is temporal: the speed bump is there day and night. however, the enunciator of this technical act disappeared from the scene – where are the engineers, where is the traffic cop? – while someone or something confidently acts as a legacy, taking the place of the enunciator. (latour 2001, 216) (author’s translation) with the description of the four senses of technical mediation, we can finally begin to answer one of the proposed questions: what is it that we ignore in technique? basically, we ignore the symmetry between actors and actants, between the human and the non-human. we ignore that the dynamics of the technique is complex to the point of not being possible to fix the roles of the actors and divide them between, for example, world, man and object, as is the case with simondon’s approach. we ignore it, even though the role of mediator does not belong exclusively to one type of actor, but, on the contrary, it is a prominent 15 in france, the speed bump is also called the “sleeping guard”, as if there is a traffic cop controlling the speed, but he is sleeping on the asphalt. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 characteristic of the relationships themselves (every relationship is mediation). since we ignore all this, we intend to establish an anchor point in this complexity in order to find an ultimate foundation of reality. abdicating this last foundation, what remains for technique is the condition of an adjective: “‘technical’ is a good adjective; ‘technique’ is a vile noun” (latour 2010, 219). this means that the mediation is technical, that is, the relationship is technical, since there is not, exactly, a thing-in-itself where this adjective can rest. so, it can be said that the term “technical object” is just a simplified way of naming the non-human element of technical mediation, but the noun “object” should not be taken in a strong sense. in the book investigation on modes of existence (2012), latour presents a chapter entirely dedicated to the way of existence of technique and resumes this contrast between his proposition of a multiple ontology and the traditional ontology of modernity. about the technical object, as it is considered by simondon, latour states: “contrary to the title of simondon’s book, it is not the mode of existence of the technical object that must be addressed, but the mode of existence of technique, of human beings. technicians themselves” (latour 2012, 225) (author’s translation). this mode of existence of technique can only manifest itself in the collective. the four meanings of mediation, presented above, show us that each technical action is inserted in a broader context. this context encompasses a chain of action, involving the collective, which is characterized by the constant exchange of human and non-human properties. in a movement of composition, the chain of action mobilizes the collective and expands it, by going beyond its limits. latour calls the process by which this limit is extended “displacement”: [...] first, there would be translation, the means thanks to which we articulate varied species of matter; later (borrowing an image from genetics), what i would call “permutation”, which consists of exchanging properties between humans and nonhumans; thirdly, the “recruitment”, whereby a non-human is seduced, manipulated or induced to the collective; fourth, [...], the mobilization of non-humans within the collective, which brings fresh and unexpected resources, resulting new and strange hybrids; and finally the displacement, the direction taken by the collective after its form, extent and composition have been changed through the recruitment and mobilization of new agents. (latour 2001, 223) (author’s translation) in current times, this permutation of qualities between humans and non-humans is so narrow and the number of translations so high, that it becomes very difficult to isolate objects or subjects, to register and analyze. those hybrids, as in the example of the set “man and weapon” (agent 3), serve only for explanatory purposes insofar as the hybrids that participate in modern collectives are, undeniably, much more complex. the relationships that constitute the network are multiple and the complexity of the mediations prevents the project of an ontology of the object: everything in the practice of artisans, engineers, technologists, and even sunday “bricoleurs”, highlights the multiplicity of transformations, the heterogeneity of combinations, the proliferation of cunning, the delicate assembly of fragile “savoirfaire”. if this experience remains difficult to register is because, remaining faithful to it, it will be necessary to accept its rarity, its dazzling invisibility, its profound and constituent opacity. is that it always oscillates between two lists of elements contradictory: rare and banal, unpredictable and predictable, elusive and constantly retaken, opaque and transparent, proliferating and dominated. (latour 2012, 223) (author’s translation) ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 we have, then, a brief overview of the radicalism assumed by latour, regarding relational ontology. there is no definitive black box, the last one, the one that cannot be opened. faced with what we call an object, we will find its reality not in something static or subjacent (like its substance, essence, or ultimate reality). on the contrary, the question about its ontology encounters the disconcerting multiplicity of transformations. even so, this question should not be abandoned: it is necessary to continue opening the black boxes and revealing the relationships, mediations, that pass through them. although our main conclusion has already been announced – that ontology applies to the technique itself, as a relation, and not to the object –, some important points remain to be resumed. first, it seems paradoxical that the distancing of ontology from the object does not lead to the ontological emptying of technique. however, this distancing is accompanied by a radical commitment to the reality of relationships. the ontological generosity, which latour points out as lacking in the moderns, is the result, precisely, of an ontology that reduces the technical object to the subject-object binomial and, by conferring stability to the object, makes the multiple transformations that pass through it invisible. so, the movement that removes the ontological weight of the noun – technical object – to attribute it to the adjective – technique – does not empty the reality of the technique, it only displaces it. as a second point, we point out the consequences of the divergence between latour and simondon, for their respective projects. if, as we said, these authors share the diagnosis regarding the concealment of technical reality and the false opposition between the technical and the human, adopted by culture/modernity, their different schemes for explaining technical reality led to different paths to overcome such opposition. in the simondonian project, the opposition is overcome by the process of awareness. although simondon highlights the role of education in this process, and its general nature, since it is an expansion of culture, awareness evokes a certain individual character. at the very least, even if it can be objected that this occurs in a context of psycho-collective16 individuation, it must nevertheless be admitted that the individual element remains as an ontological unit. in this way, the limits of multi-realism, pointed out by latour, reflect on the path to promote de-alienation: it can only occur in the individual context and propagate throughout the collective. for bruno latour, the only possible scope to overcome traditional ontology lies in politics.17 although actors and actants have goals and properties – which they share and transfer between them –, intentionality is reserved only for institutions.18 in the model of radical multi-realism, proposed by latour, only institutions are able to catalyze objectives, transforming them into intentionality. so, for there to be a shift in the way a certain collective relates to technology, it will be necessary to mobilize political forces. finally, as a third element, the role of man in relation to technology is quite different when comparing the two authors. this same individual character pointed out above regarding simondon’s line of thought, results in the conception that man is a kind of “master of machines” and that, therefore, he occupies a position, in a certain way, privileged, while technical objects are, permanently, mediators. we say, “in a certain way”, because simondon intends that the position of man, in relation to technical objects, is neither that of master nor that of servant. however, this position is certainly asymmetrical: man is the conductor and machines are the instruments that lead and are led by him, but these roles are not interchangeable. in latour’s case, the relational ontology decentralizes the figure of man, by attributing to the human and non-human elements a total symmetry regarding the objectives and 16 simondon assumes several levels of individuation: from the physical, through the biological, psychic and, finally, collective. 17 more precisely, cosmopolitics, which even questions traditional political boundaries. 18 latour evokes foucault’s concept of device. ontology of technique in bruno latour’s thought: on the mode of existence and non-human actors veronica ferreira bahr calazans transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 responsibilities of technical action. the complexity of relationships does not allow attributing the character of mediator only to (non-human) actors. every relationship is mediation, and therefore, everyone is a mediator. this non-centrality of man is a very important element in latour’s work, taken in a broad sense. the vastness and conceptual complexity of bruno latour’s work are notorious, so establishing a cut is always a great challenge. we hope that the path chosen here has been enough to shed light on the dynamics that drive technical relations, aware that it is only a part of the great network that establishes what we call “reality”. conclusion in this article, we address the ontology of technical objects in the line of thinking of bruno latour. from a counterpoint with the ontology of technical objects of gilbert simondon, we conclude that latour shifts the question of ontology to the plane of relationships. such displacement does not result in the ontological emptying of the objects in question. on the contrary, insofar as it decentralizes the figure of the man, it assigns a symmetry of importance to technical objects as part of the network. references cooren, françois. 2018. “bruno latour ou les exigences de l’irréductionnisme ontologie relationnelle et étude des phénomènes communicationnels”. symposium 22 (1): 6-21. debaise, didier. 2004. “qu'est-ce qu'une pensée relationnelle?” multitudes 4(18): 15-23. ferreira, pedro. 2017. “reticulações: ação-rede em latour e simondon”. revista eco-pós 20 (1): 104-135. harman, graham. 2009. prince of networks: bruno latour and metaphysics. melbourne: re.press. latour, bruno. 2001 [2001]. a esperança de pandora: ensaios sobre a realidade dos estudos científicos. bauru, sp: edusc. latour, bruno. 2010. “prendre le pli des techniques”. réseaux 5(163): 11-31. latour, bruno. 2012. enquête sur les modes d’existence: une anthropologie des modernes. paris: lá découverte. simondon, gilbert. 1989 [1958]. du mode d’existence des objets techniques. paris: albier. souriau, étienne. 2009 [1943]. les différents modes d’existence. paris: puf. microsoft word simões layout scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (10): 1-13 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue – wittgenstein and the sciences: history and philosophy of science and science education scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões1 abstract: the purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the wittgenstein tractatus deals with themes related to the laws of nature, as well as with the metatheoretical principles of science. more specifically, our intention is to expose the notions of scientific representation linked to principles such as those of causality and induction. as a starting point, we propose that the notion of non-precedence of one scientific theory over another is hertzian inspiration, which argues that “one image may be more suitable for one purpose, another for another” (hertz 1956, 3). as an unfolding of this notion, the systems of the geometric representation of hertz and boltzmann will serve the tractatus in order to demonstrate that laws, like the law of causality, as form and not content, only represent the network (any method) that, after all, is optional. on the other hand, metatheoretical principles such as induction have no logical basis and their effect, in the wake of what hume thought, is only psychological. like the other themes of the tractatus, its philosophy of science cannot be understood outside a broader context, which is the proper context to the criticism of language. therefore, what is presented here intends not to be divorced from the relationship between logic, language and science. since, in our view, these are the three pillars of support of the tractatus. keywords: scientific representation; causality; induction: tractatus; wittgenstein received: 14 march 2021. reviewed: 09 april 2021. accepted: 13 may 2021. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction on wittgenstein tractatus, starting with aphorism 6.3, we find comments about the natural sciences. for those who follow the systematic of the “growing” development of the items explored in the work, it is believed that those aphorisms, placed at the end, are the unfolding from the reflections that were being made on logic and mathematics. however, it must be 1 eduardo simões [orcid: 0000-0001-7375-8574] is a professor in the department of philosophy at the federal university of tocantins. address: quadra 109 norte, av. ns 15, s/n. alcno 14, bloco bala 2, sala 16 cep: 77001-090 palmas/to – brazil. e-mail: eduardosimoes@uft.edu.br scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 2 noted that propositions concerning the natural sciences (natural laws and metatheoretical principles) are an integral part of the tractatus project. from the time of studying mechanical engineering in 1906, until he went to study with russell in 1911, wittgenstein became interested in logic and mathematics due to his personal interest in the philosophical foundation of natural science, motivated by reading hertz’s works (the principles of mechanics) and boltzmann (populäre schriften) (monk 1995, 38). in this way, the natural sciences theme, or the non-priority of a system of scientific representation in relation to the others, is ingrained in his thinking and follows him from notebooks (1914-1916) to on certainty. in this brief article, we will make a foray into some points concerning this subject, which appear specifically in the tractatus logico-philosophicus, namely: on the question of scientific representation (darstellung) and how this notion, circumscribed in the works of boltzmann and hertz, was appropriated by wittgenstein in the tractatus. in this sense, notions such as causality, as a metatheoretical principle and not a law of nature, cannot be conceived as a proposition saying something about the world, but belonging to the image that represents the facts of the world. in this same line of thought, we will also deal with the relationship between the causal nexus and the determination of the propositional sense and, finally, about the psychological foundation of the inductive method, trying to understand why, with all restrictive positioning of wittgenstein to the metatheoretical principles, even so, he admits the anteriority of the propositions of science in the tractatus to the detriment of the propositions of ethics, aesthetics and religion, for example. we hope that these few lines of thought can urge wittgenstein’s readers to enter into this interesting world that reveals wittgenstein’s strong commitment to thinking about science since the most remote times of his philosophy. the scientific representation in the tractatus the picture theory of language was an integral part of wittgenstein’s philosophy of science, advocated as an attempt to interpret the difficult problem of the relationship between theory and nature, while avoiding the realism vs. anti-realism dispute within a scientific theory. that his conception of scientific theory, treated as the only field subject to meaningful propositions, was successful, it was what was desired – although it came as an unfortunate consequence to inspire an ontological interpretation. a way to “deviate” from such an interpretation was to emphasize in its system the purely representational character such as that of physical theory, demonstrating its independence from external foundations through a clear and simple representation2 and, thus, avoiding confusion about the status of the formal elements of the built system. that is why the tractatus’ absolutely simple object3 is also a unique way: “mechanics is one attempt to construct all the propositions that we need for the description of the world according to a single plan” (notebooks, 06/12/1914); and in the same sense it says: “just as with the number-system we must be able to write down 2 “but how remarkable: in the familiar theorems of mathematical physics there appear neither things nor functions nor relations nor any other logical forms of object! instead of things what we have here is numbers, and the functions and relations are purely mathematical throughout!” (notebooks, 20/06/1915) 3 the tractarian “object” is the ultimate constituent of reality. the one on whose basis all linguistic terms, endowed with meaning, would be connected, in a space called by wittgenstein as “logical space”. in short, it is about the ontological counterface of linguistic representation. that is where the language terms point. scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 3 any number we wish, so with the system of mechanics we must be able to write down any proposition of physics that we wish” (tlp 6.341).4 according to wittgenstein’s understanding of the tractatus, the hertz system made a coherent representation of mechanics. its mechanics function as a kind of geometric coordinate system,5 in which the locations are defined using a plane that allows the measurement of a system to be established without reference to any other. wittgenstein then seems to use this procedure to design a “method” and define a configuration, describing it entirely by means of a given mesh of a certain fineness (tlp 6.342). this is where the affinity of his notion of scientific theories with images or systems that, as constituents of language through their propositions, also picture the world occurs: let us imagine a white surface with irregular black spots on it. we then say that whatever kind of picture these make, i can always approximate as closely as i wish to the description of it by covering the surface with a sufficiently fine square mesh, and then saying of every square whether it is black or white. in this way, i shall have imposed a unified form on the description of the surface [...]. (tlp 6.341) “the net, however, is purely geometrical; all its properties can be given a priori” (tlp 6.35). and what is right a priori is purely logical (tlp 6.3211). novalis’ old notion that “hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch”, used by karl popper as an epigraph of his book the logic of scientific discovery, was also used by wittgenstein to illustrate the different representations of the natural sciences. he uses the image of a metaphorical network, intending that the description of a specific theory offered would be compared to a network being traversed by the facts. this network could be more or less thin and, thus, describe facts more or less accurately – “for example, the mechanics of newton’s principia would represent one net of a certain fineness. later, with the development of lagrange’s analytical mechanics, this description would represent a finer net” (kjaergaard 2002, 132). this image of the spot on a white surface is the projection of the distribution of simple material points in space. there are points in space matching shapes of spots. to describe this surface, one can, for example, cover it with a square network. if the network’s meshes were thin enough, there would be conditions to determine whether each square of the network is white or black. in that case, there would be a description of the surface in a unit form. this shape, however, is arbitrary, as the network could consist of triangular, hexagonal, or other meshes, including combinations of geometric figures, such as triangles and hexagons. the network itself is the coordinate system by which the distribution of the spots is defined, and each network would correspond to a different system of description of the world, a different mechanic – “just as it must be possible to write down any arbitrary number by means of a system of numbers, so it must be possible to write down any arbitrary proposition of physics by means of the system of mechanics” (tlp 6.341). an example is made possible by comparing what occurs in the logical space of the tractatus with the metaphorical network. it is known that the logical space is a measurement space. according to fraassen (2008, 165), “the act of measurement is an act – performed in accordance with certain operational rules – of locating an item in a logical space”. wittgenstein did not give a concise definition of “logical space”, nor did he present a concrete construction of the meaning of logical coordinates. however, it is clear that the logical space refers to the 4 here the work tractatus logico-philosophicus will be abbreviated to tlp and the number that follows the acronym refers to its respective aphorism. 5 “a coordinate system is undoubtedly an important piece of symbolism in the sciences. here it is used to describe the movement of a body. it can also hypothetically describe the relationship between mass and volume. on one-dimensional scales, temperatures can also be exposed in this way” (griffin 1998, 148). scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 4 total set of logical possibilities, possibilities that form a “logical scaffolding” (tlp 3.42), a systematic aggregate similar to a coordinate system. each elementary proposition corresponds to two possibilities of truth (tlp 4.31). the truth or falsity of “molecular” propositions, treated as truth-function, occurs by determining the truth-value of these elementary propositions (tlp 5.234). the completeness of the logical space ensures that each meaningful proposition is localizable and, for this location, is linked to a possible state of affair (sachverhalt). according to lugg (2019, 212), “wittgenstein placed boltzmann and hertz first and second in a list of influences he drew up in 1931 (vb 1998: 16), and when discussing scientific theories, he follows in their footsteps”. regarding boltzmann’s influence on wittgenstein, he further states that: it is a safe bet that he was acquainted with boltzmann’s populäre schriften (if not his more technical work) and was aware that boltzmann identified the properties of a physical system with coordinates that jointly define a ‘space’ of possible states. he too took spaces of possibilities to be allied to systems of coordinates as a matter of course, an alliance he exploited in his late as well as his early writings. given his scientific training, he would not have needed to be reminded that mathematical physicists identify time with points on a one-dimensional line, correlate the positions of particles with points in a three-dimensional (cartesian) coordinate space and associate the positions and momenta of n particles with points in an 6n-dimensional (phase) space (lugg 2019, 212). the boltzmann statistical mechanics program aims to associate a weight or probability of occurrence to the different microstates and to predict the average result of a large set of measures of observable data. in this case, statistical mechanics functions as a probabilistic theory that establishes the connection between the two levels of description – the macroscopic (thermodynamics) and the microscopic (mechanical) – within a phase space. the general formula that synthesizes its functioning is boltzmann’s own equation. this equation, like the guiding principle for the construction of diverse representations of the “logical space” taken from the combinatorial scheme of the theory of truth-functions6, also proposes to calculate what happens in a system with distribution-function of particles, which gives the number of particles per unit volume in a phase space. the phase space, in this case, allows us, through the attribution of numerical values to the various random dynamic states in which the elementary and discrete components of the system are at a given moment in time, to distribute the temporal evolution of the instantaneous variables of the various states alongside a period of time, that is, the trajectory of each macrostate related to all its associated microstates. as all points that fill the space have the same contour parameter, that is, they are in the same space, under the same temperature and pressure; the relevant variables in the entire space are the same and share the same domain and image set. the dimensions of the phase space are the relevant variables observed themselves. the system’s behavior is established according to the particles’ behavior, in numerical values, within the contour parameters (limits) and represented in the phase space. what the phase space does is a distribution of the microstates of each particle of the system at the moment of observation. 6 i also believe that the technique of truth-functional analysis of descriptive language is a generalization of the familiar helmholtz-boltzmann idea of phase-space, the geometrical representation of all the states that a system could take up, all the configurations that are possible for it (harré 2001, 213). scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 5 to understand how this happens, think about a given material system with a set of variable attributes. a convenient example could be a planetary system like our solar system. for such a system, there are some possible configurations and others not. the term “phase space” in physics refers to an imaginary volume that contains all possible configurations of these variables. it is basically a mathematical idea that allows us to trace the history of the system. the real history of the system is a set of points in the phase space. these sets of points constitute a line, that is, the number of dimensions of the phase space. the number of relevant variables to be observed will be as many as are necessary so that the trajectory of the points has a linear characteristic. the real history of the system, therefore, corresponds to a trajectory of a point in the phase space. the introduction of the statistical method allows the understanding of the functioning of the accessible microstates of the system (set called statistical ensemble) as being possible events within the so-called sample space (s), and assumes that, a priori, all events of this sample space are equiprobable, that is, they present the same probabilities of occurrence. it is precisely this so-called “sample space” that is argued to be a model of logical space as proclaimed by the tractatus. the essence of the network metaphor, on the other hand, is the comparison of a proposition as a point in a system of coordinates and names with coordinated singular numbers. in a given coordinate system, putting two numbers together defines a point; in a given language, joining two names makes a statement. in this way, languages are a kind of coordinated logical system. just as there are different systems as a result of choosing different points of origin, different scales, and so on, so there are also different forms of representation in the language (griffin, 1998). here an influence is established on wittgenstein’s thought that is hertzian expressed in his conception of fundamental law.7 because it is a local variational principle, which its explanation is general, it applies, of course, to any other representation characterized by a set of fundamental principles or laws. a scientific law, like the image of the metaphorical network, is not to make descriptions, not even very general descriptions, but to provide representation techniques by which it is possible to make descriptions. scientific theories – newtonian mechanics serves as a concrete example – function as systems of concepts for speaking about natural phenomena and “the relative position of logic and mechanics” (tlp 6.342) is determined by the fact that they supply different resources for describing the world, not by the fact that they say different things about it. newtonian mechanics is a “form of description” but more restricted in scope than logic. while circumscribing what is possible rather than what is actual, it treats solely of matter and motion. (lugg 2019, 214) or, in the words of wittgenstein: [newtonian] mechanics determines one form of description of the world by saying that all propositions used in the description of the world must be obtained in a given way from a given set of propositions – the axioms of mechanics. it thus supplies the bricks for building the edifice of science, and it says, ‘any building that you want to erect, whatever it may be, must somehow be constructed with these bricks, and with these alone’. (tlp 6.341 – our addition) 7 “309. fundamental law. every free system persists in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straightest path” (hertz 1956, 144). scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 6 newtonian mechanics, therefore, puts the description of the world in a unitary form. “[…] newtonian mechanics is as silent about the forces on bodies as the network of squares is silent about the configurations of black spots on white surfaces” (lugg 2019, 215). wittgenstein’s fundamental notion about science is that there is no such thing as a privileged theory, but different points of view. if physical theories are figures of reality and thus have only a descriptive relationship with nature, this leads to the possibility that the natural sciences integrate multiple models of explanation. in other words, there is no privileged physical theory. similarly the possibility of describing the world by means of newtonian mechanics tells us nothing about the world: but what does tell us something about it is the precise way in which it is possible to describe it by these means. we are also told something about the world by the fact that it can be described more simply with one system of mechanics than with another (tlp 6.342). if there is no privileged theory, there are certainly several possible ways of representing facts. one is not more correct than the others are, but one could be more appropriate to give a more detailed or helpful picture of that part of nature that specific physical theory should describe. according to wittgenstein (1980, 18), “the real achievement of a copernicus or a darwin was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view” or “darwin’s theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other hypothesis in natural science” (tlp 4.1122). drawing attention to two of the most celebrated scientists in the historical construction of the view of the modern world, wittgenstein at the same time demonstrates the general character of his argument and deconstructs the false conceptions of truth spread by the theories of science, nurtured by the tremendous success of natural science. and, thereby, it also intends to give a correct interpretation to the notorious law of causality. the determination of the propositional sense and the foundations of the law of causality from this point on, one can discuss the affinity of the model conception as an image and bring it closer to wittgenstein’s approach to scientific theories. in the models produced in science, the various principles, laws, theorems, axioms and definitions are instilled. here we intend to analyze how wittgenstein evaluated them, as well as his restrictive attitude towards them, starting with the law of causality. as for the reflections on causality, presented in the tractatus, it can be said that there are two possible interpretations: the first of them linked to a supposed influence of hertz, who had anticipated that an image does not describe nature but represents it through differential equations and coordinate system – or, in wittgensteinian terms, through the metaphorical network: what he means is that the law of causality was not conceived as a proposition saying something about the world, but as belonging to the image representing the facts of the world, just like hertz’s fundamental law. causality is instrumental in integrated information about the facts of the world, so it is a form of the law rather than the true law of nature “the law of causality is not a law but the form of a law” (tlp 6.32). it is a generic name that covers a range of principles of representation. such principles, which i call metatheoretical principles, have historically been included in the list of “laws of nature”. the principle of sufficient reason, the principle of occam’s razor, the principle of least effort and the principle of continuity of nature are some of these principles. according to wittgenstein, it is wrong to call these principles scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 7 “laws of nature” because they say nothing about natural phenomena, they do not describe reality. they say nothing about the spot, but about the net (barroso 2017, 53). alternatively, as stated by lugg (2019, 216-217): just as there are in mechanics “minimum-laws, such as the law of least action”, so there are in physics “causal laws, laws of the causality form”, each of which is presupposed when the world is represented and like everything “a priori certain proves to be purely logical” (ibid.: 6.3211). to wittgenstein’s way of thinking, “[a]ll propositions, such as the law of causation, the law of continuity in nature, the law of least expenditure in nature, etc. etc., […] are a priori intuitions of the possible forms of the propositions of science” (ibid.: 6.34). which is to say they are principles of representation, not representations that record “accidents”. like all principles of representation (and laws of logic), they do not convey information and can only be displayed. the “connection” in causality is not a relationship in itself but only a means of showing the existence of the relationship. to affirm the opposite, that is, that causality is in fact an explanation of the phenomena of nature, constitutes the illusion that founded the modern worldview – “the whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena” (tlp 6.371). thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as god and fate were treated in past ages. and in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. (tlp 6.372) this means that causality is not a law of logic, nor an empirical generalization, nor a synthetic proposition a priori. in fact, it is not even a proposition, since it tries to say what can only be shown. what it indicates is a certain form of description that is crucial for scientific theorization (tlp 6.321 et seq.). in this sense, the law of causality, as it is conceived by the natural sciences (as a relationship between event and cause), is something superfluous, meaningless and represents nothing. the principle of causality is in itself a formal concept; it does not describe reality, but, as a “network”, corresponding to one way of representing reality that, in fact, is optional. as wittgenstein says: “‘law of causality’ – that is a general name. and just as in mechanics, for example, there are ‘minimum principles’, such as the law of least action, so too in physics, there are causal laws, laws of the causal form” (tlp 6.321 – emphasis added). the law of causality would be nothing more than the methodological prescription that the propositions of science take the form of hypothetical laws: all its relevance to the propositional representation of the world is concentrated in its prescriptive core, “everything has a cause”. “causal laws are instructions that circumscribe what counts as a senseful proposition of the causal form (i.e., of the form ‘p causes q’) within an optional system” (sandis; tejedor, 2017, p. 579). in the aphorism 6.36 of the tractatus, wittgenstein states that “if there were a law of causality, it might be put in the following way: ‘there are laws of nature’. but of course, that cannot be said: it makes itself manifest”. it shows itself precisely why, being form and not content, it is to be understood as an image representing facts of the world, that is, strictly as representation and not as law. the laws of mechanics, for example, “are the laws of our method to represent mechanical phenomena, and [...] once we effectively choose a method scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 8 of representation when describing the world, it is impossible that the laws of our method say something about the world” (watson 1938, 52) – they represent, they show the world. once again, a notion appears in the tractatus whose foundations date back to hertz’s mechanics: the analysis of a system’s functionality does not allow to say anything about the system itself or even the facts of the world; all of that, it shows – “our fundamental law allows us to survey the whole domain of mechanics, it shows us what are the limits of this domain” (hertz 1956, 38). another interpretation that can be given to the question of causality is directly related to the propositional logic of the tractatus; more specifically to the question of the determinability of the propositional sense, which also has a hertzian background, in the sense that a scientific theory cannot be a description of needs implicit in nature, it has to be determined; it is up to it the function of being only an image, independent of natural phenomena – “images produced by our mind and necessarily affected by the characteristics of its mode of portrayal” (hertz 1956, 2). there are three basic principles that support the fabric of the tractatus: the idea that the proposition is essentially i) bipolar, ii) complex and iii) fully determined (prado neto, 2003, 46). which is to say that: i) they can be true or false from their comparison with the real, ii) they are formed from the combination of a complex of names; finally, iii) they are fully determined because there is no possibility that one proposition is inserted in another – except as a truth-function of a complex proposition. this means that the meaning of elementary propositions does not depend on meanings that are more elementary of which it would be composed (unlike the meaning of the complex proposition, which is determined by the meaning of elementary ones), as well as, it is independent of the meanings of other propositions. “one elementary proposition cannot be deduced from another” (tlp 5.134). we know that in the tractatus, the world is defined as the totality of compound facts and atomic facts (or elementary), the states of affairs. the latter are made up of simple objects, each of which can be given a name. the combination of such names results in an elementary proposition that is independent of its similar. each of these propositions is positive and describes a possible state of affairs, which constitutes its meaning. however, nothing prevents thinking about the independence of the propositional sense in relation to its truth-value, or better saying; nothing prevents using a meaningful proposition, although it does not correspond to any fact or that it is false. in wittgenstein’s words, nothing prevents the proposition from representing a negative fact – “we also call the existence of states of affairs a positive fact, and their non-existence a negative fact” (tlf 2.06). it is in this project that wittgenstein dives: to safeguard the legitimacy of the false sense and the autonomy of the propositional sense in relation to its truth-value. this will only be possible due to the development of the conceptions of the object and the elementary proposition. in the tractatus, the proposition is a picture of reality by virtue of names (tlp 2.1515). even if a proposition does not correspond to any existing state of affairs, their names have references (this solution will only work if the names are the genuine names required by the tractatus, which take the place of absolutely simple objects, therefore, indestructible, also required by the tractatus). in this way, the proposition has an independent sense from the facts (tlp 4.061), that is, the sense is previous to the affirmation or denial of the proposition (tlp 4.064). understanding the propositional meaning is in the existence of what is logically simple, the object – which is replaced by the name that has no sense, only reference. through the concatenation of names, propositions come into contact with the fact, and the language touches the world. the elementary proposition expresses its meaning by picturing a fact, that is, its meaning is the expression of the contact between it and the fact. therefore, it must be fully determined. scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 9 due to what has been said, wittgenstein justifies the impossibility of representing the needs of nature (for example, the causal nexus) when he asserts that the meaning of the proposition must be completely independent. as wittgenstein says: one elementary proposition cannot be deduced from another. there is no possible way of making an inference from the existence of one situation to the existence of another, entirely different situation. there is no causal nexus to justify such an inference. we cannot infer the events of the future from those of the present. superstition is nothing but belief in the causal nexus. (tlp 5.134-5.1361) “one elementary proposition cannot be deduced from another” (tlp, 5.134), that is, elementary propositions have to be fully determined; it is not possible for one proposition to be inserted in another – except as a truth-function of a complex proposition. this means that the meaning of elementary propositions does not depend on meanings that are more elementary of which it would be composed (unlike the meaning of the complex proposition which is determined by the meaning of elementary ones), as well as it is independent of the meanings of other propositions. each of these propositions is positive and describes a possible state of affairs, which constitutes its meaning. thus, the proposition has an independent meaning from the facts (tlp 4.061), that is, the meaning is prior to the affirmation or denial of the proposition (tlp 4.064): this thesis [...], means that if elementary propositions were logically dependent, then it would be possible to deduce one elementary proposition from another. this consequence, if accepted, in turn, would imply the possibility of inferring the very states of affairs that the elementary propositions appear, i.e., it would be possible to apply the logical calculation a priori to the states of affairs, thus attributing to the empirical relationship of causality, the status of logical necessity. now, as it is not possible to calculate a priori the occurrence of states of affairs, since there is only need in logic [...] then the elementary propositions that affirm the subsistence (das bestehen) of states of affairs must be logically independent. (moreno 1995, 203-204) since there is no elementary proposition that can be deduced from another, the belief in the existence of a causal nexus cannot be logically justified since one cannot deduce the existence of a situation from the existence of another situation. such refusal of the existence of the causal nexus, however, does not have the same grounds for which hume also rejected it. what hume refuses is the notion of an associative principle that makes it possible to make inferences about facts and events that are not presented to the senses. such inferences are made possible by habit, which underlies the feeling that there is a regularity in nature. this regularity, however, would have a psychological basis since it is an expression of beliefs; his study is about “irrelevant investigations” (hume 2001, 28). in wittgenstein, however, the rejection of the causal nexus does not originate in the subject’s psychological expressions, which make him believe that in nature things happen like this and so, but in logical inferences that prescribe that the propositional sense must be independent of others senses, because “there is no causal nexus to justify such an inference” (tlp 5.136). if the propositional sense is supposed to be fully determined, the conception of a causal nexus is superstition. scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 10 the inductive method and the anteriority of science propositions in the tractatus these reflections on the causal nexus obviously extend to the principle or method of induction. if the law of causality is based on principles such as, for example, newton’s third law, according to which “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”, the principle of induction is aimed at making generalizations from the observation of particular cases, since it is not possible to carry out concrete experiments in all cases – “the procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences” (tlp 6.363). in this case, it is a psychological process8 by which it is hypothetically assumed that there is reason to affirm the possibility of a future event based on a set of events in the past. “it is a hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise. there is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. the only necessity that exists is logical necessity” (tlp 6.36311, 6.37). nothing can logically guarantee that the events to be known in the future will continue to exemplify the regularity described by the simplest set of laws compatible with past and present experience. like hume, the tractatus concludes: the induction procedure has no logical basis but only psychological. there is no logical reason that we can claim as the basis for our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow; in fact, we do not know if he will actually rise. we act as if we know because we have nothing better to do. (santos 2001, 98-99). this notion is only maintained by the coercion of the “modern view of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called natural laws are the explanations of natural phenomena” (tlp 6.371). “nature is uniform” not provide us with an instruction that circumscribes our use of signs: it does not rule in certain senses and rules others out in the way that causal laws do. when we observe our first black swan, having in the past only ever observed white ones, no law relating to the uniformity of nature instructs us to find a new name for this creature. upon inspection of the animal, we may or may not end up calling it a swan – but that we may indeed end up opting for this term simply goes to show that there is no instruction circumscribing our use of signs in place here, no instruction relating to the uniformity of nature. (sandis; tejedor 2017, 580). if the inductive method that is based on so-called scientific propositions does not sustain itself, why is wittgenstein electing the propositions of science that are the only ones liable to truth-values? according to the tractatus, there are three types of propositions: the propositions of philosophy, those of logic and the significant ones (propositions of science). as for the propositions of philosophy, these are not false, but “nonsensical”. most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. consequently, we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (tlp 4.003) 8 “this procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one” (tlp 6.3631). scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 11 the reason for the philosopher’s “failure to understand” concerning the logic of language lies in the fact that “language disguises thought” (tlp 4.002). that is why “the correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e., propositions of natural science – i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions” (tlp 6.53). thus, “the word ‘philosophy’ must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them” (tlp 4.111) and would have no other role than that of “logical clarification of thoughts” (tlp 4.112).9 it is clear, at the outset, that the tractatus favors factual discourse to the detriment of others, such as ethical, aesthetic, religious, etc. as for the propositions of logic, these are not representations, as they are meaningless propositions and do not say anything about the world. the propositions of logic are necessarily true (tautologies) or necessarily false (contradictions), that is, they do not have truth-conditions, they are not “proposals” of agreement with the world, because the bipolarity of the meaning (t/f), characteristic indelible from significant propositions, does not underlie them. its function is to show the limit cases of the signal connection, that is, its dissolution as significant signals “tautology and contradiction are the limiting cases – indeed the disintegration – of the combination of signs” (tlp 4.466). truth-values cancel each other both in tautology and in contradiction. “a tautology leaves open to reality the whole – the infinite whole – of logical space: a contradiction fills the whole of logical space, leaving no point of it for reality. thus neither of them can determine reality in any way” (tlp 4.463). the truth of a logic proposition is recognized only by looking at the sign: it is the peculiar mark of logical propositions that one can recognize that they are true from the symbol alone, and this fact contains in itself the whole philosophy of logic. and so too it is a very important fact that the truth or falsity of non-logical propositions cannot be recognized from the propositions alone. (tlp 6.113) given the characteristics of the propositions of logic, it is seen that “the so-called law of induction cannot possibly be a law of logic, since it is obviously a proposition with sense. – nor, therefore, can it be an a priori law” (tlp 6.31). “logic is prior to every experience – that something is so” (tlp 5.552). if the law of induction is not a logical law, then it is a proposition of science, as it is “endowed with meaning”. as for the truth of this type of proposition (non-logical, or significant, or science propositions), it can only be recognized through comparison with reality – “reality is compared with propositions” (tlp, 4.05). only the propositions of science can be chosen as a figure since only they are capable of representing the contingency of the concatenations of objects in the logical space. only they are figures, because only they maintain the condition of internal identity (due to their combinatorial possibilities) and external (due to the fact that they are combined) with thought and reality, and this does not happen even with nonsensical (with the propositions of philosophy, for example) nor with the propositions of logic, as it turned out. 9 as long as there is a verb “to be” that seems to work like “to eat” and “to drink”; as long as the adjectives “identical”, “true”, “false”, “possible” exist, as long as people talk about the passage of time and the extension of space etc., they will continue to encounter the same difficulties that leave them perplexed (wittgenstein, l. manuscript 111. pp. 133-134 apud spaniol 1989, 94). scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 12 final considerations in this article, a brief presentation of scientific representation questions, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus was proposed. it is known that the tractatus’ conception of science, as well as the notion of geometric representation, is a tributary of both hertz’s mechanical system,10 and boltzmann’s mechanical and thermodynamic systems. from hertz’s notion, it is possible to have several images of nature and that systems can be represented through systems of coordinates of material points that the meaning of the metaphor of the wittgenstein network can be deduced. on the other hand, this notion is also a boltzmannian notion and, “perhaps recalling boltzmann’s use of the phrase ‘geometric representation’ (boltzmann 1974, 9), he likens mechanics to a ‘square network [quadratischen netzwerk]’ (tb 35; tlp 6.341)” (lugg 2019, 214). just as the coordinate system represents a reality of nature through its fundamental coordinates, the tractarian metaphorical network allows facts to be described from its configuration and its meshes’ fineness. the metaphorical network symbolizes the possibility that different reference systems (metatheoretical principles) or different scientific theories say something about the world, preventing the advance of one theory over the other – all are legitimate modes of representation, each working in their own way. such conception is part of hertz’s notion that scientific theories are forms of representation, or images of the world, each, in its own way, plays a role in elucidating the order of nature. some of the images are more suitable for a particular purpose, others for other purposes, with no precedence for one over another – “one image may be more suitable for one purpose, another for another; only by gradually testing many images can we finally succeed in obtaining the most appropriate” (hertz 1956, 3). the fundamental requirement is that such representations do not infringe the principles of logic permissibility (zulaessigkeit), correction (richtigkeit) and adequacy (zwegmaessigkeit) (hertz 1956, 2). the notion of logical permissibility is connected to the notion of determinability of the tractarian propositional meaning, which advocates that the meaning of the proposition must be fully determined and, still, it must not be contradictory. this notion directly reflects his assessment of the causal nexus and the principle of induction, which deceive us into believing that there are designs in nature. the law of causality, as a metatheoretical principle, that is, as a form of law and not a law itself, is neither a law of logic, nor an empirical generalization, nor a synthetic proposition a priori. as a form, it cannot say anything about the world, only show – “what can be shown, cannot be said” (tlp 4.1212). what it indicates is a particular form of description that is crucial for scientific theorization (tlp 6.321). in this sense, the law of causality reveals itself to be superfluous, meaningless and represents nothing. whether the proposition is to be fully determined and cannot depend on other propositions’ meaning, then the causal nexus is a superstition. on the other hand, the support of other principles that advocate the chaining of particular events, in order to justify a general inference regarding the behavior of nature, is only made possible by psychological issues: by the belief that, if an event occurs several times in a certain way, this must be how it will happen the next time. thus, the inductive method, according to wittgenstein, “has no logical justification but only a psychological one” (tlp 6.3631). it is not because the sun has always risen in the morning that it will be guaranteed that it will rise the next day. these wittgensteinian notions about scientific representation, causality and induction seem clear when understood in the light of the hertzian image of mechanics, as well as boltzmann’s physics and philosophy of science, and everything proposed here was to show how this is possible to be understood. 10 see, for example, (simões 2020, 93-107). scientific representation, causality and induction in ludwig wittgenstein’s tractatus eduardo simões 13 references barroso, c. 2017. a concepção tractariana de ciência e a necessidade natural. argumentos. fortaleza: ufc, vol. 9, nº 17, p. 42-56. fraassen, bas c. van. 2008. scientific representation: paradoxes of perspective. oxford, new york: oxford university press. griffin, james. 1998. o atomismo lógico de wittgenstein. porto: editora do porto. harré, rom. 2001. wittgenstein: science and religion. philosophy. vol.76 (296), p. 211-237. hertz, h. 1956. the principles of mechanics: presented in a new form. preface by hermann von helmholtz. authorized english translation by d. e. jones e j. t. walley. with a new introduction by r. s. cohen. new york: dover publication. hume, d. 2001. tratado da natureza humana: uma tentativa de introduzir o método experimental de raciocínio nos assuntos morais. trad. débora danowski. são paulo: unesp. kjaergaard, peter c. 2002. hertz and wittgenstein’s philosophy of science. journal for general philosophy of science. netherlands: kluwer academic publishers, nº 33, p. 121-149. lugg, andrew. 2019. wittgenstein and scientific representation. wittgenstein-studien. berlin: walter de gruyter gmbh. vol. 10, ed. 1, p. 211-226, 2019. located in: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/wgst/10/1/articlep211.xml#:~:text=wittgenstein%20regards%20scientific%20theories%20as,are%20propo sitions%20of%20mathematics%2c%20i. accessed on: jan. 25, 2021. monk, ray. 1995. wittgenstein: o dever do gênio. trad. carlos afonso malferrari. são paulo: cia das letras. moreno. arley r. 1995. fenomenologia e problemas fenomenológicos. manuscrito: revista internacional de filosofia. campinas: unicamp, centro de lógica, epistemologia e história da ciência, v. xviii, nº. 2, p 129-225, out. prado neto, bento. 2003. fenomenologia em wittgenstein: tempo, cor e figuração. rio de janeiro: editora ufrj. sandis, c; tejedor, c. 2017. wittgenstein on causation and induction. in: glock, hans johann; hyman, john (eds.). a companion to wittgenstein. nova jersey: john wiley & sons, ltd., 2017. p. 576-786. santos, l. h. l. 2001. a essência da proposição e a essência do mundo. ensaio introdutório à tradução do tractatus logico-philosophicus. são paulo: edusp. simões, eduardo. 2020. wittgenstein: physics and philosophy. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science (8): 93-107. spaniol, werner. 1989. filosofia e método no segundo wittgenstein: uma luta contra o enfeitiçamento do nosso entendimento. são paulo: loyola. (coleção filosofia; 11). watson, w. h. 1938. on understanding physics. cambridge. wittgenstein, l. 1961. notebooks 1914-1916. ed. by g. h. von wright, g. e. m. anscombe. new york. wittgenstein, l. 1961 b. tractatus logico-philosophicus. translated by d. f. pears and b. f. mcguinness with introduction by bertrand russell. routledge & kegan paul, london & henley. wittgenstein, l. 1980. culture and value. oxford: basil blackwell. microsoft word simãµes layout 93 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (8): 93-107 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open access article special issue – historiography of physics wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões1 abstract: the purpose of this article is to fill an interpretive gap in l. wittgenstein’s tractatus logicophilosophicus in what has been overlooked by most scholars of the austrian philosopher. it is the consideration of the possible influences that he would have suffered from the time of mechanical engineering studies and that reflected directly in his philosophy, especially those arising from the field of physics. due to the extensive restrictions that involve a scientific article, it will not be possible to present here what we believe to be the influences of l. boltzmann’s thought on the wittgenstein tractatus – which will remain for future work. however, we present the influences of h. hertz’s the principles of mechanics on at least three fundamental themes of wittgenstein’s tractatus: on the ontological formalism of tractarian objects, on the picture theory of language and on the conception of science of that work. it is expected that such clarifications will serve a new and important understanding of this seminal work of the 20th century, this time from the perspective of the relationship between philosophy and physics in wittgenstein. keywords: wittgenstein; tractatus; hertz; mechanics, representation received: 22 april 2020. reviewed: 25 may 2020. accepted: 29 may 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i8.08 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. _____________________________________________________________________________ introduction it is not known exactly what is the real contribution of understanding a thinker’s contextual biography to the understanding of the development of his own thought. there are things that can only be revealed in the proximity of textual readings, focusing on the reconstruction of the internal coherence of words, in an attempt to interpret his thoughts. in the case of the austrian philosopher ludwig wittgenstein (1889-1951), however, it is necessary to pay attention to his intellectual biography, since his transition from mathematics to philosophy, through mechanical engineering, would leave more marks in his tractatus than so far it has been recognized. his training as an engineer in berlin and manchester from 1906 until he finally went to study with the philosopher and mathematician bertrand russell (1872-1970) in cambridge in 1911 does not mean just a hobby in terms of intellectual development. he really 1 eduardo simões [orcid: 0000-0001-7375-8574] is a professor in the department of philosophy at the federal university of tocantins. address: quadra 109 norte, av. ns 15, s/n. alcno 14, bloco bala 2, sala 16 cep: 77001-090 palmas/to – brazil. e-mail: eduardosimoes@uft.edu.br wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 94 became interested in logic and mathematics out of a personal interest in the philosophical foundation of natural science – he became interested in the philosophy of science. “the works by scientists which he read as a teenager – heinrich hertz’s principles of mechanics, and ludwig boltzmann’s populäre schriften – suggest an interest, not in mechanical engineering, nor even, especially, in theoretical physics, but rather in the philosophy of science” (monk,1995, 38). it was through these works, whose access was given during his studies in mechanical engineering, that wittgenstein provided us with one of the most comprehensive and thought-provoking philosophical works of the 20th century, the tractatus logico-philosophicus.2 this work, which includes topics ranging from ontology to mysticism, through subjects that involve the relationship between language and the world, between logic and mathematics and between philosophy and science. in it, after a considerable intellectual effort that aimed to address the limits of what can be said, wittgenstein recognizes that his own sayings exceeded those limits and that, therefore, the work should only serve as a ladder that could be abandoned as soon as it had been climbed. the tractatus’ triumphant end is the decree of silence and mystical contemplation of the limits of language that presuppose the limits of the world, both components of the unspeakable sphere. therefore, wittgenstein closes the work with a solemn aphorism: "what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (tlp, 7). even with the perception that he had spoken beyond the sphere of what can be said, even so, the themes involving the work are of great relevance and topicality and encompass problematizations that until today occupy the imagination of scholars who publish thousands of works about the tractatus. in this article, a brief presentation of how science, especially physics, was part of wittgenstein’s philosophical production, especially in the ontology of the tractatus and its direct correlates, namely, in his notion of objects, in the picture theory of language and in the conception of science as something that contains elements a priori, the net of our description of the world. the ontological formalism of the tractarian object and the principles of mechanics by heinrich hertz on wittgenstein’s philosophical background, gottlob frege (1848-1925) and b. russell always appear as those who formed the main philosophical impact on the young ludwig. this view supported by numerous works on the tractatus where his influences from the field of physics, such as of heinrich hertz (1857-1894) and ludwig boltzmann (1844-1906), are not even mentioned, although, in the case of hertz, this was one of the few people that wittgenstein explicitly referred to.3 and this is a consequence of the fact ignored by most interpreters of wittgenstein’s thought that seems to disregard one of his own statements regarding the nature of his work: “my work has extended from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world” (notebooks, 2/8/1916). therefore, if at first, the works of frege and russell served to give a scientific character to the language, exempting it from any and all mistakes that could be produced by its superficial form, in a second moment, it is the work of physicists that inspires the idea about what characteristics the world should have to be represented. from russell and frege, it can be said, wittgenstein would have inherited the content, but from physics comes the form. due to the extension of this work, we will focus on hertz’s influence on wittgenstein’s thought and we will leave for another occasion what we believe to be boltzmann’s influence on that same work, namely, the notion of logical space, which it would have been tributary to 2 work that will be abbreviated here with the acronym tlp, accompanied by the corresponding aphorism number. 3 in the works: notebooks – 06/12/1914; tlp, 4.04; tlp, 6.361; the big typescript – 1933, for example. wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 95 boltzmann’s notion of phase space in statistical thermodynamics, as well as the theory of truth functions (truth tables), which is a generalization of that same notion of phase space. we saw that wittgenstein knew the work the principles of mechanics – presented in a new form by hertz. published posthumously, this 1894 work occupied the last three years of hertz’s life. regarding its structure and purpose, its reading seems to point to the reality of representation within scientific theories: its form, content and purpose. it is, in fact, a critical method of analyzing philosophical problems within physical theories, that is, a method of philosophical clarification. with this method, it is possible to identify philosophical problems within scientific debates. as in the case of the introduction of concepts in physics such as “force” or “energy” which, for hertz, since they have indeterminate meanings, far from being resolved, should be eliminated, as they are pseudo concepts. to resolve the question of indeterminacy of meaning within physical theories, or, in hertz’s language, to “eliminate pseudo-concepts”, he proposes a third way – presented in a new form -, replacing those presented by newton and maxwell, when founding the system on a field theory – “given that the underlying image of a mechanical theory is a space filled with point-like particles” (grahoff, 2006, 9). the questions that remain are how would hertz’s influence on wittgenstein’s tractatus have been? how would the principles of mechanics serve to explain the ontology of that work? how could hertz’s work be related to wittgenstein’s analysis of language? let us start with a first vestige. at the center of a group of aphorisms in which wittgenstein deals with the nature of the proposition (tlp 4.01 to tlp 4.06), specifically in aphorism 4.04, the tractatus says: “in a proposition there must be exactly as many distinguishable parts as in the situation that it represents. the two must possess the same logical (mathematical) multiplicity. (compare hertz’s mechanics on dynamical models)”. now the question is: and what is the approximation that we can make between the ontology of the tractatus and the world of hertz mechanics? why does wittgenstein quote hertz at this point in his exhibition? before answering these questions, let us understand what this aphorism means. there wittgenstein is talking about ordinary propositions, in which “logical multiplicity” includes predicates and relations, in these cases, it must be possible to distinguish as many “meanings” in the situation as there are “significant terms” in the proposition. if it is not done, it will result in nonsense. hertz says something around the same thing when he claims that a system that is the model of another must satisfy the condition “that the number of coordinates of the first system is equal to the number of the second” (hertz, 1956, 175). and “if one system is a model of a second, then, conversely, the second is also a model of the first. if two systems are models of a third system, then each of these systems is also a model of the other” (hertz, 1956, 175). this hertzian conception of systems as models is also based on a kind of atomism, like wittgenstein’s logical atomism. in the principles of mechanics, hertzian atomism presupposes a kind of vertical ascension that goes from the material particle, passing the mass to the material point, with the junction of material points forming the system. the mass itself is conceived as a unit of measurement and has nothing to do with the mass as it is commonly understood in physics, including, hertz admits in his system the existence of hidden masses. the philosophy of wittgenstein’s tractatus is also built on the basis of logical atomism that leads to ontological atomism; that is why his job “has extended from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world” (notebooks, 2/8/1916). this nature, which is based on the existence of objects, which are not material, but which presupposes the existence of the world as constitutive of facts. since then, wittgenstein denounces his debt with hertz’s thought: tractarian “objects”, like hertzian “material particles” will be the flagships of his theories. a doubt that still resides in the collective imagination of wittgenstein scholars is about what would be the “object” of the tractatus. wittgenstein, at no point in his work, leaves us with a “practical” example of what an object would be. he was clear that, as a logician, his concern would have to be with how the complexes and objects are combined and not with wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 96 the question that there are complexes and, consequently, there must also be objects. for him, logic is primarily interested in the system by which we build symbols from even more basic symbols (tlp 5.555) and what it does is to present the parallelism between the a priori order of the world4 and of thought. in the case of thought, the order of meaningful propositions; in the case of the world, the order of states of affairs; in both cases, says wittgenstein, it is the order of possibilities. likewise, the book i of the principles of mechanics introduces the physical concepts and theorems without reference to the external world, where all the expressed propositions are a priori judgments in the sense of kant. they are affirmed by the “laws of the inner imagination” and the logical form. nevertheless, what is the object? did wittgenstein know an example of an object? in a passage from notebooks, wittgenstein already denounced his difficulties in answering this question: our difficulty was that we kept on speaking of simple objects and were unable to mention a single one. if a point in space does not exist, then its coordinates do not exist either, and if the coordinates exist then the point exists too. that is how it is in logic. the simple sign is essentially simple. [...] it always looks as if there were complex objects functioning as simple, and then also really simple ones, like the material points of physics, etc. it can be seen that a name stands for a complex object from an indefiniteness in the proposition in which it occurs. this comes of the generality of such propositions. we know that not everything is yet determined by this proposition. for generality notation contains a proto-picture. [cf. 3.24] all invisible masses, etc. etc. must come under the generality notation. (notebooks, 21/06/1915) in the paragraphs quoted, “material points” and “invisible masses” are used as examples of pseudo objects – “hertz’s invisible masses are admittedly pseudo-objects” (notebooks, 12/06/1914). in the whole form analyzed, an empirical sentence must refer to objects and their relations. only in that case, can the truth-value of the sentence be determined. therefore, according to the rules, in order to be able to judge the lack sense of the sentence, the object complex needs to be analytically divided into its atomic components: “the division of the body into material points, as we have it in physics, is nothing more than analysis into simple components” (notebooks, 20/06/1915). thus, in linguistic terms, the sense would be fully determined to the extent that “one name stands for one thing, another for another thing, and they are combined with one another. in this way, the whole group – like a tableau vivant – presents a state of affairs” (tlp, 4.0311). the object itself indicates the reference (the meaning); only in the context of the proposition of names (representatives of objects) makes sense. wittgenstein emphasizes the terms “material points” and “simple components” to indicate the ultimate components of reality, with which it is fully possible to determine the propositional sense. now, how could the lack of sense of sentences be decided by a mechanical theory like hertz’s? to wittgenstein, “mechanics is an attempt to construct according to a single plan all the true propositions that we need for the description of the world” (tlp, 6.343). ordinary language sentences are often about complex objects, their properties and their 4 a priori order of the world is the order of possibilities, which is common to the world and to the thinking. it precedes every experience, makes every experience and does not adhere to any opacity or empirical insecurity. wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 97 relationships, so they are indeterminate – “it can be seen that a name stands for a complex object from an indefiniteness in the proposition in which it occurs. this comes from the generality of such propositions” (notebooks, 21/06/1915). the language of physics, on the other hand, defines systems based on small objects with atomic dimensions, whose indeterminacy is impossible. thus, it is possible for someone to determine which set of atomic objects – the objects of the world – is part of a complex body. wittgenstein in his search for the determination of the propositional sense will struggle with the problem of reducing propositions about the external world for physics. even so, according to him, even if all possible scientific questions have been answered, our life problems will not even be touched (tlp 6.52), or, according to hertz, even though the physical conception of material points and their movements have been theoretically resolved, the task of explaining complex physical bodies using ordinary language is still arduous (hertz, 1956). it would be practically impossible to analyze each sentence of ordinary language for the level of its atomic components, especially, we could admit, as wittgenstein at first admitted, that “relations and properties, etc. are objects too” (notebooks, 06/16/1915). but when a physicist deals, for example, with a material body, he can easily understand it as a finite number of material points, related to any material point, that is, he can “establish a measurement system without reference to something other than measurable quantities and only measures them relative to each other” (grahoff, 2006, 9). wittgenstein, with the concept of object as the ultimate element of reality, just as the material particle in hertz is the ultimate element of the system, uses mechanics as an attempt to construct all the propositions we need for the description of the world according to a plan (notebooks, 12/06/1914). expressions like “as we have it in physics” (notebooks, 06/20/1915) show the familiarity with which he related to this field of knowledge. elucidates how wittgenstein adopted the mechanics’ procedure: the division of bodies into material points, as occurred in physics, adds to the process of dividing complexes into their simplest components. wittgenstein does not copy the physical analyses of complex bodies as an example among others of the known methods of analysis. for him, all the ordinary propositions of the external world, in the process of complete analysis, should be reduced to their ultimate elements, in this case, to names. this is the same as hertz thought, for whom all ordinary bodies in the external world would be analyzed in such a way that their elementary components were produced from material points. in the case of wittgensteinian analysis, which is directly linked to language, the names would be linked to the true objects of the tractatus, simple, eternal, indestructible. in the certainty of the existence of such objects, as last correlates of names, it is that the absolutely determined sense of the propositions would be preserved. in the objects, we would have the guarantee of the substance of the world of the tractatus, just as we would have it in the material particles of hertz. from hertz’s terminology, wittgenstein uses, for example, the concept of material point: “we must not forget that the description of the world by mechanics is always quite general. there is, for example, never any mention of particular material points in it, but always only of some points or other” (tlp 6.3432). written in this way was the aphorism above in the first translation of the tractatus by ogden (assisted by ramsey), where it juxtaposed the english translation with the original german, as desired by wittgenstein. however, “this clear request by wittgenstein is disregarded in all later english editions” (grahoff, 2006, 19). this is the case, for example, of the second translation by pears and mcguiness (wittgenstein, 1961b). in this second translation, when pears and mcguiness translate the aphorism 6.3432, the translation comes out as follows: “we ought not to forget that any description of the world by means of mechanics will be of the completely general kind. for example, it will never mention particular point-masses: it will always talk about any point-masses whatsoever”. the point is that this translation, as it stands, makes a mistake by distancing itself from wittgenstein’s theoretical pretension, which was to identify his wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 98 “object” with the formal concept of “material particle” of hertz’s mechanics. when the two translate as point-masses (massenpunkt) what would actually be material points (materielle punkte), they create a notion that wittgenstein interpreted such points in the same way as they are treated, for example, in the physics of particles, that is, from the perspective of a realistic theory.5 if so, the tractarian object as a tribute of the hertz mechanical system would be empirical and would have, for example, properties such as being heavy, hard, colored (tlp, 2.0131). such an interpretation would agree with those of many who insist on the materiality of tractarian objects that, even though they are not material, “contain the possibility of all situations” (tlp, 2.014). these complications by wittgenstein that lead, for example, the vienna circle to serious mistakes in the interpretation of the tractatus. if we understand simple objects like pears and mcguiness’ point-masses (massenpunkt), our understanding will be that they are impressions or sense data. such an idea would thus produce an objectivist reading of the tractatus. the idea that sense data are such objects is an empirical way of looking at them, but it is completely doubtful that this was what wittgenstein had in mind when he spoke of simple objects. since they are from hertz mechanics, as we have seen, this is not the path to a correct interpretation. those who carefully read the principles of mechanics clearly perceive that the material points (which the aphorism 6.3432 talks about) are not the simple elements postulated by particle physics. simple objects, for example, are called by hertz “material particles”. by calling his simple objects material particles, he can deceive his reader into thinking that such objects have to be interpreted as physical entities. however, there are several reasons why this is not so, for example, what hertz says about the first book of the principles, where he deals with such matters: “the subject-matter of the first book is completely independent of experience. all the assertions made are a priori judgments in kant’s sense” (hertz, 1956, 45). when it is believed that wittgenstein misread hertz’s work, it is believed that his object was also something material – pears and mcguiness made this mistake when translating the aphorism 6.3432 of the tractatus. the biggest flaw in the translation by pears/mcguinness is the inconceivable rendering of “materielle punkte” as “point-masses”. in the preface the translators state that the authorized first translation by ogden and ramsey “has been revised in the light of wittgenstein’s own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with c. k. ogden about the first translation”. in the correspondence we find nothing to justify the changes of tlp 6.3432. (grahoff, 2006, 20) while we talk about the external world and the matter itself, hertz and wittgenstein speak of material points, that is, of logical elements, whose function would be to provide a feature of generality and formal independence to their systems. if pears and mcguiness paid attention to the guidelines given by wittgenstein to ogden, they would certainly have a hint of how to translate the technical terms of these passages. according to wittgenstein guiding: “to get the right expression, please look up the english translation of hertz’s ‘principles of mechanics’” (wittgenstein, 1983, 35). and why do we insist so much that this is how we should interpret the tractarian ontological formalism? roughly speaking, because we could not simply ignore the imperative wittgensteinian present in the prototractatus (2.0141) which says: “let the thing be the material point” (“das ding sei der materielle punkt”). if we understand “thing” like “object”, ding like sache,6 we will see that here wittgenstein 5 we see that this was not hertz’s pretension, let alone wittgenstein’s. it is reinforced, therefore, that wittgenstein’s “object” is identified with the hertzian concept of “material particle” and not of “material point”, which is more identified with the tractatus “state of affairs”. 6 with regard to the concepts of “thing” and “object”, there is no evidence (as some scholars of wittgenstein’s thought think) that he put them in a situation of opposition (ding x sache). in the wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 99 commands us to think in this way. otherwise, he would give us only an empty indication and depending on our interpretation saying: “the thing is the material point” (“das ding ist der materielle punkt”). aware of the functionality of the material points in hertz mechanical system and of the objects in the tractatus ontology, it remains for us to understand how wittgenstein’s notion of picturing is a tribute of the hertz mechanical system. wittgenstein’s picture theory of language as a tribute to hertz mechanical system in a group of aphorisms that deals with the picture theory of language (tlp 2.1-3.5), having claimed that the world is the totality of facts, wittgenstein proceeds to investigate a subset of that totality, namely, the pictures: in particular the proposition as a fact which is capable of representing other facts. in hertz’s time, the concept of representation was in vogue. the principles of mechanics, for example, points to the reality of representation within scientific theories. hertz uses the term representation as darstellung; a term that does not mean a representation as a reproduction of sensory impressions, but as equivalent to “cognitive schemas”, “formulas”, “models” – schemes consciously constructed for knowledge. as janik and toulmin said (1991, 140), “in this mode of representation, men are not merely passive spectators to whom “representations”, like humean “impressions” or machian “sensations”, just happen”. based on the assumption that wittgenstein was heir to this way of conceiving representation, we propose that his notion of picturing deals with an appropriation of the notion of representation of hertz’s principles. hertz, as we said, uses the term darstellung when he wants to qualify a scientific representation as such, for example, the graphic representation as currently used in physics. but it mainly uses the term bild, which in german literally means “picture” or “image” – “images produced by our mind and necessarily affected by the characteristics of its mode of portrayal” (hertz, 1956, 2). with this same connotation, the term bild is used in the tractatus in aphorisms that deal with the picture theory of language. representation and picturing are, therefore, common terms among these authors that point to the same reality, namely, that “we picture facts to ourselves” (tlp, 2.1). in the context of our claim that wittgenstein’s work “has extended from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world” (notebooks, 08/02/1916), we were convinced that the picturing for wittgenstein was still problematic: “the difficulty of my theory of logical portrayal was that of finding a connection between the signs on paper and a situation outside in the world. i always said that truth is a relation between the proposition and the situation but could never pick out such a relation” (notebooks, 27/10/14). nevertheless, two days later, in the light of hertz’s theory, he already had an answer to this problem: “the internal relation between the proposition and its reference – the method of symbolizing – is the system of coordinates which projects the situation into the proposition. the proposition corresponds to the fundamental coordinates” (notebooks, 29/10/14 – emphasis added). “internal relation”, “coordinates system” are terms that are part of hertz’s mechanics. but, how to understand such inspiration? or how to support statements about this proximity? as tractatus, things or objects indicate simple constituents of reality. wittgenstein, right from the start, affirms both (tlp 2.01). when he puts “things” in parentheses right after he has defined the state of affairs as a connection of objects, it seems that he draws attention to his preference for the concept of “state of affairs” and not that of “state of objects”, it would be very strange. however, there seems to be no relevant difference: the object that is known (tlp 2.0123) is the same as the thing (tlp 2.012 to tlp 2.0122) known. wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 100 was said earlier, in order to understand the issues that inhabited wittgenstein’s mind at the time of writing the tractatus, his biography cannot be belittled: he is someone who came from mechanical engineering, with a reading of the issues physics was concerned at the time and with a good knowledge of such issues. as for the picture theory of language, for example, griffin (1998, 140) clarifies that the main exponents that would have influenced wittgenstein in its formulation would have been the physicists ludwig boltzmann and heinrich hertz, but, mainly, hertz. in what way? how to sustain this inspiration? where is the approach? in the aphorisms that deal with the picture theory of language, wittgenstein states: “we picture facts to ourselves” (tlp, 2.1) and “a logical picture of facts is a thought” (tlp, 3), that is, “we think the world!”. and what does this mean? in what relationship is the world and the thought? in what sense does the association of real objectivities correspond to thoughtful objectivities? how can a correspondence between two different fields be thought of? to wittgenstein, trying to solve this problem using the naive concept of picturing, that is, thinking that there is an “empirical” correspondence between the proposition and the world is an error. for the relations between a proposition and the world are not object relations but of logical order. how, then, to understand the logical relationship between proposition and world? and how to understand the hertzian affiliation, at this point in the reflections of the tractatus? as we said, wittgenstein starts his picture theory of language with the assertion that “we picture facts for ourselves” (tlp 2.1); hertz, on the first page of the introduction of the principles of mechanics, writes “we form for ourselves images or symbols of external objects and the form we give them is such that the necessary consequents of the images in thought are always the images of the necessary consequents in nature of the things pictured” (hertz, 1956, 1). apparently, according to what hertz said, there must be certain conformity between nature and our thoughts. wittgenstein affirms something very similar: that there must be something in common between figure and fact (tlp, 2.16; 2.161), there must be conformity because our names must behave as objects behave. and what should representations share with their facts? among other things, wittgenstein states that the figure must have the same numerical multiplicity as its fact (tlp, 4.04 b). hertz postulates that one system, which is the model of another, must satisfy the condition “that the number of coordinates of the first system is equal to the number of the second” (hertz, 1956, 175). and that “if one system is a model of a second, then, conversely, the second is also a model of the first. if two systems are models of a third system, then each of these systems is also a model of the other” (hertz, 1956, 175). even our thoughts are representations, so they must be situated in this internal relationship: “the relation of a dynamical model to the system of which it is regarded as the model is precisely the same as the relation of the images which our mind forms of things to the things themselves” (hertz, 1956, 177). in this system, the simplest things we have to deal with in representations or models are, for hertz, “material particles” or “material points”. in wittgenstein’s case, they are “objects”. objects are eternal (tlp, 2.027), they cannot be destroyed. for hertz, his material points are also “invariable and indestructible” (hertz, 1956, 46). a system is an aggregate of material points; the world is, at least in part, an aggregate of material points. the models, the representations we make of the world, are constructed in a similar way, from the symbols that represent these material points. hertz’s proposal was to determine the limits of physics from within himself, and the idea of a model came around when he was studying the nature of maxwell’s theory and trying to understand what his equations said about electromagnetic phenomena. on that occasion, hertz had the idea that maxwell’s equations, in fact, said nothing about the physical nature of these phenomena. they were nothing more than mathematical formulas capable of providing a logical apparatus for dealing with physical phenomena. these systems or models are not derived from experience but wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 101 correspond to logical constructions from which facts from experience can derive. (margutti pinto, 1998, 85) the point of approximation between hertz mechanics and wittgenstein’s picture theory of language can be sought precisely in the understanding of two formal concepts: object, in the tractatus; and that of material particles in the principles. regarding the tractatus’ object, we saw that it is not an empirical object; about it really is, wittgenstein prefers to let the logicians of posterity, through the process of analysis, find out. it is a formal concept necessary to the tractarian system since its postulation allows the propositional sense to be fully determined. as for hertz’s “particles” and “material points”, we have also seen that these are formal concepts (hertz, 1956, 45). and about “correctness or incorrectness of these investigations can be neither confirmed nor contradicted by any possible future experiences” (hertz, 1956, 135). this is because, what is called “the principles of mechanics” are propositions “which satisfies the requirement that the whole of mechanics can be developed from it by purely deductive reasoning without any further appeal to experience” (hertz, 1956, 4 – emphasis added). it is hertz himself who insists that his judgments are a priori, that they cannot be confirmed or denied by experience and that they are deductive reasoning, and we are not qualified to deny it. the most important fact to be highlighted in his theory is that it was obtained from the analysis of the symbols used in scientific discourse, seeking their formal and factual meanings and rejecting the meaningless questions that arise from the illogical use of symbols and not from legitimate problems generated by the facts. it is about decoding and understanding the world from a conception of representation in a symbolic system. and it is in this way that wittgenstein’s picture theory of language, as a tribute of hertz’s model theory, must be understood: the correspondence between thought (language) and the world is of a logical and not an empirical nature. picturing consists of the relation by which the figure imposes itself on the fact; it is what makes one fact a figure of the other (tlp, 2.1513). the truth, in this case, is nothing more than the formal identity between facts and thoughts. the role of logic in this context is to present the parallelism of the orders a priori of the world and of thought. in the case of thought, the order of significant propositions; in the case of the world, the order of states of affairs. hertz and the philosophy of science of wittgenstein’s tractatus anyone who reads the tractatus and finds at the end, specifically from aphorism 6.3, comments about the natural sciences, has the impression (by the “growing” organization of his aphorisms) that those comments are a kind of attachment and that appear there as a consequence of his elucidations about logic and mathematics – by the way, most of his interpreters make this mistake. but if we look at wittgenstein’s real intentions, comments about the natural sciences are an integral part of his project. the picture theory of language, which we discussed in the preceding item, was also an integral part of wittgenstein’s philosophy of science, advocated as an attempt to interpret the difficult problem of the relationship between theory and nature while avoiding the realist/anti-realist dispute within a scientific theory. that his conception of scientific theory, considered as the only field subject to meaningful propositions, was successful, was desired7 – although it had the unfortunate consequence of inspiring an ontological interpretation. one way to “deviate” from such an interpretation was to emphasize in its theory the purely representational character such as that of physical theory, demonstrating its independence from external foundations through a clear and simple representation, thereby relieving itself of confusion about the status of the formal elements of the constructed theory – “but how 7 “the totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of the natural sciences)” (tlp 4.11). wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 102 remarkable: in the familiar theorems of mathematical physics there appear neither things nor functions nor relations nor any other logical forms of object! instead of things what we have here is numbers, and the functions and relations are purely mathematical throughout!” (notebooks, 20/06/1915). that is why the tractatus’ absolutely simple object, in addition to being indestructible, is also indescribable. its functionality, besides guaranteeing the formal consistency of the system, still has the additional advantage, as an ontological counterface of language, to guarantee the determinability of the linguistic sense – “the requirement that simple signs be possible is the requirement that sense be determinate” (tlp, 3.23). to wittgenstein, the demand for the representational character of science was fulfilled by hertz’s mechanics, which became prototypical for science in the tractatus. in the analysis of the propositions of natural science, mechanics was exemplary because, according to wittgenstein, it presents a successful attempt to bring the description of the world in a unique way: “mechanics is one attempt to construct all the propositions that we need for the description of the world according to a single plan. (hertz’s invisible masses.)” (notebooks, 06/12/1914) and in the same idea, he said: “just as with the number-system we must be able to write down any number we wish, so with the system of mechanics we must be able to write down any proposition of physics that we wish” (tlp, 6.341). according to wittgenstein’s understanding of the tractatus, hertz’s system of hidden masses made a coherent representation of mechanics, but it also demonstrated the general and abstract interpretation of the status of a philosophical theory: “we ought not to forget that any description of the world by means of mechanics will be of the completely general kind. for example, it will never mention particular point-masses: it will only talk about any point-masses whatsoever” (tlp, 6.3432), and in his notebooks (06/12/1914) he says that: “hertz’s invisible masses are admittedly pseudo-objects”. thus, a good theoretical representation equal to mechanics, involving pseudo objects as a constituent part, shows the generality and formal independence of the system; and this should be the case for any representation of the natural sciences, regardless of how they might appear. but what would be hertz’s role in the relationship between the picture theory of language and the idea of wittgenstein’s different scientific descriptions, represented by different types of nets? following a trend in theoretical physics of his time, hertz uses mathematical models and physical concepts, along with deduction techniques such as logic and critical analysis, in order to explain and predict physical phenomena in a rational way. in general terms, its objective was to represent the natural relationships between the “three independent fundamental conceptions, namely, those of time, space, and mass” (hertz, 1956, 24), exempting from the foundations of mechanics postulations about the things in itself and avoiding the use of pseudo concepts such as “force” and “energy” within it. to this end, he tries to establish the measurement of a system without reference to any other, only measuring them in relation to each other through coordinate systems: “it is mathematically possible to write down any finite or differential equation between coordinates and to require that it shall be satisfied” (hertz, 1956, 11). the concept of “mass”, for example, comes to be understood from the association of particles in a kind of coordinate system – “the number of material particles in any space, compared with the number of material particles in some chosen space at a fixed time, is called the mass contained in the first space” (hertz, 1956, 46). interpreted as a definition of mass a priori, it can be said that one can choose a certain area of points in space, defined by a set of coordinates, and use this as a unit of measurement in order to define the mass of some other set of points in the space. even the introduction of the “hidden masses” from which, presumably, a connotation of the ontological thesis would emerge in the hertzian system, serves him much more as a methodological requirement, namely, “to predetermine the motions of the visible masses of the system, or the changes of its visible coordinates, notwithstanding our ignorance of the position of the concealed masses” (hertz, 1956, 224 – emphasis added). therefore, we see that hertz’s mechanics wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 103 works as a kind of geometric coordinate system8 where the locations are defined by means of a plane that allows the measurement of one system to be established without reference to any other. this is very similar to the tractarian “method” for defining a configuration, describing it completely by means of a certain net of meshes of a certain fineness (tlp, 6,342). let us imagine a white surface with irregular black spots on it. we then say that whatever kind of picture these make, i can always approximate as closely as i wish to the description of it by covering the surface with a sufficiently fine square mesh, and then saying of every square whether it is black or white. in this way, i shall have imposed a unified form on the description of the surface [...]. (tlp 6.341) “the net, however, is purely geometrical; all its properties can be given a priori” (tlp, 6.35). and what is right a priori is purely logical (tlp, 6.3211). we see that novalis’ old notion that “hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch”, used by karl popper as an epigraph of his book the logic of scientific discovery, was also used by wittgenstein to illustrate the different representations of the natural sciences. wittgenstein uses the image of a metaphorical net in order to compare the description of a specific theory offered with a net being traversed by the facts. this net could be more or less thin and, thus, describe facts more or less accurately. “for example, the mechanics of newton’s principia would represent one net of a certain fineness. later, with the development of lagrange’s analytical mechanics, this description would represent a finer net” (kjaergaard, 2002, 132). this image of the spot on a white surface is the projection of the distribution of simple material points in space. there are points in space, matching shapes of spots. to describe this surface, we could cover it with a grid, for example. if the meshes of the net were thin enough, we would be able to say whether each square of the net is white or black. in that case, we would have a description of the surface in the unit form. this shape, however, is arbitrary, as the net could consist of triangular or hexagonal meshes or others, including combinations of geometric figures, such as triangles and hexagons. the net itself is the coordinated system by which the distribution of the spots is defined and each net would correspond to a different system of description of the world, a different mechanic (tlp 6.341). and here, as we have seen, there is a striking parallel with hertz and his holistic conception of fundamental law: a scientific law, like the image of this net, is not to make descriptions, not even very general descriptions, but to provide representation techniques by which it is possible to make descriptions. a remarkable example of what we are talking about is the comparison of the notion of logical space in the tractatus with the metaphorical net: the essence of metaphor is the comparison of a proposition as a point in a coordinated system and names with coordinated singular numbers. in a given coordinate system, putting two numbers together defines a point; in a given language, joining two names makes a statement. in this way, languages are a kind of coordinated logical system. and just as there are different systems as a result of choosing different points of origin, different scales, and so on, so there are also different forms of representation in the language (griffin, 1998). wittgenstein’s fundamental notion regarding science, for example, is that there is no privileged theory in science, but that there are different points of view. if physical theories are figures of reality and, therefore, only have a descriptive relationship with nature, this leads to the possibility that the natural sciences integrate multiple models of explanation. in other words, there is no privileged physical theory. 8 “a coordinate system is undoubtedly an important piece of symbolism in the sciences. here it is used to describe the movement of a body. it can also hypothetically describe the relationship between mass and volume. on one-dimensional scales, temperatures can also be exposed in this way ”. (griffin, 1998, 148) wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 104 similarly, the possibility of describing the world by means of newtonian mechanics tells us nothing about the world: but what does tell us something about it is the precise way in which it is possible to describe it by these means. we are also told something about the world by the fact that it can be described more simply with one system of mechanics than with another. (tlp, 6.342) if there is no privileged theory, there are certainly several possible ways of representing facts. none is more correct than the others are, but one could be more appropriate to give a more detailed or helpful picture of that part of nature that a specific physical theory should describe. according to wittgenstein (1980, 18), “the real achievement of a copernicus or a darwin was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view”. drawing attention to two of the most celebrated scientists in the historical construction of the view of the modern world, wittgenstein at the same time demonstrates the general character of his argument and deconstructs the false conceptions of truth spread by the theories of science that were nurtured by the tremendous success of natural science. on the other hand, wittgenstein also proposes to give a correct interpretation of the infamous law of causality. we see that the reflections on causality presented in the tractatus and discussed in aphorisms about science are also a consequence of the influence of hertz’s mode of representation and are directly involved with the representation of the metaphorical net. says wittgenstein: “laws like the principle of sufficient reason, etc. are about the net and not about what the net describes” (tlp, 6.35). what he means is that the law of causality, or the principle of sufficient reason, on the other hand, was not conceived as a proposition saying something about the world, but as belonging to the image representing the facts of the world, just like the hertz’s fundamental law.9 causality is instrumental in the integrated information about the facts of the world, thus being a form of the law instead of the true law of nature; the “connection” is not a relationship in itself, but only a way of showing the existence of the relationship. to affirm the contrary, that is, that causality is, in fact, an explanation of the phenomena of nature, constitutes the illusion that founded the modern worldview – “the whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena” (tlp, 6.371). thus, people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as god and fate were treated in past ages. and in fact, both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. (tlp, 6.372) this means that causality is not a law of logic, nor an empirical generalization, nor a synthetic proposition a priori. in fact, it is not even a proposition since it tries to say what can only be shown. what it indicates is a certain form of description that is crucial for scientific theorization (tlp 6.321 et seq.). in this sense, the law of causality as it is conceived by the natural sciences (as a relationship between event and cause), is something superfluous, that lacks sense and represents nothing – “it is a hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise” (tlp, 6.36311, 6.37). nothing can logically guarantee that the events to be known in the future will continue to exemplify the regularity described by the simplest set of laws compatible with past 9 “our fundamental law allows us to survey the whole domain of mechanics, it shows us what are the limits of this domain” (hertz, 1956, 38). wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 105 and present experience. like hume, the tractatus concludes: the induction procedure has no logical basis, but only psychological. there is no logical reason that we can claim as the basis for our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow; in fact, we do not know if he will actually rise. we act as if we know because we have nothing better to do. (santos, 2001, 98-99) the principle of causality is itself a formal concept; it does not describe reality, but as the corresponding “net” to one way of representing reality that, in fact, is optional. as wittgenstein says: “‘law of causality’ – that is a general name. and just as in mechanics, for example, there are ‘minimum principles’, such as the law of least action, so too in physics there are causal laws, laws of the causal form” (tlp, 6.321 – emphasis added). the law of causality would be nothing more than the methodological prescription that the propositions of science take the form of hypothetical laws: all its relevance to the propositional representation of the world is concentrated in its prescriptive nucleus, “everything has a cause”. in the aphorism 6.36 of the tractatus, wittgenstein states that “if there were a law of causality, it might be put in the following way: ‘there are laws of nature’. but of course, that cannot be said: it makes itself manifest”. and it shows itself precisely because, being form and not content, it is to be understood as an image representing facts of the world, that is, strictly as representation and not as law. the laws of mechanics, for example, are the laws of our method for representing mechanical phenomena, and since we have effectively chosen a method of representation when describing the world, it is impossible for the laws of our method to say anything about the world – they represent the world. as wittgenstein says: “one might say, using hertz’s terminology, that only connections that are subject to law are thinkable” (tlp, 6.361). to think connections that conform to the laws is to think of a coordinated system that represents the fact without mentioning it, that is, without saying anything about it. thus, from this notion, we can establish a relationship between mechanics and logic. we know that the fact that a white surface, covered with black spots, can be described by a given net does not say anything about the surface specifically, but the complete description of the surface by the net somehow characterizes the surface. saying and characterizing (showing) frequent different fields. the various systems of mechanics, with their varied axiomatic languages, represent any facts, however, without saying anything about them. even so, that a given system is capable of describing such facts, or that a given system describes them more simply than another, shows the essence of these facts. and this is very similar to the discussion about the logical form of the proposition where the doctrine of showing and saying of the tractatus arises, says wittgenstein: “propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them. propositions show the logical form of reality. they display it” (tlp, 4.121). the synthesis of this doctrine would be this: the language is not confined to saying that this or that happens; it shows. what can be said in the language is that this object does have, in fact, this property or is, in fact, in this relationship with this other object; however, nothing can be said about the formal properties of objects or states of affairs; formal properties and relationships are shown. in this way, solutions like those of russell’s paradox, which attributed external measures to determine the validity of selfreferring formal systems, creating a kind of metalanguage to deal with language problems, could not do anything for the system when they tried to say what could only be shown in logical notation. once again we see a notion emerging in the tractatus whose foundations go back to hertz’s mechanics: the analysis of the functionality of a system does not allow us to say anything about the system itself or even the facts of the world; all of that, it shows – “our fundamental law allows us to survey the whole domain of mechanics, it shows us what are the limits of this domain” (hertz, 1956, 38)”. wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 106 final considerations due to the fact that it was ignored by the majority of tractatus interpreters that physics, here especially hertz’s mechanics, had substantial importance in the constitution not only of that work but of all wittgenstein’s thought, we proposed this article. we demonstrate the presence of the hertzian spirit, going from the tractatus object conception to the formalized world scheme (ontology) presented in this work. this scheme had a direct impact on his conception of science, the only one capable of providing the language with meaningful propositions since its propositions are the ultimate representatives of the contingency of objects in states of affairs. the coordinate system of hertz mechanics not only provided the tractatus with the notions represented above but also was a source of inspiration for the doctrine of saying and showing presented in that work. but the hertzian influence on the tractatus may have gone further. baker (1988), for example, deals with the strong inspiration of hertz’s methodology on wittgenstein’s thinking to address the clarification of thought and the dissolution of problems. for him, the hertzian method has become a way to expose the lack of sense of issues that make a true proposition a priori. likewise, kjaergaard (2002) states that the physicist h. hertz played a decisive role in the use of wittgenstein’s only philosophical method. and that wittgenstein successfully applied this method to the critique of problems in logic and mathematics throughout his life, including to solve problems concerning logical paradoxes and foundational problems, including those of mathematics – all of which would have been seen by wittgenstein as pseudo-problems requiring clarity, instead of a solution. thus, we restricted our analysis by dealing only with the influence of hertz’s mechanics on the tractatus, but we found that the reflexes of hertz’s philosophy of science on wittgenstein’s philosophy persist throughout his work, for example the notion of “sleeping partners” used by wittgenstein in philosophical grammar (as well as in philosophical remarks and philosophical investigations) is the same used by hertz in principles (hertz, 1956, 11-12). likewise, the method of resolving language misunderstandings dealt with by philosophical investigations (if, § 90) is the same critical method of analyzing philosophical problems within physical theories used by hertz: a method of philosophical clarification with which it is possible to identify and dissolve (not solve) philosophical problems within scientific debates, because, such concepts “(...) have no additional value for us besides being abbreviations” (hertz, 1956, 25). this hertzian inspiration of the need to dissolve pseudo-problems in the realm of science endures throughout wittgenstein’s late philosophy; he assumes it, for example, in the big typescript (2005, 310e): “as i do philosophy, its entire task is to shape expression in such a way that certain worries disappear (hertz)”. these problems are generated by “misunderstandings regarding the use of language”. for conceptual confusions, providing the content offered by frege and russell’s philosophies was a great asset for wittgenstein, but what helped him to resolve these same confusions was the form offered by hertz. after all, as we have said, one of the most important parts of the method of doing philosophy for wittgenstein, in almost his entire career of thought, was the concern with the form of an argument and not with the content. therefore, it is necessary to understand the importance of the form in order to understand the tractatus method and appreciate the continuity of wittgenstein’s thought. references baker, g. wittgenstein, frege and the vienna circle. oxford: basil blackwell, 1988. grahoff, g. wittgenstein’s world of mechanics. new york: springer wien new york, 2006. wittgenstein: physics and philosophy eduardo simões 107 griffin, james. o atomismo lógico de wittgenstein. porto: editora do porto, 1998. hertz, heinrich. the principles of mechanics: presented in a new form. preface by hermann von helmholtz. authorized english translation by d. e. jones e j. t. walley. with a new introduction by r. s. cohen. new york: dover publication, 1956. janik, allan; toulmin, stephen. wittgenstein’s vienna. new york: touchstone, 1973. kjaergaard, peter c. hertz and wittgenstein’s philosophy of science. journal for general philosophy of science. netherlands: kluwer academic publishers, nº 33, p. 121-149, 2002. margutti pinto, p. r. iniciação ao silêncio: análise do tractatus de wittgenstein. são paulo: loyola, 1998. monk, ray. wittgenstein: o dever do gênio. trad. carlos afonso malferrari. são paulo: cia das letras, 1995. santos, l. h. l. a essência da proposição e a essência do mundo. ensaio introdutório à tradução do tractatus logico-philosophicus. são paulo: edusp, 2001. wittgenstein, ludwig. culture and value. oxford: basil blackwell, 1980. wittgenstein, ludwig. gramática filosófica. trad. luís carlos borges. são paulo: loyola, 2003. wittgenstein, ludwig. letters to c. k. ogden with comments on the english translation of the tractatus logico-philosophicus. oxford: blackwell, 1983. wittgenstein, ludwig. notebooks 1914-1916. ed. by g. h. von wright, g. e. m. anscombe. new york: 1961. wittgenstein, ludwig. prototractatus: an early version of tractatus logico-philosophicus. london: routledge & kegan paul, 1971. wittgenstein, ludwig. the big typescript, ts 213. edited and translated by c. grant luckhardt and maximilian a. e. german–english scholars’ ed. oxford: blackwell publishing, 2005. wittgenstein, ludwig. tractatus logico-philosophicus. translated by d. f. pears and b. f. mcguinness with introduction by bertrand russell. routledge & kegan paul, london & henley, 1961 b. microsoft word martínez layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-15 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0011-0472] abstract: in this article, i provide an initial approximation to the establishment and the early stages of the history of science in uruguay. to do so, i focus on the first courses on the subject dictated in uruguay and the first figures—both local and foreign—that took part in the process. with this objective, first, i examine the introduction of the discipline into the río de la plata—and into argentina more particularly—via the arrival of european historians. i then analyze the role played by some of the first most significant figures in the history of science in uruguay in the second quarter of the twentieth century. finally, i explore and briefly describe the first courses dictated at the facultad de humanidades y ciencias (school of humanities and sciences) of the universidad de la república (university of the republic) during the midtwentieth century. keywords: history of science in uruguay; first half of the twentieth century; school of humanities and sciences; eduardo garcía de zúñiga; paul schurmann; desiderio papp. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ from europe to the río de la plata during the first half of the 20th century the first institutions completely devoted to the history of science can be traced back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. during that same period, the first research centers and national societies devoted to the study of the discipline were 1. maría laura martínez is an assistant professor in the history and philosophy of science department, facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación, universidad de la república, uruguay. address: edificio central – avenida uruguay 1695 – 11.200 montevideo – uruguay. e-mail: marialauramartinez1@gmail.com the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 established, the first international events were organized, and the first specialized journals commenced publication. in 1907 in italy, the societá italiana di storia critica delle scienze mediche e naturali (italian society for the critical history of medical and natural sciences) was constituted. three years later, the societá started publishing its journal, and it was there where aldo mieli (1879-1950)2 published his first contributions to the history of science. there, mieli attempted to trace some of the programmatic limits that would make of the history of science an independent discipline—one that was to be understood as providing the examination of the development of all cognitive activities whose objective was attaining a systematic knowledge of reality, both through speculative and empirical means. after the first world war, mieli got ready to follow the path of george sarton (1884-1956), whose work had made a decisive contribution to the consolidation of the history of science as an academic discipline in the united states. there, sarton had developed a program for the general history of the sciences, which was, for its part, inspired in paul tannery’s (1843-1904) and pierre duhem’s (1861-1916) proposals. sarton’s historiographic approach was influenced by a positivist, presentist, and internalist historiography. sarton defended the idea of a relentless progress of reason went hand in hand with the evolution of civilization, in such a way that the history of science should be studied and taught as a fundamental pillar of the cultural history of humanity. during the early years of the 1910s, he followed this approach, and began publishing isis academic journal in belgium. afterwards, during his exile in the united states, he became the founder of the history of science society (1924). in 1919, and following sarton’s tracks, mieli created the archivio di storia della scienza (archive for the history of science), which in 1927 became archeion, a journal which allowed him to promote the international organization of the history of science. a year later, during the international conference of historical sciences that took place in oslo, mieli proposed, successfully, to create an international committee.3 a year later, this committee became the académie internationale d’histoire des sciences (international academy of the history of science), which was based in the centre international de synthèse, located in paris, and whose official organon was archeion. the second world war, however, led mieli into exile, forcing him to flee, first, to paris, where he acted as the director of the centre international de synthèse, and then to argentina, where he arrived in 1939, and where had intellectual friendships with figures such as umberto giulio paoli—who had been his chemistry professor in pisa —and with the spanish mathematician julio rey pastor (1888-1962).4 just like mieli, rey pastor had been a member of the académie internationale d’histoire des sciences of paris since 1934, and in argentina he had constituted the grupo argentino de historia de la ciencia (argentinian history of science association) in 1933.5 it was through rey pastor that the italian historian found a place that suited his research interests and that allowed him to pursue his work, something he did in the universidad del litoral, located in the province of santa fe, which created for him the instituto de historia y filosofía de la ciencia (institute for 2. aldo mieli obtained a chemistry degree in pisa (1904) with a theorico-experimental thesis. four years later he moved to the sapienza university of rome where he later began his teaching career. 3. the committee was originally conformed by abel rey, george sarton, henry sigerist, charles singer, karl suddhoff and lynn thorndike. 4. even while mieli was legally not a refugee, in practical terms he was one. the conservative europe of the 1930s discriminated him for being jewish, socialist, and homosexual. 5. the groups existence was fleeting, and was integrated by amado alonso, nicolás besio moreno, ángel cabrera, juan a. dominguez, enrique herrero ducloux, ricardo levene, josé f. molfino, emilio ravignani and the uruguayan eduardo garcía de zúñiga (plá 2003, 92). the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 the history and philosophy of science).6 there, he was able to keep on publishing his journal until 1943.7 mieli arrived in argentina with his personal library, one of the most valuable ones in the field, something that facilitated research and thus allowed for the production of serious scholarship. in the institute, mieli worked with a group of young researchers, one of them being the mathematician and engineer josé babini (1897-1984), a disciple of rey pastor, and the hungarian emigrant, desiderio papp pollack (1895-1993). it was also in the institute that mieli began working on his panorama general de la historia de la ciencia (general overview of the history of science), the first general work dedicated to the history of science to be published in spanish. the first volume appeared in 1945, and mieli kept working on the project until the time of his death in 1950, managing to publish the first five volumes. after mieli’s death, babini and papp took over his work, publishing seven more volumes. just like sarton, considered by mieli to be “the greatest representative of the contemporaneous science historians” (mieli 1951, 2), the italian historian took the history of science to be “an organic whole where all the parts are intimately connected with one another, and not a juxtaposition of different histories, each devoted to a particular discipline, or, what is more, to specialized fragments of a single discipline” (mieli 1951, 2). at the core of his historiographic conception lay the idea of a general history of the sciences, that is, the idea of a fundamentally universalist history which was to reveal science organically, not only by showing the connection between its parts, but by acting as a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. on the one hand, mieli’s approach to the history of science was guided by the theses of continuism (mieli 1951, ix), and thus approached an internalist approach. yet, on the other hand, mieli believed that the history of science had a pedagogical objective: we believe that the student who, on a par with contemporary science, knows how it has been constituted and who, in particular, knows in depth the history of their specialty, will find themselves in a privileged position, not only with regards the production of original research, but also in relation to their professional practice (plá 2003, 95). the history of science in uruguay after the second quarter of the 20th century in the first decades of the 20th century, the development of the history of science began its promotion within uruguay. in the school of mathematics of the universidad de la república (university of the republic), for example, the engineer and professor of mathematics eduardo garcía de zúñiga (1867-1951)8 defended the centrality of the humanities and of 6. the institute performed the following functions: carrying original research that contributed to the advancements of the history and philosophy of science; contributing to the formation of new researchers; establishing local and international links with similar scientific entities or institutes; dictate specialized courses and develop a bibliography devoted to the history and philosophy of science as well as to the development of contemporary science (plá 2003, 94). 7. in 1943, due to the military coup, the institute disappeared, the publication of archeion was interrupted, and mieli had to flee to buenos aires, where he resided until his death in 1950. in 1947 archeion came back to life under the name archives internationales d’histoire des sciences thanks to the sponsorship of the unesco. the journal is still edited to this day. 8. eduardo garcía de zúñiga graduated from the school of mathematics in 1892 with a degree as a bridges and highways engineer. years later he travelled to europe, where he specialized in advanced mathematics, in port-construction, and in materials testing. he was a professor, counsilor, and a dean of the school of mathematics (later called school of engineering), as well as the author of several the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 research for engineering, and promoted the development of the history of mathematics and of the history of science more generally. one of the actions he partook in to achieve this was the creation of a bibliographic archive—a set of works and periodicals which essentially acted as sources for the history of mathematics and its corresponding historiography. the archive also included numerous materials related to the history of science more generally, as well as to other scientific disciplines, making it an extremely rich collection—one that, at the time, could hardly find a comparison to any other such collection in latin america. see (martínez 1994). between 1924 and 1935, garcía de zúñiga dictated a series of conferences about the history of mathematics.9 his intention in so doing was to broaden the extracurricular formation of engineering students. these conferences exposed the high amount of material and information that he handled, his deep knowledge of the discipline’s evolution, and his broad socio-historical perspective. in this regard, cheroni writes: in this field garcía de zúñiga occupies the place of a pioneer in our country […] he put in place research tasks that were articulated upon highly elaborated methodological conceptions. his work was not limited to uruguay; it gained international recognition and was part of a vanguard that was, around the world, struggling to help the new discipline reach its own professional status. (cheroni 1992, 37) for the lectures, garcía de zúñiga relied on some chapters of isaac newton’s principia as well as from the optics that he himself translated—these were actually some of the first versions of newton’s work to be translated to spanish directly from the latin.10 during that time, a transformation was taking place within the university, and in particular within the school of engineering. the institution, formerly focused mostly on the formation of professionals, was turning into a place where researching the basic sciences became paramount. in that context, in 1932, the certificado de estudios de matemáticas superiores (certificate of superior mathematical studies) was created, following a syllabus planned by rey pastor, and which included a course on the history of mathematics taught by garcía de zúñiga. it should be noted, in this vein, that rey pastor’s involvement with the development of the certificado went beyond the mere development of the syllabus. the works and articles on engineering and mathematics. he was president of the instituto de estudios superiores, a member of the board of the fhc – facultad de humanidades y ciencias (school of humanities and sciences) – , and, in 1940, he was made an ad-honorem professor from the school of engineering, as well as honoris-causa doctor from the universidad de la república. he worked in the departamento nacional de ingenieros, in the inspecciones técnicas regionales, in the inspección general de ferrocarriles, and in the dirección de la administración nacional de puertos del uruguay. along with other researchers, he was a founding member and an active participant form the asociación uruguaya para el progreso de la ciencia, as well as an honorary member of the instituto histórico y geográfico del uruguay, of the junta n. de historia y numismática de buenos aires, of the real academia de ciencias of madrid, of the academia de ciencias exactas, físicas y naturales of lima, and of the instituto histórico del perú. he represented uruguay in the consejo de patronato de la sociedad de matemáticas española, he was an academic from the academia de la historia de la habana, member of the instituto paraguayo de investigaciones históricas and from the consejo de la sociedad de historia de las ciencias in the united states of america, and these are just some of his institutional affiliations. 9. published in the revista del centro de estudiantes de ingeniería, 1924, 1925, 1928, 1929 and in the revista de ingeniería, 1932, 1934 y 1935. the themes of the conferences were: the beginnings of mathematics in greece. thales and the pythagorean school; mathematics in the alexandrian era; euclid; the arab mathematicians; mathematics in the medieval christian period. 10. the work referred to is isaac newton. selección. requested and translated by eduardo garcía de zúñiga and j. novo cerro. colección austral no. 334, espasa calpe, buenos aires, 1943. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 spanish mathematician actually travelled systematically to montevideo to teach lectures which were part of the curriculum he developed. notably, garcía de zúñiga’s defense of the importance of the history of science, as well as his fight for its inclusion and progress, was not limited to his work in the aforementioned school. as the permanent president of the instituto de estudios superiores (institute of higher studies, hereafter referred to as ies) and as chairman of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias (school of humanities and sciences, hereafter referred to as fhc), he also actively took part in the materialization of the corresponding lectureships. in 1937, at the request of garcía de zúñiga, the sección de historia de la ciencia (section of history of science) of the ies was created. the institute, which had only been inaugurated in 1930, had been created to tap into the blindspots of the professionalist education taught in the university’s schools, an education that, for one, had no cultural concern. the ies’s objective was thus to bring scholars together and stimulate their intellect, acting as a space for the free development of thought and where they could have academic freedom. in line with this, the ies promoted equal respect for all disciplines, regardless of whether or not these belonged to the official syllabi and programs.11 its main aim was to run courses, conferences, and publications, among others. overlooked subjects such as latin, greek, or the history of music were therefore taught and studied with the same impetus as those that constituted the backbone of the official education. it was in this context that the aforementioned sección de historia de la ciencia was created. its directorship fell upon the figure of paul f. schurmann, a figure to which we will return below. garcía de zúñiga was a member of the grupo argentino de historia de la ciencia (plá 2003, 92) until he—alongside some of his colleagues and peers—took part in the constitution of the grupo nacional de historia de la ciencia (national association for the history of science) of uruguay, an association that became a plenary member of the international association of the history of science affiliated to the unesco. the group was comprised of figures such as ergasto cordero, paul schurmann, carlos etchecopar, and rafael schiaffino, among others,12 and it pushed for the development of the history of science in uruguay. it did this, among other ways, by requesting to the fhc’s council that the history of science was to be “recognized by this school as a fundamental discipline, one that is formative and informative not only for science and philosophy but for any general cultural plan”. the authors also sustained: […] it is easy to remember that the history of science is currently recognized as a source of indispensable precedents for all original scientific studies and investigations, and that it stands, in addition, as a necessary introduction or essential complement for the study of philosophy and history—and even more so for the philosophy of science and epistemology […] we, therefore, express our hopes that the history of science is included in the school’s plans, as it formerly had been: in its authentic unity and in the form of a regular and 11. the institute was a free and independent non official institution, even if it was subsidized by public entities (schurmann 1942, 13). 12. ergasto cordero (1890-1951), a doctor in medicine, afterwards studied zoology in germany, vienna, and paris. he co-founded the sociedad uruguaya de ciencias naturales (1928), he taught the zoology courses assigned to the fhc between 1946 and 1951, and was the director of the museo de historia natural of montevideo since 1942. carlos etchecopar (1908-1986), was a professor of astronomy at the ies and at the fhc, and was the director of the observatorio de montevideo. rafael schiaffino (1881-1955), medical hygienist, and an important protagonist in the medical historiography in uruguay during the 20th century. he was the author of historia de la medicina en el uruguay, a three-volume work (1927-1952). the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 specialized curse that functions, preferably, following the characteristics of a documentation and study section […].13 the first history of science courses in the fhc the fhc was created in 1945 with a spirit that flew in the face of the professionalist profile that dominated the university at the time. it was thus conceived of as a center for “disinterested studies” that promoted a specific environment for “original” research. some of the fhc’s particularities were that it did not issue certificates nor differentiate between degrees. instead, the faculty was divided in chairs, and it did not serialize its courses. it emphasized the value of “study for study’s sake” and did not pursue practical ends, and hence was directed to a special student body, different from that which pursued a disciplinary and professional formation14 (parís de oddone 1995, 11). in 1946 the professor paul schurmann (1895-1983) was assigned as responsible for the first history of sciences course, a course that was part of the physico-chemicalmathematical sciences study program. schurmann had arrived from belgium, the country from which he emigrated into uruguay during the decade of the 1910s. he had been a member of the international academy of the history of science since 1938, and his most important work was historia de la fisica (history of physics), published by the university’s annals in 1936 (a work that was praised by mieli in the bibliographical recommendations contained in his own panorama general de historia de la ciencia). the value of schurmann’s work was also acknowledged by rey pastor, who contended that there were two ways of conceptualizing history and several methods to expose it: first, as the exclusive product of a few exceptional figures, to whom all of the great ideas (later developed by others) are attributed: “mieli’s sumario and papp’s historia de la fisica belong to this type of schematic conception, [which is] very efficient in the portrayal of the historical process as a geodesic triangulation that only requires the highest vertices” (rey pastor 1947, 123). the second was as a vision of progress qua continual evolution, one that advances via the small yet incessant contributions of many figures, whose knowledge and comparative analysis reduces the big names to their right proportion. “[the second conceptualization] is more precise and righteous, but has to be exposed after the first one is developed in the form of a preparatory scheme. this topographic [approach] of the primary and propaedeutic triangulation is being carried forth by mieli in his panorama […]” (rey pastor 1947, 123). schurmann’s historia de la física, rey pastor considered, […] occupies a middle ground between two types that can be called telescopic and microscopic. it is, on the contrary, a natural vision, a panorama, with less of an erudite scaffolding than mieli, but which provides to the humane element more texture and vivacity, by presenting, in its biographical and anecdotal traces, not only the culminant figures, but all of those that have done something enduring for physics’ advances. (rey pastor 1947, 123) worried about the need to stimulate the development of the history of science in uruguay, in 1947 schurmann communicated some suggestions and propositions to the fhc’s 13. note from the group to the dean of the fhc, carlos vaz ferreira, 10/2/1953, docket 32, file 52, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 14. “the essential goal was the higher education and research in philosophy, literature, history and sciences”. among the basic principles one could find: encouraging specialization and research, promoting the culture, teach courses in various specialized fields, organizing research seminaries on high culture (for national and american affairs), organizing conference series and special courses”. (parís de oddone 1995, 16). the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 dean, which were considered by him to be “of fundamental importance to the teaching and development of the history of science in our school and in our medium”. schurmann highlighted that […] in the last decade the study of the history of science has seen an extraordinary increase throughout all of the world, and in particular in buenos aires, apparently placing uruguay at the margins of this so necessary intellectual movement.15 he thus alluded to rey pastor’s (1947) opinion regarding uruguay’s priority in this awakening, which, he continued, […] is founded upon the work of the engineer garcía de zúñiga within the library of the facultad de ingeniería, as well as of the present, with the publication of my historia de la física, alongside other works. despite those antecedents, to which should be added the constitution of the grupo nacional de la historia de la ciencia—a part of the sección de historia de la ciencia of the instituto de estudios superiores—and of the history of science course conferred upon me by this school, it is necessary to recognize that in uruguay those dedicated to scientific studies have yet to realize that, currently, scientific progress—with its insightful revision of essential concepts—demands a perfect knowledge and an in-depth critique of the temporal development of every scientific concept. i do not think that the short course on the history of science that has been trusted upon me will be enough to fulfill the school of humanities and sciences’ pressing duty to understand and propagate this urgently necessary discipline, so that our scientific environment gets in line behind the world’s scientific evolution.16 the development of the history of science, thus, was relevant not only because the discipline—as an organized and independent field—was opening its path through the curricula of superior and secondary education. it was also relevant because of the direct influence that it exerted upon the exposure methods used by a diversity of scientific subjects. schurmann agreed with the history of science’s pedagogical aims, which were also emphasized by mieli, rey pastor, and later on by papp. schurmann considered that the first required measure was to generate the work environment and gather the materials needed so that the propagation of the history of science becomes possible. this was no task for a short course, but required the support of an institute. however, at the time, there were economic constraints for the creation of such an institute. hence why schurmann proposed to begin by at least planting the seeds for such an organism, thus looking forward toward its future growth: […] a history of science section would be created under the direction of the subject’s professor, and with the collaboration of teaching assistants […] the job would be subject to the following plan from its inception: a) a general study of the history of science; b) a review of specific items; c) the study of the history of science in latin america and in [uruguay]; d) the diffusion of the study of the history of science 15. note from schurmann to the board of the fhc, 22/7/1947, docket 32, file 52, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 16. note from schurmann to the board of the fhc, 22/7/1947, docket 32, file 52, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 through classes, courses, the publication of journalistic pieces, communication with science professors, etc.; e) the preparation of a bibliographic documentation […].17 three months later, schurmann would insist upon the need to improve the history of science within uruguay. with the support of sarton and mieli’s opinions, he affirmed that the classes and courses taught following the university’s approach would not be sufficient as background conditions for such a task. hence why a research plan was indispensable, as were the ordering and the diffusion of the knowledge and of the working elements, and these could only be developed by an organism inspired in the institutes’s common plan. schurmann closed the note by pointing out that he had […] personal relations with the greatest specialists in the history of science, [relations that had been nurtured] permanently and for years (sic) (among which i highlight, in particular, those with mieli and sarton [the latter had been visited by schurmann a few months earlier in the united states]). i can assure you that the seminar, which will be the embryo of the “institute”, will deserve all their interest, and that we will be able to count on their valuable and disinterested counseling and collaboration.18 schurmann’s proposal contemplated three academic functions: teaching, research, and outreach. regarding the first of these, he affirmed: the history of science is necessary for education. it must thus be included—and given the corresponding weight—within the subjects that can find in it a wealth of useful elements. the history of “each scientific discipline” must become an integral and essential element of the lectures imparted by the professors of the corresponding disciplines, and general history of science must become one of the main components of the heterogeneous and complex study of universal history. (schurmann 1937, 350) with regards to the two other functions, schurmann wrote that the seminar, in addition to being the natural place for doing research, would “perform a labor of ‘synthesizing the history of science’ with didactic ends, and the results would be shared in the form of brochures, articles, synoptic tables, and so forth … these would allow for the establishment of ‘public relations’, that is, the propagation of the knowledge of this new subject, which is necessary to build a supportive interest for its development within the intellectual and educational context”.19 the work’s execution started with a course on the history of science. in a report written in 1949—the last year that he himself taught the course—schurmann accounted for the advances made: the history of science’s books which integrated different libraries had begun to be filed; regarding the field’s dissemination, a series of articles on the “great milestones of science” had begun their publication within press media; and concerning research, an analysis of the historical background of science’s evolution in uruguay was being addressed, particularly by working on the trajectory of the main national figures and institutions of fields such as botany, biology, or astronomy. another aspect of the story begins in 1947, when the fhc’s board received a program proposal for a course in philosophy of science. the proposal had been advanced by desiderio 17. note from schurmann to the board of the fhc, 22/7/1947, docket 32, file 52, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 18. note from schurmann to the board of the fhc, 3/10/1947, p. 2, docket 32, file 52, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 19. note from schurmann to the board of the fhc, 3/10/1947, p. 2, docket 32, file 52, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 papp (1895-1993), a hungarian doctor in philosophy (a degree he obtained in 1917 from the university of budapest) who resided in argentina. as a student, papp had developed an interest in philosophy and philology, but in 1918 his focus started to move toward the sciences, in particular toward physics. in 1922 he encountered the work of authors such as friedrich dannemann, edmund hope and emile meyerson. in 1927 he moved to vienna, where he resided until 1938 when, after being prosecuted by the nazi regime, he had to emigrate, first to switzerland, then to paris—where he refined his knowledge in the history of astronomy and in the physico-mathematical sciences—and finally to spain. papp was a privatgelehrter in universities in both budapest and vienna, the latter being the place where he became well known as a disseminator of science through the publication of hundreds of articles in a diversity of journals. at the same time, papp began publishing books on the history of science.20 in 1942 he arrived in buenos aires, where he continued teaching at the university level and publishing his work. papp taught courses in epistemology (1947-1962) and in the scientific thinking (which was a course on the history of science) (1951-1962) at the fhc.21 in 1948 he was elected as a membre correspondant for the academia internacional de historia de la ciencia (international academy for the history of science), and in 1950, after mieli’s death, he continued—alongside josé babini—with the publication of the last volumes of the panorama general de la historia de la ciencia.22 before continuing with papp’s proposal, it should be noted that since the previous year the fhc had offered—within the context of the physico-mathematical sciences’ syllabus— an epistemology course that was taught by carlos evaristo prélat (1910-1980), an argentinian doctor in chemistry who had worked as a professor in argentinian universities, imparting courses on physico-chemistry and on the history of science. prélat was also a member of the grupo argentino de la unión internacional de historia de la ciencia and was one of the first argentinians to study and foment the history and epistemology of chemistry systematically. in this vein, between 1947 and 1950 he published three books, one of them in collaboration with papp.23 in 1946 prélat had become the chair of physico-chemistry at the fhc in montevideo. the main aspects of the program that he dictated while occupying such a position adumbrated his interest in the study of the discipline’s history. that same year, the fhc’s journal published two articles penned by him.24 in the course’s report that he presented, he suggested to the board that, in the future, the courses that encompass the “domains of the great field of the philosophy of history science should be advanced and multiplied, perhaps through the eventual creation of an institute of philosophy and of 20. for a list of his bibliography, see kohn loncarica 1993, 216-219. 21. between 1953 and 1954 he was substituted by francisco marciano due to the impossibility to travel between buenos aires and montevideo. 22. by the end of the 1950s he was invited by the universidad de concepción (chile) to dictate courses that were to introduce the teaching of the history of science and the history of medicine. in 1961 he was hired by the universidad de chile, in santiago, to teach and organize courses on the history of the organic and inorganic sciences. he resided in chile during 1961 and became a referent of the scientific community there. he received several awards and distinctions, such as the orden de bernardo o´higgins (1982) and the andrés bello medal from the universidad de chile (1977). he was also named an honorary citizen and a honoris-causa doctor from the universidad de concepción (1981). he died in buenos aires in 1993. 23. prélat, c. (1947). epistemología de la química. fundamentación observacional. buenos aires: espasacalpe; prélat, c. (1948). epistemología de las ciencias físicas. buenos aires: espasa-calpe; prélat, c. y papp, d. (1950). historia de los principios fundamentales de la química. buenos aires: espasa-calpe. 24. prélat, c. (1947). la afinidad química. evolución histórica de su concepto. revista de la facultad de humanidades y ciencias 1 (1): 275-303 and prélat, c. (1947). orientación epistemológica de la física actual. revista de la facultad de humanidades y ciencias 1 (2): 13-23. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 science, especially within a school with a character such as this one”.25 after 1948, however, he was unable to continue dictating his lectures in montevideo, impeded by the projected activities he had to perform in buenos aires. let me return to papp’s proposal. in a letter, papp remarked upon the interest of philosophy students and also of those belonging to the different scientific disciplines, both pure and applied, that a course on the philosophy of science generated. of this discipline, he affirmed: “it is founded, at least in our times, partly upon an interpretation of the sciences. in fact, the bond that brings together these two orders of knowledge has never been more strongly felt as in these decades [...]”.26 yet, papp’s letter also illuminated the relationship between the history and the philosophy of science, insofar as he contended that the analysis of the heuristic mechanism that permitted to find and ground our natural laws allows for frequent incursions into the history of those basic laws, and demands the exhibition of the personal procedures of their discoverers—the masters of scientific thought, whose cognitive paths, and sometimes even their mistakes, are filled with teachings. in this way, the course would also provide a glimpse into the organic development of the paths of the sciences that, together with the gnoseological criticism of the results obtained through research, constitute the internal history of the sciences, a history that vastly differs from its external one, the latter which only deals with the material and chronological development of the scientific disciplines.27 (emphasis in original) initially, given the budgetary limitations, papp was hired to dictate a common course in epistemology for the philosophy, history and biological sciences studies. years later, it was decided that a specialized course for the history student body should be created. in its 1947 ‘edition’, the epistemology course dealt with the ‘theory of space and time in science and philosophy’. in the seminar that accompanied the theoretical lectures, identité et realité was analyzed, a book written by meyerson, a philosopher whose thought had strongly influenced papp. in 1949, the course’s theme was the “conceptual innovation introduced by microphysics in the contemporary theory of knowledge”. special attention was paid to the quantum and wave theories of planck, bohr, schrödinger, heisenberg, and de broglie. throughout the course’s development, papp’s understanding of the history of science became clear. as papp wrote, the introductory lessons were to be devoted to the historical evolution of concepts throughout the history of philosophy and of science, and his lectures would then sketch […] the ideological scheme [of quantum theories], in order to expose in depth their epistemological repercussions, showing, particularly, the heuristic paths followed by its creators and the methodological media that allowed to transpose the experimental proceedings which functioned in our macrocosmic scale into a microcosmic one.28 25. prélat’s report, directed to the dean of the fhc, carlos vaz ferreira, 18/10/1947, docket 18, file 88, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 26. note from papp to the board of the fhc, 21/2/1947, p. 1, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 27. note from papp to the board of the fhc, 21/2/1947, p. 2-3, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 28. report from papp to the board of the fhc, 8/12/1949, p, 2, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 the 1951 epistemology program, for its part, dwelled upon the problems that accrued to the purpose and method of scientific knowledge, but papp made it clear that the intention was not […] to remain satisfied with a traditional abstract analysis of the methodological proceedings of science, which abound within textbooks. i pretend to provide the exposition with a different focus, showing the heuristic path truly followed by some of the great researchers such as galileo, harvey, newton, dalton, robert mayer and— among our contemporaries—plank, millikan and bohr, in their pursuits.29 but the most interesting aspect of the course was that, in the accompanying seminar, papp affirmed that he had detached himself from the traditional way of exposing the scientific method in still another way: we have studied […] the psychology of the scientific discovery, usually overlooked in methodological treatises, even when it shines a light on the psychogenesis of the discovery—in many cases, it even does so over the initial stage of the path followed by the discoverers.30 the authors that were dealt with that year in the accompanying seminar were duhem, bachelard, cassirer, eddington, maritain, and meyerson, names that reflected the main influences in papp’s thought. that same year, as was previously mentioned, a synthetic module on the history of science (the course entitled the scientific thought) was organized for the history students. in his report from the epistemology course dictated in 1950, papp signaled to the school’s board that there was an ongoing preoccupation within that part of the studentship, which related to the difficulty to follow the course’s content, due to their poor scientific formation and to the gap between the themes dealt with there and those studied in their history modules. when presenting himself to the call to applicants for the dictation of said course, and attending to the two difficulties mentioned, papp proposed: the curriculum for this [course] should include a synthetic exposition of the development of scientific thought, taking into account only the general principles and the relatively reduced core of the main empirical facts which ground the broader scientific theories […] [the course should also] present the evolution of the sciences in close connection with the ideological, socio-cultural, and even economic spheres that accompany it […] therefore establishing a link with the problems that the history student usually deals with […].31 the proposed course, thus, was different from the epistemology course, since it did not include the gnoseological critique of scientific concepts. however, it was to avoid being simply 29. note from papp, directed to the dean of the fhc, justino jiménez de aréchaga, 19/1/1951, p. 1, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 30. note from papp to the dean of the fhc, 29/1/1952, p. 2-3, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 31. note from papp to the dean of the fhc, justino jiménez de aréchaga, 10/1/1951, p. 1-2, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 12 […] —a history of science in its traditional guise—a coherent chronological exposition of the exploration of reality, given that the latter—as a register of theories and discoveries in their temporal unfolding—scarcely considers the socio-cultural context that acts as its framework […] my objective, however, should be functionally different than the one traditionally pursued by science historians. it should present the progressive acquisition of scientific knowledge within its human coordinates, trace its evolution in close parallelism to the rest of humankind’s history, evidence its uninterrupted interferences with socio-political factors. in a word, it should present the evolution of the sciences as an integral part of the development of humankind’s history. 32 (emphasis by the author) in order to show the unfolding of theories and discoveries, as well as the interrelations with the events that constituted their historical background, papp oriented the exposition of the course’s themes following the next contentions: 1the scientific theories and doctrines should be studied in their relationship with the epoch’s ideological sphere (religious beliefs and metaphysical convictions intervene in the structuring of science’s basic hypotheses, scientific theories possess a close relation to the contemporary philosophical doctrines); 2 as decisive as the contribution of genius figures to the progress of scientific knowledge can be, science must be understood as a social creation (it does not appear as an isolated epiphenomenon within the frame of the collective mindset, but is, instead, linked to the socio-cultural order of a determinate time); and 3the course should also touch upon the interference between the applied sciences and the world’s political history. one of the aims that oriented the course’s content was, therefore, explaining sciences’ function within the political and cultural history of the world. according to papp, three foci would allow underscoring the interactions that bring together the progressive acquisition of scientific knowledge, on the one hand, with the historical background, on the other. these were “1st – the relation of scientific progress with the ideological sphere of each epoch; 2nd – the interdependency between scientific progress and the social order and 3d – the repercussions of progress within the sciences over the world’s political history”.33 as has been manifested, the courses taught by papp were guided by his evolutive conception of science, and by the idea that history itself is the […] story of the resolution of scientific ideas, limiting itself to those that draw lines in the sand, to inflection points, changes in orientation, bifurcations on the—often tortuous—road followed by reason in its search for the real; itenerarium mentis ad veritatem, is the pilgrimage of intelligence towards truth. (papp 1993, 15) papp’s purpose was to provide a sketch of the most outstanding aspects in the history of science, centering himself on the most important figures of the evolution of scientific thought. the reasons were described by him as follows: even if the development of scientific knowledge and its multiple applications constitute a social work, a collective creation, we owe the primordial laws, the crucial discoveries, the general theories to a reduced group of researchers. a handful of personalities have produced the foundations and the columns that hold together the superb building of knowledge. (papp 1993, 15) 32. note from papp to the dean of the fhc, 28/1/1952, p. 2-3, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. 33. report from papp to the board of the fhc, 22/12/1952, p. 6, docket 40, file 176, archive of the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 13 in line with sarton, papp affirmed the intimate connection between science and its times, as well as with the cultural and social environment within which it was produced. nevertheless, much closer in this regard to the thought of alexandre koyré, he added: notwithstanding, assuming […] that the syracuse of the king hiero explains archimedes, and that the florence of the medici explains galileo, or pretending that the work of newton is conditioned by the transition of feudalism to capitalism, amounts to a blindness vis-à-vis the creative power of the genius, and leads to a distortion of the historical perspective […]. (papp 1993, 16) final considerations in 1937, schurmann described the situation of the history of science in uruguay as follows: […] aside from the valuable labor performed in the history of mathematics by the engineer eduardo garcía de zúñiga and in the history of medicine by doctors rosello and schiaffino, and aside from my own modest collaboration to the study of the history of physics, a strongly defined interest in the history of science is yet to be observed here in uruguay […]. (schurmann 1937, 348) five years later, he would add: […] it can be argued that, from a cultural perspective, america is still to be weaned from its mother, europe, and that its period of dependency is far from over. but, inevitably, this period must sooner or later come to an end, since america must construct its own culture […]. (schurmann 1942, 2) a similar opinion was expressed by rey pastor (1947, 125) when referring to the flood of publications in the history of science that from río de la plata was sweeping over spanishspeaking countries, even when he lamented that the original production was still very poor in quantity and quality. it was in that context that the emergent researchers of the nation who were interested in the history of science, such as schurmann and garcía de zúñiga, got involved with the field’s development. they established and maintained contact with internationally renowned figures from their field, conformed the grupo nacional de historia de la ciencia, published their works, made access to first-class bibliography possible, and even organized conferences and courses. it was also in this context that rey pastor, prélat, and papp, for example, arrived in uruguay: ‘visitors’ who proposed and taught new courses. notably, most of these intellectuals—both local and foreign—had originally studied some science (mathematics, physics, chemistry, for example) but did not have a systematic philosophical formation. all of them had virtually taught themselves philosophy. the case of papp, who had been awarded a philosophy degree, was the exception. however, papp’s work on the history of science did not have a philosophical angle, nor were his research and publications devoted to the philosophy of science. even his filosofía de las ciencias naturales (philosophy of the natural sciences) (1945), his most epistemological work, was written in a less rigorous style than the one usually found in the contemporary works specializing on the philosophy of physics—and this holds even for those works that he himself makes reference to in his own work (cassini 2017, 64). additionally, the history of science usually practiced by the aforementioned figures focused on periodization, chronicling scientific discoveries and publications, or on enumerating dates and authors. it was a history of science highly indebted to sarton and the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 14 mieli, authors who had brought together the history of science with the cultural history within which the former belonged. that was the spirit of the first courses on the history of science taught in uruguay, particularly within the fhc. once again, the case of papp was exceptional, since his work was also influenced by thinkers of the french tradition, as has been pointed out already. several factors came together and prevented this first attempt from anchoring itself institutionally, thus developing the history of science in uruguay. one of them was the lack of continuity given to the projects. an illustrative example was the attempt, based on a proposal by schurmann, to institutionalize the discipline in the fhc. this attempt, still in its initial stages, came to a sudden halt when schurmann left the institution. this exposes yet another important factor: the fact that the natural place for the history of science in uruguay was a non-professional school —one whose goal was knowledge for knowledge’s sake—, in which the professionalization of the disciplines (both scientific and humanistic), was not an ideal to chase. this is partly why, throughout the period examined in this article, the institution did not provide adequate academic infrastructure, nor the conditions necessary to form new generations of professional intellectuals and researchers within the discipline. a way to assess the introduction or the emergence of an intellectual tradition or of a new discipline within a nation is by focusing on how and through which means do intellectual currents arrive to it. as santos herceg notes (2012), one of the most chosen paths through which new ideas penetrate a nation is through its “visitors”. for uruguay, maintaining constant relations with the exterior—something usually achieved through the lengthy stays of international figures—was vital to cultivate or to strengthen the disciplines that had insufficient or no antecedents at all. in the case of the history of science, as we have seen, the influx of european professors residing in argentina was noteworthy. these foreign professors were the ones that, together with the local proponents of the discipline, conformed the group that promoted the growth of the history of science from the second quarter of the 20th century onwards. following this same analytical path, it is also interesting to assess the different activities performed by those “visitors”: did they create new research centers? did they publish their works? did they leave behind a school of thought? in that sense, even when papp was a lecturer at the fhc for over a decade (1947 to 1962), there is no evidence that a research community was forged around him. the hungarian philosopher lectured in the country, yet it was a country to which, intellectually, he was never fully integrated: he did not settle, published, or did research in uruguay. papp travelled back and forth between buenos aires and montevideo, yet all of his intellectual life and production stayed on the other side of the rio de la plata. references cassini, alejandro. 2017. los orígenes de la filosofía de la ciencia en argentina. cuadernos de filosofía, 69: 59-76. cheroni, alción. 1992. eduardo garcía de zúñiga. un humanista militante. gaceta universitaria, 6(1): 37-38. martínez, maría laura. 1994. fondo garcía de zúñiga de historia de la ciencia: fuentes e historiografía, galileo, segunda época, 10: 35-79. mieli, aldo. 1951. panorama general de historia de la ciencia. la eclosión del renacimiento. vol 3. buenos aires: espasa-calpe. papp, desiderio. 1945. filosofía de las leyes naturales. buenos aires: espasa-calpe. papp, desiderio. 1993. ideas revolucionarias en la ciencia. vol. i. santiago de chile: editorial universitaria. the early days of the history of science in uruguay: its first courses and practitioners maría laura martínez transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 15 parís de oddone, blanca. (coord.) 1995. historia y memoria: medio siglo de la facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación, 1945-1995. montevideo: udelar-fhce. plá, cortés. 2003. el instituto de historia y filosofía de la ciencia de la universidad nacional del litoral. saber y tiempo, 4(16): 91-102. rey pastor, julio. 1947. historia de la ciencia en el plata. realidad. revista de ideas. 1(1): 121125. santos herceg, josé. 2012. visitantes europeos. el eurocentrismo del desarrollo institucional de la filosofía chilena. intus-legere filosofía 6(2): 9-26. schurmann, paul. 1937. la historia de la ciencia y su introducción en enseñanza secundaria. anales de enseñanza secundaria, ii (4): 347-351. schurmann, paul. 1942. el problema de la cultura. el instituto de estudios superiores y don eduardo garcía de zúñiga. montevideo: instituto de estudios superiores. microsoft word olano layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-13 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) cernuschi vs. papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano1 [http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9461-8749] abstract: this paper aims to revisit the intellectual tension in the river plate region surrounding a dispute between the hungarian philosopher desiderio papp and the argentine-uruguayan physicist félix cernuschi when they were contenders for the chair of scientific thought at the school of humanities and sciences of the universidad de la república in uruguay. their disagreement was personal, political, and philosophical and divided the waters among the emerging community of physicists in the region and a group of actors who, for some time, had been devoted to the history of science in the universities of the region. the history of science constituted the battleground out of which it would emerge how science should be understood in a uruguayan university that, historically speaking, had been remiss in providing an appropriate space for its development. in revisiting this event, this paper seeks to throw light on the present situation of an almost non-existent history of science in uruguay. keywords: historiography of science in uruguay; félix cernuschi; desiderio papp; school of humanities and sciences; history and philosophy of science in latin america. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ how can the historiography of science be reconstructed in a desert? the study of the history of science in uruguay can be likened to a desert. in the first place, because up to the present, it is not institutionally cultivated in any university or research centre, nor is it fostered by any academic society or professional organisation. in the second place, it is a very difficult project to think about the task involved in cultivating the discipline on such an arid, forgotten field, subsumed under the approaches of other disciplines such as 1 juan a. queijo olano is a professor in the department of history and philosophy of science at the facultad de humanidades y ciencias de la educación, universidad de la república. address: edificio central – avenida uruguay 1695 – 11.200 montevideo – uruguay. e-mail: juan.queijo@gmail.com cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 epistemology, which fulfilled – in their ways – some of the tasks associated with the history of science. this makes historiographic reconstruction of the history of science in uruguay all the more complex because the various signs of life – work produced by researchers, which, from the perspective of their disciplines described the history of one or another discipline – lead us to isolated narratives of discontinued experiences, but not to the account of a history of science going beyond individual track records and which is, at the very least, an institutional concern. so, faced with the task of entering the desert with no other certainty than seeking out the isolated accounts of the history of medicine, of mathematics, or of chemistry, the driving motivation behind this paper is to understand how this almost-vacant situation was reached. this way of reconstructing the historiography of science in the country is driven by a widerreaching explanatory purpose: to provide justifications that will allow us to understand why it was not possible to form a fertile field for the study of the history of science, in spite of mid-twentieth century leading exponents practising the discipline in a professional and outstanding manner. this study seeks to find an interpretation of an event – the dispute sustained by hungarian philosopher desiderio papp and argentine-uruguayan physicist félix cernuschi when they were contenders for the chair of scientific thought, in 1950. this reconstruction effort also means finding documentary sources beyond those provided by institutions. this study analyses a variety of sources, which open up roads yet to be explored. the main documentary corpus is taken from the school of humanities and sciences (facultad de humanidades y ciencias, fhs) archives, mainly consisting of the personal documentary files of the protagonists of the event, as well as the proceedings of the fhs council. in addition, there are reports taken from journals and magazines of the period, such as ciencia e investigación, the journal of the argentine association for the progress of science, and also correspondence found in the guido beck archives in the brazilian centre for physics research. the dispute and its context on december 22, 1950, a resolution taken by the council of the school of humanities and sciences approved the call for candidates to teach a course on “scientific thought”, as part of the ba course in history. the creation of this course sought to remedy the “insufficient scientific training” of history students (fhs archives 1951). the proposal for the creation of the course had come from philosopher desiderio papp pollack, a hungarian professor who had been teaching epistemology since 1947. papp was also the author of many books specialising in the history of science, well-known in the spanish speaking world. together with papp, was another candidate for the position, the uruguayan-born, argentinaand cambridge-educated félix cernuschi, who had held the chair of astronomy in the school since 1949. as the fhs council was proceeding to study the applicants’ files, on march 2, 1951, professor cernuschi sent a note strongly denouncing desiderio papp, making two accusations against him: firstly, of having lied in his cv when papp held a post at the university of tucumán, in 1946, where he stated that he had been a professor at the university of vienna, which was later checked and found to be untrue (fhs archive 1951c). cernuschi’s second accusation referred to papp’s academic quality: mr papp’s books are simply for a general readership and even if they did not contain errors, they could not be considered of sufficient merit for university teaching. mr papp’s books are filled with false concepts and ideas that clearly show mr papp’s lack of scientific training. he may have some literary training, but i do not like to give an cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 opinion on matters i have no understanding of. (fhs archive, 1951d, emphasis in the original.) the note gave rise to a situation between the two men, as well as within the council, that ran on for several months and was even taken to court. the tension, as we shall see, hid a far more complex undercurrent than a simple confrontation between academics. in order to understand the whole story, we must move back in time, as well as geographically. scientists and peronism first, we will need to go back from 1950 to 1943, from uruguay to argentina, from the universidad de la república to the university of tucumán. in june 1943, a military coup in argentina ousted ramón castillo’s government. a good part of the scientific and academic communities holding university positions started to publicly express their discontent over the increasing authoritarianism advancing into some universities, such as the early intervention in the university of el litoral in santa fe (buchbinder 2010, 145). among the most prominent argentine academics was félix cernuschi, who, on november 15, 1943, was separated from his post in the department of astronomy of the university of tucumán (unt) and forced to flee the country because of political persecution. the university, created in 1914, had been founded following the university of la plata model, an avant-garde university in the continent due to its clearly scientific profile. within the scientific development framework of the unt, physics played a uniquely important role when german physicist josé würschmidt was hired in 1925. würschmidt’s work, creating both human and material resources for the practice of physics, was decisive for the country as a whole, but very specifically too for cernuschi and papp, as they were hired to work in the new areas würschmidt had opened up. würschmidt was responsible for establishing the institute of physics at the unt in 1931, the physics teacher training programme for the province, and the undergraduate physics programme in 1943 (tagashira 2012, 97-98). italian mathematician alessandro terracini and cernuschi propelled the development of the institute of physics within the country and out into the region, integrating its production to that of existing scientific associations. one of the most significant milestones was the publication of the revista de matemáticas y física teórica (journal of mathematics and theoretical physics) in 1940, which included a previously unpublished article by albert einstein in its second issue (luciano 2020). although this small group of physicists had established the ba courses in physics and mathematics at the university of tucumán, several of the most renowned academics of this new university did not escape persecution from the de facto government. in november 1943, by order of the executive power, cernuschi was stripped of his job, which started political persecution that prevented him from finding employment of any kind in argentine universities. desiderio papp’s led an eventful life, full of incidents that included escaping nazi persecution in vienna, spain and france. he finally arrived in argentina in 1945, where he obtained a position at the university of tucumán after working for other buenos aires institutions. but the following year, 1946, with the unt intervened by the state, papp was dismissed due to his claim, included in his cv, that he had been a professor in vienna. for the same reason he was expelled from the argentine physics association (afa), where he was an active member. this was a crucial point because, through the afa, a crusade against papp’s publications was embarked upon by a community of physicians (and even philosophers) – and not only against his publications, but against his person, against his cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 philosophy of the history of science, and at the same time questioning his moral integrity.2 in order to understand more clearly why he was rejected, it is also necessary to realise that once juan domingo perón became president, his minister of health, ramón carrillo, with whom papp had forged a strong friendship, decided to hire him to teach a course on the history of science at the medical association (fhs archives 1951i; kohn loncarica 1994, 205). so that papp could, in effect, be hired for the post, the matter of his dismissal had to be resolved, as a professor at a state university could not take on a new government post after having been dismissed from another post by the same government – a government, in fact, led by someone who was the focal point of strong criticism and resistance, voiced by the argentine scientific community. so, coming back to 1950 and the fhs, it is clear to see that the dispute for the chair was highly charged with political implications, which were neither passing nor contingent, nor merely personal or in connection with the post itself. the incidents bear on cernuschi’s animosity towards papp, whom he constantly accused of being a “spy for perón’s government”, underscoring the division between the scientific community and political power that had permeated argentina since 1946. but to this, we should add another philosophical dimension, referring to the ways of understanding what is truly implied in constructing scientific knowledge. setting academic standards cernuschi’s second objection to papp is connected to whether he was academically qualified to teach a course such as scientific thought. we have seen that cernuschi considered papp’s publications as “simply for a general readership”, and even if they did not present errors, “they cannot be considered of sufficient merit for university teaching”. notice that in addition to the ethical question concerning alleged lies in papp’s cv about his educational background, he is further accused of not having the expected academic level to qualify for university teaching, based on what can be deduced from his literary work. this fact allows us to see that the criteria that papp and cernuschi, respectively, considered appropriate as academic qualifications greatly differed. cernuschi’s accusation is based on his own academic track record, and those of his colleagues. it should be remembered that cernuschi graduated as an engineer in buenos aires, and, on the recommendation of the physicist enrique gaviola, he went to england to study for a phd in physics. once he was accepted as a doctoral candidate at magdalene college, cambridge, he devoted his studies to statistical physics, under paul dirac. this is a branch of quantum mechanics which using probability, seeks to describe a system of particles under the general laws of the quantum world (isaacs 1996). this use of mathematics to resolve problems in physics by linking the two great phenomenal dimensions of the world had been undergoing extensive research since the 1930s in the most prominent physics centres in europe and the united states and would later be of great use to cernuschi for his work on astronomy. it is important to point out, in order to understand cernuschi’s dispute with papp, that cernuschi’s formative studies reveal someone entirely immersed in the scientific community of physicists in those decades, which was organised and oriented entirely to the resolution of problems connected with understanding matter, its composition and behaviour, using strictly defined tools and techniques. during his years in england, 2 it should be pointed out that before the irregularities in his cv were discovered, papp’s participation in, and ties to, the scientific community in argentina went undisputed and were recognised. in 1945, in buenos aires, the first colloquium of history and philosophy of science took place, sponsored by the argentine union of mathematics and the spanish cultural institute. rey pastor, papp, lindemann, terracini, mieli, würschmidt, beppo levi, josé luis massera, among others, were active participants. (revista unión matemática argentina 1946, 211-212) cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 cernuschi wrote a number of papers published by the mathematical proceedings of the cambridge philosophical society, which set out his initial research interests (cernuschi 1936; cernuschi 1938). in 1939 he published a paper in le journal de physique et le radium on neutrons which continued the line of research begun in england (cernuschi 1937), and was the basis for his relationship with radiochemist moïse haïssinsky, of the institute de radium, which had been directed by marie curie (giambiagi and giambiagi 1996). on his return to argentina, he positioned his work firmly in the field of astronomy. thus, the study of neutrons is taken as the crux to understanding the nature of supernovas in his 1939 articles in the journal physical review (cernuschi 1939a; cernuschi 1939b; cernuschi 1939c), published at the time when he was working together with gaviola in the national observatory in córdoba. these are his first studies in astronomy, the discipline which was to figure in the dispute with papp about the qualifications and academic production needed to lead the chair of scientific thought. on the other hand, papp did not write for academic journals: he wrote as an author. he did not write papers or articles; he wrote books. his work was not peer-reviewed; he was “reviewed” by readers. nevertheless, his work does not lack references to authors, concepts and terms connected with the study of the discipline. there is no doubting his erudite knowledge of historical periods, explanatory models, instruments for each period, or archaic ways of calculating the position of stars in the firmament. but this does not appear to be the field of modern theoretical physics, based on mathematics, in which the world of astronomy was immersed from the beginnings of the 20th century. this marks an insurmountable difference between the two men, summed up in one of the notes cernuschi presented to the fhs council stating the reasons why he had applied for the post: i decided to respond to the call not only because i was and am deeply interested in the subject of the course (in order to understand scientific thought, it is of supreme importance to have worked in some of the specific branches of science and especially in the more evolved ones, such as the so-called exact sciences) but also so that the governing council might have the chance to seriously consider reviewing and investigating mr desiderio papp’s academic background. (fhs archives 1951e) the criteria regarding what is scientifically acceptable in cernuschi’s view, lie in having practised science in order to be able to speak with authority on issues related to the history of science. in other words, the history of science must be forged by someone who has made science. but once again, this strong and structured position does not spring from the dispute produced by the call; rather, the dispute also has a history and a context which allows us to recognise the tension involving two strong philosophical positions in the region. therefore, we should go back to 1945, when papp published his filosofía de las leyes naturales (the philosophy of natural laws), a book that produced a division of the waters about understanding the history of science. the journal ciencia e investigación (science and research, the publication of the argentine association for the advancement of science) of that year, published a review by an austrian philosopher, hans a. lindemann. lindemann had been invited to write an article for the first issue of minerva, a journal begun by a young mario bunge, then a physics student. the publication has been considered the first example in the continent of the scientific philosophy born out of the vienna circle. lindemann’s criticism of papp’s book in ciencia e investigación is harsh: for the student or the non-specialist scientific researcher who might wish for guidance referring to the problem with the book, the fact is that it actually is dangerous because, instead of precise definitions, it is filled with badly-defined concepts, often contradictory, which will only trouble the unsuspecting reader, and not provide the necessary clarity and precision on the majority of the philosophical and cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 epistemological problems dealt with in the text. everything purely physical, rural, is treated with undoubted mastery and knowledge. (lindemann 1945, 461) papp responded to this critique in the issue for december of the same year of the same magazine. his argument in reply is based on repositioning metaphysics as a crucial element of scientific research: lindemann should know that any proposition adopted about the relationship between idea and object will inevitably lead to the metaphysical thesis, which is necessarily hidden within all scientific propositions. a science eliminating metaphysics completely would be renouncing the reality of the objects it investigates and would be unable to admit that the laws of nature are knowable by the human spirit. (papp 1945b, 580) to reconcile the differences between the two men would obviously mean entering areas that are beyond the scope of this paper because it would imply not only reviewing their philosophical starting points, but also the philosophy of the scientific currents they claim to represent. however, what is, in fact, of interest is that the reception of papp’s work, criticised by cernuschi, was also negative within a larger circle of scientists and philosophers. for example, in a letter to josé würschmidt, physicist guido beck, who was working in the national observatory in córdoba and was bunge’s tutor at the time, comments on the diatribe in ciencia e investigación, pointing out the author’s questionable attitude regarding lindemann’s critique: much worse is papp’s reply to lindemann’s critique (c e i, december 1945). the fact that papp is upset about the criticism as a human being is understandable, but as a scientist, he should be able to put that aside. if an author has very good factual reasons to complain about criticism, he should lodge complaints with the editor’s office, demand more factual criticism in future, and possibly a second critique from an independent source. in no event should he degrade a journal by exhibiting a dispute between an author and his critic about whether the critique is “bad” or “good”. additionally, mr papp does not attempt to adopt a factual position regarding the critique; rather, he simply states that the critique “was not justified on any point”. he seems to want to counter the criticism by attempting to deny mr lindemann’s factual competence. this is completely inadmissible and goes beyond the scope of the problem itself. it damages the legitimate interests of the critic, the journal, and its readers. (videira and puig 2020, 236) years later, it was clear that resistance to papp had not waned: in 1949, in a letter to cernuschi, lindemann maintained his unchained judgement of the work carried out by the hungarian philosopher: let me tell you frankly that i have little faith in papp’s knowledge of physics. although i’m not a physicist, i do have some understanding of the subject thanks to the classes i attended by schlick and other physicists in vienna. it was only not to offend rey pastor, who protected papp, that i praised his knowledge of physics. unfortunately, it is always inferior people that dr rey pastor chooses to protect. i really do not know why! (fhs archives 1949) another name now crops up: julio rey pastor. julio rey pastor held a very different position from that of cernuschi and beck, which in some ways meant firm support for papp’s production. it is important to point out rey pastor’s high positioning within the river plate’s nascent scientific community (ortiz 2011). cernuschi himself named rey pastor as a great cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 mentor in his university days, the first of his teachers to encourage him to pursue a scientific career (cernuschi 1994, 39). but the fact is that rey pastor also had a background as a historian of mathematics, a side he developed following a visit to berlin and munich, where he studied the work of sixteenth-century spanish mathematicians. this interest in the history of science probably explains his understanding of the nature of papp’s work, far from the hard positions characteristic of his students, such as cernuschi. a significant point in the discussion on the quality of filosofía de las leyes naturales must refer to the fact that the introduction to the work was written by rey pastor himself. in a letter written by rey pastor to guido beck, where he mentions his “personal” disagreement with the argentine physics association, he includes a paragraph about papp’s work, showing the usefulness of this kind of philosophy for a scientific education: in my last letter, i forgot about the papp affair; i truly believe you are being too hard on him. clearly his place is not in an observatory or experimental course, but this is a pedagogic institute whose mission is formative, and for this, i think that, rather than complicated formulating, it is more effective to give basic ideas on the structure of the world and to study the interesting and dramatic history of astronomy. in the other secondary education teacher-training institutes there are similar courses, which, judging from their performance, seem destined to produce hatred for the science of the stars, based as they are on series and trigonometry formulae. (…) i am certain that papp´s performance would be infinitely more competent, even if we did not take into account his superiority regarding culture and general knowledge of every kind, in comparison with the average argentine university environment (videira and puig 2020, 250-251). however, beck’s position did not appear to be changing. in the same letter he wrote to josé würschmidt, beck commented on an article by papp published in ciencia e investigación, el 50 aniversario del descubrimiento de los rayos x (on the 50th anniversary of the discovery of x-rays), dedicated to the memory of wilhelm röntgen (papp 1945, 491-492), saying “it is not very apt and contains many more words that content. it is in the worst south american tradition” (videira and puig 2020, 236). i should like to pause at beck’s last comment, because it will allow us to enter one of the matters of greatest interest to this group of physicists, that of eradicating types of intellectual work they considered empty, mere empty words. this is the “worst tradition” that bunge and lindemann pronounced against philosophy from the few issues of minerva that were published. bunge himself was to recall in his academic memoir the case against papp as a case of scientific fraud,3 showing how that episode carved out a chasm between the emerging scientific community and a south american philosophy established in universities that based their studies and courses on german-language authors or philosophers like ortega y gasset (salmerón 1991). this allows us to see that the standards and criteria that the group of physicists sought to impose 3 bunge writes: “other cases of fraud in which the afa was involved were those connected to the science historian, hungarian desiderio papp, and the german physicist guillermo klein. both had escaped from nazism at the last moment. papp wrote several popular books on the history of science. he also attended some afa meetings, where he was admitted because he was thought to possess a phd in astrophysics from the university of vienna. when talking to him, gaviola suspected that this was not true, and once the war was over, he wrote to the university of vienna to enquire about papp’s thesis. the answer was that there was no trace of his doctorate. this contributed to explaining why papp’s published works were superficial, only limited to listing the production of his characters. an afa meeting expelled papp. but he seemed not to care, and continued publishing, because he and my friend, mathematician josé babini, were the only historians of science left in the country after the death of aldo mieli” (bunge 2014, 92-93). cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 were not reduced exclusively to their own field of science, rather, they constituted a form of intellectual life based on the precepts of scientism. empiricism and rationalism: a philosophical dispute in ethical and professional terms, the different ways of understanding how to approach academic life divided the waters, with cernuschi and the physicists defending one side, and papp, supported by rey pastor, defending the other. the distance between them was also expressed in the philosophical realm, where both assumed irreconcilable positions, as can be seen from the discussion which arose over the book filosofía de las leyes naturales. the book’s arguments must have been quite provocative for a physicist working in the first decades of the 20th century, when so much progress was made in the description of the subatomic world, especially through the construction of experiments. for papp, and this is stated in the opening pages of the first chapter, la ley y el espacio (law and space): science – despite what is said in handbooks about the empirical bases and inductive methods of galilean physics and consequently present-day physics – has never forgotten its euclidean origins; its spirit has never been fundamentally unfaithful to its geometrical ancestry. throughout all its history, science has preserved a nostalgia, more or less manifest, for its hellenic and geometrical filiation. (papp 1945, 18) cernuschi openly rejected this premise in his arguments against the quality of papp’s work which he presented at the fhs council: (…) the thesis underpinning his book: he raises from the dead rationalism long left behind. as is well known, for descartes and leibniz, physics was an extension of mathematics. descartes strove to despise experience and replace the world of physics with a world “which is the object of geometrical speculation”. hegel believed that science could become a great tautology awaiting an explanatory principle coming from “another place”. we could go on, referring to many philosophers who developed various aspects of rationalism. what is a novelty to me, are the contradictory and nonsensical arguments used by mr papp to “defend” a defunct thesis. (fhs archives 1951, 79) for cernuschi, “the relationships required by knowledge of the physical world cannot be ‘deducible’ from the demands made by our reason”. for this point, he resorts to examples that show that things that are, are not explained by the necessity of the deductions of thought: for example, that our planet has only one satellite, and not 2 or 3; nor that newton’s law of gravity is shaped by the necessity of reason. cernuschi’s point is that the laws of the physical world do not manifest any necessity whatsoever, they are synthetic a posteriori propositions, whose value is “probabilistic”. to sustain the opposite, as mr papp does, it is necessary to be unaware of the genesis and verifiability of scientific knowledge, the history of science, and elementary notions of epistemology. (fhs archives 1951h, 79-80) a second point in the discussion, derived from this great dispute on how scientific knowledge is effectively constructed, and which will probably help explain even better the disagreements with lindemann mentioned above, has to do with the philosophy of science and the understanding of science built on the precepts of logical positivism. this point in the dispute is expressed in the second chapter of the book, las leyes naturales, ¿son leyes de la cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 naturaleza? (are natural laws laws of nature?). papp’s purpose is to show, as has been stated, the existence of a necessary metaphysics underlying the entire series of theories and laws produced in the field of physics, especially from the third decade of the 20th century on: unlike philosophical thought, scientific thought admits, in its striving to forge an intelligible image of the phenomena it confronts, more or less consciously, three metaphysical hypotheses. it accepts the reality of the outside world; it is convinced a priori that the inconsistency in the area of phenomena, and the disorder in their progress through time, conceal laws; finally, it assumes that laws are rational, knowable by the spirit. (papp 1945, 64) papp goes on to discuss the philosophical bases of the vienna circle, recognising ernst mach’s authority on the subject and the attitude of physicists such as heisenberg, born and jordan, who worked on a “physics of the observable”. the problem for papp lies, precisely, in reducing what he calls the “being” to “the complex of our perceptions; the physical real to the psychic content of our conscience”. so, in his view, so-called positivism “vaporises all that is positive into appearance without reality”, and “makes visible and palpable nature a mere tissue of our representations”. the most immediate and radical consequence which should arise from this doctrine, according to papp, is a fall into a solipsism “of the ‘i’ locked forever in the narrow prison of perceptions, powerless to know a thing of any kind of the world around us. this sterility will be the price to pay for having eliminated from science every hypothesis, every non-observable mental construct, the fatal recompense for having expelled metaphysics” (papp 1945, 64-65). cernuschi’s reply to this was that it was “impossible” to reconstruct a “more clumsy caricature of the vienna circle, or of logical empiricism”. and in order to discredit the positions defended by papp, his resource was to cite an authority on the subject, arthur eddington, who was not a member of the viennese movement, but whose book philosophy of physical science defends empiricist modes of knowledge. the exchange between the two contenders follows cernuschi’s analysis of every example papp gives in the book, although the argument always really lay in the eternal dispute between radically rationalist positions and radically empiricist ones. one of these was about defining whether galileo effectively constructed his knowledge by following deductive modes or whether it was based on induction, carrying out various scientific experiments in a laboratory. again, their positions are so absolutely and radically opposite, that from certain passages found in the documents consulted, it appears unlikely to reach, as both men must have hoped at the time, some definitive resolution regarding these contrastive readings. the end of the story told from the present the council of the school of humanities and sciences of the universidad de la república decided to give papp the chair. the advisory committee, composed of two members, the dean, jiménez de aréchaga (a constitutional lawyer who, because of the repercussions of this affair – among other matters – resigned in 1951), and the biologist clemente estable, did not reach an agreement. the council’s argument was centred mainly on the first point of cernuschi’s denouncement: papp’s moral suitability, his “imposture” and the questionable relevance of this past situation on the present tender, which was taking place five years later. papp won, with five votes in favour, and two abstentions. cernuschi got no votes. this might lead us to think that all this small academic battle gave us papp as a winner. but in fact, this has not been the case, if one looks at the present-day situation: history of science is a great desert in the universidad de la república. cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 how was it that, with papp having won the tender for professor of scientific thought, his work was not continued through some of his students, following and expanding his lines of thought? it is very likely that the fact that papp did not live in montevideo, but travelled every week from buenos aires to teach his classes, might have made it difficult for him to be academically ambitious in montevideo. papp worked in the fhs until 1963, and was succeeded by the philosopher mario otero, who replaced him as professor of epistemology and of scientific thought. several years later, otero founded the department of history and philosophy of science, but the philosophical profile adopted did not pursue the historical interest noted in papp’s work. in his inaugural lecture as chair of epistemology in 1964, otero spoke about the current situation and functions of the philosophy of science. in the lecture, he described the kind of programme he was seeking to develop: to have the aim of elucidating the telos of scientific thought is the ultimate task, to be undertaken only in the light of specific investigations focussed on the various aspects of concrete scientific knowledge. the opposite approach might seem very “profound”, but it will inexorably lead to vagueness, to rampant speculation, or to chattering about science with a capital letter. the most appropriate method to avoid both that nebulous focus as well as its opposite, pedestrian particularising scientism, is that which proceeds to studies of increasing generalisation which at every stage will hold, by means of rational reconstruction, scientific action and theorising. this is precisely what the philosophy of science attempts to do. (otero 2019, 26) later on in his speech, as if trying to return to the old arguments sparked by the philosophy of natural laws almost twenty years before, otero expounds two modes of doing philosophy of science “which are not necessarily in opposition”: i) one is exemplified in the works of authors such as meyerson, duhem and bachelard, key authors for papp; ii) the other mode is that originated in the manifest of the vienna circle. it is interesting to note that for otero it is the latter mode which should be practiced, not for its empiricist theses, nor for its rejection of metaphysics or for sustaining the dichotomies of analytic and synthetic propositions. what the new scientific philosophy offered, as a distinctive and determining element, was [the] very mode of doing philosophy of science based on dialogue and on criticism; it is the collective mode of doing philosophy (…). in our understanding it is precisely the use of these means of communication and philosophical dialogue, so often overlooked, that constitutes the fundamental and characteristic element of the study of the philosophy of science today. (otero 2019, 29) the dispute over the chair of scientific thought allows us to recognise certain elements soliciting our reflection in more detail about the past of the history and philosophy of science in uruguay. furthermore, it seeks out the old disputes within the later context of these spaces devoted to the reflection on science. far from an administrative struggle, the dispute was rather a grand discussion on the consolidation of a scientific authority within a university and a country attempting to begin developing in that direction; the way this discussion occurred helps us understand – to a certain degree – some aspects of the desertlike situation i have referred to. at the end of his inaugural lecture, otero took the time to thank all those who had guided him in his formative years, and had contributed to his attaining the chair of epistemology. among the names on that select list is cernuschi’s, but there is no mention at all of his predecessor in the position, desiderio papp, who had held that same chair for over 15 years. the dispute stemming from the question of university ethics, cernuschi’s arguments as read in his texts, and the implacable hardness of his actions, should not be explained as cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 alien to the circle of physicists he was part of. undoubtedly, the construction of the discipline of physics in those years being in the hands of the first professional physicists of the river plate area, most of whom had been in contact with elite scientific circles, meant that it was them who would impose the criteria they considered necessary and inalienable to institutionalise science in the continent’s universities. in an article published in 1952 by the newsletter of the asociación uruguaya para el progreso de la ciencia (uruguayan association for the advancement of science), cernuschi referred to the matter concerning universities and the conditions needed for the proper development of scientific research. among several points, cernuschi pointed out that “the spirit of scientific research is the preeminent condition for a true social morality to blossom, because one of its inexorable pillars must be the defence and verification of truth” (cernuschi 1952, 8-11). these standards linking the professional activity of science to a moral hierarchy in society, are not a mere whim of cernuschi’s. the same attitude is present in the writings of enrique gaviola and bernardo houssay. this moral ruling of the proper way for a university scientist to act worked as a cohesive element among the first professional physicists in the region; it is something less tangible than scientific interests but apparently of similar relevance when defining an academic community. this ethical aspect was connected not only to scientific fraud but to explicit positioning when confronting governments which – like perón’s – differed greatly with the science universities were attempting to develop. neither should we leave aside the difficulties arising in connection with the reception of logical positivism in latin american universities in those years; nor the triumph of “spirituality”, as pointed out by ardao, in the uruguayan university of the beginning of the 20th century. in some ways, criticism of papp is also a criticism of what was understood as “the worst south american tradition” of philosophy (videira and puig 2020, 236). this is why the dispute is lodged within a more general framework. undoubtedly, papp’s vindication of metaphysics was seen as an element to be unconditionally attacked. and the members of the circle of empiricist physicists did so, both in public and in their personal correspondence. now, why was the dispute about the professorship of scientific thought so important? this paper offers some hypotheses in order to try and understand why this is so, based on available documents, together with hypotheses regarding the matter of the burgeoning growth in academic institutions of courses seeking to understand the past of scientific practice. we must not forget that the course itself was created because historians’ training was sorely lacking concerning science. to that effect, physicists and philosophers who united against papp’s ethics, political action and philosophy, believed that these spaces for epistemological training, such as the chair of scientific thought, were of the utmost relevance for the fostering of science in highly professionalist universities, not oriented in epistemological terms towards the new scientific philosophy. it is not by chance that the interest in the history of science, especially in the post-war period, should have become a new concern for scientists, as here too, it seemed that the question of all science’s legitimacy might be called to account. it was in the general context of the post-war years that science attained unprecedented social relevance, especially physics. in actual fact, rey pastor’s position and concern over the attacks against papp’s work should be understood as those of a scientist worried about the course taken by the construction of narratives about the history of science.4 even in the incipient conditions available in the river plate area, the importance of disputing the criteria upon which to define how and in what way to practice science was of crucial concern to scientists, historians, and philosophers. but there is a further aspect which 4 julio rey pastor had by then published several books on the history of science: ciencia abstracta y filosofía natural (abstract science and natural philosophy) (1923); la ciencia y la técnica en el descubrimiento de américa (science and technology in the discovery of america (1945); historia de la matemática (history of mathematics), with josé babini (1951). cernuschi vs papp: the uruguayan dispute over the history of science juan a. queijo olano transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 12 motivated debates: who should safeguard the criteria. that is, who would establish the validating criteria of what science was, and consequently, what we should consider the word applies to today. in other words, the dispute was a battle for authority over science. this battle is not only fought in the analysis of the epistemological positions of the two opponents but also by taking into account this dimension in connection with several others, such as ethics and politics. what is science, and who should be its spokesperson, was part of the fight which for the physicists of the region – among others – had to be fought not only against political power but also within the very universities themselves. references archives of the school of humanities and sciences. 1949. letter from lindemann to félix cernuschi, may 22. archives of the school of humanities and sciences. 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(org.) 2020. guido beck: the career of a theoretical physicist seen through his correspondence. são paulo: livraria da física. microsoft word bardi layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-11 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal article the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi1 – https://orcid.org/0000.0002-9440-2849 abstract: the year 2023 marks the 550th anniversary of the birth of the polish scholar nicolaus copernicus. usually deemed one of the most emblematic examples of the scientific revolution and the theory of paradigm shift in the history of science, the heliocentric theory proposed by copernicus in 1543 has fed the minds of philosophers and historians for centuries. recently, increasing attention has been put on the recognition of the sources that might have influenced copernicus’s creativity. the outcomes showed that the claims on paradigm shift are pretty shaky, because copernicus was deliberately in dialogue with ancient greek and arabic authors, and his on the revolutions of the celestial spheres deliberately emulates ptolemy’s almagest. in this sense, the essence of the scientific revolution is more an attempt to recreate the debate with ancient authors then a breaking with their paradigms. this study takes a closer examination of copernicus’s early draft on heliocentrism, the commentariolus (1510-1515 ca.) and it argues that the birth of the heliocentric theory was first conceived as an attempt to write an archimedes-like treatise, while the efforts to emulate ptolemy come at a later stage. on this account, the early copernicus can be considered an archimedean. this calls for further historiographical reflections on the scientific revolution. keywords: copernicus; commentariolus; on the revolutions of the celestial spheres; archimedes; scientific revolution received: march 07, 2023. reviewed: april 27, 2023. accepted: may 15, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.09 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ for nicolaus copernicus’s 550th birthday anniversary introduction marking the 550th anniversary of the birth of the polish scholar nicolaus copernicus, the year 2023 calls for further study of copernicus’s work. this paper takes the opportunity to pay homage to this immense figure by proposing a new interpretation of how to read the birth of the heliocentric theory. 1 alberto bardi is an assistant professor in the department of the history of science at tsinghua university. address: department of the history of science, school of humanities, tsinghua university, haidian district, beijing 100084, china. e-mail: alberto.bardi@live.com the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 it is well established that copernicus’s major work, on the revolutions of the celestial spheres (henceforth de rev) shows that copernicus strives to emulate his main model, i.e., ptolemy’s almagest (most recently: netz 2022a; netz 2022b; ragep 2022). in the vulgata, the proposal of the heliocentric theory corresponds with the publication of de rev, in 1543, but a closer look at copernicus’s production reveals a more sophisticated scenario, which is worth exploring further. in fact, if the heliocentric theory proposed by copernicus is unanimously considered a major breakthrough in the history of science and, more generally, culture, still the nature and the process that triggered the creativity of copernicus has been puzzling scholars for ages and continues to do so (most recently, among others: goldstein 2002; goddu 2010; westman 2011; omodeo 2014; vesel 2014, gingerich 2016). copernicus’s de rev undoubtedly marked a momentous change in the history of science and culture such that copernicus is usually mentioned as one of the main figures of what is commonly known in historiography as scientific revolution. notably, philosophers alexandre koyré and thomas kuhn deemed him a watershed figure between the science of the ancients and modern science, the first who broke from the medieval aristotelianptolemaic paradigm about the cosmos (koyré 1957; kuhn 1962). but the birth of copernican theory is not just a punctuation in a page of history, because it is a process of creativity, which started way before 1543, and which is attested by an unpublished text, authored by copernicus himself, circulating before the publication of de rev, the so-called commentariolus, that is “brief draft” (ca. 1510-15). moreover, given the link between copernicus and the historiography of science, recent reflections on the scientific revolution deserve attention. for instance, reviel netz (2022a; 2022b) has convincingly argued that copernicus’s production is to be understood as the outcome of a sixteenth-century scholar in dialogue with the ancients, and his novelty should be reconsidered in light of this stylistic fact. it is known that de rev was written on the genre-model of ptolemy’s almagest and benefitted from astronomical models proposed by islamic astronomers (whether or not it was an “independent” discovery—a still open debate—this question is beyond the scope of the present article). at any rate, de rev is not the point where the copernican heliocentrism begins. therefore, what is the stylistic model, if any, for the first copernican draft of the heliocentric theory? this article will give an answer to this, as yet unanswered question. moreover, netz (2002b) has convincingly argued that archimedes and his rediscovery in fifteenthand sixteenth-century italy were essential in paving the way to the scientific revolution, and that the latter is essentially a recreation of the dialogue with ancient greek mathematicians and their debates on scientific and philosophical matters. this article argues that it is reasonable to read copernicus’s first formulation of the heliocentric theory as an attempt to reproduce an archimedean treatise: copernicus can be considered in dialogue with the ancients on astronomical matters even before the publication of de rev. although there is no evidence of copernicus reading the works of archimedes, the genre of the commentariolus shows that his creation was well due to an attempt to write an archimedean-style treatise on mathematical sciences. therefore, it is expedient to see the rediscovery of archimedean works as the ideal intellectual environment for the creativity of the early copernicus and for the search of a model to emulate during the writing process of the first draft on heliocentrism. a link between copernicus and archimedes: preliminary working questions the inspiration for this study on copernicus is due to a reading of a provocative essay on archimedes and his place in world history, authored by reviel netz. it is worth quoting one of netz’s passages: the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 what needs to be stressed for copernicus himself is, first, that he spent the great bulk of his creative energies on studying and emulating ptolemy; second, that his own understanding of his heliocentrism was not as the casting out of antiquity in favour of modernity but, rather, as the revival of an ancient debate; and, finally, that he was right. by saying that he was right, i do not mean the fact that there were indeed a few heliocentric authors in antiquity, which is largely besides the point. i mean that copernicus sensed, correctly, that by presenting his own astronomy as a superior alternative to past astronomies, he was reviving, rather than abandoning, the agonistic practices of ancient science. this is why it is important to note that koyré and kuhn were wrong to think of the aristotelian paradigm as ancient; and why it is important to note that copernicus was a man of the renaissance. (netz 2022b, 318) it is well established that copernicus presents his dialogue with past masters of astronomy in de rev, and i agree with seeing copernicus as reviving the agonistic practice of ancient science. such an agonism is carried out by choosing models and writing treatises in order to emulate them. copernicus did this for de rev, which is a long mathematicalastronomical treatise shaped along the structure and the geometrical models of ptolemy’s almagest and the innovative models of islamic astronomers (among others, ragep 2007; 2010; 2022). furthermore, the agonistic spirit was played through erudition, which was not an autoreferential attitude but a fruitful way of communication between renaissance peers, pursued in order to demonstrate their scholarly talents in sixteenth-century europe (omodeo 2014). as netz points out, “it is not a joke to observe that copernicus could have been remembered as no more than the translator of theophylact. the fact that he cared about that is indeed telling for the actual culture – and suggestive for the potential alternatives” (netz 2022b, 324). in this state of the art, it is worth asking what is the stylistic model for copernicus when writing the commentariolus? could he refer to an archimedean model, although he does not mention him explicitly? to whom else? given the relevance of commentariolus to the birth of the heliocentric theory, thus the scientific revolution, these are important questions. recently, netz (2022a; 2022b) has shaped a new view of copernicus in the historiography of the scientific revolution: it starts by singling out the relevance of archimedes’s work as outstanding for the history of mathematical sciences and global history more generally. according to netz, ptolemy represents the culmination of the achievement of the generation of archimedes. later on, figures within the european renaissance, thanks to the spreading of scientific works through print as well as the manuscripts coming from byzantium, re-read archimedes and continued a tradition based on debates, agonism, and non-conformism with the authorities of the middle ages. in this sense, the revolution of copernicus is a re-creation of that agonistic spirit, the outcome of a combination of the islamic criticism of ptolemy’s mathematics and the rediscovery of the almagest in europe. for copernicus, to be modern means to become ancient. therefore, can copernicus be considered, in this intellectual framework, an archimedean? let us take a closer look at the commentariolus. copernicus’s commentariolus: a brief overview the first written occurrence of the copernican heliocentric theory is provided in a brief treatise entitled draft on the hypothesis on celestial motions established by nicolaus copernicus [nicolai copernici de hypothesibus motuum caelestium a se constitutis commentariolus], better known as commentariolus, likely composed between 1510 and 1515 (swerdlow 1973; rosen 1971; folkerts, kirschner and kühne 2019). the commentariolus has attracted the attention of twentieth-century historians of astronomy. but its relevance to astronomical inquiry was recognized immediately after copernicus’s death. in fact, among others, joachim the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 rheticus, duncan liddel, and tycho brahe had in their hands a copy of the commentariolus (dobrzycki and szczucki 1989). particularly noteworthy is the aberdeen edition, because it contains the pages of commentariolus and de revolutionibus in parallel, according to the criterion of affinity of the proposed theme, demonstrating that the generation immediately following copernicus considered the two works as complementary and not mutually excluding (dobrzycki 1973). the commentariolus is the first witness to copernicus’s dialogue with ancient scholars dealing with astronomy. it begins indeed by recalling past masters of astronomical science and their theories. let us read the copernican text in the following. i understand that our predecessors assumed a large number of celestial spheres principally in order to account for the apparent motion of the planets through uniform motion, for it seemed highly unreasonable that a heavenly body should not always move uniformly in a perfectly circular figure. they had discovered that by the arrangement and combination of uniform motions in different ways, it could be brought about that any body would appear to move to any position. calippus and eudoxus, attempting to carry this out by means of concentric circles, could not by the use of these give an account of everything in the planetary motion, that is, not only those motions that appear in connection with the revolutions of the planets, but also that the planets appear to us at times to ascend and at times to descend in altitude, which concentric circles in no way permit. and for this reason, a preferable theory, in which the majority of experts finally concurred, seemed to be that it is done by means of eccentrics and epicycles. nevertheless, the theories concerning these matters that have been put forth far and wide by ptolemy and most others, although they correspond numerically [with the apparent motions], also seemed quite doubtful, for these theories were inadequate unless they also envisioned certain equant circles, on account of which it appeared that the planet never moves with uniform velocity either in its deferent sphere or with respect to its proper center. therefore, a theory of this kind seemed neither perfect enough nor sufficiently in accordance with reason. (translation swerdlow 1973, 433–434) it is straightforward to see copernicus’s will to dialogue with the ancient masters. moreover, the heliocentric theory is introduced through a list of seven axioms. let us read them in full. therefore, when i noticed these [difficulties], i often pondered whether perhaps a more reasonable model composed of circles could be found from which every apparent irregularity would follow while everything in itself moved uniformly, just as the principle of perfect motion requires. after i had attacked this exceedingly difficult and nearly insoluble problem, it at last occurred to me how it could be done with fewer and far more suitable devices than had formerly been put forth if some postulates, called axioms, are granted to us, which follow in this order: first postulate – there is no one center of all the celestial spheres (orbium) or spheres (sphaerarum). second postulate – the center of the earth is not the center of the universe, but only the center towards which heavy things move and the center of the lunar sphere. third postulate – all spheres surround the sun as though it were in the middle of all of them, and therefore the center of the universe is near the sun. the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 fourth postulate – the ratio of the distance between the sun and earth to the height of the sphere of the fixed stars is so much smaller than the ratio of the semidiameter of the earth to the distance of the sun that the distance between the sun and earth is imperceptible compared to the great height of the sphere of the fixed stars. fifth postulate – whatever motion appears in the sphere of the fixed stars belongs not to it but to the earth. thus, the entire earth along with the nearby elements rotates with a daily motion on its fixed poles while the sphere of the fixed stars remains immovable and the outermost heaven. sixth postulate – whatever motions appear to us to belong to the sun are not due to [motion] of the sun but [to the motion] of the earth and our sphere with which we revolve around the sun just as any other planet. and thus, the earth is carried by more than one motion. seventh postulate – the retrograde and direct motion that appears in the planets belongs not to them but to the [motion] of the earth. thus, the motion of the earth by itself accounts for a considerable number of apparently irregular motions in the heavens. (translation swerdlow 1973, 435–436) concerning these axioms, the eminent historian of science noel swerdlow argued that they are “incorrectly called axioms since they are hardly self-evident, take the place of the general description of the universe in the opening chapters of the almagest, the epitome, and later, de revolutionibus. […] there is no reason to doubt that he also believes these postulates to be true” (swerdlow 1973, 437). against swerdlow, scholars agreed that copernicus was not referring to axioms as self-evident truths (goddu 2010; bardi 2023). moreover, the notion of self-evidence is not the only feature that mathematicians attach to axioms, which are indeed more versatile and can be employed in many ways in mathematical practice (schlimm 2013; bardi 2023). to be sure, copernicus considered his assumptions to be true, because he was certainly not an “instrumentalist”. however, to interpret the copernican assumptions as attached to the notion of self-evidence is a choice which refers to a notion of mathematical principles which distinguishes postulates and axioms. such a distinction originated in the debates on euclid’s elements (de risi 2016). so, if copernicus was not referring to that debate, where did he find the term “axioms” (axiomata) in the literature he had at his disposal? what sources could have influenced him? let us recall copernicus’s words: […] it at last occurred to me how it could be done with fewer and far more suitable devices than had formerly been put forth if some postulates, called axioms, are granted to us, which follow in this order. (swerdlow 1973, 435, emphasis added) the original latin text reads petitiones quas axiomata vocant, where petitio conveys a variety of meanings: requirement, statement, assumption, axiom, postulate. swerdlow was undoubtedly referring to a precisely connotated meaning of axioms and postulates, where axiom is exclusively connected to self-evidence. this distinction is not modern; it traces back to the debates on euclid’s elements, more precisely to the greek philosopher geminus (first century bce), as attested in proclus’s commentary on the first book of euclid’s elements. according to geminus-proclus, the postulates of euclid’s elements can be divided into two groups, reflecting their different nature: constructions are required in postulates 1–3, while postulates 4–5 state properties of particular geometric objects. as for the axioms (or common notions), they were generally conceived as assumptions conveying self-evident truths, hence requiring no proofs. yet, not every author of the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 mathematics assumed principles in the same manner as euclid did. for example, archimedes used axioms as true statements to describe the physical world, e.g., archimedes’s on the sphere and the cylinder opens with axioms (netz 2004, 34–36). more below. edward rosen pointed out, with the right reasons, that copernicus was not taking part in any hilbertian program (rosen 1976). later on, andré goddu (2010) undertook detailed research on the making of copernican cosmology and his possible sources, detected his logical and philosophical backgrounds, and surmised a plausible method of reasoning in a socratic-dialectic process (as detectable in plato’s parmenides) used by copernicus in setting out his axioms. goddu claimed that axioms are to be intended in the sense of common notions, assumptions to be taken for granted, where no self-evidence is needed (goddu 2010, 243). at any rate, there is no occurrence of the word petitio as a synonym for axioma in the euclidean tradition (de risi 2016). it is therefore likely that copernicus knew that axioms were known and evident to everybody, which could explain why he names his principles such. second, the word axioma in latin was extremely rare around 1515, when copernicus composed the commentariolus. indeed, the only occurrence is in giorgio valla’s de expetendis et fugiendis rebus (valla 1501, book 10, ch. 110, fol. oiii verso), an encyclopedic work of sciences and arts.2 valla was a humanist who was keen on transliterating greek words into the latin alphabet (de risi 2016, 643; goddu 2010, 229–236). in sum, it is safe and historically accurate to read copernicus’s assumptions as axioms, and it is noteworthy that archimedes is among the possible models copernicus could be referring to in the way in which he is using his axioms. given archimedes as a possible model, a closer look at sources will make the scenario clear (next section). after the exposition of the axioms, further chapters from the commentariolus deal with the other topics in the following order: the arrangement of the heavenly spheres; the motions of the earth (i.e., the motions apparently attributed to the sun); the convenience in assuming the uniformity of motions from the fixed stars rather than from the equinoxes; the motions of the moon and the five planets of ancient astronomy, i.e., saturn, jupiter, mars, venus, and mercury. by copernicus’s will, lemmas, theorems, proofs and diagrams are absent. all of them were destined, again according to the author’s explicit statement, for a more extensive work, namely de rev. now that these postulates have been set down, i shall attempt briefly to show how carefully the uniformity of the motions may be preserved. i have decided, however, for the sake of brevity to leave the mathematical demonstrations out of this treatise as they are intended for a larger book. nevertheless, the lengths of the semidiameters of the spheres will be set down here in the explanation of their circles, from which anyone not ignorant of mathematics will easily understand how very precisely such an arrangement of circles agrees with computations and observations. in the same way, in case anyone believes that we have asserted the movement of the earth for no good reason along with the pythagoreans, he will also receive considerable evidence [for this] in the explanation of the circles. and in fact, [the evidence] by which natural philosophers attempt so very hard to confirm the immobility of the earth depends for the most part upon appearances. all [their evidence] falls apart here in the first place since we overthrow the immobility of the earth also by means of an appearance. (translation swerdlow 1973, 438–439) 2 i wish to thank andré goddu for helping me consult this source and locate the page in the rare book. the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 looking for a stylistic model for the commentariolus undoubtedly, copernicus treats the ancient astronomers as his contemporaries and aims at debating with them. this is clear from the brief introduction we read in the previous section and from the way he uses axioms. the axiomatic approach is indeed fundamental in our attempt to look for a stylistic model which copernicus could refer to or emulate. actually, he could well refer to the greek tradition of mathematical sciences, which was keen on using such an axiomatic approach. for instance, several greek works of mathematical sciences often adopted six or seven unproved assumptions to open treatises, for instance archimedes’s on the equilibrium of planes (heath 2002, 189–190). it is likely that copernicus arranged his treatises on seven principles in order to refer to that tradition, which could well have served as a model for him. archimedes’s on the equilibrium of planes was circulating in italy thanks to the latin translation of william of moerbecke, and that work opens with the word petimus (the verb linked to petitio, meaning “we require,” “we state some principles”), which is followed by exactly seven principles (clagett 1976, 116). moreover, elementa jordani (elements of mechanics by jordan of nemore) provides seven initial unproved assumptions (clagett and moody 1952, 154–155). goddu (2010) argued that the axioms are likely the outcome of a process of socratic questioning, indebted to plato’s parmenides. however, there are five opening questions in scholastic style in blasius of parma’s (14th c.) questiones super tractatum de ponderibus (clagett and moody 1952, 232), therefore copernicus, being educated in italy, could have structured his treatise in a similar manner. instead, he chose to put axioms directly in the form of statements. since copernicus chose to put his assumption in declarative mode, he is more archimedean than scholastic in his style. however, he would have been fully archimedean had he provided proofs in the chapter following the assumptions. notably, the only surviving work by aristarchus of samos, on sizez and distances, opens with six axioms. let us read them in full. 1. that the moon receives its light from the sun. 2. that the earth is in the relation of a point and center to the sphere in which the moon moves. 3. that, when the moon appears to us halved, the great circle which divides the dark and the bright portion of the moon is in the direction of our eye. 4. that, when the moon appears to us halved, its distance from the sun is then less than a quadrant by one-thirtieth of a quadrant. 5. that the breadth of the (earth’s) shadow is (that) of two moons. 6. that the moon subtends one-fifteenth part of a sign of the zodiac. (translation heath 1913, 353) aristarchus’s theory was criticized in archimedes’s the sand-reckoner (ca. 216 bce) for having set up mathematically impossible proportions, but aristarchus was the first astronomer who demonstrated that a sound astronomical theory could be established out of a few observational data combined with purely mathematical arguments, thus putting the emphasis on mathematical structure rather than empirical numerical data (neugebauer 1975, 634–642). in other words, aristarchus provided rigorous and logical geometrical proofs in a similar fashion to euclid and archimedes. on sizes and distances marks the first attempt to the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 determine astronomical distances and dimensions by mathematical deductions based on a set of assumptions.3 that copernicus adopted an archimedean model to propose once again a heliocentric theory, which archimedes had criticized as mathematically unsustainable, would be fascinating, but unfortunately, it is just speculative, for it is unprovable by the sources at our disposal. copernicus did not read the sand-reckoner, but mentioned aristarchus in a passage of a draft of de rev. however, that passage was not included in the final publication (goldstein 2002, 232). however, a scholar like copernicus would have certainly been perfectly at ease with such erudite references, and these were the kind of stylistic traits that he and his peers were using when confronting their ancient predecessors in their writings. at any rate, archimedes was one of the authors who sparked enthusiasm among those europeans rediscovering greek scientific works. one of the first written evidences of this process is in fifteenth-century astronomer regiomontanus’s lecture at padua university in 1464 (regiomontanus 1537), (schmeidler 1972, 43-53), (swerdlow 1993), (byrne 2006), (malpangotto 2008, 133-46), (goulding 2010, 8-10), (omodeo 2021). on that occasion, regiomontanus spoke highly of the syracusan scholar: “the discoveries of archimedes will produce no less admiration than joyfulness to us readers as to future human beings even after thousand generations” (malpangotto 2008, 142, my translation).4 triggered by the smart rhetorical skills of petrarch,5 the rediscovery of archimedes was indeed one of the main features of humanism and its success in the generations preceding and following copernicus (høyrup 1992, 1996, and 2017). just to mention a few facts of archimedes’s rediscovery in the lifetime of copernicus, william of moerbecke’s and jacopo da san cassiano cremonensis’s translation of archimedean works were circulating in sixteenth-century italy (d’alessandro and napolitani 2012) and girolamo cardano in 1535 praised archimedes as a man of highest genius in his encomium geometriae at the academia platina in milan (høyrup 2017, 14). moreover, the first printed edition of archimedes’s works was printed in basel in 1544, just one year after de revolutionibus (venatorius 1544), and not to mention those most influential italian archimedean scholars like francesco maurolico, guidobaldo del monte, federico commandino and bernardino baldi (høyrup 2017). giorgio valla himself is among those who acquired the manuscript used by moerbecke and he not accidentally mentions archimedes (mathematics or life episodes) in de expetendis (høyrup 2017, 11). during his sojourn in italy, copernicus might well have encountered archimedes by reading valla. conclusion usually deemed one of the most emblematic examples of the scientific revolution and the theory of paradigm shift in the history of science, the heliocentric theory proposed by nicolaus copernicus in 1543 has fed the minds of philosophers and historians for decades. recently, greater attention has been put on the recognition of the sources that might have influenced copernicus’s creativity. the outcomes showed that the claims on paradigm shift and similar are pretty shaky, because copernicus was deliberately in dialogue with ancient 3 the question of why heliocentrism was not further developed among the greeks is still open. it is likely that a mathematics adequate for sustaining heliocentrism as a physical hypothesis was not developed at that time. first, heliocentrism was undoubtedly developed before the geometrical models, proofs, and calculations of apollonius of perga, hipparchus, and ptolemy, whose works were all based upon a geocentric orientation. second, aristotle’s doctrine of natural places held its influence for long time, making the central position of the earth in the universe harder to confute. 4 inventa archimedis post mille secula venturis hominibus non minorem inducent admirationem quam legentibus nobis iucunditatem (malpangotto 2008, 142). 5 petrarch wrote short biographies of archimedes (quoted in clagett 1978, 1336-1341). the archimedean revolution of nicolaus copernicus alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 greek (and arabic) authors, and his on the revolutions of the celestial spheres emulates ptolemy’s almagest. in this sense, the essence of the scientific revolution is more an attempt to recreate the debate with ancient authors than breaking with their paradigms. this study has contributed to this scholarship by taking a closer examination of copernicus’s commentariolus and has reached several conclusions. first, the birth of the heliocentric theory was first conceived as an attempt to write an archimedes-like treatise, and the struggle to emulate ptolemy and integrate the innovations of the arabs comes at a later stage. second, the style of the commentariolus is archimedean because the way in which copernicus takes his axioms (as true statements to describe the physical world) and deals with astronomy in brief chapters resembles archimedean treatises on mathematical sciences circulating through latin translation in sixteenth-century italy, where copernicus had his education. third, if we want to take a broad historiographical picture following netz (2022a; 2022b), ptolemy is the culmination of the achievements of the generation of archimedes in greek mathematical sciences, copernicus is the one who managed to re-read ptolemy and reform it through ptolemy’s own devices. therefore, in a framework of intellectual history, the copernican heliocentric theory, in its first conception, is archimedean. in this sense, against previous theses that take copernicus’s work as a reaction to an astrological crisis (westman), pure rediscovery of the greeks (koyré, popper), paradigm shift (kuhn), or a culmination of islamic astronomy (ragep), the first occurrence of the copernican theory might be better understood as an attempt to write an archimedes-like treatise. copernicus’s process of creativity can be seen as an attempt to emulate archimedes, which evolves into an emulation of ptolemy, integrating the almagest with the innovations of the arabs. in this sense, the copernican revolution is archimedean. acknowledgments i am grateful to professor guosheng wu and the tsinghua department of the history of science for making this research possible. references bardi, a. 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(2011) the copernican question: prognostication, skepticism, and celestial order. berkeley: university of california press. microsoft word vasconcelos layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-15 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal special issue historiography of science in south america: reception, reflection and production (argentina, brazil and uruguay) on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos1 [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9163-1446] abstract: the present article is elaborated in two parts. in the first part, we present a survey of authors and their works that throughout the second half of the 20th century, developed significant references for the history of science in brazil, establishing and consolidating this field of studies in the country, with an exacerbated emphasis on the historical aspects that occurred in minas gerais, rio de janeiro and são paulo. in the second part of the article, we present a concrete historical experience in the 19th century, in the province of ceará, totally disregarded by the traditional and the current historiographic production of history of science. this situation ultimately raises the question: what is the history of brazilian science? what are the determinants of the history of science in brazil? to what extent is the history of science in brazil national? keywords: history of science, natural history museums, brazil, ceará, 19th and 20th century. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ science, ideas and explanations in 1956, the brazilian sociologist from minas gerais and based in são paulo, fernando de azevedo, published the book a ciência no brasil [science in brazil] (azevedo 1956),2 the result of a commission made by the larragoiti foundation, an institution created in 1950 by sul américa companhia de seguros de vida [south america life insurance company] (sulamérica). fernando de azevedo’s work was the third book published by this foundation. the first publication was as artes plásticas no brasil [plastic arts in brazil], by rodrigo melo franco de andrade. the second was literatura no brasil [literature in brazil], by afrânio 1 eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos is a professor in the department of history at the state university of goiás ueg. address: avenida brasil n.435 – quirinópolis, go. 75860000 – brazil. e-mail: eduardo.vasconclos@ueg.br 2 in 1943, fernando de azevedo wrote a cultura brasileira (3 volumes), a work in which the author had already made observations concerning the sciences in brazil, some of these considerations taken up for the new book of 1956. on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 coutinho. the fourth and last work printed was a medicina no brasil [medicine in brazil], which was under the responsibility of leonildo ribeiro, physician and director of the larragoiti foundation (oliveira 2016, 496). notably, the foundation’s name was a tribute from the company’s controlling family to its creator and patron of the family: dom joaquim sanchez de larragoiti lucas.3 azevedo’s book and the other works published under the same heading were not just simple works published in one of the many editorial collections in vogue in brazil motivated by the editorial boom of the 1940s and 1950s. instead, by selecting renowned and recognized authors in their respective areas, the objective was to create a reference work, a work of synthesis that would guide its readers towards what was most characteristic of cultural and scientific advances at the time. imbued with this spirit, fernando de azevedo (1956) organized a collective work, in two volumes, with 14 chapters,4 in which he stated that the sciences in brazil following all scientific requirements, it is the exclusive result of the university of são paulo usp, founded in the city of são paulo in 1934. it is necessary to emphasize that azevedo was one of the educators who participated in the movement to create usp, and it is not surprising to defend such an understanding. a more assertive response to the proposition that determined the beginning of science in brazil with the founding of usp came to light 21 years later with the brazilianist nancy leys stepan, who published in 1976 the book: beginnings of brazilian science: oswaldo cruz, medical research and policy 1890-1920 (stepan 1976a). in this work, the author argues that science in brazil began in the 20th century, but not with the creation of usp, as stated by fernando de azevedo. on the contrary, for nancy stepan, creating the instituto soroterápico federal,5 [federal serum therapy institute], nowadays named fiocruz, was the beginning of academic science in brazil. it is not by chance that fiocruz itself endeavored to arrange for the translation and dissemination of stepan’s book in brazilian soil, still in 1976, with the title in portuguese: gênese e evolução da ciência brasileira: oswaldo cruz e a política de investigação científica e médica (stepan 1976b).6 subsequently, in 1978, the sociologist by training josé murilo de carvalho published a very expressive work, a escola de minas de ouro preto: o peso da glória [ouro preto's school of mines: the weight of glory] (carvalho 1978). the great merit of murilo de carvalho’s book is that it leaves the limits of the 20th century and sheds light on scientific activity in the second half of the 19th century, in minas gerais, beyond the rio de janeiro and são paulo axis. in this way, the spaces of performance of scientific activities in brazil came to include, in academic historical studies, the minas-rio-são paulo triad. it is noteworthy that in this work, the young author who would gain projection and notoriety among brazilian historians in the 1980s was still a recent ph.d. in political science with a thesis defended at stanford university, in the united states, in 1975.7 the thesis was 3 historical information of the sul america insurance company available at: https://portal.sulamericaseguros.com.br/institucional/sobre-a-sulamerica/historia/ 4 the book was written in portuguese and the chapters of the book are: “mathematics in brazil”; “astronomy in brazil”; “physics in brazil”; “meteorology in brazil”; “geology and paleontology in brazil”; “mineralology and petrography in brazil”; “geography in brazil”; “chemistry in brazil”; “zoology in brazil”; “botany in brazil”; “biology in brazil”; “psychology in brazil”; “the political economy in brazil”; “anthropology and sociology in brazil”. 5 after several changes since the 1970s received the name oswado cruz foundation fiocruz 6in an article about the academic production of nancy stepan, retired professor of columbia university, simone petraglia kropf and gilberto hochman attest that the book was published in portuguese in the same year of publication of the original in english, with omissions of notes and of the original bibliography. see (kropf and hochman 2011, 391). 7in brazil, josé murilo de carvalho’s doctoral thesis was initially published in portuguese separately in two books: a construção da ordem: a elite política imperial. rio de janeiro/brasília: ed. campus/ed. da on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 on the “elite and state building in imperial brazil”. carvalho was invited by his fellow simon schwartzman, a brazilian sociologist, who at the time coordinated a research project of the financiadora de estudos e projetos – finep8 [founding institution of studies and projects], on the history of science in brazil, to record the “glories” of the traditional school of mines. soon after, another work on the history of science was published. the sociologist simon schwartzman published, in 1979 the book: formação da comunidade cientifica no brasil [a space for science: the development of the scientific community in brazil, english language version published in 1991] (schwartzman 1979).9 commissioned by finep and had the consultancy of sociologist joseph ben-david (edler 2015, 29). unlike his predecessors, the author was not concerned with determining where true scientific matrix knowledge (understood as logical, rational, pragmatic and european) “was born or gestated in the country”. in this project, the author had more freedom to develop a thorough overview and address what he called the 18th-century heritage,10 presenting with more acuity the scientific activities of the 19th century, with an emphasis on naturalists, higher education, engineering and mining, and in medicine and surgery. thus, schwartzman’s book drew attention to scientific practices in brazil hitherto disregarded. the final years of the 1970s were a very fruitful period for the history of science in brazil. in addition to the works of nancy stepan, josé murilo de carvalho and simon schwartzman, the publication of a collection on the scientific theme came to light. entitled history of science in brazil, mário guimarães ferri and shozo motoyama organized a work in 3 volumes, printed in 1979, 1980 and 1981. although respectively the two organizers were professors from usp, ferri was a biologist and motoyama was a physicist by training but with a strong interest in the history of science and a pioneer in the history of science at the history department of usp (silvia 2021, 635-637). their book was financed by the conselho nacional de desenvolvimento científico e tecnológico – cnpq [national council for scientific and technological development] and published by editora da universidade de são paulo – edusp [são paulo university press], in partnership with editora pedagógica universitária – e. p. u. [university pedagogical press], (ferri & montoyama 1979-1981). given this scenario, we open a quick parenthesis to mention the research carried out by professor margarida de souza neves, published in 1986, under the title: as vitrines do progresso [the showcase of progress], (neves 1986), which, in addition to the usual funding from finep, was supported by cnpq and the pontificia universidade católica do rio de janeiro puc/rio [pontifical catholic university of rio de janeiro], the latter, the professor’s binding institution. in this text, margarida neves draws attention to the importance of universal exhibitions in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century as universidade de brasília, 1980; teatro de sombras: a política imperial. são paulo/rio de janeiro: vértice/instituto universitário de pesquisa do rio de janeiro. 1988. 8 according to pirró e longo and derenusson, in 1965 the finep fundo de financiamento de estudos e projetos e programas, “with an accounting fund and directed by a coordinating board, its purpose was to provide resources to finance the preparation of feasibility studies of investment programs and proposals.” however, in 1967, finep financiadora de estudos e projetos, empresa do setor público, que sucedeu ao fundo [created two years before in 1965] assuming its rights and obligations, and must also assess the feasibility of investment projects for the ministry of planning”. see (pirró e longo and derenusson 2009, 517). 9 in 2015, the book had its 4th edition, and was published under a new title: um espaço para a ciência: a formação da comunidade científica no brasil in brazil. thus, the publication in portuguese was given a title closer to the english language title: a space for science: the development of the scientific community in brazil. university park, pennsylvania. the university of pennsylvania press, 1991. according to the author’s preface, the translation into english was completed in 1988, during his time as a researcher at usp with the support of a grant from the ford foundation. 10 here, schwartzman only reproduces the idea of “18th-century heritage” forged by fernando de azevedo to justify the brazilian scientific backwardness. on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 authentic arenas of political, economic and cultural influence. in these universal exhibitions, the participating countries should present themselves in the “concert of nations” through what they had best in terms of technique, objects, and industrial, scientific, and technological production. even though it was not published in book format, margarida neves’ research circulated among her peers within the scientific community of the humanities in brazil. thus, in a pioneering way, she pointed out to brazilian researchers the material culture and exhibitions importance as arenas of social and scientific action in brazil (and other nations) in the 19th and 20th centuries. in the 1990s, lilia katri moritz schwarcz (1993) defended her phd thesis in the anthropology course at the university of são paulo, originating the book: o espetáculo das raças: cientistas, instituições e questão racial no brasil (1870-1930) [lilia moritz schwarcz. the spectacle of the races: scientists, institutions, and the race questions in brazil, 1870-1930. english version published in1999]. in this work, the author focuses on the scientific discourses and practices developed in the institutions where science was practiced in brazil. the author’s institutional cut is formed by historical institutes, medical institutions, law schools and natural history museums. by observing the tensions and contradictions existing in the practices that constitute each of these “areas” of action, from the institutions investigated, the author shows how the science practiced was permeated by a prioris, preconceived ideas and prejudices, which they manifested, among other problems, a huge social and racial gap between the people and the “men of letters and science”. it is necessary to point out that in this work, lilia schwarcz inserts the museums of natural history and material culture in the dynamics of production, dissemination and circulation of scientific knowledge, something that had been done in a timid way by the researchers who preceded her. but if on the one hand, it includes, on the other hand, it does so with reservations, because when studying natural history museums, it focused only on three museums: museu nacional, museu paulista and museu paraense emilio goeldi. in the second half of the 1990s, readers received a book by maria margaret lopes, entitled: o brasil descobre a pesquisa científica: os museus de ciências naturais no século xix [brazil discovers scientific research: natural science museums in the 19th century] (lopes 1997), as the result of her phd in history, with an emphasis on the history of science, in university of são paulo, under the supervision of professor maria amélia mascarenhas dantes. in her book, margaret lopes is peremptory in stating that before universities and laboratories, it was in natural history museums that science was carried out in brazil throughout the nineteenth century. in addition to going back in time, “to the beginning of science in brazil in the 19th century”, the author also precisely demarcated natural history museums, which until then had low priority from science historians in brazil, as the locus par excellence of scientific practices. throughout the book, margaret lopes analyzes the creation, the constitution of collections and the effective scientific activities of four museums, are they respectively: museu nacional rio de janeiro; museu do ipiranga são paulo (also known as museu paulista); museu do paraná (also known as museu paranaense) and the museu paraense emilio goeldi. three museums on the south axis and just one in the north of the country. if, as margaret lopes maintains, science in brazilian territory began and was practiced in natural history museums, would the museums she studied be the only ones that existed until then? problematizing the author’s option to focus on just four museums in such a large and vast country, we ask: would there be a possibility of other museums, in different spaces where science was practiced in brazil and that simply she has not studied? unfortunately, margaret lopes does not answer this question. before concluding this list of authors and works, it is necessary to approach the book: espaços da ciência no brasil [science spaces in brazil], a work organized by maria amélia on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 mascarenhas dantes and published by fiocruz press (dantes 2001). in this book, that covers the period from 1800 to 1930, several articles are dealing with different scientific institutions such as the faculdade de medicine do rio de janeiro [faculty of medicine of rio de janeiro]; jardim botânico [botanical garden]; sociedade auxiliadora da industria nacional – sain [auxiliary society of national industry], among others. if the temporal recoil until the beginning of the 19th century is fully contemplated in the work, however, the amplitude of the “scientific spaces” was restricted to the traditional regional binomial rio de janeiro – são paulo. that is, even expanding the scope of the research to the nineteenth century, it does so by limiting itself to the same spaces already addressed by other researches previously, confirming as “most relevant” the subjects, institutions and scientific practices of the large economic, political and urban centers from brazil. indeed, once again, the slow process of growth and expansion of scientific activities developed until the publication of the work of margaret lopes was disregarded by her supervisor, maria amélia mascarenhas dantes, what seems an explicit process of involution. an eventual explanation for the incorporation of other “scientific spaces” in the book involves the limitations imposed by the publisher. it is certainly not possible to include all institutions that developed scientific practices in brazil over 130 years. when we look at the curriculum vitae of professor maria amélia dantes11 one of the main researchers on this topic in brazil and latin america -, we realize that she guided postgraduate students in history at usp, as well as had been a member of several postgraduate boards (masters and doctorate) that presented research objects located in different places in the country, acre, bahia, ceará, mato grosso do sul, pará, paraná, for example. however, in the book espaços da ciência in brazil, this “broad brazilian reality” was not addressed. this problem would be fully solved if, after just one volume, the usp professor published two or three books, reserving for the subsequent volumes an adequate focus on these “other realities” not contemplated in the single volume published in 2001. after this presentation, the historiography of science is evident, emphasizing works and authors more focused on or related to the studies of natural history museums in the country, whose orientation demonstrates an appreciation of the activities developed in the southern area of brazil. we also note that the analyzed production seeks to legitimize the actions carried out almost exclusively on the tripod minas rio são paulo. this production covers minas gerais in the 18th and 19th centuries with less emphasis and a greater focus in rio de janeiro in the 19th century and são paulo in the century xx. the result is the exclusion of the others constituent spaces of the country, such as the north, northeast, south and center-west in the making of the “genealogy of national knowledge”. what induces the reader to understand that one is not included in these works is simply because it does not exist. in this way, we perceive that the historiographic production presented carries in its core elements similar to what the brazilian historian manoel salgado guimarães criticized as a disciplinary memory: (...) belief in a history that seems to be confused with the report of past events, ensuring a dose of naturalness to the task of giving meaning to human actions, made this past come to inhabit the spaces of the sacred, preserved from the exercise of criticism, building in this way a memory of the discipline (guimarães 2003, 10). taken all together, this production is presented as a memory that is not only disciplinary but thoroughly disciplined that only accepts a certain way of reading, writing and 11maria amelia dantes’ curriculum vitae at http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.do?id=k4783109h0 on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 producing history, excluding other forms and/or possibilities (turin 2009, 79-80).12 it is based exclusively on the so-called processes of state formation national with an exacerbated emphasis on economic and political aspects that made possible and still make possible the scientific and didactic production carried out by the official institutions of the instituted power, intensely sharing and disseminating this worldview with the various areas that make up the country. another structuring aspect of brazilian historiographic production on the history of science is the mobilization, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit, of the so-called epistemic virtue.13 what legitimizes, in this way, the importance of specific productions and spaces that are taken as representative of the nation. therefore, when talking about these practices and these spaces, one speaks, by metonymy, of brazil. thus, if there was science in brazil in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries, it was necessarily in the places and the molds presented by the dominant historiography. aware of this situation, it remains for us to ask how to practice other ways of understanding and writing the history of science in brazil and “disciplinary memory” to incorporate the many experiences of the different realities of the country. such problematization is necessary, as it is still being done incipiently by a few researchers in the area. moema vergara, for example, who, upon concluding the review of the book espaços da ciência no brazil [science spaces in brazil], launched the following question: “but the challenge remains: is it possible to make a history of science in brazil outside institutions?” (vergara 2003, 81). here, taking advantage of moema vergara’s questioning to broaden the question: is it possible to make the history of science in brazil that includes a diversity of times, spaces, subjects and experiences? more specifically, is it possible to make a history of science in brazil that absorbs and presents distinct areas and regions such as the north, northeast, south and midwest? present alternatives to the current writing of history centered on the antithetical pairs “core/peripheral”, “developed/undeveloped”, “true/false”, “presence/absence”? one must bear in mind that maintaining this framework is nothing more than the reproduction, within national borders, of an argumentative logic developed by nations with greater capacity for scientific production to legitimize iniquity between national groups that produce and those that consume science. in opposition to the understanding presented above and still in full execution in how historians of science think and write the history of science in brazil, we offer a specific case (aware that all cases are specific, even the so-called general cases). this case refers to the reality of ceará in northeastern brazil (a region historically considered the poorest in brazil and usually seen as a place for the reproduction of science carried out in the southern of brazil). 12by analyzing the writing of history in the 19th century turin presents some characteristics that are still seen in the writing of the history of the history of science in the 20th century (turin 2009, 79-80). 13 according to joão ohara, there are two variants to the concept of epistemic virtues: the first that presents itself as a reliable cognitive faculty, “so that its exercise is conducive to the truth” and the second variant that states that epistemic virtue “is a trait of character or disposition that an epistemically responsible agent would possess or demonstrate when producing knowledge”. see (ohara 2016b, 172). still on this concept of epistemic virtues in brazilian historiographic production, see (ohara, 2016a, 39-56). for a general understanding of the so-called epistemic virtue in the historiographic field, see (paul 2011, 1-19). see also (mcgill 1994); (daston and galison 2010). on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 disregarded science in the book, o brasil descobre a pesquisa cientifica: os museus e as ciências naturais no século xix, maria margaret lopes (1997) did a great work of synthesis and presented the general lines of the development of museums and natural sciences in nineteenth-century brazil. focusing on specific cases of the museu nacional, museu paulis paulista (ipiranga), museu paranaense and museu paraense (later named museu emílio goeldi). however, the researcher’s quick mention of the reality of ceará and the existence of a museum in this province draws attention, commenting that: in ceará, in mid-1871, a private collector, dr. joaquim antônio alves ribeiro, doctor at santa casa de misericórdia and captain surgeon of the national guard, had a small museum with natural history objects, open to the public. (...) the doctor asked to donate [his collection] to the government to compose the initial nucleus of a cabinet of natural history in the province in exchange for an honorary distinction. (lopes 1997, 151) although not specifically focusing on the reality of the province of ceará, the author mentioned the request for donation of dr. joaquim antônio alves ribeiro’s collection to the president of the province in 1871. the president, in turn, asked the director of the national museum, ladislau de souza mello netto, to issue an opinion on the case. in his response, the director replied in the affirmative, as this would be an excellent opportunity to create a local museum if the items offered were in good condition and of good quality (vasconcelos 2017, 159). the positive opinion attested by the scientific authority, in this case, the director of the national museum, did not satisfy the president of the province, most likely the bachelor in law, josé fernandes da costa pereira júnior, from rio de janeiro, who did not purchase the collection. according to margaret lopes, “(...) the president of the province of ceará considered that the objects were not in very good condition, no they were so curious”. and the author continues, “(...) the physician [collection donor] enjoyed a modest position, few fees and no position as a man of knowledge”. finally, according to the same author, “(...) besides, as she considered that very few people in fortaleza were dedicated to natural history, it was a high expense for the province, which had more urgent needs” (vasconcelos 2017, 159-169). unfortunately, despite a wide range of research dealing with 19th-century natural history museums in brazil, maria margaret lopes only approached dr. alves ribeiro’s natural history collection en passant, restricting the few information mentioned above. in this sense, the following lines have as main focus to present the history of the natural history cabinet, the first museum of ceará. the creator seeking to understand the work, that is, the history of the constitution of the ceará museum, we started to look for news about its creator. thus, in the dicionário bibliográfico brasileiro [brazilian bibliographic dictionary], a work published by sacramento blake in 1883, we find the following record: joaquim antonio alves ribeiro he was born in the city of icó, in the province of ceará, on january 9, 1830, and died on may 2, 1875. he was a doctor in medicine at cambridge university (sic), in the united states, where he practiced for some time, and approved by the faculty of rio de janeiro on his return to brazil, he settled in his native province on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 and served there in the charity hospital. he was a surgeon in the national guard, knight of the order of the rose, member of the imperial academy, now the national academy of medicine, of the sociedade auxiliadora da indústria national and other associations of letters, national and foreign, and was part, as an adjunct member, of the commission brazilian at the vienna d’austria universal exhibition in 1873. (blake 1883, 83-84) we also identified another record, also of a biographical nature, registered in the dicionário biobibliográfico cearense [biobibliographical dictionary of people born in ceará], written by guilherme studart (baron of studart), with brief information about the character in question. joaquim antonio alves ribeiro one of the 17 children of antonio manoel alves ribeiro and mrs. alexandrina mendes ribeiro, he was born in icó on january 9, 1830, and died in fortaleza on may 2, 1875, a victim of stomach cancer. his mother died on march 7, 1860, at almost 55 years of age. graduated in medicine from the university of harvard, cambridge, in 1853, he maintained his thesis at the medical faculty of bahia, coming to exercise his profession in his native province. he was a doctor at the hospital of charity of fortaleza, surgeon of the national guard, knight of the order of the rose (december 2, 1858) and of christ (october 12, 1867), corresponding member of the imperial academy of medicine of rio de janeiro, of the medical society of massachusetts, natural history society of frankfurt, aid society of national industry. this doctor is responsible for the 1st museum that ceará has seen; after his death, the various collections, some of them very precious, were donated to the state government, which entrusted them to the public library, and were later removed to the escola normal. he married in fortaleza his cousin madam adelaide smith de vasconcellos, daughter of josé smith de vasconcellos and his wife mrs. francisca mendes da cruz guimarães, 1st barons de vasconcellos, who died in rio de janeiro on 8 october 1903 and she on 4 august 1873 in liverpool. (studart 1910, 06) 27 years separate the two publications. the first came to light in 1883 and the second in 1910. when comparing the two publications, we realize that sacramento blake briefly presents exclusive information of a professional nature, public or related to bureaucratic tasks. on the other hand, guilherme studart’s writing mixes professional, public information with some personal information. in addition to the time difference between the two works, the difference in information is clear because blake states that alves ribeiro graduated in medicine at cambridge, where he worked and revalidated his diploma at the faculty of medicine of rio de janeiro. studart claims that alves ribeiro graduated from harvard, revalidated his thesis at the medical faculty of bahia and developed his professional activities in his native divot. when comparing the two biographical records, it is clear that the record made by sacramento blake contains some errors. probably the result of mistakes or minor confusions, as the creator of the first museum in ceará studied medicine at harvard (harvard university 1980, 230), which is located in cambridge (middlesex county in the state of massachusetts, united states) and according to the levantamento nominal dos formando de 1812 a 2008 da faculdade de medicina da bahia14 [nominal survey of graduates from 1812 to 2008 at the faculty of medicine of bahia ], it is reported that dr. alves ribeiro revalidated his diploma at the faculty of medicine of bahia. but unfortunately, we still don’t find documents or 14 levantamento nominal dos formando de 1812 a 2008 da faculdade de medicina da bahia at http://www.cbg.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/b_formandos_medicina.pdf on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 indications that he has practiced or developed his professional activity in the united states of america. finally, it is necessary to emphasize the total silence of sacramento blake regarding the museum of natural history of ceará created by dr. alves ribeiro. the same did not occur in guilheme studart’s record, who emphatically recorded: to this doctor is owed the 1st. museum that ceará saw; after his death as several collections, some very precious, were donated to the state government. (studart 1910, 06) when studart published his bibliographic dictionary in the first decade of the 20th century, the republican political regime was already consolidated. and by recording that the collections were donated to the state government, we must understand that the collections and their respective pieces were under the auspices of the provincial government a from 1871. the cabinet of natural history unfortunately, the cabinet of natural history, the first museum in ceará, is an incomplete history, with few and scarce records. thus, we did not obtain further information and details on how dr. alves ribeiro’s collection was constituted. when did he start collecting the pieces? what are the first objects? who helped you? who visited and researched this museum? as it was a private collection, made for the private use of studies on natural history, we cannot answer these and other questions, as we lack the records concerning this first moment in the collection of dr. alves ribeiro. however, little by little, the natural history museum grew and drew the attention of the residents of the city of fortaleza, the capital of ceará, to the point that, in 1868, the president of the province, pedro leão vellozo, directly mentioned the establishment when he said that: dr. joaquim antonio alves ribeiro, a physician established in this city who, as i am informing, has dedicated himself to the studies of the natural sciences, managed, after a few years, to form a collection of various natural species that he presents for public examination and of usefulness, as you know. in cuvier’s opinion – a natural history museum is a public school of instruction. the creation of this museum by the efforts of a private individual is an important fact for science and a real service, which deserves to be taken into account and assisted by the public authorities for the benefit of the province, and to encourage attempts of equal utility. (relatorio 1868, 12) the president of the province, in a flattering tone, acknowledged, in the above passage, the effort and dedication of the museum creator in his studies of natural sciences, highlighting the educational usefulness of museums and reinforcing the need for public authorities to support this and other initiatives beneficial to province. after a little more than six months of praise given by pedro leão vellozo on november 1, 1868, the new president of the province of ceará, diogo velho cavalcanti de albuquerque, on the museum, said that: dr. joaquim antonio alves ribeiro, a physician in this city, owes the existence of a set of nature reserves, already in proportions greater than the resources of a private amateur. (relatorio 1868, 26) on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 parsimonious, the new president of the province peremptorily attested to the grandiosity of the museum it already possessed by reaffirming that the establishment already had large proportions than that of an amateur. even though this information is valid, as it is a testimony of the time, it is necessary to discuss it, since without raising more information, mentioning only the lines mentioned above, what was the experience of the president of the province in the area of museums and/or natural history collections to support that the establishment had resources superior to an amateur? is this just a personal opinion without scientific backing? from cavalcanti de albuquerque’s peremptory statement, we have a more weighted statement following. thus, in 1869, a new president of the province, joão antonio de araujo freitas henriques, also made his remarks about the museum: there is in this capital, as is not unknown to you, a curious establishment of this kind, due to the efforts of its owner, dr. joaquim antonio alves ribeiro. having already had the pleasure of visiting it, it seems to me that it is not in much worse condition than others of the same species, which exist in various provinces, those which have cost large sums to the public coffers”. so determined efforts, so usefully employed, deserve the attention of enlightened men, and must be encouraged by all those who take up the study of the sciences, and applaud the vocations to useful knowledge. (relatorio 1869, 25) a little more profound than its predecessors, as the three paragraphs uttered by the new president of the province of ceará respectively address: the curiosity of the establishment; the comparison with other museums15 and the need to support useful knowledge. both the first and third paragraphs are usual topics used to talk about museums, that is, the curiosity and the almost obligatory nature of the government to financially support these institutions. however, the second paragraph is quite innovative. it suggests that its author knew or had previous experience with other museums existing in other provinces of the country, even if only as a visitor. so, after visiting the natural history cabinet, freitas henrique suggested that this one was not as inferior as the others he met and that cost hefty sums. in other words, the president of the province stated that, in other provinces, there would be larger and more expensive museums; that the natural history cabinet was inferior, but not so much, without the onerous cost of other museums. thus, by basing his analysis on the pragmatic bias of the cost-benefit relationship, the public administrator implicitly suggested that from the bottom of the public coffers, the natural history cabinet was set up and maintained by a private person and ceará society enjoyed, in this way, a great benefit. as already mentioned in this article, in 1871, the cabinet of natural history was offered in the form of a donation to the ceará province by its creator and then maintainer, and the provincial administration quickly expressed its opinion on the matter: since dr. joaquim antonio alves ribeiro offered the province a natural history cabinet, which he had, in order to serve as a nucleus for the creation of a public museum, i informed the provincial assembly, which was working at the time, of such an offer, asking it to congratulate the means of contributing to the expenses that acceptance would entail (relatorio 1872, 19). 15 for an overview of museums in 19th century brazil, with an emphasis on the 1870s, see (vasconcelos 2019, 151-166). on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 thus, after communication to the provincial assembly, baron de taquary, then president of the province, ordered the necessary steps to be taken to receive the donation: on december 4 last [1871], i authorized the payment of the amount of 520$000 reis, spent on the purchase of shelves and cabinets for the museum, and the 22, the expense of 80$000 reis with the replacement of glass that had broken during transport from the same shelves, and with the invoice of a wooden grid. (relatorio 1872, 20) next, the conscientious baron concludes by stating that: by act of december 30, i appointed a guard to the museum, with an annual bonus of $400 reis, who has to serve under the orders and instructions of the librarian. this act, dealing with the creation of a job, is dependent on the approval of the provincial assembly. (relatorio 1872, 19) the collection of natural history objects started, initially a private collection for private use and after the donation became part of the heritage of the province of ceará. it possessed a fixed place of shelter for the collections and with open visitation to the public. from cabinet to provincial museum after accepting the donation from the cabinet of natural history, it started to operate in the same building in which the public library of ceará was already operating, in marques de herval square, in the center of fortaleza (almanak 1873, 361). the museum had several specimens: monkeys, wild cats, birds, fish, spiders, shells. as it was a collection made by a researcher from ceará and in ceará, it is assumed that the specimens that constituted the museum were mostly from ceará fauna and flora, but as there is no indication of origin in the classification list of objects, we cannot effectively make such a statement. a difficulty that arises when checking the classification list of objects. the great power of synthesis that those responsible had, makes it impossible to have a broader view of the collections, as it is possible to verify in the point concerning the mineral kingdom: mineral kingdom there are several samples of rocks, the number of which rises to 560, 25 of which are iron, lead, copper, gold, iron tetaniferous (sic) and bismuth. (pereira 1873, 365) if those responsible for the classification had been more detailed, they could have specified more than the 560 rocks, informing their shapes, sizes and weights. furthermore, the indication of origin would also help a lot, as was done in the paleological collection with the indication of the existence of fossil fish from the araripe mountain range (in the southern region of ceará) and the existence of bones obtained through excavations made in quixeramobim (central region of the ceará). but none of this was done and so we only have the raw information on the existence of 560 rocks. this same difficulty can still be seen in the details of the archeology and numismatics collection: archeological [and] numismatics on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 12 there are indian instruments suitable for war and hunting, 2 well-worked oars, a firearm of extraordinary thickness, 1 photograph of lopes,16 1 pair of clogs suitable for walking on ice. as for numismatics, there are coins of copper, silver and paper money from paraguay (pereira 1873, 365). once again, we asked ourselves about which instruments used by the indigenous peoples were these? where did they come from? how way obtained? but as already mentioned, unfortunately, there is no detail of this information. and along with the indigenous objects, a firearm, a photo of francisco solano lopes and shoes for walking on ice. objects worthy of a cabin of curiosity, especially the photo of the president of paraguay and the boots for walking on ice. the pictured man was killed in the war and boots in ceará would have no use. we conclude by mentioning the words of austriciliano deoscorides damon padilha, in charge of the museum and responsible for the information provided to the almanak administrativo, mercantil e industrial da província do ceará, who clearly realized that the continuity and growth of the museum involved the engagement of both the public authorities and private interests: “these are the objects that make up the museum, it is to be expected that it will take on other proportions, if perhaps the city councils and even private individuals take an interest in the aggrandizement of this institution, bearing in mind the recommendations that have been made for this purpose” (pereira 1873, 365). conclusion after presenting how historically the history of science in brazil has been and continues to be researched and explained with an exaggerated emphasis on specific cases in the southeast region of brazil (minas gerais – rio de janeiro – são paulo), we presented a concrete historical experience that took place in brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century in the current northeast region of brazil, not studied by the historiography production on the subject. if the cases presented are ontologically equivalent, the same does not happen epistemologically. when historians present specific cases that occurred exclusively in the southeast region of brazil and self-title these experiences as “the only brazilian experience”, an alleged metanarrative is created that is accepted and never questioned, because for these historians, science is synonymous with money, of investments and the only place that presents the adequate economic conditions for this logic is the southeast region of brazil, as that is where the country’s industrial park is located, with the largest cities, consolidating, in this way, the southeast as the largest economy. in other words: as the place in the country with the infrastructure, the southeast region of brazil can fully develop the superstructure that involves science. in addition to being a marxist argument with a determinist bias, this way of explaining disregards and ignores other forms as they do not fit the parameters of this understanding, they are disregarded. knowing different experiences, expanding the cases in which science was thought and experimented in brazil in past centuries as the museum of natural history of ceará in the 19th century demonstrates -, is to broaden the notion of science and broaden the notion of a nation that is still quite restricted both yesterday and today. 16 francisco solano lópez carrillo, usually known as solano lópez (1827-1870). he was the second constitutional president of the republic of paraguay. he was commander of the armed forces and supreme chief of his country during the war beetwist paraguay and the triple alliance (argentina, brazil and paraguai), also known only as the paraguay war. occurred in 1864-1870. for a broad understanding of the impact of the war in brazil, see (izecksohn 2020). on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 13 references azevedo, fernando de. 1943. a cultura brasileira: introdução ao estudo da cultura no brasil. rio de janeiro, instituto brasileiro de geografia e estatística (ibge), comissão censitária nacional. azevedo, fernando de (org.). 1956. as ciências no brasil. são paulo, edições melhoramentos. 2v. blake, augusto victorino alves sacramento. 1883. diccionario bibliographico brazileiro. rio de janeiro: imprensa nacional. 7 v. carvalho, josé murilo de. 1975. ph.d. dissertation, “elite and state-building in imperial brazil” (stanford university). carvalho, josé murilo de. 1978. a escola de minas de ouro preto: o peso da glória. rio de janeiro: finep/cia editora nacional. carvalho, josé murilo de. 1980. a construção da ordem: a elite política imperial. rio de janeiro/brasília: ed. campus/ed. da universidade de brasília. carvalho, josé murilo de. 1988. teatro de sombras: a política imperial. são paulo/rio de janeiro: vértice/instituto universitário de pesquisa do rio de janeiro. dantes, maria amélia mascarenhas. 2001. espaços da ciência no brasil: 1800-1930. rio de janeiro. editora fiocruz. daston, lorraine and galison, peter. 2010. objectivity. new york: zone books. edler, flávio coelho. 2015. a história das ciências e seus públicos. in: [revista] maracanan, n. 13, dezembro de 2015. ferri, mario guimarães and motoyama, shozo. 1979-1981. história das ciências no brasil. são paulo: edusp; e.p.u. 3 vols. guimarães, manoel luiz lima salgado. 2003. cultura histórica oitocentista: a constituição de uma memória disciplinar. in: pesavento, sandra jatahy. 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[report with which his excellency dr. pedro leão vellozo passed the administration of the province to his excellency the 1st. vice president dr. antonio joaquim rodrigues junior on april 22, 1868. fortaleza typograhia brasileira property of j. evangelista. 1868] falla recitada na abertura da assembleia legislativa provincial do ceará pelo excelentissimo presidente da província dr. diogo velho cavalcanti de albuquerque no dia 1ª. de novembro de 1868. fortaleza. typograhia brasileira propriedade de j. evangelista. 1868. [speech recited at the opening of the provincial legislative assembly of ceará by the excellency president of the province dr. diogo velho cavalcanti de albuquerque on the 1st. november 1868. fortaleza. brazilian typograhia property of j. evangelista. 1868] on the writing of history of science in brazil in the second half of the 20th century: what is inside and outside? eduardo henrique barbosa de vasconcelos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 15 relatorio apresentado à assembleia provincial do ceará pelo presidente da mesma província o exm. sr. desembargador joão antônio de araújo freitas henriques no dia 1ª. de setembro de 1869. fortaleza typografia constitucional. 1869. [report presented to the provincial assembly of ceará by the president of the same province the hon. appellate judge joão antônio de araújo freitas henriques on the 1st. september 1869. fortaleza. constitutional typography. 1869] relatorio com que o excelentíssimo senhor conselheiro barão de taquary passou a administração da província do ceará ao excelentíssimo senhor comendador joaquim da cunha freire 2ª. vice-presidente da mesma no dia 08 de janeiro de 1872. [report with which the honorable councilor baron of taquary passed the administration of the province of ceará to his excellency commander joaquim da cunha freire 2ª. vicepresident of the same institution on january 8, 1872] websites historical information of the sul america insurance company https://portal.sulamericaseguros.com.br/institucional/sobre-a-sulamerica/historia/ levantamento nominal dos formando de 1812 a 2008 da faculdade de medicina da bahia [nominal survey of graduates from 1812 to 2008 at the faculty of medicine of bahia]; in: http://www.cbg.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/b_formandos_medicina.pdf maria amelia dantes’ curriculum vitae at http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.do?id=k4783109h0 microsoft word stoffel layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-22 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal article a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism — demonstrating the importance of scientific historiography by way of a discussion between a student and one of his professors jean-françois stoffel1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0321-3875 abstract: according to the copernican myth, geocentrism was a form of anthropocentrism because it showcased humankind as being both the centre and the purpose of the cosmos, whereas heliocentrism, in dethroning humankind from this privileged position, luckily provided a means to quash this point of view, which was illusory and vain, and that even went against scientific progress. according to the anthropocentric myth, which is a part of it, geocentrism is a form of anthropocentrism, while heliocentrism is really an anti-anthropocentrism and not simply a non-anthropocentrism. this article, in the form of a dialogue, questions these two myths, looking in particular for the causes of their appearance, among which is a guilty anachronism. keywords: anachronism; anthropocentrism; geocentrism; heliocentrism; worldview received: september 25, 2022. reviewed: october 20, 2022. accepted: november 11, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i13.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ to lucas trappeniers a request lucas. — excuse me, professor, but as part of our research methodology coursework, we are required to complete a project demonstrating the importance of paying attention to the 1 jean-françois stoffel is a professor at the haute école louvain-en-hainaut. address: département paramédical du campus de montignies, 136 rue trieu kaisin, 6061 montignies-sur-sambre, belgium. email: stoffeljf@helha.be a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 historiography of science, which means — if i’ve understood correctly — the way in which the history of science was previously written and how we ourselves write it today. professor. — well, that seems rather interesting… on my behalf, please congratulate the teacher who assigned you this project! lucas. — will do! although, we have to do it based on an interview with a teacher who has already dealt with this issue either directly or indirectly during the course of their research. we also have to read and use the article that they published as a result of that research. so, i immediately thought of you… because, as you mentioned before, i know that you are very attuned to the issues of methodology due to your thorough reading of alexandre koyré’s works. do you have a publication on this subject, and would you accept my asking you a few questions after having read it? professor. — no, not really, but the research i’m currently doing involves exposing a historiographical myth, while making sure to avoid merely substituting it with another one that is simply its opposite! i’m also looking to understand how this myth came about and why it persisted... lucas. — great! i think that fits our assignment. but do you already have the article? professor. — no, not yet. i’ve only just chosen the title: centralities of the earth and centralities of humankind: towards a nuanced expression of the relationship between geocentrism, heliocentrism and anthropocentrism. i think there’s a solution to this, though: you could simply help me to write it, by playing the role of the innocent. so, at the end of the day, you will not only have asked me loads of questions, but you will also be in possession of the article you need! what do you think of that? lucas. — that’s fine by me because i need a text! according to your title, it seems that your research is about the history of cosmology? professor. — yes, it concerns the idea that geocentrism was a form of anthropocentrism because it showcased humankind as being both the centre and the purpose of the cosmos, whereas heliocentrism, in dethroning humankind from this privileged position, luckily provided a means to quash this point of view, which was illusory and vain, and that even went against scientific progress. lucas. — with all due respect, everyone knows that! it’s the first of the three humiliations: copernicus, darwin and freud! i’d really like to get a good mark. do you think that with a subject like this… professor. — i do… because this idea is still to be found everywhere: you just proved that to me yourself! it is, however, largely incorrect. a fact that was established nearly a century ago already in various incontestable texts! lucas. — sorry, but that’s surely because this myth, as you say, isn’t entirely incorrect. con artists, i’m told, know only too well that they have to blend a little truth in with their lies, at least if they hope to avoid being found out too easily! professor. — exactly, lucas! that is indeed the case! and even twice over. firstly, because this myth makes a fundamentally true statement, although less in relation to those who lived through this cosmological upheaval than to those who, a little later on, would create and a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 3 even sustain it. as i’d like to demonstrate in my article, it also contains a second piece of truth, since there is actually a form of anthropocentrism within geocentrism, but it isn’t as a direct result of this so-called vain centrality of the earth! lucas. — i got it right with my con artist story then. so, can i be your candide? professor. — of course! here’s some reading material for you so you can immerse yourself in the subject. we’ll start working on this next wednesday. day one lucas. — good morning, sir. i imagine we should start by better defining our subject. so, what exactly is this historiographical myth that the historians so hotly contested, that we still seem to find everywhere despite it all, and for which the two true parts were underestimated? professor. — here’s a very brief summary. the earth, after having been placed at the centre of the world by human vanity, was debased because it lost this noble and prestigious position and took up an ordinary seat among the many meandering heavenly bodies; because in doing so, it became just a mere planet like all the others; and, lastly, because it was seen to be an incredibly small body compared to the vastness of the universe. as for humans, their self-esteem had taken a blow because they were no longer the centre of a world made purely for them; because they no longer occupied this central position that was a sign of their unique nature as sons and daughters of god; and because the possibility of there being other living species on other inhabited worlds had even deprived them of their uniqueness. for the sake of brevity, let’s call this historiographical schema “the copernican myth”, whereas others have named it “the great copernican cliché” (danielson 2001, 1029 & 2014, 159; keas 2015, 25), and even “the modern historical interpretation” (špelda 2014, 76). by the same token, let’s call the works of those who challenge this myth “the copernican revision”. have you been able to identify, from the description i just gave you, the part that we’ll need to focus on more specifically? lucas. — yes, that would be the double comparison whereby geocentrism is a form of anthropocentrism, while heliocentrism is really an anti-anthropocentrism and not simply a non-anthropocentrism. and, naturally, you’ll call that… professor. — …the anthropocentric myth and the anthropocentric revision! in this way, we’ll be able to distinguish between the overall interpretive schema and the more specific part that we’ll be examining. the latter is intrinsically linked to the notion of centrality, as implied at first glance by the term “anthropocentrism”. lucas. — well, that’s perfectly clear! but i’m still not entirely convinced that i’ll get a good mark! when i came to see you, you told me that the copernican myth has already been challenged for nearly a century, but to no avail, it seems. so, why do you think that our article would succeed in changing anything? and also, who is going to want to read it, since even i admit to having my doubts about the relevance of your research? a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 4 professor. — your concerns are entirely justified, so i think i’ll toy with you a bit first and begin by reinforcing them… and then you’re going to tell me how we’re going to take that into account! i think we can separate our future readers into three groups: the more or less conscious supporters of the copernican myth; the relatively few proponents of the copernican revision; and, lastly, all those who, devoid of any preconceived ideas, are curious enough to make the effort to read our work. leaving the last group aside, let’s try to guess what the two others will make of it. the supporters of the myth will say that the ties between geocentrism, heliocentrism and anthropocentrism were already firmly established in the second half of the 17th century (danielson 2001, 1033): geocentrism is a form of anthropocentrism; anthropocentrism is a form of geocentrism; and it’s thanks to the eternal glory of nicolaus copernicus, who inaugurated our modernity, that we were delivered, through heliocentrism, from these equally unified and puerile illusions. for them, our work will be seen as useless… since it’s superfluous! the proponents of the revision, on the other hand, will perhaps enjoy arguing with the former by pointing out that their attempt to set the polish astronomer up as the flagbearer for the triumphant rejection of all anthropocentrism is, to say the least, paradoxical: on the contrary, the latter viewed the world as having been created for man (copernic 2015, vol. 2, 8; blumenberg 2000, xii-xiii, 38, 172). but having the distinct impression that their protests have thus far gone unheard, i imagine that they’ll above all be thinking: “what’s the point in yet another article?”. for them, our work will be considered equally useless… since it’s destined to fail! lucas. — well done on the pep talk, sir! so, how do you expect me to convince these people to read our work anyway? professor. — think about your assignment… lucas. — my assignment is about historiography… professor. — so… lucas. — so, it needs to examine how we wrote scientific history… in this case, how the authors of the copernican revision wrote theirs? professor. — yes, in order to… lucas. — …to see how we could go about things a little differently so as to increase our chances of success a bit? professor. — precisely! lucas. — but i guess that this exercise will teach us many other things… professor. — absolutely! it will be up to you to make sure this comes across in your work. so, this is my take on the contemporary history of the copernican revision. to my mind, it began around ten years after the copernican myth had acquired, between 1835 and 1925, its a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 5 particular set of features chiefly influenced by positivism, darwinism and freudianism (stoffel 2012). i’d suggest dividing it into three periods. as a starting point, seeing that it’s emblematic, i take the year 1936 because that’s when arthur o. lovejoy’s book, the great chain of being, was published. this initial period was characterized by publications that either refuted the main idea of the myth or furnished a certain number of elements that went towards refuting it. although in both cases, these publications did so in a partial, scattered and relatively discrete manner, with hardly any explanation or textual justification, simply because that wasn’t their main objective. i’d say the second one began in the early 1970s, with the debate between cl. savary (1969, 1970) and r. montpetit (1970). it distinguished itself from the first in that its works provided a far more explicit and well-reasoned refutation. lastly, the third one, which began around the year 2000 and is essentially based on the english translation of the prominent article by r. brague (1997), is that of dissemination and vulgarisation. what have you gleaned from this quick presentation? lucas. — that it seems to demonstrate a growing awareness of the copernican myth’s basic inaccuracy. we see this not only from the increasing number of publications but also from the rise of popularisers. professor. — right! so, this is the first point in favour of remaining hopeful when it comes to your legitimate concerns about our chances of success. lucas. — there’s a second one? let me figure it out… i feel that it must be linked to either the humiliation or to the truthful part that we already talked about, but i don’t really get the connection. professor. — it’s linked to both! let’s address the truthful part first. the resistance that the authors of the revision kept coming up against was a sign that the myth possessed a certain power that must have been, in one way or another, as a result of its truthful part. consequently, it isn’t enough to merely explain the reasons for its falsehood, one must also, and perhaps above all, identify those that contributed to its success. since once we’ve managed to identify what this success is the “symptom” of (savary 1970, 399), it will be easier for us, even if we don’t manage to entirely cure our historical myopia, at least to become aware of why we remain so attached to this historiographical schema in spite of everything. lucas. — then it’ll be easier for us to free ourselves from it. that’s the second point in favour of us remaining hopeful! professor. — exactly! in order to identify the reason behind this attachment, let’s now turn to the aspect of humiliation. you surely agree that it’s paradoxical, to say the least, to cling to a myth that we know to be quite far from the truth, and one that is also regarded as rather degrading for the human race! lucas. — agreed! although, to my mind, this myth seems fairly straightforward to explain, simple to understand and easy to remember. also, the fact that it doesn’t entirely fit with a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 6 historical truth is quite secondary at the end of the day… of course, we still have the humiliation! professor. — …humiliation for which the myth provides us with different interpretations. as far as i can make out, there are three that we can show as having succeeded one another over time: the first one is optimistic as it’s liberating; the second is nostalgic since it’s destructive (koyré 1957, 281; stoffel 2018a, 426-427); and, lastly, the third is quite simply resigned. now, according to the optimistic version — which is, above all, typical of the rational mind — this demotion, albeit real, was not only necessary but even deeply gratifying. necessary, because the sudden awareness of these individuals having been ousted from their cosmic centrality allowed humankind to free itself of two prejudices responsible for geocentrism and opposed to scientific progress: the authority granted to senses and the incessant use of finalistic reasoning. gratifying, because this awareness served to reveal not only a rare strength of character but also the importance of the intellectual effort required in order to see through deceptive appearances. lucas. — so the humiliation of no longer being the centre and the end of the world was presented, by those who wrote this history, as having been largely offset by the triumphant revelation of the eminently human values of courage, power of reason and the ability to thenceforth ensure the progress of the sciences? professor. — exactly. incidentally, i really like the way you worded that sentence because you said: “…by those who wrote this history…”. therefore, it’s…? lucas. — historiography! professor. — yes, in the sense that you are attempting to figure out the true motivation behind such a story, in this case, the desire to get people to accept their loss of privilege by immediately replacing it with another one that is presented as being far superior! i’d like to take this opportunity to assure you that i’m in no way losing sight of the subject of your assignment. but that i’ll be trying to imitate koyré, who never wrote a manual, or even a single article, on how to write scientific history. instead, he peppered his publications with numerous methodological musings, because for him it wasn’t about mastering them theoretically but rather applying them day by day — as it were — article by article! this is why i’ll hardly ever mention historiography to you during our discussions. i would, however, like you to experience for yourself how different our little research project would have been had we not constantly remained mindful of the way in which history was written by our predecessors and the way in which we intend to write it ourselves. lucas. — yes, we tend to believe more strongly in what we’ve experienced ourselves! but you know, i’ve read a little koyré. i presume that the methodological principles you’ve just alluded to represent our need to set aside what we know, the dangers of searching for predecessors, and even the challenge of thinking like those we’re studying thought… professor. — quite so, but you are forgetting the most important one: the dangers of anachronism! that should remain etched in your mind! a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 7 lucas. — done! i promise to watch out for any signs of the subdued yet fundamental application of these principles that should govern our way of writing history. but to come back to the values of courage, intelligence and scientific progress, are they really enough to make one forget such a major loss and humiliation? because after all, being the centre and the end of the world was quite a big deal! professor. — for the most part, yes! since, other than this humiliating consequence of the new astronomy, it revealed another consequence which was seen to be even greater and which was presented as a major breakthrough for the human intellect. allow me to sum up the reasoning behind it for you. with geocentrism, the ancients were happy to derive their dignity from the special position they’d been assigned in the cosmos. with heliocentrism, the moderns certainly suffered humiliation, although this allowed them to realise that their true dignity resided in the very courage they’d displayed and in the intellectual effort they’d managed to make. this was a vital step forward since this passively received dignity, which was purely positional in nature and provided by an other, was replaced by an actively acquired dignity that was intellectual in nature. due to this substitution, the criteria establishing the nobility of the human race were greatly improved: no longer passive, but active; no longer dependant, but self-sufficient; no longer occupying a prime position in space, but endowed with the power of intelligence! that was more than enough, according to this interpretation, to help them forget the humiliation tied to a naïve and now outdated concept of the world and of humankind! lucas. — i fully understand that, and yet this feeling of humiliation, which should have been resolved along with the growing awareness of the substitution, still remains! one just needs to read the titles of many current publications… professor. — of course, but don’t forget that where there’s an optimistic interpretation, there’s also a nostalgic one. what’s more, as you’ll come to understand shortly, the optimistic interpretation might also benefit from highlighting this humiliation. in any case, now you’re able to better understand why the battle being led by the revision authors is bound to be difficult despite the reasons that we’ve found for remaining hopeful: no matter the amount and pertinence of the arguments that these authors continue to produce, it’s never going to be easy for them to obtain a renunciation of this founding narrative of our modernity, which continues, under the guise of humiliation, to flatter the human pride to such a large degree! lucas. — so, hiding behind the humiliation lies a pride that’s at least as inflated as the one the moderns criticised the ancients for due to their central position in the cosmos? in the end, is this not then just a case of one pride attempting to drive out another? professor. — if we stick to this interpretation of the myth, then there are indeed those who argue in favour of that perspective (polanyi 1962, 4), even pointing out that the latter is certainly not the lesser of the two (gilson 1948, 246-247; barth 1949, 21-22)! because, don’t forget, that the revision consists precisely in denying the fact that the cosmic centrality of their dwelling might have been a favourable setting for the ancients to get this impression. so, this would be a more accurate way of putting it: while harshly condemning the pride that supposedly belonged solely to the ancients, the moderns displayed a pride that was very real, albeit somewhat concealed behind their feelings of humiliation. obviously, as i’m sure you realise, the truth of the matter is far more complex than this quick and provocative statement would suggest. a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 8 lucas. — i must admit that i still need time to digest this series of paradoxes… but at least i can tell my methodology teacher that my project, despite the issues you’ve just pointed out, is neither superfluous nor destined to fail — which is a pretty good thing! professor. — you could even add to that: tell him it’s original! think about it. what’s our position in the history of the copernican revision? lucas. — we’re part of the third phase! professor. — i’m not so sure! i think we could reasonably argue that we are inaugurating a fourth phase, or rather a new sub-phase within the third one. think back to what i said to you when you were talking about con artists… lucas. — that i was right twice over because there wasn’t just one, but two truthful parts to the myth. we already discussed the first one: this feeling of humiliation that was present in both the optimistic and nostalgic interpretations. so, i presume you’re referring to the second one: the presence of a certain anthropocentrism within geocentrism! that’s why you told me that the revision, in its desire to correct the myth’s simplicity, had to be careful not to fall prey to equally simplistic statements, because they’d merely be reversing them! professor. — precisely! to my mind, it might even be necessary to go through two new sub-phases: the first being the one that you just mentioned relating to geocentrism, and the second being the transition period during which geocentrists and heliocentrists coexisted! let’s take a look at the first one now. remind me to tell you about the second one when you hear the word “topography”, okay? lucas. — all right! professor. — the first should then be characterised by paying closer attention to this anthropocentric dimension, but without giving the impression of regressing, since it’s a question of trying to refine the revision rather than going back to the myth! lucas. — so, if we succeed, i’ll be able to tell my teacher that our work is original since the movement it’s trying to establish isn’t cyclical but rather helical! professor. — i’m impressed! but we still have to prove it. let’s examine this revision history a little more closely. aside from a few rare exceptions (del prete 1998), it consisted in implementing one of two strategies. the first and least frequently encountered in the field of scientific history, refutes the idea that within essentially christian geocentrism the importance afforded to humankind was in any way linked to its position in space, or as is the case here, to its cosmic centrality (vincelette 2021, 148-149). this thus cuts all ties between geocentrism and anthropocentrism. the second, and most predominant, involves consistently contradicting all those claims put forward by the anthropocentric myth. where the latter describes geocentrism as a form of anthropocentrism, the revision instead presents it as a form of diabolocentrism (lovejoy 1936, 102; nowicki 1973, 100), an infernocentrism (slagle 2003, 291) or a theocentrism, which seems more relevant to me. although, the revision immediately adds the fact that, from a human standpoint, it can also undoubtedly be seen as an anthropoperipherism (lewis 1964, a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 9 58). so, it’s not about deleting but rather inverting the link between geocentrism and anthropocentrism: instead of being seen as central, the position of humankind’s dwelling is qualified as peripheral, commonplace and insignificant… lucas. — and so, as opposed to deleting or inverting, we’ll be adding! but, in my role as candide, i still have two more questions! firstly, are you sure that we are the first to attempt reintroducing, as it were, a “dose” of anthropocentrism back into the christian geocentric world? just to see how high my mark could actually go… professor. — your question gives me the opportunity to better explain, and so to better define, our originality. as you’ve gathered, challenging the anthropocentric myth is denying the idea that humankind’s dignity could have resulted from its cosmic centrality, since this was deemed contemptible rather than glorious. but the fact remains that on the scale of beings typical of medieval thinking, the human race was positioned, to put it briefly, above the stars and only slightly below spiritual beings. within the revision as we know it, we’re thus faced with a paradox: how are we to understand that humankind, even though positioned in the armpit of the cosmos, could have been considered nobler than all other corporeal creatures, be they terrestrial or celestial? aware of this issue, some authors (slagle 2003, 297) made use of certain elements belonging to christian doctrine — the imago dei, the incarnation, the redemption — in order to counterbalance the baseness of this dwelling place... lucas. — …and thereby explain how humankind, despite it all, managed to find itself so high up on the ladder! professor. — exactly! and without denying the significance of these elements, our goal is nevertheless different: we aim to point out that which, within the very heart of the geocentric worldview and not within christian doctrine, could have constituted proof of a certain anthropocentrism. therein lies the relative originality of our approach. lucas. — got it! second question: why are you less partial to “diabolocentrism” and “infernocentrism”, while favouring “theocentrism”? professor. — i won’t be able to answer that for you until i’ve explained why, in geocentrism, the centre of the world was considered to be the most contemptible one. lucas. — okay, well i’m really looking forward to hearing that explanation because i honestly don’t see the logic in it. i think that being in the centre is a rather good thing! i mean when you’re teaching a class, you’re the one in the middle of the lecture theatre and not some other halfwit… professor. — you’re entirely correct, so much so that i’ll make that next wednesday’s topic… right after you give me a brief summary of what we discussed today. in the meanwhile, keep reading! day two professor. — good morning, lucas. would you mind refreshing my memory as discussed, please? a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 10 lucas. — of course, i’ve prepared a summary. let me read it to you. endeavouring to better explain geocentrism, heliocentrism and anthropocentrism may seem somewhat superfluous to the proponents of the myth, and even futile to those supporting the revision. however, we shouldn’t allow the latter’s feelings of impotency to undermine our efforts because, on the one hand, we’re witnessing an increasingly widespread dissemination of the revision and, on the other hand, we plan to reveal not only the reasons for the myth’s falsehood but also those that have contributed to its success. the latter, albeit multifaceted, is largely due to the fact that the myth, under the guise of humiliation, flatters human pride by appealing not to the position of our dwelling, but rather to the power of our intelligence. by substituting this intellectual criterion for a spatial one, it’s perfectly in keeping with modern thinking which is partly founded on this narrative. this is why we remain so attached to it. its endurance can also be explained by the truthful part that it contains. whereas the revision either severed any ties between geocentrism and anthropocentrism or reversed the link that traditionally united them, it seems essential to recognise the fact that there’s indeed an element of anthropocentrism within the geocentric worldview. it’s for this reason that our efforts will be neither superfluous nor destined to fail, and even quite original! professor. — not bad! as i remember, you’re eager to understand why the cosmic centrality of the earth was considered humiliating as opposed to glorious, as claimed by the myth. here’s the explanation for you (stoffel 2018b, 414-420). as such, the study of the different cosmological systems only pertains to the history of astronomy, or, depending on one’s point of view, to that of cosmology, providing one adopts the current meaning of the term. however, when one also takes into account the particular topography that comes with each of these systems, they go towards defining a certain worldview. studying them thus pertains either to the history of natural philosophy or to the history of cosmology, this time used in a broader sense. by “topography”, i mean that set of characteristics — of a scientific, philosophical, religious and symbolic nature — which, whether spatial or temporal (or at least reputedly so), mean that these cosmological systems serve not only to scientifically order and arrange these celestial bodies but also to determine a certain worldview, or a weltanschauung, as koyré would’ve put it. lucas. — you mentioned “topography”, which is when i was to remind you that… professor. — yes, i remember. but please wait a little longer! our topic concerns the value that’s ascribed to humankind according to the centrality attributed, or not, to its dwelling. this thus involves two worldviews and not just two cosmological systems. consequently, we need to take these topographies into account. we can identify two main ones, without it being necessary, for our purposes, to go into any further detail. the first one, which is essentially vertical, is obtained imaginatively by omitting the southern hemisphere, both terrestrial and cosmic, and by the perfect, albeit purely fictive, alignment of the “planets” along an axis perpendicular to the horizon while defining a range of values (fig. n°1). seeing that in this worldview, all movement and efficiency — the source of which is generally to be found beyond the sensory world — are communicated to the rest of the cosmos from the sphere of fixed stars, this axis is traversed in a downward direction: from the sphere of fixed stars (seen as the top) down to the earth (seen as the bottom), a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 11 passing through the star of the day (seen as the middle). once this axis is extended in either direction beyond the sphere of fixed stars, it can also make room for the placement of entities, possible deemed supranatural, such as the prime mover, god, the empyrean, or at its other extremity, satan and the underworld. figure 1. the vertical topography of geocentrism lucas. — from what i can make out in your diagram, i’m guessing it’s because the earth is seen, according to this topography, as being at the very bottom rather than in the centre that the revision contests the idea, as you’ve been saying all along, that its position is prideful? professor. — precisely, because as i’m sure you can see, it’s fairly easy to get from the bottom, as a position, to baseness, as a value judgement! lucas. — do the texts prove this? professor. — yes, they certainly do! that being said, i’ll grant you that it’s a little absurd for the ancients to have completely ignored this fact and mistaken the bottom for the centre… but anyway, that’s just the way it is! as long as you’re aware of that… a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 12 lucas. — i am, but my methodology teacher always says that our predecessors weren’t dumber than we are. therefore, he adds, that when we get the impression they were — as is the case here — we should rather think it’s us who have missed the point! but then again, he doesn’t know as much as you do… professor. — well actually, your teacher is absolutely right! i was just trying to catch you out to see if you’d spot the error, horrid as i am. and you saw straight through it, quite cleverly i might add! well done! look, this assimilation of the centre and the middle is hardly as ridiculous as it seems. allow me to give you just one example among many. since time immemorial, the celestial sphere was considered to be the top and the opposing terrestrial world to be the bottom. this assimilation was established within rudimentary cosmologies that placed the sky, according to our basic experience of reality, above the plane surface that is our earth. far from cancelling out these associations, as we might presume, the transition from a flat cosmology — as in the bible, for example — to a spherical cosmology — as in geocentrism, in this case — served, on the contrary, to reinforce them. logically, since in a spherical world the celestial sphere is still seen as the top, one must, as before, designate a bottom. so, in a sphere, the only place that is the farthest from every point of it, and the only position that can claim to be its extreme opposite, is of course the centre. only the centre can thus constitute the bottom of the sphere, and the traditional top/bottom opposition is thereby preserved. it is even strengthened from a geometric and symbolic point of view. in fact, considering that it seems rather natural in a plane world to place the sky at the top and the earth at the bottom, the awkward question immediately arises as to what is underneath this base. it would then appear that this base is only relative, since there must be something else below it. however, in a spherical world, there really can’t be anything underneath this base, since attempting to go below it means losing it by going above it! similarly, from a symbolic point of view, the terrestrial world was conceived as being below due to its difference in nature when compared to the world above, which is eternal, immutable and animated only by a circular motion. but the fact remains that, beyond this qualitative difference, there was, from a quantitative point of view, a certain proportionality between above and below, since the expanse of one merely covered the expanse of the other. in a spherical world, this qualitative difference is also marked by a quantitative perspective: the relationship that exists between the terrestrial world and the celestial world is no longer one which is established between two expanses, but one which is determined from the notion of a whole sphere surrounding a mere point. lucas. — i must say, that’s quite clever! professor. — now that you’ve passed this little test, let’s get back to the topographies! unlike the first one, the second, which is decidedly spherical, is obtained imaginatively without having to omit one of the hemispheres or assume that the “planets” are perfectly aligned along a particular axis (fig. n°2). based on the principle that the essence of the universe, and even the source of all movement and/or all efficiency, is to be found at its centre, it’s from here that the various effects radiate outwards, their power being considered to decrease in proportion to their distance from the centre. a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 13 figure 2 the spherical topography of heliocentrism lucas. — and so now we’re dealing with a centre that’s really a centre and no longer a bottom? professor. — that’s badly worded but entirely correct. and as you might have guessed, due to the fact that it’s organised around the concepts of top, middle and bottom, and is characterised by the notion of hierarchy, vertical topography is particularly well represented in christian geocentrism. governed by the concepts of a centre and its perimeter, and directed by the idea of diffusion, spherical topography is chiefly characteristic of copernican and, to an even greater extent, keplerian heliocentrism. lucas. — yes, i understood that. but has this topography business been proven because i don’t think i’ve ever come across it before? professor. — well, that’s entirely understandable since it’s a personal historiographical model that governs my way of understanding and thus of tracing the history of worldviews. to answer your question, its relevance should be judged according to how it measures up against the literature, and its ability to provide a better understanding of the history of worldviews. so, it’s up to you to decide! now that you’re familiar with the topographies that are actually associated with geocentrism and heliocentrism, you’ll be able to discover for yourself wherein the grave error that constitutes the origin of the copernican and anthropocentric myths lies. a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 14 lucas. — you think that i’ll be able to figure out for myself why so many people have been so wrong for so long? are you making fun of me right now? professor. — not at all! you now have all the information you need. firstly, consider the period in which the myth was created, then the cosmological system and topography that applied at the time, and lastly the value attributed to the centre of the world. from there, you’ll be able to find what caused the humiliation, as well as the comparison of geocentrism to anthropocentrism, and then finally what brought about this error… lucas. — the second half of the 17th century… heliocentrism… spherical topography… and a highly esteemed centre! so, they obviously felt humiliated because the earth had been driven out of the centre… professor. — and who are “they”? lucas. — those who thought that this centre was a glorious position according to spherical topography. professor. — why is it necessary to specify that? lucas. — i don’t know… professor. — because during this transition period, there were also those geocentrists who examined the same cosmological upheavals, except by applying… lucas. — …vertical topography! professor. — yes, and they weren’t the only ones. the tychonians also did this, as did the copernicans who, scientifically speaking, had already adopted the new world system, although, symbolically speaking, they hadn’t yet embraced its spherical topography! so, the same upheavals — namely, the loss of the central position, or rather the distancing from it — should also be examined by systematically adopting each of these two points of view! and depending on which one we choose to adopt, the resulting assessment will be entirely different! now go ahead and prove this to me! lucas. — those who adopted spherical topography — as we’ve understood for a while now — mourned the idea that the earth was no longer at the centre, but presumably derived comfort from the fact that the sun now occupied this noble position. those who looked at it in terms of vertical topography probably didn’t understand why our humble earth, having been removed from such a low position, had been worthy of such a big promotion… professor. — …nor why the star of the day, which until then had occupied a medial position (fig. n°1), had suddenly been punished by being placed at this centre that for them was at the bottom! i insist on this point because it strikes me that the revision didn’t adequately address these different perspectives. in fact, it primarily strove to overturn the established similarities between geocentrism and anthropocentrism, and to briefly show how heliocentrism, despite it all, could lend itself to an anthropocentric interpretation. it thus rightly challenged the myth’s pre-copernican version and sought to evaluate its post-copernican one. however, it didn’t manage to capture the complexity of the copernican period itself, since it overlooked the a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 15 coexistence of the different perspectives. the fact that this in-between period hasn’t yet been studied with the attention it deserves is one of the convictions driving my research. but let’s move on. you were attempting to pinpoint the mistake made by the myth when you discovered that the humiliation, as described therein, was a direct result of applying a spherical topography. lucas. — that’s correct! and i suppose that the myth authors behaved in a similar way to the revision authors that you were just talking about? professor. — i’m not sure what you mean by that. lucas. — that the myth authors, in neglecting to account for these different perspectives, also didn’t pay enough attention to the fact that geocentrism had a topography of its own. consequently, they believed that the centre had always been held in great esteem as it was for them. and when one believes that, then geocentrism does indeed become a form of anthropocentrism! professor. — well done! and the error they made… which is incidentally one of the most serious that a historian could ever make? lucas. — they projected their topography onto an era in which it didn’t yet apply. so, it’s an anachronism! see, i did burn it into my brain! professor. — bravo! lucas. — so… that’s all it is then? i mean, both these myths that we just can’t seem to shake off are simply the result of… a vulgar anachronism? professor. — now look who’s judging our ancestors a little harshly! rather try to understand them, or as is the case here, understand their mistake. i’ll start by giving you an initial explanation. the fundaments of a worldview, which includes topography, are rarely fully understood by those who share it. so, you can well imagine what it’s like for those who don’t share it, simply because they’re living within another worldview. let’s take galileo, for example (galilei 1968, 62; stoffel 1998, 27-28). his natural topography was spherical, yet he was very familiar with the old topography which was vertical. also, knowing full well that the centre of the world had been an infamous place in geocentrism before becoming a glorified position in heliocentrism, he naturally took full advantage of this fact. briefly, he accomplished this by presenting geocentrism in an unfavourable light, and heliocentrism in a favourable light! but not everyone was like galileo, and knowledge of the old topography was gradually lost, even by those who remained proponents of geocentrism. under the circumstances, one is able to understand why it seemed quite natural for the myth authors to believe that their spherical topography had always been the order of the day! lucas. — it was slowly forgotten over time then, which is even more understandable considering that topographies weren’t as clearly defined as cosmological systems were, if i’ve understood correctly. i suppose this is why you are keen to further the knowledge surrounding their existence and content via your model! professor. — i couldn’t have said it better myself… a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 16 lucas. — so, now it’s my turn to find an explanation! they must have undoubtedly been less inclined to make an effort to understand the true geocentric worldview since their own version, albeit erroneous, afforded them the benefit of a privileged position: geocentrists got the vile anthropocentrism, while heliocentrists got the glory of getting rid of it! professor. — exactly! in short, they forgot the fact that appealing truths need to be proven twice over! in following their line of thinking, we are even able to find a third, more subtle reason. to achieve this, think back to the difficulty you initially had in understanding how a central position could be seen as a sign of humiliation! to illustrate this, you even used me as an example! lucas. — i used you as an example? oh yes, the lecture theatre! professor. — precisely! with the teacher standing in the middle of it so that he could be clearly seen and heard by everyone — this served as a reminder that, in our daily lives, the centre is generally highly valued. allow me to expand upon your remark. i’d like to begin by pointing out the ambiguity of the term “anthropocentrism” (tinguely 2008), which stems from the fact that it contains the word “centre”. in its literal sense, it refers to the point around which, in adhering to the equidistance principle, a circle or sphere is drawn. or, inversely, one could say that the “centre” is the only point that can be obtained from a circle or a sphere by respecting this principle. taken in a broader sense, in other words metaphorical as opposed to geometrical, this same word then designates a point, not necessarily a real one, but one that is considered to be privileged. consequently, at first glance, one is able to understand the term “anthropocentrism” as affording humankind a centrality (in the figurative sense), which is possibly “supported” by the centrality (in the literal sense), that it enjoys due to an environment which remains to be determined. in your example, this environment is the lecture theatre; in our article, it’s the cosmos taken as a whole. within the term “anthropocentrism” these two meanings can be employed simultaneously — a qualitative centrality based on the existence of a spatial centrality —, but it’s equally possible for it to be taken only in its broader sense, so without considering the literal meaning — a qualitative centrality independent of any spatial centrality. lucas. — the anthropocentric myth combines these two meanings. professor. — yes it does, which means that it relies not only on the presupposition — which we now know to be false — that the centre is necessarily a valued position, but also on another one — which is by no means clear — whereby the qualitative value of a being, namely its importance, is determined by a qualitative element, in this case its spatial relations. what we need to understand is why “anthropocentrism” tends to combine these two meanings of “centre” — which is the case, as you just pointed out, when it comes to the myth — even though it isn’t necessary or even easy to do so. and this is where your example of the lecture theatre will come in handy. the fact that it’s natural to go from the literal meaning to the figurative meaning is easily explained by looking at the human (and even animal) environment, where the centre is indeed considered to be a privileged position. we can thus understand how the myth is able to draw comparisons between geocentrism (embodying spatial centrality) and anthropocentrism (representing the inferred qualitative centrality) that are actually quite credible: this comparison is merely the result of applying, on a cosmological level, that which already prevails in our immediate, or terrestrial environment. the a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 17 mistake that was made here is thus to have assumed, through anthropomorphism, that what applies on earth also applies in the heavens (brague 2008, 371). more precisely, it concerned the idea that what is valid on earth is always valid in the heavens or, by extension, for any cosmological system. now, you know that this isn’t the case when it comes to the vertical topography that goes along with geocentrism. even though within the latter worldview, it’s entirely possible to afford a qualitative centrality to humankind, this centrality can in no way be directly based on its spatial centrality. in short, comparing our earthly experience to the conditions in the heavens, which is valid in the case of heliocentrism, is simply unjustifiable when it comes to geocentrism. lucas. — so, on top of the anachronism providing a direct explanation for the origin of the myth, there’s the, at the very least paradoxical, application of a naïve anthropomorphism! professor. — why paradoxical? lucas. — come on, sir! because i learnt from my reading that the myth didn’t only denounce anthropocentrism, but also the dangers of anthropomorphism. whereas, in the end, it actually falls prey to both itself! professor. — you really are catching on fast! to conclude, i’d like to come back to one of your previous questions. remember when you asked me why it is that i find “diabolocentrism” and “infernocentrism” to be quite inappropriate, while i see “theocentrism” as entirely acceptable? well in fact, while these labels aren’t inaccurate, they may lead to confusion. presenting the aristotelian medieval world as diabolocentric or infernocentric, even if one specifies that it’s only “in the spatial sense” (lovejoy 1936, 102), means running the risk, by insisting on the notion of centrality, of suggesting that a spherical topography is relevant when addressing geocentrism. whereas, in order to avoid making the same mistake that the myth made, the historian’s main task should, on the contrary, involve constantly evoking the fact that vertical topography was the one that was actually applied within this worldview. lucas. — i totally agree… except that to my mind, “theocentrism” suggests a spherical topography as much as “diabolocentrism” and “infernocentrism” do. so, if you reject the last two, then you should also… professor. — no, and this is where it gets complicated because you have to consider the fact that vertical topography is capable of being transformed, under one very specific condition, into… spherical topography! and in that case, the term “theocentrism” is entirely appropriate. allow me to explain this. as you know, god is traditionally sitting “up on high”, so whether we’re talking about vertical or spherical topography, god is still to be “found” in the same place: “beyond” the sphere of fixed stars. this “place” is clearly described as peripheral by spherical topography, meaning a location of little importance. however, this same “place” in vertical topography is referred to as the top, which is already a great improvement. but now comes the aforementioned condition. believing that the physical world was symbolically “upside down”, since they placed humankind at the centre of the world and god at the periphery, geocentrists thought it a good idea to put it back “the right way up”, so as to correct it symbolically, although not physically of course as this would mean that god would be at the centre and man at the periphery! in short, geocentrism has a vertical topography by default, but a spherical one when applying this inversion intended to put the world back “the right way up”! so according to vertical topography, the centre is the bottom and the periphery is the top, whereas according to spherical topography the top ceases to be the top to a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 18 turn into the centre, and the centre stops being the centre to only become the periphery! god is thus, without having changed “place”, either on the top or at the centre, depending on which topography one applies, but either way, god is no longer at the periphery! lucas. — it’s so complicated! but perhaps we can leave that aside, because in the end it doesn’t seem to change much in terms of our study: in geocentrism, humankind is at the bottom by default and, with your inversion, at the periphery. since neither is better than the other… professor. — since neither is better than the other, we can stop there for today! we’ll continue this next week, which will be our last discussion! lucas. — already? it all went by so quickly! day three lucas. — good morning, sir. to finish in style, i’ve prepared three questions! but i guess that i first need to present my summary of our second day to you? professor. — so kind of you to offer… lucas. — from a scientific point of view, a worldview is defined not only by a cosmological system, but also by its relevant topography. whereas geocentrism applies a topography that is essentially vertical, heliocentrism employs one that is decidedly spherical. this is why, in geocentrism, the centre of the world is symbolically associated with baseness rather than centrality. within this worldview, the position of humankind’s dwelling was hardly going to induce a sense of pride. on the other hand, in heliocentrism, this is also why the centre of the universe is indeed symbolically considered to be a privileged position. having lost sight of the particular topography that went hand in hand with geocentrism, the myth authors projected their own topography onto this cosmological system, which explains how they came to liken geocentrism to a form of anthropocentrism. although inexcusable, the anachronism they thus generated can be explained by various factors: not only the satisfaction that this way of comprehending geocentrism brought them, not only the credibility that their topography enjoyed due to its relevance both on earth and in the heavens, but also more generally owing to the overall implicit nature of these different topographies. the mistake made by the myth authors was, incidentally, reproduced to a certain extent by those of the revision: during the transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism, they didn’t pay enough attention to the coexistence of these two topographies and thus the need to consistently evaluate these upheavals from both points of view. professor. — very good! now i’m interested in hearing your questions, although i’m not surprised you have some considering that we’re very far from having covered all the relevant issues, as i’m sure you are aware. i do, however, think that what we’ve already managed to accomplish is sufficient in terms of your project… and my article! i’m listening. lucas. — here’s the first one. while going over my notes, i realised that the title of your paper is in the plural: centralities of the earth and centralities of humankind. although, until now we’ve only discussed one centrality, namely that of the earth within geocentrism, and i don’t see how there could be any others! a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 19 professor. — and yet there are indeed two others, although admittedly of lesser importance, to be found — brace yourself — in heliocentrism! the first one is exactly the same as that attributed to the sun in geocentrism: in the same way that the star of the day then occupied a medial position in the succession of the planets inasmuch as it was preceded and followed by precisely three of them (fig. n°1), the earth enjoys the same privilege today. however, in order for it to be placed in the middle of two triads (the sun, mercury and venus on one side, mars, jupiter and saturn on the other), one had to include the stationary celestial body positioned at the centre of the world in this list, namely the star of the day. you will of course remember that geocentrism didn’t need to resort to such measures. at any rate, this medial position of the earth is likely to have been seen as a privilege granted to the human race: from this mobile observatory that was conveniently positioned in the middle of the planets, humankind could be seen as sitting pretty when it came to better grasping the overall structure of the world! the second centrality is that bestowed upon a planet by its possession of one or more satellites. the earth was the only one, initially, to benefit from this privilege by being the centre for the moon’s revolution, although the symbolic value of this centrality naturally evolved over time with the discovery of various satellites orbiting around other planets. an exhaustive study of the relationship between earth’s centralities and humankind’s centralities will thus necessarily require us to take all three of these centralities into account, instead of merely focusing on the obvious centrality of the earth in geocentrism and in geoheliocentrism. lucas. — in short, one must always study a question from every angle! here’s my second question. could you explain why it’s still necessary to refine the revision by acknowledging the anthropocentric component existing within geocentrism? professor. — let me start by saying that “necessary” … is an understatement! firstly, you will have noticed that while the positional aspect is indicated as being either incapable of sustaining any form of anthropocentrism or as entirely irrelevant in this matter, the kinetic aspect — namely the fact that the stars revolve around the earth which is partially or totally stationary — is completely overlooked by both the proponents of the myth and the actors of its revision. yet it’s the very immobility of the earth that makes its cosmic centrality — which is neither glorious as purported by the myth, nor humiliating as alleged by the revision — quite ambivalent: unique, yet contemptible as being likened to baseness, the centrality of the earth is, due to the motionlessness it affords, highly valued. after all, even though our dwelling is in a state of lack, it finds itself in an enviable state of rest, from where, paradoxically, all its desires are fulfilled by the already blessed and blissful heavenly bodies revolving around it. it’s in this lesser inconvenience that many geocentrists perceived a greater convenience, confirming that humankind is indeed at the centre and the end of the cosmos (stoffel 2018c). lucas. — yes, it’s true that we haven’t come across rest or movement anywhere… professor. — and yet this is a serious mistake, since it’s only by taking both positional and kinetic aspects into account that we’re able to discern a certain anthropocentrism within geocentrism, such as koyré (2016, 120) briefly outlined in a little-known text. indeed, the cosmological criterion that was primarily considered by geocentrists and heliocentrists alike for a persistent myth: comparing geocentrism to anthropocentrism and how this vain illusion was shattered by heliocentrism jean-françois stoffel transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 20 determining the value of humankind wasn’t the centrality of the earth as such, but rather its stationary state. the former issue would only attract attention further down the line, at a time when this centrality had already been sharply contested, and even largely lost… lucas. — so tell me, even though you indicated that an anthropocentric aspect might have existed within heliocentrism, would it be fair to say that the latter finally put an end to any such attempts? professor. — no, they simply used different criteria, such as time or complexity: what is known as the “anthropic principle”, for example, could be described as anthropocentric — or, more accurately, “anthropofinalist” — even though it was conceived within a worldview that portrayed the earth as being lost somewhere in space! lucas. — okay, let me try again: …finally put an end to any such anthropocentric attempts based on a particular location in space? professor. — nope, that’s no better! since they could no longer invoke terrestrial centrality, some alleged that the solar system itself occupied the central position in our galaxy, and when this argument was no longer viable, others claimed that our galaxy was at the centre of our universe… lucas. — woah! so not being at the spatial centre of the world, in one way or another, is seen as a serious issue? professor. — certainly not as far as i’m concerned, unless one decides to make it a problem! but that whole issue could be the subject of another publication… lucas. — oh, that’s really kind of you but i’m okay for the moment, thanks! i’m not sure whether my methodology teacher will be pleased with my work, but i certainly am. when one only has access to the article one generally only gets to see the results, whereas working with you i was able to see how the research is actually carried out. i might even have contributed a little to it. above all, i was able to experience how important paying attention to historiography... professor. — yes, of course, lucas, but off you go now and write all that down for your 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an open-access journal special issue wittgenstein and the sciences: history and philosophy of science and science education science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé1 abstract: the article aims to demonstrate the possibility of writing the history of science from the later wittgenstein viewpoint. to accomplish this purpose, it exposes the “theory of history” of wittgensteinian inspiration, called “grammar of history”. then it discusses the idea of a wittgensteinian-inspired “theory of science”, here called “grammar of science”. finally, based on the interconnections between the grammar of history and the grammar of science previously exposed, some guidelines for writing the history of science from a wittgensteinian perspective are outlined. keywords: wittgenstein; grammar of science; grammar of history; history of science received: 14 march 2021. reviewed: 18 april 2021. accepted: 01 june 2021. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.06 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction wittgenstein’s work has been used for the understanding of science, its epistemology, and history. the austrian-british philosopher’s reflections on science were already presented in the tractatus logico-philosophicus,2 though in a very synthetic manner. besides his significant presence in the vienna circle, influential authors such as kuhn, shapin, and schaffer were 1 mauro l. condé [orcid: 0000-0003-4156-2926] is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 from this point on, i will refer to wittgenstein’s books worked as follows: the tractatus logicophilosophicus, only tractatus, and in quotations, tract., followed by the number of the aphorism to which it refers. the philosophical investigations, in the citations, pi, followed by the number of the paragraph to which it refers. the on certainty, in quotations, oc, followed by the number of the paragraph to which it refers. the remarks on the foundations of mathematics, in the citations, fm, followed by the paragraph number to which it refers. http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i10.06 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 2 inspired by wittgenstein to understand science and its historical insertion.3 in giving sequence to these appropriations of the wittgensteinian work to understand science, even though not necessarily in the same direction of these authors, this article aims to understand the uses of the later wittgenstein’s philosophy4 as a robust reference for the understanding of science and its history. namely, wittgensteinian philosophy can supply us with some significant guidelines to orient our writing of the history of science. whether starting from the assumption that the philosophy of the later wittgenstein, especially his notion of grammar, can be understood as a model of scientific rationality, we can take it as a reference for elaborating the writing of the history of science. with this purpose, in the first moment, i will discuss the notion of grammar in the later wittgenstein. in the sequence, i will try to show how to understand history from a wittgensteinian perspective, even though our author has not explored this theme. i will try to explain what i call here a “grammar of history”. in a third moment, i will try to demonstrate, always based on the wittgensteinian notion of grammar, how we can conceive a theory of science or what i call “grammar of science”. finally, in the last part, based on the ideas discussed (theory of history and theory of science), i will try to demonstrate how wittgensteinian thought allows us to establish guidelines for understanding the history of science and the elaboration of its writing. in other words, i will try to explain the “grammar of the history of science”. due to wittgenstein’s work complexity and the extensive historical and philosophical aspects concerning science, of course, the approach of these issues cannot fit in all its depth in this article. although having a vital presence in contemporary philosophy, the author of the philosophical investigations has not yet been fully taken as a philosopher who could establish a “theory of science” that would appropriately understand the history of science. in this sense, i hope to be contributing by pointing out wittgenstein’s philosophy as a valuable way to think about science in its epistemological and historical aspects. from conversations with colleagues and graduate students who are historians of science, i realized the need to synthesize in a single text two previous articles (condé 2004a, 2018) about this topic. thus, i reworked and expanded them substantially to make more evident the beneficial use of wittgenstein’s philosophy as a reference for writing the history of science. the notion of grammar as i tried to demonstrate in previous work (condé 2004), language in wittgenstein can be thought of as a model of rationality that opposes modern reason to overcome it in its dichotomies and paradoxes. the wittgensteinian notion of grammar is central to this formulation. the idea of using the wittgensteinian grammar as a model for analyzing the history of science is based on the conception that wittgenstein’s work offers us a model of rationality beyond a philosophy of language. based on this model of rationality, we can understand science, among other forms of human knowledge (art, politics, religion, etc.). 3 although wittgenstein was not precisely a philosopher of science, his philosophy has already greatly propitiated the philosophical and historical reflection about science. according to ryle, wittgenstein was an unknown but important philosopher of science (see ryle, 1957). authors like thomas kuhn (kuhn 1970 [1962] and 2000) acknowledge the influence they received from wittgenstein’s work. as far as a philosophy of social science is concerned, peter winch’s well-known book, the idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy, was perhaps the most striking influence, becoming a reference for philosophers and social scientists (winch 1958). wittgenstein’s contribution to the sociology of science was mainly in the so-called “strong program” of david bloor’s sociology of scientific knowledge (bloor 1973; 1991 [1976]) (shapin and schaffer, 1985). not to mention, of course, all the decisive influence of the author of the tractatus on the vienna circle. 4 it has become common the expression “later wittgenstein” to designate the second philosophy of the austrian-british thinker, present above all in the philosophical investigations. science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 3 this model of scientific rationality, which wittgenstein inspired, especially from his notions of grammar and pragmatics of language, is configured as a particular type of system. as one of its main aspects, this system has a holistic perspective while not a totalizing one. thinking particularly about science, we notice that the wittgensteinian model of rationality, unlike the modern totalizing scientific rationality, is not constituted from an a priori and hierarchical order. it is not similar to the cartesian mathesis universalis, but, in contrast, it is a flexible multidirectional network that extends itself through “family resemblances” (familienänhlichkeiten) (pi §§ 67, 77, 108). the wittgensteinian’ rationality is not totalizing because it does not claim to provide a “unique” and complete worldview based on an ultimate foundation. however, it is holistic because it presents a panoramic dimension (übersichtlichkeit) (pi § 122) constituting an open and decentralized system in which rationality is not incrusted in any privileged place but configured from the multiple relations within the system (grammar). although this wittgensteinian model of rationality is an autonomous system, it is not closed in extreme relativism as it is open to other systems. in approaching the conception of grammar in the later wittgenstein, at first two essential observations must be made. first of all, it is necessary to point out that, in wittgenstein’s uses, the expression grammar should not be confused with the normative grammar of any particular language. in using the expression grammar, wittgenstein is essentially concerned with the philosophical aspect of language. second, we have much more a “notion” of grammar than a closed “concept” with well-defined limits. although my aim is not to reconstruct the later wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, to understand the notion of grammar in the philosophical investigations, it is necessary to understand the concepts of “use”, “language-games”, “family resemblances”, and “rules”. for wittgenstein, the use of language in different situations and occurrences enable the meaning of an expression, that is, “(...) the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (pi § 43). in the philosophical tradition, or even in the tractatus’ perspective, an object determined the meaning of a word. according to the later wittgenstein, the meaning of a word comes from its use in a given context. these contexts are not exclusively linguistic but involve a whole pragmatic dimension: a set of words, objects, actions, behaviors, etc. wittgenstein calls this set “language-games” (pi § 7). the austrian-british thinker exemplifies several language-games as: giving orders, and acting on them – describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements – constructing an object from a description (a drawing) – reporting an event – speculating about the event – forming and testing a hypothesis – presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams – making up a story; and reading one – acting in a play – singing rounds – guessing riddles – cracking a joke; telling one – solving a problem in applied arithmetic – translating from one language into another – requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. (pi § 23) however, there is no common foundation for all games. they are simply similar to each other, like the members of a family. some specific features belong to certain games but are absent in others. thus, particular features appear and disappear from one game to another, and in several language games, characteristic traits appear and disappear. according to science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 4 wittgenstein, the only connections in these multiple and varied language-games are like the similarities between family members. language-games are related to each other in many ways, like “family resemblances”. thus, family resemblances are the similarities between aspects belonging to the various compared elements but in a way that similar features are distributed randomly across these elements, without repeating themselves uniformly. the author of philosophical investigations proposes the end of a search for the essence of language that characterized the traditional philosophy of language. according to him, there is no something as a property common to all languages. for wittgenstein, the use within a language-game is not an indiscriminate practice. although relatively free, language uses are governed by rules that distinguish the correct and incorrect use of words in different contexts. these rules are linguistic and pragmatic; namely, they involve actions, objects, and behaviors. moreover, it is the set of these rules, which have a dynamic aspect and are in a continuous flow, which makes up grammar. to the extent that grammar, more than the syntactic-semantic dimension, incorporates pragmatics, it is inserted in social practice. a grammatical rule can only effectively constitute itself as such through social praxis. grammar is a social product. it remains to be noted that just as the use of a word conditions the rule, the rule, in turn, will determine whether the use of this word is correct or not. however, as grammar is an open-ended set of rules, new rules may be added, old rules changed. the later wittgenstein’s conception of grammar keeps, thus, some essential characteristics. possibly the most important one is the precise that the rule is a product of social praxis. from this conception, it follows that the rule is a social convention (therefore, a collective agreement) which arises from this praxis and could be different if this praxis were different (or even could change from one society – “form of life” (pi § 19) – to another). as an “invention”, the rule is a social creation that does not reflect any metaphysical essence. it is an “arbitrary” creation which means it is an “invention”. however, the rule cannot be completely arbitrary, since it must maintain its coherence with the set of other rules, practices, and behaviors, that is, with grammar. “[…] if rule became exception, and exception rule; or if both became phenomena of roughly equal frequency – our normal language-games would thereby lose their point” (pi § 142). thus, rules arise in our “patterns of behavior”, usages, practices, customs, and institutions (pi §§ 142, 199, 202, 337). when we understand the rule as a product of a language-game, we conclude by the operative character of the rule. following a rule is an operation – that is the pragmatic character of the rule. “to understand a language means to be master of a technique” (pi § 199). it is not an isolated mental process. “that’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. and to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. and that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it” (pi § 202). following the rule in the language-game is a practice that involves expressions, objects, actions, behaviors, and attitudes. in his philosophical investigations, wittgenstein distinguishes two levels of grammar. the “surface grammar” (oberflachengrammatik) and the “depth grammar” (tiefengrammatik) (pi § 664). surface grammar deals with the evident characteristics of the expressions without considering the global grammatical context in which those expressions are generated. in contrast, in the depth grammar (panoramic grammar),5 the rules of the use of language are engendered. within the depth grammar, like a game, the production of 5 the expression “depth grammar” does not seek to affirm the “essential structures of reality”, as the metaphysical tradition has claimed. there is nothing hidden beyond our grammar. as h. glock points out, “depth grammar” may not be a good expression since it is not a contrast between the surface and the “geology” of expressions, but between local uses and global geography (see glock 1996, 154155). thus, i think it would be better to use the expression “panoramic grammar”. science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 5 different linguistic expressions is generated, and in the same way, rationality. thus, depth grammar, more than peculiar aspects of a specific language-game, considers everything involved in the whole praxis of language, such as its uses, production of rules, etc. perhaps, the general meaning of the later wittgenstein’s notion of grammar could be expressed as follows: logic is expressed in grammar rules. every logical possibility is grammatical. in the philosophical investigations, grammar, more than making logic possible, is logic itself. consequently, grammar tells us what is logical, what is inside and outside the limits of meaning. “so does what is, and what is not, called (logically) possible depend wholly on our grammar” (pi § 520). as a more immediate consequence, rationality is, first of all, grammatical. grammar is, therefore, the set of rules erected from the interaction between language and actions in its regularity. this regularity establishes the standard norm, which also establishes the understanding of exceptions (pi § 142). in effect, a grammar of history, a grammar of science, and, consequently, a grammar of the history of science would follow the same processes described in the philosophy of the later wittgenstein. i will address the “grammar of history” in the next section. the grammar of history in his philosophical investigations, wittgenstein comments on a passage by st. augustine about the issue of time – “what, then, is time? if no one asks me, i know; if i want to explain it to those who ask me, i no longer know” (pi § 89) – to conclude that our understanding about time resides, essentially, in a philosophical aspect. thus, as augustine’s passage might suggest, our understanding is not based exclusively on an empirical perspective that tries to establish considerations about the nature of time in its duration: past, present, and future. for wittgenstein, we do not reflect on the phenomenon of time itself. we reflect on the “possibilities” of the phenomenon of time, that is, about the way we qualify it from our language and social insertion (grammar). we feel as if we had to see right into phenomena: yet our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. what that means is that we call to mind the kinds of statement that we make about phenomena. (pi § 90) in effect, thinking about temporality is not limited to only think about the physical phenomenon of time. first and foremost, a “grammar of time” is a “grammar of history”. however, doing this exercise of analyzing the interpretative possibilities of history from the work of the austrian-british thinker was not something that historians and philosophers of history considered a very fruitful task. as we know, wittgenstein was not a philosopher of history and influenced relatively little or almost nothing about the science of history.6 wittgenstein was not even a philosopher of a dialectical tradition. still, perhaps the highest representative of an analytic tradition consolidated in the british world. to some extent, the later wittgensteinian philosophy flourished as a counter position to the dialectical, hermeneutic, or phenomenological tradition. wittgenstein did not discuss the temporality phenomenon (historicity) properly. however, it is possible to think about history from his later work. this section aims to explain what this temporality is. a first point to highlight the use of wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to understand history imposes on us a minimalist and dynamic ontology. one can say a “deflated” ontology that opposes traditional philosophical theses about history (à la kant, hegel, marx, comte, etc.) – currently no longer practiced by historians and philosophers of 6 as pointed out, wittgenstein’s influence on history has been in the specific field of the history of science in such major authors as kuhn (1970 [1962], 2000) and shapin and schaffer (1985). science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 6 history. this minimalist ontology displays the contingency of a given historical time through its complex pragmatic and grammatical networks and ramifications, not very fond of grand metaphysical syntheses or the affirmation of metanarratives. however, on the other hand, even if wittgenstein’s work can allow us to understand the rationality of the singularity of a given historical time from the analysis of such intricate pragmatic and grammatical interactions of a contingent historical time, this does not necessarily imply in assuming a historical relativism. relativism would be if this historical time were closed in on itself, that is, relative to itself, without connections to its past, present, and future horizons or any contact with other cultures and societies. nevertheless, the first analysis of any history is enough to see that there are always continuities and ruptures in any historical time. these continuities connect us not only with our past but open the door to relate with other histories and societies. most of the time, we find, in a wittgensteinian perspective, “family resemblances” of a historical time with itself in its past, present, and future. it is also entirely possible to confront this particular culture with other historical times or other cultures and societies. in short, historicity is not synonymous with historical relativism. i will return to this point later on when dealing with relativism in science. faced with the constant danger imposed by the metaphysics embedded in traditional philosophies of history, it would be possible to use wittgensteinian’s grammar for an adequate understanding of historical processes. in other words, it is possible to build a type of methodology allowing us to understand historical processes. we do not need to construct a strong “thesis” about history. thus, in a wittgensteinian perspective, it is not a matter of capturing the metaphysical essence of a historical time but understanding its grammatical scope or extension (habits, traditions, and costumes). historical processes are related in a long and comprehensive chain of interactions of their multiple events. faced with such complex phenomena, we lack “an overview” (übersichtlichkeit) (pi § 122), as explained by wittgenstein. moreover, it is, in this sense, that in analyzing the grammar of history, it is not precisely a matter of establishing a depth, of searching for an essence that is far from the surface. it is about understanding a complex network of interactions that extends too far for us to grasp it immediately. we are swallowed by the complexity of the historical process, for we lack “an overview” to reach every corner of our historical experiences and memories. however, to articulate these multiple experiences and historical memories, it is possible to use the wittgensteinian notion of grammar; that is, it is possible to establish a “grammar of history” that provides us with the conductor thread of our understanding of the historical process. first of all, grammar is already something eminently historical because its constitution in the form of life – with its multiple social and cultural interactions – is a process in time. in sum, grammar is essentially historical (since, as a dynamic and open mechanism, it is constantly changing). because grammar is a historical and social system that constitutes a particular kind of “holistic” system (although, as noted, it is not a “totalizing” metaphysical system),7 it stands in opposition to traditional conceptions of history. in other terms, contrary to the idea of a positivist and neutral narrative, a wittgensteinian-inspired theory of history is not constituted from a hierarchical structure or an a priori metaphysical order. on the contrary, the grammar of history is constituted by the network of family resemblances and their different language-games distributed in time. like the wittgensteinian notion of grammar, a grammar of history cannot be something totalizing because it has no ultimate 7 the 18th and 19th centuries philosophies of history had this totalizing character as if all rules were valid for all members of society. we see this claim, for example, in authors like kant, hegel, comte, and even marx and engels in the famous communist manifesto that ends with the statement: “proletarians of all lands. unite!” (marx; engels 1998, 69), without considering that even proletarians constitute different subclasses with distinct interests. in wittgensteinian terms, we would say that they established different grammars in different forms of life. science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 7 foundation, nor does it seek a metaphysical or positivist intelligibility. the grammar of history must be holistic; that is, it must seek a panoramic view of historical processes. in effect, it constitutes an open and decentralized system in which rationality is not based in any special privileged place but instead is configured out of the multiple relations within the social and historical system it configures. extending wittgenstein’s conception of linguistic (grammatical) rationality to our understanding of historical processes, we realize that the science of history, in its modus operandi, is also a kind of grammar. this “grammar of history” can be conceived as a theory of history. in effect, contrary to theories of history that affirmed the description of facts or metaphysical worldviews, the grammar of history does not seek the narratives of a historical fact, essentially, from its description or positivity, or even from metaphysical foundations. above all, it seeks the intelligibility of its grammatical dynamics. as observed, it is not a matter of approaching the (historical) phenomenon per se, but the grammatical “possibilities” of the (historical) phenomenon. these grammatical possibilities are not metaphysical presuppositions but the result of social and historical interactions. the grammar of history follows a basic assumption of any theory of history. although history refers to the past, it does not prevent us from understanding the weaving of history in the present. of course, it is not a matter of glimpsing the telos of the event for the grammar of history. the most important is to understand the meaning of the historical experience. to understand how this temporality constituted its historical values in the plot of its events. in other words, how history established its grammatical rules erected through social behaviors over time. in other words, if understood as grammar, the science of history allows us to establish intelligibility in the historical processes. it allows us to understand the grammatical rules that marked the events, even though we can never inexorably predetermine the flow of events. in this sense, the grammar of history is an “understanding” and not an “explanation”, as established by dilthey’s hermeneutics. although it is an autonomous system, the grammar of history is not closed as in a system of extreme relativism since it remains open to other systems of thought and behavior (other grammars). it is through the possibility of using the concept of grammar in many areas – the grammar of colors, grammar of uses, etc. –, the association of grammar with the notion of institutions – money (pi § 584), writing and reading (pi § 156), the system of measures (pi § 50) – that we can think of the institution of history as grammar. in other words, we can think of history as an institution as a set of rules and practices that encapsulate its rationality within itself, even if it is opened to connecting with other grammars. like grammar, history has its values in itself and, in this sense, its autonomy. a historical grammar always describes a peculiar process even if it has “family resemblances” with other grammars. even if the grammar of history is contingent on its own rules, it can go beyond this contingency by presenting family resemblances among its institutions and even potentially with the institutions of other grammars (cultures and societies). indeed, the grammar of history is the historical device or the “system of reference” (bezugssystem) (pi § 206) that situates us historically. social and linguistic behaviors structure our cognitive practices in the particular context of what wittgenstein called a “form of life” (pi § 19). so, in this form of life, we deal with social and natural events constituting that process of our historicity. thus, the grammar in space and time is analogous to a form of life. however, differently from some interpretations of wittgenstein’s work, a form of life is not closed to others. on the contrary, as already pointed out, it interacts with other possibilities of social practices or other forms of life, with more or fewer connections. we can establish approximations, comparisons, confrontations, etc., with other historical grammars or forms of life through the grammar of history. from our form of life, we establish our “system of reference” for understanding other forms of life, and we share family resemblances in many science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 8 of our practices and institutions. from our historical grammar, we thus find a possibility of understanding other historical grammar. of course, historical grammars are peculiar. thus, we cannot expect from our historical grammar to understand the totality of other grammars anachronistically. even though if we can establish through family resemblances some intelligibility about them. there are ruptures and continuities between different historical times, such as between feudalism and capitalism. several institutions present in feudalism have “family resemblances” to capitalism (money, writing, reading, religion). however, it is only within the emerging capitalist relations or the historical grammar of capital that we find new institutions or new social values like “individualism”, “competition”, “profit”, “social mobility”. and, as a whole, the new mode of production with its new division of labor. however, a grammar of history does not necessarily lead us to know “why” capitalism came into being – however much we enumerate the necessary conditions for this – but only to infer “how” its grammatical rules of operation and its various language-games were instituted. in conceiving a grammar of history, it is not a matter of seeking the telos of history but to imagine its mode of evolution in terms of darwin established with his idea of evolution. not a process toward somewhere but coming from somewhere. we can understand the grammar of history a posteriori, but we cannot explain its development teleologically or a priori. an expressive part of the questions posed by traditional philosophies of history since st. augustine is, in fact, questions that sought a metaphysical and teleological why of history and not a grammatical “how”. this “why”, although it may have its hermeneutical legitimacy, turned out to be, most of the time, an empty metaphysics without a practical explanatory commitment to historical processes. a grammar of history does not seek a why. it seeks to know “how” the grammatical rules of such a historical process were constituted in its political, social, economic, etc., circumstances, in short, in the context in which the events occurred. however, to understand history, one must create the institutions and mechanisms of that historical consciousness. just as wittgenstein points out that one cannot play chess without the institution of the game of chess (pi §§ 337) – or measure without the institution of measurement –, it would also be impossible to understand history without some mechanisms. these mechanisms allow us to understand the institutionalization of our social practices, habits, and customs. thus, they allow us to construct our historicity. historical mechanisms are the different configurations, explanatory models, and theories ranging from myth to the most advanced and complex possible theory of history. whether the interpreters are aware of it or not, the different explanations of history (regardless of their degree of complexity) are only possible as grammatical institutions. when trying to understand the historical process, the traditional philosophy of history and the wittgenstein-inspired grammar of history answer, in a way, the same questions, but from different perspectives: one based on the metaphysics of “why” historical facts happened and the other based on the grammatical “how” these same facts happened. in other words, the grammar of history shows us the way “how” knowledge and practices are institutionalized within a certain historical context (or form of life) but has little to say about the motivations or the random events that led to these facts. although this grammar of history has these limits, perhaps no theory of history can ever give us definite answers to these “whys” (other than mere teleological and metaphysical speculations). so, we have to be content to know “how” a specific set of grammatical rules helped shape a historical moment. according to wittgenstein, language and social practices are processed and organized through language-games and their grammar from where we see the world. grammar tells us what the world is. “grammar tells what kind of object anything is” (pi § 373). finally, if there is any possible essence, “essence is expressed in grammar” (pi § 371). grammar circumscribes science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 9 the “essence” of historical understanding. it is in this sense a convention and never a metaphysical essence. for wittgenstein, the search for essence is always searching for the convention stipulated by grammar and its pragmatics or social practices. from the above, taking our author’s ideas to the last consequences to establish the basis of a theory of history, we can affirm that our actions are social acts. while they take place in time, they are necessarily historical. therefore, by providing the parameters of our practices and our knowledge, grammar situates us historically. its function is precisely to construct in a given historical time the specificity of the different values that we attribute to the world as a historically situated society. although exposed here in a synthetic way, we can perceive some of the fruitful possibilities of understanding history from wittgenstein’s later philosophy. in the last section, i will resume some aspects of the grammar of history to think about the history of science. for now, explained the grammar of history, i will move on to the grammar of science. the grammar of science in its modus operandi, science also constitutes a specific grammar.8 this “grammar of science”,9 insofar as it characterizes scientific rationality, allows us to think of it as a “theory of science”. consequently, in this section, i will try to explain the notion of the grammar of science. as already pointed out, it is by the possibility of the use of the notion of grammar in many domains (grammar of colors, of uses, etc.) and the association with institutions (money; writing and reading; system of measures, etc.) is that we can also think of the institution of science as a grammar. in other terms, as an institution with a set of rules and practices, habits and customs that enclose its rationality in itself, that is, as a grammar, science has its values in itself. in this sense, the grammar of science is autonomous, although not independent from society, since it is in society that the grammar of science finds its “rough ground” (pi § 107) on which it is built. in a wittgensteinian viewpoint, what circumscribes something as scientific, such as what separates medicine from witchcraft or establishes the distinction between scientific 8 the idea of science as grammar was embryonically postulated by physicist heinrich hertz in his book principles of mechanics, published posthumously in 1892. however, hertz referred to the normalizing grammar of any given language and not to grammar in the philosophical sense stipulated by wittgenstein. hertz formulates the idea that science, mainly mechanics, operates similarly to the grammar of a given language (hertz [1892] 1956, 40). although the young wittgenstein received a significant influence from hertz (tract. 4.04, 6.361), his inspiration was not explicitly from the analogy between science and grammar. this influence possibly came from the concept of the model (bilder) in hertz’s physics and was used to elaborate the notion of logical grammar in the tractatus (tract. 3.325). 9 it is also worth noting that the expression “grammar of science” is the title of karl pearson’s book (pearson, [1892] 1943), coincidentally published in 1892, the same year that hertz’s principles of mechanics appeared. pearson was not explicitly inspired by hertz. although he does make some brief references to him (pearson [1892] 1943, 30, 31 and 153); these concern hertz’s scientific contributions and not the philosophical ones present mainly in the introduction of the principles of mechanics. in his book, pearson tries to balance the sciences until the end of the 19th century, but he does not explicitly explain his title. with some effort – and to some extent already influenced by a wittgensteinian gestalt – we are led to conclude that science’s methodological and operational aspects resemble grammar for pearson. however, although pearson’s book brings some innovative philosophical aspects for its time – such as the critique of metaphysics from the new scientific ideas –, his epistemology still finds limitations to address what the sciences from the late nineteenth century onwards present. in fact, except for the title of pearson’s book, what is set as grammar here is a model of scientific rationality centered on the later wittgenstein and is not developed either from hertz’s work or pearson’s book. despite this coincidence, the expression “grammar of science” is justified from the later wittgenstein’s philosophy. science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 10 and nonscientific, is the set of rules, practices, and scientific results. in short, the elements of the “grammar of science”. considering scientific grammar is an open system of interactions and juxtapositions of practices, rules, and values, it is even possible to say that there are family resemblances between science, witchcraft, religion, and politics. these resemblances may, in different manners, influence the final product of scientific knowledge, but the justification of scientific rationality is found in its grammar. finally, as an institution, science has specific rules and practices, its particular grammar – remembering that, for wittgenstein, every rule can be applied only in an institution (pi §§ 380, 540). of course, the grammar of science can be permeated by other values of the society in which it is inserted. insofar as these criteria of scientific rationality are social, public, pragmatic, and intersubjective (neither transcendental nor merely positive), they allow us to have access to the different “system of references” (grammars). they enable us to make choices among different grammars. the necessity of choosing between the grammar of science and that of witchcraft, for example, among the public criteria, will be the rules of behavior of each group and the efficacy in reaching the intended goals, i.e., nature’s response. therefore, even if our grammar is not reduced to the positivity of facts, if these facts were different, our languagegames would also be different, and, consequently, our grammar: as wittgenstein points out, “if we imagine the facts otherwise than as they are, certain language-games lose some of their importance, while others become important” (oc § 63). in other words, languagegames constitute their “regularities” (pi § 208), so to speak, also from a kind of “order of things”. the language-game of understanding nature is part of science, although it is not necessarily part of other grammars such as art, religion, or witchcraft. this wittgensteinian grammatical perspective opens – like the networks made possible by family resemblances – a fruitful way to investigate epistemological issues highlighted by contemporary sciences. some traditional epistemological problems would thus find a rich possibility of an equation in the perspective of wittgensteinian grammar. some related problems to scientific knowledge are objectivity, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, certainty, validity, relativism, internalism, externalism, the foundation of knowledge, etc. of course, these problems are related in a complex net in a theory of science, which makes it challenging to address them in isolation. however, i will indicate how to approach two of these problems from a wittgensteinian perspective for illustrative purposes. albeit briefly, i will address the problems of (1) the foundation of knowledge and (2) relativism. the purpose is to outline one possibility of approaching such problems from the grammar of science. modern epistemology had as its central point the issue of the foundation of science. although this issue is an inheritance from greek thought, it seems justified in the rise of modern science since it stands on the debris of the foundations of the greek episteme. on this new ground, it became necessary to construct the “new science”. for both cartesian rationalism and baconian empiricism, although from different perspectives, the primary role of philosophy was to provide the foundation of science. for wittgenstein, there is no ultimate foundation. the value of a particular statement, for example, is not due to the positivity of facts or metaphysical essence but just given by the pragmatic set which makes up our system of reference, our grammar of rules, uses, and actions present in our different language-games. it is from this pragmatic perspective that “our knowledge forms an enormous system. and only within this system has a particular bit the value we give it” (oc § 410). the search for the foundation as an ultimate essence from which we structure our knowledge is the fruit of a grammatical illusion. for wittgenstein, “to the depth of the essence there corresponds to the deep need for the agreement (übereinkunft)” (fm § 64). he places the end of the chain of reasons not in a metaphysical ground (truth) but the pragmatics of our language-games, habits, and institutions where we established agreements. the grounding (begründung), the justification of evidence, has an end – but the end is not the fact that certain propositions immediately present themselves to us as being science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 11 true. it is not a matter of seeing (sehen) on our part, but of our acting (handeln), which is at the bottom of the language-game (oc§ 204). therefore, there is no ultimate foundation as modern science has claimed, but a grammatical “system of reference” established by our different language-games. this position opens the question to the second epistemological problem to be addressed here by the grammar of science, namely, scientific relativism. is it knowledge relative? in other words, does knowledge produced by different forms of life lead to relativism? it could be argued that wittgenstein’s position ends up enclosing knowledge in relativism. science would be lost in its grammar by establishing the criteria of our knowledge and judgment in grammar and language-games. however, this was perhaps the greatest misconception attributed to wittgenstein’s philosophy. if grammar were impervious to other grammars, we would have relativism because each grammar would be closed in on itself. however, to the extent that grammar is an open system, we can mitigate relativism. from our grammar, we can establish relations with other grammars and create criteria to understand them based on the family resemblances. moreover, above all, we share resemblances in the way we act in the world. although grammar is where i construct my criteria for judgment, it is possible to understand other grammars through it. suppose you came as an explorer to an unknown country with a language quite unknown to you. in what circumstances would you say that the people there gave orders, understood them, obeyed them, rebelled against them, and so on? shared human behaviour is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language (die gemeinsame menschliche handlungsweise ist das bezugssystem, mittels welches wir uns eine fremde sprache deuten). (pi § 206) the reference for understanding a foreign grammar is its performance and our performance that we share – family resemblances – with foreign culture. there is no common ground between different forms of life because there is a common foundation, but simply behaviors, practices, interactions, institutions. in short, ways of acting can be shared as family resemblances, sometimes to a greater, sometimes to a lesser degree. the grammar of science is open knowledge. for example, as the criteria of objectivity emerge from a pragmatic perspective, they are public and thus can be assimilated with greater or lesser precision by different grammars. in the same way, different scientific theories and practices are not necessarily incommensurable, which does not imply that they find in the positivity of facts or the transcendental essence the absolute reference of convergence or refutation of knowledge. unlike, the dialogue between alternative scientific approaches or different group choices within science is based on the public criteria of the pragmatics of language and understood through its grammar. in this grammatical perspective, language and facts are “balanced” in language-games, thus allowing the constitution of our rationality and of our way of organizing the world scientifically. in the next section, when addressing specificities of the history of science, i will return to some of these points. finally, we can see that it is possible to glimpse a fruitful way to constitute a wittgensteinian epistemology which allows us to understand science in its various philosophical problems. the grammar of the history of science considering that, inspired by wittgenstein, it is possible to conceive history and science as grammars; then, one can conclude that it is possible to establish a grammar of the history of science. in other words, conceiving the grammar of history (theory of history) in tune with the grammar of science (theory of science) enables us to understand science and its history science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 12 and, consequently, understand some guidelines for fruitful writing of the history of science. in the broadest sense, the history of science follows similar parameters to the theory of history in the wittgensteinian perspective presented above. however, the history of science presents specificities better understood with the help of a theory of science. in other words, a theory of science teaches us how to approach nature, and we must attentively observe the importance of facts when writing the history of science. to sum up, the “grammar of history” teaches us how to understand the historical process, and the “grammar of science” helps us understand the issue of the facts in the construction of science. unlike when we deal only with the history of human social, political, artistic or religious plots, nature plays a central role in the history of science. perhaps, we could, for example, interpret a revolutionary political movement in different ways and eventually relativize the figure of the “hero” of the revolution in this process. we could speculate whether or not there were heroes or even that, who is considered a hero, will depend on which side of the contention triumphed. here it seems that the hermeneutic criteria are much more elastic. in turn, although we can elaborate on different interpretations of a scientific fact in the history of science, we cannot disregard the unique weight of empirical in this fact. we can have various theories explaining why the stone falls (to occupy its natural place, by the force of gravitational attraction), yet to compose our scientific knowledge, we cannot ignore the fall of stone. nature is undeniably there, and although interpretations of a scientific fact can be contested, we have to deal with the empirical facts in a much more emphatic way in science. a fact is a construction, but it is not a construction out of nothing. it has a firm reference to empirical. to understand the interpretation of empirical facts in science, the help of a theory of science becomes very relevant. in what follows, i will initially seek to understand the specificities of the history of science vis-à-vis the theory of history and then how a theory of science complements our understanding of the history of science. these theoretical references (history and science) are the presuppositions for writing the history of science from a wittgensteinian perspective. two points are essential to understand the role of the theory of history in science – of course, they should be present in any historical approach. the first one consists of the affirmation that there is no “telos” of grammar. although there is the inevitable evolution of natural, social, and linguistic phenomena in (historical) time, we cannot consider that historical grammar has a telos. although it may allow us to understand this process retrospectively, grammar does not have a pre-established direction towards the future. it merely reflects the synchrony of social interactions. even if it can be seen retroactively as a kind of backward diachrony, it can never guarantee the precise direction of future events. it is important to stress this point because the idea of progress has often been influential in the history of science. there is an expectation that science will always triumph. however, a vaccine will not necessarily be discovered. a theorem will not necessarily be “demonstrated as it should be” (quod erat demonstrandum). science and its history are subject to the same indeterminacy about the future. therefore, a wittgensteinian history of science can never be teleological. well, history is the history of the past. no past guarantees future, no matter how science can make reasonable predictions about the behavior of nature and how much this has deceived triumphalist or positivist historians. one cannot reconstruct the chain of events based on an idea of telos from the past to the future. as seen above, the existing nexuses in this chain are grammatical and not teleological. there is no inexorability of the arrow of historical time, only an unfolding of the grammar of science. a second critical point for the history of science from the idea of a grammar of history is that we cannot construct “metanarratives” – what we should not do in any historical approach. we cannot narrate history with the presupposition of one who watches it “from the outside”. we have to assume the grammatical contingency of history and run away from totalizing metaphysical approaches. at most, one grammar shares family resemblances with others, but there is no meta-grammar from which to look at the others. nevertheless, even science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 13 so, grammar constitutes a “system of reference” which allows us to understand the whole (holism of the grammar),10 even if it is permeated by other grammars (family resemblances). this system of reference gives us the basis to construct the meaning of the grammar to which we belong, while it provides us with the parameters for understanding other grammars. in the present, the historian of science can look at the past grammar of science and understand its rules. naturally, it is necessary to respect the rules of the grammar of the past, under penalty of committing anachronisms. in effect, we can only see nature (or society), that is, do science, from our grammatical contingency. we construct a holistic perspective from our partial grammatical view of the object nature (and the object society), allowing us to do science. there is no privileged place in the history of science in which it could make a kind of metanarrative, however much nature weighs in this process. it is not the positivity of the facts themselves but the grammatical interactions that give us the map for understanding our scientific objects. positivist stances believed that the empirical data would be the crucial reference in the understanding of science. hence one of the solid reasons for the failure of positivism. considering that we cannot construct metanarratives, how do we suppose to understand the historical phenomenon of science in depth? in other words, how to overcome the lack of “an overview” (übersichtlichkeit) (pi § 122) of the complex networks of interactions that are lost in time? to navigate this deep historical sea, it is up to the historian to establish what wittgenstein called “intermediate links” (zwischengliedern) (pi § 122) for understanding this panoramic network of the grammar of science. comparisons (family resemblances) and intermediate links are all we have to understand the intricate map of the flow of historical processes. we have of history just that: language-games, rules, grammar, institutions that form and fall apart in the process of time. to understand the grammar and its language-game is necessary to contrast them and find the intermediate links that connect them. in the same way that the historical process of the development of science is prepared by women and men inserted in concrete social relations, or the “rough ground” of pragmatic relations, the historian of science cannot put himself in a privileged place to elaborate narrative. his or her historical approach is equally made under the same conditions. it is always built through the analysis of a specific grammar. thus, the task of the historian of science is to analyze the grammar of science risen in its “form of life” to understand how it is institutionally located. since, as pointed out, it is in the institutions, habits, and customs that the language-games governed by its grammar take place. different cultures and societies, in general, share institutions (money, marriage, numbers) and, even if such cultures are not identical in their different institutions, they have in them an air of family. we will only know the historical meaning of science – the intentions of the scientists’ behaviors governed by the grammar of their language-games – by identifying their pragmatic procedures in their form of life. only by identifying these language-games and their rules will the historian understand the grammar of a historical time. in this analysis of the historian of science, it is necessary to understand the grammar of science both “internally”, in its ideas, concepts, theories, and connections with nature, and “externally” in its social relations or family resemblances that it establishes with other grammars (politics, religion, art). only by this analysis can the historian identify the goals and strategies followed in the historical flow of science and thus understand the grammar of science and its history, but without ever giving in to the illusion of a metanarrative. one must see the grammar of science always from its contingency. thus, the grammar of history does not seek a “why” but the “how”. in other words, how are constructed the grammatical rules of such a historical process? how did a specific set of grammatical rules come about that helped to shape a historical moment? 10 unlike a totalizing perspective based on metaphysical assumptions, holism is a possible summation of the parts of grammar in their interactions (family resemblances) with others. science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 14 finally, the grammar of history provides us with a more profound (panoramic) understanding of the transformations of linguistic and social processes not only within science but in its relations with other grammars. by analyzing the grammar of science, we can distinguish the dialogue it establishes with nature. this dialogue is understood as something specific and different from mere political and economic aspects, although the latter may affect the grammar of science. the historian of science has to be aware that such economic or political aspects – even considering their weight at the end of the process – are not at the root of the production of scientific knowledge. political and economic conditions are, to a large extent, “necessary conditions” for the production of scientific knowledge, but they are not “sufficient conditions”. as we know, it is possible to have societies with economic and political institutions but without science. the sufficient conditions for doing science arise from the social and linguistic constitution of specific practices in the form of life, that is, from the way the grammar of knowledge is engendered. in other words, the grammar of the history of science shows us that knowledge is based on the two sides of the same coin that make up grammar, that is, the social aspect and the linguistic aspect. these aspects establish the rules (grammar) that guide the meaning of our knowledge. science is not something essentially political or economic, as stressed by some authors, although it can be stimulated (or eliminated) by politics or economics. these are factors that enter into its recipe but do not make up its central decision-making core. the grammars of politics or economics affect science or even share family resemblances (a science policy of an institution or government, for example). however, science is a specific and autonomous device, although not independent from other grammars. the generating matrix of scientific knowledge is not in politics but the autonomy of the grammar of science with its own rules. now, to think about the place of nature in the history of science, i will analyze the “theory of science”, that is, the “grammar of science”. a theory of science has its main focus on the specificity of science in its relation to nature. in the first place, it is necessary to recognize that science has internal and external aspects. as mentioned, science institutions go far beyond ideas, theories, academies, laboratories, research groups, specialized journals, scientific associations, and congresses, branching out into society through the different contacts and uses that non-scientist establish with science. science is constituted as a scientific culture or a scientific “form of life”. this scientific form of life is constituted as an institution in its technical and scientific apparatus (theories, laboratories, etc.) and its purposes, values, imaginary and uses of science. so, we should understand the idea of a scientific institution in this broader perspective that considers both the ideas, theories, and more abstract aspects of science (traditionally as internal aspects of science) and the material and social aspects (traditionally as external features). internalism and externalism are different aspects of the grammar of science or the institution of science.11 another critical point to highlight the relation between grammar and nature, or facts in science, is to recall the expression “language-games”. in the direction this article, “language-games” does not mean a distancing from facts. sometimes, those who read about wittgenstein’s philosophy understand that “language-games” deal only with words that construct an empty discourse. if this were so, anything could be said, and even if an empty discourse eventually made sense, it would not refer to anything concrete in the world. they would have no materiality or no ballast in the empirical. language-games would be mere fiction. however, when we look at the theory of science or the wittgensteinian-inspired grammar of science, we realize that this is not the case. nature is an essential point in the 11 by considering both the social aspects of science and its abstract theories and ideas, the notion of grammar allows us to “dissolve” the old internalism/externalism problem. for those who argue that science has a development by itself, independent of social aspects, the notion of grammar shows us that scientific ideas are shaped in society’s dialogue with nature. science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 15 makeup of the grammar of science. the language-games of science are not simple linguistic and social constructions. therefore, no matter how much we may develop those social and linguistic apparatuses with which we analyze nature, the empirical data is equally relevant. as wittgenstein pointed out, our language-games would also be different if the facts were different (oc § 63). not because the facts are determinant, but because this change would force us to reposition our language-games. thus, it is up to the historian of science to analyze how a scientific community constructs its grammar in dialogue with nature. how it established the understanding of what a scientific fact is. how were theories formulated and revised? how were agreements sanctioned? etc. from the grammatical viewpoint, it is not a matter of establishing the description of the fact since any description is already a grammatical formulation. the interpretation of nature is made from different grammatical “possibilities” (pi § 90) that allow understanding a phenomenon or fact. thus, this interpretation is a grammatical analysis and not an apprehension of the phenomenon itself. one concludes that the value of the fact is relative to the context of grammar. we can change our understanding of the fact by modifying our grammatical perception, changing our language-games, or even inserting new phenomena in a language-game. thus, we see that the social and linguistic (grammatical) aspects are vital in forming the “grammar of science”, even though they are conditioned up to a significant extent by facts. indeed, any history of science is a social (grammatical) history. ultimately, even scientific ideas and theories are the fruit of grammar. no matter how abstract an idea could be, even if it is highly relevant to our understanding of nature, such an idea is the product of a social constitution (grammar). theories and ideas lay down on the complexity of the scientific culture. they lay down in a grammar of a form of life. even the ideas of a theoretical scientist – like einstein – are based on the grammar’s natural, social, institutional, and theoretical complexity. for the austrian-british philosopher, the meanings of words in a language-game also involve the empirical aspects connected to the interaction between speakers and the world (oc §§ 98, 145, 319, 401, 455). to understand how we make these assertions about phenomena (pi § 90), wittgenstein differentiates an “empirical proposition” (erfahrungssatz) from a “grammatical proposition” (grammatischer satz) (pi §§ 251, 295, 458). the empirical propositions refer directly to phenomena, and the grammatical ones establish the rules of language uses. however, there is not such a simple division. in a language-game, it is not always easy to distinguish between a grammatical and an empirical proposition, for “there is not a sharp division of the one from the other” (oc § 97). this difficulty in distinguishing between these two types of prepositions is because this division is not of nature but function. thus, the same proposition can perform both functions (empirical and grammatical). although the empirical propositions have the purpose of describing the empirical aspects, in some way, they are constituted by usage, rules, in short, by grammar, which is the set of rules. on the other hand, even though they may contain some “description” of the empirical dimension of the world, grammatical propositions constitute explanations of the uses we make of words and the rules we obey to signify. therefore, there is not a distinction of nature but function. some propositions have the function of describing. in others, this function is not relevant. for wittgenstein, “the same proposition may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing” (oc § 98). thus, in analyzing nature, we do not directly address phenomena but the “possibilities” of phenomena. either when we construct empirical propositions or elaborate grammatical propositions with our rules of use in understanding these phenomena. scientific theories make use of both of these types of propositions. indeed, not only do grammatical propositions form the basis of our understanding of the world, but empirical propositions also play a decisive role. “the truth of certain empirical science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 16 propositions belongs to our system of reference (bezugssystem)” (oc § 83). to realize our grammatical understanding, more than activities, acts, behaviors, and interactions, we also rely strongly on the facts and phenomena we perceive by empirical propositions. “i want to say: propositions of the form of empirical propositions, and not only propositions of logic, form the foundation of all operating with thoughts (with language)” (oc § 401). in other words, our judgments about the world depend not only on what our grammatical (logical) propositions tell us but also on what our empirical propositions inform us. both types of prepositions make up the grammar which we realize our “surveyable representation” (übersichtlichen darstellung) (pi § 122) of the world. they thus become the basis of our judgment. they configure themselves as “paradigms” (pi § 50) in our language-games to establish our “world view” (weltanschauung) (pi § 122). we say we know that water boils and does not freeze under such-and-such circumstances. is it conceivable that we are wrong? wouldn’t a mistake topple all judgment with it? more: what could stand if that were to fall? might someone discover something that made us say “it was a mistake”? whatever may happen in the future, however water may behave in the future, – we know that up to now it has behaved thus in innumerable instances. this fact is fused into the foundations of our languagegame. (oc § 558) finally, within the framework of a “theory of science”, it is up to the historian of science to analyze – considering empirical and grammatical propositions in grammar and its language-games –, how theories refer to facts. this analysis shows us the structuring of scientific knowledge in its internal aspects in tune with its external aspects. in other words, by understanding how the relationship between grammar and empirical is established, we can see the harmony between the internal and external aspects of science. by distinguishing between empirical and grammatical propositions, the history of science can solve the internalism versus externalism problem. moreover, wittgenstein provides us with a parameter to seek a balance between the two positions. thus, avoiding radicalisms that emphasize only one side, such as, for example, the statement that closes the eminent book by shapin and schaffer, leviathan and the air-pump, according to which “the solution to the problem of knowledge is political” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 342). consequently, for them, “it is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know” (shapin and schaffer 1985, 344). however, from wittgenstein’s later philosophy, we can see that this responsibility is shared between man and nature.12 by understanding grammar with its grammatical and empirical propositions, we can see our perception of nature is changed by the facts and grammatical networks. there is a tendency to balance this relationship, but only through grammar analysis can we evaluate how this process is established. as we can see from a “theory of history” and a “theory of science” inspired by wittgenstein, we have fruitful ways to guide the writing of the history of science. the later wittgenstein’s philosophy opens rich possibilities of overcoming epistemological and historical problems in which other approaches look like they have encountered severe difficulties. conclusion in this article, we have seen that the later wittgenstein, particularly with the notion of grammar, offers excellent tools to help us to write the history of science. a “theory of 12 this was the central point of kuhn’s criticism of the strong program, that is, disregarding the role of nature in formulating our knowledge about it (kuhn 2000, 105-120). science and its grammar: writing the history of science through the lens of the later wittgenstein mauro l. condé transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 10 (june) 2021 17 history”, here called “grammar of history”, was discussed in the first moment. then, a conception of a “theory of science” was developed and called “grammar of science”. finally, from the interconnections between these two theories, some significant guidelines for writing the history of science were outlined in the last part of the article. although, for reasons of space, the theme could not be developed to its full extent, i hope to have demonstrated how fruitful the later 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tractatus logico-philosophicus. english translation by d. f. pears. london: routledge and kegan paul. wittgenstein, ludwig. 1969. on certainty. translated by d. paul and g. e. m. anscombe. oxford: basil blackwell. microsoft word lira layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (9): 1-18 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open-access journal article pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira1 abstract: this paper aims to present the exemplarity of an intellectual meeting between a french intellectual, trained in history and geography at the sorbonne, france (before spending time in spain during the beginning of his doctorate), and the “brazilian terrain”. from his training to his work as a university professor in brazil, what i want to characterize is a transnational intellectual context in the domain of the history of science, using geographical reasoning as a reference. however, before becoming aware of these intellectual processes, it should be said that at the base of this context lies the brazilian space. this kind of reasoning as a proposed methodology is named here the geohistory of knowledge. in this paper, i seek to present this methodology and its theoretical and empirical results, focusing on how the construction of contextualization can be related to space. keywords: contextualisation; geohistory of knowledge; history of geography, pierre monbeig; brazil; circulation of knowledge; space doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i9.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ the french geographer pierre monbeig (1908-1987) was born into a humble family in marissel in 1908 in the suburbs of beauvais in the department of oise, france. he studied geography and history at the sorbonne between 1925 and 1928, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree and the agrégation2 at the age of 21 years old. shortly after, albert demangeon, a direct disciple of the founder of french academic geography, vidal de la blache, encouraged him to begin a thesis on human geography on the balearic islands (clout 2013, 54-56).3 pierre 1 larissa alves de lira [https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0675-0008] is a visiting professor at the federal university of minas gerais (ufmg). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270901, brazil. e-mail: lara.lira@gmail.com 2 the agrégation was the entry into the university system, to obtain better salaries within the network of colleges and to enter the administrative system of public instruction (sanguin 1993, 30). 3 the institutionalisation of french geography began to gain impulse after france’s defeat in the francoprussian war in 1870, as the failure of the french, and the german soldiers' knowledge of geography became apparent. at that time, jules simon, minister of public instruction, launched a policy to boost the discipline (andrews 1986). in 1872, the historian paul vidal de la blache was appointed as the first professor at the university of nancy, as the chair of history and geography pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 2 monbeig did not come into direct contact with vidal de la blache, but did with the first disciples trained by la blache, such as albert demangeon. in 1930 and 1931, monbeig attended casa velázquez, in spain, where he began his doctoral research. in 1935, however, he was invited by henri hauser and george dumas to teach geography and history in brazil, at the newly founded university of são paulo, as part of a french university mission. monbeig travelled to brazil in 1935 and soon after he abandoned his thesis on the balearic islands, beginning a doctoral thesis on the “pioneering fringes” of são paulo.4 he would live in brazil for 11 years. in 1946, he returned to france and defended his main thesis, marche du peuplement et zones pionnières de são paulo (brésil) in 1951, obtaining a doctoral degree from the sorbonne. in the same year, he was appointed professor of colonial geography at the university of strasbourg and, returning to paris in 1952, he took the chair of economic geography at the conservatoir national de arts et métier. in 1961, he was appointed professor of human geography at the sorbonne, when he took up the post of director of the institut des hautes études de l’amérique latine (iheal) (andrade 1994, 75-76). shortly after, he became director of research at the centre national de la recherche scientifique (cnrs), becoming one of the leading experts of his generation. monbeig had always been close to the historians of the socalled school of the annales, after having maintained long-standing friendships with lévistrauss and fernand braudel (salgueiro 2006a). the purpose of this essay is to present pierre monbeig’s trajectory,5 in relation to the challenges of the discipline as a whole, in the long term (longue durée), which appear in this context and that of brazil, how it relates to geographical spaces and spaces of debates, and considering the context of a world-science (polanco 1990).6 i call this perspective the geohistory of knowledge. my objective is to clarify how this theoretical proposal relates in particular to the intellectual procedure of the construction of contextualization. geohistory of knowledge particularly after the publication of david livingstone’s book, putting science in its place (2003), the proposal to produce a geographical history of geography and a geographical history of sciences was developed. derek gregory exemplifies what this geographical history (sanguin 1993, 108-109). la blache had already shown an interest in geography through his travels in the mediterranean and the reading of the work of alexander von humboldt and the german geographer and historian carl ritter about asia and the inland sea (lira 2013). at the height of french colonialism, vidal opts to lay the foundations of geography close to ethnography, elaborating the concept of genre de vie and establishing bridges with haeckel’s german ecology and geohistory. during the course of his career, he moves towards human geography (albeit still very ecological in its nature) and finally towards geopolitics and economic geography. he trained almost all the geographers who took up the geography chairs at french universities as they were inaugurated at the beginning of the 20th century (berdoulay 1984). for updated information on vidal de la blache’s career and the institutionalisation of geography in france, see robic (2000, 2003, 2004, 2013). 4 the idea of a “pioneer zone” is related to the process of modernization of the areas of central-south brazil as a result of international market influence, soon after the abolition of slavery. 5 pierre monbeig boasts a vast work on brazil and latin america. his books and articles were mostly published in france and brazil between 1932 and 1987. much of his work is accessible in specialized journals. another part of his work, such as letters, cuttings, notes, rare books, is placed in the pierre monbeig fund, which is located at the ieb (institute of brazilian studies) of the university of são paulo. for a complete bibliography of monbeig, see the work of heliana angotti salgueiro on pierre monbeig (salgueiro 2006b). 6 the way xavier polanco uses this concept of world-science is more associated with the geopolitics of knowledge, the way relations between the centre, semi-periphery and periphery structure scientific relations between countries (polanco 1990). pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 3 of geography consists of: “this essay considers a third thematic that also shaped productions of knowledge through productions of space: the modalities through which the routes described by travellers (their paths and circuits) shaped their descriptions of those routes” (gregory 2000, 297). from the point of view of the geography of science, charles withers employs the concepts of geography (scale, place, traffic, etc.) to understand the advent of european enlightenment (withers 2007). i consider these works as more general parameters from which i aggregate the notion of plurality of historical time (braudel 1992). monbeig spent time in france, spain and brazil, and this geographical and global circulation was of particular interest to me. to build a geohistory of knowledge, i base my argument on the idea that spaces can frame specific evolutions at specific paces, in the circulation of ideas and such spaces would act as structuring filters in the process of the displacement of ideas and practices. it is also true that scales can vary, and that ideas evolve. these spaces conditioned evolutions, events and surface movements. long and deep movements of ideas, that filled the constitution of science with events, conjectures, permanencies, ruptures and the circulation of ideas. it is therefore important to point out that my methodological handling of geohistory also includes reasoning about processes as if they also occurred in a deeper sphere. when i refer to processes in the history of science which are deeper than the others, i am referring to structures, layers, to a kind of “infra-mentality” that exists in scientific spaces and that can also circulate.7 in the journey from france to brazil, therefore, monbeig’s historical trajectory was touched in depth by long-lasting movements of scientific ideas that concerned the entire discipline, and all these movements were repositioned according to this and other displacements, and the spaces in which monbeig is located: france, spain, and brazil (i do not analyse monbeig’s return to france). geohistory and intellectual history on the one hand, geohistory has led me to the spaces and plurality of times, in addition to the movements regarding the depth of ideas, which i call “infra-mentalities”. on the other hand, intellectual history has led me to a general approach to the scholar’s trajectory. geohistory is associated here with a particular conception of intellectual history, which was previously established by françois dosse (2013). this means an intellectual history in a broad sense, involving actors, ideas, objects and practices. in this sense, brazilian space was seen as one of the main structures of this circulation of ideas in latin and global worlds, touched by deeply-rooted trends, and whose specific characteristics of space, such as its continentality, influenced the movement of displacement over the spaces. an intellectual experience situated in the space, incarnated in characters and their concrete actions, beyond the very use and mobilization of objects, could not be ignored in the process of understanding the production of scientifical ideas. besides, observing the spatial dimensions of the spaces of circulation, i seek to identify their unfolding in the sociological and political contexts (of the production of ideas), the affinities of the characters, the controversies, the associations, the strategies, and how these elements can help to understand the theories proposed by pierre monbeig and his colleagues. however, i do not wish to encapsulate my reasoning in a geographical determinism, since it was not only the spatial dimension that conditioned the movement of ideas. i developed dimensions of analysis that started with geographic spaces and cultural traditions, 7 the idea of a type of overlapping causality is well-known among those who dedicate themselves to the epistemology of geography (moreira 2009) probably under the influence of geology. pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 4 the latter with different roots and geographic and regional frameworks (that the french geographical tradition developed in a specific way in relation to the german one, for example) that would be constructed by movements of depth, would pass through the mediations of circulations among other spaces and by the encounter of other movements of depth, only then to end up in individual, political, and then epistemological choices, even if within a framework of possibilities limited by the other spheres. geohistory and epistemology finally, before proceeding with a geohistorical application to the contextual construction and the empirical results of framing primary and secondary sources, i will try to add to this approach the relationship between spaces, intellectual history and epistemology. that is, how space could focus on understanding an epistemological discourse and whether it could be geographically framed. i restrict here the understanding of the final form that the methodological path takes according to the analysis of its systems of causalities. throughout my work (lira in press), i have assembled schemes, sometimes linear, sometimes circular, sometimes mixed, that give form to monbeig’s thought, inspired by daniel loi’s methodology (1982, 1985). these forms could also be related to the spaces in which they were produced. in other words, a particular causal arrangement has the possibility of revealing individual methodological options, but they can also interact with the spatial situation and framework of which it is the fruit, in the case of geography. for example, in geography, linear causal logics are usually rooted in deterministic reasonings, that is, the causal origin is usually a natural fact determining a human fact. on the contrary, circular causal logics are normally systemic, the result of the analysis of more humanized, economic or urban environments, and nature is included in the system (normally as a resource) but does not determine it. thus, daniel lois had already elucidated that the use of different causal systems can come from methodological postures which are equally determined by the character of the object of the geographer, the spaces (loi 1982, 1985). according to this author, causal structures reflect deterministic or possibilistic reasoning when considering the starting point of structure in natural or human phenomena (reverberating the duality of geographical science in the consideration of natural determinism); causal structures may also reflect the homogeneity of the reference space by taking into account internal or external causes of the space in question (revealing the duality of methodological considerations around isolation and circulation, as well as differences in vertical and horizontal, internal and external relations of the environment in question); synchronic and diachronic reasonings also reflect the characteristics of spaces, since they may be organized in linearity, normally revealing deterministic reasoning, or in cycles revealing independence in their relations with the environment (loi 1982, 1985). deterministic or semi-deterministic (mixed) reasoning is more common in agrarian monographs, while systemic reasoning is more common in urban monographs. thus, causal structures result in aspects that are key to the understanding of methodological postures and are also structured according to the degree of humanization of the environment they reflect. the intriguing thing about daniel loi’s analysis is that the most recurrent causal structures in the classical works of geographers produced between 1900 and 1910 were those organized around linear linkages, which evoke a theoretical construction that is predominantly historical and ecological, based on linguistic and temporal linearity, revealing a “diachronic tendency of french geography” (own translation) (loi 1982, 19) and which, as a rule, began with the consideration of natural factors. however, there is also the systemic, or synthetic structure: “it is the kind of [systemic] structure of which much is spoken, to which one aspires, but which is not practised, which cannot be practised” (own translation) (loi 1982, 20). pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 5 pierre monbeig uses five types of causal structure throughout his career: the simple type (linear and deterministic, since in its causal origin there is an aspect of the natural environment); a mixed linear type, involving a causal among both within nature and a constructed human space; the systemic type (circular and autonomous in relation to the characteristics of the environment, and which i try to model in the case of the advance of the pioneering fringes, its object of study); and the stratigraphic type (that is, the determinations would occur in a vertical ambit, in a relationship of structure with superstructure). finally, it creates a mixed type between the stratigraphic and the systemic (the system at the top of a vertical evolution influenced by movement from below to above and vice versa), and which, moreover, proved to be specific to brazil, as it was open and expanding, since it had a structural imbalance that led to the displacement and expansion of the cycle, since it never closed as a system. this is the causal model mobilized to explain the pioneer front, which is the purpose of monbeig’s study, that is, the movement of capitalist advancement toward the brazilian hinterland (“sertão” in portuguese) and the establishment of an agri-exporting economy in the transition from slavery to an industrial economy. the evolution of long durations in france to consider the challenges of an entire discipline, which accompanied monbeig’s trajectory, i have to start in france, where he studied in his youth. some of the long durations of french science would be reconfigured in the são paulo region. on one hand, there is a conflict intrinsic to french scientific culture itself which, dating from the end of the 19th century, is beginning to emerge in the form of an antagonism between the systematisation of theoretical formulations, in the training of the social scientist, arising from the gaze of the renewed german natural sciences on reality and, on the other hand, the irreducibility with which the french literary tradition tended to adorn its narratives and which suggested assumptions about descriptions of totally unique situations (lepenies 1996). these long-lasting french trends were first identified by wolf lepenies: “in the interruption of buffon’s career and the unstable reception of his histoire naturelle, we can follow the process by which the sciences gradually distance themselves from literature, and how traditional values, which could be called literary, are excluded from the canon of accepted knowledge” (own translation) (lepenies 1996, 13). this conflict became increasingly explicit during the course of the institutionalisation of the social sciences in france, at the end of the 19th century, and was expressed by a supposed antagonism between the “literates”, for whom it was necessary to describe, narrate and highlight particularities, and for the more “scientific” scholars, who argued that science should explain, systematise and highlight the universality of processes (lepenies 1996). these two trends were potentially conflicting and were rooted in the structures of french scientific infra-mentalities in the 19th century. nonetheless, disciplines, such as geography, offered original solutions to reconcile these values. in agreement with lepenies, i consider scientific values and literary values different academic postures in the face of the structuring and legitimization of knowledge, which cannot be reduced to epistemological logic, nor can they be explained by a relationship of a direct influence of the natural sciences or literature in the human sciences, since they imply taking positions in various spheres of society, in science, but also in culture and politics. by characterizing this conflict even more, i consider it as a set of attitudes which are assumed around two poles and which can be expressed in various positions within society: the so-called “scientific” values, on the one hand, and “literary” values, on the other. regarding scientists influenced by the renewal of the natural sciences, there is an “obsession with method”, the primacy of “questions of classification” and “precise terminology”, “specialized teaching”, “gain in precision and objectivity”, the primacy of “doctrine” over pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 6 observation, a greater “methodological awareness” (lepenies 1996), a higher degree of social commitment and application of the sciences to reality. on the other hand, in relation to those who wagered on the power of sensibilities as a way of understanding the world, the “literates”, they insist on the irreducibility of reality to systems, i see a critique of doctrines, highlighting the “illusion of dogmatism”, the primacy of the importance of the “french spirit”, of “brilliant rhetoric”, of “linguistic sensitivity”, of “style”, of unselfish visions, of the detachment from the demands of politics. this play of forces has been part of the long tradition of french science (lepenies 1996). in short, tension exists between forms of logical writing and expressive writing in france. how is this tension expressed in geography? in fact, such tensions have also greatly affected french geography, although in the coexistence of these values this discipline has found a positive and original “duality” in its epistemological constitution. this division was explained by the position occupied by the discipline at the time of its institutionalisation, with the result that this duality also constitutes a long duration of french geographical knowledge. geography was divided, on the one hand, between the public success that previous geographical practices had generated (for example, the geography of elisée reclus), the insertion of a university position linked more to a literary discipline (history), and, on the other hand, between the practices that aroused an intention for exploitation, colonial interest and the planning for colonial areas (robic 1991, 54). there is a “science” which, also immersed in the assumptions of “art”, was structured around descriptions and narratives, on the one hand; on the other, a generalising appetite that allowed for action and “planning” of colonial spaces. this formed an “epistemology of the mixed, or rather, of the between two, of the passage”, according to marie-claire robic (robic 1991, 54). the expression “rational description” (an opposition in terms) condensed this “research strategy” (robic 1991, 55) which incorporated the superiority of the explanation together with the description, whose very term “geo-graphy” etymologically highlighted the appreciation of it (robic 1991, 55). geography was situated between “empiricism” and “constructivism”, between “pure description” and “explanation” (robic 1991, 57), between the understanding of the literates and the logic of the planners. with little epistemological appetite or what robic called “invisibility of the paradigm”, geography was defined by the adoption of a “critical method” (robic 1991, 59), under construction, a kind of passage between “the world of experience and scientific reason” (own translations) (robic 1991, 59). on the one hand, the literary side of vidal de la blache’s geography was closely linked to ecology and the description of the landscape based on the intuitive experience of the geographer in his fieldwork and his travels (based on perigenesis). on the other, a generalising appetite was not absent in the practices of geographers, that is, a systematic application from the point of view of a potentially abstract and general method (robic 1991, 65). according to robic, “the specificity of geography in relation to the autonomy of the social sciences is due to three structural features placed in the crux of tension between the natural sciences and the humanities. paul vidal de la blache’s success in founding the academic field can be accounted for by the way be utilizes writing styles and unpublished materials, both logical and expressional” (robic 1991, 53). however, in general, the human sciences are slowly moving away from literature and the canon of knowledge is gradually moving towards a greater systematisation of discourse and the applied use of the method, and france has also been a “victim” of this long duration (lepenies 1996). the tension between literary and descriptive values, on the one hand, and general and utilitarian values, on the other, is long-standing and deeply rooted in scientifical thought of the geographical discipline. pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 7 repositioning of the long durations in brazil pierre monbeig did not live with vidal de la blache, but his memory in france in the 1920s was very much alive. but for now, to reposition pierre monbeig spatially in brazil, it is worth noting that the initial priority scale of analysis was the national scale, even if other scales were incorporated along with the evolution of t h e long durations. the characteristics of t h e brazilian space matter. emptiness, vastness, situation, tropicality and the opening of internal borders are the main brazilian geographic arrangements that condition the themes, negotiations and adaptations of the theoretical subjects and methods of french geography in brazil. thus, the literary geography that in france was focused on the historical understanding of a certain equilibrium reached by the country, of a relatively small space, had to be placed at the service of the planning of the occupation of a continental and “empty” space in brazil,8 thus, an altogether different task. while it may be assumed that this new demand would lead to a total shift in the scientifical paradigm, this was in fact not what happened. despite the desire expressed by intellectuals and politicians to occupy this broad space, brazil had technical and capital constraints that prevented it from understanding continental space and planning it with the same statistical instruments of the sciences that were already being applied in countries like germany and the united states in the same period (the 1930s and 1940s). therefore, the method applied to the intellectual instrumentalization of the brazilian reality is a mix of a literary conception of geography, supported by field work, perigenetics, and the values of literature, and an applied conception, supported by the values of projection and statistics. as far as conjunctures and displacements are concerned, it had to be understood that they also play a role: they accelerated the processes and revealed the cracks of long-lasting tensions, favouring the ruptures of the initial arrangements of the vidalian paradigm. the main brazilian conjuncture to which these long-lasting arrangements are submitted brings together the following simultaneous situations: an effort of diffusion, propaganda, the irradiation of french geography in brazil; an invitation from a group of very important brazilians in national politics (the so-called “paulista elite”) to french intellectuals to contribute to the processes of renewing science and the formation of a brazilian school, also using this intellectual capital for political means; the consecutive tension between the autonomy of the group of young french scholars in the face of their sponsors; the pressures from other sectors of brazilian society to change the brazilian space and from the intervening state which was beginning to take shape; a context of the advance of capitalism in brazilian territory, which would lead geographers to a hesitant but early tendency to apply and insert themselves into the practical field of intervention (brazil is a country experiencing the advance of colonization over the hinterland); a feeling of urgency and need to boost development; a process of heightening awareness of social inequalities in the country.9 in 8 despite the existence of indigenous people. 9 more specifically, the events alluded refer to the conflict between the new populism and the oligarchies, which appeared in the revolution of 1930 and the conflict for paulista “autonomy” in 1932. after relations began to be pacified again, the paulista elite had drawn up a plan to deepen the spread of their political objectives through the organisation of higher education (cardoso 1982). however, in 1937, the regime closes further and soon after the coup d’état nouvelle (estado novo) took place, with the aim of combating regional discrepancies in brazil and promoting national development through the action of a strong state (penha 1993). in 1938, the instituto brasileiro de geografia estatística (brazilian institute of statistical geography) was created by the brazilian state, an essentially geographic and planning institution, with which the generation of all brazilian and french geographers remain linked. pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 8 other words, i understand these movements as being inserted in a process of formation of the modern national state that aimed to pursue the insertion of a continental country in the modern nations, which tended to accelerate the movement of transformation of its spaces and, along with this, the potential transformation of a literary paradigm into an applied paradigm. pierre monbeig’s leadership in the formation of the brazilian geography had been subject to these tensions, posed by space and the historical context experienced in brazil. from the point of view of the intellectual field, the creation of a militant intellectuality in brazil in the 1930s is observed, concerned with drawing “portraits of brazil” (own translation) (miceli 2001), and a tendency towards applied science, focused on the question of the valuation of the territory and, later, its development. these intellectual provisions are also linked to space, though not exclusively. to make the reasoning proposed here clearer, i reaffirm the argument that space is also an essential component for understanding the militant aspect of brazilian intellectuality at the time, since the urgency of development is felt in brazil, considering its continentality and tropicality, but also the fact that these intellectuals make their own ideological choices. an intellectual history embodied in the actors cannot ignore the spatial dimension of politics in brazil. the evolution of monbeig’s trajectory before brazil: training in france and doctorate in spain having explained these methodological presuppositions, i will proceed to their actual application by first focusing on the intellectual formation and circulation of pierre monbeig. as stated, he studied at the sorbonne as a graduate student in geography and history between 1925 and 1929. he is inserted in a moment of renewed french geography after the death of vidal de la blache, in 1918, and in the movement of knowledge of new research terrains by geographers after the first world war and important institutional conquests of geography such as the foundation of the institute of geography at the sorbonne in 1925. these three examples will be analysed. first, i observe the tension between literary studies and applied studies materialising mainly around the tension between the french scientific model and the renewed german scientific model, after the rapid german industrial boom, relations which were reconfigured after the first world war. the first world war, however, also gave french geographers, as experts on the subject, the opportunity to take part in the debate on the new borders in europe and the consolidation of peace after the war, at a time when an autonomous discourse was being built. this french expertise takes the academic debate in the direction of a more technical and less monographic or literary language. the conflicts created by the war also break some old epistemological balances (ginsbourger 2010). thus, while there was, on the one hand, a strong influence of the german model, on the other, the ancient admiration for german science gives way to a spirit of independence and french geographers do not want to see themselves as tributaries of german science. thus, in the counterweight of this movement, a context emerges, in the intellectual field of geography, of profound nationalism, highlighting the french style of doing geography. however, the institutional renewal of geography, expressed in the case of the foundation of the institute of geography at the sorbonne in 1925, continues and its central influence is the model of the german institute, more concerned with the practical interests of society than with scholastics of knowledge: practical exercises were privileged in relation to the great oratory exercises, modern languages in relation to ancient languages, projections in relation to history. however, the importance of not abandoning the french style continues to be stressed, in the words of de martonne, one of the geographers who carried out (years after pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 9 that declaration i quote above) the organization of the institute of geography in 1925: it can be seen from the concern for the practical side that the teaching of german geography tends to offer students not only ideas, general principles, but above all, ways of [practical] work, instruments of personal scientific research. it is a teaching method that is perhaps less for the past and more for the future (...). one sees practical spirits forming rather than method-oriented profiles. these tendencies (...) are generally opposed to the tendencies of our teaching (...). predisposed by their literary and philosophical education to face facts from above, to connect themselves to ideas rather than to the facts which are the origin of these ideas, to the great relationships of cause and effect which are intertwined in geographical phenomena rather than to these phenomena themselves (...). it will be able to bring together the advantages of these two ways of seeing things and of completely different types of teaching, and, to put it better, which complement each other. (own translation) (de martonne 1898, 259) at the time when pierre monbeig is at the sorbonne as a student, important controversies about scientific and literary values are already taking place between three poles of understanding geography, within the direct disciples of vidal de la blache. in one way or another, the nature of these controversies will be reproduced in other intellectual situations in which monbeig will see himself throughout his career and will push him by different forces and senses of the geographic poles and social situations in which these sets of values are aggregated. in france, jean brunhes represents the total, and almost retrograde, preservation of vidal’s own methodological developments (jean brunhes advocates a geo-ethnography with strong literary assumptions); lucien gallois is the most faithful of the disciples in proposing the continuity of a regional geography; albert demangeon and lucien febvre defend a kind of aggionamento of vidal de la blache’s conception of geography (from human ecology to the logic of understanding the economy and globalisation, without ignoring the analysis of the natural or ecological basis and the description of the landscape). however, unlike subsequent controversies, no one at the time doubted the capacity of a geography based on the values of literature to be able to explain modernity (or its roughness) to some extent. the nature of these controversies will shift its centre towards a growing negation of the geography of literary bias, as i have already stated, and with it the social and spatial poles that tension these ideas, and around which different scientific values and attitudes are added. in his early work as a student, pierre monbeig allied himself with the reformers (albert demangeon and lucien febvre) in the way he embodied his studies at the sorbonne. but the work that pierre monbeig (1929) does at that time also shows a strong duality. he studies the conflict between the “personality” of a small french region (“personality” is a “metaphor” much used by vidal de la blache), which progressively becomes the “banlieu” of paris. in this work, he traces out two orders of causal linearity that are separate. one that starts from the natural reality, imposing transformations in the landscapes (the natural conditions that worsen) and the other in which the landscape changes according to the proximity of yvelines de paris (monbeig 1929). monbeig uses a temporal retrospective to corroborate that yvelines progressively loses its “personality” to become the “banlieu” of paris: “once again, the yvelines region shows how it tends to lose its personality to be a part of the parisian suburbs” (monbeig 1929, 390). “small and medium-sized owners are increasingly constrained to sell their goods to the parisians and castle owners” (monbeig 1929, 387). this new situation, in turn, is characterised in the first place by the modernisation of forest exploitation (monbeig 1929, 385). through the incorporation of machinery (“local labour is constantly diminishing”) (monbeig 1929, pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 10 385), family work begins to disappear (“since the end of the 19th century, these family métiers have practically disappeared”) (own translations) (monbeig 1929, 385). the management of vidal de la blache’s epistemological heritage keeps the master very much alive in the memory of his disciples, with priority contact with the spaces of france in general and paris in particular. but the decade of 1920 would also be marked by the movement to export the french legacy to other countries. with a degree in geography and history from the university of paris, monbeig leaves paris for spain to begin his doctoral thesis. in 1930, pierre monbeig moved to spain to do a two-year research internship at casa velázquez, with the aim of writing a thesis under the guidance of albert demangeon, a direct disciple of vidal de la blache. when emmanuel de martonne ascends to the position of new head of school, french geography is at a turning point with its capacity for intellectual export, so that geopolitics of knowledge and the understanding of the effect of globalisation on new research terrains offer the possibility of new intellectual and epistemological balances. in order to understand this new period, i am mobilizing a kind of reasoning that tries to perceive successive adjustments and a gradual erosion of literary values, opposing each other between poles where these values are agglutinated: france and spain, which is equivalent to saying, on the one hand, a territory that is more slowly integrated with globalisation, france, and, on the other hand, a territory that is more rapidly integrated (albeit as a semi-periphery), spain. this moment is part of a process of becoming aware of the crisis of 1929 and of a policy of association with french cultural diplomacy in favour of the expansion of its areas of cultural influence and the export of its intellectuals (delfosse 2001), given also the already relative closure of the french university system which presents difficulties in creating new posts. in this context, a theory of economic colonization resurges as an important forgotten research agenda of vidal de la blache. the curious thing is that the topic of colonization had already been the subject of disagreement between vidal de la blache and marcel dubois, who advocated an applied colonial geography of the french colonies.10 this also reveals the gradual and specific movement of french human geography in the construction of its theories, its capacity to interpret the world through processes that go before and after the processes of economic globalization, as well as to export these tools of analysis to other territories were again in conflict. at the same time, i see an initial shift and an erosion of important literary principles of regional geography. thus, if vidal de la blache represents one of the legacies of classical french geography on monbeig’s reasoning, a second pole of influences is represented by henri hauser, lucien febvre and albert demangeon, in a counterpoint to brunhes even more marked than previously took place, when monbeig was still a student. before braudel, demangeon had managed to understand the geographical rhythm of the expansion of the world market in the geographical thought (demangeon 1927 1929 1932). his conceptions would have profound effects on monbeig's studies in spain and later in brazil. one aspect of albert demangeon’s work that had and would continue to have an impact on monbeig’s work in spain and then in brazil, with the deep involvement in the methodological transformations of geographical discipline in the context of globalisation 10 olivier soubeyran helps me to differentiate between regional geography, ecological bias, colonial geography, and economic and political bias: “the article [on ‘le dombes’ by lucien gallois, a direct disciple of vidal de la blache] crystallizes in a dozen pages what will become exemplary in french geographical thought [of vidalian geography]: the party taken by geology, by the determinist, linear chain, which necessarily leads to a relationship between man and soil. an approach where the regionalisation of spaces produced by history and politics denaturalizes what nature had united. a vision, which one wants from above and disinterested, where what is described is what is in relation to what was (...)” (soubeyran 1997, 115) [my emphasis]. pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 11 and internationalisation, is the formulation, in the context of geography, of the different temporalities of the local market (linked to nature) and the world market (linked to transport networks). in fact, it is pierre monbeig who expresses this understanding in an article published in 1934 entitled “les importations de fruits frais en grande-bretagne” (1934). demangeon explains the imbalance caused by the 1929 crisis from a twofold ecological and economic point of view, stressing that the contradiction of these dimensions was what led to the imbalance of the global economy (demangeon 1929). demangeon expresses the view that agriculture continues to be commanded by natural forces in the places of origin. but the propensity of imperial mercantile circulation strives to annul the rhythms of the seasons that command the local market and produces an excess supply (demangeon 1929). the world market cancels out the imbalance of local markets by varying the areas in which it drains its products. thus, the world market, geographically, maintains an almost constant demand and distribution of products. local markets, when closely linked to the propensities of global markets, are driven to annul the natural rhythm of their seasons, or the natural dynamics of the soil in terms of productivity (monbeig 1934). thus, in studying spain, monbeig again reasons under a double type of separate causalities, which do not merge; this time he organizes one of these causal chains in the form of a systemic reasoning (monbeig 1930 1931 1932): one is the deterministic and ecological causality, relative to a period or area barely affected by globalization, and the other a cyclical and systemic causality, in circuit, which explains the circuit of regions in modernization. these two orders also do not merge in their discourse. in my view, this shows the difficulty of french geography in merging the literary paradigm, which is more ecological, with the applied paradigm, which is more economic, demonstrating a slow transition. monbeig notes that “(...) the huertas [spanish] participate in modern activity: they tend to have a perfected and specialized agricultural production, thanks to the irrigation systems which constitute a beautiful technical undertaking (...). industries also evolve; they tend to work for the universal market” (own translation) (monbeig 1930, 606). moreover, of course, the literary descriptions of landscapes are always present in his works. the evolution of the long epistemological trends of french geography through pierre monbeig’s trajectory in brazil monbeig arrived in brazil in 1935 as part of a french mission specifically formed to contribute to the foundation of the first so-called “modern” university in brazil, the university of são paulo. he immediately became involved in the construction processes of this university. also within the organizational process, i observe monbeig’s practices as a way of expressing his double engagement with france and brazil, transported in the form of an engagement around a paulista pole and a “brazilian” pole, adopting at this stage of my work two other points of polarization. the conflict between a french model and a “brazilian model” in the formation of the university now appears in a series of examples that make up the history of usp's formation. in fact, since pierre monbeig takes root in brazil and changes the subject of his thesis to a brazilian one about the pioneering fringe (and thus begins to build a personal project of a greater commitment to the country), what can be observed is that his research takes root in são paulo, but with a vison of intellectual and organisational action in the whole of brazil. on the one hand, what was at stake was the formation of brazilian geography, which, if its original pole was paulista, maintained, at the same time, a national aspiration. on the other hand, the variation in scale between the poles of diverse intellectual environments shows that, as monbeig distances himself from a paulista pole, which is, in turn, “more french” in the brazilian context (and without ever losing his own particular roots), he pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 12 approaches a brazilian pole which is a crossroads of influences. and so, at the same time, he transforms his conception of science, which takes on features that are increasingly engaged and practical in style. through the notion of literary and scientific values that vary in scale according to new polarizations, i observe successive and gradual adjustments of the longterm trends here lies the key to contextualization as i reconstruct it. simon schwartzman explains how usp was primarily inspired by the french university organisation model: but there would be yet another very strong reason for preserving the preference on the french model [for the foundation of the university], disregarding the scientific importance mainly of the english and american models, where experimental science (and not “principalist” like the french and the german ones) (...). in the view of the founders of the university of são paulo, the faculty of philosophy, sciences and letters would bring together all the branches of science in one single institution, giving it a high power of generation and irradiation of a new mentality. the paulistas were in a hurry (own translation). (interview with paulo duarte in schwartzman 1979, 200) i note that in the initial stages of institutional action, in the circle of affinities of monbeig in brazil, there is a strong resilience of the old balances of the french geography through the resilience of paulista values in the organization of the university. however, as monbeig’s brazil becomes “more brazilian”, either due to the influence of other global and american currents, or to the very discovery of new landscapes revealed by the march towards the west and the entrance into the hinterland by getúlio vargas’ government, or even by the entrance of low-income students (usually children of immigrants and migrants in the ffcl, in general with more pragmatic behaviour), there is a strong tension in these old epistemological balances of french geography.11 the question is whether, as monbeig spends more time in brazil, he submits himself to this tendency towards fragmentation that the brazilian territory seemed to be able to displace the french geography still very much anchored in literary values, and whether it changes its geography gradually or radically. both possibilities existed in brazil. brazil in the 1930s was a country that wanted to modernize and transform its landscapes in the same march of modern civilizations, with one of the outcomes of this movement being the creation of the national council of geography (cng) and the brazilian institute of geography and statistics (ibge), in 1938, in the country’s capital, rio de janeiro, besides many other actions carried out by the vargas government. it is also worth remembering that são paulo and rio de janeiro were the main opponents of an almost separatist war, when são paulo fought for a supposed autonomy of the nation in 1932. however, the desire to transform the brazilian space did not live up to reality. by around 1940, the scientific institutions that sponsor the brazilian geography are already consolidated, and pierre monbeig makes a personal effort, together with his disciples from são paulo, to nationalize the so-called modern geography throughout the brazilian territory, also involving the ibge. thus, i first used the intellectual poles, that opposed the different disciples of vidal from their understandings about globalization. i then used the different poles surrounding the space of france and spain as expressions of the agglutination poles of the long-term tensions of geography. i will now transpose brazil and france as poles of repositioning tensions, transported to the cities of são paulo and rio de janeiro, since 11 for sérgio adas, analyzing the example of the trajectory of the geographer orlando valverde during the emergence of the academic geography in rio de janeiro, capital of brazil, there was a difference between the pole of são paulo and rio de janeiro: “they (...) [the paulistas] maintained greater independence in relation to the government designs, structuring themselves in the direction of a more academic orientation, unlike our author and his peers” (own translation) (adas 2006, 27). pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 13 pierre monbeig is already relatively immersed in brazil, as well as the institutional poles and collective groupings that involve french and paulista intellectuals, on one side, and cariocas and brazilians on the other. this was the way in which i began to polarize monbeig’s heritage when he was located in são paulo, parallel to a process of national irradiation of his geography. in this context, by nationalizing his way of practising geography, monbeig’s work ends up developing a geography of the colonization of brazil, relating it to the genre de vie of the remote and old areas of brazilian territory (the genre de vie is an ethnographic concept of vidal de la blache) and understanding the processes of the spatiality of the economic forces in the context of colonization. therefore, he elaborated a regional geography of colonization that could be understood and commanded by the national state. again, there is a shift from the centre of the controversies surrounding the erosion of the literary values of geography. but there is also a widening of the range of positions related to the poles furthest from the new controversy. thus, while, on the one hand, he already adhered to the idea of colonisation (which, it should be repeated, was outside the hard core of regional thinking in the early 19th century), on the other, he refused to draw up an applied theory of market-led colonisation, another pillar through which the colonial geography of marcel dubois, in conflict with vidal de la blache, revolved in the past. in this sense, the fact that he dedicated himself to the subject of colonization in the way he practised geography in brazil also revealed a hybridism of perspectives. the topic of colonization was a preference already defined in spain and continued in brazil. thus, although monbeig strongly preserves his inheritances, brazil was also able to represent the need to review the french geography. it represented a space of colonization, in the face of the expansion of capitalism in the mid-20th century, or late capitalism, where the force of humankind’s action in the face of nature is even more important but directed by the state. it also represented the concrete impossibilities of abandoning vidal de la blache’s geography in depth, in monbeig’s eyes, because of the very constraints that the great emptiness placed, this time, on applied studies. ephemeral wealth, that of the pioneer fringe, may object. but there were solid fortunes built. (...) for brazil, the hour has passed when all production is destined for export trade; there is a national market for products of the land that widens year by year. the pioneering economy can only profit from this development, because it will be less exposed to the crises of the world economy. (own translation) (monbeig 1894, 391) thus, the incorporation of brazil and of a whole regional geography into the process of the universalization of french geography can be seen as a stimulus to its modernization, not only of its methods, but also of its institutional and political strategies. in 1940, robic speaks of a return to the paradigm of marcel dubois’ colonial geography (robic 1996, 46) (with all the nuances and specificities of this movement). colonial and political geography that were observed to be marginalised at the beginning of the century at the core of the french geography and that represented another paradigmatic arrangement of modern geography (clerc 2017) was renewing. as can be seen, the tension between literary and scientific values, now called “applied” geography, is at this time being played out by other intellectual and political attitudes, that is, it has new injunctions, reformulated by intellectual devices of successive approaches to new realities and spatial and sociological poles of agglutination. i observed at this moment that the essential tension between the paradigms in brazil surrounded a liberal conception of geography or a nationalist conception, guided by the state, which sought to evoke the irreducible singularities and particularities of the nation and its embarrassments, at the same time as intervening in space and society. in other words, it is no longer a totally disinterested conception, as literary values could valorise, nor a cosmopolitan, highly abstract and planned, theoretical and liberal application that would make a blank slate of the singularity and constraints imposed by nature on man's actions. pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 14 monbeig’s organisational presence and theoretical elaboration in brazil between 1946 and 1952 (year of publication of his thesis) reached its peak in 1952. in theoretical terms, pierre monbeig was responsible for the formulation of a geohistory of the colonial expansion of capitalism in brazil and from brazil. at that time, monbeig’s proposal involved a reformulation of the cognitive tools of the human sciences, mobilizing synchronic, diachronic and stratigraphic reasoning (articulating systemic, cyclical and vertical causal relationships). moreover, pierre monbeig is increasingly taking upon himself the task of understanding the condition of social inequality in brazilian society and of considering brazil within the framework of its development. thus, later, around 1957, he began to think in terms of “development”. for him, the challenge of brazilian development is, first of all, to install infrastructures that allow the entire population to live under the same temporality, promoting a transformation of the planteur [planter, or “plantador” in portuguese] into a peasant, more rooted in the soil and creating an internal market in which goods and capital circulate, and where the peasant takes care of the land. moreover, strengthening the internal market would be a way to cushion the setbacks suffered as a result of international economic cycles. for monbeig, the creation of the domestic market is a direct consequence of the care of the “natural processes” and they can only be favoured by “closing” the border (the idea of an internal border seen as constant advancement, a horizontal dynamism). pierre monbeig himself calls this entire intellectual process in brazil “neo-regionalism”, revealing an awareness of its intrinsic originality: for this neo-regionalism to be likely to succeed, it was necessary to choose the branches of production to be intensified or created in the different regions wisely, which would presuppose perfect knowledge of natural resources and no less perfect knowledge of economic and human problems. here, too, geographical research was called upon to collaborate in this eminently practical work. (...). it would be unfair not to refer to brazil, where geographers are used to conducting practical surveys. the very creation of the national council of geography aims to provide the best knowledge of the country, indispensable for its good administration. (own translation) (monbeig 1957, 22) in addition, he proposes standard forms of thinking about the economic movement on the territory (which he named “urban cycles” in 1948) on the advance of modernization driven by international demands, which, by clashing with traditional tropical structures, produces a structural imbalance of the territory in continual expansion, and which, moreover, slows down the process of securing the worker and renews conditions for his exploitation, as well as delaying the formation of an internal market through natural processes. from my point of view, he anticipates a geographical understanding of underdevelopment, although the word will perhaps be consolidated in the international scientific arena a little later. this idea, he later expresses as: agriculture and rural society in tropical countries have two radically opposed aspects, at least in most cases. on the one hand, traditional subsistence agriculture carried out by human groups with archaic techniques, old structures and a local or domestic economy. on the other, a sector that is less interested in national than international markets (...). thus, ‘developed’ agriculture and ‘underdeveloped’ agriculture coexist. it is precisely this duality which constitutes one of the forms of underdevelopment of the intertropical zone, while at the same time being one of the essential causes. (own translation) (ieb, pierre monbeig fund. untitled. on malnutrition in the intertropical world. box 5, doc 14. sd) in brazil, monbeig’s thinking leads to a geography of development and i think this pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 15 process of constructing his way of thinking is situated. moreover, this process of transforming french geography into brazilian terrain contributes to advancing the erosion of literary values, tending to place geography at the service of state human action, within a re-founding conception of the structure of brazilian society, and normatizes the geographical method in the form of establishing reasoning that conveys standard forms of functioning. finally, in 1957, monbeig was involved in an important dialogue with another brazilian historiographic current, the economic theories on the development, which proved to be one of the great critical fortunes of brazilian historiography. however, he remained loyal to his heritage. monbeig’s thesis is almost a literary book. he strives not to create a model about the functioning of the pioneering fringes, not to create a theory, but to describe individuals and landscapes, to dilute almost all systematic thinking amid beautiful descriptions, although, in my view, his thesis has the objective of building a model, without actually doing so. a “model” of the advance of capitalism through the territory of brazil explained, moreover, under the injunctions of the resistance of a geography that advocates literary values. the idea of building models on the basis of description may be a potential contradiction in global epistemological reasoning, but it seems to be a contradiction which geographical tradition has internalized as the driving movement. pierre monbeig was not one of the actors that endorsed the detachment of the literary paradigm from the applied one, which would take place in terms of a deeper appreciation of the agency of man, the elimination of natural determinism, the tendency to understand the generalities of global landscapes, to applied geography and a political and planning bias. thus, he developed a regional thought on colonization (regional because it is constrained by nature), which originally brought together elements of geography that were epistemologically different in the past (vidal de la blache – regional – and marcel dupois – colonial) and finally ended in a geography of development. in this final movement, he seems to have diluted his main theoretical originalities in a discourse in which the backdrop was the reaffirmation of his legacies. this, because he seems to have been carried away by the long durations, the spaces and the conjunctures, but also by his own vision of a realistic temporality, whether of the occupation of continental spaces like brazil; of the intellectual thought that accompanies him as a whole; or of the difficultly to overcome colonial and territorial historical liabilities. thus, monbeig had his own convictions. they were based on his deep individual predispositions around the geography of vidal de la blache and his disciples. brazilian geography is also the fruit of monbeig’s individual choices, despite the brazilian space. monbeig chose to remain within the framework of a literary and regional geography, but the way in which long periods of geography evolved, and repositioned themselves in brazil, led him to make necessary adaptations to the original paradigm towards a geography of development. conclusion this paper addressed the way i use a geographical method in intellectual history and the history of science, the geohistory of knowledge, and the problem of the specificity of brazil in the field of world-science. the trajectory of the french geographer pierre monbeig acts as the axis of the analysis. for me, the brazilian space and the subsequent injunctions and mediations ended up tensioning monbeig’s originally literary geography to a geography of development, promoting hybridism between a historical and projective, ecological and economic, descriptive and practical vision. a geohistory of knowledge, enriched by the contributions of intellectual history, was the method of analysis used to reveal the globality and specificity of pierre monbeig’s trajectory in brazil. at the same time, it was able to reveal how the brazilian space and context itself guided pierre monbeig’s geography in a certain pierre monbeig and the formation of geography in brazil (1925-1957): geohistory of knowledge, intellectual history and the insertion of brazilian geography into the world-science larissa alves de lira 16 direction. as a result, i believe i have succeeded in highlighting a certain specificity of brazilian geography in world-science, which i believe is to provide answers to the problem of development. acknowledgment this article was produced from research that obtained financial support from the foundation for research support of the state of são paulo (fapesp). references adas, sérgio. 2006. o campo do geógrafo: colonização e agricultura na obra de orlando valverde (1917-1964). 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(2007) placing the enlightenment. university of chicago press, chicago. archive institute of brazilian studies [instituto de estudos brasileiros] (ieb/usp). fundo pierre monbeig. microsoft word chen layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-22 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal article surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5905-2102 abstract: this historiographical paper gains novelty by rebutting the medicine-centered methodology frequently employed in the positivist studies of pharmaceutical history. based on the critiques of current literature, this paper conveys two interrelated points. first, the factual approach adopted by positivist pharmaceutical historians demonstrates the explanatory limitations that the report-like discourses on the history of drugs and medicines are too pedantic to be rationally insightful. second, the attempts of developing a sociocultural framework for the british history of opium consumption remain an underdeveloped topic for the constructionist historiography of pharmaceutical science. taken together, the author attempts to hypothesize a research methodology for the constructionist pharmaceutical history by introducing a theory of interaction that uses an interpretive approach to humanize the past of drugs and medicines for the philosophical explorations of the human-centered world. in doing so, pharmaceutical history is able to fully realize its long-wasted potential as an intellectual source of enlightenment. keywords: historical positivism; historical constructionism; sociocultural framework; interpretive approach; theory of interaction received: september 16, 2022. reviewed: october 20, 2022. accepted: november 11, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i13.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction as a study of the past, history can be defined as either the practical manifestation of representational realism or the brainchild of conceptual constructionism. for the historical positivists, the representational realist theory methodologically complements their view that historical memories should be preserved as factually as possible (gould 1986). in their view, the duty of historians is to “discover and record the most relevant and essential information” that upholds the principle of uncovering most accurate facts (carrier 2002). contrariwise, historical constructionists see history as a source of conceptual yet ideological explanations that philosophically enlightens our understanding of the world from the perspective of which 1 xianle chen is a phd research fellow in the department of history at the peking university. address: no.5 yiheyuan road, haidian district, beijing p.r. china 100871. email: markchenxianle@hotmail.com surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 mankind is the central actor for the historical evolution from the past to the present (frankel 1957).” because of this, the historical constructionists emphasize the philosophical rationale in the human-centered history that “[in the case of comprehending the contemporary], there is no way to create comprehensive, plausible, and verifiable explanations without taking [humanized] history seriously into account (berridge 2008).” in short, historical constructionists use history as the explanatory tool that decodes the pattern of modern world by idealistically exemplifying perceived elucidations for the events of the past. it is this interpretive function of history that permits the constructionist historians to elevate the human minds to a higher level of intellectual capacity when surveying the meaning of the word “reality” as a conceptual realization of philosophy. such is the ground on which history can be celebrated as being an influential discipline (tosh 2019). unfortunately, the pharmaceutical historians in large part aren’t particularly fond of the historical constructionism. as dictated by the medicine-centered historiography of pharmaceutical science, the loyalty of scholars writing about the histories of pharmacy, pharmaceuticals and medical technologies lies within the positivist idea that “historians are the workhorses of long-term social memory (carrier 2002).” that is, in the eyes of pharmaceutical historians, the purpose of examining history is to produce factist chronicles that even the tiniest details of past stories occurred in the disciplinary development of medicine are being reported to the fullest extent. therefore, what we generally observe in the review of existing literature is that pharmaceutical historians are laborious to clarify technical facts at the cost of seriously undermining the formations of explanation and rationale. in the context of professional histories of pharmacy and medicine, the “technical facts” include but are not limited to the newly discovered texts produced by ancient practitioners, pharmacy artefacts, former therapies, and the institutions of ancient medicine that are excessively investigated as the word-to-word reconstruction of data-based history (richmond and stevenson 2017). evidently, the factual methodology of pharmaceutical historians is somewhat comparable to that of the empirical scientists. the way with which the studies on pharmaceutical history are styled by positivism can be likened to the practice of writing scientific report. as might be expected, a pharmaceutical historian will most likely keep the interpretations of knowledge to a minimum because the process of generating explanations requires personal judgement and informed imagination that contradict badly with the fact-based thinking of science. the emphasis for factualness in pharmaceutical history naturally invites professionalization and specialization that “clinicalization” for the historiography of pharmaceutical science becomes inevitable (burnham 1999). expressed differently, the histories of pharmacy, pharmaceuticals and medical technologies are exclusively written by and for the scientifically trained clinicians (helmstädter 2020a). what this implies is that the research authorship for pharmaceutical history is largely inspired by figures, statistics and numbers. no historical positivist is able to deny that the rules of data-handling must be applied to the historical investigations of pharmacy. the positivist methods of factually presenting the information collected as an experimental report essentially nurture the writing style for some of the most senior pharmaceutical historians in the contemporary. consequently, historical constructionism, which philosophically facilitates the theorization of sociocultural framework for general interpretation of history, in most cases fails to attract the attention of pharmaceutical historians. the writers of pharmaceutical history, who normally read medicine in their student years, are methodologically accustomed to the factgathering research. furthermore, they neglect the needs of elucidating pharmaceutical history from a philosophical perspective that considers the past of medicine and pharmacy as a subject for sociocultural analysis. the fact that the practice of historical positivism disregards the constructionist interpretation is the achilles' heel for many pharmaceutical surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 3 historians. without interpretivist approach of historical constructionism, the historical knowledge of medicines and pharmaceutics can never achieve its full potential. the “fact-based methodology” of historical positivism is intrinsically problematic if we see the pharmaceutical history as a sub-discipline of history. since what we call “the general history” is an outcome of the historical constructionism that personal and theoretical beliefs of evidences are the main feature of writing, three issues are identified when pharmaceutical history is studied by the historical positivists (hobart 1989). first, by applying the theory of representational realism in their researches, pharmaceutical historians “strictly adhere to [documentable records and statistics] (ludmerer 1990).” this explains why they are reluctant to develop philosophical theories for the factual information gathered. stressing the specialty of a relationship between humanity and therapeutic agents demands them to adopt factist approach that constitutes the foundation of a competent assessment for pharmaceutical history. what it means is that, for some pharmaceutical historians, the scientificness of medicine and pharmaceutics makes their histories distinctive from the general history that employing the constructionist doctrine for methodology detriments the objectiveness of medical discipline. thus, as they take pride in their laborious investigations of collecting figures, most pharmaceutical historians lack the vision that pharmaceutical history, like other branches of general history, can be used to unmask the truth of world at a philosophical level. the constructionist view is despised by historical positivists that, in order to produce explanatory power, history must be narrated to mirror historians’ ideologies. naturally, pharmaceutical history becomes a “personal plaything” of the fact-appreciating professionals. by condemning historical constructionism as being unscientific, the positivist examinations of pharmaceutical history lose the interpretive function which often gives unmatched insight to the understanding of “present reality.” second, the medicine-centered approach shaped by historical positivism overestimates the gravity of factual preservation that frequently marginalizes the relevance of the historical studies for pharmaceutical science. put another way, “what most needs analysis [in pharmaceutical history] is not the dimensions of a problem the statistical and epidemiological approach has spilled over in historical discussions from its dominance of contemporary scientific writing on [pharmaceutical matters] but the definition of it (berridge and edwards 1987).” the one interesting thing about her remarks is that berridge indicated the importance of exploring the complex relationship between men and medicines in the light of conceptual interpretation (plant 1999). yet, because pharmaceutical historians are mostly the disciple of historical positivism, the realist style of their factual discourses is inherent as well as inevitable. considering that medicine-centered historiography of pharmaceutical science dominates the methodology of which pharmaceutical history ought to be written as the data report, constructionist survey that ideologically analyze the metaphysical characters of medicine and pharmaceutics in the context of historical philosophy will remain absent. third, since the positivist pharmaceutical historians refuse to generate rational explanations of their own, facts and figures presented by their works are often susceptible to misinterpretations. taking the debate about drug control policy in britain in the 1970s as an example, the extent to which the research for history of opium consumption was misused by the positivists caused the prohibitionist legislations to be generally ineffective (berridge and edwards 1987). as shrewdly noticed by berridge, “those concerned with present policy have been too intimately involved with the assessment and selection of material from the past (berridge and edwards 1987).” what is more, “the statistics of the past have been quoted in comparison with those of the present with little realization of the pitfalls of historical data, the very different cultural and social situations of drug use in historically distant societies (berridge and edwards 1987).” the historical factists who do not recognize surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 4 history as a theoretical foundation for constructionist interpretations have “a tendency to read the preconceptions and values of the present too directly into the past (berridge and edwards 1987).” accordingly, as a discipline, the pharmaceutical history is at large belittled by the established academia for not being interpretive enough. nevertheless, there have been attempts by few social historians of medicine to upgrade the historiography of pharmaceutical science so that the explanatory scope of pharmaceutical history can be significantly expanded. in 1960s, numerous historical specialists tried to “place medicine in a wider social and cultural context (anderson 2005).” rosenberg “explored medical history in relation to broad social and political currents (peckham 2010).” two decades later, berridge examined the social history of english opium eating to feed the makings of contemporary drug control policy. similarly, neustadt and may also suggested that the history of public health management could be used to “furnish insightful evidence for decision-makers formulating future health policy (peckham 2010).” in contrast, brown explained “the british prohibitions of opium” as the social aftermath of what he termed “the conscientious politics (brown 1973).” and while harding expounded the emergence of opium addiction in victorian era from the perspective of moralist ideology, fay proclaimed that the suppression of british drug trade in far east was induced by the “protestant crusade (harding 1986; fay 1971).” moreover, since the commencement of this century, people like ng and kim have all provided us with their own version of historical theories that treats pharmaceutical history as either something intertwined with sociology or the byproduct of imperial bureaucracy (ng 2016; kim 2020). what is self-evident about the studies quoted above is that an “interpretation-based model of constructionist reasoning” has been developed for the pharmaceutical history (with limited success nonetheless). currently, the author can conclude with much confidence that factual preservation is still regarded as the principal function of a positivist pharmaceutical history. because history generates relevance and intellectual power for being philosophically insightful in the realm of constructionist ideologies, the factual tradition of pharmaceutical historians marginalizes their importance in the researches that elucidate the structure of present world as the continuation of the past. at the time of writing this essay, the mainstream historians are still indifferent about the theoretical development of pharmaceutical history. it is against this specific backdrop that the author seeks to introduce the constructionist interpretation for the pharmaceutical historians. the idea is to realize a vision that the purpose of studying pharmaceutical history should be more than just collecting facts. the historiography of pharmaceutical science requires a theoretical revision that the information preserved by the positivist research of pharmaceutical history can be used to explain humanity and world in a wide-ranging context of sociocultural phenomena. namely, a pharmaceutical historian will need to be intellectually imaginative about giving elucidations so that the explanatory capacity of the pharmaceutical history is not restricted by historical positivism. by applying the doctrine of historical constructionism in the methodology of pharmaceutical history, this paper introduces the interpretive approach that surveys the past stories of medicine and pharmaceutics in the light of metaphysical philosophy for humanism. this is to show that our interactions with medical actives in history impact the construction of the contemporary. there exist three tasks for this paper to undertake. first, publications from the pharmaceutical historian are exemplified to illustrate that factual analyses of pharmaceutical history are incompetent to describe the ontology of medicine in the humancentered language of rationality. second, as a part of explicating the author’s argument, a historiographical critique for the british history of opium consumption is produced that the constructionist framework of sociocultural interpretation can be theorized. after meeting surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 5 the objectives laid out in the first two tasks, this paper is then prepared to propose an “interaction theory” to upgrade the sociocultural interpretation of pharmaceutical history as the third and final assignment. although social historians of medicines and pharmaceuticals in the 1960s were on the right path to explore the possibility of framing an interpretationbased model of constructionist reasoning, the theoretical development of their works has experienced difficulties. specifically, their understanding of historical constructionism was still confined to the idea that the sociocultural explanations of pharmaceutical history should only be employed to assess the historical origin of contemporary medical institutions. this gives rise to the perception that discourses for the history of british opium use remain too professional to allow the rational application of pharmaceutical history in wider context. needless to say, the methodological poverty of pharmaceutical history favorably creates relevance for writing this paper. especially, the author ontologically envisages that the interactive relationship between the health-pursuing minds and the existence of diseases initiated the historical dynamics of pharmacy, pharmaceuticals and medical technologies. understanding such interactive relationship offers the pharmaceutical historians a historiographical opportunity to contextualize the complexities of medicine and pharmaceutics in the milieu of external world that, in turn, expands the scope of elucidation for the pharmaceutical history by functionalizing the past events in the medical world as a key to address the need of comprehensively explaining the modern humanity. the limitation of a factual approach: an alienated journal of pharmaceutical historian in milk of paradise, inglis remarked that “the research this book entailed, although set in motion by personal experience and a cursed curiosity, has been both deskand field-based. the former attempts, in the main, to reduce opiates, and now opioids, to a number game: kilograms seized, hectares burned, numbers arrested (inglis 2019).” such structural explanation of her research proves to be extremely relevant because it indicates the historiographical importance of historical positivism (or as termed by inglis, “the number game”) in the examinations of pharmaceutical history. the present view within the academic community is representationally demonstrative of the fact that the “number game” helps the pharmaceutical historians to focus on “the documentations of [clinical] stories and [pharmaceutical] experiences (the american institute of the history of pharmacy 2020a).” in consequence, the research methodology through which the discourses for pharmaceutical history are penned is styled in accordance with the principles of positivist professionalism and scientific clinicalism. unsurprisingly, answering the “scientific questions” about pharmaceutical history in positivist manner becomes the priority for some pharmaceutical historians. it is to be noted that the scientific questions are concerned with quantifiable properties of medicines and pharmaceutical profession. they could include the following: what were the dosage forms used in the ancient medicine? what clinical activities did the physicians carry out? how medicines were administered in ancient times? questions like these are highly technical that require factist answers. therefore, pharmaceutical historians are accustomed to the practice that, rather than treating it as a field of the historical study, pharmaceutical history is written in a way that mirrors the factual professionalism of the clinical discipline. what this elucidates is the reason for which the medicines-centered preservation of facts is regarded as the sole research method for the pharmaceutical history (sur and dahm 2011). put simply, when exploring the historical truth of medicines and pharmaceutics, data and statistics prevail in the “historiographical competition against the doctrine of historical constructionism” since the natures of pharmaceutical history are “scientific and professional (helmstädter 2020b).” appreciating scientificness and the professionalness of pharmaceutical history paves the way surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 6 to the understanding of why pharmaceutical historians have a clinical way of thinking for methodology. they repudiate, as fiercely as they can, the interpretive approach which, if employed, will appropriately address the complex philosophy of humanity in history. regrettably, the fact that pharmaceutical history is of positivism makes it a tool for the clinicians to merely develop professionalism, leadership and medical ethics. in plain english, the factual approach narrows pharmaceutical historians’ perspective significantly when it comes to interpretation. it mechanistically and pedantically confines the explanatory scope of pharmaceutical history to the scientific domain that the findings of the pharmaceutical historians are often detached from the general reality and common sense. the major problem with a positivist pharmaceutical history is that it is deprived of the rational capability to elucidate how the sociopolitical structure of a progressing human life is influenced by such factors as pharmaceutical products. the rightful function of pharmaceutical history to explicate the past in a constructionist way is impaired by the factual method that considers positivist documentation of medical data as its only role. what this has caused is that the research contents of pharmaceutical history cannot be integrated with the metaphysical explanations of which the daily events experienced by the humanity are theorized as the studied phenomena (green, haddad and aronson 2018). to rephrase, the fact-based studies of pharmaceutical history are, methodologically speaking, too exceptional to be accepted as a sub-branch of history. because such exceptional methodology is employed in a discipline that mostly welcomes historical constructionism, the literal and positivist translation of the figures collected, which is usually a pride for many scientists, becomes a curse for the pharmaceutical historians. their failure of developing a constructionist framework to characterize the past of medicines and pharmaceutics as the human phenomenon is marginalizing the disciplinary authority of pharmaceutical history. as it has been reiterated numerously in this paper, the belief shared by many pharmaceutical historians that the knowledge about medicinal products is somehow professionalized wrongfully separates “the history of pharmaceutical world” from “the history of human world.” the former requires sophisticated skills of historical positivism while the latter is just “a linguistic and unscientific imagination of the unlettered (kertész 2010).” this kind of positivist perception about the difference between pharmaceutical history and human history encourages the professionally trained pharmaceutical historians to think that the constructionist interpretation for the historical reality of human world is too petty to be taken seriously. understandably, much of their research enthusiasm is devoted to the factual assessment of the historical development in the pharmaceutical world that contextualizing the constructionist explanation for the past of medicines and pharmaceutics in the matrix human phenomena does not deserve their time and effort. such is the reason for which pharmaceutical history is alienated by the mainstream academia. being detached from the established community of history pressures the pharmaceutical historians to seek theoretical upgrade of historiography that provides the author with an opportunity to write this paper. what we will undertake now is to analyze the most representative articles selected from the pharmaceutical historian, the international journal for the history of pharmacy. since its first publication in 1967 the journal has always been viewed as being “specialized” and “professional.” thus, to the journal’s editors, the principal outlook is to promote a historical education in pharmacy by which competence and professional leadership are ensured (anderson 2017). the implication for defining pharmaceutical history as a part of pharmacy discipline is the introduction of historical positivism that situates the methodology of history in the empirical theory of clinical science. for many experts of social medicine, pharmaceutical history has to be fact-based so that it suits well with data-oriented style of scientific research. in a pedantic way, the explanatory function of history obscures the objectiveness of science that it has no place in the factist fields of knowledge such as medicine. frankly, historical positivists would like the writings of surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 7 pharmaceutical history to be as scientific as possible because the purpose of learning history in healthcare is to theorize the continuous developments of professionalism and leadership. surely, the “fashionable nonsense” produced by historical constructionism is detrimental to this cause. hence, the editors of pharmaceutical historian are mostly inclined to invite “scientific contributions and comments [from the clinicians] (kletter 2017).” by semantically appraising the structural linguistics for the essays published in the pharmaceutical historian, this paper finds that four research themes characterize the scientific surveys of the positivist pharmaceutical history. the first research theme encompasses the personal stories of the historical pharmacists. throughout decades of journal publication, scholars like morson, block and worling all wrote articles that present the readership with the factual chronicles for some of the most famous figures in pharmaceutical history (block 2008; morson 1988; worling 1998). despite the potential generation differences, the way in which these pharmaceutical historians wrote their discourses are surprisingly similar. they have almost standardized the structure of research by consistently gathering such factist information as the family origin, education background, apprenticeship, and the professional achievements. as their research objective is to accurately recreate the career trajectories of the historical pharmacists for the purpose of clinically enlightening today’s practitioners, a biographical study of a qualified pharmacist in history virtually offers no interpretation that goes beyond the facts presented. the second research theme comprises the historical assessment of medicine employments that, as a clear extension of historical positivism, will be inherently technical and factual. for instance, clarke studied how chloral hydrate was used medically in 19th century britain (clarke 1988). then there was jackson who analyzed the treatment of poisoning from classical times to late 18th century (jackson 2000). on the other hand, guly penned a series of papers that recorded “the drugs taken and used during the heroic age of antarctic exploration (guly 2012).” the lessons that we can learn from the works exampled above are that, for the pharmaceutical historians, factual preservation comes above everything else when investigating the historical administrations of medicines. there is no room for theoretical development that rationalizes the history of medical utilities as an intellectual leverage to lift the burden of the underexplained humanity in pharmaceutical world. relating the daily operating procedures for pharmacies in history forms the third research theme that ascertains the historical facts for the professional managements of pharmacy businesses. wholesale trading activities, medical advertisements, counterprescribing, dispensing, formulating variety of dosage forms, writing prescriptions and developments of businesses are the typical information which normally constitutes the main essay contents (cox and anderson 2018). the technicality of the information presented in these studies forces the pharmaceutical historians to fashion an expression that structurally and linguistically promotes scientific methodology for pharmaceutical history. what has resulted from this is the theorization of historiography of pharmaceutical science that the historical examinations of pharmacy ought to have the professional and clinical connotations. the constructionist interpretation that handles the metaphysical philosophy of history is deemed scientifically inaccurate and therefore disregarded. the fourth research theme concerns the study for ancient pharmaceutical items. the term “pharmaceutical item” can either mean a medicine or a technological product within clinical science. a 2016 essay by hardy is a typical example because it assessed “an ointment from a late 17th century italian medicine chest (hardy 2016).” later, lindeke characterized “four nuremberg medicinal weights recovered from the wreck of the seventeenth century swedish warship hms kronan (lindeke 2019).” the medical properties of the ancient pharmaceutical items have exhausted most of the pharmaceutical historians’ writing effort that the factist methods have to be employed for maintaining the principle of historical surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 8 positivism (just like all of the papers in other three research themes). instead of elucidating the data gathered, the main focus for these essays is to merely exhibit the faithfully documented facts. the positivist practices adopted by pharmaceutical historians are dictated by the applications of pharmaceutical history. the conventional belief is that the histories of healthcare professions are used to develop clinical leadership and professional competence (metcalfe and stuart 2013). with this in mind, it is easy to see how pharmaceutical history serves a scientific cause which consolidates the medical authorities for the practitioners. its function is to assist the optimization of patient-centered care by utilizing the positivist methodology that recognizes history as a “knowledge reservoir” for the continuous professional development of the clinicians. because of this, the luxury of framing the interpretivist constructionism in the historiography of pharmaceutical science cannot be afforded by the scientifically-trained historical specialists of pharmacy. they will have to be factually accurate so that the tone of their works theoretically safeguards the data-based empiricism commonly observed in the practices of healthcare professionals. as the result, in order to reinforce the scienceness of pharmaceutical history, pharmaceutical historians are encouraged to employ the medicine-centered historiography. after all, for the qualified practitioners, the purpose of being historically conscious is to further an evidence-based thinking in clinical setting. fundamentally speaking, pharmaceutical history is under-developed because it fails to rationally illuminate the present with its explanatory theories. it is overwhelmingly satisfied with factual description that its understanding of our reality is both pedantic and rigid. pharmaceutical historians are only interested in such questions as how we can authentically retell the stories of the past events for the medical world? by answering questions like this as the historical positivist, they maximize the factuality for the histories of pharmaceuticals, pharmacy and medical technologies at the cost of eliminating theoretical richness of history. what they have done essentially is to “professionalize” pharmaceutical history for clinical science. and since scientists only speak in the language of numbers and figures, pharmaceutical historians write in a style that data outnumbers the words. they adopt the positivist method of inductive reasoning to reflect the factist historiography. the integrative and constructionist logics which form the basis of the historical argument is nowhere to be seen in their studies. having reviewed the literature in the pharmaceutical historian, what we can conclude is that historical positivism makes the discipline of pharmaceutical history theoretically unimaginative when constructing a methodological system for analysis. rather than assessing the humanistic ontology of pharmaceutical history, they prefer to factually approach “their research subjects in positivist dimensions.” the rationality behind this is the disciplinary categorization of pharmaceutical history as the sub-branch of clinical science that the contents of investigations must be data-based. thus, pharmaceutical historians methodologically abandon the constructionist reasoning which normally will grant history a distinctive academic influence. a positivist historiography offers no explanations that provide us with the ultimate insight to the philosophical meaning of humanity from the historical perspective. eventually, the fact-preserving discourses on the pharmaceutical history will be vulnerable to laypeople’s superficial yet incorrect interpretations. it is for this reason that the leading journals in this discipline (e.g., pharmaceutical historian) becomes the victim of scholarly alienation. the dismissal from the fellow historians is the single biggest limitation that specialists surveying the histories of pharmaceuticals, pharmacy and medical technologies will have to face. surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 9 the english history of opium eating and the employment of sociocultural approach when explaining the personal motivation for writing the milk of paradise, inglis has mentioned that half of the book’s contents is concerned with the “the human stories of addiction and recovery, of war, and treatment from both ends of the doctor-patient spectrum, but above all, the existential needs that drive humanity to seek the temporary relief opiates provide (inglis 2019).” in my view, the most interesting thing about her comments is the constructionist indication of why human-centered interpretation is important for the history of opium. she has effectively stressed that drug historians need to focus on the sociocultural relationship between opium and men if they want to fully understand the existence of narcotic in human life. the so called “sociocultural relationship” connotates a historiographical development that uses the doctrine of historical constructionism to transform the methodology of pharmaceutical history. arguably, the inherent nature of history is defined by a collective of human activities that is entangled with all facets of human life. an examination of history is therefore really an examination of how humanity had participated in such activities as cultural production, construction of social relationship, consumption of goods, ideological moralization, and intellectual undertakings. the accumulations of the human activities as the integrative experiences forge the history. what this means is that the essence of history is a comprehensive system of humanistic phenomena that requires historians to observe it through a sociocultural lens. the same thing can be said about pharmaceutical history. pharmaceutical historians should employ the appropriate approach which addresses the sociocultural comprehensiveness of human activities involved in the historical progression of the pharmaceutical profession. in all honesty, the idea that pharmaceutical historians are the custodian of clinical healthcare is only a partial picture of what pharmaceutical history is really about. just like all other sub-branches of history, the function of pharmaceutical history is to philosophically expound how humanity has culturally and socially sophisticated itself from a state of nothingness. medicines and pharmaceutics, in this case, are a theoretical foothold for the pharmaceutical historians to develop their constructionist interpretations. indeed, historical constructionism was a central theme for berridge when she attempted to write a sociocultural history for the english opium eating in the 70s. to quote her own words, the objective of “berridge analysis” was to examine “the process whereby opium, a drug once freely available and openly sold in every type of shop, gradually became restricted, and its regular users classified as ill or deviant in some way (berridge 1977a).” what is revealing about her research objective is that she did not intend to restrict the discussions surrounding the opium use in 19th century britain to the scientific realm. as an astute social historian of medicine, she had a firm grasp with the notion that the tangibleness of pharmaceutical products was never the foundational core for pharmaceutical history. rather, it was our metaphysical and intangible perceptions about medications that shaped the continuation between the past and the present for the health-prioritizing society. as a matter of course, the crafts of constructionist historians were appropriately employed in her investigations to which her explanations for english opium consumption were no longer “pharmaceutical.” she recognized the sociocultural comprehensiveness of a humancentered pharmaceutical history by exploring “the debates about drug use within nineteenth century british society (berridge 1977b).” she surveyed “the public and official reactions for the working-class opiate consumption in the nineteenth century england (berridge 1978a).” she studied the cause-and-effect relationship between the myths of east end opium dens and the emergence of anti-opium sentiment (berridge 1978b). taken together, these exampled works have demonstrated how the historiography of pharmaceutical science was perceived by berridge. her highly celebrated writing, opium and the people, provided “the surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 10 context for the evolution of current uk drug control policy” that framed the history of english opium consumption as a sociocultural reflection of the humanist society (plant 1999). in the book, it was argued that “professionalization of pharmacists and medical men, the debate over the india-china opium trade, the temperance movement, and the class bias in society all affected the way later victorians perceived the drug (parssinen 1982).” all of the factors listed in the book that she believed to be the cause of british anti-opium movement were humanistic in nature. berridge must have realized that her version of opium history was founded upon a constructionist foundation of interpretive approach. as rightfully pointed out by walton, opium and the people viewed “[the opium problem] from a perspective of social pathology which arose from the preoccupations of increasingly vociferous nineteenthcentury reformers, and from the mainly twentieth century association of opiates with recreational rather than medical uses, and with deviant sub-cultures (walton 1983).” the main message conveyed here is that the moral condemnation of opium by victorian public was the result of a comprehensive yet dynamic social context. in essence, a spot-on examination of pharmaceutical history needs a methodological assistance provided by the human-centered doctrine of historical constructionism. by having opium and the people as a case in point, what we can learn from it is that british opium utility in 1800s was not only a medical problem but also a matter of sociocultural ecology. the complicated milieu had interacted with british drug ideologies that occasioned the moralist crusade against opium in the late 19th century. clearly, the problem of how opium was banned in britain was not “pharmaceutical” any more. again, it came down to the philosophy of men in the historical setting. as far as historians are concerned, history, in a philosophical sense, is composed of a humanity that characterizes itself as a sociocultural creature (schoenherr and burleigh 2015). such is the reason why berridge focused on the factors which socially, culturally, politically and ideologically transformed people’s attitude towards opium in 19th century britain. basically, she constructed a methodology for the history of english opium use that puts “human beings” at the center of research. opium and the people, which primarily utilized the social status of opium in victorian britain as a surgical instrument to dissect the sociocultural anatomy of the cognitive human mind, stressed the vitalness of analyzing pharmaceutical history from the constructionist perspective. in the book, berridge proposed that the uk drug control policy in the 1970s was shaped by the evolution of a social attitude observed in the 19th century. highlighting the contemporary addiction conditions and policies in britain as a continuation of the past indicates interpretive constructionism in the sociocultural historiography of opium and the people. then, it becomes pretty self-explanatory that, when writing the english history of opium employment, berridge defied the idea of which pharmaceutical history should be a clinical discipline. in the first pages of opium and the people, the readership has been told that “the author kept the technical language to a minimum (berridge and edwards 1987).” obviously, she refused to write the book in the scientific language. by choice, she decided to shy away from medicine-centered narrative which, if used, would force the author to pen opium and the people as another positivist discourse. fortunately, what we now see in this book is actually the development of an explanatory model that discussed the english opium usage in 1800s as a cultural aftermath of the ideological transformation within the victorian society. that being so, she explained how the drug control policy in uk evolved to the present stage by employing a sociocultural approach to generate comprehensive interpretations that recognized the ideological and intellectual complexities of humanity in pharmaceutical history. in doing so, she rightfully brought the history of pharmaceutical world back to the history of human world. the “humanization” of opium history by the constructionist “berridge analysis” enlightened many of her colleagues. through the explorations of personalities and religious conscience, harding introduced a moralist theory that elaborated medical denunciation of surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 11 addiction in britain in late 19th and early 20th centuries as a consequence of manner reformation (harding 1988). in comparison to what harding did, strang, however, later examined the heated debates which was aroused by thomas de quincey’ s confession of an english opium eater (strang 1990). subsequently, holloway penned a sociopolitical history for the royal pharmaceutical society of great britain that, revealed for us, the embedding of humanist phenomena in the pharmaceutical world (holloway 1991). lastly, in recent past, bonea and her team illustrated “how complexly interconnected the worlds of science, medicine, and technology were with society, religion, government, and family life (bonea et al 2019)” in a nutshell, with berridge included, all of the historians mentioned above demonstrated that pharmaceutical history and human history are inextricable. the foundational human activities that structured civilizations since the dawn of time have always included the manufacture, supply and consumption of medical products. this is the precise reason that pharmaceutical history, on the whole, needs to be humanized. a pharmaceutical history without the constructionist investigations of humanity is, by definition, incomplete. as such, the duty of pharmaceutical historians should be more than preservation of facts because pharmaceutical history has always been an important thread that unmasks how the fabric of the human-centered historical reality was entwined together. the pharmaceutical historians must be able to frame an elucidative methodology that treat the factual preservations of pharmaceutical history as a starting point to understand the comprehensiveness of human history. our relationship with medicines must be understood as something that is deeply entangled with the social, cultural, political and ideological facets of human world. the humanization of pharmaceutical history inspires historians like berridge to theorize a sociocultural approach that focused on the constructionist interpretation. they placed our experiences with medicines in a complicated system of reasoning to address the integrative humanness of history. by doing so, they established a philosophy for the pharmaceutical history that a continuity between the past and the present determines how the medical facet of reality shapes the human world. hence, with the application of a proper explanatory framework, medicine’s age-old stories can facilitate us to comprehend the ontological characters of humanity at metaphysical level. regrettably, the success which berridge and others alike achieved in exploring the possibilities of developing a constructionist method for pharmaceutical history is unfruitful to say the least. to date, the verdict is that sociocultural histories of pharmaceuticals, pharmacy and medical technologies are “under-explored (the american institute of the history of pharmacy 2020b).” the truthfulness of this verdict lies in the fact that, although medical historians including berridge have attempted to break the chain of historical positivism, the scope of interpretation which they assumed in their discourses continued to be clinical and narrow. while opium and the people was written to inform the prescription of drug regulation policies in the contemporary, harding based his assessment for the “problematic addiction” in the 19th century britain on a proposition that “drug history is a medical matter (berridge 1999).” controlled use, therapeutic dependence, withdrawal techniques and tolerance which are technical subjects often found in the clinical studies remained the key topics of discussions in strang’s paper. also, as proclaimed by holloway, the motivation for writing sociopolitical history for the royal pharmaceutical society was to enlighten “the future generations of pharmacists (holloway 1991).” the consistency of how scholars surveyed pharmaceutical history is self-evident that the major focus of research is still the professionalism of healthcare even though some constructionist efforts have been made for the methodological introduction of sociocultural interpretation. in this regard, people like berridge, harding, strang and holloway failed to completely escape the view that pharmaceutical history is for professional applications only. inescapably, this has impaired the interpretive capability of the pharmaceutical historians to philosophically resolve some surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 12 of the “big questions” in “general history.” what the author actually means by this is that theorizing the making of humanity characterizes the rationality of history. the “big questions” correlate the existence of mankind with the external matrix of sociocultural phenomena that helps us appreciate the philosophical generalness of human historicity. for the constructionist pharmaceutical history, the “big questions” are the ones that explore the formation, the dynamics and the prospect of humanist society from the medical perspective. examples may include the following: what could the consumption of medicines by the british people in 1800s tell us about their living standard? could the self-medication practices within the lower social order of british society in 19th century signal a class-reconstruction? how the healthcare professionals in history represented the progressiveness of a civilization? as one would imagine, most of these questions cannot be answered by the existing literature of pharmaceutical history. specially, the writings for the sociocultural history of opium consumption continue to be partially factist that they fail to live up to their explanatory potential. merlin’s on the trail of the ancient opium poppy is a perfect illustration of this because its contents seem to be way too professional and botanical (merlin 1984). even berridge has turned her eyes to the clinical aspect of opium history in the beginning of this century (anderson and berridge 2000). to the best of my knowledge, the only works that can, to an extent no less, respond to the big historical questions are anxious times, empires of vice and milk of paradise. they shared a striking similarity in methodology that they all used the pharmaceutical history of opium as a way to expound the rationale of human-centered world. certainly, this is something that senior drug historians didn’t do in the past. neither berridge nor harding have comprehensively interconnected the past of pharmaceutical world with men’s general experiences. likewise, strang, merlin and holloway merely regarded opium as a medical item needing positivist investigations. on the account of this, their interpretations were partially professional that there was no way to fully transcend the already-established narrative of which pharmaceutical history was presented as an explanation for the affairs of medical humanity. but the strength of anxious times, empires of vice and milk of paradise exactly relies on this fact that berridge and her contemporaries haven’t journeyed into deepest part of historical constructionism. the authors for these three books have in effect used the pharmaceutical history to address the multifaceted properties of the human-centered reality. their historical examinations for “human phenomenon” which manifests in social, cultural, religious, moral, political and ideological spheres were thoroughly performed in a comprehensive system of all existences that put emphasis on the all-embracing nature of the constructionist history. developing the theory of interaction: an interpretive approach to a constructionist pharmaceutical history with a lengthy literature critique, the author has managed to assert that a positivist pharmaceutical history is impaired by the scientific methodology. the fact-based approach greatly limits the functional potential of the pharmaceutical history as an explanatory source for inspiration and enlightenment. following the doctrine of historical positivism mechanistically has cost the pharmaceutical historians their disciplinary acknowledgement within the mainstream academia. owing to this reason, there is an urgent need for pharmaceutical history to upgrade its historiography that a constructionist writing style is to be fashioned. undeniably, drug historians in the 70s pioneered the historiographical upgrade for pharmaceutical history by associating opium consumption with the human phenomenon that generated integrative interpretations at a sociocultural level. yet, they only achieved a partial success because the aim of their elaborations was to enrich our understanding for medical humanity. by not completely humanizing men’s relationship with the narcotic as a surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 13 historical matter, they failed to answer the “big questions in general history.” briefly, the under-explored sociocultural approach ought to receive a theoretical revision so that the pharmaceutical history can be used to address the comprehensiveness of the humancentered reality. the illuminating works such as anxious times, empires of vice and milk of paradise have motivated the author to invite the possibility of introducing an interpretive approach for the constructionist pharmaceutical history. developing a novel theory of interaction is the key to the framing of the interpretive approach. as argued by the author, “the humanization of history” is the defining characterization of the interaction theory that permits us to hypothesize pharmaceutical history as a means of decoding the sociocultural structure for the world. in the final part of this essay, the author will explain what the humanization of history is and how we can apply the theory of interaction in the explanatory model of pharmaceutical history. the conceptualization of ontology for pharmaceutical history determines the way with which we humanize the past of medicines, pharmaceutics and clinical sciences. seven decades ago, butterfield suggested that humanity is featured at the center of history (butterfield 1949). bloch later paraphrased his words by declaring that “history is the product of human action, creativity, invention, conflict, and relationship (little 2020).” if we were to accept the construct that human beings are the solely actor of history, it can be said that “human action, creativity, invention, conflict, and relationship” have stemmed from the “reciprocal actions in the continued progress of human existence.” then, history undergoes a process of humanization which can be perceived as the dynamic state of human interactions. everything occasioned in the past was the outcomes of different types of human interactive activities that has created “different types of human-centered history.” for example, the interactions between human minds have forged our political history. the interactions between human creativity and men’s needs for expression have shaped our cultural history. and while social history is all about the interactions between human productivity and the desire to engineer settlements, it is the interactive relationship between humanity’s wellness-pursuing mind and the bodily onsets of pathological abnormalities that have formed the basis of pharmaceutical history. based upon the humanization of history, the theory of interaction appraises the past in terms of what mankind had done. for the pharmaceutical historians, the centuries-long stories of how medical world have progressed should be appropriately recognized as the outgrowth of human behaviors. the interaction theory promotes the humanization of history. humanity in the past interacted with all kinds of disorders in diverse ways to achieve the disease-free survival. furthermore, what we observe is a comprehensive historical profile of mankind’s diseasecuring activities that pharmaceutical history can be used to represent a matrix of complicated sociocultural phenomena. put differently, in order to maintain health, human beings have the active mental power to interact either with their internal consciousness or the external surroundings that medically shapes the progressive trend of the general history. to be specific, pharmaceutical history is first and foremost a premise for the political studies. given that the interaction theory humanizes the historical events, the establishments of medical institutions can be treated as something ensuing from the interactive relation between people’s want for health and the realized objective of medical standardization. then there is a humanized hypothesis to explicate the technological advancements in pharmaceutical history. our appetite for remedies and the intellectual imaginations of mankind mutually produced influences upon one another to induce the historical innovations of the medical scientists. for sociology, practitioners’ self-awareness and the changing structure of society shared an interactive relationship that occasioned the emergence of the professional boundaries. in a word, as dictated by the theory of interaction, a constructionist pharmaceutical history is humanized that it becomes an interwoven web of human activities formed by our survival instinct to eradicate disorders. hence, the surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 14 pharmaceutical historians are tasked with a campaign to place the investigation of medications in a reality that includes every aspect of human life if they desire to surpass the clinical realm of medical sciences. the doctrine of historical constructionism establishes that the human-centered assessments of pharmaceutical history cannot be methodologically dominated by the factual approach. data and figures are incompetent to mirror the humanness of medicines and pharmaceutics in the sociocultural fabric of reality. a positivist pharmaceutical history cannot inform us about the simultaneous manifestations of medical happenings in the multiple dimensions of general reality. the fact-based approach, which methodologically determines the research style of historical positivism, only allows the pharmaceutical historians to mechanistically clarify the details for a single event in the pharmaceutical history from a pedantic perspective. it produces scientific enquiry that divorces historical facts from the humanistic milieus. inevitably, if a constructionist consensus is reached that the pharmaceutical historians are to provide critical insight to the ontology of human world by investigating the “medicine through time,” the introduction of an interpretive approach should become a must. with the conceptualization of a humanized pharmaceutical history, the theory of interaction develops a theoretical framework of interpretive constructionism to tackle four unavoidable issues commonly observed in the historiography of medicine. first, a reasoning method should be selected for the constructionist interpretation. since the factist studies of the pharmaceutical history currently use inductive argument to produce “data reports” that supplement clinical science, they simply cannot stand the assertion that historical thinking shall journey into the territory of philosophical deduction (osimani 2013). this is to say that, for the “clinical researches of pharmaceutical history,” the concluding remarks must be based on the scientific certainty which, according to the professionals, is solely ensured by figures and numbers. to elaborate, the collections of numerical data and technical facts are “perfectly sufficient” for pharmaceutical history because the findings can be inductively expressed in a quantifiable and evidence-based way. for the historical specialists of pharmacy and medicine, the positivist quantification of research results guarantees the scientific competence as most of them are influenced by the precautionary principle that is commonly adopted in the studies of professional leadership to inform the risk-free practices of pharmaceutical clinicians (zebroski 2016). promoting the scientificness of analysis for continuous professional development in clinical practices explains why pharmaceutical historians in the contemporary are inclined to offer a word-forword induction of the factual evidences collected. in the end, a scientist will always proudly proclaim that “the facts speak for themselves without fail (caldwell 1980).” conversely, a constructionist pharmaceutical history, which is structurally qualitative and methodologically deductive, is deemed by the induction-loving positivists as both unquantifiable and unscientific. but overestimating the importance of the factual pharmaceutical history and the inductive reasoning seriously degrades the function of historical knowledge to illuminate human understanding of external world because “access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone (outhwaite 1988).” no matter how it is being celebrated by the scientific community, historical positivism and inductive reasoning are “illsuited to reflect the nuance and variability found in human interaction (outhwaite 1988).” the inability of factual induction to humanize the past is detrimental because history encompasses the interconnected web of human activities in the former period. therefore, as proposed by the theory of interaction, historians need to employ hermeneutics that “sketches out ways of representing the complex activities and events of the past (little 2020).” in practice, “their accounts need to be grounded on the evidence of the available historical record, and their explanations and interpretations require that the historian arrive at hypotheses about social causes and cultural meanings (little 2020).” thus, it goes without saying that, as humanity is an ideological creature of sociocultural complexity, all branches surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 15 of history (including the pharmaceutical ones) are the constructionist product of philosophical rationality if the metaphysical humanness within the stories of the past is to be stressed. often, in an effort to pen a human-centered constructionist history, historians “turn to the best available theories in the social and behavioral sciences to arrive at theories about causal mechanisms and human behavior” since the explicit facts are normally absent in the historical enquiry (little 2020). so, the rational theories produced by the historians “ultimately depend upon theoretical reasoning (little 2020).” the phrase “theoretical reasoning” refers to the deductive arguments because history is all about the rational surveys of concepts and ideologies (nozick 1994). under most circumstances, notions and ideas lack the tangibleness that normally characterizes numbers and figures. in simple terms, they are too abstract to be analyzed by induction. the deductive framework of reasoning transcends factual induction in areas where the humanization of constructionist history dominates. the methodological superiority of deduction allows it to treat the tacit messages implied in the historical documentations as “the superstructure” when theorizing “the describable laws” in human phenomena (audi 2001). as historians seek to understand the essence of past events in an abstract form, they will have to deductively base their examinations of historical occurrences on a foundation of which the meaning, the immediate outcomes and the long-term effects of history are interpreted rationally and philosophically. to paraphrase dietl, deduction completes historical explanation by surpassing the statistical information that ignores the intelligibility and the subjectiveness of humanity (dietl 1968). by fully exploiting the potential of deductive reasoning, constructionist interpretation commands disciplinary authority for history. hence, the pharmaceutical historians ought to employ deductive argument when writing the sociocultural histories of medicines and pharmaceutics on the ground that the exactness of the number-based data cannot reveal the complicated human minds. the pharmaceutical historians must derive objective explanations from the rational deductions, not from the scientific gathering of facts. given that the theory of interaction humanizes the pharmaceutical history, the human interactions, which in most cases cannot be numerically represented, are to be explored by constructionist approach. this means that the scholars surveying the pharmaceutical history will have to be academically imaginative in generating the deduction-based interpretations. second, an explanation of pharmaceutical history, which is formed by the interpretive constructionism, requires a comprehensive perspective. the common sense is that the complexity of history exceeds the competency of a single outlook (kelly 2013). in the words of ridgway, “everything is history (ridgway 1975).” the present is “what has been (ridgway 1975).” thus, every facet of reality makes up the integral system of historical happenings that history itself becomes a matrix of complicated and mutually interactive human phenomena. inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and integrativeness are some of the terms that characterize the attribute of history. it is in this sense that historical explanations are to be produced from the encyclopedic perspective because history almost encapsulates every aspect of human life. historians need to act like a polymath as their intellectual capability to rationalize the historical experiences is greatly influenced by their intellectual appreciation of the humanized reality. therefore, surveying history becomes an undertaking that sees the past as a system of diverse facets. each of these facets requires historians to have different skill sets for investigations that “specialist knowledge” will need to be “borrowed” from a wide range of research disciplines. for a start, historical surveys are integrated with the studies of political science. historians also collaborate with scholars researching the social relations to offer an account on societal structure and class differentiations. in addition to the study of society, it is no secret that historians have always allied themselves with the researchers of international relations. meanwhile, nunn has argued that the economic surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 16 assessments need to have a cultural comprehension of history (nunn 2012). in brief, the relevance of historical explanations relies on the relevance of the theories and the ideas which historians employ to relate the totality of history from an interdisciplinary and comprehensive perspective. on this account, manifesting the diversification of viewpoints in the historical interpretation addresses the complexity of humanized history. if the interaction theory is to be applied in the writing of constructionist pharmaceutical history, the historiographical understanding of what determines the humanization of medicines and pharmaceutics has to be prioritized. academics recounting the sociocultural developments of pharmaceutical sciences must realize that a constructionist pharmaceutical history surpasses the scientific perspective. when the positivists produce a medicine-centered narrative, the pharmaceutical history is simply deprived of ways to mirror the whole of general reality. as revealed by berridge, “there is a danger in stressing the [medical theme] in connection with the [pharmaceutical items] that doctors come to be seen as some autonomous body, working out their designs on [medicines] in an isolated way, for in reality the medical profession merely reflected and mediated the structure of the society of which it was the product (berridge 1999).” what is indicated in her argument is that the humanization of medical history entails a multidimensional reflection of general reality. as the constructionist pharmaceutical historians, we need to demonstrate how the interactive activities of the human actors caused the formation of sociocultural relations at a level of which medical ideas integrated with the comprehensive system of humanistic existences (berridge 1999). ergo, there is a practical requirement for pharmaceutical historians to develop an all-embracing perspective that shows the history of medicines and pharmaceutics is in fact embedded in the overall structure of the sociocultural world. the historiography of anxious times is a perfect illustration of how medical history is used to uncover the cultural sensibility of the victorian british. the book’s authorship did not historically inquire the psychological wellness of the victorian society in the light of professional science. on the contrary, by having an exhaustive outlook, they penned a sociocultural history for the “diseases of modernity” in victorian britain that interlaced medications with humanity. they analyzed “literature, medicine, science, and popular journalism in the 19th century england” to produce a multidisciplinary book for the history of medicine (bonea et al. 2019). their work is a milestone because it methodologically confirms the potential of the constructionist pharmaceutical history as a powerful piece of equipment to decode the human-centered reality. third, a question exists as to the limit of interpretive approach. candidly, when compared to positivist method, there is no bound to which the constructionist interpretation of pharmaceutical history explains the phenomena of the past. as dictated by the theory of interaction, strands of mankind’s reciprocal activities are mutually interwoven together to form a web of multifaceted history. along these lines, arguments which are made to help us understand the ontology of pharmaceutical history can be used to elucidate how general reality is humanized by historical experiences. because consumption of medicines is an unavoidable part of behavioral profile of our daily life, the historical experiences which we had with the drug-takings shape our humanistic identity in the contemporary. comprehending the humanness of medical ingestions necessitates the capability of which the constructionist pharmaceutical historians explore the sociocultural relationship between humanity and medicines at the macro-level. consequently, by interpretively assessing the contents of pharmaceutical history, the rationalization of necessary truth can be offered for the examinations of the large-scale patterns of a continuously developing world that give human-centered answers to the abstract and philosophical questions generated by the observations of the past. these questions are termed by the author as the “big historical questions.” inquiring them will help the historical constructionists understand how humanity evolved to its present state. although the significance of big historical questions has long surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 17 been accustomed by the constructionist historians, the novelty of this paper is the proposition that the sociocultural evolution of mankind can be explained by the pharmaceutical history. surveying such matters as the social implications of drug use, the establishments of medical institutions, the professionalization of clinical practitioners, and the politicization of medical trades facilitates the formation of knowledge foundation upon which the medically-specialized theories for the progressions of humanity can be conceptualized. in other words, with the utilization of interpretive approach, the contents of constructionist pharmaceutical history are indispensable in illustrating the human phenomena both in the past and the present. therefore, the explanatory scope of the interpretive constructionism is theoretically boundless for pharmaceutical history. fourth, in order to master the interpretive approach, pharmaceutical historians must undergo necessary trainings. according to walsh, “[a constructionist historian] cannot simply reproduce the historical data (walsh 1960).” he must have the philosophical skills for uncovering the rational principles that underlie the developmental pattern of general history. on this ground, the job of constructionist pharmaceutical historians is to obtain some sort of competency in the study of ideas. this is because intellects and thoughts permit them to develop a capacity for “the formal articulation of reason” that consolidates the function of pharmaceutical history as a platform for promoting the faculty of humanized explanations (walsh 1960). that being so, constructionist pharmaceutical historians are able to “elevate empirical contents [of pharmaceutical history] to the rank of necessary truth, thereby giving the elucidations of the past a transcendental quality of human-centered idealism (simon 2019). in simple language, before writing constructionist articles worthy of journal publications, pharmaceutical historians are required to read philosophy so that they can acquire the interpretive approach to comprehend metaphysically the humanization of the existential past. the theory of interaction is particularly illuminating for this essay’s readership because it interprets the constructionist pharmaceutical history as the dynamic collective of human phenomena manifested in time and space. it shows that the past of pharmaceutical world is about the elaborations for wide-ranging human activities. these activities represent men’s continuous efforts to eradicate diseases that are an inclusive part of human history. philosophically speaking, our understanding of how humanity had attempted to cure physiological abnormalities can be abstractly refined since pharmaceutical history serves to be a unique lens for examining the whole of reality. the interaction theory recognizes pharmaceutical history as the process whereby humanity interacted with the pathology of bodily dysfunctions continuously. having ascertained that mutually interactive relations between human activities makes pharmaceutical history inherent in the facets of general history, analyzing the interaction-centered process of how diseases were treated by ancient doctors allows pharmaceutical historians to view the past of pharmaceutical world from a perspective that mirrors the overall structure of history in an all-inclusive manner. the doctrine of historical constructionism provides the pharmaceutical historians with necessary toolkits to do whatever is required in the constructionist research. by applying the interaction theory in the history of opium use in 19th century england, this essay hypothesizes the practicality of developing the interpretive approach in the constructionist surveys of pharmaceutical history. the most important point is that pharmaceutical historians should not confine themselves to the pedantic documentation of facts and figures. instead, they need to peruse the evidences in a manner of which the rational is discovered within the real. the “rational,” which is the elemental properties of the humanized interactive activities occurred in the historical sphere of the pharmaceutical world, are to be analyzed philosophically for the purpose of examining the fabric of reality. in the empires of vice, what we actually see is that, as a notorious drug, opium was in fact deeply entangled with the political facet of human life. kim has used the sociopolitical characters of surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 18 the narcotic to portray for us a bottom-up picture of colonial bureaucracy in southeast asia in late 19th and early 20th centuries that clearly surpasses the usually assumed scope of drug history. based on this, the author is confident to assert that the impacts of pharmaceutical consumption clearly have infiltrated into every aspect of human-centered reality in the formation of what we call history. even though the constructionist methods are conventional in mainstream academia, investigating the pharmaceutical history interpretively remains novel because it combines medical perspective with the humanistic historiography. thus far, no one has given any serious thought about reading the human history from the professional view point. hence, a constructionist pharmaceutical history will demonstrate how the sociocultural advancements of humanity can be observed through a medical lens. the historical explanations for a particular medicine can be extended to other branches of history that will permit the constructionist pharmaceutical historians to address the comprehensiveness of a complicated historical reality. the factualness of medications and pharmaceutics is useful only if it can fully participate in the sociocultural interpretation of the constructionist history. all in all, the theory of interaction humanizes the facts collected by pharmaceutical historians that the discipline can finally emerge as an enlightening source of comprehensive explanations. concluding remarks the disciplinary function of history can either be the faithful reconstruction of the factual past or the rationalized interpretation of the human-centered world. these two functions fashion the historiography for all sub-branches of historical assessments. the research method of a positivist historiography is different than that of a constructionist historiography. while historical positivists employ the representational realist theory to develop a factual approach, the historical constructionists explore the idealist framework in the hope of formulating an interpretive approach. the marked methodological distinctions between which the positivists and constructionists write history determine how historians achieve intellectual authority within the mainstream academia. currently, there is a shared view that the renowned influence of history is to be found in the constructionist research. but the conventional practice of pharmaceutical historians remains factual because they see the writings for the history of medical world as a supplementary enterprise for clinical science. their positivist mindset is lethally detrimental for the theoretical prospect of pharmaceutical history as a medicine-centered historiography of pharmaceutical sciences is both pedantic and mechanistic. what the positivist methodology has produced is the historical discourses overly emphasizing the importance of data collection. the layout of most papers on pharmaceutical history bear striking similarities to that of the experimental reports. in some extreme cases, they are too professional to be even considered as historical studies. as revealed by a literature critique of journal publications for the pharmaceutical historian, a positivist pharmaceutical history restricts itself in the factist space that it fails to decode the structure of human world at level of which the past is treated as the foundation for the contemporary and the future. instead, it is only interested in the literal descriptions of the facts gathered (as evidenced by the positivist publications in the pharmaceutical historian). interpretations that stress about the humanization of pharmaceutical history are generally absent. it is on this ground that this essay introduces the interpretive approach. by taking inspirations from the researches on the sociocultural history of opium, this essay proposes a theory of interaction that humanizes the past of medicines and pharmaceutics. this is to say that, since the whole of general history is forged by facets of interactive relationship, there is a need to recognize humanity as the central actor for the historical evolutions from the past to the present. these interactions are mutually entangled together to form the complicated web of comprehensive human history. based on this, we need to appreciate the surpassing factual preservation: an interpretive approach to the constructionist pharmaceutical history xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 19 elaboration of pharmaceutical history as a human-centered collective of medical activities that requires rational, idealistic and philosophical inquiries. such is the purpose of introducing interactive theory. it fulfills the role of establishing a constructionist historiography for pharmaceutical historians that methodologically mirrors the humanistic and idealist nature of pharmaceutical history. thus, by employing a deductive reasoning for rationality, pharmaceutical historians can “amplify” their knowledge to expand the explanatory scope for pharmaceutical history through the employment of interpretive approach. in doing so, they could then potentially offer a new perspective for examining the general reality that utilizes the historical facts about medicines. as it should come as no surprise to anyone, the interaction between men and diseases is a historical relationship that, if elucidated properly, can provide us with a unique insight to the philosophical making of human world. this is something that cannot be achieved by the factual approach. acknowledgements i am grateful for the masterful works produced by virginia berridge, the research supports provided by the society for the 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microsoft word mocellin zaterka layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-18 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2022 – this is an open-access journal article materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4093-672x luciana zaterka2 – https://ocid.org/0000-0002-4933-8534 abstract: in this article, we are interested in analyzing the biography of metallic titanium (ti) and its dioxide (tio2) from a historical, philosophical, and sociological point of view of some of its modes of existence. this biography does not suggest any anthropomorphization of material objects, rather, it is about an attempt to reconcile the reality of science in the present with its history to understand the particularities of materials in contemporary societies. we intend to investigate some properties and characteristics of the “natural” modes of existence and the new properties and implications when these materials gain a new mode of existence, the nanostructured one. this mode of existence refers to a new way of organizing scientific knowledge, an inflection which has been called technoscience, more concerned with what an object will become in the future, then with what it essentially is. in this sense, the proper chemical identity of these substances is one among other modes of existence, into this mode of existence, one must add others which can approach its biological, geological, cultural, technological, economic or geopolitical behavior. keywords: biography of materials; modes of existence; titanium, titanium dioxide, technoscience received: september 26, 2022. reviewed: october 17, 2022. accepted: november 11, 2022 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i13.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction proposing analyses and reflections about contemporary sciences is a challenge for historians, philosophers and sociologists. how do one approach the material and scientific objects that are made available by sciences, technology and industries for society and the natural environments at the present time? although it was during the 20th century that most sciences 1 ronei clécio mocellin is a professor of philosophy in the department of philosophy at the federal university of paraná (ufpr). address: rua dr. faivre, 405, 6° andar, ed. d. pedro ii, curitiba – pr. cep 80060-140, brazil. e-mail: roneimocellin@ufpr.br 2 luciana zaterka is a professor of philosophy in the center for natural and human sciences at the federal university of abc (ufabc). address: rua arcturus, s/n, bloco delta, sala 238, são bernardo do campo, sp. cep: 09606-070, brazil. e-mail: lucianazaterka@ufabc.edu.br materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 developed and structured themselves, be it from an institutional or social perspective, the majority of articles and books about the history of sciences cover periods prior to that. many barriers are raised when investigating the history of science in action and its philosophical, social and environmental implications. for example, one of these difficulties constitutes the matter of the proximity of the historian, philosopher or sociologist, who has an intimate spatial-temporal relationship with scientists, governments and industries, but also faces secrets and patents, besides the complexity when it comes to these researchers understanding concepts and languages that are pertinent to current sciences (söderqvist 2012). the historiography produced concerning the emergence of technoscience and nanotechnologies during the second half of the 20th century has faced these obstacles and has proposed varied analyses of these scientific and social emergencies. recently, the “biographical” genre has been used to converge historiographical, philosophical and sociological narratives, aiming to analyze both scientific objects and the particularities of several materials present in contemporary societies. it is important to observe, however, that when using the term “biography” of scientific objects and materials, one intends simply to make an analogy with their “lifespan”, in which said objects acquire several “modes of existence.” this narrative genre does not suggest any kind of anthropomorphization of material objects, nor does it attribute any “conscience” to them, but, as said by lorraine daston, it is intended to be an attempt to reconcile the reality of the present science and its history (daston 2000). for bernadette bensaude-vincent, although materials have a long history, the science of materials as a specific domain of investigation is fairly recent. this new discipline emerged in the usa around 1960 and is a result of the aggregation of multiple disciplines that were already well-established, such as metallurgy, chemistry, mechanical and electrical engineering, as well as more recent fields of solid-state physics. the science of materials deals with the individualities particular to each material and not the general concept of matter. it focuses on the technological and economic characteristics of materials, starting from the investigation of its structure, properties, performance, and processes. thus, to write the biography of a material means, above all, making elements of the history of chemistry, physics and engineering converge with social, cultural, historical, geopolitical and environmental aspects, among others. materials demand, therefore, the writing of “composed histories” (bensaude-vincent and loeve 2018; bensaude-vincent 2022). these biographies are composed of several modes of existence of a material. when and how does a specific chemical object start existing? we could settle for answers that bring us to the name of the person who discovered it and the description of the techniques employed by said scientist, but maybe we are settling for too little. the existence of a material object means more than its discovery or its invention, it means the object in question becomes part of a set of entities, with material properties that are particular to it, and which should be named and classified among the ones already known. the expression “modes of existence” has already been employed as a conceptual operator by philosophers such as etienne souriau (souriau 2009), gilbert simondon (simondon 1989), and more recently bruno latour (latour 2019). the expression also seems appropriate to refer to material objects produced by the chemical science, with the goal of trying to understand the genre of ontology which engages the practices of chemists as a consequence of their own social demands (bensaude-vincent 2005, 215s). to understand the modes of existence of materials, the debate should not happen around the question of “what can i know?” but around the question of “what can i make?”. thus, we should not ask ourselves “what is” a chemical object, but “in which ways is it”, which constitutes its modes of existence in the natural and social world. this article focus on analyzing some of the modes of existence of titanium dioxide (tio2), for it is a very informative case study about a material of great capillarization in the current production system (pigments, food, hygiene products, medicine, environment, materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 3 metallurgy), moreover, it provides clues about the particularities of nanostructured materials. thus, the goal is to describe and analyze some properties and characteristics of the modes of existence of “natural” titanium dioxide and the new properties and implications present when this material receives a new mode of existence, the nanostructured one. this mode of existence refers to a new way of organizing scientific knowledge, an inflection which has been called “technoscience”. in this field of investigation, with the convergence of expertise promoted by “technoscience”, a term employed by gilbert hottois to refer to the implications of new technologies in human societies and natural environments, we find the multiplication in the use of certain materials, besides the research and development of new ones, with even more surprising properties. it is known that materials have numerous exclusive properties on the nanometric scale, including new behaviors in phase transitions, new thermal and mechanical characteristics, new reactivities (catalyzes), or even optical, electrical or magnetic behaviors that are unusual. besides, the nanoscale of a chemical structure raises issues of great interest for the philosophy of chemistry. in this case, regarding the singularity of emergences of macro chemical and nanochemical levels from molecular or crystalline structures. this means that these emergences are not successive, but happen in a parallel way and generate original properties and behaviors (zambon and córdoba 2021). for the philosophy of chemistry, a central point in this discussion is the ability of storing more information in an increasingly smaller volume of matter. the question regarding the limits of materiality is posed. as cyrus mody reminds us, even before dalton’s atomic theory, chemists were fully conscious that their discipline dealt, above all, with small objects, and contemporary chemistry is where canonically nanotechnological “artifacts” are born, such as nanotubes and buckyballs. in the past, due to the reductionist tendencies of certain perspectives of logical empiricism, and also because of physics’ social prestige, chemistry was many times neglected by sociologists and philosophers. in fact, there has always been little exploration of how epistemology and the social practice of chemistry were distinct from physics. as it is the case with engineering sciences, however, there is now a genuine interest, which can be seen in the current literature, that points to the singular relationship chemists have with the instrumentation by approaching, for example, questions of purity and contamination in a very specific manner, with particular epistemic meanings, and thus, have a different kind of involvement with their experiments and representations compared to scientists in other fields. the recent literature brings to light the precise way in which chemistry is the science that makes ‘epistemic things’ — materials which pave the way for experimental work and that result in small and minuscule parts of the world to be scrutinized by it. the competence of chemistry is the creation of molecules, integrated into equipment, concepts and processes which allow chemists to simultaneously generate meaning and artifacts in the nanoscale (mody 2004). the occupation of the world by industrial products multiplied along the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, with increasing demand both in civil society as well as in the military apparatus. after the industrial revolution, we observed a growing movement of industrialization with an ever-growing locus for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, as well as the creation of large private industrial laboratories. if coal, oil, cast iron or steel continued to be the most available materials made available for social use, new materials came onto the scene. it is the case of titanium, an extraordinary material which is highly resistant, low in density, and has an excellent corrosion resistance, making it attractive to various applications, such as in aircraft, engines and biomedical devices. if in its metallic mode of existence, titanium possesses great importance, the modes of existence of its “natural” dioxide manifest in much broader domains of our everyday practices. but there is no metallic titanium in the natural environment, it is extracted with great difficulty from its main natural composition, the titanium dioxide present in some minerals. materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 4 therefore, investigating how a material like titanium dioxide and its derivatives (which include its metallic form) come into existence takes us to a description of material, cognitive, institutional, social and environmental conditions which brought it to this existence. but, coming into existence, these chemical objects become materials that can behave in different ways. as we will see below, the proper chemical identity is one among other modes of existence of an atom, a molecule or a composite. to this mode of existence, others must be added, which can approach, for example, its biological, geological, cultural, technological, economic or geopolitical behavior. the variety of narratives which describe these different manifestations constitutes what the authors we cited above call the “biography” of scientific objects of materials, which attempt to describe the history of their presence in the natural and social world. as gaston bachelard reminds us: when the lesson of things happens as things [such as] sulfuric acid and sugar, it is already a lesson of social things. in the same manner, hydrogen and oxygen are, in many aspects, if we dare to express in such a way, social gasses, high civilization gasses. (bachelard 1963, 31) we should not forget, however, about the socially situated character of sciences and the need, for their philosophies to consider their connections with societies and the natural environment, as well as reaffirming the intersubjective nature of scientific knowledge. “natural” modes of existence between discovery and existence: metallic titanium from the 1790s, when it was first identified, until the mid-20th century, titanium, one of the most abundant metals of the earth’s crust, had a confidential presence restricted to the laboratories of chemists and dreams of metallurgists. the first announcement of its existence was published in 1791 in the crell’s annalen, the main german-language science journal3, by english chemist and clergyman william gregor (1761-1817). gregor managed to isolate, through chemical analysis, an unknown and still impure metal from a rock which contained the mineral known today as ilmenite which, according to him, had 26% of calx (oxides) of iron and manganese, 29% of siliceous earth and around 45% of a reddish lime, which was named manaccanite, after gregor’s parish, located in cornwall, in the southwest of england. the article was read by one of germany’s main chemists at the time, martin heinrich klaproth (1743-1817), who was also an apothecary and an assiduous collaborator of crell’s annalen (klein 2007). while gregor started from ilmenite to try to isolate the unknown metal, klaproth isolated a metal with very similar characteristics from the mineral we today know as rutile, found in a rock extracted in hungary. but as opposed to gregor, klaproth was not in agreement regarding the name of the new metal, manaccanite, because such a name was not following the new nomenclature rules crell demanded for his journal, which was now following a new chemical language proposed by his french colleagues, guyton de morveau and lavoisier, published in 1787 in paris (guyton de morveau, lavoisier et al., 1994/1787). thus, klaproth suggested naming the new metal titanium, from the latin titans, in reference to the children of gaia and uranus. because according to him: 3 the science journal chemische annalen was first published in 1778 and was known as crell’s annalen after its editor lorenz von crell (1744-1816), a chemist and professor at the university of helmstedt. the journal had an important role in the formation of a community of german-speaking chemists (hufbauer 1982). materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 5 whenever no name can be found for a new fossil which indicates its peculiar and characteristic properties (in which situation i find myself at present), i think it best to choose such a denomination as it means nothing of itself, and thus can give no rise to any erroneous ideas. in consequence of this, as i did in the case of uranium, i shall borrow the name for this metallic substance from mythology, and in particular from the titans, the first sons of the earth. i therefore call this new metallic genus titanium. (apud. housley 2007, 5) even though it was not isolated in its purest form, titanium started to be recognized as a simple body, earning the status of a chemical element in mendeleev’s periodic table. titanium then started to be represented with a symbol (ti) and a mass number (50 – in the 1869 table) which characterized it, and when the number of protons in the nucleus started to characterize the singularity of chemical elements, it started to be identified by its atomic number (22) and located in the fourth group of the current periodic table (iupac). the arrival of electricity as a new instrument in the chemical laboratory along the 19th century was important for the isolation of several metals, such as sodium and potassium, and was also the case for titanium, although still in impure samples. in its pure form, the metal was only isolated by matthew a. hunter in 1910 with the collaboration of general electric at the rensselaer polytechnic institute, in troy (new york). he heated titanium chloride (ticl4) with metallic sodium in a steel container, under pressure (the hunter process). finally, william justin kroll, in 1946, managed to isolate titanium for commercial purposes, by reducing ticl4 with metallic magnesium (the kroll process). using magnesium instead of sodium made the process cheaper, which helped with the emergence of titanium’s social, industrial, and environmental existence (quian and froes 2015). if the metallurgic method developed by kroll proved to be fundamental for research in isolation of titanium, it was undoubtedly pushed by the quest for new materials brought on by the cold war between the usa and the ussr. in the usa, the production of titanium on an industrial scale began in 1948 with dupont inc., although, starting in the 1950s, other chemical products industries started to produce titanium, which was destined, above all, to the aviation industry. in the ussr, the industrial production of this metal started in 1957 and was made by vsmpo (verkhnaya salda metallurgical production association) and was mainly destined for the manufacturing of deepwater high-performance submarines (housley 2007). but if in its origin, metallic titanium, which has high production costs, was first proposed for the construction of aircraft and submarines, it also started to be employed in the manufacturing of several objects. thus, the metallic mode of existence of titanium broadened its uses and applications, as it was employed, for instance, in the manufacturing of jewelry and watches or even yet in architecture, such as in the titanium cladding of the panels in the guggenheim museum bilbao, in 1997 (moiseyev 2006; browne 2014, 132). the high production cost of metallic titanium is not associated with a shortage of the raw material, but with the large amount of energy and technology necessary to isolate this highly reactive metal from other elements, specifically oxygen. titanium can be found in materials that are relatively abundant on the earth’s crust, such as ilmenite (fetio3), titanite (catisio5) and rutile (95% tio2). the material presents allotropy. it has a crystalline closepacked hexagonal structure (alpha phase) when in room temperature and remains stable until 882ºc. above this temperature, its structure is altered and becomes body-centered cubic (beta phase). above all, it draws attention to — hence, the growing increase in its production all over the world — its chemical and physical properties and, as a direct consequence, its wide range of important applications. an excellent refractory metal, for its melting point (1668ºc) and boiling point (3287ºc) are high, and its thermal and electrical conductivities are low. it is as resistant as iron, yet 45% lighter. it is 60% heavier than aluminum, although around twice as resistant, which reflects its low density (4,54g/cm3) and its elastic modulus above 12,7 x 104 mpa. it is, then, a substitution and complementary metal materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 6 for the industry, just as its alloys with metals such as aluminum, magnesium, iron, or vanadium (sha and malino 2009). the titanium industry is organized in such a way that it forms oligopolies, companies that control the whole production line, and that are currently concentrated mainly in the usa, russia and china (seong, younossi and goldsmith 2009). finally, although titanium is an element abundant in minerals, it is not found in large quantities in the human body. however, the surface of titanium is among the most biocompatible known surfaces, consequently, this metal started to be widely used in the manufacture of biomaterials such as dental and orthopedic implants (brunette et. al. 2001). besides absorbing part of the industrial production of titanium, which contributed to the growth of its market, research and development in the conception of biomaterials made of titanium also constitutes one of the best examples of the necessary interdisciplinarity between basic and technological sciences. that is because the creation and production of these biomaterials is dependent on research developed by disciplines such as physics, chemistry, metallurgy, mechanics, surface science, interface and colloid science, as well as biological sciences and engineering (oshida 2007). titanium dioxide: its existence and plurality of presences titanium dioxide came into existence in the beginning of the 20th century. its industrial production started in 1917 in norway when chemists peder farup (1875-1934) and gustav jebsen (1884-1952) developed an industrial method to extract a white material from ilmenite, which could be used as a pigment in various kinds of paints (korneliussen et al., 2000). this new white pigment started being widely used by modernist artists, such as in architecture with le corbusier and in painting with kazimir malevich (white on white, 1918) (van driel 2018). when they came into existence, the whiteness and chemical stability of this material soon expanded its applications. but what made it become present in a plurality of places? titanium dioxide (tio2), also known as titanium (iv) oxide is a naturally occurring oxide with applications in paints, medical devices, hygiene products, ceramic composites, additives, textiles, water treatment systems, the food industry, paper production and pharmaceutical additives. it is known as “titanium white” or “white powder” due to its brightness and to being a potent opacifier, that is, its coating abilities. titanium dioxide is a nontoxic, nonhygroscopic, nonvolatile material. it is important to highlight its high chemical stability. it does not dissolve in water, organic solvents, acids (except hydrofluoric and sulfuric acid), nor in alkalis. the properties of tio2 are determined by the morphology of its particles, the size of its crystals and its crystal structure, which depend on choosing the best method for its synthesis and final thermal treatment. some of its methods include sulfate, chloride and precipitation. among its important properties, one can highlight the thermal stability and the capacity of absorbing and dispersing uv light, as it has a high refractive index (n=2,7). its coating capability is not even comparable with that provided by the possible alternatives. the formulations of paints containing other white pigments would require higher quantities and many more layers of paint to obtain the same coating effect. all crystalline forms of tio2 offer photoactive properties. the differences in these properties can be characterized by the differences in band gaps in the electronic structure of tio2. when uv light is irradiated with an energy superior to its band gap, electrons of the valence band of titanium dioxide are promoted to the conduction band, generating an e− electron which is responsible for the photocatalytic activity of the material and electron holes (h+). electrons combine with oxygen in the atmosphere to produce active o2, while the holes combine with water or water vapor in the atmosphere to form radicals oh•. these hydroxyl radicals are strong oxidizing agents and can, therefore, easily oxidize and thus decompose several organic pollutants, materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 7 such as oils and fats. anatase is the form that presents the highest photoactive capacity (siwinska-stefanska 2017; musial 2020). titanium dioxide is a common additive in many food items, personal hygiene products and other consumer products used massively by us. after use, it can easily get into the sewer system, and later, penetrate in the environment as treated wastewater, released in superficial waters or biosolids applied onto agricultural land, incinerated residue or solids derived from landfills (weir et al., 2012). dyes are used extensively in the beverage and food industry because they confer aesthetic appeal to the products, which would, without them, be colorless or have an unpleasant appearance. therefore, titanium dioxide (e171) is among the most used food colorings, exactly because it makes candy, ice cream, sweets and bubblegum more visually attractive. its cost is low and its handling easy, and it does not interfere with the flavor of the food. regarding personal hygiene products, such as toothpaste and sunscreen are the ones presenting a larger amount of tio2, after all, it has both its whitening property, an important value for contemporary western society, and can also filter uv rays. we have observed, over the last decades, an important increase in the search for new solutions in terms of lithium-ion battery technology, as these are, after all, the main technologies for storing energy: “currently, the greatest challenge in the design of these batteries is to find an optimum combination of cathode and anode materials, as these largely determine the cell’s parameters, including capacity, voltage, reversibility of the charge/discharge reaction, and chemical stability” (janus 2017). among a wide range of available materials, titanium dioxide and its derivatives were chosen as good anodes for these batteries, as they allow for the design of devices with low levels of safety concerns. in addition, this class of materials offers thermal stability, low cost, biocompatibility, relatively high surface area and porosity, a wide electrochemical range and enhanced cyclical performance due to its superior electrical conductivity. these characteristics make titanium based derivatives a good candidate to replace the commonly used carbon (graphene) as an anode material in libs. in the economic sphere, titanium dioxide is consumed more as paints, coating, plastics and papers. china, which continues expanding sectors such as plastics and coatings, should considerably increase the use of dioxide over the next few years. for example, china has consumed about 32% of the world’s production of tio2 between 2014 and 2017, and this amount is expected to increase at an annual growth rate of around 3,5% over the next five years. the chinese market will also boost general market growth, specially in the construction industry due to the high demand for anticorrosive coatings in architecture. in the usa, paints and coatings are key sectors, but the contribution of the plastics industry will increase over the next few years. if the predicted demand grows according to the forecast (4% to 5% a year), production capacity should increase up to 300 thousand cubic tons a year. also in europe, the most relevant sectors for application of tio2 are paints, coatings and plastics, which represent a 650 billion euro market. we are, therefore, analyzing a material with gigantic growth potential in the economic sector and thus, with a high degree of capillarization in society and the environment (parrino 2021). it is important to mention that titanium dioxide is a substance with merely an aesthetic function and thus, does not aggregate any nutritional value. in fact, the use of this additive started being questioned after analyses indicated that particles of the substance could accumulate in the human body. since 2016, the european food safety authority warns of the need for further studies, for genotoxicity — the ability of substances to damage genetic information in cells — of particles of titanium dioxide cannot be ruled out, and it is not possible to establish an acceptable daily intake (adi). the efsa manifestation subsidized the decision by the european commission about the food additive, stipulating that the use materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 8 of e171 will be banned in countries of the european union after a transition period.4 in brazil, titanium dioxide has its application as a food additive regulated by the brazilian health regulatory agency (anvisa). technical note nº 30/2021/sei/geare/ggali/dire2/anvisa contains precise information about the food coloring function of titanium dioxide5. from the note, one can infer that anvisa understands there is sufficient evidence to indicate how more restrictive measures about its use in food are pertinent, measures which would demand an update of prevailing regulations. currently, bill nº 2257/22 is being discussed in the chamber of deputies, which forbids the use of titanium dioxide in food manufacturing, as well as the import of goods containing this substance. if natural titanium dioxide raises such important questions about its safety regarding human health, we will see that in its other mode of existence, in a nanometric scale, the uncertainty and unpredictability will appear in a fundamental manner, because although they present in the same structure, their properties are totally altered, and can engender serious ethical, medical, epistemological and social problems. it is important to note that between the beginning of regulation in europe about the use of titanium dioxide in the food industry in the 1950s, until its ban in 2021, we have a significant inflection moment. it happens in the beginning of the 2000s, exactly when the industry starts providing titanium dioxide in nanostructured forms (boutillier et al., 2022). if we are to be aware of its natural mode of existence, recent studies point to the danger of titanium dioxide particle absorption at a nanometric scale. the emergence of a new mode of existence: nanotechnology and nanochemistry just as the metallic titanium industry, a new way of organizing scientific and technological research was also born within the context of the second world war and the cold war. this is in reference to the projects aiming at the dissolution of frontiers between science and technology, which led to the idea that science and technology would be transformed into something new, a technoscience. some philosophers and historians of contemporary science consider technoscience a result of the so-called “big science”, whose model would be the manhattan project. its ramifications would be the result of a state policy applied in the united states starting in 1945, guided from directives stemming from the famous vannevar bush report (science, the endless frontier) which was drafted by request of president roosevelt (echeverria 2003). a similar movement can be seen in the governance of the soviet state in the post stalin era. the de-stalinization of the soviet society did not only involve the abolition of the cult of personality of josef stalin, but also led to broader intellectual changes in relation to what was called “scientific forecasting and future studies” (rindzeviciute 2016). certainly, the creation of the akademgorodok (academic city), located in western siberia, characterizes this reorganization of soviet scientific research, which brought it closer to those practiced in the usa and in european countries6. as we have seen, however, the term technoscience was first used by belgian philosopher gilbert hottois, who, since the 1970s, employed it to denote the new emerging relationship between science and technology. his philosophical goal was to counter the theoretical and linguistic reductionism of analytic philosophy which, according to him, was disconnected from the scientific-technological 4 https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/news/titanium-dioxide-e171-no-longer-considered-safe-when-usedfood-additive 5 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6oua8erwny02jo1/sei_anvisa%20-%201526798%20%20nota%20t%c3%a9cnica.pdf?dl=0 6 this city of science was established in 1958 and was idealized by mathematician mikhail alekseevich lavrentev (josephson 1997). materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 9 reality and its value judgment implications (metaphysical, epistemic, ethical, social, economic, environmental, military and more) (hottois 2006). the nbic acronym condenses the four engines of technosciences, which focus on the investigation of the most intimate part of the matter: the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. technosciences, as experimental sciences, operate on the frontier between knowing and doing, where the question is about what is it? becomes how does it work? it is about operationalizing nature by intervening in its processes, even if matter itself, especially living matter, keeps moving, in a constant process of coevolution. one can notice that, while the ontology of modern science turns itself to the investigation of the being-object, abstracting certain characteristics considered essential and that distinguish it from the other beings, and theories search for, by means of universalization, validation for each time and place, technosciences move towards the goal of recreation from the fundamental bricks of matter. in one, emphasis is on the essence of the objects, in the other, on their existence. with technoscience we find, thus, a collapse of the fundamental distance between subject and object, between natural and artificial, instituted since the beginning of modern science in the 17th century, an ontology of substances, and the emergence of a process ontology, more concerned with what one object will become in the future than with what it essentially is (bensaude-vincent 2013). because this “essence” can transform into conflict with the environment, with the human body, with the social environment. from there maybe we can think more about ontological pluralism, other than an ontology that is unique and a priori. it was in this context, then, of institutional, economical, epistemological and political reorganization of sciences and technologies that a new domain of investigation came about, which would be practiced on a scale that would open the doors for a new world, a nanoworld, whose dimension corresponded to one billionth of a meter. it concerns the appearance of nanotechnology. richard feynman and, later, eric drexler first introduced the conceptual possibility of atom manipulation, of “shaping the world atom by atom” and its consequences for the industrial field (feynman 1960, 22-36; drexler 1986/1992). here we observe an interesting example of how difficult it is to work with the history of sciences in the present, for although feynman’s conference (“there’s plenty of room at the bottom”, 1959, american physical society at its meeting at caltech in pasadena, california) is considered the origin of nanotechnology by several authors, including drexler, historians have demonstrated that this influence in the experimental field was much smaller than the commonly admitted in the promotional rhetoric of nanotechnology. in fact, the myth of the precursor must also be put aside in the historiography of contemporary sciences. finally, nanotechnology does not need to be considered as something with a precise beginning and following a clear line of historical causality (toumey 2008, 133-168). feynman’s conference was, without a doubt, inspiring, but it was the arrival of the scanning tunneling microscope, capable of obtaining images at an atomic level which, in fact, broadened the perspective for a growing increase of analysis capacity and manipulation at a nanometric scale. in 1981, gerd binnig and heinrich rohrer, both winners of the nobel prize in physics (1983), developed this equipment, which supplied the first images of individual atoms onto the surfaces of materials, specifically silicon and gold. the scanning tunneling microscope is used in industrial research and is fundamental for obtaining images of metallic surfaces at an atomic scale. it provides a three-dimensional profile of the surface and thus offers information to characterize surface roughness, observe defects on it and determine the size and aggregates and molecular conformation (neddermeyer 1993). according to drexler, in his already classic engines of construction (1986), it is the variations of atoms that distinguish them between cheap or expensive, what is ill or healthy. one can simply think of carbon and diamonds, sand and computer chips, cancerous and healthy tissues. disposed of in a certain manner, they can compose fresh air and houses; disposed of in another, they constitute ashes and smoke. however, even though the north materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 10 american scientist praises the level we have reached today with our equipment and drugs, saving millions of lives, he signals we are still at a time when the domain over the atomic order has not yet been achieved (drexler 1992, 57). why? because traditional chemical synthesis, according to him, is still a very primitive way of doing things. the chemist chooses certain reagents which are mixed in a container in the hopes that a sufficient number of molecules will eventually fall in the right place to produce the desired product. drexler defends a radically new technology which will manipulate atoms and individual molecules, putting them together like lego pieces and, thus, will provide complex molecular products in a clean and efficient way. in contrast with this dream of synthesis without waste, drexler characterizes current organic synthesis as a random and not very reliable process to build complex molecular chains. at the beginning of his book, drexler already contrasts two types of technology. on the one hand, the current one, which deals with blocks of mass construction of matter, while, in a new era, the nanotechnology era, it will “manipulate individual atoms and molecules with control and precision”. that is, on the one hand, a chemical process that is “top to bottom” and, on the other hand, a new approach that is “bottom up”. finally, genetic engineering, without a doubt, is the model adopted by the american physicist and engineer, because like molecular biologists describe ribosomes and proteins as molecular machines, nanotechnology will carry out specific molecular tasks for the industry. however, this physical and mechanical model by drexler was challenged by another great enthusiast of nanotechnology, chemist richard smalley, one of the winners of the nobel prize in chemistry in 1996, for discovering fullerenes, an allotropic nanometric form of carbon. for smalley, it is not possible to guide individual atoms with the precision required by drexler. a crucial aspect of the controversy which has been established between both concerns the experimental viability of the notion of “molecular assemblers”. according to drexler, such assemblers would be capable of building everything with atomic precision, and he uses, as an analogy, the protein synthesis made by rna, an example of a biological nanorobot. smalley contests the viability of this machine model, defying the possibility of obtaining precise control of nanophenomena such as the assumptions theoretically adopted by drexler. smalley raises two main objections: the fat fingers and the sticky fingers issues. on the first one, the target is drexler’s mechanistic reductionism, which conceives nanorobots without taking into account that they, themselves, are also formed by atoms, in such a way that there would not be sufficient room for control with atomic precision at a nanometric scale. on the second objection, the sticky fingers issue, precise control over the positioning of atoms required by drexler also could not be achieved with the known chemical operations since the atoms of the manipulating arms can always interact with other atoms. finally, an epistemological analysis of this debate in the history of nanotechnology reveals that there is, in fact, a profound incommensurability between these two projects. this incommensurability occurs in relation to the concepts that are employed, the theoretical principles, for those proposed by drexler derive from quantum physics while smalley’s concepts are bound to experimental chemistry, and also to the intended experimental goals and the proposed methods. nevertheless, despite this incommensurability, both programs share the same scientific instruments, maybe the only possible means of communication between these two scientific, but also philosophical approaches to nanotechnology (bueno 2004). beginning in the 1990s, nanotechnology started becoming part of research programs in north american and european universities. but it was in the usa that this new domain of scientific research started getting an industrial and commercial influence, above all, with the materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 11 creation of the national nanotechnology initiative by the federal government7. for the historiography of nanotechnology it is pertinent to observe that drexler became critical of the initiatives of the nni. his objections related not only to the research programs supported by the agency, which privileged, above all, synthetic chemistry and the emergence of new material properties, but also the abandonment of feynman’s revolutionary scientific goals in favor of a solely economical and commercial orientation for research in nanotechnology (laurent 2010, 31). in the beginning of the 21st century, other industrialized countries also implemented incentive systems for the research and application of nanotechnology products. since then, the production of nanostructures can be observed, be it in the form of reducing existing dimensions, or by way of the formation of new molecular arrangements, with the goal of creating chemical, biological and physical effects that are applicable to industrial and technological activities. in this context, we witnessed the emergence of a new domain of chemical investigation: nanochemistry. the synthesis of nanostructures and nanomaterials by means of using supramolecular and biomimetic materials which make bottom-up nanostructured materials emerge constitutes the pillars of nanochemistry. it presents two important aspects: one of these is associated with gaining insight into peculiarities of chemical properties and the reactivity of nanostructured particles, which feeds the research in this domain of chemistry. another aspect, connected to nanotechnology, consists of applying nanochemistry to the synthesis, modification, and stabilization of individual nanoparticles and also for their directed self-assembling to give more complex nanostructures (sergeev and klabunde 2013). the properties of chemical substances depend on the size of the entities considered. the dependence of chemical activity in relation to the size of reagent particles is characterized by the fact that the properties of atoms and molecular aggregates (˂ 1nm) and nanoparticles (1-100nm) differ considerably from microparticles (˃ 100 nm) commonly present in laboratory samples. besides chemists, this difference in properties due to the size also draws the attention of great philosophers of chemistry, in particular those dedicated to the study of the emergentism of chemical entities. despite the varied emergentist theories, one concept prevails, that is, that the properties of a determined level of materiality, although derived from an inferior degree, are exclusive to this level. some philosophers of chemistry support that the process of emergence for nanochemical entities differs from those of macrochemical entities, since, while the former would be ruled by quantum mechanics, the latter would follow the laws of classical thermodynamics, which would make these entities ontologically distinct (zambon and córdoba 2021). these important discussions give rise to reflections about the ontology of chemical entities itself. above we have seen some properties and the large number of applications of titanium dioxide in its natural modes of existence, whose diameter of entities is between 200 and 300nm. but could the applications of this material not be expanded if it were possible to structure them in a nanometric form? the synthesis of the first tio2 nanotubes was obtained in 1996 by chemist patrick hoyer through a process of electrochemical deposition in a porous aluminum oxide mold. these titanium dioxide nanotubes had an internal diameter between 70 and 100nm and were excellent semiconductors (hoyer 1996). curiously, the small dimension of nanoparticles greatly increases the relationship between the available surface area for physical-chemical activity and the volume of the material. because the properties of titanium dioxide are mainly associated with the available crystalline surface, the investigations of its nanostructured forms then started attracting great interest from both scholars and industrialists. 7 https://www.nano.gov/about-nni. the creation of this research agency and its development in the year 2000 by president bill clinton is a result of, above all, the efforts of mihail roco, its first director, who had coordinated the report on "nanotechnology research directions" in 1999 (roco 1999). materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 12 tio2 nanoparticles have been studied with the intention of knowing its mechanical and chemical properties, its effective biological and chemical inertia, its optical effects, and its resistance to corrosion. nanocrystalline tio2 exists, mainly, in three polymorphs, which include rutile, anatase and brookite, and which depend on the conditions of production and thermal treatment after its production. the research indicates that tio2 nanoparticles could have a wide range of applications, which include nanomedicine, nanobiotechnology, solar and electrochemical cells, wastewater treatment, the food industry, soil recovery, gas detection, cosmetics, plastics, paints, paper production, production and storage of hydrogen fuel, antiseptic and antibacterial compounds, self cleaning devices, as well as many others yet to be discovered (wu and ren 2020). the production of these nanoparticles can happen through a variety of experimental methods and its cost is relatively low. according to the method used (vapor deposition, solvothermal method, electrochemical approaches, solution combustion, microemulsions method), different variations of sizes and shapes of tio2ns are obtained, and may present particular biological and physical-chemical properties (khataee and mansoori 2012, ch. 3). it seems that here we have an interesting example of the primacy of experimental over theoretical, as mentioned by ian hacking, for it must be admitted that the reality of entities is related to experimental devices that act as a cause producing certain phenomena (hacking 1983). however, several studies have been revealing something fundamental: that in the nanometric scale new material priorities have important consequences and unexpected obstacles in their thermodynamics and their reactivity. “the properties of these new nanoparticles and nanostructures are still, in great part, unknown [...] (for example: the highly reactive surface of nanoparticles; its ability to go through membranes) and can be associated to a potentially high level of toxicity” (riechman 2009, 267). in other words, the euphoria caused by the wonderful properties of tio2ns should not conceal the other side of this coin, which is: it can induce severe toxicity. these nanoparticles can be introduced in the human body through a number of different manners, including airways, the digestive, intravenous and dermal systems. through these ways, they can easily interact with biological systems, they can also accumulate in the body over long periods of time (dar et. al. 2020). in pharmacology, for instance, nanoparticles must transport assorted substances to tissues and cells, minimizing toxic effect and increasing therapeutic efficacy. however, the interaction between substances in the organism is important for planning the drug, because, as with every medication, it can become a harmful agent, altering or destroying vital functions. from the point of view of nanoparticle inhalation, for example, there is great concern, after all, the smaller the particle, the easier it will break the barriers of our respiratory system, accumulating in the pulmonary alveolus and compromising our respiratory capacity. once deposited in the pulmonary epithelial cells, differently from larger particles, they can migrate and reach other organs. asthma appears here, as a disease directly linked to the inhalation of these micro particles, beside bronchitis, emphysema, and lung cancer. a 2007 study presents as well the intrinsic relationship between tio2 particles in the order of 10nm and significant pulmonary inflammation (suzuki 2007). another area that has been growing exponentially is that of nanocosmetics, which utilizes nanotechnology to carry nanostructured active ingredients, with the clear intention of optimizing the properties and performance of the substances, when compared to the conventional ones. but tio2 nanoparticles used for protection against uv rays can present toxic effects such as morphological alterations, apoptosis (programmed cell death), and mitochondrial dysfunction (zhang 2011). besides, these nanoparticles will be fatally released in natural water environments presenting potential risks for the living organisms within these ecosystems, creating the urgent need to evaluate and understand the subsequent ecological damages (he and hwang 2014). materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 13 this detrimental side of nanotechnology can become a great social and environmental problem, especially due to the lack of investment in investigation into its possible harmful effects. for instance, a 2006 research article points out that of the nine billion dollars spent annually worldwide with studies in nanotechnology, only between 15 and 40 million dollars are allocated to research about its risks, toxicity, safety, health effects, etc. this means that only one in every 300 dollars is spent with research related to precaution with regard to this new technoscience (riechman 2009). finally, it is fundamental to keep in mind that a medication, dye, capsule, cleaning agent, is always a complex object and cannot be reduced to merely a chemical substance, with certain physical chemical properties only, for it is, above all, a relational object, that is, technical, economical, social and political. nanostructured tio2 and gmos: an analogy about the management of technoscience products above, we pointed out the exponential increase in the interest and research in the area of nanotechnology in general and nanochemistry in particular, and, as a direct consequence, a considerable increase of innovative products in important areas such as nanomedicine, nanocosmetics and nanopharmacology. however, as we saw in the case of titanium dioxide, the properties of many of these new nanoparticles and nanostructures are still largely unknown if we think of their highly reactive surfaces, as well as their ability to go through membranes. that means, as recent studies show, that nanoparticles can be easily absorbed by the human body, be it through circulation, inhalation or through the skin. on the other hand, regulatory measures are not following the development of said research. well, that is, above all, an ethical problem similar, in fact, to the one that happens with genetically modified organisms (gmos). one of the main problems of an epistemological nature involving gmos is based on the discussion about the scientificity or not of the so-called concept of substantial equivalence, frequently presented in opposition to the ethical precautionary principle. the concept of substantial equivalence has its history beginning in 1993, when it was first introduced by the organization for economic co-operation and development. broadly speaking, according to the reports, this principle must include the following aspects: 1) evaluation of the new food source at a molecular level; 2) comparison of phenotypic characteristics of the genetically modified plant to a conventional plant; 3) composition analysis — that is, an analytical comparison — of the genetically modified plant and its derivatives and the composition of traditional analogs (fao/who, 1996). thus, based on this principle, if a genetically modified organism has a chemical composition equivalent to the traditional one, both would be safe. well, what does it mean to be equivalent? the strange thing is that genetic modification has as its main objective the “introduction of new characteristics in the respective organism” and, thus, the outcome will necessarily result in a different composition of the initial genes and proteins. in fact, this is the reason why the organism can be patented, because it is different from its natural variety. the proposed equivalence refers to the chemical and molecular composition between the natural and the modified products. but the gmos are and were synthesized with the clear objective of being distinct, different from their products of origin. countless studies, then, show the difficulty in operating with the concept of substantial equivalence, due to its lack of scientificity, a lack that was pointed out in 1999 by nature8. the core issue in the epistemic and scientific limit of 8 “substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgement masquerading as if it were scientific. it is, moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests. it therefore serves to discourage and inhibit potentially informative scientific research”, (millstone et al., 1999). materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 14 such concept is that, however effective the chemical analysis (the comparison of the phenotypic characteristics, molecular level evaluation and analytical comparison), they are not able to reveal, as it is beyond of chemical and microscopic experimental apprehension, the presence of toxic components or unknown allergens. and here we reach an important point in our discussion. the epistemic problem of the concept of substantial equivalence finds itself precisely in its limitation to reductive analysis parameters, not taking into consideration the necessary plurality of strategies, such as the ones of a biochemical, pharmacological and even biological nature. nowadays, by distancing itself from deterministic and reductive modern science, contemporary chemistry must take into consideration the important interaction between genes and the lives of organisms, that is, take into consideration qualitative aspects of the analyzed structures, approaching “gene ecology”, namely, research in which the regulation of metabolic function of organisms is in direct relationship with the wide network of interdependent genomic sequences, interacting, moreover, with environmental factors. this is necessary because the proposed chemical analyses cannot, by themselves, relate the possible effects of a biochemical, toxicological and immunological nature in genetically modified food, because, as we saw, they only take into consideration analyses of chemical, molecular and analytic composition of gmos. thus, the sought equivalence refers more specifically to quantity, or something measurable that can be technically compared. in comparative terms, the genomes of a natural plant and of a genetically modified organism are not equivalent. they would only be equivalent if one had originated from the other by means of vegetative reproduction. by the techniques used, genetic construction inserted in the plant has distinct elements from those found in the original plant, which can provide new gene products, which in turn can trigger serious pleiotropic effects. the challenge presented is in understanding the influences of cellular organization and macromolecular associations over the function of individual enzymes and other biomolecules (zaterka and mocellin 2022, ch. 5). something similar, as we saw, occurs with research in the area of nanotechnology, or yet, with the lack of research, after all, scientists postulate in a quick manner and without due public responsibility that natural substances and the ones that are nanoproduced possess equivalent properties. however, nanostructured titanium dioxide was built with the goal of acquiring new properties, after all, its microscopic size favors a small number of atoms and, therefore, electrons. these electrons in a nanoscale act in a manner that is very different from the traditional one, because here, they do not possess mobility, they are ‘confined’ to the material, following the model of quantum theory. these characteristics provide optical, electrical, transportation, and electromagnetic properties that are completely distinct, and can result in, as emphasized above, important pharmacological and toxicological issues. therewith, we can clearly observe distinct modes of existence, with capillarizations and, therefore, unique biographies. different from conventional ones, nanoparticles have a larger potentiality for biological interactions. for instance, if nanotechnological medications can favorably act on targets with more precision and efficacy, on the other hand, the same properties make reaching places that were unthinkable before by conventional products. in this sense, more research in relation to the possible effects in the areas of toxicity, stability, dosage and efficacy is clearly necessary. for example, a 2008 study shows that the ingestion of nanosilver, which possesses physical, chemical, and biological characteristics that are considerably uncommon when compared to silver in a macro scale, was linked to argyria, a disease which causes irreversible skin darkening, besides pro-inflammatory lung effects (chen 2008). as the use of nanomaterials, from an economic standpoint, proves itself a promising strategy, the manufacturing of these products is increasing, which will result in a growing appearance of nanomaterials in air, water, soil and organisms (mueller and nowack 2008). this environmental issue related to the application of nanotechnology makes it necessary to materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 15 pay more attention to the industry, which is largely responsible for a wide range of environmental impacts due to the inadequate use of its materials and the improper disposal of residues, assuring the guarantee of development and compliance with sustainability tools and minimizing potential impacts that nanoparticles are capable of causing, due to being microscopic and carrying chemical substances with higher efficacy, able to generate high degrees of toxicology. the applicability of nanobiotechnology in several areas requires a deeper investigation, as it alters the biological environment, possesses greater accessibility to permeate physiological barriers, and the physical-chemical properties of these new reagents are more complex, becoming more challenging than conventional products (florence 2012; muthu 2010). this discussion allows us to emphasize the use of the precautionary principle (pp) in these kinds of analysis, where risk, indeterminacy and uncertainty appear, connected to nearly non-existing regulation. when researchers do not have conditions of making definitive judgments about the potential risks, “the precautionary principle recommends taking special precautions and, depending on the way appropriate research about risks is conducted, postponing final decisions about, and under which conditions, implementing innovation effectively” (lacey 2006). incorporated, since 2005, to the french constitution by means of the charter for the environment, the pp affirms that: “when the occurrence of any damage, albeit unpredictable in the current state of scientific knowledge, may seriously and irreversibly harm the environment, public authorities shall, with due respect for the precautionary principle and the areas within their jurisdiction, ensure the implementation of procedures for risk assessment and the adoption of temporary measures commensurate with the risk involved in order to preclude the occurrence of such damage” (charte de l’environnement 2004). the precautionary principle introduces a fundamental perspective in the application of science, which consists of rejecting incomplete studies based on insufficient or inconclusive reports. this seems to be the case, as no rigorous methodologies that can establish the real differences between the properties found on a macro scale and on a nanoscale exist yet. many of the nanochemical particles can involve new interactions, new modes of absorption and a capillarization capacity that are unique and, because of that, result in complex environments where unexpected new properties can emerge. the philosophy of chemistry, by working with the autonomy of chemical entities, points to the complex interactions of molecules with their means. in this sense, we can better map out and diagnose the modes of existence of these substances and their consequences for humans and the planet. by handling this ‘molecular ecology’, we can never forget about hans jonas’ imperative of responsibility and thus take into consideration the principle of responsibility, besides the precautionary principle. obviously, this does not mean immobilizing the progress of humanity, science, or the economy, but on the contrary, proposing durability of the quality of life for human generations and all existing nature on the planet. after all, is that not why our first humanists established modern science? conclusion materials have histories, and humanity’s history is intrinsically connected to them. our goal in this article was to approach some biographical aspects of metallic titanium and titanium dioxide. although multidisciplinary, our investigation also pointed out some issues that are particular to the philosophy of chemistry, the history of technoscience and nanotechnology brought on by the different modes of existence of titanium dioxide. the historiography of some of the modes of existence we have evoked reveals that the materials are not only a set of physical and chemical properties but also a social existence and a hybrid cognitive identity. in fact, the existence of titanium dioxide, both natural and in its nanostructured forms, materials and their biographies: the case of titanium and its dioxide ronei clécio mocellin – luciana zaterka transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 16 means more than its discovery or its invention, 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dioxide nanoparticles in food and personal care products. environmental science & technology (46): 2242-2250. wu, aiguo and ren, wenzhi. 2020. tio2 nanoparticles. applications in nanobiotechnology and nanomedicine. weinheim: wiley-vch verlag. microsoft word lorenzi andrade layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-16 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2023 – this is an open-access journal bruno latour – special issue the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8486-0726 thales haddad novaes de andrade2 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4000-3527 abstract: this study compares the philosophies and epistemological proposals of philosophers and sociologists edgar morin and bruno latour. to this end, we present morin’s thought specifically his critique of what he calls the old paradigm of simplification and his proposal of a new paradigm of complexity or complex thought. we then attempt to demonstrate, by comparison, how latourian epistemology fits within this epistemological proposal or new paradigm as an example of a metatheory that is capable of successfully dealing with the challenges presented by morin’s complex thought. this study seeks to contribute to the field of knowledge theory in social sciences and studies in science, technology, and society through a more descriptive, comprehensive, and careful methodological and epistemological proposal concerning the various constitutive factors of any research object in the field of knowledge and technologies. keywords: morin; latour; paradigm of complexity; complex thought; epistemology received: february 3, 2023. reviewed: may 24, 2023. accepted: june 12, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.04 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction this study proposes to compare the philosophy and epistemological-methodological proposal of the philosophers and sociologists edgar morin and bruno latour. edgar morin is considered one of the greatest references in education worldwide and an important thinker in the epistemology of social sciences, having contributed significantly to proposals for education and methodology in humanities and social sciences research. bruno latour was one of the founders of what would become a true paradigm in social sciences, science and technology research because of his contributions to the actor-network theory (ant). we 1 bruno rossi lorenzi is a postdoctoral researcher in the program science, technology and society at the federal university of são carlos – ufscar. address: via washington luís, km 235 monjolinho pc 13565905 – são carlos, sp – brasil. e-mail: brunolorenzi@gmail.com 2 thales haddad novaes de andrade is a professor in the department of social sciences at the federal university of são carlos – ufscar. address: via washington luís, km 235 monjolinho pc 13565905 – são carlos, sp – brasil. e-mail: thaleshnandrade@gmail.com the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 believe that this attempt to theoretically approach these two authors, focusing on their epistemological proposals, greatly contributes to research methodology in social sciences and education, as well as to develop and understand both authors’ theoretical proposals. this study is structured in four parts: first, a presentation of edgar morin’s proposal and his critique of the old paradigm—simplifying par excellence—that prevailed from the mid-17th century to the late-19th century (and still imposes itself in many parts as strong resistance to modern sciences). next, a brief outline of the challenges presented by the first analyzed author (edgar morin) in the form of principles that should guide the new paradigm he proposed – capable of confronting the complexity of the world revealed by the quantum and relativistic revolution in physics from the beginning of the 20th century, which is also taken as an example for this complex thought model. after that, a presentation of bruno latour’s epistemology and methodological proposal while seeking to compare his ideas and demonstrate how the latourian philosophy fits into the paradigm of complexity and can overcome the challenges proposed by edgar morin. finally, a brief conclusion of this essay, pointing out the convergences between these authors and the advantages of using an epistemological and methodological proposal that addresses the complexity of knowledge described by morin, as we believe is the case with latourian theory. the crisis of the old paradigm according to edgar morin edgar morin, a pseudonym for edgar nahoum, is a french sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher born in 1921, who also holds degrees in history, geography, and law. in addition to participating in world war ii as a member of the french resistance, morin is an important current reference in sociology, politics, pedagogy, and the epistemology of science, the last of which is the focus of this study. the following works by edgar morin were used in this comparative study: science with consciousness (2005), originally published in 1982, introduction to complex thought (2005b) from 1990, and well-made head (2003) from 1999. these works were chosen because it is in them that this author developed most of his theory and epistemological proposition, which he calls complex thought or paradigm of complexity in the cited works. the works will not be analyzed chronologically, nor is it our intention to analyze them in detail, but their ideas and concepts will be cited and grouped to facilitate our comparison. to understand morin’s proposal of a complex thought, we need to follow the criticism he makes of what he calls the old paradigm, or paradigm of simplification (or even simplifying thought). only then can we understand the challenges that this author considers as obstacles to a truly transdisciplinary and open science and how he intends to overcome them through his propositions. in summary, we can say that the paradigm of simplification corresponds to determinism, typical of physics and the sciences in general from the 18th century until the beginning of the 20th century (morin, 2005b, 34). this type of reasoning, with origins in 17thcentury cartesian rationalism and empiricism, assumed a perfect, or quasi-perfect, correspondence between what was rationalized (i.e., the knowledge generated from logic and mathematical calculation) and reality. to achieve this ambitious goal, general laws were proposed, which attributed a single cause to a particular effect, and, therefore, should perfectly describe the movement and functioning of the studied objects (such as celestial bodies, refraction of light, pendulum movement, etc.). newtonian physics is considered the main exponent of this type of thought, and it is on this basis that chemistry, biology, geology, and even sociology in its early stages (called “social physics” by auguste comte) were developed at that time. the main objective of this old science—still very present in our thinking—was to accurately determine and predict the behavior of the studied objects, whether they were astronomical, optical, gaseous, or demographic (morin 2005, 157). the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 however, this type of thought prevailed not only in the exact sciences. morin suggests that industrialization, urbanization, bureaucratization, technologization, as well as economism, were designed based on a rationalizing ideology, which includes work and human beings, who were seen as simple objects from which maximum efficiency should be extracted, like machines (morin 2005, 162). according to morin, the problem with this type of thought is that, despite having been very successful in predicting certain phenomena, especially those of physical and chemical nature, so necessary for the technological and industrial development of the 18th century, they are simplifiers par excellence, eliminating from reality everything that cannot be reduced to a perfectly predictable law or equation. the paradigm of simplification, corresponding to this type of rationalizing thought, would operate from two factors: disjunction, that is, the fragmentation of a complex phenomenon into as many parts as necessary for its study, and reduction, which unifies, aiming to simplify, things that are diverse, usually in the form of a law or deterministic equation (morin 2005, 160). all these aspects generated (and still do) a totalizing view of the world from partial data that focus only on one or a few aspects of reality, simplifying for the sake of maximum efficiency. however, it was in physics itself that this movement was overcome. it was after the discovery of quantum phenomena (discrete packets of energy), by max planck, and the dual nature of light, which behaves as both a wave and a particle at the same time,3 initially developed by niels bohr, that physics finally took the first step toward complex thought. from that point on, it was no longer possible to insist on pure rationalist and deterministic methods, as it was impossible to precisely and simultaneously predict the position and speed of a photon or electron, or to describe the quantized behavior of light in terms of classical physics (morin 2005, 213). as thomas kuhn (2005), a philosopher of science, astutely points out in his seminal work, the crises in the sciences caused by the inadequacy of the old paradigm in explaining anomalies, and unforeseen phenomena are overcome not through the accumulation of knowledge, but rather through “revolutions”, where a new paradigm capable of explaining both the old and new problems replaces the previous one. this was the case with quantum physics, which had to embrace the phenomenon’s complexity and the incapacity of the old paradigm to explain it, opening a dialogue with uncertainty and incompleteness (morin 2005, 230). according to morin: bohr, in my opinion, marked an event of paramount epistemological importance when, not out of exhaustion, but out of awareness of the limits of logic, he ended the grand tournament between the corpuscular and wave conceptions of the particle, declaring that one must accept the contradiction between the two notions which became complementary, as rationally, the experiments led to this contradiction. (...) since then, a dialogue with contradiction has been opened. we have been led to establish a complementary and contradictory relationship between the fundamental notions necessary to conceive of the universe. (morin 2005, 186-187) we can also cite the invaluable contribution of albert einstein’s theory of relativity, which rendered the old categories of absolute space and time from classical physics completely outdated, making the observer (and their velocity relative to the object) a crucial factor in understanding the fabric of space-time as unified dimensions, necessary for 3 this is demonstrated by the famous double-slit experiment, first performed by thomas young in 1802 and confirmed over the last two hundred years by physicists, despite their inconclusiveness regarding its interpretation, the subject of a heated debate to this day, with several competing interpretations. there is a wealth of material available on the different interpretations of this phenomenon and ensuing discussions; here we suggest (al-khalili 2003). the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 predicting the trajectory of light and objects moving at speeds close to that of light, such as electrons and cosmic rays. as morin points out, the new physics challenged the determinism of classical physics; however, it still allowed for the visualization of patterns, regularities, and even more reliable predictions than the previous paradigm, “and which, in essence, it was not the ruin of determination or determinism, but a flexible way of seeing the relations between determinism and its opposite” (morin 2005, 71). there is another important aspect of the old paradigm emphasized by morin that we must not overlook in this analysis: the fact that the classical view not only separates the cognizing subject from the cognizable object but considers the subject as noise, a disturbance in the data to be avoided at all costs in favor of “objectivity” as if it were possible to exclude the subject from this relationship and collect only “impartial data”. at the same time, the subject itself, detached from the objectivity of the world, becomes a specter of its vague perceptions based on deceptive senses and thought categories (morin 2005b, 40). however, the modern philosophy of science, especially following the emergence of anthropology and sociology of science, considers that subject and object are inseparable, products of each other, and that it is impossible to think about the world from “objective and impartial categories” since knowledge is always the product of the combination of data and impressions with some mental model or scientific theory that categorizes things and perceives phenomena in an inevitably conventional way to some extent. at the same time that the world or the environment only exists from our consciousness and its perceptions, the subject is also a product of the environment and brain physics, where physical-chemical laws prevail (morin 2005b, 45; 88); therefore, it is pointless to try to exclude one or the other. all this effort to eliminate this supposed noise—and thereby the cognizing subject, seen by the old paradigm as an obstacle to be overcome—is due to the aversion to uncertainties in this deterministic way of thinking about the world and its parts. uncertainty is the main enemy of reason in the old paradigm (morin 2005, 2005b). however, as quantum physics has demonstrated, uncertainty is inevitable when it comes to infinitely small and fast objects, which constitute everything in the world (since quantum mechanics dominates the universe of particles and sub-particles that make up the atoms of things and our cells). therefore, for morin, uncertainty is not our enemy. as in quantum mechanics, it is an ally for a more complex, richer, and, therefore, more comprehensive world vision. here we have come to the core of morin’s epistemological theory (2003; 2005; 2005b). by accepting uncertainties, we are able to perceive the complexity of the world and its parts, including ourselves and our collective organization, which we like to call society. the challenges and principles for the complex thought of the new paradigm resuming morin’s (2005; 2005b) conclusions about the emergence of a new paradigm, we have come to believe that the uncertainties arising from this new way of thinking are not a problem in themselves. on the contrary, by accepting that we cannot be certain about many complex phenomena (from the movement of electrons to the movement of economic agents), we are finally able to perceive that we are dealing, most of the time, with complex phenomena, open systems, which are in constant interaction with the environment. with this, our analyses and perceptions can become richer and more comprehensive (morin, 2005; 2005b; 2003), just as niels bohr perceived in quantum mechanics and is cited by morin: at first, this situation could seem very regrettable, but, in general, throughout the history of science, when new discoveries revealed the limits of ideals whose universal value had never been challenged, we were rewarded: our view expanded, and we the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 became capable of uniting phenomena that previously seemed contradictory. (bohr, light and life, 1932 as cited in morin 2005b, p. 44) nevertheless, for morin (2005), despite the possibilities opened by the new paradigm of complexity – proposed as an open system instead of a self-contained one (like the mathematical models of classical physics and classical economics), this change is imposed on us not as a miraculous solution, but as a challenge. proposing a more comprehensive analysis of any subject, pointing out its relationships with the environment and other systems, and not excluding the subject-object relationship, is, as the name suggests, much more complex. we need to consider many other factors and be more careful with the conclusions so as not to run the risk of closing the analysis within itself with some form of reductionism. to overcome these challenges, morin (2005) proposes that we face the obstacles we have created when thinking of the world in the last centuries as a closed system. to this end, he proposes a series of principles and challenges that guide the paradigm of complexity and which we will briefly examine below. the first principle to be examined refers to a central idea in morin’s thought, which permeates his entire work: the dialogic principle, which refers to the complementarity between two apparently contradictory logics, but which are, in fact, codependent, such as life and death, reproduction and evolution, individual and collective thinking, and, especially, the dialogue between order and disorder (morin 2005b, 73). for morin, we need to recognize that it is possible for order to arise from chaos or disorder, that is, organized phenomena can emerge from what is apparently chaotic, like a planetary system can arise from a cloud of gases resulting from the explosion of a supernova, or from a social system that is organized based on multiple contradictory collective interests (morin 2005, 179). the idea here is that chance is necessary for an organization as a result of a non-deterministic process. in his words: the complexity of the order/disorder/organization relationship arises, therefore, when it is empirically noted that disordered phenomena are necessary under certain conditions, in specific cases, to produce organized phenomena, which contribute to the growth of order. (morin 2005b, 63) the next principle concerns the simultaneity of unity and multiplicity in organizations, understood by morin as what constitutes a system (physical, biological, or social) from different elements, called the systemic principle (morin 2003, 93; morin 2005, 180). he also claims that, while a system is smaller than the sum of its parts (since it often inhibits individual potentialities, whether of an individual through social constraints, or of a chemical compound because of molecular stability), it is also greater than the sum of its parts, as new properties and potentials emerge from this organization, such as molecular properties that are not present in isolated atoms or social institutions such as morality or state apparatuses that only arise as a result of collective organization. this leads to another principle highly valued by morin: the holographic principle, which suggests that the whole is contained within the part and the part within the whole (like dna is present in all of our cells, or general culture, such as language, is present in the individuals who compose it) (morin 2003, 94; 2005, 180; 2005b, 74). as a consequence of the holographic principle, another principle must be considered, that of a recursive organization (morin 2003, 95; 2005, 182; 2005b, 74). this means that the effect acts upon the cause, feeding back and interfering with the cause – like a thermostat affects the temperature of an oven, despite being a result of the heat caused by the oven. similarly, we are both products and producers of the social system – and this aspect of the complexity of open thinking constitutes the sixth avenue. in morin’s words: the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 a society is produced through interactions between individuals, and these interactions produce an organizing whole that retroacts on the individuals to co-produce them as human individuals, which they would not be without instruction, language, and culture. therefore, the social process is a continuous productive circle in which, somehow, the products are necessary for the production of what produces them. (morin 2005, 182) these principles lead us to a challenge, which morin (2005, 183) calls the “crisis of closed disciplines”, such as dependence and autonomy, subject and object, living being and environment, where clearly demarcated concepts are insufficient to explain the complexity of the world. morin asserts that it is necessary to perceive, in agreement with the dialogic principle, that apparent contradiction sometimes indicates not an error but complementarity. in his words: “in the universe of simple things, ‘the door must be open or closed’, but in the complex universe, an autonomous system must be open and closed at the same time. one must be dependent in order to be autonomous” (morin 2005, 184). finally, to complete the paradigm of complexity, it is necessary, according to the author (morin 2005, 185; 2005b, 96), to reintegrate the observer into the observation, that is, to stop interpreting them as noise or an obstacle to research and assume the complementarity between subject and object as emerging parts of the same phenomenon. as we will see later with the second analyzed author (bruno latour), subject and object are products of the same process, and it is not much different here. impartiality is nothing more than an abstraction of a science that has developed based on an idealized system considered closed. however, if we want to practice science—natural or social—accepting the challenge of complexity, we must also admit that the subject is part of the world, is a product of the environment (physical and social) while being a creator of that environment (physically and ideally), according to the dialogic and recursive principle. as previously emphasized, these aspects of complex thought, or paths that lead us to the paradigm of complexity, are above all challenges. the old paradigm, which morin (2005b) calls the paradigm of simplification, has cemented our thought, limiting it to well-defined disciplines and sub-areas (closed concepts) where each part of this thought (economics, biology, sociology, physics – more specifically each specific sub-area, such as financial economics, microbiology, particle physics, etc.) should be simplified until it becomes completely predictable and determinable, like a hermetically closed system where nothing enters and nothing leaves, and therefore is self-sufficient to explain itself. obviously, and as the history of the sciences and the social studies of science and technology (ssst) clearly demonstrate, this model has never fully come to fruition. throughout the entire history of the development of scientific theories, there have always been (many) outliers, anomalies, and inconsistencies, always demanding new explanations for these “exceptions”, new theories, and the addition of more and more parts to these closed systems so that they could stand, like ptolemaic epicycles. still, the old paradigm insists on disciplinary segregation in many fields to this day, ignoring the relations between spaces and knowledge, or at most trying to connect these closed systems to each other like pieces in a large computer, where there is only one communication channel (input/output) between each of these parts, theoretically completely controllable and predictable (although, in practice, being much more complicated and subject to errors). thus, for example, economics has nothing to do with biology, even though it is possible to estimate losses in the volume of fish caught annually because of the reduction of their population due to declines in breeding rates, the problem is “solved” economically perhaps with new taxes and incentives, perhaps with the exploitation of other ecosystems, markets, and suppliers, but never assuming that the decline in the breeding rate of this fish population is associated with economic policy. environmental, social, and economic problems are becoming increasingly global and systemic, but simplifying thought insists on this model separated from the world, where the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 economics is resolved with economics and environmental and social problems remain unsolved. growth or reduction rates (rise in global average temperature, decrease in fish population, impoverishment of populations, etc.), measured very successfully by social and natural disciplines, are enough to feed economic predictions – through this single nondialogic and non-recursive communication channel, thus not needing to “merge”. the course is set for disaster, as long as it is mathematically predictable, there is no cause for concern in terms of the epistemology of scientific knowledge and model of social action. therefore, it is increasingly urgent to embrace the open systems of the paradigm of complexity, to recognize how much ecology interferes with the economy and vice versa, or how much technological policy and economic policy have in common. by proposing complex thought, which sees the relationships between objects, subjects, and knowledge, in which the effect acts on the cause and the whole is present in the part, morin wants to draw our attention to the challenge of overcoming closed and simplifying thought, but also to the opportunities that open up when we embrace complex thought, with enough courage to see the relationships between problems, regardless of their disciplinary identity, in an effectively transdisciplinary stance. the disciplines should indeed be respected, but not the reductionism. as morin puts it, it is not only a political and social problem but also an epistemological one, “the problem is not so much to open the boundaries between disciplines, but to transform what generates these boundaries: the organizing principles of knowledge” (morin 2003, 24-25 our emphasis). at this point in the study, we must ask ourselves: is there any theoretical proposal, any epistemology of knowledge that respects these principles and duties? that sees the relationships between the parts and the systemic character of action and knowledge? that truly leads us to a complex thought, a new paradigm in terms of the construction of scientific knowledge and action? our answer to this question is yes, and here we enter the second part of the study, where we present bruno latour’s approach to morin’s proposal, which enables us to recognize latour as a legitimate representative of the paradigm of complexity. bruno latour’s epistemology as an example of complex thought in the new paradigm the second author in this essay, who serves here as a comparison and suggestion of epistemology and methodology that aligns with morin’s complex thought, is bruno latour (1947-2022) – a philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist who studied, among other things, scientific and technological endeavors as of the late 1970s. latour is considered one of the foremost exponents of french pragmatic sociology and has examined various topics throughout his career, especially science and technology, the environment, democracy, and epistemology. known for famous works, which deviate from conventional sociological and epistemological thought, such as we have never been modern (1994) and, more recently, an inquiry into modes of existence (2019), latour emphasizes notions and principles inspired by many branches of knowledge theory, from tardian sociology (tarde 2003), through the process philosophy of alfred whitehead, and more contemporary authors such as michel serres, gilles deleuze, and félix guattari, among many others (harman 2009). the aim of this section is to present bruno latour’s thinking—often equated with the actor-network theory (ant), as he is its most prominent exponent–and point out the similarities between latour’s epistemology and morin’s proposal for a paradigm of complexity or complex thought. latour’s theory (we will call it that in this study because we understand that it transcends the ant in its more recent writings, such as an inquiry into modes of existence, 2012) was developed in 1979 with the publication of laboratory life and includes dozens of books and publications. because of its complexity and breadth, in this study, we will only address its main concepts, especially those that converge with morin’s the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 proposal, in an attempt to demonstrate that latour’s theory fits into the paradigm of complexity through concepts and methods that surpass the old paradigm or paradigm of simplification and moves toward complex thought. one of the first points that latour seeks to redefine is the notion of subject and object in the conception and making of modern science. in agreement with morin (2005; 2005b), latour (1994) opposes modern epistemology, which understands object and subject as two opposite and completely separate spheres, where the supposed partiality and interests of the subjects are simply an obstacle to the correct understanding of the analyzed object. for latour, object and subject (or nature and society) are not starting points but rather the result of a long process that he calls translation or mediation. before we delve into the theoretical comparison we intend to conduct, it is important to briefly address the concept of translation, also called mediation, which is probably the central concept of the ant and latourian epistemology as a whole. it is worth emphasizing here, to avoid confusion, that latour uses these terms in a completely interchangeable manner, preferring one or the other depending on the work or situation. however, if we delve into the reading of his collective work, we will realize that these terms have very close and complementary meanings, especially from the use that this author (and other ant authors, such as michel callon and john law) makes of them. this means that, in general, the actions, or rather, the performances of any actant (human or non-human), in the understanding of the ant, always occur at the same time: translations, since they imply modifications and interpretations of reality; mobilization, considering that they involve movement of actants around some point or objective; mediations, once it is always necessary to use or create new connections—or associations—between actants to carry out an action. in latour’s words: “i used translation to mean displacement, drift, invention, mediation, the creation of a link that did not exist before and that to some degree modifies the original two” (latour 2001, 206), “in place of a rigid opposition between context and content, chains of translation refer to the work through which actors modify, displace, and translate their various and contradictory interests.” (latour 2001, 356). having made this brief clarification, we can continue with the subject-object issue. for the author of we have never been modern, nature and society are inseparable, one does not exist without the other, and it is impossible to say where one ends and the other begins. just as we are social beings, we are also animals (and, therefore, beings of nature). even language, which often defines us as human beings and provides us with the raw material for our thinking, is a product of both social conventions and our innate brain and phonatory apparatus. similarly, what we call society is the result of both legal and political conventions and an instinctive impulse present in our dna, since the human being is a social animal and our ancestors already lived in herds long before the emergence of modern homo sapiens. on the other hand, what we call nature surpasses us while it is our creation, impossible to be conceived without the aid of language, culture, and, more recently, through scientific understanding. and it is this point that latour uses to demonstrate the reach of his ideas: the transcendent nature remains, after all, mobilizable, humanizable, and socializable. laboratories, collections, calculation and profit centers, research institutes, and development offices daily mix this nature with the multiple destinies of social groups. conversely, although we have built the society in full, it lasts, it surpasses us, it dominates us, it has its laws, it is as transcendent as nature. this is because the laboratories, collections, calculation and profit centers, research institutes, and development offices daily trace the limits of social groups’ freedom and transform human relations into durable things that no one created. the critical power of moderns resides in this double language: they can mobilize nature within social relations, while keeping it infinitely distant from men; they are free to construct and deconstruct their society, while making their laws inevitable, necessary, and absolute. (latour 1994, 42) the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 according to bruno latour (1994), the separation that moderns make between subject and object, or their collective equivalents – society and nature, is completely artificial, produced by us at the end of a lengthy process of mediation (which blends the two things) and purification (which separates into two poles things that are inherently similar), but that we categorize as “social” or “natural” depending on the final result (closer to what we consider one or the other). for instance, an environmental policy like the preservation of natural reserves. although this involves plants, animals, and natural resources, sometimes upon which our survival depends, we believe that these laws and policies fall into the “society” pole because they seem more conventional than natural to the modern mind. however, their hybrid nature is apparent. it is nature’s policy while being a natural imposition when considering our dependence on these resources and the consequences of their devastation. at the same time, a certain species of tree within this reserve is placed in the “nature” pole, as it involves categories, concepts, and definitions from the natural sciences, such as biology and botany. however, these categories are constructed by the members of these sciences, through dynamics that are far more human than conventional epistemology and modern thinking can admit, involving categories of thought, concepts, points of view, interests, and controversies that demonstrate that nothing in that universe is fixed or absolute (latour 2001). the history of science itself and the controversies that latour explores throughout his career4 demonstrate the conventional and political nature inherent to scientific activity. in other words, the taxonomic categories of natural sciences are also hybrids, the result of a process that has human and non-human elements and transformations. we can observe in this account that, as proposed by edgar morin (2005; 2005b), subject and object are not antagonistic, quite the contrary, they are complementary, one only exists from the other. and bruno latour takes this argument to its ultimate consequences when he states that subject and object are not starting points, but finishing lines, results of a process (mediation) that involves the two parties all the time, so that only through a high level of abstraction can we separate what pertains to one or the other: if we are trying to unfold the middle kingdom itself, we are forced to reverse the general form of explanations. the point of cleavage and encounter becomes the starting point. explanations no longer depart from pure forms [nature pole and subject/society pole] toward the phenomena, but rather from the center toward the extremes. the latter are no longer the fulcrum of reality, but rather provisional and partial results. (latour 1994, 77) it is worth noting that this is not the same as saying that everything is conventional. as the author himself strives to debunk (latour 2001, 134167; latour 2012, 355-371), the so-called “social constructivism”, which attributes all reality to the subject and society – as if it were merely a convention, without (or with very little) support in the facts (or better said, in the resistance of non-humans), is just another type of reductionism. it inverts the logic of positivism toward the prism of conventional sociology, where everything is “social construction”. latour’s epistemology is very careful in this respect and strives to demonstrate in many of its examples and case studies that, while the reality of facts is flexible and supports many 4 there are many case studies and controversies explored by the author throughout his career, and it would be difficult to list them all. here, we indicate some of the more famous ones if the reader is interested: microbiology and pasteur’s yeast (latour 1988); the isolation of trf (h) in an endocrinology laboratory (latour 1997); the development of nuclear research during world war ii (latour 2001); various cases (latour 2000). the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 definitions (which are never definitive and are always at most “stabilized”), this same reality – which latour (2019) more recently called “mode of existence” or beings of reproduction, imposes resistance and does not behave simply as scientists and engineers wish. all the time there is a type of struggle and mobilization of other actants to “domesticate” nature, making it behave more or less as engineers want or fit into explanatory scientific models and theories. in latour’s words: (...) reality, as the latin word res indicates, is what resists. but resists to what? to the trial of strength. if, in a given situation, no dissenter is able to modify the form of a new object, then yes, it is reality, at least as long as the trials of strength are not modified. in the examples presented, there were many resources mobilized in the last two chapters by the dissenters to support their claims that, let us face it, resistance is futile: the assertion must be true. at the moment when the contestation stops, at the moment when i write the word “true”, a new and formidable ally appears in the winner’s field; an invisible ally until then, but now behaves as if it had been there all the time: nature (latour 2000, 155 author’s emphasis). indeed, it is this process of mobilization, modification and redefinition (also called mediation) of human and non-human actants (which always act together) that latourian epistemology seeks to explore symmetrically, making visible the movements of both sides in a struggle around temporary stabilizations that we call scientific facts or successful innovations. no definition of natural phenomena occurs outside of patterns and models manufactured by scientists through a long chain of references (latour 2001, 86). at the same time, non-human actors insist on not fitting perfectly into these patterns, acting unpredictably or revealing themselves to be more complex than we imagined, always provoking new discoveries and changes in scientific and technological understanding. this unattainable complexity is an important part of the approach between the two authors. for morin (2005, 177), complex thought must not only deal with, but also embrace uncertainty and incompleteness as part of scientific knowledge, both in the exact sciences and in the humanities (or even in transdisciplinary studies, which are the author’s ideal). accepting uncertainty allows complex thought to explore innovative and often revelatory paths. for instance, in quantum mechanics, embracing the inability to calculate the position and momentum of electrons with precision at the same time (heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) led to the realization that it was possible to discern interference patterns and wave functions. these provide a highly precise estimation of the region where an electron could be found (an orbital), even if it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact location of the electron within that region at any given moment. it is from this sense of incompleteness that bohr’s principle of complementarity (the dual nature of light) is born, previously mentioned in this study, and which serves as an example and analogy for the other sciences in morin’s proposal. similarly, in latour’s epistemology (latour 1988), reality is never thoroughly and definitively known. it can only be perceived through gradients of resistance – trials of strength, that is, through interactions between actants that produce noticeable changes or differences. in this way, it is as if we are groping reality in the dark, sensing the real only through its resistance, much like the edges and textures of an object that react to the touch of our fingers – akin to how quantum physics does not fully comprehend the wave-particle duality of light, but fumbles this phenomenon from the resulting patterns of experiments involving slits and particles (and their interactions). here we can see that uncertainty and incompleteness are at the heart of latour’s theory from the outset. it is this principle of uncertainty that allows the author to explore controversies and view reality only as temporary stabilizations, which exclude any form of reductionism and determinism. the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 we will gain a better understanding of how latour’s theory deals with uncertainty and complexity as we delve into how this theory (or meta-theory) responds to the challenge of complexity proposed by morin (2005) based on the principles driving this challenge, as previously presented in this study. we will start with the dialogical principle, which states that apparently antagonistic ideas and concepts, such as order and disorder, individual and collective, etc., should be explored to find their probable complementarity in most of the complex phenomena studied by scientists, as most of the time, according to morin (2003; 2005; 2005b), one depends on the other. in this sense, no other concept in latourian theory is more representative than the notion of human and non-human actors, or the heterogeneity of the mediation process. as we have already discussed in this section, according to latour, nature and society are finish lines, not starting points. the process, which necessarily involves both, always includes what we call human actors, i.e., individuals, groups, institutions, businesses, governments, etc., and non-human actors, such as machines, equipment, technological assemblies, algorithms, materials, etc. for this author, it is more important to realize that one cannot exist without the other, does not act without the other, and that for human actors have strength and their associations be durable, they necessarily need to be associated with non-human actants (latour 2000; 2012). in the latourian epistemology, there is no division between “social universe” and “material universe”. the symmetry advocated by the author is not a proposal for “equality” between two irreconcilable worlds, but rather the complete absence of asymmetry: we cannot speak of an empirical case when the existence of two coherent and homogeneous aggregates, for example, technology “and” society, make any sense. the ant is not—i repeat: is not—the creation of an absurd “symmetry between humans and non-humans”. achieving symmetry, for us, means not imposing a priori a spurious asymmetry between intentional human action and a material world of causal relationships. there are divisions we should not cross, overcome, dialectically reduce. they need, indeed, to be ignored and left to their own resources, like a once formidable castle now in ruins. (latour 2012, 111-112 author’s emphasis) particularly regarding the complementary notion of order and disorder – so valued in the epistemology proposed by morin (2005; 2005b), we can say that the main concept of latourian theory – that of translation or translation, is inspired, according to law (2007, 5), by the philosophy of michel serres, in which translation is treated as the overly human attitude of seeing some order in the sea of disorder that is the world. this ordering, in turn, is always fragile and temporary. as latour (2000, 338; 2001, 107) demonstrates, scientists, engineers, and even politicians must make a great effort, mobilizing many heterogeneous parts and materials, to keep associations operating as expected in scientific theories, technological innovations, or government programs. order, therefore, can both emerge from disorder and be devoured by it, amounting to nothing more than a temporary arrangement with more or less strength and stability. interpretive flexibility (included in the concepts of translation or mediation) and impermanence of associations are principles highlighted and explored throughout all of latour’s work, through dozens of case studies. by assuming that nothing is definitively known and at most can be considered a temporary stabilization resulting from resistance, latour also contemplates chaos and the unknown as parts or actants that are not perceived or mobilized. the author will call this unknown universe “plasma”, that is: (...) that which has not yet been formatted, measured, socialized, inserted into metrological chains, covered, inspected, mobilized, subjectivized. how big is it? take a the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 12 map of london and imagine that the social world visited so far only covers the space of the subway. the plasma would be the rest of london (...). (latour 2012, 347) this non-mobilized and unformatted part of the world we inhabit (both physically and subjectively) can be perceived as chaotic, as simple ignorance – or better said, not inserted into our metrological chains. this is a fundamental piece in latourian theory, which not only prevents social and “realist” reductions, but also explains changes in the scientific and social universe. from this, we can affirm that the dialogical principle proposed by morin is completely satisfied by the various sets of “symmetries” proposed by latour, since his intention is always to demonstrate that the two logics (society/nature; subject/object; human/non-human; reality/construction), are not only complementary, but in fact have never been distinct except as a product of high abstraction at the end of a process that is necessarily heterogeneous. the next challenge proposed by morin (2005) refers to the systemic principle and its consequence, the holographic principle, which says that in phenomena involving organizations (understood as that which constitutes a system involving different parts), not only is the part present in the whole, but the whole is also present in the part. latour does not use these terms, but in his philosophy, the whole, the macro, the “global”, or better said, the network of associations, is always present, even when we address an actant or action localized in time and space. according to latour (2012), although the concepts of local and global are most often seen as antagonistic, these terms are actually complementary, since one cannot exist and operate without the other. for this author, what we call local can only function globally (from a network), at the same time that global can only operate locally. if we consider every actor as an actor-network, we rapidly understand why every local is global: as we trace the connections that allow an actor to act, we soon perceive the global network that is linked to them. direct interactions must be seen as the endpoint of a myriad of people, a large number of actions pointing in that direction. in his words: an actor-network is always tracked whenever, in the course of a study, the decision is made to replace actors of any size with connected sites and locations, rather than inserting them into the micro and the macro. both parts are essential, hence the hyphen. the first part (the actor) reveals the scant space where all the magnificent ingredients of the world begin to be incubated; the second (the network) explains by what vehicles, traits, trails, and types of information the world is put inside these places and then, once transformed there, expelled from within its narrow walls. this is why the “network” with a hyphen is not just a stealthy presence of context, but as that which connects the actors. (latour 2012, 260) furthermore, in latourian theory, the number of actual interactions is always much larger than what is visualized by the analyst. even the actors considered mediators in the ant never act alone, they are always connected to a network that surpasses them and goes far beyond what it is possible to map. as latour points out: “the “actor’, in the hyphenated expression ‘actor-network’, is not the source of an action but the moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it” (latour 2012, 75), and also: “by definition, action is displaced. action is borrowed, distributed, suggested, influenced, dominated, betrayed, translated. if it is said that an actor is an actor-network, it is primarily to clarify that it represents the main source of uncertainty about the origin of action” (latour 2012, 76 author’s emphasis). therefore, the portrait produced by the analyst is always partial, in the figurative and literal sense, once it is impossible to trace all associations and mediations. the account will always be inconclusive, always open to improvements, and never deterministic. the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 13 thus, we can say that in the ant and, consequently, in latourian thought, the whole is always present in the part. it is always signified, mobilized, directed, influenced, represented (and so on) through other actors-networks (again, human and non-human). therefore, there is no isolated or autonomous particle or actant, the “global” network is always acting together. the next challenge proposed by morin (2005) refers to the recursive principle, which says that the effects (of nature or society) act on the cause to reproduce themselves, which ends up generating differences during the process. this principle certainly fits in with the perspective of the ant, as, according to latour (2000; 2012), there is no pre-defined social structure that orders us and defines our behavior, like defined pieces in a game with readymade rules. on the contrary, this “structure” is constantly questioned, challenged, disassembled, and reassembled by the actors-networks through their translation movements, with various and often conflicting objectives and interests. this does not mean that what we call society is always chaotic and unpredictable. the primary goal of most actors-networks is to produce stabilizations, compulsory passage points, black boxes that will remain unquestioned and functioning properly for a long time in a certain range in space (or network). however, here it is necessary to make two important caveats. first, according to latour (2012, 288), these stabilizations are only possible because of the non-human actors we are capable of mobilizing. they are the ones that allow action at a distance from a long chain of actants that enable, for example, a bank transfer, which in turn allows banks and account holders to trust their hard-earned money (a fundamental actor here) in a deposit that operates in an extremely complex and mysterious way for the minds of most people. the trust in all these factors (and many others)—which indicates stability, where atms and financial apps function as black boxes,5 which we do not need to understand how it works, but only how to operate, and banks act as a compulsory passage point for most transactions—is what allows account holders not to form desperate lines to withdraw all their money from the account as well as some financial stability to an increasingly globalized and branched system. in the second place, as latour has stressed throughout his work, these stabilizations are only temporary. rarely does a black box—such as a well-established scientific theory or a widespread technological artifact—last a long time without undergoing modifications, questioning, defects, adaptations and, finally, its complete replacement by something more efficient and effective. even in the example previously provided, we cannot forget the successive and constant financial crises we have faced with increasing frequency. what is a company or a bank whose shares are high today may well go bankrupt tomorrow, sometimes leading to a crisis in the entire financial system in much of the world, as we saw in 2008. new unicorns (startups worth more than a billion dollars) emerge every month, just as old companies that monopolized markets for decades go bankrupt every year. nothing is fixed in this “structure”. in latour’s epistemology and cosmology, nothing is, everything is in a state of becoming. to understand how a temporary stabilization in the form of a star (actors associated in a network, not crossed by any “social force” or extra dimension) occurs, the 5 latour (2000) borrows this concept from cybernetics to represent well-established scientific facts or widely disseminated technological artifacts. although these incorporate a myriad of heterogeneous associations within them, which enable their scope and functionality, they are treated as sealed devices. only what goes in and what comes out matters, meaning what this black box allows to be done without the user needing to understand it deeply or how it was constituted. latour also uses this concept to represent ready science when controversies have been resolved and the fact or artifact is stabilized. in contrast, according to the author, the analyst of science and technology should “open” this box, demonstrating how the view of science in action produces a perspective much more detailed and realistic than an analysis of finished science can do. the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 14 ant analyst should follow and pay close attention to the transformations and mobilizations that form all the time around these stabilizations in the form of disputes and alliances to destabilize or expand them. thus, we can say that latour’s philosophy fits into morin’s recursive principle (2005; 2005b), as there are no absolute and immutable causes. the effects of a network are constantly acting on their own causes (or the translations that shaped them) aiming at their expansion or replacement, which necessarily produces changes over time (in fact, all the time to some degree) in a recursive manner. in this process, non-human actors are essential, since most changes occur in the form of technological innovations (even in scientific research, which most of the time can only advance when it can count on new and better instruments). the fragility of order (social and natural) is, therefore, a fundamental point both in the paradigm proposed by morin and in latour’s philosophy. regarding the crisis of closed concepts and their overcoming (morin, 2005, 183), pointed out in the previous section, we can say that latour’s theory satisfies this point because the notion of symmetry previously addressed, in which there is no clear and definitive division between subject and object, society and nature, human and non-human, or network and environment (as the notion of plasma allows us to visualize). all these notions are united in latour’s philosophy through the synesthesia expressed by the concept of mediation, which unites different things in a single movement. the separation of these concepts, as we have already explored, is the result, the finish line of a process that operates from the heterogeneity inherent in the construction of black boxes (such as scientific theories and technologies). it is, therefore, an artificial construction of the moderns (latour 1994) who like to separate things into binary pairs (ready science), but who in practice (science in action) operate from hybridization. therefore, latourian epistemology operates precisely from the deconstruction of closed concepts, in which the aim of the analyst is to demonstrate how these concepts are artificial constructs and that sociology only stands to gain by avoiding them. finally, morin (2005, 185; 2005b, 96) states that it is necessary to bring the observer back to the observation. after going through all the principles and challenges, it is unacceptable to continue considering the observing subject as an obstacle or noise to be avoided. the researcher is an integral part of the research, without whom it would be impossible. continuing with our comparison, we can say that latour has never shied away from this challenge, and at no point in his work he tried to remove the observer to make the analysis “impartial”. quite the contrary, according to this author, the observer or analyst is an integral part of the network and the movements they map. according to latour (2000; 2001; 2012), the analyst should consider the situation or black box they seek to describe from the perspectives of as many actors-networks as they can trace, symmetrically, without assigning more or less importance to one or another based on preconceived notions such as the social status of the interviewee. it is through the controversies that can be perceived from the different accounts and narratives of the observed actors that the analyst is able to discover and map issues, problems, alternatives, and non-human actants that were previously hidden to laypeople or those not involved in the project at hand (in the case of technologies or government programs, for example). and the observer or analyst of the ant is part of this process. at the end of their research, the researcher must produce a report or account of the case. this account should be as descriptive, accurate, faithful, and objective as possible (which is only achievable through the symmetrical consideration of viewpoints and human and non-human actors). the more detailed the composition of this map of actors and the description of the behavior and actions of the actors in question, the stronger this account will be. therefore, according to latour (2012, 179), it is always a risky account, as in the end, if it is good enough, it will become part of the very network in question and act as a mediator that can modify the course of action. the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 15 this differs from the discourse that scientific analysis should be completely impartial and “disinterested”, as well as from the discourse that claims it is impossible and that all we can produce are “narratives” which are entirely dependent on the actors’ perspectives. according to latour (2012, 366), the sociology of associations is not a “construction” like fiction. by acknowledging that the analyst is also an actor-network, we can realize that it is possible to produce a detailed and well-grounded account with a plurality of viewpoints, which can be considered objective without excluding the subjectivity inherent to all actorsnetworks (including the analyst). the same applies to the activities of natural sciences such as physics, biology, etc. by producing a well-articulated chain of references and a detailed description of the data and how they were obtained and processed, the natural scientist (as well as the social scientist) ensures the circulation of information within well-defined channels, corresponding to the notions of circulating references or immutable mobiles (latour 2001). by analyzing these movements and translations through the lens of the sociology of associations, we can perceive a richness far greater than the reductionist essentialism of the old paradigm claimed to be realistic. final remarks throughout this study, we have sought to demonstrate how latour’s methodology and epistemology align with morin’s epistemological proposal for a broader scientific practice and understanding. they both embody a new paradigm that embraces the complexity of the world and rejects reductionist determinisms and closed concepts of the old paradigm, which has not yet been completely overcome in most scientific areas and methods. by doing so, we hope to have indicated not only how latourian epistemology is a solid example of complex thought, but also how much we stand to gain by utilizing the principles shared by these authors. at this point, we would like to emphasize the importance that morin attributes to quantum mechanics and relativity to overcome the old paradigm and inspire complex thought. these fields of physics broke with long-established and unquestionable principles, such as the notion of absolute time and space, which allowed for reductionist and deterministic operations in the sciences as a whole. by exploring the wave-particle duality and the inherent uncertainties of this mechanics, physicists were able to perceive that contradictions sometimes indicated complementarity and that certain measurements were impossible (at least simultaneously). it has become increasingly clear to physicists that it was impossible to know everything at the micro scale, such as the position and momentum of an electron (heisenberg’s uncertainty principle), and that one had to settle for patterns and wave functions that only indicated probabilities, albeit with great precision. similarly, the sciences in general, including the social sciences, have gradually moved away from deterministic claims and have been driven toward identifying trends, patterns, and probabilities. as a result of this approach, according to morin and also to us, we have not lost reach and precision; on the contrary, we have been able to perceive more relationships, more interactions, open systems instead of closed ones, complementarities instead of contradictions, and previously overlooked recursivity. in essence, complexity has replaced simplification. latour does not use the same analogies in his work, especially regarding quantum mechanics. however, throughout our comparison, we have been able to perceive how latourian epistemology is resistant to any type of reductionism or determinism, whether of naturalistic or social nature, and converges with morin’s proposal of complexity in epistemology. in this sense, it would not be incorrect to say that latour’s philosophy operates somewhat like quantum mechanics, where non-humans, like sub-particles, do not behave exactly as we desire, and cannot be precisely measured and visualized. as latour the paradigm of complexity in edgar morin and the latourian epistemology: an attempt to approach bruno rossi lorenzi – thales haddad novaes de andrade transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 16 points out, our knowledge about reality is solely based on the resistance and trails of strength offered by the actants. therefore, they are like experiments that only grope at quantum phenomena through the wave functions resulting from them. no one knows exactly how massive particles, such as electrons, are able to behave as both waves and particles simultaneously. the only thing physicists have at their disposal are the resistance and trails of strength offered by these sub-particles through experiments involving multiple slits. there is always the possibility of new potentials and resistance being perceived, revealing some new aspect of reality that will only be understood in some way when it is incorporated into a collectively stabilized explanatory model. as sciences advance in their endeavors, it is inevitable that new conceptions and resistance emerge, leading to destabilizations and opening previously sealed black boxes. we have nothing to lose in this process, except for some accommodations. but for that, we need to embrace the complex thought of this new paradigm, immune to simplifications and unquestionable facts. references al-khalili, jim. 2003. quantum: a guide for the perplexed. london: weidenfeld & nicolson. harman, graham. 2009. prince of networks: bruno latour and metaphysics. melbourne: re.press. http://www.re-press.org/book-files/oa_version_780980544060_prince_of_networks.pdf accessed: 02/14/2022. latour, bruno. 1988. the pasteurization of france. translated by alan sheridan and john law. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. latour, bruno. 2010. “tarde’s idea of quantification”. in: candea, matei (ed.). the social after gabriel tarde: debates and assessments. new york: routledge, pp. 145–162. latour, bruno. 1994. jamais fomos modernos. rio de janeiro: ed. 34. (ca 1, 2 e 3) latour, b. (2001), a esperança de pandora: ensaios sobre a realidade dos estudos científicos. bauru, sp: edusc. latour, bruno. 2000. ciência em ação: como seguir cientistas e engenheiros sociedade afora. são paulo: unesp. latour, bruno. 2012. reagregando o social: uma introdução à teoria do ator-rede. salvador. edu a; são paulo: edusc. latour, bruno. 2019. investigação sobre os modos de existência: uma antropologia dos modernos. petrópolis, rj: vozes. morin, edgar. 2005. ciência com consciência. tradução de maria d. alexandre e maria alice sampaio dória. 8ª ed. rio de janeiro: bertrand brasil. morin, edgar. 2005b. introdução ao pensamento complexo. editora meridional. porto alegre: sulina. morin, edgar. 2003. a cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento. tradução de eloá jacobina. – 8ª ed. rio de janeiro: bertrand brasil. tarde, gabriel. 2003. monadologia e sociologia. petrópolis: vozes. microsoft word bardi layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2021 (11): 1-13 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2021 – this is an open-access journal article hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science: rethinking the history of astronomy between second-century ce alexandria, ninth-century baghdad, and fourteenth-century constantinople alberto bardi1 [https://orcid.org/0000.0002-9440-2849] abstract: originating in the field of biology, the concept of the hybrid has proved to be influential and effective in historical studies, too. until now, however, the idea of hybrid knowledge has not been fully explored in the historiography of pre-modern science. this article examines the history of pre-copernican astronomy and focuses on three case studies—alexandria in the second century ce; baghdad in the ninth century; and constantinople in the fourteenth century—in which hybridization played a crucial role in the development of astronomical knowledge and in philosophical controversies about the status of astronomy and astrology in scholarly and/or institutional settings. by establishing a comparative framework, this analysis of hybrid knowledge highlights different facets of hybridization and shows how processes of hybridization shaped scientific controversies. keywords: astronomy; astrology; hybrid knowledge; alexandria; baghdad; constantinople doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2021.i11.09 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction originating in the field of biology, the concept of the hybrid has proved to be influential and effective in historical studies, too (stross 1999). however, the idea of hybrid knowledge has not been fully explored in the historiography of pre-modern science. this article examines the history of astronomy (and astrology)2 from late antiquity till the fifteenth century and focuses on three case studies—alexandria in the second century ce; baghdad in the ninth century; and constantinople in the fourteenth century—in which hybridization played a crucial role in the development of astronomical knowledge and philosophical controversies 1 alberto bardi is an assistant professor in the department of the history of science at tsinghua university. address: department of the history of science, school of humanities, tsinghua university, haidian district, beijing 100084, china. e-mail: alberto.bardi@live.com. 2 from antiquity till early modernity, astrology was not terminologically distinguished from astronomy. among others (rutkin 2019). in the current paper, both astronomy and astrology will be under consideration, and i will properly explain the distinctions below, turning to ptolemy’s own statements to do so. hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 2 about the status of astronomy and astrology in scholarly and/or institutional settings. my use of “hybrid” and its relatives derives from influential work in intellectual history, such as the notion of hybridization in knowledge as defined by anna winterbottom. she uses “hybrid” “to encapsulate what the diverse ways of knowing that i will explore have in common with one another: an admixture of information drawn from diverse sources drawn together to make something new.” (winterbottom 2016, 2).3 steven shapin points out the inevitable hybridity of social and scientific knowledge (shapin 1994 and 2010). with an awareness of this limit, the study considers alexandria in the second century, baghdad in the ninth, and constantinople in the fourteenth, in order to cover a wide spectrum in the pre-copernican history of astronomy.4 these cases offer three radically different historical-intellectual contexts as well as diverse cultural, religious, and institutional settings. therefore, by putting them into a comparative framework,5 this analysis of hybrid knowledge will highlight facets of hybridization in several instances, and will show the following: how processes of hybridization are used in intellectual controversies to legitimize or reject “foreign knowledge” (e.g., from hellenistic to islamic cultures and from islamic to byzantine); how legitimization triggered the creativity of scholars to produce or justify new forms of knowledge; how hybrid knowledge links to clashes between radical religious factions and groups of scholars open to new forms of knowledge in both the islamic and the byzantine worlds; and how hybrid knowledge links to the reconceptualization of the epistemology of astronomy and astrology from one culture to another. alexandria in the second century ce: the hybrid nature of astrology and the betrayal of platonic ideals the major product of hellenistic astronomy is undoubtedly the great mathematical syntax, better known as the almagest, of claudius ptolemy, a scholar who worked in alexandria under roman rule in the second century (toomer 1984, pedersen 2011). the work itself can be described as the result of a hybridization of greek geometry with babylonian arithmetic.6 hybridization, in this case, means not only a successful mixture, but the production of new knowledge,7 for instance, a new kind of astronomical table (discussed below). the almagest provided a mathematical astronomy that was useful not only for computing planetary positions and eclipses but also for decision-making, weather forecasting, and making predictions about many other aspects of life and nature, commonly known as “astrology.” the latter has been distinguished terminologically from the scholarly tradition of “astronomy” in modern times (rutkin 2019). moreover, there have been controversies over astrology’s status as a science. notions of hybridity shed new light on these controversies and their cultural settings. the most influential systematization of knowledge that can be labeled “astrology” was redacted in the second century in ptolemy’s tetrabiblos, also known as apotelesmatics (ptolemy 1940). the introduction to the work helps us to understand astrology through the eyes of ptolemy and the alexandrian scholars: 3 further publications which inspired the current study include: (burke 2009), (burke 2016), (stockhammer 2012). 4 copernicus’ major work, on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, was published in 1543, but a first draft of his heliocentric theory was written around 1515 and circulated among his peers (see swerdlow 1973). 5 for this methodology i am indebted to ma and van brakel (2016). 6 this claim is often implicit in the historiography of astronomy. for an explicit statement see anderson (1962: 175). 7 for a detailed overview of the novelties provided by ptolemy in the almagest see goldstein (2007). hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 3 of the means of prediction through astronomy, o syrus, two are the most important and valid. one, which is first both in order and in effectiveness, is that whereby we apprehend the aspects of the movements of sun, moon, and stars in relation to each other and to the earth, as they occur from time to time; the second is that in which by means of the physical character of these aspects themselves we investigate the changes which they bring about in that which they surround. the first of these, which has its own science, desirable in itself even though it does not attain the result given by its combination with the second, has been expounded to you as best we could in its own treatise by the method of geometrical proofs. we shall now give an account of the second and less self-sufficient method in a properly philosophical way, so that one whose aim is the truth might never compare its perceptions with the sureness of the first, unvarying science, for he ascribes to it the weakness and unpredictability of material qualities found in individual things, nor yet refrain from such investigation as is within the bounds of possibility, when it is so evident that most events of a general nature draw their causes from the enveloping heavens. but since everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men, and in the case of the two before-mentioned disciplines the allegations against the first could be made only by the blind, while there are specious grounds for those leveled at the second—for its difficulty in parts has made them think it completely incomprehensible, or the difficulty of escaping what is known has disparaged even its object as useless—we shall try to examine briefly the measure of both the possibility and the usefulness of such prognostication before offering detailed instruction on the subject. (translation robbins, slightly reworked, see ptolemy 1940, 2–4) briefly, astronomy is endowed with a higher degree of certainty, granted by geometrical proofs, while astrology is a less self-sufficient branch—the physical branch—of astronomy. “physical” here refers not to physics, as in the modern sense, but to the sublunar world (physis). astrological foundations are based on the grounds of the regular occurrence of the same effects of the sun and the moon, and of other regular occurrences, which were compiled via the observations of not only astronomers, but also farmers and sailors. to elevate these observations to the level of science, accurate knowledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies is necessary. in other words, the observer needs to have studied the mathematical astronomy contained in ptolemy’s almagest. a mathematized form of divination, astrology can be taken as a hybrid form of knowledge that combines mathematical astronomy with divination. in the tetrabiblos, ptolemy argues that astrology does not enjoy a good reputation chiefly because of the mistakes of unskilled astrologers and the financial motivations of the people who produce horoscopes. aside from these factors of social history, astrology’s scientific status is intrinsically subject to criticism because: 1) the object of study of astrology lies in the sublunar world, which is per se subject to change and instability; 2) the same configuration of the heavens is never exactly repeated—at least, not within the lifetime of a single observer. therefore, replicability cannot be taken as a criterion for this science and observation plays a minimal role. however, the third chapter of the tetrabiblos stresses the usefulness of astrology. similar to ancient historiography, it helps predict what is likely to happen in the future, so that people can take preventive measures to avoid harm. although ptolemy does not convey the notion that events befall mankind as if they were preordained by divine command, astrology’s predictive faculty gave rise to issues that would (and continue to) attract criticism on the grounds of determinism and the role of free will. before looking further into astrology, some comments here on the almagest will be expedient. according to ptolemy, the very goal of mathematical astronomy was to educate hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 4 people in order to contemplate the laws governing the heavens and thus become, in the platonic sense, god-like. for ptolemy and his fellow scholars, mathematics, not theology, was the highest form of philosophy.8 the almagest provided its audience with the know-how to construct an innovative kind of astronomical table, which would create a quantitative representation of the geometrical models expounded in the almagest in user-friendly, tabular form. in the almagest, a table never appears on its own, but always as a constitutive element of a complex mathematical argument that relates the tables to the geometric model (sidoli 2014). the goal of the tables was to show that apparently irregular motions are actually based on the periodic motions of circles. the tables attracted the attention of people uninterested in the theory, such as astrologers. furthermore, a new mathematical practice of astronomy in tabular form had been inaugurated, and would continue to influence the history of astronomy for centuries thereafter. after completing the almagest, ptolemy established a structured set of astronomical tables, known as handy tables, which were adapted from the tables embedded in that earlier treatise. ptolemy also produced a short introduction to the handy tables, disseminated separately from the tables themselves, known as the psephophoria or arrangement and calculation of the handy tables (the title varies considerably in its manuscript forms). the text comprises chapters listing and explaining the use of the individual tables. the tables were of immense importance in antiquity and medieval traditions of the western and eastern mediterranean and the middle east. they superseded other formats of astronomical knowledge, such as the tables of babylonian tradition.9 one may think immediately of ptolemy’s tables when reading that astronomy in the middle ages was the “science of kings” and that kings, caliphs, and emperors would pay large sums for the best and most accurate astronomical tables. someone in full possession of the know-how provided by the astronomical tables would be able to draw schematic maps (horoscopes) of the heavens for the present, past, and future, which could then be properly interpreted after studying the tetrabiblos. the true philosopher, according to ptolemy, learns both the almagest and tetrabiblos, and in that way, can reach full contemplation and become god-like. the social history of astronomy registers a significant change after the second century ce. the proofs one was supposed to learn to become a true philosopher were perceived as too difficult. this was likely one of the reasons why ptolemy reworked the tables and set them into a single work, the above-mentioned handy tables,10 and provided instructions on how to use them. moreover, the alexandrian commentators of ptolemy’s work, the mathematicians pappus and theon,11 evidence the difficulty of the subject and the problems encountered by students in alexandria. for instance, in his commentary on the almagest, theon describes the situation in fourth-century alexandria: what has been left without a commentary seems difficult. as for those people about whom ptolemy, at the beginning of the work [i.e. the almagest], says are willing to prove the whole topic geometrically, they end up managing most of the topics in handy tables through simple methods. on the contrary, we have not only put our best efforts into going through each topic through geometrical proofs as far as possible, but have also left nothing at all of difficult teaching, and we are not among those people who hold this opinion on the subject. (my translation; original text in rome 1931–43, vol. 2, book 1, p. 318 ll.8–14). 8 on ptolemy’s philosophical foundations see boll (1894), taub (1994), and feke (2020). 9 for a study of the different kinds of tables circulating in roman alexandria and the novelty of ptolemaic tables see jones (1997a, 1997b, 1998, 2000). 10 the edition (partial) of the handy tables is provided by tihon and mercier (2011). 11 on pappus see gillispie (1970–1981, vol. 10, 293–304), on theon see gillispie (1970–1981, vol. 13, 321– 325). hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 5 in a similar fashion, theon’s little commentary on the handy tables reports: my epiphanius, we have accurately provided a more rational method for the computation of the stars in the handy tables in another treatise in five books. however, because the majority of those who followed our classes in order to learn the subject not only are unable to follow sufficiently the multiplications and divisions of the numbers, but also are completely ignorant of geometrical proofs, we have done our best to systematically comment on them [the tables] by providing plain methods so that the exposition of the subject would be clearer to them [i.e. those who do not understand geometry]. (my translation; original text in tihon 1978, 199, ll. 1–10) people referred to the tables simply to learn how to use them, without comprehending the geometrical proofs underlying their construction. after the second century, the hellenistic world increasingly saw scholars adopting the use of tables without education in geometrical proofs, in practice that was likely perceived as “astronomy” and “science” among the educated population. contrastingly, from ptolemy and his peers’ philosophical perspective, this could constitute a betrayal of platonic philosophy. the transmission of this betrayal from alexandria to baghdad and to constantinople offers new insight with which hybrid astronomical knowledge in the arabic and the byzantine worlds can be examined. ninth-century baghdad: abū maʿšar and the criticism of astrology ptolemaic works reached the arabic world through translations from syriac and middle persian. the elements we have found in ptolemy and his commentators in terms of theory, practice, and difference in the nature of the two branches of astronomy were transmitted almost unchanged. there is evidence of this in ninth-century baghdad in the work of the renowned pupil of al-kindī, abū maʿšar. in his great introduction to astrology, book one, chapter five sets out ten points of criticism against astrology, which abū maʿšar carefully refutes in order to legitimate astrology as a science.12 among these criticisms and refutations, the third is especially important for the current study, and it starts as follows: the people of reflection and disputation refute the science of astrology, saying that the stars do not indicate a thing which comes to be in this world. they argue this by claiming that the stars do not indicate the possible (contingent). we shall now discuss some arguments of the ancients who rejected the possible. then we affirm 12 here i cannot treat all points in detail. for the comparative framework of the current study, points 3 to 6 proved to be the most appropriate. the reader will find excellent explanations and discussions of all points in burnett (2002, esp. 206–211) as well as burnett and yamamoto (2019, vol. 1, 12–15), to which i am indebted. the english translation from the original arabic is burnett and yamamoto (2019, vol. 1, 107–150). since i treat points 3 to 6 below, i offer a brief sketch of the other points in the following. point 1 refutes the arguments of those who criticize astrology as unfounded on the ground that planets have no influence on anything below the sphere of the moon; point 2 concerns the argument that the planets indicate universal things, not individuals; point 7 deals with the criticism moved against astrology from people unable to master the theory; point 8 concerns some physicians who, inspired by the promise of making a quick profit, do not want to properly study medicine, which includes astrology; point 9 moves against accusations from people who esteem science on the basis of scientists’ income; point 10 refutes those who consider astrology unscientific on the basis of the practice of incompetent astrologers (those who avoid the mathematics). hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 6 the possible. then it will become clear that the stars indicate the possible. (translation burnett; see burnett and yamamoto 2019, vol 1, 111) the rest of the objection addresses accusations of astrology as being deterministic and denying free will. as convincingly shown by adamson (2002), abū maʿšar can be deemed a “compatibilist” because he argued that free will is not denied by the determinism that astrology apparently generates. briefly, abū maʿšar recalls aristotle and claims that not everything has to be necessary or impossible, but that some things could go either way (in other words, they are contingent). similarly, the planets, which were endowed with rational souls, indicate the necessary, the impossible, and the contingent. since both planets and human beings are faced with the necessary, the impossible, and the contingent, the faculty of choice in human beings is not affected by determinism, because a choice evolves from the confrontation of the human rational soul with the human animal soul. the planets, instead, determine the relationship between the two parts of the human soul. on this account, the human being is free to choose what the stars indicate. abū maʿšar’s great introduction also criticizes the fact that both branches of the sciences of the stars were considered problematic in ninth-century baghdad. for instance, point four addresses the opinion shared among astronomers that stars influence only the changes of the seasons. as a refutation, abū maʿšar employs ptolemy’s recommendation, mentioned above, that in order to study astrology properly, one must master mathematical astronomy along with its geometrical proofs. thus, abū maʿšar and his followers also took the tetrabiblos and the almagest to be complementary. point five states that astronomers reject astrology on the grounds that no one has the length of experience of observing the stars necessary to verify whether a repeat of the same configuration of the stars brings about the same effects. abū maʿšar replies that astrologers, specifically as mathematical astronomers, rely on the collective experience of their predecessors, such that it is valid to make deductions from analogy. point six claims that astrology is unscientific on the grounds that different astronomical tables give different values for the positions of the planets. in this instance, abū maʿšar argues that number-counting is not the most important part of astrology. if an astrologer gets the wrong values, the blame should be put on the mathematicians who provided the numbers in the tables. once again, the mathematics of the almagest is conditio sine qua non for the good astrologer. as for the “people of reflection and disputation” mentioned in point three, this can refer to two groups, according to burnett’s and yamamoto’s studies of arabic manuscripts (burnett and yamamoto 2019): ahl an-naẓar wa-l-ǧadal, or mutazilites, according to one manuscript tradition; ahl al-ḥadīṯ wa-n-naẓar, or “traditionalists,” according to another. the latter rejected astrology on the grounds that it was a foreign science and its greek philosophical foundations were not in accordance with the teaching of the qur’an, and were thus potentially harmful to society.13 the mutazilites, on the other hand, were in favor of greek knowledge and translated and disseminated greek science and philosophy in arabic. therefore, they struggled to make the case that astrology was discordant with the foreign sciences they were mastering, and that it was unfounded, employing the points of criticism recalled by abū maʿšar. the two groups, alongside other factions (saliba 2002), were living amid a climate of political struggle for cultural hegemony, and the discrepancies between astrology and the doctrine of the qur’an therefore played a crucial role in astrology gaining official acceptance. 13 for a survey on the factions in favor and against astrology in ninth-century baghdad see saliba (2002). hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 7 at any rate, in baghdad, astrology was understood, at least by an influential group of scholars, as an integral part of astronomy, as ptolemy proposed, with the caveat that astrologers cannot pretend to foretell the future with certainty, for that is a domain of knowledge that pertains only to divinity. in that cultural context, abū maʿšar managed to establish the foundations of astrology by considering it as a part of natural philosophy, conceived of in an aristotelian framework. astrology could enjoy the status of a science because it discovered causes by observing effects, and it could be freed from accusations of determinism or of being against the teachings of the qur’an. in summary, astrology could be considered hybrid with regard to both its disciplinary status and the traditions from which it stemmed. in ninth-century baghdad, the hybridity of astrology as a discipline led the mutazilites to criticize it as an unfounded science, while the hybridity of its cultural origins served as the main target of attack by those advocating the purity of quranic teaching (discussed further in the conclusion below). fourteenth-century constantinople: the reception of abū maʿšar and controversies about the status of astronomy and astrology abū maʿšar’s great introduction and the nativities were translated into greek at a certain point. surviving manuscripts of the greek versions of the great introduction stem from the fourteenth century onwards, according to david pingree’s examinations.14 the byzantine world had already inherited all the problems related to the status of astronomy and astrology from the achievements of alexandrian scholars, benefitting from linguistic and stylistic continuity. as early as the seventh century, the byzantines had their first handbook on the handy tables of ptolemy, ascribed to stephen of alexandria working for the emperor heraclius, and astrological aims were deliberately included, because astrology was cultivated in byzantine imperial courts (magdalino and mavroudi 2007). the ptolemaic conception of astrology as a less self-sufficient branch of astronomy permeates the centuries of byzantine culture as well as troubling its status as a science. this is likely the reason why the ten points of criticism of the great introduction (book one, chapter five) are missing in the extant greek manuscripts. astrology was frequently the subject of polemics throughout the byzantine era. in the fourteenth century, this criticism led to the formation of factions which partially resembled the “traditionalists” and the mutazilites mentioned by abū maʿšar. before delving into this scenario further, here it is worth mentioning the brief work hermippus on astrology (h. de astrologia).15 the great german philologist franz boll discovered that this text contained a portion of abū maʿšar’s nativities that had been translated into greek and interpolated (boll 1912). at first glance, hermippus shares more similarities with the tetrabiblos than with the greek version of abū maʿšar. this could be due to linguistic continuity, but there are other possible explanations, too. in the extant literature, there is no consensus about the composition and the authorship of hermippus. manuscript editions of the text date from the fourteenth century but it may have been composed earlier. there are two candidates for the text’s authorship: john catrarios and nikephoros gregoras, both of whom were active as scribes and composers of astronomical texts in fourteenth-century byzantium (jürss 1964). hermippus has been described in the literature as a dialogue on astrology and a defense of it. i am skeptical about its dialogical nature, because hermippus and his interlocutor have only a few exchanges; it is arguably a monologue of hermippus. furthermore, it is more a treatise on the beauty of astrology than a defense against criticism, since it touches on all the 14 see burnett and yamamoto (2019, vol. 2, 1–5). 15 the greek text is edited in kroll and viereck (1895). i am currently working at the english translation. hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 8 possibilities that are granted to those who want to study astrology. the book explains the nature of the planets (which are endowed with souls) and the effects of their conjunctions on the world and human affairs, the nature of the human soul and its parts, and how they influence our decisions. unlike abū maʿšar, hermippus is not a compatibilist. in fact, his neoplatonic framework does not generate any concerns about determinism. the author even employs neoplatonic concepts to describe the nature of christian concepts, such as the holy trinity: i will plainly explain what’s left, that is: reason (λόγος) is the vehicle of the intellect, the soul is the vehicle of reason, and the spirit is the vehicle of the soul. […] for this reason, when we are successfully and appropriately inspired—if we observe properly—we worship the three hypostases in god and the mystery of the triad [i.e. trinity] from which life begins and was revealed to us. that which is the intellect in us is the father in them [the hypostases], reason is the son, the soul is the [holy] spirit, and by them, the spirit is uncreated and life-generating. (my translation; original text in kroll and viereck 1895, 21) what is also striking is that the author claims astrology is necessary in reaching the contemplation of god, implying that scriptures, prayers, and ascetic practices alone would not be enough (magdalino 2006, 154–157). unlike ptolemy and abū maʿšar, the author does not elaborate on proofs or the use of tables, indicating the introductory character of this work. hermippus’ statements would have sounded problematic in fourteenth-century byzantium. in constantinople, instead of mutazilites and traditionalists, there were hesychasts and palamites. furthermore, there were controversies not just surrounding astrology but also regarding theological issues, such as the procession of the holy spirit.16 the hesychasts, originally a group of monks on mount athos, were considered specialists in reaching the contemplation of god through a specific ascetic practice, called “the prayer of the heart.” the group became very influential in the orthodox world in the fourteenth century and was attacked in 1337 by barlaam the calabrian, a byzantine scholar from italy. he claimed they were mad and that it was impossible that they could see the uncreated light of god as a result of the prayer of the heart. an influential byzantine theologian, gregory palamas, defended the group, refuting barlaam by developing a doctrine to distinguish god’s “essence” from god’s “activities.” according to palamas, the latter was reachable through ascetic practices like those of the hesychasts, while the essence of god, according to scriptures, is unknowable to human beings. in the 1340s and 1350s, the polemics between barlaam and palamas became a matter of official theological discussion in the church of constantinople. eventually, barlaam was condemned as a heretic and converted to catholicism, while the doctrine of palamas became official in the decrees of the council of 1351. de facto, without being hesychast and a follower of the doctrine of palamas, it was hard to be accepted into the scholarly realms of the church of constantinople. the church of constantinople had always treated astrology with suspicion, but once the prayer of the heart and the doctrine of palamas became part of the official sphere, the church turned completely against the practice of astrology and its epistemological capacity, such as some statements in the hermippus. according to the byzantinist paul magdalino, astrology and ascetic practice became two competing epistemologies which eventually clashed (magdalino 2006). 16 on hesychasm and palamism see, among others, meyendorff (1974), rigo (2004). an overview of late byzantine social, political, and ecclesiastical history is offered by nicol (2008). hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 9 evidence of this is provided by theodorus meliteniotes’ rejection of astrology in all its aspects and applications. meliteniotes was a hesychast, palamite, and rector of the patriarchal school of constantinople whose treatise on astronomy, composed around 1352, was entitled three books on astronomy (bardi 2020). the first two books deal with the use of the astrolabe and the tables of ptolemy, while the third is a handbook on islamic astronomical tables (zījes) translated into greek from the original works by maraghan astronomers, imported into constantinople via trebizond at the beginning of the fourteenth century through a cultural broker—the byzantine scholar gregory chioniades (pingree 1964; 1985). chioniades had traveled to tabriz in the ilkhanid empire and learned the science of the stars from experts whom he refers to as “persians,” then came back via trebizond, where he would have finalized his translations. while chioniades’ works, as well as those of meliteniotes, deal with the side of astronomy that does not require one to learn geometrical proofs, in around 1300 the polymath theodorus metochites developed the first byzantine commentary on the almagest, comprising proofs, theorems, and tables (bydén 2003; paschos and simelidis 2017). he followed the conceptual distinction between astronomy and astrology as ptolemy and abū maʿšar had done. however, unlike ptolemy, he classified astronomy according to an aristotelian framework, therefore placing theology as the highest form of knowledge, and the study of the stars as a step below. given the double nature of celestial objects, which fall under the domains of both mathematics and physics (natural philosophy), the study of the abstract properties of those objects was more easily executed due to the certitude granted by mathematical proofs. metochites accepted astrology as influential in the sublunary world but rejected its possible influence on human decisions on the grounds of determinism and denial of free will, which would lead to a loss of responsibility in the field of human actions. he was not a “compatibilist,” but rejected astrology on moral, rather than scientific, grounds. due to the difficulty of metochites’ prose and his taste for the proofs of the almagest, he was almost an isolated voice, with the exception of his pupil nikephorus gregoras, who was keen on mathematics, but whose career was limited by his not being a hesychast. as a result, the byzantine manuscripts from the fourteenth century contain dozens of copies of astronomical tables from both ptolemaic and arabic traditions, but nobody has ever challenged the almagest as scholars did in the arabic world. transcriptions and marginal notes indicate that some attention was paid to ptolemy by byzantine scholars before metochites. similar to methods used to disparage the traditionalists mentioned by abū maʿšar, astrology was tactically labeled a “foreign science” in constantinople, in order to reject it as an opposition of monotheistic principles. gregory chioniades, on account of his encounters with muslim scholars, had to make a profession of faith in constantinople to prove his orthodoxy. the use of tables for astrological purposes was not new to byzantium, but the practice became politically sensitive during the civil wars in late byzantium and became an essential part of the theological debates concerning the proper way to reach god, as in the case of barlaam against palamas. meliteniotes’ work emblematizes the incorporation of “foreign astronomy” (tables taken from zījes) into the byzantine world. unlike the translations of chioniades, meliteniotes omits astrological chapters in his handbook to the so-called “persian tables” (bardi 2018). however, the content of his three books on astronomy is exclusively practical, comprising instructions on how to use the tables of ptolemy alongside those of the zījes. on the one hand, metochites’ treatise on the almagest considers astronomy as a whole and as a means of helping one become god-like through the learning of proofs and theorems. on the other hand, meliteniotes’ approach marks a radical rejection of the double nature of astronomy, banning astrology from the program of the patriarchal school of constantinople, where he was working as rector around 1352. in other words, in late byzantium there was no consensus on the concept of a “true philosopher” as elaborated by ptolemy. for metochites, one must hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 10 master the proofs; for meliteniotes, an official voice of the church of constantinople, learning the procedures to use the tables is good enough. on this account, the contradictory view on astronomy, which in alexandria was generated by the betrayal of platonic ideals, was repeated in late byzantium when interest in the almagest was revived by metochites. the interplay between geometrical proofs and the use of the tables to reach the contemplation of the heavens resembles the state of the art inherited from alexandria. of course, aside from observing scholarly and official recommendations, the practice of astrology spread due to its applications in medicine and warfare, as well as the desire for foreknowledge amid a time of crisis, as the ottoman conquest moved ever closer. comparisons and final remarks in light of the concept of the hybrid, this article has surveyed the history of pre-copernican astronomy within the three different historical and cultural contexts of alexandria, baghdad, and constantinople. the field of inquiry on hybrid knowledge and the history of astronomy undoubtedly needs to be further enriched: on the one hand, facets of hybridity have been detected in the philosophical or socio-political aspects of astronomy’s cross-cultural history; on the other hand, those features pertaining to mathematics and instrumentation will be the subject of further research. at any rate, already some partial conclusions can be drawn here. by comparing the three case studies chosen for this paper, two main notions of hybridity have emerged: 1) the hybridity of astronomy as a discipline; and 2) hybridity with regard to the traditions from which astronomical knowledge stemmed. they can be considered common lines of reading within the historical time frame with which the current study has engaged. along these lines, a comparison of the aforementioned case studies suggests further and more extensive conclusions, which i provide in the following. the success of ptolemaic works in alexandria between the second and fourth centuries can be understood as the outcome of ptolemy’s reliance on a hybrid heritage: the achievements of greek and babylonian scholars. as has been shown, it is historically apt to consider ptolemaic astronomy as a whole that consists of the almagest and the tetrabiblos, viz. mathematical astronomy and astrology. the latter, being a combination of mathematical astronomy and divination, drew criticism in all three historical contexts, due to its scientific status. the combination of analogical reasoning drawing from previous results based on geometrical proofs can be seen as a form of hybrid knowledge itself. the habit of avoiding the geometrical proofs of astronomy in order to focus on tables is a well-documented trait of the social history of astronomy; as a betrayal of the platonic ideals of ptolemy, it had repercussions on the history of the epistemology of astronomy. in alexandria, baghdad, and constantinople, a strand of criticism against astrology was established on the grounds of the unreliability of the mathematics on which (bad) astrologers were making predictions. accordingly, the recommendation to study theorems and proofs of astronomy in order to become a good astrologer became a necessity that would endure in the history of astronomy until astrology was later demoted from the academic disciplines. notably, the astronomer regiomontanus, whose work was of fundamental importance for the future advancements of copernicus, complained about the inaccuracy of some astrologers in his renowned lecture of 1464, and recommended the study of mathematics because astrology is the queen of mathematical sciences, granting its practitioner access to divine realms (rutkin 2019, 369– 373).17 the habit of relying on astronomical tables, aside from contributing to the proliferation of bad astrologers in each of the cultural contexts examined above, generates an epistemological misunderstanding in fourteenth-century constantinople. according to 17 on regiomontanus’ lecture see also (swerdlow 1993), (byrne 2006), (malpangotto 2008, 133–146), (goulding 2010, 8–10), (omodeo 2021). hybrid knowledge and the historiography of science alberto bardi transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 11 (december) 2021 11 the byzantine sources on ptolemaic astronomy, teaching in geometrical proofs and teaching in procedures were considered equivalent. the statements of byzantine authors should likely be taken with a pinch of salt: they were inserted into rhetorical premises to astronomical treatises and their function was mainly to demonstrate the erudition of their authors. at any rate, with the benefit of hindsight, metochites and meliteniotes are the only sources on the epistemology of ptolemaic astronomy that have come down to us from late byzantium, and they prove to be contradictory. meliteniotes’ three books on astronomy, combining ptolemaic and islamic astronomical knowledge, employed the rejection of astrology as a tool to make “foreign knowledge” acceptable to his christian orthodox readership. in this instance, astrology’s hybridity was used to generate a hybrid work, which led to non-byzantine knowledge gaining official acceptance for the first time. when religious factions such as the hesychasts (christian orthodoxy) and the traditionalists (defenders of quranic doctrine) faced the hybridity of astrology as a discipline, the controversy between them and advocates of the full potential of astrology shifted into a dispute about the correct way to reach a contemplative status of divinity. both factions (christian hesychasts and islamic traditionalists) defended their respective positions by recalling the hybridity of astronomy in terms of its tradition: in both cases a pagan (and hellenistic) one. at a general level, ninth-century baghdad and fourteenth-century constantinople saw the formation of factions who considered astrology and monotheistic faith to be incommensurable, by labeling astrology a “foreign science,” thus potentially damaging the faith of the receiving culture: embracing astrology would have meant accepting determinism and the denial of free will, a position which would have been at odds with the teachings of islamic and christian faith. the mutazilites, instead, attacked astrology on the grounds of it being a foreign science because they deemed it unfounded compared to their conception of greek sciences. in the mutazilite worldview, astronomy’s hybridity as a discipline and as a tradition merged. after the achievements of the alexandrian tradition and the betrayal of platonic ideals with regard to astronomy, the hybrid knowledge of the ptolemaic heritage was repeatedly reconceptualized in aristotelian frameworks (as in abū maʿšar, metochites, meliteniotes), but the elaboration of the ptolemaic conception of becoming god-like had different outcomes: abū maʿšar was a compatibilist, whereas metochites and meliteniotes conceived of astrology as denying free will. acknowledgments an early draft of this study was presented at a seminar on cultural brokerage in pre-modern islam, organized by luke yarbrough and uriel simonsohn at the israel institute for advanced studies. i am grateful to them and to the participants for useful suggestions and comments. i reworked some materials i used for that seminar and reconsidered them in the light of the history and historiography of science. for the final form 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de théon d’alexandrie aux tables faciles de ptolémée. città del vaticano: biblioteca apostolica vaticana. tihon, anne and raymond mercier, eds. 2011. πτολεμαίου πρόχειροι κανόνες. les tables faciles de ptolémée. 2 vol.. leuven: peeters. toomer, gerald j. 1984. ptolemy’s almagest. london: duckworth. winterbottom, anna. 2016. hybrid knowledge and the early east india company. new york: palgrave macmillan. microsoft word biacino layout 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2020 (9): 1-38 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2020 – this is an open-access journal article development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino1 abstract: in (biacino 2018) the evolution of the concept of a real function of a real variable at the beginning of the twentieth century is outlined, reporting the discussions and the polemics, in which some young french mathematicians of those years as baire, borel and lebesgue were involved, about what had to be considered a genuine real function. in this paper a technical survey of the arising function and measure theory is given with a particular regard to the contribution of the italian mathematicians vitali, beppo levi, fubini, severini, tonelli etc … and also with the purpose of exposing the intermediate steps before the final formulation of radon-nicodym-lebesgue’s theorem and the italian method of calculus of variations. keywords: borel and lebesgue measurable functions; lebesgue-vitali’s theorem; absolutely continuous functions; vitali-lusin’s theorem; bounded variation functions; additive set functions and their derivatives doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2020.i9.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction in (biacino 2018) the evolution of the concept of a real function at the beginning of the 20thcentury, after the introduction in the mathematical world of the dirichlet’s concept of function, the appearance of a series of pathological functions and finally the definitions of new classes of sets and functions given by the french mathematicians baire (1874-1932), borel (1871-1956) and lebesgue (1875-1941), is examined. their purposes and attempts to propose a large class of functions and sets as accessible objects, where all the mathematical classical operations could be performed, their discussions and polemics, in which many other mathematicians were involved, are reported. in this paper the early development of measure and function theory is exposed and discussed in detail, with a particular emphasis on the new technical results about functions and the comparison of their properties. the contribution of some italian scholars to the just 1 loredana biacino [https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7035-3993] is a former associate professor at the d. m. a. of university “federico ii” of naples. address: via blundo, 42, 80128 napoli, italy. e-mail: loredana.biacino2@unina.it development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 2 born theory of measurable functions is underlined also: as i observed in (biacino 2019), a particular interest in the theoretical questions about real functions and a noteworthy sensibility towards riemann’s integral theory were already present in the thought of the italian mathematician u. dini (1845-1918); this is why the theses of baire, in 1898, and lebesgue in 1902, were published on the annali di matematica, directed by dini; indeed, the important mathematician had already developed in his famous treatise: fondamenti per la teorica delle funzioni di variabili reali in 1878 noteworthy attempts at the study of the functions of a real variable in a very general setting; there he gives the notion of indetermination limits in a point, on the left and on the right, for oscillating functions and the consequent definition of derived numbers, the so called dini derivatives, the proof of the hankel condensation principle and a great amount of fundamental theorems, we will often quote in this paper. many of his disciples also gave this theory fundamental contributions. the young v. volterra (1860-1940) in a paper published on the giornale di battaglini, in 1881 proposed the first example of a bounded derivative that is not riemann integrable (volterra 1881 b). this function is a pointwise discontinuous function, that is, as in the definition in (dini 1878, 62), even it has infinitely many discontinuities, in every part of the interval where it is defined there is at least a point of continuity for it. but it is not riemann integrable: dini claims that if a function is riemann integrable then it is pointwise discontinuous, but he says also that he believed that the converse in general does not hold (dini 1878, 250). the previous example by volterra proves that he was right; and that pointwise discontinuous functions exist whose set of discontinuities has positive lebesgue measure. but mainly it proved that riemann’s theory of integral was inadequate to solve the problem of the research of the primitives of a given bounded function and justified the introduction of lebesgue’s integral, as lebesgue himself notices in his leçons. no wonder if a good series of results in measure and real function theory was produced by the successive generation, that is the generation of c. severini (1872-1951), g. vitali (1875-1932), f. fubini (1879-1943), b. levi (1875-1961) and l. tonelli (1885-1946): the work of all these mathematicians is amply quoted and expounded in this paper, the origin of their ideas and the connections with the french scholars are also underlined. so in the following essay you will find a brief history of many important theorems about the new classes of functions introduced at the beginning of 20th century, as lebesgue-vitali’s theorem, vitali characterization of integral functions, vitali-lusin’ theorem etc. up to radom-nicodymlebesgue’s theorem: indeed these theorems not only allowed a complete organization of the material and a significant progress of the theory but represented even a key to win the resistance of the classical mathematicians who thought that only very regular functions were useful when doing mathematics. at the same time the way was beginning to open to the important applications to the variational calculus and functional analysis. vitali-lebesgue’s theorem at the beginning of 1900, the mathematicians work mainly using analytic functions or functions provided of one or more derivatives, except at most for a finite number of points. now in general a riemann integrable function, a baire function, a lebesgue measurable function are not of such a kind. this is why a comparison of the new classes of functions becomes essential and proceeds rapidly at the same rate of growth of measure and integration theory. another important problem was to characterize a riemann integrable function by means of some property of the set of its discontinuities. the idea of hankel that a function is riemann integrable if and only if it is pointwise continuous was proved to be wrong, as we development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 3 have said, so the problem kept unsolved. the young vitali2 in the first years of 1900 was a teacher at sassari, voghera and genua. despite he came from the school of dini and arzelà, he worked in general without contacts with other mathematicians3; after his important papers about analytic functions linked to the arzelà’s research, he was interested, perhaps indirectly influenced by dini, in the works of cantor, borel, jordan. so in 1904 vitali in his brief paper sulla integrabilità delle funzioni (vitali 1904) and lebesgue in his leçons (lebesgue 1904 a), separately characterize riemann integrable functions; they establish in this way a link between the rising theory of functions and classical mathematics, solving definitely a problem in which the mathematicians were interested since 1867. the demonstrations by lebesgue and vitali are fundamentally equivalent; lebesgue claims that: main theorem – a real bounded function f(x) is riemann integrable if and only if its set of discontinuities is a null measure set. it is merit of lebesgue to have borrowed the definition of a null measure set from borel: it is a set such that its points can be enclosed in a finite or enumerable number of intervals whose total length is as small as we want. on the other hand stating the same theorem independently vitali requires that the set of discontinuities has estensione minima nulla,4 where the minimal extension of a set is the g.l.b. of the sum of the lengths of the intervals of a finite or enumerable system that covers the set without internal points in common. this is equivalent to the definition of lebesgue’s external measure (lebesgue 1904 a, 104), so the two definitions are completely equivalent. both the demonstrations start from the du bois-reymond’s criterion, where the notion of the oscillation5 of a real function f(x) in a point y as the difference between the maximum and the minimum limit of f(x) in y is used: a real bounded function f(x) in the interval (a,b) is integrable if and only if for every >0 the set of the points where the oscillation is greater than  is an “integrable” (according to lebesgue-du bois-reymond) or a “rinchiudibile” (according to vitali) set. 2 for a biography of vitali see the introduction by pepe to (vitali 1984,1-24) and also (pepe 1984) and (vaz ferreira 1991). 3 tricomi said about him: “fu essenzialmente un self made man che, per buona parte della sua carriera, lavorò quasi senza contatti con altri scienziati, e gli capitò di arrivare simultaneamente ad altri, ma indipendentemente da loro, specie dal lebesgue, a fondamentali risultati di teoria delle funzioni di variabile reale, che altrimenti gli avrebbero data fama mondiale” (giusti e pepe 2001, 152). 4 also vitali in his paper sui gruppi di punti (vitali 1960, 139), where develops his measure theory independently but equivalently to lebesgue, quotes (borel 1898). 5 du bois-reymond (1831-1889) introduces the “limits of the indetermination” of a series and their difference since 1870 (hawkins 2002, 26). in 1875 also ascoli (1843-1896) gives a punctual definition of oscillation and furnishes the following condition: a function is integrable in [a,b] if and only if for every >0 and for every sequence of decompositions of [a,b], g1, g2, g3, ... in partial intervals such that the maximum width of the intervals of the decomposition gn tends to 0, the sum of the measures of the intervals containing points where the oscillation is equal or greater than  tends to 0 when n tends to . (for the proof see (ascoli 1875) and (letta 1994)). the preceding condition is equivalent to the criterion established by du bois-reymond in 1882. (ascoli 1875) is written in italian and is difficult to read, perhaps this is why it passed unnoticed: lebesgue and also the italian vitali refers always in their works to du bois-reymond criterion and do not quote it. it is also worth noticing that in the same year in which darboux memoir on discontinuous functions appears, in (ascoli 1875) the existence of upper and lower integrals of a bounded function is proven. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 4 both words in the preceding criterion, “integrable” or “rinchiudibile”, indicate a peano jordan null set. but, while, as we will see, vitali devoted to the subject two papers when he was youth and a third one in the years of maturity, lebesgue claimed, after remembering that yet in a note of c.r. in 1901 he demonstrated the necessity of the condition: “j’attache d’ailleurs assez peu de f𝑢t à cette condition qui est identique, au langage employé près, à celles de riemann et du bois-reymond” (vitali 1960, letter of february, 16th, 1907 from lebesgue to vitali). in the leçons, after the demonstration of du bois-reymond’s criterion as a consequence of riemann criterion, lebesgue proceeds quickly to prove the necessity: if f(x) is integrable, then for du bois-reymond criterion the set g()= {𝑥: 𝑜𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑓(𝑥) ≥ } is integrable for =1, , , ... . on the other hand the set of discontinuities coincides with g(1)g( )g( ).... then it has null lebesgue measure. on the contrary if the set i of discontinuities of f(x) has null measure then for every >0 a sequence of intervals (𝐼 ) exists such that 𝐼 contains i and the sum of the lengths of such intervals is <. consider the set {x : oscill f(x)  }: it is contained in i and, by a baire’s result, is closed (baire 1899, 10), therefore a finite number of the previous intervals cover it and therefore it is integrable. so, by the du bois-reymond criterion, also the sufficiency of the condition is proved. the proof by vitali is fundamentally the same, save for some little variations in the name of the notions at stake. it is interesting to remember that, in the paper sulla condizione di integrabilità delle funzioni (vitali 1903), written one year before, vitali furnishes a criterion with a different statement, where only rinchiudibili sets are involved:6 criterion 1 a real and finite function f(x) is integrable in an interval (a,b) if and only if the set of its singularities is such that every closed subset of it is rinchiudibile. the proof is founded basically on the du bois-reymond’s criterion and on the following theorem proved by vitali: criterion 2 if f(x) is a real finite function, integrable in the interval (a,b), then every real and finite function (x), continuous in the points where f(x) is continuous, is integrable in (a,b). proof of criterion 1 the condition is sufficient because if it holds then the set of the points where the oscillation of f(x) is greater or equal to , being a closed set contained in the set of the singularities, is rinchiudibile and therefore by du bois-reymond’s criterion f(x) is integrable. conversely, if f(x) is integrable and d is a closed subset of the set of its discontinuity points, then it is possible to construct a function g(x) with a jump greater or equal to  in the points of d and continuous elsewhere: such a function is integrable by criterion 2 (that is not proved here) and therefore by the du boisraymond’s criterion the set d is integrable. it is interesting to remember that vitali deals again with this subject in (vitali 1927), in the years of his maturity, when he furnishes a new demonstration of the main theorem. the proof, we give the only if part of it, is very simple because, even if it requires more advanced notions, it is not linked to du bois-reymond’s criterion, but is related directly to the riemann definition of integrability. on this occasion, indeed, vitali makes use of the following property: given a real, bounded function in an interval (a,b), the upper (resp. lower) darboux 6 vitali uses a particular case of a theorem by osgood (american journal of mathematics, 19), that is: if a closed set is the union of a sequence of rinchiudibili sets, it is rinchiudibile. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 5 integral, as a function of the upper limit of integration x is an absolutely continuous function whose derivative is f(x) in the points x where f is continuous. now, if a function is absolutely continuous and his derivative is a. e. zero then the function is constant. therefore if f(x) is a.e. continuous in the interval (a,b) then the difference between the upper and the lower integrals, an absolutely continuous function, has a.e. null derivative so it is a constant: but this difference is zero if x=a and therefore upper and lower integrals coincide in all of (a,b), that is the function is integrable. vitali-lusin’s theorem in 1904-05 great interest was devoted to the study of baire classes by several authors: in (lebesgue 1904 b) h. lebesgue proves again, but this time without the use of transfinite ordinals, the fundamental theorem already established by baire that a function is of class 1 if and only if it is punctually discontinuous. in 1905 g.vitali in a brief paper, una proprietà delle funzioni misurabili proves that: every real measurable function is the sum of a function of class not greater than 2 and of an a.e. zero function7 (vitali 1905 a). the proof is based on the observation that every measurable function is the sum of an a.e. zero function and of a function that is the limit of a non-decreasing sequence of first class functions. such functions can be determined thanks to a theorem nowadays known as lusin’s theorem, which furnishes a characterization of lebesgue measurability and is established in this paper by vitali for the first time. lusin (1883-1950) in his turn will state and prove it again independently in a special paper in 1911. 7 in (volterra 1881 a) it is proven that, given a finite number of punctually discontinuous functions (that is first class functions by baire theorem) defined on the same set d, the points where they are all continuous is a dense subset of d. in (lebesgue 1904 b) this fact is generalized to the case of a sequence of functions. on the other hand, young (1863-1942) proves in 1911 that every real bounded measurable function is the sum of a first class function and of an a.e. null function, without quoting the results of vitali and lebesgue (young 1911). indeed young proves that every bounded measurable function f(x) is equivalent for purposes of integration to an upper bound of an increasing sequence of upper semicontinuous (u.s.) functions and to a lower bound of a decreasing sequence of lower semicontinuous (l.s.) functions (young 1911, 16). now an u.s. or a l.s. function is a first class function and therefore, by baire theorem, is pointwise continuous. by the preceding theorems by volterra and lebesgue, given an increasing sequence of u.s. functions and a decreasing sequence of l.s. functions, there is a dense set e where all the functions are continuous and therefore f being the upper limit of the first sequence is l.s. in e. and being the lower limit of the second sequence is also u.s. in the same set e, then f is punctually discontinuous, that is belongs to the baire first class. it is worth noticing that, some years before, the argument was discussed in some letters from lebesgue to the young fréchet (taylor dugac 1981); in the letter of dec. 26th, 1904, lebesgue writes: “you start from a very beautiful observation, that is if f is the limit of fn and fn is the limit of fnp then it is possible to select some fnp in such a way they have f as their limit except for a set of null measure. then you conclude that if fn is limit of polynomials (except on a null measure set) also f is limit of polynomials. it follows that every baire’s function can be represented a. e. by a sequence of polynomials”. since every measurable function a.e. coincides with a baire function it follows by the previous fréchet theorem that every real measurable function of real variable is the a.e. limit of a sequence of continuous functions (taylor dugac 1981, 150 and following, where two proofs by lebesgue are given). it is also interesting the remark by lebesgue (taylor dugac 1981, 159, letter of january, 22th,1905): “it is clear that the foregoing statements implies: ‘f equal a.e. to a convergent sequence of polynomials’, but that does not mean ‘f a.e. the same of a function that is everywhere of the first class’”. it is interesting to remember that tonelli in 1910 proves that every lebesgue summable function of two variables is a.e. the sum of a series of polynomials (tonelli 1910). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 6 here is the statement of vitali-lusin’s theorem: if f(x) is a measurable function in an interval (a,b) whose length is l, then, for every >0 a closed subset p of (a,b) exists such that the restriction fp of f to p is a continuous function. in a footnote vitali claims that this theorem looks like another theorem at which the following papers hint: borel, un théorème sur les ensembles mesurables. c. r., 7. 12. 1903, lebesgue, sur une proprieté des fonctions, c.r., 28. 12. 1903 and lebesgue, leçons, footnote at p.125. vitali adds that the author, that is lebesgue, did not give yet explicit demonstration of it.8 the proof of vitali-lusin’s theorem is based on a proposition stated and proved by vitali himself: if f(x) is a measurable function in a subset g, whose measure is m, of a bounded interval (a,b), then given the numbers >0 and >0, there exists a perfect subset g1  g, whose measure is greater than m- and there exists a segment , such that in every interval whose measure is ≤, the function, restricted to the points of g1, has an oscillation ≤. now vitali proves the main theorem. indeed let 1, 2,... s, ... be positive numbers such that the sum of the series 1+ 2+...+ s+ . . is less than . moreover let 1, 2, ..., s, ... be an infinitesimal sequence of positive numbers. by the preceding proposition there exist a perfect set g1 such that m(g1)>l-1 and a number 1 such that in every interval whose length is ≤ 1 the function f(x), restricted to g1 has an oscillation not greater than 1. now for the preceding proposition applied to g1 there exist a perfect set g2⊆g1, such that m(g2)>m(g1)2, and a number 2 such that in every interval whose length is ≤ 2 the function, restricted to g2, has an oscillation ≤ 2, and so on. the intersection of the sets g1, g2, .... is a closed set , whose measure is m()>l∑  >l-. the function f is continuous in the points of : indeed, for every positive  there exists s< and for every x0, in every neighborhood of x0 whose length is ≤ s the function restricted to gs and a fortiori to , has an oscillation ≤s<. now we will expose the proof of vitali-lusin’s theorem given by lusin in 1911 in his note on the comptes rendus where his results on measurable functions already published in russian the year before are exposed. a characterization of the class of baire functions is obtained in a very simple way since it is based on severini-egoroff’s theorem (lusin 1912). by the way we remember that this theorem was proved before by severini in 1910 and after independently by the russian mathematician egoroff (1869-1931) in 1911: the brief paper by egoroff starts quoting borel (borel 1905, 35) and riesz9 treatment of the relations between a.e. convergence and measure convergence (egoroff 1911) and the author obtains his simple proof by using a consequence, obtained by lebesgue, of the implication a.e. convergence  measure convergence.10 8 in (lebesgue 1904 a, footnote p. 125) the following, statement appears: “toute fonction mesurable est continue, sauf aux points d’un ensemble de mesure nulle, quand on neglige les ensembles de mesure , si petit que soit ”. analogous statement one can find in the note sur une proprieté des fonctions (lebesgue 1903). in it lebesgue observes that the preceding property, he calls borel property, since this author has pointed out it in a note of the c.r. (december 7th, 1903), characterizes the measurable functions. 9 f. riesz, sur les suites de fonctions mesurables, c.r. t.148, p.1303. 10 an equivalent statement is given for the series, as we will immediately see, in (lebesgue 1903), for the proof see (lebesgue 1906, 9) and (borel 1905,35). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 7 also severini’s proof is based on lebesgue’s result, but it is inside another demonstration: for this reason and also because it is written in italian, the theorem is known out of italy with the only name of egoroff.11 the statement of severini-egoroff’s theorem is the following: if (𝑓 ) is a sequence of measurable functions in [0,1] a.e. converging to a function f(x) then for every >0 there exists a closed set p such that meas(p)>1- and the sequence uniformly converges to f in p. here is the proof by severini for the series, completely independent from the context were it is inserted: consider in an interval (a,b) the a.e. convergent series fn(x). by a result in (lebesgue 1903), given two positive numbers  and , it is possible to determine an increasing sequence of natural numbers n1, n2, ..., ni,.... such that, if h is the set of the points where some remainder of the series starting from the n is ≥  then m(h )≤  . now if i’ is a natural number such that  ≤ and if h =h  h  ... h  .... then in (a,b)h the series uniformly converges. indeed for every g>0 if i” is such that i”≥i’ and  " ≤g , then for every n≥ n " it is |∑ f (x)|<  " ≤ g for every x(a,b)h "(a, b) − h ; moreover m( h ")≤ m(h )≤  +  + ....+  + ...=  ≤ . the proof by egoroff is very similar. it is possible to find a proof of vitali lusin’s theorem, in (lebesgue 1903), where the “proprieté de m. borel” stands for a new type of continuity arising from continuity when passing to the limit: in order to prove that the functions defined at the present time satisfy borel’s property it is enough to remark that the continuous functions satisfy this property and it is preserved when passing to the limit. and lebesgue adds, without demonstration: every convergent series of measurable functions is uniformly convergent if we omit a set whose measure is 𝜀, 𝜀 being as small as we want. borel and lebesgue already enunciated in 1903 not only vitali lusin, but also severini egoroff theorem! the very simple proof by lusin is similar to the preceding one given by lebesgue: it is based on the fact that if f is of class 1, by severini egoroff theorem, the following property holds: for every >0 there exists a closed set p such that meas(p)>1- and f is continuous on p. now lusin proves that the class of functions for which this property holds is closed under a.e. convergence (“elle se conserve à la limite”, as lebesgue says). it follows that all baire’s functions verify this property. 11 only in 1924, in the brief note su una proposizione fondamentale dell’analisi, (b.u.m.i.(2), vol. 3, p. 103-104) l. tonelli (1885-1946) credits severini for the first proof of severini-egoroff theorem. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 8 moreover, every lebesgue measurable function coincides a.e. with a baire’s function and vitali-lusin’s theorem is proved. it is interesting remember that some years after, l. tonelli introduces the definition of funzione quasi-continua (almost continuous function) in the following way (tonelli 1921, 131): a function f defined in the interval (a,b) is called an almost continuous function if for every >0 there exists a closed subset h of (a,b) such that the restriction of f to h is continuous and m(s-h)<.12 many authors were interested in this argument. sierpinski, in 1916, in order to give an elementary proof of lusin’s theorem, gives a new definition of measurable set based on set theory. precisely he defines the sets of null measure as usual, then for every set he calls it measurable if it is the union of a closed set and of a set of null measure: he does not give a definition of measure but he can define in this way measurable functions (sierpinski 1916). absolutely continuous functions in (lebesgue 1904 a) the author studies with care functions of bounded variation whose main properties he describes since chap. iv. but only in chap. vii, after defining the notion of summable function, he displays their more interesting properties. in his thesis he had proved that if a function f(x) is everywhere derivable and his derivative is bounded then the derivative is lebesgue integrable and the following equality: f(x)-f(a)=∫ 𝑓′(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 holds, but he had been unable to extend this result to whatever unbounded derived number. this is accomplished in (lebesgue 1904 a) in the following way: assume a derived number of a function is finite,13 then it is summable if and only if the function is of bounded variation. if this is the case its total variation coincides with the integral of the absolute value of the derived number.14 (lebesgue 1904 a, 122-123) lebesgue claims also that the fundamental relation f(x)-f(a)=∫ 𝜇(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 holds, where 𝜇 is the derived number that is supposed to exist. the proof is based upon the notion of chain 12 without reference to vitali-lusin’s theorem, in 1921 tonelli proves that every almost continuous function is lebesgue measurable, but the converse does not hold, because: non sono definite quelle funzioni nelle cui definizioni si fa uso del principio delle infinite scelte arbitrarie. indeed, this author introduces the class of measurable sets in a completely new way in order to avoid any use of choice axiom: obviously it is a more restrict class of sets than the class of lebesgue measurable sets. for the same reason he considers exclusively analytically expressible functions (as defined by lebesgue): he proves that they are all almost continuous and defines his integration theory, less generally than lebesgue, based on the new measure space and quasi-continuous functions. so, his definitions of measurable sets and functions and his integration theory are closer to borel’s than lebesgue’s theory and they agree with the classical contemporary mathematics. vitali represents an opposite tendency with respect to choice axiom and uses it in a decisive manner to prove the existence of a not lebesgue measurable set (vitali 1905 e). 13 observe that if it possesses only discontinuity of first type it is riemann integrable. indeed in 1908 l. tonelli wrote discontinuità di 1a specie e gruppi di punti, (tonelli 1960, 69-74) where he proves that the set of the discontinuities of first type of a real function of a real variable is at most countable. then if a function has no second type discontinuities, for (dini 1878, 244), it is riemann integrable (as riemann’s function). 14 this last equality is wrong in general if the derivative number is not finite in every point: indeed if f(x) is the cantor function then its variation is 1, but the integral of its derivative number is zero (see also the statement and the proof in (levi 1906, 359)). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 9 of intervals he defines at p. 62 and the use of transfinite ordinals. he extends also the fundamental theorem proved by dini (dini 1878, 278)15 for riemann integrable functions to lebesgue summable functions, but it is surprising since, while dini’s result agrees with the vitali-lebesgue’s theorem that a riemann integrable function is almost everywhere continuous, no similar information is available for summable functions (for example the characteristic function of the rational numbers of the interval [0,1] is summable but totally discontinuous): if f is summable on [a,b], then the derivative of the integral 𝐹(𝑥) = ∫ 𝑓(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 is a. e. equal to f(x). he concludes his book by adding that: every bounded variation function f(x) has a. e. a finite derivative that is summable. but in general f(x) is not a primitive of its derivative, as it is possible to see for example with the cantor function (lebesgue 1904 a, 128-129). then lebesgue claims, in a footnote and without demonstration that: in order that a function is an indefinite integral its total variation in every countable number of intervals of total length l has to tend to zero with l. and also: if in the statement at page 94 one does not suppose f(x) bounded nor f(x) with bounded derivatives numbers, but only the previous condition, then one obtains a definition of integral equivalent to that developed in this chapter and applicable to all summable functions bounded or not. now at page 94 there is the following definition whose particular cases are duhamel’s and riemann’s definitions of integral: a bounded function f(x) is called summable if there exists a function f(x) with bounded derivatives numbers that admits f(x) as its derivative except for a set of values of null measure. the integral in (a,b) is then, by definition, f(b)-f(a).16 in 1905 vitali writes the paper sulle funzioni integrali (vitali 1905 d). where he focuses on the nomenclature and gives the fundamental definition of absolutely continuous function that will be quoted in all the subsequent literature on this topic. let f(x) be a real function defined in the interval (a,b) and let (c,d) be an interval contained in (a,b): vitali calls increment of f(x) in the interval (c,d) the difference f(d)-f(c) and 15 if f(x)= ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 (riemann’s integral) then the four derivatives of f are all finite and (riemann) integrable and if g is one of them, then f(x)-f(a)= ∫ 𝑔(𝑥)𝑑𝑥. 16 the passages from the leçons above can be found also in (lebesgue 1907 b, 286 note 1), where lebesgue claims priority about the extension of the fundamental calculus theorem. in the same paper he says that b. levi pointed out to him the paper by vitali where the same theorem is enunciated and proved. lebesgue quotes many other works by vitali about lebesgue’s theory and concludes: these points of contact show that the theorems we are talking about are very natural and they arise to all those are studying such questions. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 10 calls increment of f(x) in a set of pairwise disjoint partial intervals the sum of the increments of f(x) in every interval. then he calls absolutely continuous a function f(x) if for every >0 there exists >0 such that the sum of the absolute values of the increments of f(x) in a set of pairwise disjoint intervals such that the sum of their lengths is less than , is less than . he calls integral function a function f(x) if there exists a (lebesgue) summable function f(x) in (a,b) such that for every x(a,b) it is: f(x)-f(a)=∫ 𝑓(𝑡)𝑑𝑡. at this point vitali shows that: a function f(x) in (a,b) is an integral function if and only if it is absolutely continuous. in this way vitali expresses in an elegant manner the only sketchy thought in the lebesgue footnote, and furnishes a precise demonstration of it, including the case of not bounded derived functions. in order to obtain the proof of the fundamental theorem, vitali establishes some partial results that one can find also in the leçons: for example he proves that if a function is absolutely continuous then it is of bounded variation, (toute intégrale indéfinie est à variation bornée, in the leçons) and also that it is not true the converse of the preceding proposition, that is there are continuous functions of bounded variation that are not absolutely continuous like the cantor function (the (x) function of the leçons): indeed it is continuous and not decreasing, therefore it is a function of bounded variation, but for every >0 there exists a set of intervals whose union contains the cantor set such that the sum of all the intervals is less than : the increment of the function in it is equal to 1 and therefore the cantor function is not absolutely continuous. borrowing a theorem from the leçons he modifies slightly, vitali proves that 1) every derived number of a continuous function with bounded variation is a. e. finite. then he proves that 2) if a function f(x) is absolutely continuous and zero is a.e. between the two derived right numbers then f(x) is a constant (vitali 1905 d, &6). moreover, generalizing an important result of the leçons to unbounded functions: 3) the indefinite integral of a summable function has a.e. this function as its derivative (&7). 4) the lower right-derived number d of a continuous non-decreasing function f(x) in the closed interval (a,b) is summable ( &8). 5) an absolutely continuous non-decreasing function is an integral function (&9). finally, since every absolutely continuous function is the difference of two absolutely continuous non-decreasing functions, the theorem is proved. in 1916 l.tonelli, (tonelli 1916a) in the paper sulla ricerca delle funzioni primitive, will give a simpler proof than vitali’s one of the fact that an absolutely continuous function is the integral of its derivative, a proof more elementary also than the first rough one by lebesgue, based on intervals chains and resorting to the transfinite (lebesgue 1904, 121-22). tonelli’s proof is obtained approximating the given function of bounded variation, whose graph is therefore rectifiable, by piecewise linear functions. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 11 exchange of opinions b. levi – lebesgue for its conceptual characteristic breaking with the traditional mathematical culture, the apparition of the leçons by lebesgue gave rise to a series of comments. since lebesgue’s admirable and extensive work often shows some obscure aspects, b. levi, in 1906, begins an interesting exchange of opinions with the french mathematician, writing four notes on the rend. acc. dei lincei, justifying he himself some enunciates by lebesgue, and suggesting that the demonstration of some other propositions has to be improved. levi intends to submit the more questionable propositions of (lebesgue 1904 a, 12223) to a careful analysis, following anyway lebesgue’s methods. namely in the first note he begins considering the proposition by lebesgue: the integral of one of the derived numbers of a function (supposed finite) does exist if and only if the function is of bounded variation; if this is the case the indefinite integral of that derivative number is a primitive. now, levi says, in this proposition the hypothesis that the derivative number is bounded is essential and therefore the proof given by lebesgue is faulty. in order to give a more careful proof of it levi proves some auxiliary facts: the lower or upper, right or left derived numbers of a continuous function belong to the baire second class; therefore, they are measurable (levi 1906 b, 433).17 if f(x) is a continuous function and in every point the right and left derivatives exist then the set of the points where they are different is enumerable (levi 1906 b, 437). then he proves again the proposition of (lebesgue 1904 a, 120), that is: the indefinite integral of a bounded measurable function f(x) has a.e. a derivative equal to f(x). he demonstrates with care that the previous theorem holds also in the case f(x) summable but not bounded (pp. 674-681). in all the notes he continues his strong analysis of lebesgue’s work, studying in detail the relations between the behavior of derivatives and their primitive functions. and particularly he corrects the previous lebesgue’s statement in the following way: a function of bounded variation is a primitive of one of its derived numbers if this number is bounded (and not merely finite). this is analogous to some other propositions in (lebesgue 1904 a,123-125) that are rather ambiguous for the presence of the word “finite” in place of “bounded”. one of the main results of levi’s research about this topic is the following very interesting characterization of the integral functions: let f(x) be a continuous function in the interval [a,b] and let u(x) be one of its derivative functions. then the fundamental theorem of the calculus holds if and only if the set of the 17 in (baire 1899, 64) it is proved that if a function is derivable then its derivative is in the first class. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 12 values assumed by f(x) in a zero measure set has zero measure and u(x) is a summable function (levi 1906 b, 358).18 the fundamental theorem by levi in the case the derived number is not bounded is given in (levi 1906, 359), using the notion of reducible set that is a set such that one of its derived sets is empty: let u(x) be one of the derived functions of the continuous function f(x) in the interval [a,b]: if the set of the points where u(x) is infinite is at most reducible, then the necessary and sufficient condition in order that u(x) is lebesgue summable, is that f(x) is of bounded variation. then f(x) = ∫ 𝑢(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 +c, where c is a constant. observe that by the characterization of the integral functions given by vitali, we can obtain by this theorem the following interesting proposition: a continuous function is absolutely continuous if one of its derived functions is summable and the points where it is infinite is at most reducible. after the long proof, levi observes that he has preferred a way of proof different by that used by lebesgue: the french mathematician in his proof, in order to calculate the total variation of the given function, considered a sum extended to an enumerable chain of intervals. remember that a chain of intervals, defined in (lebesgue 1904 a, 63), is an ordered set of disjoint intervals of the real line. every interval is contiguous to the preceding one if it exists; otherwise it has as first extreme the upper bound of the second extremes of the preceding intervals. the operation of extending a sum to an enumerable chain of intervals seems to levi an elegant and suggestive but always very delicate operation, resorting to the transfinite, about which levi has some reservations. lebesgue, quite irritated, immediately answers, (lebesgue 1907 a, b), meeting some levi’s objections and adding some intermediate reasoning, but also explaining some definitions he himself used. he claims that, while a bounded derivative of a function is not necessarily riemann integrable, as volterra proved with a counter example, on the contrary: the indefinite lebesgue integral of a bounded derivative always exists and is one of its primitive functions. if the derivative is not bounded he remembers that in the leçons he gave the following propositions: the indefinite integral of an everywhere finite (bounded or not) derived number is one of its primitive functions if and only if the derived number is lebesgue summable. moreover: 18 observe that, by vitali’s theorem about integral functions, this proposition implies the following banach-zarecki theorem: if f(x) is continuous, of bounded variation and the lusin’s condition (n) holds (that is for every subset e of [a,b] m(e)=0 →m(f(e))=0) then f(x) is absolutely continuous on [a,b]. it is clear that lusin’s (n) condition is already present in the proposition by b. levi. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 13 the indefinite integral of an everywhere finite derived number is one of its primitive functions if and only if the primitive functions are of bounded variation. in this way lebesgue corrects the analogous proposition of the leçons simply by removing the part regarding the representation of the function having the derived number by its integral. lebesgue adds that, in general, both the derived number is finite or infinite, the problem of the determination of a primitive function of it does not make sense. indeed, lebesgue claims, hans hahn has proved that there exist two functions, f and g, having everywhere the same derivative but f-g is not a constant; if the derivative is not finite it is impossible to determine the function up to a constant. it is worth noticing that lebesgue assures that the previous propositions are absolutely correct and they were given a proof also by b. levi (lebesgue 1907 b, 284 note 1). but he does not agree with the drastic opinion by levi about the use of transfinite chains of intervals in his demonstrations. this is a crucial point in the polemic. lebesgue refutes his opponent’s argument defending his procedure. in particular levi has observed that if the extremities of the intervals constitute an irreducible set, as in an example he exhibits and as in the cantor set, the results are no more reliable. lebesgue answers simply that he was already acquainted with that. we now finish the exposition of the exchange of ideas between lebesgue and b. levi, by reporting a summary of the subsequent development of the problem of the research of the primitives that is possible to read in a paper of 1920 by l. tonelli: sulla ricerca delle funzioni primitive, (tonelli 1960, vol. i, 360-376). in it the author deals with the problem in the most general setting, making a survey of the situation. he recapitulates that if a function has a bounded derivative then this derivative is lebesgue (not always riemann) integrable and the equality: f(x)-f(a)=∫ 𝑓′(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 holds; moreover, vitali showed that this equality holds for every absolutely continuous function. but there are some not absolutely continuous functions that possess a finite derived-number or even a finite derivative at every point, which is not lebesgue integrable.19 the problem to determine a primitive function in this case was faced by denjoy and solved by a new method of integration he called totalisation. it was not possible to say that the research was finished at this point since functions exist which have derivative or a given derived number that is not always finite. now, while in the preceding cases the solution is proved to be unique, in the last case the problem may be undetermined. if for example a function has an upper right-derived number equal to +∞ (-∞) at every point of a perfect set p, if we add to it a function (x) that is constant in all the intervals contiguous to p and increasing (decreasing) to the right at every point of p that is not the first extremum of a contiguous interval, the sum f(x)+(x) and f(x) have always equal upper right-derived numbers, but f(x) and f(x)+(x) do not differ from one another only by a constant. examples of such functions (mentioned by lebesgue) were given by h. hahn, b. levi and others. remember that b. levi gives the following sufficient condition to the point: two continuous functions f(x) and g(x) defined in the same interval differ at most by a constant if they have equal derivative in every point of the interval, the derivative being finite everywhere except at the points of a set e such that m[(f-g)(e)]=0 (levi 1906, 558). 19 for example the function defined in [0,1] in the following way: f(0)=0, f(x)=x2𝑠𝑖𝑛 for 𝑥 ≠ 0, has a not summable derivative that is finite in every point. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 14 as a counterexample let f(x)= (x) and g(x)=2(𝑥) where (x) is the cantor function. f(x) and g(x) are continuous and their derivatives coincide everywhere; they are infinite in the points of the cantor set c, but m[(f-g)(c)]=1. indeed g(x)-f(x) is not a constant. observe that c is perfect. well, tonelli, by using the denjoy integration method, proves that: a necessary and sufficient condition in order to a continuous function be determined, up to a constant, by a derived number is that: 1) this number exists a.e.; 2) the set of points where this number is infinite does not contain a perfect set. term by term integration of equi-absolutely continuous sequences of integrals only in 1907 lebesgue sends a letter20 to vitali about the papers of the italian mathematician on measure and integration theory; indeed, he complains: “i have always had knowledge of your papers (when i have had) by chance and after their publication”. he notices that there are very many points in common in their respective papers: with regard to absolute continuity and the relevant theorem, lebesgue underlines his priority, but acknowledges vitali as who threw light upon the result he himself had mentioned on the contrary only in passing; but above all he praises vitali since he has transposed the definition of absolute continuity to a useful condition to integrate series term by term. indeed, in february 1907 vitali published the paper sull’integrazione per serie (vitali 1907), a very famous and quoted paper, where the definition of absolute continuity is extended to a family of functions in the following way: given a family of functions, their integrals are called equi-absolutely continuous if for every >0 there exists >0 such that the absolute value of the integral of whatever function of the family, extended to whatever measurable set whose measure is less than , is less than . after this definition vitali obtains the following criterion: a series of summable functions defined in a measurable set of finite measure is term by term integrable if and only if it converges and the integrals of its partial sums are equiabsolutely continuous. in particular if we have a uniformly convergent series of continuous functions defined in a set of finite measure, then, as was exclusively applied until then, the term by term integration is allowed by the criterion. lebesgue had yet generalized this result to bounded measurable functions in the leçons, by the following theorem: if a series converges and its partial sums are uniformly bounded, then it is possible to integrate it term by term. this theorem is quoted by vitali, since it is a simple consequence of his general criterion; but vitali does not notice that by his criterion the more general condition easily follows: 20 letter of february 16th, 1907 (vitali 1984, 457). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 15 if a series converges and all its partial sums are less or equal to a summable function, then it is possible to integrate it term by term. such a theorem will be enunciated and proved in (lebesgue 1908). with regard to the same theorem, in a footnote of a subsequent paper (lebesgue 1909), the french mathematician observes that it is implied by vitali’s criterion; he also remembers that poincaré had given in 1894-95 some lessons at the sorbonne about the potential theory, edited with the name of leçons sur la théorie du potential newtonien by le roy and vincent and published in 1899, where a theorem in order to pass to the limit under integral sign is enunciated; in it the hypothesis of a summable majorant plays a crucial role.21 it is worth noticing that by vitali’s general criterion, as vitali himself underlines, also the following beppo levi’s theorem (levi 1906 a), published one year before, follows: let (fn(x)) be an increasing sequence of nonnegative measurable functions and let f(x) be its limit. then ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 = limn∞∫ 𝑓 (𝑥)𝑑𝑥. thus, the determination of vitali’s criterion, together with the more available lebesgue’s and b. levi’s sufficient conditions it implies, concludes the research about the topic. the problem of the reduction of double integrals reducing double integrals was a complex problem from the very beginning; the difficulty was linked to the fact that if a function is integrable, both in riemann and in lebesgue sense, the partial functions obtained by restricting it to the segments of equation x=constant and y=constant are not measurable in general. for integrals in the sense of riemann among the mathematicians which were interested in the problem there was also arzelà who gave his contribution to its solution in 1891. for the lebesgue’s double integrals in his thesis lebesgue had encountered the same difficulty for his integral but he had observed that if the function is borel measurable in the interval d=[a,b]x[c,d] then the partial functions x→f(x,y) and y→f(x,y) are all borel measurable and if f(x,y) is bounded then for the double integral extended to d we have: ∬ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 =∫ 𝑑𝑥 ∫ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑦 = ∫ 𝑑𝑦 ∫ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑥 (*) 21 indeed, we can read (lebesgue 1909, 121): “soit l’intégrale ∫f(x,y,z)dxdy étendue à un certain domain s. supposons: 1o que le contour c qui limite s ne dépende pas de z; 2o que l’on ait en tout point de s |f(x,y,z)|≤ (x,y),  étant une fonction positive; 3o que l’intégrale ∫(x,y)dxdy étendue au domaine s, ait un sens; 4o enfin, que l’on ait 𝑙𝑖𝑚 ⇾ f(x,y,z) = f(x,y,0) quels que soient x et y, pourvue qu’ils restent fixes. dans ces conditions, on a la relation: 𝑙𝑖𝑚 ⇾ ∫f(x,y,z)dxdy =∫f(x,y,0)dxdy.” but lebesgue notices that since there is no demonstration, it is difficult to have an overall view of the situation; some explanations before the enunciate let us believe that poincaré referred to continuous functions and that f(x,y,z) was supposed to converge uniformly to f(x,y,0) except for some exceptional points. while until then uniform convergence had played a central role when passing to the limit under the integral sign, in this way poincaré made use of a summable majorant for the first time, allowing the possibility meas (s) infinite. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 16 in the case the integrals in (*) are riemann’s integrals, some mathematicians had showed that there are many exceptions to its validity; in 1907 e. w. hobson observed that all the counterexamples fail if we consider in (*) the lebesgue’s integral. consider for example thomae’s example: d=[0,1]x[0,1], f(x,y)=1 if x is rational, f(x,y)=2y if x is irrational: the integrals ∬ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 and ∫ 𝑑𝑦 ∫ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑥 do not exist in riemann’s sense but hobson pointed out that both exist in lebesgue’s sense and have value 1 (hawkins 2002, 159). hobson did not realize that equality (*) holds in general for a function of two variables if it is integrable in the sense of lebesgue. instead this fact was noticed first in 1906 by b. levi, who in a footnote of a paper about dirichlet’s principle, claimed, in passing and without proof, starting from some papers of pringsheim about superficial riemman’s integrals, that if a function f is summable in the unitary square then it is possible to deduce that the linear integrals do exist on every segment of equation x=constant or y=constant except at most for a set of lines of zero measure and therefore negligible. then the double integral can be obtained by means of two successive integrations.22 in (fubini 1907) the idea of b. levi is dealt with apart, and we can find finally the proof of the following most general version of the reduction theorem: let f(x,y) a function of two variables, summable in a rectangular set d=[a,b]x[c,d] : then for a.e. y∈ [𝑐, 𝑑] the partial function x∈ [𝑎, 𝑏] → f(x,y) and for a. e. x∈ [𝑎, 𝑏] the function y∈ [𝑐, 𝑑] → f(x,y) are summable and (*) holds. fubini proves that if f(x,y) is summable in d then there exists a borel measurable function g(x,y) that coincides a. e. with f(x,y) in d. it follows that f(x,y) is linearly summable that is for a.e. y∈[c,d] the partial function x∈ [𝑎, 𝑏] →f(x,y) and for a. e. x ∈ [𝑎, 𝑏] the partial function y∈ [𝑐, 𝑑] →f(x,y) are measurable: fubini proves that they are also summable and (*) holds. two years after tonelli inverts the preceding proposition if the function is nonnegative. if f(x,y) is a measurable nonnegative function in the set d=[a,b]x[c,d] such that one of the iterated integrals in (*) is finite, then f(x,y) is summable and (*) holds (tonelli 1960, vol. i, 157). it is well known that great difficulties lebesgue’s integration theory encountered to be considered at an international level as a significant mathematical theory (vitali 1984, 9-10). by means of fubini-tonelli theorem and the theorems about the passage to the limit under the integral sign lebesgue’s theory was complete and ready for the applications, so these theorems decreed its triumph. contribution by tonelli to the problems of the rectification of the curves jordan in the c.r. de l’academie de france in 1881 and in the second ed. , vol. 1 of his cours d’analyse had defined the functions of bounded variation and had proved that a curve is rectifiable if and only the functions which represent it are of this kind. in 1908, one year after he graduated with first class honors at the university of bologna discussing a thesis about the polynomials of approximation of tchebychev, tonelli23 writes the paper sulla rettificazione delle curve (tonelli 1960, vol.i, 52), where he deals again with the problem of the determination of the length of the curves, this time in the light of 22 b. levi, sul principio di dirichlet, rend. circ. mat. palermo, t.22, 30. 23 further information about the life and the works of tonelli can be found in “sulla vita e sulle opere di leonida tonelli” by silvio cinquini in (tonelli 1960, vol. i, 1-35). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 17 the new theory of lebesgue’s integral and of the definition by vitali of an absolutely continuous function.24 he improves the result given by jordan, establishing the following characterization: the length l of the curve of equations x=x(t), y=y(t), z=z(t) (a≤ 𝑡 ≤b) is given by: l =∫ 𝑥′(𝑡) + 𝑦′(𝑡) + 𝑧′(𝑡) 𝑑𝑡 (where the integral is the lebesgue integral) if and only if the functions x(t), y(t), z(t) are absolutely continuous. in 1916 he comes back to the subject in the paper sul differenziale dell’arco di curva, (tonelli 1916 b) where he points out, among other things, that the graph of the cantor function f is an example of rectifiable curve whose components x(t)=t, y(t)=f(t), t[0,1] are of bounded variation but not absolutely continuous. in this case the length is strictly greater than the corresponding integral, and is equal to it plus the total variation of f in the set of the points where the derivative does not exist finite. functions of more variables and additive set functions in 1915 and after in 1916 de la vallée poussin gives a general definitive treatment of additive set functions, their derivatives in a point and the generalization of the fundamental calculus theorem. as we have seen, in the case of one real variable, vitali had already completely solved the problem in 1905, introducing in the paper sulle funzioni integrali the concept of a real absolutely continuous function of a real variable and characterizing by it the integral functions. interesting thing, in 1907, in the paper sull’integrazione per serie, vitali comes back to the preceding definition, looking at the integral function of a summable function no more as a point function but as an absolutely continuous set function. in the paper sui gruppi di punti e sulle funzioni di variabili reali (vitali 1908) the author tries to generalize the fundamental definitions appearing in (vitali 1905 d) to functions of more variables. namely, let f(x,y) be a real function of two variables defined in a rectangle with edges parallel to the coordinate axes. vitali calls increment of f in the rectangle whose vertices are (a,b), (𝑥 ,𝑥 ), (a,𝑥 ), (𝑥 ,b), the quantity: f(a,b) + f(𝑥 ,𝑥 ) f(𝑥 ,b) f(a,𝑥 ); f is called absolutely continuous in the rectangle r if for every number >0 there exists a number >0 such that for every finite set of rectangles contained in r with edges parallel to the coordinate axes the sum of whose measures is less than , the sum of the moduli of the increments of f(x,y) in such rectangles is less than . f(x,y) is an integral function if and only if there exists a summable function f(x,y) such that: f(𝑥 ,𝑥 ) = ∫ ∫ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦)𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦. vitali says that a function f is of bounded variation if in whatever manner the rectangle r is divided in a finite number of rectangles with edges parallel to the coordinate axes, the 24 it is interesting remember that in a postcard dated 25thapril 1908 arzelà writes to vitali “ho una nota del mio allievo tonelli relativa alla lunghezza, e che si riattacca all’ultima sua nota. io sono occupatissimo, potrebbe leggerla lei? è breve” (vitali 1984, 470). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 18 sum of the moduli of the increments of f(𝑥 ,𝑥 ) in such rectangles is less than a fixed number. the incremental ratio is defined in the following way: ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) . vitali makes h and k tend to 0 with h=k and calls numeri derivati destri (sinistri) in the point p the indetermination numbers of such an expression for h and k tending to 0 and positive (negative). if these limits are finite and equal, their common value is, by definition, the derivative. on the basis of these elements, vitali claims that it is possible to extend to the case of more variables all the results previously obtained for the functions of one variable. in order to give an example of a total derivative in the sense of vitali for a function of more variables, in (tonelli 1910) the problem of the derivation of a multiple integral is faced in the same order of ideas. tonelli indeed considers a lebesgue integrable function of two variables f(x1,x2) in a domain a and defines the first derivative numbers of the integral of f(x1,x2) in the point (x1,x2) interior to a as the indetermination limits for u0+ of the integral:   f(x1+u1,x2+u2)du1du2 if these limits coincide their common value is called first derivative of the integral of f(x1,x2) in the point (x1,x2); if u0 in one or in both the integration limits and if there is no indetermination, then it is possible to obtain the second, third and fourth derivative. if these four derivatives coincide their common value is the derivative. tonelli is able at this point to prove a generalization to functions of more variable of the analogous result proved by lebesgue for functions of only one variable, that is: a lebesgue summable function f(x1,x2) coincides a.e. with the derivative of its integral in the interior points (x1,x2) of a. in particular it is the derivative of its integral in the points where it is continuous. in (lebesgue 1910) the preceding fundamental definitions are generalized to the case of functions of more variables, and lebesgue extends the results of the last chapter of the leçons, in particular with respect to the multiple integrals derivation. lebesgue quotes the young tonelli’s work and, in his paper, makes constantly reference to (vitali 1908): he inspects vitali’s definitions, visits their positive sides and organizes the new theory; as first thing he defines the notion of additive set function taking as a prototype the integral function.25 first an interval function is defined (coinciding with the increment of the given function as in vitali); indeed in the two-dimensional space lebesgue considers the interval i=(a,b), where a=(x1,x2), b=(x1+h,x2+k) (h>0,k>0) and defines the function (i) = 𝑓(𝑥 + ℎ, 𝑥 + 𝑘) + 𝑓(𝑥 , 𝑥 ) − 𝑓(𝑥 + ℎ, 𝑥 ) − 𝑓(𝑥 , 𝑥 + 𝑘). let f be of bounded variation: then if the interval i is the sum of a finite number of pairwise disjoint intervals ip then (i) = (ip), that is  is additive. lebesgue does not highlight the intermediate further steps of the extension of  to a general additive set function, but they are well underlined in (de la vallée poussin 1915). after lebesgue makes clear the meaning of the derivation in this frame: to this aim firstly he introduces the notion of a regular family of domains: a family of measurable 25 “after all, giving an additive and absolutely continuous set function, or giving a bounded and absolutely continuous function of k real variables are two equivalent operations” (lebesgue 1910, 386387). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 19 domains is called regular if there exists >0 such that, for every set d of the family, it is m(d)>.m(s) where s is the smallest hypersphere containing it. by this definition a variable set of the family is not allowed to have an infinitesimal measure if all its dimensions are not infinitesimal. then, given an absolutely continuous additive set function, f, lebesgue defines its derivatives as the indetermination limits of the ratio ( ) ( ) , where m is the lebesgue measure of e, e varies in the family and the diameter of e tends to 0. the whole central part of his paper is a re-examination of the definitions and the proofs of vitali’s widely quoted paper of 1908, and a suitable transformation of them leading to the generalization of the theorem of the italian. lebesgue says: “j'ai imité son exemple en me bornant tout d'abord aux fonctions f absolument continues”. he then proves the following theorem, analogous to vitali’s theorem: an absolutely continuous additive set function has a finite derivative a.e., which is summable, and it is the indefinite integral of such a derivative (lebesgue 1910). in order to prove it lebesgue uses a geometric proposition by vitali,26 the following cover theorem: let e be a measurable set: let us suppose that every point of e belongs to an infinite number of arbitrarily small intervals from a family f of intervals. then it is possible to extract from f a finite or enumerable set of intervals, pairwise without interior points in common, such that the sum of their measures is not less than the measure of e. in 1908, vitali notices that an analogous proposition can be proved in the plane, considering, in place of intervals, a family of squares, or in the space, a family of cubes. lebesgue proves it for every regular family of domains, but he shows that it is not true for whatever family of domains (vitali 1908). vitali cover theorem is used by lebesgue in particular to prove that: if an absolutely continuous additive set function  is positive in a quadrable domain d,27 then there exists in d a set of positive measure where the derivative numbers of  are positive. indeed if this was not the case, with every point p of d, except the points of a null set, it would be possible to associate a sequence of regular domains , interior to d and containing p, whose diameters tend to 0 and such that, for every , ()/m() <(d)/m(d). now by vitali’s theorem there exists a sequence of regular , pairwise without interior points in common, covering all of d, except a null set e. then d can be viewed as the union of the  and of e and therefore m(d)=m() and (d)=(). it follows: () < m() (d)/m(d)=(d), an absurdity. 26 in (banach 1924) there is a simple demonstration of this fundamental theorem. 27 that is a lebesgue measurable domain whose boundary is a null set (therefore a quadrable domain is nothing but a peano jordan measurable domain). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 20 an important consequence of the preceding proposition which plays a central position in the proof of the main theorem is the following: let an absolutely continuous additive set function be such that one of its derivative numbers is a. e. not negative (resp. not positive), then it is constantly not negative (resp. not positive). and therefore if a derivative number is a.e. equal to zero then the function is a.e. equal to zero. to prove the fundamental theorem lebesgue considers an absolutely continuous additive set function  that is ≥0 (this hypothesis is not restrictive since every absolutely continuous function is the difference of two nonnegative). he considers one of the two derivative numbers of , d(), and determines a lower approximation of the integral function of d() in the following way. given >0, let ei={𝑥: 𝑖 ≤ 𝐷() < (𝑖 + 1)}, i=1,2, ...n-1, e={𝑥: 𝐷() = }. these sets are measurable since lebesgue has previously proved that: the derived numbers of an additive absolutely continuous function are measurable functions. now, consider a domain f including all the previous ones: let, for every i, i be a closed set, i ⊆ei, such that m(i)>m(ei)  and  a closed set, ⊆e , such that m()>m(e)-. let fi(p)=0 if p∉i, fi(p)=i if pi; f(p)=0 if p∉, f(p)=n if p. also let (e)=∑  fi(p)dp + f(p)dp. it follows that the derivative numbers of  are less or equal to d(). let () be the upper derivative number of : then it is d(-)≥d()-()≥0 and therefore, by the preceding proposition, for every n: -≥0. on the other hand, it follows by definition that: (f)≥  … [d()-]dp + nm(); this relation holds for every n and for every >0. it follows that m()=0 and therefore also m(e)=0. it follows that d() is a.e. finite. let 0 and n. since m(f)≥ m(  ... )>m(e1)+...+m(en-1)-, it is m(  ... )m(f). therefore we obtain: (f)≥  [d()]dp. now lebesgue puts d’(p)= d()(p) if d()(p) is finite, and d’(p)= 0 otherwise. it follows (f)≥(f)≥  d’(p)dp and also (e)≥(e)≥  d’(p)dp for every domain e. by a similar procedure lebesgue proves also the converse inequality obtaining (e)=  d’(p)dp for every domain e. since this relation holds also for the other derivative number, the two derivative numbers are equal, that is  has finite derivative a. e. and coincides with the indefinite integral of such a derivative. by the fundamental theorem, the integral, that is the function f: e 𝑓(𝑄)𝑑𝑄, is an additive absolutely continuous function. lebesgue considers in particular a function f of two development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 21 real variables. as usual in order to prove that the derivative of f in p is equal to f(p) it is enough to prove that it is 𝑙𝑖𝑚 ( )  | ( ) ( )| ( ) =0 where e varies in a regular family (lebesgue 1910, 404). as he has proved for the functions of one variable and tonelli for a function of two variables, now lebesgue proves that the set of the points p such that this derivative is not f(p) has null measure. therefore if f(q) is a summable function then the derivative of the function e 𝑓(𝑄)𝑑𝑄 is a.e. equal to f(p). lebesgue defines also the mean density of a measurable set e in an interval (a,b) as the ratio [ ∩( , )] ; and the density of a set e in a point a on the right as the limba [ ∩( , )] if it exists; in an analogous way the density on the left is defined; if the two preceding values coincide they are the density of the set e in a. lebesgue proves that the density of a measurable set e is a.e. equal to 1 in the points of e and 0 in the complement and therefore coincides a.e. with the characteristic function of e,  . by the equality (a,b)=∫  (𝑥)𝑑𝑥 =m[e(a,b)] it follows that  is a. e. the derivative of its indefinite integral. then, lebesgue deduces in general: every summable function of a real variable is a.e. the derivative of its indefinite integral (lebesgue 1910, 408). in 1915 de la vallée poussin considers a particular family of regular sets and defines the notion of reseau: a reseau consists in a sequence of nets by which the space is divided: for example in the case of two dimensions it is possible to obtain a net by two systems of straight lines parallel to the coordinate axes and equally spaced. the subsequent net is obtained adding other two parallel lines equally spaced between two consecutive ones of the preceding net, the distance of the next parallel lines being always in the same ratio with the distance of the preceding lines. the definition of derivative is given in the following way: given the absolutely continuous additive set function, f, de la vallée poussin determines for almost all the points p, in a uniform way, a sequence en of elements of the reseau such that the point p belongs to every one of them and limnm(en)=0, then he calculates the lower and upper limits of the ratio f(en)/m(en). in the case such limits are finite and coincide they are the derivative of f in the point p. obviously the just now defined derivative depends on the fixed reseau.28 well, by using such a uniform procedure, de la vallée poussin proves the fundamental theorem without using the vitali covering theorem. the quadrature of the surfaces another field where tonelli gave a great contribution was about the quadrature of the surfaces: in the past the area of a surface s had been often considered as the limit of the areas of some polyhedral surfaces inscribed in s and having s as their limit: but in order that this definition is well given it is necessary to prove that whatever sequence of polyhedrons is considered the corresponding limit is the same. schwarz and peano in 1882 gave examples 28 obviously, this happens in general also for the regular families, but de la vallée poussin proves that the choice of the family is influential only in a set of points of null measure (de la vallée poussin 1915). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 22 to prove that the previous limit does not exist in general, varying with the particular sequence considered. subsequently peano gave, in 1890, in a paper on rendiconti dell’accademia dei lincei, the following general definition: the area of a convex surface is the l.u.b. of the areas of the polyhedral convex surfaces inscribed and the g.l.b. of the circumscribed ones. this definition is not depending on the cartesian coordinates, but it is too general and is not useful for applications. hermite, in his leçons, in 1882, proved, in the way we study nowadays, the formula for the quadrature of a surface of equation z=f(x,y) with (x,y) belonging to a bounded set d: he supposed that the surface had a tangent plane in every point and that this plane varied with continuity. in (lebesgue 1902, chapt. iv) the previous definition is extended to a lebesgue summable function f(x,y) with summable derivatives. in order to give for the surfaces a definition similar to that of the rectifiable curves it was necessary generalize the definition of function of bounded variation in the case of functions of two variables; this had become a very hard problem since in the case of more variables the definitions by vitali and lebesgue of a function of bounded variation turned out to be inadequate. it is remarkable that some years before vitali gave his definition of function of two variables of bounded variation arzelà (1847-1912) made an attempt to define this concept, as follows (arzelà 1904-05 and 1906-07). consider a bounded function f(x,y) defined in a rectangle abcd whose edges are parallel to the axes and let l be a curve that has a as an extremity and is such that along it x and y are both increasing, at least one of them strictly. let m be the other extremity belonging to the rectangle and let m1, m2, ...mp=m be points of l disposed in the increasing order of x and y. consider the sum f(m)-f(a) = f(m1)-f(a) + f(m2)f(m1)+ ...+f(mp)-f(mp-1) = pl-nl where pl is the sum of the positive differences and nl the sum of the absolute values of the negative differences. the author says that the function f(x,y) is of bounded variation if one of these two sums is bounded when l varies in the class of the prescribed curves and m varies in the rectangle. if this is the case, he proves that also the other sum is bounded and f(m)-f(a) = p(m) – n(m), where p(m) is the upper bound of pl and n(m) is the upper bound of nl. then he proves that the functions p(m) e n(m) are not decreasing if m proceeds along a line of the prescribed ones in the positive direction of x and y. so it is easy to prove that: the function f(m) is of bounded variation if and only if it is the difference of two positive not decreasing functions in the direction of the positive axes. if f(m) is of bounded variation and continuous then it is only possible to prove that the function p(m) is continuous along ascending curves. the definition is too restrictive and the procedure is not available for the applications, particularly for the treatment of the area of a surface. about this topic tonelli wrote a series of papers on the rendiconti dell’accademia dei lincei, culminating in 1926 in a communication to the accademy of sciences de paris (tonelli 1960, 453), where he gave two new definitions of a function of bounded variation and a definition of an absolutely continuous function. these definitions turned out to be very useful also in the studies about the double series of fourier and in the calculus of variations. given the continuous function f(x,y) defined in the square q whose opposite vertices are (0,0) and (1,1), for every �̅�[0,1] tonelli denotes by vy(�̅�) the total variation of the function, of the only y, f(�̅�,y) with y varying in [0,1], with an analogous meaning for the function obtained by exchanging x for y, vx(𝑦 )̅. the function f(x,y) is said to be of bounded development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 23 variation in q if vx(y) and vy(x) are a.e. finite in the interval [0,1] and if the lebesgue integrals: ∫ 𝑉( )(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 e ∫ 𝑉( )(𝑦)𝑑𝑦 exist finite. tonelli defines the area of a surface as lebesgue, that is it is the minimum limit of the areas of the polyhedral surfaces tending to the considered surface and proves that the surface of equation z=f(x,y), (x,y)q, has finite area if and only if f(x,y) is of bounded variation. if f(x,y) is of bounded variation in q then the partial derivatives with respect to x, p(x,y), and y, q(x,y), exist finite a.e. in q, are integrable and for the area of the surface, s, it is: s ≥ ∬ 1 + 𝑝 + 𝑞 dxdy, the integral being extended to q. in the previous inequality the equality holds if the function f(x,y) is also absolutely continuous , that is the partial functions f(�̅�,y) e f(x, 𝑦) are absolutely continuous, the former for a.e. �̅�, the latter for a. e. 𝑦 in [0,1] and the variations vy(�̅�) and vx(𝑦) are integrable functions respectively of �̅� and 𝑦, in [0,1]. observe that if a function is of bounded variation in arzelà’s meaning it is also of bounded variation in the sense now exposed. as a matter of fact for a function satisfying arzelà’s definition the functions 𝑉( )(𝑥) and 𝑉( )(𝑦) are bounded. it is not true the contrary. moreover if the function is of bounded variation in the sense of vitali may not be of bounded variation in the sense of tonelli: indeed the function defined in the unit square by f(x,y)=g(x) where g(x) is not of bounded variation in the interval [0,1], is of bounded variation in the sense of vitali (actually all the increments f=f(x+h,y+k)-f(x+h,y-k)-f(x-h,y+k)+f(x-h,y-k) in the partial rectangles are zero) while obviously it is not of bounded variation in the sense of tonelli. but there are functions of bounded variation in the sense now exposed but not in vitali’s sense (tonelli 1926 a). during the proof tonelli introduces the concept of total derivative of the function f(x,y) as vitali: indeed he considers the increment f=f(x+h,y+h)-f(x+h,y-h)-f(x-h,y+h)+f(xh,y-h) and defines the derivative as the limit for h tending to zero, if it exists, of the ratio f/4h2. extension of rolle’s theorem to additive set functions only about seven years after he has written the paper sui gruppi di punti e sulle funzioni di variabili reali, vitali, in that period teacher in a school at voghera, begins again to produce research papers. he gets in touch with his friend fubini, who is working about the extension of the mean theorem to additive set functions and gives his contribution to the argument. in those years there was some interest about this topic. peano had written a paper, (peano 1914-15), quoting a surprising treatment of the question by cauchy in the exercices d’analyse et de physique mathématique under the title mémoire sur le rapport différentiel de deux grandeurs qui varient simultanément.29 peano starts with an observation: if a function of one variable f is derivable in an interval in the more restrictive sense that for every point xo of this interval it is f’(xo)= 𝑙𝑖𝑚  ,  ( ) ( ) , then the derivative f’(x) is a continuous function. but, for an additive set function f the derivative is just defined in this way, since, peano says, f’(a)=lim ( ) ( ) when the set e tends to the point a (and not necessarily a belongs to e): so if f’(a) exists finite for every a, then 29 t.2, paris 1841, pp.188-229. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 24 f’(a) is a continuous function.30 peano concludes, thank to his very strong definition of derivative: if a bounded, closed and continuous body (or class of points) has a determined density in every point, then the mean density coincides with the density of the body in a suitable point (peano 1914-15, 1155). also fubini had dealt with the same argument and in (fubini 1914-15) had proved the following proposition: if f is a finitely additive function derivable in all the points of a bounded measurable set j such that if t is a part of j between two parallel lines at a distance of h each from the other then f(t) tends to 0 when h tends to 0, then for this function rolle’s theorem hold, that is if f(j)=0 then there exists a point a interior to j such that f’(a)=0.31 fubini added in this way in his hypotheses a weak form of continuity for the function that holds for example, he observed, for the integral functions. here is the elementary proof by fubini: he considers the domain j enclosed between two right lines y=a and y=a+h. for every y he considers the part jy of j whose points have ordinate not greater than y and he puts f(y)=f(jy). the function f(y) is continuous by hypothesis, moreover f(a)=f(a+h)=0. if f is not identically zero then there exists a point ]a,a+h[ interior to j which is a point of minimum or maximum for f. if ≤ is suitable small, in the interval ]-,+[ there exist two points y=b and y=b+k where f assumes the same value and therefore: f(b+k)-f(b)=0. let t be the part of j between the right lines y=b and y=b+k. it is f(t)=f(j)=0. let us repeat about t the reasoning made about j, exchanging the role of x and y. we obtain a set j1 interior to j such that f(j1)=0 and each projection of it on both the coordinate axes is less than the half of the analogous projection of j. repeating for j1 the previous procedure and continuing indefinitely we determine a sequence of domains jj1j2 .... such that the projections of every jn on every one of the two axes is less than the half of the analogous projections of jn-1 and f(j)=f(j1)=f(j2)= ...=0. there exists one and only one point a belonging to all the domains jn. since the diameter of jn tends to 0 then f’(a)= lim ( ) ( ) =0. if the previous continuity condition was dropped fubini only was able to prove a weak version of the mean value theorem (fubini 1915b), namely: if f(t) is an additive and derivable set function defined in the closed partial domains of a measurable and bounded domain j, if l and l are the g.l.b and l.u.b of the derivative f’ in the points a of j, then l≤ ( ) ( ) ≤l. and, if l<l it is l< ( ) ( ) <l. then, as a consequence, fubini proves:32 if two (finitely) additive and derivable functions f(t) and g(t) have equal (finite) derivatives, they are equal. 30 for the proof see (peano 1887, 171-172), where additive set functions and their derivatives are introduced in a pioneering way. 31 the thesis was a consequence of peano’s result, but fubini had some doubt to use peano’s definition of derivative, very different from the definitions by lebesgue and de la vallée poussin, as is possible to see by some letters he sent to vitali (vitali 1960, 518-520). 32 fubini’s interest for the new mathematical topic is also testimonied by the new chapter, funzioni additive generali e integrali multipli, he added to the second edition of his textbook (fubini 1915a). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 25 vitali writes two papers on the mean value problem: the first one is a note derived from a letter to fubini where he shows that the continuity condition of the function used by fubini can be dropped if the domain is for example a rectangle (vitali 1915-16). in the second paper (vitali 1916) he also observes that while in the theorem of fubini the point a is interior, so that the function can be supposed derivable only in the interior points of the given domain, in his proposition the function has to be supposed derivable in all points of the domain. here is the theorem established by vitali: let j be a rectangle abcd, let f(e) be an additive function, defined in the class of the measurable subsets e of j, that has a finite derivative (in the sense of lebesgue) in every point of j and let f(j)=0: then there exists a point p belonging to j such that f’(p)=0. the elementary proof is based on the subdivision of the rectangle j in the following way: vitali divides the edge ab in 2n equal parts and draws the parallel lines to bc passing through the division points; in the same way he divides bc in 2n equal parts and draws the parallel lines to ab passing through the division points: in this way for every natural number n he obtains a system sn of equal rectangles. since f(j)=0, there exist two consecutive rectangles 𝑇 and 𝑇 " of s1 such that f(𝑇 ) ≥0 and f(𝑇 ") ≤0. let t1=𝑇  𝑇 " . then in t1 there exist two consecutive rectangles 𝑇 and 𝑇 " of s2 such that f(𝑇 )≥ 0 and f(𝑇 ") ≤ 0. let t2=𝑇  𝑇 " and so on. the rectangles t1, t2, t3, ... have one and only one common point p. it is not difficult to prove now that f’(p)=0 and the theorem is proved. a property like “there exist two consecutive rectangles in which f changes sign” is called in (peano 14-15, 1153) “semidistributive”: it is a property u in a given class of sets  such that if a and b belong to  and ab verifies u, then or a verifies u or b verifies u but it is not true the converse. a proof in which a semidistributive property is involved is analogous to the proof of the zero theorem for continuous functions of one variable. it is evident that the constructions used by fubini and vitali for their proofs are very close to the procedures of the reseaux introduced by their belgian colleague de la vallée poussin. functions of bounded variation after the absolutely continuous additive set functions, lebesgue studies in his paper sur l’intégration des fonctions discontinues the functions of bounded variation of more than one variable in an analogous way. as vitali does, starting from a function of bounded variation of one (or more) variables, he obtains the additive set function corresponding. as vitali does, if f is a function of two variables, he defines the function (e). lebesgue defines also for such a function the saltus in a given point33 in an analogous way that in the case of one variable. a point is called singular if one of the saltus is different from zero.34 he introduces also the singular segments (or varieties in more than two variables). then he obtains the important result: a function of bounded variation of k variables gives rise to an additive set function that has a.e. a finite derivative; the derivative is summable and the function coincides with the 33 there are 4 saltus for a function of two variables. 34 lebesgue proves that a point is singular if at least one of the two derived numbers is infinite. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 26 sum of an absolutely continuous function, the integral function of its derivative, and a singular part, the saltus function whose derivative is a. e. zero.35 many years after, in 1922, vitali, comes back to the early studies about functions of real analysis and being in the dark about preceding results, proves an analogous elegant and more precise proposition, about functions of bounded variation of one variable. here is the statement: every function of bounded variation is the sum of a saltus (discontinuous) function, of an absolutely continuous function and of a linear combination of finite or infinitely many elementary spreads, where the elementary spreads are continuous functions of bounded variation, not absolutely continuous, as the cantor function (vitali 1922 e 1923). by a letter of march 30th, 1923, fréchet will acquaint vitali with the results obtained by de la vallée poussin.36 in 1925 vitali will come back to the argument with the important note sulle funzioni continue (vitali 1925), where a new remarkable characterization of the continuous functions of bounded variation is exposed, known today under the name of banach-vitali theorem since also banach obtained similar results by means of different methods. given a function f(x) defined in an interval (a,b) and with values in (c,d), let 𝐺 be equal to the set of points of (c,d) corresponding to infinitely many points of (a,b), and, for every natural r, let 𝐺 be equal to the set of points of (c,d) corresponding to precisely r points of (a,b). moreover, let 𝐹 be the set of points of (c,d) corresponding to r points at least of (a,b). then the 𝐹 are measurable and it is: 𝐺 =𝐹 𝐹 . vitali proves that the following theorems hold: theorem 1. let f(x) be a continuous function in (a,b); f(x) is of bounded variation if and only if the series ∑ 𝜇 (𝑟), where 𝜇(r) is the measure of 𝐹 , is convergent. in every case the total variation of f is given by the sum of such a series. 35 in (de la vallée poussin, 1909) the author says that he has completely changed the integral part of the treatise with respect to the first edition in order to expose the beautiful works by lebesgue; in this part (pp.269-272), we find the following theorem quoted in (lebesgue 1910): “let f(x) be a continuous function of bounded variation in the interval (a,b), γ a derivative number of f(x), e the set of the points of (a,b) where γ is infinite; then γ is summable in the set of points where it is finite and f(b)f(a)=∫ f(x)dx+v, where v is the variation of f in e, that is the limit of the sums of the variations in a countable set of disjoint intervals whose union covers e when the length of these intervals tends to zero”. in a footnote de la vallée poussin remembers that he had communicated this result to lebesgue, furnishing the demonstration for the case of a monotone function f. lebesgue answered immediately, furnishing the general proof, based on the consideration of an intervals chain. 36 we can find the final formulation of the theorem under consideration for the functions of a real variable, jointly with the demonstration, in the second edition of the leçons by lebesgue, sent to press on december, 1926, in the chapt.ix: a bounded variation function f(x) in an interval (a,b) has a finite derivative a. e. and its derivative is summable. moreover f(x) is the sum of an absolutely continuous function (the integral function of its derivative) and a bounded variation function, the saltus function, having a. e. zero derivative. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 27 theorem 2. let 𝑚 be the measure of 𝐺 . then f is of bounded variation if and only if 𝐺 has null measure and the series ∑ 𝑟𝑚 converges: in such a case the sum of this series equals the total variation of f. arzelà’s contribution to calculus of variations in the 19th century many mathematicians were interested in the dirichlet problem, concerning the search of a harmonic function u in a tridimensional set e verifying the condition u= f on the boundary of e, s, where f is a given function. some mathematicians thought to obtain the resolution of dirichlet problem using the “minimum principle” introduced in mechanics in the xviiith century, that is, given a function f on s, they believed that the solution of the problem was a function assuming the value f on s and minimizing the integral ∭ + + 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦𝑑𝑧. this method was called in the sequel dirichlet’s principle and for many years nobody had doubt about the existence of such a minimum. many properties of the harmonic functions could be deduced by the study of holomorphic functions. the first who thought to invert this trend and to use the properties of harmonic functions to study holomorphic functions was riemann. he considered the double integral ∬ + 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 : (*) since it is positive and varies with continuity he admitted the existence of the minimum and supposing that the boundary conditions were verified, obtained the fundamental theorem of the conformal representation of a simple connected region onto the unitary circle. weierstrass was the first to observe that there was no prove about the existence of such a minimum and subsequently prym and hadamard gave examples of harmonic functions in e, continuous in the closure of e, such that the integral (*) is infinite (diedonné 1996, 337). from that negative result many researches were born in order to determine under what conditions dirichlet principle holds, that is when it is possible to establish the existence of the minimum without recourse to the differential equations. it was necessary to investigate a manner to transfer weierstrass theorem to prove the existence of maxima and minima for continuous functions, to more general situations. just in line with the recent studies by volterra, c. arzelà, in 1889, in funzioni di linee, and some years after in 1895 in sulle funzioni di linee, considers a class of equi-continuous functions, a distance between functions, a neighborhood of a function and a concept of function that is the uniform limit of a suitable subsequence of an infinite family of functions. he proves, using ascoli’s theorem, that such a limit exists if the functions of the family are uniformly bounded and equi-continuous. as cantor arzelà calls a family g of functions closed when every its limit point belongs to g. if f is a real function defined in a closed family of functions g he says that f is continuous if f(u)= limn f(un) for every sequence un of points of the family g that has u as its limit. we underline that in arzelà’s definition the function works on entities, objects that (as in volterra) are not completely abstract yet, but may be points or curves (linee). also volterra defines the concept of continuity for such a type of functions, we now call functionals (after hadamard), but he does not deal with the possibility of transferring to them weierstrass theorem. this is instead the intention of arzelà who wants to use this theorem for applying it to the proof of the dirichlet principle: development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 28 theorem – let f be a real function defined in a family of functions g. let the functions of the family g be equi-continuous and let g be closed. then there is in g at least a function v(x) such that the l.u.b. of the values of f in every neighborhood of v(x) coincides with the l.u.b. of f in g. an analogous proposition holds for the g.l.b. of f. if f is continuous then there exist in g two functions u and v such that f(u)≤f(u)≤f(v) for every u∈g (arzelà 1895-96). it is worth noticing that in a communication presented at the first international congress of mathematicians held in zurigo in 1897 j. hadamard (1865-1963) claimed the importance of functional analysis in the study of calculus of variations and in general for the theory of differential equations. in the same year an important step to apply a direct method to the resolution of dirichlet principle appeared in the paper by arzelà sul principio di dirichlet, where for the first time an attempt is made to restore riemann’s demonstration using the theorem of weierstrass. it is also worth noticing that few years after an analogous generalization of weierstrass theorem for functionals defined in abstract compact sets would be carried out by frechet, hadamard’s disciple, in his doctorate thesis (frechet 1906). consider now (arzelà 1896-97). given an open set a whose boundary is a continuous curve c, let f(x,y) be a continuous function defined in the points of c. arzelà considers the class of functions u=u(x,y), defined in the closure of a such that: 1) u(x,y) are continuous with their first and second derivatives, 2) the second derivatives and the incremental ratios of the second derivatives are uniformly bounded, 3) u(x,y)=f(x,y) in the points (x,y) ∈ c. then he proves that the considered class is closed with respect to the uniform convergence and, as he has proved in the preceding paper, there is a function u in the class such that, if j(u)= ∬ + 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦, where the integral is extended to a, then it is j(u)≤j(u) for every u in the class. arzelà proves that such a function u is harmonic. indeed consider a function u+𝛼v, where 𝛼 is whatever real number, positive or negative and v is a function satisfying 1) and 2) that is zero in the points of c. then by gauss’s formula it is: j(u+𝛼v)=j(u)+𝛼2j(v)+2𝛼 ∬ + 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 = j(u)+𝛼2j(v)-2𝛼 ∫ 𝑉 ds -2𝛼 ∬ 𝑉∆𝑈𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦= j(u)+𝛼2j(v) -2𝛼 ∬ 𝑉∆𝑈𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 where ∆ is the laplacian. since it is j(u+𝛼v)≥ j(u) for every ∝, arzelà proves that ∬ 𝑉∆𝑈𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦=0 and, since v is arbitrary and ∆u is continuous, then ∆u=0. in this very original way arzelà proved the existence of the minimum for the integral of the square of the laplacian only in a subclass of the class of continuous functions. only three years after, at the second international congress of mathematicians held in paris, without mentioning arzelà’s work, that he probably did not know, d. hilbert claimed he was convinced that in order to solve differential equations with partial derivatives in particular as in the classic case of dirichlet’ principle, some proof of existence could be produced on the basis of a general minimizing criterion. in particular he considered the problem of minimal surfaces: it consists in the search, among all the surfaces that have a given boundary, of the surface with the smallest area, that is such that, given a domain d, the integral, extended to d, ∬ 1 + ( ) + ( ) dxdy development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 29 is minimum. in the past the problem, dealt also by lagrange, was reduced to a differential equation, the eulerlagrange equation, but, among other difficulties linked essentially with the fact that the theory of surfaces was not completely advanced, it was difficult to verify whether the solution of the equation was actually a minimum or not. in his relation hilbert claimed that this problem and laplace equation were particular cases of the following general problem: determine a function z=f(x,y) for which the integral: ∬ 𝐹(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧, 𝑝, 𝑞)𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 , where p= , q= , is minimum under the condition ( ) >0. hilbert wondered whether the solutions of such problems were always analytical, a question that has been answered negatively in the sequel. tonelli’s contribution to calculus of variations the vast amount of work and papers tonelli produced on calculus of variations from 1911 is strictly linked to the works of arzelà (his professor at the university of bologna) and hilbert. we will start with one of his most important papers of the early period, the memoir published in 1915 sur une méthode directe du calcul des variations, (tonelli 1915) where the results exposed in two notes appeared on the c.r. of the acc. of the sciences of paris the year before are assembled. in it tonelli remembers that arzelà had tried to apply the direct method in order to solve the dirichlet’s problem: his efforts were in vain but his direct method was valid since the double integral of the square of the gradient even if not continuous is lower semicontinuous. tonelli underlines that hilbert was the first to define correctly the problem: he had proved in 1900 that the technic deduced from the theory of continuous functions allowed really to solve dirichlet problem (hilbert 1900). but hilbert, in the opinion of tonelli, did not catch the very and deep essence of the method. he proved actually that a minimizing sequence of surfaces, chosen among the admitted ones, such that the respective integrals tended toward the g.l.b. that had to be proved to be the limit, had at least a limit surface. by the use of an already known solution in a particular case of the same problem, he proved that the limit surface was a solution of the problem. then he never used the fact that, given the minimizing sequence, the functional tends to the value assumed in the limit surface, that is so the required minimum value. in this way he never refers explicitly to continuity, that is the property that allows the passage to the limit. and the field of applications of his method remains in this way bounded. this limitation was underlined also by j. hadamard who furnished another direct method in order to prove the existence of the minimum. given the surface of equation z=f(x,y) and a point m on it, he affirms that if one starts from m and follows the maximum gradient line in the sense of decreasing z, he arrives at a minimum point. from this idea hadamard deduces a procedure of successive approximations which allows a method for determining effectively the minimum (hadamard 1906). but also hadamard finds some difficulties with this method. as in the preceding papers, tonelli is sure that in general the method valid for the ordinary continuous functions can be actually extended to functional calculus under suitable hypotheses and can be completed in order to give the analytical properties of the solution. he underlines the contribution that it is possible to obtain from baire’s idea to introduce the notions of lower and upper semi-continuity, in order to obtain a sufficient condition for the existence of the minimum and the maximum. but there is a difficulty: every infinite sequence of points of a bounded interval (a,b) has at least one accumulation point; this fact is not true if we consider a family of functions. in this case it is necessary to add some supplementary conditions in order to apply some particular result as ascoli’s theorem. once the existence of the minimizing element will be development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 30 proved, those supplementary conditions will imply also the analytical properties of the solution. let us show how tonelli applies the direct method to the functional: j(y)= ∫ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦(𝑥), 𝑦 (𝑥))𝑑𝑥 (*) where a is a set of points (x,y,y’) such that: a≤ 𝑥 ≤ 𝑏, -∞<y<+∞, -∞<y’<+∞; and f(x,y,y’) is a continuous function with fy’, fy’y’,fy’x in a such that: i) fy’y ’(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑦 ) ≥ 0 in a; ii) there exist constants α > 0, h > 0 and k such that f(x,y,y’) ≥ h |𝑦| +k. the problem linked to (*) is: determine in the class f of absolutely continuous functions y(x) such that f(x, y(x),y’(x)) is integrable a minimum of j(y). tonelli places himself in the set of the conditions of the regular problems (so called after hilbert). in general the integral in (*) is called positively (negatively) regular if the invariant fy’y’(x,y,y’) is >0 (<0) for every (x,y,y’)∈a. it is almost positively (negatively) regular if, as in the condition i) and ii), fy’y’≥0 (≤ 0) and f>0 (<0). tonelli proved for the first time in 1913 in the paper sul caso regolare nel calcolo delle variazioni, that positive (negative) regularity implies the lower (upper) semi-continuity of the functional. in a brief paper in 1914, tonelli proves that if the functional is continuous then the euler equation fy =0, that is the condition a minimum of the functional has to satisfy in general, reduces to fy’y’=0 and therefore f(x,y,y’)=p(x,y) + q(x,y)y’ a very restrictive condition implying that all those problems that really concern the calculus of variations are excluded (tonelli 1914). in this paper tonelli expresses also the condition that the functional is considered in the class of absolutely continuous functions (firsly he has considered the functional defined in the class of continuous rectifiable curves); in fondamenti, he insists on the semi-continuity of the almost regular integral (*) in the class f of the absolutely continuous functions y(x) in (a,b) such that f(x,y(x),y’(x)) is integrable, a larger class than the class of the continuous functions with their first derivatives, used in the classical theory. lavrentieff will prove that it is not possible to enlarge the class of absolutely continuous functions since if one considers in particular the class of the functions of bounded variation as admissible functions then the g.l.b. of the integral in this class coincides with the g.l.b. in the class of all measurable functions: and it is achieved in a pair of measurable functions g(x) and h(x), but in general h(x) is not the derivative of g(x) (lavrentieff 1926-27). let us come back to the previous paper (tonelli 1915): in order to prove that the functional (*) admits a minimum in f, as usual tonelli proves firstly that j is a lower semicontinuous functional in f. this is proved using the fact that if fy’y’≥0 in a then the weierstrass function e(x,y; y’,𝑦 ) = f(x,y,y’)-f(x,y,𝑦 )-(y’-𝑦 )fy’(x,y,𝑦 ) is ≥0 for every (x,y,y’)∈a and (x,y,𝑦 )∈a. then given two points p=(a,p) and q=(b,q) he proves the following: theorem 1– if f(x,y,y’) satisfies conditions i) and ii), there exists in the class f a function yo(x) such that the curve of equation y=yo(x) has extreme points p and q and minimizes integral (*). development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 31 sketch of the proof: let l=inf j(y) in the class of the functions of f whose extreme points are p and q. by ii) l is finite. it is possible to obtain, without the use of the axiom of choice as tonelli has proved explicitly in (tonelli 1913), a sequence of functions of f, yn(x), such that yn(a)=p, yn(b)=q and j(yn)<l+1/n for every natural number n. the functions yn are uniformly bounded and tonelli proves that they are also equi-continuous so it is possible to apply ascoli’s theorem and therefore there exists a subsequence, we can still call yn(x), which is uniformly convergent. let yo(x) be the limit function of yn (x): it is absolutely continuous, yo(a)=p, yo(b)=q. since j is lower semi-continuous it is limnj(yn)=j(yo)=l and therefore yo is the required minimum. moreover: under suitable hypotheses on f, yo is derivable in [a,b] with continuous derivative, satisfies euler equation and is the unique solution. tonelli wrote a series of important works about the calculus of variations that would continue to produce during all his life and that would culminate with the fundamental treatise (tonelli 1921-23). in 1929 obtains an interesting extension of his direct method to the double integral: id= ∬ 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧, 𝑝, 𝑞)𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 (**) where z is a function of two variables, z=z(x,y), p and q are its partial derivatives and the integral is extended to a plane domain d. tonelli remembers that e. goursat (1858-1936) in 1915 established that (**) is lower semi continuous in the class of the functions continuous with their first order derivatives if there exist two constants 𝛼 > 0 and 𝛽 > 0 such that: u2fpp+2uvfpq+v2fqq ≥ 𝛼u2+𝛽v2 for every admissible (x,y,z, p, q), a condition that implies hilbert condition of regularity; in 1927 r. rado (1906-1989) proved that the integral (**), where f(x,y,z, p,q)= 1 + 𝑝 + 𝑞 , is lower semi-continuous in the class of the functions satisfying a lipschitz condition, that is such that for every function z there exists a constant l(z)>0 such that |z(x1,y1)-z(x2,y2)| ≤ 𝐿(𝑧) (𝑥 − 𝑥 ) + (𝑦 − 𝑦 ) for every (x1,y1),(x2,y2)∈d; and in 1926 haar gave a more general result considering arbitrary functions f(p,q) such that the integral (**) is positively regular, that is fppfqq 𝑓 >0, fpp>0. in 1929 in the paper sur la semi-continuité des integrals double du calcul des variations, tonelli proves the semi-continuity of the integral (**) by means of a very general method (tonelli 1929): he supposes in fact f(x,y,z,p,q) continuous with its partial derivatives fp, fq, fpp, fqq, fpx, fqy in every point (x,y) of the open and bounded set d and for every finite z,p,q; as usual the integral (**) is called almost positively regular if fppfqq 𝑓 ≥ 0, fpp≥0, fqq ≥ 0 for every (x,y)∈d and for every z, p, q. tonelli considers also the most general functions z(x,y) that it was possible conceive in this frame, that is the absolutely continuous functions of two variables as he himself has defined in sur la quadrature des surfaces, obviously only the ones such that the function f(x,y,z,p,q) is integrable. let f be the class of such functions. then the following holds: development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 32 theorem 2– suppose that: a) there exists a real number n such that f(x,y,z,p,q)>n for every (x,y) in d and finite z, p and q; b) the integral id is almost positively regular. then id is lower semi-continuous in f (tonelli 1929, &13). in the paper l’estremo assoluto degli integrali doppi (tonelli 1933) the author exposes the continuation of the preceding research. in it indeed tonelli searches to determine the minimizing functions of the integral (**) and their degree of regularity. in order to carry out this program tonelli establishes an interesting condition a family of functions has to satisfy in an open and bounded set in order to be equi-continuous: theorem 3 suppose that the functions {f(x,y)} of a given family are all absolutely continuous in a bounded open set a and there exist two numbers p>2 and l>0 such that for every function of the family the double integral extended to a: ∬ + 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 is less than l. then the functions of the family are equi-continuous in a. to give a result of equi-continuity up to the boundary tonelli introduces a property the boundary of the set a has to satisfy: it is a rather difficult condition to expose and we limit ourselves to one of its consequences, the cone property in two dimensions that can be defined in the following way: 𝛾) there exists an angular sector t such that for every point p on the boundary of a, p is the vertex of an angular sector similar to t whose interior points are all contained in a. in particular 𝛾) holds if the boundary of a is a regular curve. tonelli begins by proving the following theorem of prolongation by continuity: theorem 4 let the function f(x,y) be absolutely continuous in a bounded open set a; suppose that there exists a number p>2 such that the double integral extended to a: 𝜕𝑓 𝜕𝑥 + 𝜕𝑓 𝜕𝑦 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 is finite and suppose that 𝛾) holds: then it is possible to prolong the given function to a continuous function in the close set �̅�. tonelli proves that if 𝛾) does not hold, even if the other conditions are satisfied, the prolongation up the boundary may be not possible. he exhibits a: counterexample define the open set a and the function f(x,y) in the following way: let the strictly increasing sequence 0 ≤ a0 < a1< a2< … < an, … <𝜋 be given in such a way that t0=a1-a0= 2-2p, tn=an+1-an = 2-(n+2)p for every natural number n. consider a polar coordinate system whose pole is in the origin and polar axis is the positive semi-axis of (x,y) plane. let a be the open set that is the union of the following sets: an= {(𝜌, 𝜗): 2-(n+1) ≤ 𝜌 ≤2-n, an ≤ 𝜃 ≤an+1}. let f(x,y)= g(𝜌) where g(𝜌)=2n+2(𝜌-2-(n+1)) if 2-(n+1)≤ 𝜌 ≤2-(n+1)+2-(n+2) g(𝜌)= 2n+2(2-n-𝜌) if 2-(n+1)+2-(n+2) ≤ 𝜌 ≤2-n. development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 33 it is easy to prove that: + = and therefore: ∬ + dxdy = ∑ 𝑡 ∫ 2 ( )𝜌𝑑𝜌( ) =1/2. since if a>0 and b>0 then ap+bp≤ 2(a2+b2)p/2, we have that ∬ + 𝑑𝑥𝑑𝑦 ≤ 1. therefore, since f(x,y) is absolutely continuous in a, the conditions of theorem 4 except 𝛾) are satisfied. the function f(x,y) can be prolonged by continuity to all the points of the boundary different from the origin, but it is not possible to prolong by continuity f(x,y) in the origin. indeed on the arcs of equation 𝜌 = 2-n it is f(x,y)= 0, while on the arcs of equation 𝜌 =2-(n+1)+2-(n+2) it is f(x,y)=1. on the other hand condition 𝛾) cannot be satisfied in the origin. tonelli proves many theorems about the existence of the minimum of the integral (**). we consider for example the following one where a complete class in (the interior of) the domain d with respect to the integral id is considered: it is a class c (ci) of functions z(x,y) absolutely continuous in (the interior of) d such that for every one of them the integral id(f) is finite and every function g(x,y) that is a limit function for the class (with respect to uniform convergence) belongs to the class. from theorem 3 and theorem 4 easily follows: theorem 5 – let id(z) be an almost positively regular integral extended to the domain d and let 𝑝>2, 𝑀>0 and n be such that: f(x,y,z, , ) > m{| |p+| |p} + n. then if the functions z(x,y) of a complete class ci are uniformly bounded in the interior of d, there exist in ci the absolute minimum of id(z). if the domain is enough regular, for example if 𝛾) holds, and if the functions constitute a complete class and are uniformly bounded on the boundary of d, then the absolute minimum is continuous also in the closure of d. in few years tonelli’s contribution begins fundamental for the theory at an international level. enthusiastic comments to his work were given by hadamard, carathéodory, volterra e peres (see the introduction to (opere scelte) by silvio cinquini). conclusions as we have seen, between 1906 and 1915, great strides were made towards the extension of many fundamental concepts of the just arisen measure and function theory. this is a general feature of this period with respect to mathematical analysis and geometry; great changes are introduced particularly by m. fréchet and d. hilbert although motivated by different interests. while, as we have seen, the mathematicians have looked so far after extending the results about the functions of one variable to functions of a finite number of variables, fréchet (1878-1973) in his phd thesis suddenly introduces abstract spaces of points (fréchet 1906). the measure theory is no more linked to euclidean spaces and lebesgue theory, but abstract metric spaces are introduced, and fréchet proves the theorems in a so general way which allows their application in many different particular cases. as we have seen in the preceding sections already some time before in the problems of variation calculus and development of the theory of the functions of real variables in the first decades of the twentieth century loredana biacino 34 mathematical physics some functionals, that is quantities not depending on a numerical variable, but on a function or on a curve, were considered, the functionals used by volterra, arzelà and hadamard, and also studied in a pioneering manner by pincherle (pincherle 1901), being of such a type; but now hilbert observes that a function, let it be continuous for example, is determined by infinitely many variables, its fourier coefficients, for example, in such a way that a functional can be viewed as a function of infinitely many real variables. fréchet in 1910 explains that only after the definition of abstract metric space he gave in his doctoral thesis, hilbert, motivated by the study of integral equations, was able to give a definition of a space whose points are the real number sequences such that the series of their squares is convergent. vitali and lebesgue, generalizing the functions of bounded variation to the case of more variables, were very near to the general concept of measure that johan radom (18871956) introduces in 1913: indeed this author, always referring to the family of lebesgue measurable sets, demonstrates that it is possible to define a lebesgue type integral with respect to whatever completely additive measure function defined in the lebesgue measurable sets of the space of one or more dimensions37. without doubt he was also inspired by the beautiful representation theorem published by riesz in 1909 (bourbaki 1960), that is the following theorem: for every continuous linear functional a on the space c of continuous functions in an interval (a,b), there exists a bounded variation function  such that a coincides with the stieltjes integral determined by , that is a(f)= ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑(𝑥) for every fc. the final generalization, where there is no reference to the lebesgue measurable sets, is dated 1915 and is due to fréchet who considers in (fréchet 1915) the integral of a functional extended to an abstract space x on which a family of sets, closed with respect to enumerable unions and to relative complements (famille additive d’ensembles, -ring today), is given. after, in 1930, nicodym will complete the new theory: in his paper (nicodym 1930) he exposes the theory of measure and integration as today is exposed in many books for first graduate students in mathematics: differently from fréchet he prefers to use the notion of corps d’ensembles (-algebra today, that is a -ring such that x belongs to it) rather than famille additive d’ensembles, and positive measure. he explains that the two choices he does are linked in his theory of integration. indeed if  is a -ring and (e)≥0 is a parfeitement additive (-additive today) bounded function on  and if  is its upper bound then there exists a not decreasing sequence e1, e2, ...en, ... of elements of  such that lim(en)==(en). let e0=en. now if e is such that ee0= then (e)=0. thus the sets outside e0 do not play any role in the theory of integration and therefore it is just the same to start with a -algebra. with these choices he develops in a very simple manner the theory of integration (starting from the definition of integral for simple functions, that is functions that assume at most infinitely many enumerable values, each in a set of ), and finally he generalizes completely the theorem first enunciated and proved by vitali in 1905 for one variable and generalized by lebesgue for the case of more real variables in (lebesgue 1910) in the following form: given a -algebra , a positive measure  on it and a -additive function, f(e), absolutely continuous with respect to , there exists a summable function f such that f(e)=  𝑓d for every e. 37 j. radon, theorie und anwendungen der absolut additiven mengenfunktionen, sitzungster. der math. naturwiss. klasse der akad. der wiss. 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(2), t.ix, 15-50. microsoft word from the editors from the editors transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-2 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2022 – this is an open-access journal from the editors on obscurantism and resistance: producing science in denialism time mauro l. condé1 – http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4156-2926 marlon salomon2 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2446-2141 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ in its six years of existence, the journal transversal has reached its 13th issue with the great satisfaction of publishing authors from different parts of the world with their works addressing the historiography of science, history of science, philosophy of science and science education. we are honored that transversal can be the platform for widely disseminating the work of all these authors. we are a niche journal in this area, especially regarding the historiography of science, so our satisfaction is even greater for connecting this fragmented community in the four corners of the world. relying on the uninterrupted work of these authors became even more important because the last few years have not been easy for a world that has had to face a pandemic with devastating impacts. in the eye of that hurricane, science and technology were our lifeboats. we were conducted to the correct epidemiological procedures, reception and care of doctors, nurses, and all health professionals until the prompt response of science and biotechnology with the production of vaccines. those actions have enabled us to return to normality gradually. unfortunately, in these same last few years, we have also experienced strong scientific denialism in different parts of the world, precisely at a time when we needed science the most. for brazilians, the situation was even worse because, for some time, that denialism came from the president of our republic and his followers, which made it very difficult to confront the covid19 pandemic in brazil. fortunately, brazil’s democracy has pointed to other possible paths. the rejection of the denialist president in the last election in november 2022 has demonstrated the direction brazil wants to take. we chose to affirm science and technology, preserve the environment, care for the vulnerable, respect differences, and practice solidarity and all the other democratic and republican values that connect us to civilization. indeed, it is highly challenging to produce science and technology – especially reflections on science’s historical and philosophical aspects –, in an environment where ignorance and obscurantism are placed as supreme values. the maintenance of transversal 1 mauro l. condé is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 marlon salomon is a full professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás. address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: marlonsalomon@ufg.br. from the editors transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 during this nebulous period was also an act of resistance. knowledge is a powerful weapon against obscurantism. science must go on because life must go on! traditionally, our issues are published around special dossiers, but from time to time, we present a regular issue as we do now. we thank the authors who wrote for this issue number 13 and hope that all our readers can continue to enjoy the articles, book reviews and interviews published here. have an excellent read! microsoft word vant'land layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-10 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal bruno latour – special issue bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3448-8775 abstract: in this article, i argue that the work of bruno latour has straddled two conflicting intellectual traditions: the relativism of 20th-century postmodernism (which deconstructed the realist pretensions of scientism) and the realism of 21st-century new materialism (which seeks to sublate the postmodern linguistic turn and embrace science alongside critical theory). i connect these twin tendencies to their ancient precursors among the greek sophists and presocratic philosophers and argue that latour’s strange position between relativism and realism recalls the historical tension between the philosophical and rhetorical traditions. latour has embodied both of these intellectual currents, shifting only his focus but never his commitment to deconstructing the distinction between nature and culture. by connecting the conflicting tendencies of postmodernism and new materialism back to the ancient sophists and presocratic philosophers, i argue that latour effectively ontologizes rhetorical persuasion as the ‘language’ of every being, human and nonhuman alike. keywords: latour; rhetoric; realism; postmodernism; new materialism received: may 11, 2023. reviewed: may 24, 2023. accepted: may 29, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.08 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction the twin discourses of philosophy and rhetoric share a complex history extending from antiquity to today’s intellectual culture. as bruno latour writes, “the ancient version of this battle is renewed from one century to the next through formulas, different every time, that always revive the same split: on one side the indisputable demonstration based on facts that are themselves indisputable; on the other, eloquence, rhetoric, propaganda, communication” (latour 2013, 131). in this article, i will trace the similarities over time between the postmodernists and the sophists in the rhetorical tradition on the one hand, and between the new materialists and the pre-socratics in the philosophical tradition on the 1 andrew r. van’t land is an assistant professor of philosophy at the community college of allegheny county. address: west hall 234 – 808 ridge avenue. pittsburgh, pa 15212. usa. e-mail: avantland@ccac.edu bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 other.2 i will conclude by examining the work of bruno latour, whose complex figure straddles both of these intellectual currents and whose highly nuanced project might trouble the typical distinctions between philosophy and rhetoric. postmodern sophistry and classical rhetoric in the past half-century, post-kantian continental philosophy has revealed the deep connections between power, knowledge, and communication. the postmodernists (like the more radical sophists in the classical rhetorical tradition) highlight the primacy of nomos or convention, stressing that the artificial and constructed nature of the human lifeworld(s) goes ‘all the way down.’ like scholars in other humanistic disciplines, postmodern philosophers navigated the ever-accelerating ‘linguistic turn.’ in this paradigm shift, philosophers came to recognize that language is performative as well as propositional, that language discloses and delimits a community’s epistemic access to its shared “world”, and that the differences which carve up reality into an intelligible and navigable matrix are largely due to distinctions made (not discovered) in and by language (lafont and medina 2002, xii). however, the model of a linguistic turn remains largely descriptive of the nature of language; i suggest that the term “rhetorical turn” denotes a prescriptive practical dimension alongside a descriptive theoretical one. it is not only the case that language does (re)constitute the reality of human lifeworlds, but also that the power of language should be used in beneficial, peaceful and just ways instead of malevolent, ideological, and unjust ways. (one need not look even so far as derrida or foucault or butler to observe this phenomenon, but only to observe the popular-level–although sometimes unpopular–rise of “politically correct” or “woke” language since the 1970s, which can more charitably be described as a hope in the constructive use of language’s power to re-construct reality [andrews 1996, 389]). thus, the ‘rhetorical turn’ may be a more accurate description than the ‘linguistic turn’ to describe the simultaneity of both descriptions and prescriptions concerning discourse. like other postmodern humanities disciplines which partake in franco-germanic literary style and content, continental philosophy can be validly situated within such a rhetorical turn—a “third sophistic” wherein the affect of rhetoric overturned the cultural dominance of philosophy (particularly its modernist offspring, foundationalist science). this postmodern “third sophistic” echoes the premodern first and second sophistics, eras of oratorical excess fixated on style over content, political praxis over scientific theoria, and contingent probabilities over necessary certainties. for victor vitanza and michelle ballif, the 20th century third sophistic is both an era and a disposition which not only opposes foundationalism and totalization, but also stresses that all language is fundamentally rhetorical, and is therefore fundamentally deceptive and mischievous (vitanza 1991, 118-9, 131; ballif 1998, 59-60). whereas the ancient greek first sophistic and the classical roman second sophistic were both “political” only insofar as they were particular regions of public discourse involving the power of the law, the continental third sophistic is “political” insofar as it (linguistically) turns every type of language into a power-seeking speech-act. postmodernists within this third sophistic recognized theoretically that the world—and knowledge of it—is (to a large degree) structured and mediated by the persuasive force of language (derrida 1997, 158; berger and luckmann 1967, 40-1). further, such sophistic postmodernists have participated practically in the ongoing (re)construction of the world by 2 the historiographical risks of drawing parallels through and within intellectual history are clear: there is always the temptation to hypostatize a tradition out of superficial similarities among thinkers, to essentialize thinkers as representative of and allied to a given tradition, and to treat thinkers’ concepts anachronistically or ahistorically. however, this paper undertakes said risks because of the assumption that the postmodern era (a “third sophistic”) has overemphasized difference and disruption to the exclusion of identity and continuity. bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 signifying performatively as well as representationally (butler 1993, 13), by politicizing supposedly “unpolitical” discourses (foucault 2009, 390), by producing novel concepts (deleuze and guattari 1992, 2), and by deconstructing texts in the pursuit of justice (derrida 2002, 243). in the final decades of the last millenium, bruno latour’s work in science studies situated itself rather easily among these postmodern literatures. he published a number of works examining the social construction of scientific facts (which “appear... unconstructed by anyone”), thereby emphasizing the rhetorical power wielded (however dissimulatively) by scientists (latour and woolgar 1986, 240). latour likens the tension between scientific realism and rhetorical constructivism to janus’s two faces: “on the left side rhetoric is opposed to science just as authority is opposed to reason; but on the right science is a rhetoric powerful enough, if we make the count, to allow one man to win over prestigious authorities” (latour 1987, 32). the third sophistic enveloping latour and his postmodern peers highlights the anarchic condition of this rhetorical dimension (that is, the performative, powerful, and persuasive dimension) of all types of language, including philosophy. to historically contextualize this third sophistic, i will now examine its forebears in the ancient first sophistic. in the fifth-century greek democracy, athenian citizens were expected to represent themselves in court. as anyone familiar with plato knows, a group of orators known as the sophists took it upon themselves to teach citizens how to speak persuasively in political settings (kennedy 2009, 15-16). in particular, the sophistic pedagogy of the rhetors protagoras, gorgias, and isocrates created a theoretical culture which shaped the sociopolitical culture of the day (kennedy 1999, 50-51). protagoras infamously claimed that “of all things the measure is man, of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not” (williams 2009, 53). gorgias was skeptical about the possibility of reality, knowledge, and communication, as shown in his hypothetical kettle logic: “[n]othing exists... even if it exists it is [not] apprehensible to man... even if it is apprehensible, still it is without a doubt incapable of being expressed or explained to the next man” (williams 2009, 59). and isocrates emphasized the power of language upon ethical and political praxis and theoria: “in all our actions as well in all our thoughts, speech is our guide” (isocrates 1968, 257). because of the sophists’ political ability to invert the balance of weak arguments against strong ones, philosophers have often regarded them as epistemological relativists. this relativism typically took the form of a de-emphasis of any universal truth claims and a cynical emphasis on how localized practical claims could both cohere with and manipulate the endoxa (conventional wisdom) of a particular culture (kennedy 2009, 7; williams 2009, 51; gagarin 2002, 32). despite this relativism—or perhaps because of it—sophistry presented itself to greek culture as a humanism, an anthropocentric discourse which put knowledge to work in the sphere of human action (williams 2009, 22). unlike the cosmological cloudheadedness of the presocratic natural philosophers, the sophists concerned themselves first and foremost with the affairs of human culture. western intellectual thought, as mediated through socrates and plato, is arced along this anthropocentric turn, which does not reduce wisdom to knowledge so much as it reduces knowledge to human wisdom. in many ways, the rhetorical tradition was the historical fountainhead of humanism (literary, pedagogical, and existential) because of its political functions. conversely, the philosophical tradition, despite its reputation for being the love of wisdom, must be characterized primarily by the love of knowledge: its goals tended toward the theoretical as opposed to the practical, the world beyond the human rather than the world of and for humanity. the primary characteristic demarcating the discursive region known as “philosophy” from that of “rhetoric” is—or perhaps, should be—de-anthropocentric realism. whereas rhetorical relativism localizes all knowledge to (all-too-)human correlations, philosophical realism seeks theoretical knowledge silhouetted by an interpretive horizon wholly unconcerned with human subjectivity. bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 new materialism and presocratic philosophy just as the ancient first sophistic was challenged by the socratic/platonic tradition of philosophy, a recent reaction to such rhetorical continental anti-realism has been generated in the form of a ‘new materialism,’ which can be read as a return to philosophy’s metaphysical speculations. the surprising development of a school of realism within continental philosophy itself amounts to a return with a vengeance of the deepest chthonic roots of the philosophical tradition. speculative realists such as ray brassier, quentin meillassoux, and graham harman have sought to rewind the linguistic turn and its attendant politicization, relativization, and anthropocentrization of every sector of human lifeworlds, over-andagainst “correlationism” or “philosophies of access” which presuppose the interdependence of human consciousness and worldly material being (meillassoux 2008, 5; harman, 8). brassier views the nihilism nurtured by de-anthropocentric philosophy as a “speculative opportunity,” proposing that “[t]hinking has interests that do not coincide with those of living” (brassier, xi). brassier sorts 21st-century philosophers into two varieties: “those who want to explain science in terms of human experience” and “those who want to explain human experience in terms of science,” positioning himself in the latter category (brassier 2009). meillassoux similarly endows “science” with “the power to decentre thought” (meillassoux 2008, 121). for meillassoux, post-kantian philosophy has not been a copernican revolution, but a ptolemaic one: far from challenging humanity’s ostensible central role in the cosmos, kant and his successors managed to rebuild the cosmos entirely around human consciousness and language, the “two principal ‘media’ of correlation” (meillassoux 2008, 6, 119-20). according to graham harman, “the mainstream in both analytic and continental philosophy still regards ‘language’ as the big man on campus... still, this is not to say that the linguistic paradigm deserves an infinite lifespan” (harman 2002, §16). tracing a constellation of diverse yet similar philosophies, harman (along with nick srnicek and levi bryant) proposed “‘the speculative turn’, as a deliberate counterpoint to the now tiresome ‘linguistic turn’” (bryant, srnicek, and harman 2011, 1). although this term quickly gave way to the broader concept of a “new materialism,” the paradigm represents a return with a vengeance of the realist philosophical tradition over-and-against the relativistic rhetorical tradition which informed the linguistic twists and turns of the postmodern third sophistic. latour’s critics among the new materialists, particularly the speculative realists, have read his corpus as perpetuating anti-scientific, rhetorical relativism. for instance, brassier critiques latour’s “dissolution of the distinction between logic and rhetoric” (brassier 2011, f.n. 12). he charges latour and his irreductive ilk with sophistry as well as correlationism: the distinction between philosopher and sophist is already precarious. and it is precisely the sophist who knows how to stave off his own philosophical identification as an imitator of wisdom by denying the possibility of distinguishing between the true and the false, essence, and appearance, philosophy and sophistry. (brassier 2013, 177) harman is likewise aware of philosophy’s complex entanglement with rhetoric, claiming that “[r]hetoric is the art of the background” and that “philosophy is... the science of the background” (harman 2012, 18). and meillassoux puts their connection most ominously: “philosophy is the invention of strange forms of argumentation, necessarily bordering on sophistry, which remains its dark structural double” (meillassoux 2008, 76). the new materialism of the speculative realists and others amounts to a reversal of the sophistic humanization of philosophy. this seems to follow karl popper’s advice to go “back to the pre-socratics” and their cosmos-centered philosophizing (popper 1958, 1-7). i suggest that new materialism amounts to a retrieval of the philosophical tradition’s original demythologizing and de-anthropocentric project (especially as exhibited by the ionian bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 presocratic philosophers). the presocratic philosophers of the ionian school (thales, anaximander, anaximenes, and—arguably—xenophanes) nurtured an anti-traditional tradition, encouraging not deference to doctrine (as with the pythagorean school) but instead applauding critique, debate, and disagreement with one’s teachers (popper 1958, 20). unlike the more mystical pythagoreans, the monist materialists of the ionian school emphasized that the arche (the basic metaphysical principle or substance underlying all reality) is only matter (mcinerny 1963, 18). of course, as aristotle records, the precise mode of that matter was up for debate among the ionians, and each of the four classical elements (earth, wind, fire, and water) was in turn, considered for the status of arche (curd 2011, 15). thales, one of the seven sages of ancient greece and (traditionally) the first of the natural philosophers, proposed water as the fluid principle of origination, preservation, and motion of all things: all of nature flows like the seas (curd 2011, 15; mcinerny 1963, 18). later, anaximenes (who studied under thales’ student anaximander) posited air as the basic metaphysical element or arche (curd 2011, 31). proposing that density is the spectrum by which to measure the differences in reality, anaximenes suggested that air formed all other physical elements (earth, water, fire, etc.) by condensing to a greater or lesser degree (curd 2011, 19-20). elsewhere in ionia, the philosophical poet xenophanes waged a demythologizing campaign against the “anthropomorphic and anthropocentric” tendencies of greek religious culture (curd and graham 2008, 136, 149). in so doing, he proposed yet a third material mode of the arche, stressing soil as the fundamental “ground” of the cosmos: “for all things are from the earth and all return to the earth in the end” (curd 2011, 35). according to curd and graham, in xenophanes’ examination of natural phenomena, he “did not limit himself to a purely phenomenological reduction...he provided a comprehensive speculative theory” (curd and graham, 137). the ancient materialists and the new materialists share not only a propensity for naturalistic demythologization and metaphysical speculation, but also for a deanthropocentrizing realism: neither school is as interested in manipulating human lifeworlds as in speculating about the world’s life beyond the merely human. kairos: bruno latour’s timely shifts and opportune alliances finally, the time has come to examine kairos, the rhetorical tradition’s virtue of sensing a persuasive opportunity. the rhetorician isocrates highlighted the persuasive significance of kairos, claiming that the “opportune moment must be chosen for a particular treatment of a theme” (isocrates 1929, 335-36). on occasion, rhetors and rhetoricians (e.g., aristotle, cicero, and augustine) have found it necessary to highlight their philosophical dimensions over their oratorical backgrounds. one branch of the philosophical tradition has responded to such shifts not by rejecting rhetorical discourse per se, but by sublating the purpose and practice of rhetorical language in the direction of realism (cicero 1949, i.xxxi.51; ii.iii.9-10; augustine 1999, iv.ii; iv.vi; kimball 1986, 27). i propose that such kairotic moves find a contemporary parallel in the career of bruno latour, whose work straddles the (de)constructivist rhetorical school and the new materialist philosophical school. the later (i.e., 21st century) latour has worried that his earlier research has aided and abetted a postmodern propensity for conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, and ultimately anti-scientific skepticism: while we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? and yet entire ph.d. programs are still running to make sure that good american kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. was i wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? ...what were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?” (latour 2004, 227) as latour reminds his readership, “the question was never to get away from the facts but closer to them” (latour 2004, 231). such a shift in latour’s persuasive tactics in light of his audience’s changing social situation can only be regarded as displaying the timely wisdom of rhetorical kairos. latour is careful to note, “this does not mean...that we were wrong, but simply that history changes quickly and that there is no greater intellectual crime than to address with the equipment of an older period the challenges of the present one” (latour 2004, 231). thus, latour has not changed his mind so much as his focus from relativism to realism. after all, even in his earlier work, latour challenged the easy relativism that characterizes (or perhaps only caricatures) the postmodernists of the linguistically-turned third sophistic: in the 1980s, he wrote: “if all discourse appears to be equivalent, if there seem to be ‘language games’ and nothing more, then someone has been unconvincing” (latour 1988, 69). elsewhere, he noted that, “when we are dealing with science and technology it is hard to imagine for long that we are... a discourse that is speaking all by itself, a play of signifiers without signifieds” (latour 1993, 64).3 however, instead of utterly rejecting rhetoric for a philosophical reason (as brassier counsels), latour re-describes “reason and rhetoric” as two separate modes of existence, “two forms of veridiction, each of which misunderstands the other by translating it into its own terms” (latour 2013, 136). in his irreductive ontology, he renders rhetoric in the mode of “politics” [pol], which is practical and performative “circular” talk, and he renders reason (philosophical or otherwise) in the mode of “double-click” [dc], which is (the pipe dream of) purely informative “straight” talk (latour 2013, 132-4). by interpreting rationalistic philosophy and political rhetoric as two of fifteen unique modes of existence, latour proposes that the respective veracity of each discourse is accountable only to its own internally-developed discursive criteria. thus, latour sees some moments as calling for relativism, and others calling for realism (latour 1987, 99).4 therefore, it seems as though latour might reject the possibility of describing his entire intellectual project as a hybrid “philosophical rhetoric,” because he views rational philosophy and political rhetoric as distinct, irreducible modes of being. however, i argue that latour might ultimately agree with such a hybrid characterization of his project: by describing the act of persuasion as the fundamental activity of every actor (human and nonhuman) toward other actors, latour effectively ontologizes rhetoric as his root metaphysical metaphor. latour’s actor-network theory portrays all actors (both human subjects and nonhuman objects) as exhibiting rhetorical power-plays: not only do actors build rhizomatic connections with other actors and mediately 3 he elaborates that “rhetoric... changed its meaning entirely when it had truth and proof to absorb instead of conviction and seduction... it is hard to reduce the entire cosmos to a grand narrative, the physics of subatomic particles to a text, subway systems to rhetorical devices, all social structures to discourse” (latour 1993, 64). 4 latour stresses that he is not talking merely about politics, power structures, or rhetorical discourse, but actually also referring to things-in-themselves: his project examines (or enacts) a “simultaneous impact on the nature of things and on the social context, while it is not reducible to the one or the other” (latour 1993, 5). bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 “translate” existence between them, but they actively create reality-as-relations by exerting persuasive power on one another. reality is the reified net effect of the transformations caused by communication between actors seeking allies for their own projects (latour 1988, 167; latour 2005, 129). for latour, it is precisely the concrete relations between these actors which constitute the length and breadth of reality, and the actors which can persuade others to rally as allies in pursuit of goals must be considered more real. the ontological resistance rallied by such projects allows latour to be read as a certain type of realist, assuming an independent reality which transcends the lifeworld of the individual actor (latour 1988, 159). yet i argue that latour does not thereby oppose the linguistic (or “rhetorical”) turn, but he actually deepens and widens its implications (that communication is inherently performative and formative) beyond the human world to the world of nonhuman objects. commenting on the third sophistic’s problematic “tendency to privilege language,” latour laments that figures such as lacan, barthes, and foucault attempted to “reduce all other forces to the signifier”; however, he stresses that language should not be privileged above all other kinds of actants populating the cosmos: “everything that is said of the signifier is right, but it must also be said of every other kind of entelechy” (latour 1988, 184-5). inverting j.l. austin, latour demonstrates “how to do words with things,” and he drives the force of rhetoric deeper than the anthropic world of verbal language down to the tectonic fluctuations of his polymodal metaphysics (latour 1991, 1). by turning the persuasive force of inter-actor communication into a metaphysical principle, i claim that latour ontologizes rhetoric. latour’s strange position between relativism and realism recalls and radicalizes the hybrid discourse of philosophical rhetoric embodied by aristotle, cicero, and augustine. this stance reinforces his search for a via media – “a good balance” – between relativism and realism, and it is in line with his exploration of hybridizations between nature and culture (latour 1987, 100; latour 1993, 30). latour laments modernity’s false dichotomies: “[d]o we have to pretend that everything is rhetorical, or that everything is natural, or that everything is socially constructed?” (latour 1993, 89-90). i interpret this posture as philosophical rhetoric, an alliance between the realist philosophical and the relativist rhetorical traditions (kennedy 1999, 14-15). latour may be speaking out of both sides of his mouth like the twofaced god janus, but perhaps that is because reality itself is always speaking—or perhaps being spoken—in two rhetorical languages: the human and the beyond-human. conclusion the 21st century has witnessed a resurgence of metaphysical materialism and epistemological realism, albeit severely chastened by two centuries of continental philosophy which has stressed how deeply the lifeworld of appearances is conditioned by a priori structures of thought and language. however, several of the leading philosophers of this new materialist wave have explicitly posited a distinction between their own projects and prior generations of such idealist, phenomenological, and post-structuralist philosophers whom they associate more with the rhetorical tricks of ancient sophists than with the presocratic speculations of the ancient ionian materialists. however, bruno latour has rejected such positioning as a false dichotomy. his own speculated framework of reality is one in which the human practice of rhetorical persuasion is simply the most visible (or audible) example of how all types of actors (from cancerous cells to cosmic radiation) inform and transform each other within networks of concrete communication. the postmodern insights into the relation between power and discourse remain true, but not because signification and the thought-world which it conditions transcend and supervene upon material bodies; rather, signification (which enables persuasion) is one more aspect by which bruno latour’s detour: from relativist rhetoric to realist philosophy andrew r. van’t land transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 entities can relate to one another. and because such networked relationships condition or even constitute the identities of the actors involved, any realist account of the facts will functionally be relativist – not only because of the contextual situatedness of the knowing subject but also because of the contextual situatedness of the knowable object. so, when global material conditions changed later in latour’s life (after spending the height of his career undermining the easy certainties of the technocratic end of history in the eighties and nineties), he responded to compounding ecological, economic, and epidemiological crises not by fanning the flames of anti-scientific skepticism but by shifting epistemological tactics. emphasizing that one’s truth procedures must be sophisticated even if they are inescapably sophistic, latour changed sides in the realism-relativism debate—or rather, he turned a onesided truth around to reveal its other side. after all, philosophy and rhetoric have never been two isolated ways of thought, but they have instead weaved and crisscrossed throughout intellectual history. and from time to time, one must re-route simply to remain true to one’s path. references classical philosophy and rhetoric anderson, graham. 2009. the second sophistic: a cultural phenomenon in the roman empire. new york, ny: routledge. aristotle. 1991. on rhetoric: a theory of civic discourse. translated and edited by george kennedy. oxford, uk: oxford university press. augustine. 1999. on christian teaching. translated by r.p.h. green. new york, ny: oxford university press. cicero. 1949. on invention. in loeb classical library 386: cicero vol. ii. translated by h.m. hubbell. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. curd, patricia and daniel w. graham, eds. 2008. the oxford handbook of presocratic philosophy. new york, ny: oxford university press. curd, patricia, ed. a presocratics reader: selected fragments and 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1993. translated by catherine porter. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. latour, bruno. 2004. “why has critique run out of steam?” critical inquiry (30): 225-248. meillassoux, quentin. 2008. after finitude: an essay on the necessity of contingency. translated by ray brassier. new york: continuum. vitanza, victor j. 1991. “‘some more’ notes, toward a ‘third’ sophistic.” argumentation 5 (2): 117-139. microsoft word gattei layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-11 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal obituary joseph agassi (may 7, 1927 – january 22, 2023) stefano gattei 1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6654-2377 received: june 21, 2023. reviewed: june 21, 2023. accepted: june 22, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.13 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ the problem of rationality concerns the choice of one’s principles, of one’s values, of one’s lifestyle. joseph agassi joseph agassi was one of the most inspiring, challenging, and insightful philosophers of our time. a philosophical “all-rounder”, as ian jarvie and nathaniel laor aptly described him employing a cricket metaphor, not only did he contribute to every major field in philosophy – philosophy of the exact sciences, metaphysics, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of technology, philosophy of education, moral philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, psychology and psychiatry, not to mention history and historiography of science – but just as an all-rounder in cricket can play superbly in all positions, so did agassi superbly play all available roles: scholar, publicist, speaker, discussant, and teacher, always engaging peers and encouraging students to widen their cultural horizons and uphold their intellectual independence. he was also a relentless critic of israeli politics, identifying its core problem in the state’s patent conflation of ethnic-cum-religious identity with modern civic nationality, a distinction he recognized as a minimum requirement for democracy proper. joseph agassi was born and raised in jerusalem, where he received a strict religious upbringing. aged 15, he left religion, but the jewish-style love of learning remained with him. later, he adopted a talmudic approach, never concealing controversies, and contributed to the investigation of talmud itself, pointing out that in the talmud factual questions may be legal questions as well, and knowledge is not only a matter of nature but a matter of conventions, thereby challenging the traditional distinction between legal questions and factual ones. from 1946 to 1951, he studied physics at the hebrew university of jerusalem, at the department founded and led by the italian physicist giulio racah, a former pupil of enrico fermi’s in rome. he received his master’s degree in physics in 1951. it was during his studies that he met with his future wife, judith (1924–2018), the daughter of margarete buberneumann (1901–1989) and the granddaughter of martin buber (1878–1965). they married in 1949 and had two children, tirzah (1950–2008) and aaron (b. 1958). together they moved to london, where both got their phd at the london school of economics and political science. agassi wrote his doctoral dissertation (the function of 1 stefano gattei is an associate professor in the department of sociology and social research at the university of trento, italy. address: via verdi, 26 – 38122 trento, italy. e-mail: stefano.gattei@unitn.it obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 interpretation in physics) under the guidance of karl popper, and submitted it in 1956. its aim was to be a case study of michael faraday, but it was much more than that: it was a study of the scientific revolution as a movement of researchers, mostly amateurs, who were led by the philosophy of the enlightenment movement, and fashioned modern science within the context of stimulating institutions. materials from this dissertation were later published in three separate works: towards an historiography of science (1963), faraday as a natural philosopher (1971) and the very idea of modern science (2013). agassi was popper’s research assistant from 1953 to 1956, and accompanied him during his 1956-1957 visit to the center for advanced studies in the behavioral sciences at stanford university, after which he was appointed lecturer in philosophy, logic and scientific method at lse (1957–1960). in 1960, choosing to pursue an independent intellectual path, he gave up his position at lse to become lecturer and then reader and head of department of philosophy at the university of hong kong, where he remained until 1963. he then moved to the university of illinois (1963–1965), and to boston university (1965–1983). since then, he held dual appointments as professor of philosophy at york university, toronto (1982–1997, and thereafter as professor emeritus) and tel aviv university (1971–1996, and thereafter as professor emeritus). he lectured at several universities around the globe, especially in europe and north america, and in 2019 he was appointed honorary professor at the university of chieti-pescara, italy. agassi was a member of the world academy of sciences, the american academy for the advancement of science, and the royal society of canada. he was offered a rockefeller fellowship in 1959, which he eventually declined, and received an alexander von humboldt senior fellowship in 1978–1979 and 1986–1987. one of the most prolific authors of the twentieth century, he published some six hundred articles and reviews in the learned press and many more in the popular press, as well as over forty monographs and collections of essays (both in english and hebrew, some of which were translated into other languages).2 he was the editor of the first two issues of the philosophical forum (1968), editor or co-editor of more than ten volumes – including six volumes of works of ernest gellner, with ian c. jarvie – and translator of popper’s the logic of scientific discovery into hebrew (2017). above all, perhaps, he was admired by his students, whom he always tirelessly stimulated to pursue their own intellectual development and flourish as human beings. in his honor, pupils, friends and colleagues published critical rationalism, metaphysics and science and critical rationalism, the social sciences and the humanities (both edited by ian c. jarvie and nathaniel laor, 1995); i limiti della razionalità (edited by martina del castello and michael segre, 2013); encouraging openness (edited by nimrod bar-am and stefano gattei, 2017); and two special issues of philosophy of the social sciences, 52:6, 2022, and 53:1, 2023 (edited by nimrod bar-am and jeremy shearmur), based on a symposium held in november 2021. both for my own limits and the extraordinary scope and variety of agassi’s production, i am unable to offer a proper account of it, let alone to do it justice. yet, however sketchy, no proper portrait may omit the following works of his. in towards an historiography of science (1963), agassi discusses two criteria for historical assessment, both stemming from the uncritical acceptance of two philosophies of science: the inductivist philosophy of science, according to which scientific theories emerge from facts, and the conventionalist philosophy of science, according to which scientific theories are mathematical pigeonholes for classifying facts. both are unsatisfactory, agassi claims, although the latter improves on the former: inductivists keep the path of science clean by sweeping errors under the carpet, whereas conventionalists, while allowing for errors, consider criticism as condemnation. by contrast, agassi points out, trying to see the world through the eyes of our predecessors would let us better appreciate our heritage: knowledge of the struggles that led to our present conditions would help us avoid taking 2 for a list up to december 2021, see https://www.tau.ac.il/~agass/pub.html. obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 such conditions for granted, and understand them more thoroughly. the only way to do so, he suggests, is by appealing to popper’s ‘situational logic’, which allows for the reconstruction of problem situations of past thinkers by appealing to theories that are open to criticism, and treats most of human greatest intellectual achievements as errors to be proud of, and human greatest discoveries of facts as the refutations of such great errors. metaphysics permeates science at almost every stage of its development – untestable ideas, that is, which not only determine what the most pressing problems are, but also what kinds of answers to those problems we shall consider as satisfactory or acceptable, and as improvements of earlier answers. in so doing, metaphysical systems function as unifiers and generators of research agendas. this will constitute a consistent line of inquiry in agassi’s large philosophical and historical production, throughout some seventy years of relentless work. combining ideas of edwin a. burtt and alexandre koyré, in the continuing revolution: a history of physics from the greeks to einstein (1968), written as a three-week discussion with agassi’s son aaron, agassi presents the development of science as an endless dialogue, centering around the posing of problems and debate over their possible solutions. in faraday as a natural philosopher (1971), the second published outcome of his dissertation, agassi considers and compares two portraits of faraday: the private, personal, or psychological, and the public, or scientific. the resulting integrated portrait expands on the idea that science is an exciting and specialized form of metaphysical exploration, in which champions such as faraday need be considered as humans whose spiritual, metaphysical and psychological aspects are to be integrated with their intellectual achievements. while teaching at boston university, agassi published his first major collection of essays, science in flux, the first of his several contributions to the prestigious ‘boston studies in the philosophy of science’ series (1975). beautifully dedicated to popper “in gratitude, with admiration and dissent” (a dedication popper did not appreciate), the collection presents science not as based on experience, as the more or less refined traditional picture would have it, but rather as consisting of explanatory hypotheses which attempt to conform to a general picture of the world, and in which the competing general theories of the world (that is, metaphysics) generate competing research programmes. the collected essays – including some of agassi’s classics, such as “the nature of scientific problems and their roots in metaphysics” (1964), “the confusion between physics and metaphysics in the standard histories of science” (1964), “the confusion between science and technology in the standard philosophies of science” (1966), “sensationalism” (1966), “on novelty” (1968), “science in flux: footnotes to popper” (1968), “unity and diversity in science” (1969) , and “when should we ignore evidence in favour of a hypothesis?” (1973) – offer a dynamic view that highlights the various ways in which the conflicts between science and metaphysics, between the scientific and the technological attitude towards positive evidence, within constraining social frameworks, enhance scientific progress. his second collection in the ‘boston studies’ series, science and society: studies in the sociology of science (1981; the volume is dedicated to the memory of michael polanyi, who is also the main target of agassi’s criticism), including over thirty major philosophical and historical papers, some of which previously unpublished, provides a general picture of the place of science in society, a description of the practice of scientific research, a critique of that practice, and a new view of rationality. agassi identifies popper, polanyi, evans-pritchard and merton as the founding fathers of the sociology of science, and sets as agenda the problem of the order of priority between toleration, criticism, and scientific progress. “science”, agassi points out in the postscript to the preface, “will do better and be more humane if the (inner and outer) democratic controls of the commonwealth of learning improve, become more effective, and apply to wider ideas”. agassi’s pioneering technology: philosophical and social aspects (1985) is a passionate search for better democratic means to control technology while fostering society’s ability to obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 cope with the very shortcomings of technology itself. calling attention to the various components of technology, its difference from science, and its sociological settings, agassi expresses concerns for the dangers posed by the inadequacy of present philosophies of technology. as in many of his later writings, agassi’s stress is on the role of education: we need broad-based education for both technology and democratic control, he argues. poverty, pollution, population explosion and the proliferation of nuclear weapons are urgent threats to the future of mankind, and drastic democratic reforms are called for. towards a rational philosophical anthropology (1977) – undoubtedly one of agassi’s major works, despite its almost absolute neglect – evolved out of three lectures delivered at the van leer jerusalem foundation in may 1971, and one lecture delivered at the boston colloquium for the philosophy of science in october 1972. it explains and criticizes five distinct anthropologies: man as machine, man as animal, man as rational, man as social, and man in the image of god. it attacks the prevalent all-or-nothing attitude in philosophy and argues for an anthropology that does not depend on the greek polarization of all that is good with all that is evil, not condemning mankind for its inherent imperfections. only if we dispose of the greek dichotomy, the author suggests, will the road be cleared for a more moderate rational picture of man as only partly rational, hopefully more at peace with himself, his partial rationality and his partial democracy. let me conclude by referring to two collections of essays. the first, rationality: the critical view (1987), is another happy outcome of the long and fruitful collaboration of agassi and jarvie. it all started with a joint paper, “the problem of the rationality of magic”, first published in the british journal of sociology in 1967: the phenomenon of magic (including sorcery and witchcraft) poses a variety of interesting problems, some of them sociological. among these, the most difficult appears to be: why do people we deem to be rational perform magical acts, such as, for instance, cast spells, enact rites, and so on? a person may be deemed rational if he acts rationally, or if he holds rational beliefs, or both. the rationality that consists in acting rationally is what jarvie and agassi call the ‘weak’ sense of rationality; whereas the rationality that consists in acting on the basis of rationally held beliefs they call the ‘strong’ sense of rationality. their thesis is that magic is rational in the weak sense, but not in the strong sense (unlike science, which is rational in the strong sense): this is their proposal to demarcate magic from science. at the end, jarvie and agassi suggest the sociological problem of the rationality of magic should be posed differently. we should ask: can people with inefficient magical beliefs be critical of them, under what conditions, and to what extent? or, to put it differently: the problem is not, how on earth can some people believe in magic?, but, rather, can they come to accept criticisms of magic? how would they do that? in what circumstances? here lies, jarvie and agassi argue, the really important sociological problem posed by magic. upon its publication, the paper provoked a considerable amount of controversy, and generated, directly or indirectly, a large literature both within philosophy and the social sciences. a subsequent paper, “magic and rationality again”, with the authors’ second thoughts and replies to critics, appeared in the same journal in 1973. there followed attempts to extend the model of rationality to other areas, with two more joint papers, “the rationality of dogmatism” (1979) and “the rationality of irrationalism” (1980). these were all usefully reprinted in part iii of rationality: the critical view, a volume that illustrates the fruitful proliferation of thoughts on the problem of rationality as it stemmed from popper’s ideas, and relates back to them. the volume, which was later complemented by “rationality: philosophical and social aspects” (1992), also includes one of agassi's more cited papers, “methodological individualism” (1960). the second collection i wish to mention here is the gentle art of philosophical polemics (1988), a selection of agassi’s most sparking and piercing reviews and critical comments, illustrating the author’s unconventional critical attitude towards the works of his peers, as well as his indications on how to properly conduct philosophical discussions. the volume presents agassi’s criticism of conventional thinking in philosophy of science and obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 epistemology, including kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions and contemporary analytic philosophy, his reappraisals of thinkers such as bacon, mach, duhem, wittgenstein and carnap, not to mention devastating assessments of grünbaum’s account of psychoanalysis, lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programmes and feyerabend’s epistemological nihilism – as well as of popper’s own evolutionary epistemology, as presented in objective knowledge (1972). much more should be mentioned, which i cannot but list here, only to offer a better idea of the sheer complexity, richness and wide-ranging character of agassi’s output: — works in the philosophy of medicine: paranoia: a study in diagnosis (1976) and psychiatry as medicine (1983), both in collaboration with yehuda fried, as well as diagnosis: philosophical and medical perspectives (1990), with nathaniel laor, advancing the proposal to restore the traditional association between medicine and education. — the siblinghood of humanity: an introduction to philosophy (1990), a little-known and hard-to-find extraordinary book, in which agassi introduces students to philosophy as debate about the nature of rationaliy. this may be coupled with the history of modern philosophy from bacon to kant (1600-1800): an introduction (1993, in hebrew). — works in the history of science, such as radiation theory and the quantum revolution (1993), a treasure trove of original ideas on the dawn of quantum physics, also discussing problems inherent in methodology, metaphysics and philosophy of science (and, at times, the psychology of scientists); and the very idea of modern science: francis bacon and robert boyle (2013, dedicated to the memory of alexandre koyré and i. bernard cohen): this was the first part of agassi’s dissertation to be written, and the last to be published. combining micro and macro approaches, the book is an important study of the scientific revolution as a movement of amateur science: it describes the ideology of the scientific societies as the philosophy of the enlightenment movement, and shows how the scientific organization of science gave way to professional science in stages. key papers include “on explaining the trial of galileo” (1971), “who discovered boyle’s law?” (1977), and “the place of metaphysics in the historiography of science” (1996). history of science is also the focus of science and its history (2008; dedicated to robert s. cohen), which – together with science and culture (2003, dedicated to lifelong friend mario bunge: in 1982, agassi co-edited with robert s. cohen a volume of essays in honor of bunge’s sixtieth birthday, scientific philosophy today) and the aforementioned science in flux and science and society (all published in the ‘boston studies’ series) – forms what agassi saw as a sort of tetralogy on the various facets of the scientific enterprise. — works on aesthetics and art: a critical rationalist aesthetics, with ian c. jarvie (2008), and malevich: the lost paintings, with david harel (2018). — works in political philosophy, such as liberal nationalism for israel: towards an israeli national identity (1999; the book was first published in hebrew in 1984), challenging the most fundamental dogmas of israel: nationalism and religious identity. failure to make the distinction between religion and nationality, agassi argues, leads to discrimination against the non-jewish citizens of israel, thus preventing peace. in this ground-breaking book, agassi supports the vision of hillel kook (1915–2001), according to which israel should be state of the israeli nation, which includes nonobituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 jewish citizens and excludes jews who are not israeli citizens, giving it a philosophical home. also, he articulates it into the demand of jews unilaterally to give up the zionist myth, offering a moral and political blueprint that also applies beyond the boundaries of israel, one that must precede any political attempts to resolve the arab-israeli conflict. in a follow-up paper, “israel: a state governed by rule-of-law or rule-by-arrangement?” (2000, in hebrew; translated into english in 2003), agassi openly denounces the actual discrimination against non-jews citizens by israeli civil servants, a discrimination that is forbidden by law but in fact allowed, if not expected of israeli civil servants, who might otherwise lose their jobs. such covert discrimination, agassi suggests, prevents progress to a modern liberal state, and has dangerous consequences: as spinoza taught, hate ends up destroying those who hate. — papers explicitly addressed to students, such as “dissertation without tears” (1999), in which he recommends writing having an imagined reader in mind and trying to serve him. most importantly, he recommends always starting with a question (“what’s the problem?”, he often asked), one that has many possible answers, which should then be clearly stated and critically discussed. and works on education, such as letters to my sister concerning contemporary philosophy (1976, 20002, in hebrew); the collection the hazard called education: essays, reviews and dialogues on education from forty-five years, edited by ronald swartz and sheldon richmond (2014); and academic agonies and how to avoid them: advice to young people on their way to academic careers, edited by james h. collier (2020). agassi admired the model of studying in the tradition of yeshiva (the traditional jewish school focused on the study of rabbinic literature) and recommended the democratization of education. — studies on the argumentative, dialogical character of philosophy, socrates-style: philosophy from a skeptical perspective (2008) and beg to differ: the logic of disputes and argumentation (2016), both in collaboration with abraham meidan. — insightful critical assessments of some of the more influential contemporary philosophers and their key works: popper and his popular critics: thomas kuhn, paul feyerabend and imre lakatos (2014), and ludwig wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations: an attempt at a critical rationalist appraisal (2018), as well as vol. 4 of paul feyerabend’s collected philosophical papers, physics and philosophy (2016, edited with stefano gattei). — two little gems, such as the philosophy of practical affairs: an introduction (2022), a book that recovers and further develops some of the themes of the siblinghood of humanity (1990), and the posthumous games to play and games not to play: strategic decisions via extensions of game theory, with uri weiss (2023). — last, but by no means least, a philosopher’s apprentice: in karl popper’s workshop (1993 and 20082), agassi’s personal account of his intellectual formation in 1950s london, struggling with the imposing figure of his mentor, colleague, and later rival karl popper. as their painful break, due to agassi’s search for intellectual independence, was never completely healed, the volume offers precious psychological insight into popper’s attitude towards his pupils and peers, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, and captures like no other the personal, academic and political elements of one of the most philosophically important milieu in the history of the twentieth century. obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 trait d’union of all these works is the discussion of the problem of rationality in all shapes and forms. agassi’s philosophy was a continuous and relentless attempt to elaborate on popper’s idea that the gist of the scientific spirit is openness to criticism. developing this idea in fields which popper himself either directly redefined, merely touched upon, or altogether disregarded, agassi has always encouraged his readers to doubt even their most cherished insights, and engage in honest, frank critical dialogue. it is not easy, it is not without effort. on the contrary: it is extremely demanding, often exhausting – yet, nothing else is more exciting and rewarding, both from the intellectual and the personal point of view. we do not have to try to make people critically minded, we have no right to force anybody to offer or accept criticism, or to learn to participate effectively in a critical discussion: it is their right to refuse to do so. all educators can do (and have to do) is try to help them become critically minded if and when they request that. throughout his intense life, and through a tightly knit philosophical output that spans over seven decades, agassi followed in popper’s footsteps to develop his master’s philosophy in new directions, driven both by the hope that rational debate will lead to improvement, and the conviction that criticism is an expression of respect, and entails responsibility. such responsibility can be encouraged, but not forced. the problem of rationality is perhaps the most important of philosophical problems and, in a sense, the core of philosophy itself. it concerns the choice of one’s principles and values, says popper; it concerns the choice of one’s lifestyle, says agassi. rationality is a part of our way of life, and that goes alike for the rationalist and the irrationalist. the solution to the problem of rationality is the very starting point of every philosophical approach, the very choice of one’s lifestyle. agassi’s own approach to philosophy, as beautifully presented in his autobiography, is his solution to the problem of rationality: his whole life is the very embodiment of his understanding of rationality and his solution to its fundamental problem. joseph agassi (left) with ian jarvie (right) and stefano gattei (middle) in the gardens of the buonconsiglio castle, trento, italy may 10, 2022 obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 this was also the very core of agassi’s swan song, the lectures he gave at the university of trento, italy, on may 10-11, 2022, together with his long-time friend and collaborator ian jarvie (who passed away shortly after agassi, on may 16, 2023), and former pupil john wettersten. at the end of this note, i cannot help but remember joske – as his friends usually addressed him – during those last, beautiful few days we had in trento. i like to conclude as i did when i gave him the floor, by quoting the closing sentence of “in search of rationality– a personal report” (1982), his contribution to a festschrift volume for popper: i may be moving in the world with the wrong map, but i am eager to improve it if and when i can, and i seek friends who can criticize me. for this, i am grateful to [joseph agassi]. references works by joseph agassi agassi, j. 1956. the function of interpretation in physics. phd dissertation, university of london. agassi, j. 1960. methodological individualism. the british journal of sociology, 11 (3), pp. 244270. agassi, j. 1963. towards an historiography of science. history and theory, beiheft 2; facsimile reprint, middletown: wesleyan university press, 1967. agassi, j. 1964a. the confusion between physics and metaphysics in the standard histories of science. in: guerlac h. (ed.). ithaca, 26 viii 1962– 2 ix 1962: proceedings of the tenth international congress of the history of science of science. hermann: paris, pp. 231-238 and 249-250; reprinted in agassi 1975, pp. 270-281. agassi, j. 1964b. the nature of scientific problems and their roots in metaphysics. in: bunge, m. (ed.). the critical approach to science and philosophy: in honor of karl r. popper. london: the free press of glencoe, pp. 189-211; reprinted in agassi 1975, pp. 208-239. agassi, j. 1966a. sensationalism. mind 75 (297), pp. 1-24; reprinted in agassi 1975, pp. 92-119. agassi, j. 1966b. the confusion between science and technology in the standard philosophies of science. technology and culture, 7 (3), pp. 348-366; reprinted in agassi 1975, pp. 282305. agassi, j. 1968a. science in flux: footnotes to popper. in: cohen, r. s. and wartofsky, m. w. (eds.). boston studies in the philosophy of science: proceedings of the boston colloquium for the philosophy of science 1964/1966, in memory of norwood russell hanson. dordrecht: d. reidel and new york: humanities press, pp. 293-323; reprinted in agassi 1975, pp. 9-39. agassi, j. 1968b. the continuing revolution: a history of physics from the greeks to einstein. new york: mcgraw-hill. agassi, j. 1968c. the novelty of popper’s philosophy of science. international philosophical quarterly, 8 (3), pp. 442-463; reprinted as on novelty, in agassi 1975, pp. 51-73. agassi, j. 1969. unity and diversity in science. in: cohen, r. s. and wartofsky, m. w. (eds.). boston studies in the philosophy of science: proceedings of the boston colloquium for the philosophy of science 1966/1968. dordrecht: d. reidel and new york: humanities press, pp. 463-522; reprinted in agassi 1975, pp. 404-468. agassi, j. 1971a. faraday as a natural philosopher. chicago-london: the university of chicago press. agassi, j. 1971b. on explaining the trial of galileo. organon, 8: 137-166; reprinted in agassi 1981, pp. 321-351. obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 agassi, j. 1973. when should we ignore evidence in favour of a hypothesis? ratio, 15 (2), pp. 183-205; reprinted in agassi 1975, pp. 127-151. agassi, j. 1975. science in flux (boston studies in the philosophy of science, 28). dordrechtboston: d. reidel. agassi, j. 1976. letters to my sister concerning contemporary philosophy [in hebrew]. omer: sarah batz, 1976; second edition, tel aviv: yedioth aharonoth books and chemed books, 2000. agassi, j. 1977a. towards a rational philosophical anthropology. the hague: martinus nijhoff. agassi, j. 1977b. who discovered boyle’s law? studies in history and philosophy of science, 8 (3): 189-250; reprinted in agassi 2008, pp. 388-443. agassi, j. 1981. science and society: studies in the sociology of science (boston studies in the philosophy of science, 65). dordrecht-boston-london: d. reidel. agassi, j. 1982. in search of rationality–a personal report. in levinson p. (ed.). in pursuit of truth: essays in honor of karl popper’s 80th birthday, atlantic highlands, nj: humanities press, pp. 237-248. agassi, j. 1984. between faith and nationality: towards an israeli national identity. tel aviv: papirus; second edition, 1993; third edition, 2019. english translation, liberal nationalism for israel: towards an israeli national identity. jerusalemnew york: gefen, 1999. agassi, j. 1985. technology: philosophical and social aspects. dordrecht-boston-london. agassi, j. 1988. the gentle art of philosophical polemics: selected reviews and comments. la salle, il: open court. agassi, j. 1990. the siblinghood of humanity: an introduction to philosophy. delmar, ny: caravan books. agassi, j. 1992. rationality: philosophical and social aspects. minerva, 30, pp. 366-390; reprinted as rationality: philosophical, social, and historical aspects, in agassi 2008, pp. 266-284. agassi, j. 1993a. a philosopher’s apprentice: in karl popper’s workshop. amsterdam: rodopi; second edition, 2008. agassi, j. 1993b. radiation theory and the quantum revolution. basel-boston-berlin: birkhäuser. agassi, j. 1993c. the history of modern philosophy from bacon to kant (1600-1800): an introduction [in hebrew]. tel aviv: ramot. agassi, j. 1996. the place of metaphysics in the historiography of science. foundations of physics, 26 (4): 483-499; reprinted in agassi 2008, pp. 254-265. agassi, j. 1999. dissertation without tears. in: zecha g. (ed.). critical rationalism and educational discourse. amsterdam-atlanta: rodopi, pp. 59-89. agassi, j. 2000. israel: a state governed by rule-of-law or rule-of-arrangement? [in hebrew]. in: david j. e. (ed.), the state of israel: between judaism and democracy. jerusalem: the israel democracy institute, 2000, pp. 211-233; english translation, 2003. agassi, j. 2003. science and culture (boston studies in the philosophy of science, 231). dordrecht-boston-london: kluwer academic publishers. agassi, j. 2008. science and its history. a reassessment of the historiography of science (boston studies in the philosophy of science, 253). cham, ch: springer. agassi, j. 2013. the very idea of modern science: francis bacon and robert boyle (boston studies in the philosophy and history of science, 298). dordrecht: springer. agassi, j. 2014a. popper and his popular critics: thomas kuhn, paul feyerabend and imre lakatos. cham, ch: springer. agassi, j. 2014b. the hazard called education: essays, reviews, and dialogues on education from forty-five years, edited by r. swartz and s. richmond. rotterdam: sense publishers. agassi, j. 2018. ludwig wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations: an attempt at a critical rationalist appraisal. cham, ch: springer. obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 agassi, j. 2020. academic agonies and how to avoid them: advice to young people on their way to academic careers, edited by j. h. collier. blacksburg, va: social epistemology review and reply collective. agassi, j. 2022. the philosophy of practical affairs: an introduction. lanham, md: lexington books. works by joseph agassi in collaboration with others agassi, j. and cohen, r. s. 1982. scientific philosophy today: essays in honor of mario bunge. dordrecht-boston-london: d. reidel. agassi, j. and jarvie, i. c. 1973. magic and rationality again, the british journal of sociology, 24 (2): 236-245; reprinted in agassi and jarvie (eds.) 1987, pp. 385-394. agassi, j. and jarvie, i. c. 1979. the rationality of dogmatism. in: geraets t. f. (ed.). rationality to-day, ottawa: university of ottawa press, pp. 353-362; reprinted in agassi and jarvie (eds.) 1987, pp. 431-443. agassi, j. and jarvie, i. 1980. the rationality of irrationalism. metaphilosophy, 11 (2): 127-133; reprinted in agassi and jarvie (eds.) 1987, pp. 445-451. agassi, j. and jarvie, i. c. 2008. a critical rationalist aesthetics. amsterdam: rodopi. agassi, j. and meidan a. 2008. philosophy from a skeptical perspective. cambridge etc.: cambridge university press. agassi, j. and meidan, a. 2016. beg to differ: the logic of disputes and argumentation, cham, ch: springer. feyerabend, p. k. 2016. physics and philosophy: philosophical papers, vol. 4, edited by s. gattei and j. agassi, new york: cambridge university press. fried, y. and agassi, j. 1976. paranoia: a study in diagnosis. dordrecht-boston: d. reidel. fried, y. and agassi, j. 1983. psychiatry as medicine: contemporary psychotherapies. the hagueboston-lancaster: martinus nijhoff. harel d. and agassi, j. 2018. malevich: the lost paintings, edited by ruth heymann. tel aviv: reichman hamburger publications. jarvie, i. c. and agassi, j. 1967. the problem of the rationality of magic. the british journal of sociology, 18: 55-74; reprinted in agassi and jarvie (eds.) 1987, pp. 363-383. laor, n. and agassi, j. 1990. diagnosis: philosophical and medical perspectives. dordrechtboston-london: kluwer academic publishers. weiss, u. and agassi, j. 2023. games to play and games not to play: strategic decisions via extensions of game theory. cham: springer. works edited by joseph agassi and ian c. jarvie agassi, j. and jarvie, i. c. (eds.) 1987. rationality: the critical view, dordrecht-bostonlancaster: martinus nijhoff. gellner, e. 1973. cause and meaning in the social sciences, edited by i. c. jarvie and j. agassi. london-boston: routledge & kegan paul. gellner, e. 1974a. contemporary thought and politics, edited by i. c. jarvie and j. agassi. london-boston: routledge & kegan paul. gellner, e. 1974b. the devil in modern philosophy, edited by i. c. jarvie and j. agassi. londonboston: routledge & kegan paul. gellner, e. 1979. spectacles and predicaments: essays on social theory, edited by i. c. jarvie and j. agassi. cambridge etc.: cambridge university press. gellner, e. 1985. relativism and the social sciences, edited by i. c. jarvie and j. agassi. cambridge etc.: cambridge university press. gellner, e. 1987. culture, identity and politics, edited by i. c. jarvie and j. agassi. cambridge etc.: cambridge university press. obituary: joseph agassi stefano gattei transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 works on joseph agassi bar-am, n. and gattei, s. (eds.) 2017. encouraging openness: essays for joseph agassi on the occasion of his 90th birthday (boston studies in the philosophy and history of science, 325). cham, ch: springer. bar-am, n. and shearmur, j. (eds.) 2022. joseph agassi’s contributions to philosophy, part i, special issue of philosophy of the social sciences, 52 (6). bar-am, n. and shearmur, j. (eds.) 2023. joseph agassi’s contributions to philosophy, part ii, special issue of philosophy of the social sciences, 53 (1). del castello, m. and segre, m. (eds.) 2013. i limiti della razionalità: scritti in onore di joseph agassi. lanciano, it: carabba. jarvie, i. c. and laor n. (eds.). 1995. critical rationalism, metaphysics and science: essays for joseph agassi, volume i (boston studies in the philosophy of science, 161). dordrechtboston-london: kluwer academic publishers. jarvie, i. c. and laor n. (eds.). 1995. critical rationalism, the social sciences and the humanities: essays for joseph agassi, volume ii (boston studies in the philosophy of science, 162). dordrecht-boston-london: kluwer academic publisher. microsoft word burganova nugayev layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-20 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2023 – this is an open-access journal bruno latour – special issue bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0568-0677 rinat m. nugayev2 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9925-2264 abstract: bruno latour’s distinctive historiographic standpoint on the origins of scientific revolutions and the multifarious accounts of their reconstructions are elicited. it is contended that, in spite of their highly iconoclastic character, latour’s views can be welcomed for their innovative approach to the inquiries of social facets of science. in particular, they can elucidate the foundations of the lucid mature theory change model proffered in our preceding writings. correspondingly, the copernican revolution is envisaged in the wayward context of intense interaction and interpenetration of aristotelean and ptolemaic sophisticated research practices. eventually, the aristotle – ptolemy pagan cosmology could not help but be exposed to repeated cogent attacks during the middle ages since it apparently confronted the renowned principles of monotheism, not admitting the impervious demarcation line between the celestial and mundane realms. all the opposite worlds should have one and the same creator. commencing with the unification, copernicus, in effect, paved the way for the descent of mathematics from heaven to earth and the spread of natural philosophy from earth to heaven. keywords: latour; scientific revolution; structure; social facets; aristotle; ptolemy; monotheistic weltanschauung; copernicus; galileo; newton received: april 11, 2023. reviewed: may 05, 2023. accepted: may 30, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction the problem of the origins of a scientific revolution: the significance of sociology of knowledge approach why did bold and abstruse copernican research program squeeze out refined and entrenched ptolemaic one commencing the first scientific revolution? – the basic 1 tanzilia a. burganova is an assistant professor in the department of social science at the kazan state power engineering university, 420066 kazan, krasnoselskaya str. 51, the republic of tatarstan, the russian federation. e-mail: tburganova@yandex.ru 2 rinat m. nugayev is a full professor in the department of social science and humanities at the volga region state university of physical culture, sport and tourism. 420138 kazan 35, universiade village, the republic of tatarstan. the russian federation. e-mails: rinatnugaev@mail.ru, nugayevrinat@gmail.com bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 epistemological approaches to broaching the subject and solving the stubbornly recalcitrant problem are commonly laid out by the following options. (i) guileless inductivist version; (ii) conspicuous falsificationist version of karl popper; (iii) discreet conventionalist version of pierre duhem; (iv) promising yet insufficiently advanced social-psychological version of thomas s. kuhn; (v) sophisticated falsificationist version of imre lakatos and elie zahar. nevertheless, the deft explanations for the ultimate reasons for copernicus’s triumph over ptolemy seem rather dubious in the light of the following rather plain counterarguments. (i) guileless inductivist account famously turns out to be especially fragile since the theories from both competing research projects – that of copernicus and ptolemy – practically equally deviated from the available observational data (see, for instance, kuhn 1977). for instance, still the notorious buridanists, in their controversy with aristotle, stressed that, on the unsteady ground of astronomical observations, it is impossible to assert definitely whether the earth or the stellar sphere moves (oresme; quoted from kokowski 1996). (ii) classical falsificationist explanations of the substantial causes of ptolemy’s defeat are commonly reduced to the following perspicuous options. (ii. а) according to the austere one, ptolemy’s deft theory was illicitly irrefutable and therefore unscientific, while copernicus’s superlative theory was just the opposite. ptolemy’s ingenious heuristic was blatantly ad hoc. any odd celestial fact could be aptly accounted for in retrospect by immense multiplying the intricate paraphernalia of heterogeneous epicycles, epicyclets, deferents, equants, and so forth. regrettably, the ‘unrestricted proliferation’ of manifold epicycles in ptolemaic whimsical astronomy constitutes a wonted ‘historical myth’ (gingerich 1997). in actual research practice, to compensate for the flagrant equant triumphal stave off, copernicus had to insert a new species of no less stale epicycles. eventually, the ptolemaic ‘antediluvian’ program transpired to embrace fewer epicycles than the ‘bold revolutionary’ copernican one. (ii. b) according to the second, more sophisticated version (popper [1935], 2002), both competing theories were practically equally lame for a sufficiently long time. but eventually, the smashing blow of the ‘critical experiment’ relentlessly refuted ptolemy, buttressing copernicus at the same time. though when did this textbook miracle happen? alas, historians of science have not come to a consensus yet. maybe in 1616, when lucky devil galileo had miraculously discovered the cycles of venus? unfortunately, the generally-accepted claim that galileo had successfully predicted the unexpected phases of venus again is a sought-after historical lapse (ariew 1989). one can rightfully sympathize with galileo’s scathing critics among the stout aristotelians decidedly refusing to take seriously the astonishing observational data produced by a newfangled telescope with rather dubious and murky work principles (kuhn 1957; feyerabend [1975] 2010; chaunu 1984). (iii) due to the discreet conventionalist approach, one cannot dare to make the final choice between the competing theories only grounded on sheer empirical considerations (duhem [1906], 1954). eventually, one theory surely fits better than the other since it is more ‘simple’, ‘beautiful’, ‘coherent’, ‘economic’, etc. yet, i. lakatos and e. zahar, many a time and oft retorted that the alluring ‘myth of simplicity’, for instance, was time and oft dispelled by the painstaking labor of the historians of science in variety of case-studies (lakatos and zahar 1974, 362). furthermore, such theorybruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 choice situations are common for the history of science, when one of the competing theories is simpler than the other indeed. however, this ‘other’ is in better agreement with the available experimental data at hand or better reconciles with other respectable theories (kuhn 1977). which theory should be definitely chosen? the same is true for other often misty conventionalist criteria that in common research practice, function as values only and not as definite and effective criteria of choice. (iv) due to t. s. kuhn’s distinctive accounts (kuhn 1957; kuhn 1963, 367), ptolemy’s sophisticated astronomy was going in 1543 through a depressive state of ‘paradigm-crisis’ that constitutes, according to the celebrated epistemological doctrine (kuhn 1961), the indispensable ‘prelude’ to a scientific revolution. nevertheless, as lakatos and zahar (1974) shrewdly parried, how many scholars had perceived this horrific ‘community crisis’ that, withal, lasted for more than a thousand years? herewith one of the celebrated historians of science persevered that in the copernican paradigmatic case kuhn oddly envisions ‘a scandal where there was none’ (gingerich 2004). and if kuhn’s meticulous analysis of the fine ‘structure of scientific revolutions’ is ultimately applicable to the copernican case, why so few scholars had deliberately buttressed copernicus before kepler, galileo, descartes and newton? further, according to thomas kuhn and his partisans, a scientific revolution – in a perspicuous analogy to political revolutions, such as the 1789 french revolution or the 1917 russian one – is taken as resolutely and completely displacing the ancien régime research traditions in science (westman 1994). through the course of such relentless breakthroughs, new mature research traditions are so radicalized that they become “incommensurable” with their mature predecessors. it leads to a bizarre standpoint that the great pundits like newton, maxwell, darwin, bohr or einstein, being the instigators of revolutionary breakthroughs, should be pictured as convinced adversaries of the ‘creative dialogue’ between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ paradigms. however, such a startling tenet seems to us rather unilateral since it apparently exaggerates the revolutionary facet of a profound scientific change. likewise, copernicus rather aptly modifies than categorically rejects aristotle’s and ptolemy’s stout principles. moreover, in many important respects, he can be envisaged just as a discreet reformer of generally accepted astronomy rather than an ardent revolutionary intent on its overthrow. for instance, copernicus discreetly modifies the famous aristotelian principle that an object can take part only in a single natural motion. he aptly argues that a more complex principle is required to accommodate falling bodies on a rotating earth (goddu 2010). (v) the sublime srp (scientific research programs) methodology (lakatos 1970) maintains that the pivotal problem of philosophy/methodology of science is to proffer a normative appraisal of scientific theories. a sturdy and objective appraisal of a scientific change is surely a normative problem and whereupon belongs to analytical philosophy. however, a stout explanation of the scientific change – of the elicited true reasons of acceptance and rejection of the theories involved – is predominantly a psychological/sociological conundrum. certainly, the copernican distinctive program showed itself as a ‘theoretically progressive’ one. not by chance had this hallmark been gladly anticipated by one of copernicus’ faithful disciples: aristotle says: ‘that which causes derivative truths to be true is most true’ (metaphysics 993b 27-27). accordingly, my teacher decided that he must assume such hypotheses as would contain causes capable of confirming the truth of the observations of previous centuries, and such as would themselves cause, we may hope, all future astronomical predictions of the phenomena to be found true. (rheticus, narratio prima; quoted from kokowski 1996, 39) bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 the copernican fine program had theoretically accounted for many important ‘novel facts’ not observed before – star parallax, for instance. though actually, the copernican program started to make reliable empirical progress only with newtonian mechanics (lakatos and zahar 1974, 374). the ‘ptolemy-copernicus’ inextricable transition had been masterly reconstructed within the dazzling methodology of imre lakatos. in our view, one should not nitpick about petty lapses that are common for any pioneering treatise of this kind. yet the crucial point is a matter of principle. one should never forget that the ultimate aim of the srp methodology is to set an objective and incontrovertible appraisal of scientific change but not the humble explanations of its actual reasons (lakatos and zahar 1974, 381). within the shadowy frame of the lakatos-zahar elevated approach, it is quite easy to admit that all the subtle content of the copernican bold program could be contrived even by aristarchus of samos. but why had it not happened? and why did these sublime designs not have any significant impact on ptolemy and his numerous followers? in our view, the abovementioned drawbacks are connected with one and the same notorious reason – lack of proper scrutiny of the subtle interconnections of cognitive and social aspects of scientific research. all those sublime epistemological models (even kuhn’s), as a matter of fact, ignore to varying degrees the relentless hallmark that science is a ‘community effect’ (russ payne). regrettably, epistemologists hold a ‘great genius’ vision of the progress of science. according to the romantic standpoint, the startling insights of very peculiar individuals, the ‘chosen ones of the gods’, are what drive science forward. though this is an apparently distorted picture. the great luminaries like newton, maxwell or einstein can only start a revolution in scientific thinking at best – but only when a broader community of researchers relentlessly prepared the field. and sedulously created the conditions for the growth of the seeds of revolution in thinking. eventually, the history of science needs to be comprehended in new terms – in terms of how these broader communities progress to the point where revolutionary thinking is called for. the celebrated ‘great insights and discoveries’ never take place in a social vacuum. revolutions in thinking cannot happen until the scientific community is convinced that the old paradigm (program, tradition) is broken. only when this does really happen, appropriate alternatives to the old and entrenched paradigm are advanced. bruno latour and modern sociology of knowledge latour and woolgar’s 1979 distinctive study decidedly broke away from unilateral positivist view of advancement of science as a sheer asocial process capable of revealing universally valid truths regarding the natural world. on the contrary, they took scientific knowledge as an artificial product of different social, political, and economic interactions. correspondingly, the pivotal tenet of modern sociology of scientific knowledge consists in the assertion that it is misleading to scrutinize the language (of science) through an analysis of words and meanings isolated from the pragmatic situations in which they are used (lynch and woolgar 1990). this applies not only to words but to methodological rules and recipes and theoretical propositions as well. although such formulations find their particular applications in real scientific accounts, they are apparently fetishized in epistemological writings on basic scientific ‘ideas’ and apt experimental ‘methodology’. forsooth, sociologists have no need to meticulously clarify everyday language, insofar as ‘everyday’ or ‘ordinary’ actions are the primary subjects of empirical study. instead of asking, “what do we really mean, in various contexts, by ‘representation’?”, the studies begin by asking “what do the participants treat as representation?” following the trend, philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science are now questioning the privilege traditionally assigned to the verbal statement or ‘proposition’, devoting instead attention to multifarious forms of representation. the corresponding studies unfold a throng of ways to disclose that the particular ‘representations’ have little bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 determinate meaning or logical force aside from the complex activities in which they are situated. eventually the startling topic of ‘representational practices in science’ was related to the general issues in the sociology and philosophy of science (lynch and woolgar, 1990). herewith a strong emphasis on the heterogeneity and discontinuity of representational formats, and on the local and contextual ground of their production, has become a common refrain in ‘postmodernist’ critiques of traditional accounts on science (derrida 1970; foucault 1970). however, the conspicuous trend under consideration was epitomized in barnes and bloor’s ‘strong program’ in the sociology of knowledge. a pivotal tenet of the program is to contrive sociological explanations of all scientific ‘beliefs’, regardless of the truth or falsity assigned to them. the ‘strong program’ takes the ‘contents’ of scientific knowledge as reified products of historical and contemporary stark controversies, sedulous partisan genealogies of scientific facts, and outrageous negotiations over credit for discoveries. on the one hand, socio-historical arguments on how scientists’ theoretical commitments reflected social ‘interests’ were ‘interesting and suggestive’ (lynch and woolgar 1990). though on the other hand they begged many inextricable questions on the nature of such ‘interests’ and how they work themselves into research settings (woolgar 1981). furthermore, according to paul tibbets, bloor’s and barnes’s constructive arguments are reflexively undermined by incongruent causal and realist assumptions (see also laudan 1981; woolgar 1983). respectively, bold hypotheses about changes in the mind or human consciousness, in the structure of the brain, in social relations, in ‘mentalité’s’, or in the economic infrastructure which are posited to explain the emergence of science or its present achievements are simply too grandiose, not to say hagiographic, in most cases and plainly racist in more than a few others…the idea that a more rational mind or a more constraining scientific method emerged from darkness and chaos is too complicated a hypothesis. it seems to me that the first step toward a convincing explanation is to adopt this a priori position. (latour 1990, 19) the key point is that the grand dichotomy with its ‘racist hubris’ certainty should be replaced by many uncertain and unexpected divides (see also goody 1977). according to bruno latour’s apt analogy, the notorious divide between prescientific and scientific culture is merely a common border – like between tijuana and san diego. it is installed by the border guards dominated by the bureaucrats; yet it does not represent any natural boundary. eventually, all these sublime grand dichotomies cannot provide any reliable explanation. on the contrary, they are themselves the things to be explained (latour 1983). but in providing reliable and stout explanations one has to steer a course that can lead out of a perfunctory relativism by eliciting a number of simple, empirically verifiable causes. one needs to arrive at more mundane explanations than that of a great divide in human consciousness. as for barnes and bloor, worst of all in order to explain science one has to kneel before one peculiar science, that of economics. thus, ironically, many ‘materialist’ studies of the profound origins of science are in no way material. they defiantly ignore the precise practices and subtle craftmanship of knowing. hence it seems to me that the only way to escape the simplistic relativist position is to avoid both ‘materialist’ and ‘mentalist’ explanations at all costs and to look instead for more parsimonious accounts, which are empirical through and through, and yet able to explain the vast effects of science and technology. (latour 1990, 21) bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 in sum, latour finds all the explanations in terms of social groups, interests or economic trends convincing only when they proffer a specific mechanism to sum up ‘groups’, ‘interests’, ‘money’ and ‘trends’. turning to the thrilling case of the first scientific revolution, one can conclude that the rationalization that took place was not of the mind, of the eye, of philosophy but of the sight. for instance, why was perspective such an important invention? “because of its logical recognition of internal invariances through all the transformations produced in spatial location” (ivins 1973, 9). hence in the west, even if the subject of the printed text were guilelessly unscientific, “the printed picture always presented a rational image based on the universal laws of geometry. hence the scientific revolution all appearance owes more to albrecht dürer than to leonardo da vinci” (edgerton 1980, 190). in this sense antonello’s st. jerome is an apt paradigm of a new consciousness of the physical world attained by western european intellectuals by the late xvth century. this consciousness was exhibited by such artists as leonardo da vinci, albrecht dürer, hans holbein and others who “developed a sophisticated grammar and syntax for quantifying natural phenomena in pictures”. (edgerton 1980, 189) that is why latour resolutely rejected the so-called ‘materialist’ explanations that apply ‘infrastructures’, or ‘markets’ or ‘consumer needs’ to account for the advancement of science. on the contrary, it is the visual construction of something like a ‘market’ or an ‘economy’ that cries for explanation. moreover, one commonly takes for granted that there exist, somewhere in society, powerful macro-actors that naturally dominate the social scene: corporation, state, material productive forces, cultures, imperialism, etc. but the problem is that these conspicuous entities could not exist at all. a ‘state’, a ‘corporation’, a ‘culture’, an ‘economy’ et al. are the result of a punctualization process that obtains a few indicators out of many traces. in order to exist, these entities, have to be summed up once upon a time and somewhere. far from being the key to comprehension of science, the abovementioned entities are the very things the new comprehension of science should explain. the large – scale actors to which the partisans of the strong program are keen to attach ‘interests’ are immaterial in practice as long as precise and empirically verified mechanisms to explain their origin or extraction and their changes of scale have not been proposed. “to take the existence of macro-actors for granted without studying the material that makes them ‘macro’, is to make both science and society mysterious’” (latour 1990, 56). furthermore, many accounts were proffered to hack up the history of science with the history of capitalism. for instance, many efforts have been made to display the scientist as capitalist. according to 1990 bruno latour, these startling efforts (even including latour and woolgar 1979, chapter v) were ‘doomed from the start’, since they took for granted the notorious division between mental and material factors. correspondingly, there is not a history of engineers, then a history of capitalists, then one of physicists, chemists and mathematicians, then one of economists and accountants. on the contrary, there is a single history of these important centers of calculation. “it is because all these inscriptions can be superimposed, reshuffled, recombined, and summarized, and that totally new phenomena emerge, hidden from the other people from whom all these inscriptions have been exacted” (latour 1990, 60). finally, two tempting attempts have been made to relate the structure of cognitive abilities to social structure. the first one applies kuhn’s celebrated paradigms (barnes 1982), while the second adheres to wittgenstein’s thought-provoking ‘language games’ (bloor 1983). the conspicuous attempts are interesting but they still try to answer a question which latour strongly recommends to reject: how cognitive subtle abilities are related to our societies. the key point is that the inextricable question (and the various answers) accept the bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 idea that the stuff our society is made off is somehow different from that of our sciences, our images, and our information. yet we are dealing with a single ethnographic puzzle: some societies – very few indeed – are made by capitalizing on a larger scale. the obsession with rapid displacement and stable invariance, for powerful and safe linkages, is not a part of our culture, or ‘influenced’ by social interests: it is our culture. too often sociologists look for indirect relations between ‘interests’ and ‘technical’ details. the reason of their blindness is simple: they limit the meaning of ‘social’ to society without realizing that the mobilizing of allies and, in general, the transformation of weak into strong associations, is what ‘social’ also means. why look for far-fetched relations when technical details of science talk directly of invariance, association, displacement, immutability, and so on? (latour 1990, 64) a blunt origin of the copernicus-ptolemy transition: in the wake of bruno latour the near-by goal of the present paper is to strengthen efforts in landing the sky-high lakatoszahar account in the wake of the abovementioned latour’s sociology of knowledge approach by taking a further step on the thorny path of reasonable explanation for the mundane reasons for the incipience and triumph of the copernican breakthrough program. in our humble opinion, the renowned accounts (i) (v) unfortunately miss an important point of the ptolemy-copernicus transition. viz., copernican and ptolemaic congenial programs were realizing the radically different from each other ways of astronomy and physics stout reconciliation. withal, let us recall how paul feyerabend, who devoted many years to the meticulous study of the first scientific revolution, concluded that not one reason and not one method, but different reasons, withal assessed from diverse positions, is what had made up the intricate copernican revolution. we would like to add that these sober reasons and vantage points were relentlessly intertwined. regrettably, this interweaving was substantially random, whereupon one should not try to explain the whole medley only by the blunt influence of simplified methodological rules. consequently, the ultimate aim of the present account is to propose merely a more stout (but not the ultimate!) answer to the stale question “why did the copernican bold program eventually supersede the entrenched ptolemaic one?” to proffer a more apt and sober explanation one has to provide a substantial ‘theoretically progressive problem shift’ relative to other rival reconstructions taking the social-cultural facets into account to a greater extent. and to exhibit that the copernican revolution, alas, is a more inextricable phenomenon than seems from the spellbinding epistemic conceptions of scientific revolutions (kuhn 1977; lakatos 1978). in good sooth, the previous alluring yet scant accounts have intensely oscillated between two alternative extremes. on the one hand, in the taken for granted blunt vein, the apparent differences between research traditions were hastily taken to be insignificant and fruitful communication (and even deep interpenetration) unproblematic. on the other hand, in the new-fangled, post-kuhnian distinctive disquisitions, really significant differences between the research traditions are commonly exhibited to be so radical that their actual communication is regarded almost impossible. the present account humbly stems discreetly from a more common and mundane ‘unhagiographic’ intermediate picture. respectively, we readily admit that the substantial differences between the research traditions exist at the various levels, ranging from entrenched ontological commitments and inextricable epistemological beliefs similar to ptolemy’s notorious instrumentalism up to subtle mathematical technique. bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 however, these often antagonistic traditions were able to communicate fruitfully in the creative acts of such pundits as ptolemy, the moslem celebrated astronomers, copernicus, galileo, descartes, kepler, and newton. owing to the intersubjective nature of human communications, the research practices had vigorously communicated by the various ways that permitted comparisons, adaptations, and even fruitful cross-fertilizations. the intermediate humble approach first and foremost originates from the principled criticism of the narrowness of advanced epistemological models: they as a matter of fact (yet due to the different philosophical reasons) lack the subtle mechanisms of the paradigms’ (or srp’s, or research traditions/practices) intense interactions (nugayev 1985 a, b). to meet the sound critical arguments, a lucid ‘mellow theory-change’ epistemic model had to be advanced (nugayev 1999). respectively, the profound origins of scientific revolutions are being fathomed not so much in the stale discrepancies of entrenched mellow theories with the ‘hard facts’ (common to all srps or ‘paradigms’), as in the multifarious collisions of ‘old’ pivotal research practices with each other. the latter transpire first and foremost in relentless contradictions that can be most effectively (yet not always!) excluded in a more general (‘global’) research tradition. whereupon, the leading parts in mature theory change are played by the intense ‘trade’ of the proponents of the old paradigms’ that may lead to mutual accommodation and even profound interpenetration of the participants’ s views. withal, impugning alan sokal’s legal critique, bruno latour had stressed that what sokal failed to grasp is that hard “facts remain robust only when they are supported by a common culture, by institutions that can be trusted, by more or less decent public life, by more or less reliable media”. hence with the rise of alternative ‘hard facts’ whether or not a proposition is believed depends far less on its veracity than on the conditions of its ‘construction’. viz., who is making it, to whom it is being addressed, and from which social institutions it emerges. yet the inevitable encounter of the stout programs, traditions or ‘practices’, their deep interpenetration, and strong twisting provide the erection of a vast hybrid realm at first with a haphazard throng of crossbred theoretical models. though gradually, on consecutive soothing and eliminating the various contradictions between the hybrid models, the crossbred solid system is sedulously set up. up to a point, the lucid epistemic model can be taken as proffering a reliable mechanism of practically simultaneous drastic transformation of the ‘old’ paradigms. the hallmark of the sophisticated mechanism consists in the contrivance of the crossbred systems from all the basic theoretical objects of ‘old’ mellow theories. the crossbred systems constitute cohesive channels through which the accommodation of the ‘old’ traditions encountered inevitably commences. the accommodation gradually leads to the installation of a throng of crossbred theoretical schemes. the hotchpotch will probably be ultimately processed and subsequently generalized to set up a conspicuous structure of a novel global theory. incidentally, a mellow scientific theory may be empirically successful if it constitutes a kind of a kantian’ draft’ that can be furnished and explicated by the results of new bold experiments that increase its empirical content significantly. the global theory may become such an effective vehicle for the production of new testable statements. for this purpose, it should merge and intertwine the ‘old’ classical research traditions in such a subtle way that they once and for all cease to contradict each other, so that the newly-constructed unification can successfully explain and anticipate novel experimental evidence. hence the crux of the present account is to provide further reliable sociology of knowledge and historical backing to the lucid epistemological theory-change model (see also nugayev 2020). we contend that profound breakthroughs in science were first and foremost not due to ingenious contrivances of brave novel paradigms or bold invention of startling new ideas ‘ex nihilo’. (the gist of the copernican program was known even to aristarchus!). on the contrary, the profound breakthroughs were caused, among other important things, by the harrowing humble processes of piecemeal accommodation, gradual interpenetration, and bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 discreet intertwinement of the ‘old’ pivotal research traditions preceding such radical breaks.3 for instance, in contriving his startling 1905 masterpieces (the daring theory of light quanta plus the whimsical special relativity) einstein was inspired by a stout belief in the necessity for unity in science (nugayev 2018) the faith he inexorably carried through his whole life. whereupon, sagacious identifying and dexterous resolving the relentless paradoxes revealing the profound clashes between the entrenched research practices turn out an indispensable part of the scientific method as such. a case of diverse programs’ inevitable encounter leads to a wonted situation when a domain of hybrid models emerges formed by plain conjunctions of the models of different research programs (ptolemy, tycho brahe, lorentz, abraham, klein). however, commonly the hybrid models transpire to be selfcontradictory; and when this is properly realized (by copernicus, maxwell, einstein, dirac), the crossbreeds are deftly constructed from the basic objects of all the cross-theories. the successful contrivance of new mellow theory commences owing to the crossbred domain’s gradual growth. the present account strives to expound that the copernican breakthrough turns out as an artificial result of elucidation and (partial) resolution of the profound dualism, of the ‘deep abyss’ (a. koyré) between ptolemy’s deft mathematical astronomy and aristotelian descriptive qualitative physics. forsooth, the basic interpretation of the opposition between astronomy and physics that is necessary to situate copernicus historically is that of alexandre koyré. hence, it is in the wake of his brilliant writings to demonstrate that it is not accidental that the dazzling writings of copernicus, galileo, kepler, descartes, newton, and their exalted disciples were all the indispensable levels of mathematics descendance from divine heavens to sinful earth and the reverse conquest of the sky by earthly mature physics. it is important that this process had inevitable socio-cultural roots. rationalization that took place during the first scientific revolution was first and foremost of the sight, when the renaissance artists had advanced a subtle grammar and syntax for quantifying natural phenomena in pictures (latour, edgerton, ivins). the rise and advancement of ptolemaic ingenious research program lakatos and zahar carefully exposed how ptolemy and copernicus had invented and coherently advanced the diverse research programs. both rival designs had branched off from the same pythagorean – platonic ‘protoprogram’. its basic principle consisted in that, since heavenly bodies are immaculate, all the astronomical appearances should be masterfully ‘saved’ by the artful combinations of as few uniform circular motions as possible. the stout principle was installed as the firm cornerstone of the powerful heuristic of both rivals; wherein the ‘heuristic’ was principal, while the ‘hard core’ only subordinate. the hard core of ptolemy’s ingenious program was made up from the geocentric solid hypothesis in conjunction with the aristotelian natural philosophy, with its notorious paraphernalia of natural and violent motions and the impenetrable and stiff demarcation line between the shabby terrestrial (sublunary) and sublime celestial realms. it should be pointed out that aristotelian physics was an empirical science par excellence that imbibed common experience much more naturally and fully than the rigid, strict, elevated, and abstract science of galileo, descartes, and especially newton. everyone knows that all the hard bodies quite naturally fall down, while fire soars up. moreover, inertial motion is not an experimental fact: common experience contradicts it. furthermore, everyone knows for sure that in nature ‘there is no void existing 3 see nugayev (2018, 2020) for multifarious rational reconstructions of the maxwellian and the planckeinstein breakthroughs, as well as nugayev 2002 for more thorough study of the sociological facets of this tenet. bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 separately’ (aristotle 2007a). the sun and the moon rise and set, while the thrown bodies do not uphold their rectilinear motion. due to common experience, masterly fixed by the flexible notions of aristotelian natural philosophy, the distinctive ‘lebenswelt’ (edmund husserl) in which one lives and acts mercifully is not a mathematical one nor can it be properly ‘mathematized’. this volatile kind of reality is the wonted realm of uncertainty, unsteadiness, inaccuracy, etc. exhibited by the vague terms ‘almost’, ‘a kind of’, ‘more or less’, etc. whereupon the greek dazzling thought could hardly concede that exactness can successfully survive in the wry world around us and that the ponderous matter of stale sublunary world with its inextricable hotchpotch of four basic elements (earth, water, air, and fire) can adequately ‘represent mathematical entities’ (koyré 1957) similar to the ideal objects of euclidean geometry. according to stagiritul, ‘the [immaculate] mathematical exactness should be demanded only for the [peculiar] objects lacking matter’ (aristotle 2007b). on the contrary, the heavens are created from an entirely different, odd, and immutable substance, the celebrated ‘aether’ (or the so-called ‘fifth element’). heavenly bodies are the components of ether spherical shells that fit tightly around each other in a strict order that commences with the moon, and extends to the sphere of distant fixed stars. a heavenly shell is characterized by its specific rotation, which accounts for the peculiar motion of the heavenly body contained in it. though outside the utmost sphere of the fixed stars, the powerful prime mover is solidly situated. it diligently imports motion from the outside sphere inward. and the natural motions of all the heavenly bodies are unforced, perfectly circular, and neither speeding nor slowing down. consequently, the perfect motions of the stars take their place in accordance with strict geometrical laws. thus, according to stagiritul’s discreet doctrine, mathematical astronomy is possible while mathematical physics is not. whereupon the greek astronomers not only masterfully applied sophisticated mathematics but with amazing patience and magnificent skill observed the skies. however, they had not even dared to mathematize inextricable terrestrial motions. the celebrated claudius ptolemy (87-150) reached the acme of ancient pre-science not least because he was a нellenistic polymath: an astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, geographer, and even poet rolled into one. his masterpiece – the ‘almagest’ – dominated the european thought for more than fourteen centuries. the socio-cultural context of the ptolemaic research tradition is transpired by the eloquent fact that the author of ‘almagest’ was a successful resident of alexandria, the splendid capital of hellenized egypt. hellenistic distinctive civilization was a blend of stunning greek culture with discreet civilizations of egypt and babylon and a substantial departure from the earlier arrogant greek attitudes towards the dubious ‘barbarian’ cultures. the extent to which genuinely hybrid greco-asian cultures emerged is rather contentious, but the encounter of the three pivotal cultures captured even the elevated domain of theoretical astronomy (neugebauer 1975). unlike the ‘antediluvian’ babylonians and egyptians, who had sedulously examined the heavens merely to keep track of their shabby seasons, the ‘sophisticated’ greeks had apprehended astronomy from a sublime theoretical standpoint: they strived to comprehend the basic nature and makeup of the whole universe. claudius ptolemy, as a typical hellenist, craved (not without success) for balancing himself discreetly between the three pivotal cultures in all the basic domains of research activity but first and foremost in ontology and epistemology. in natural philosophy, he deftly oscillated between sophisticated mathematical models and blunt, empirically-grounded qualitative physics, while in epistemology – between the blunt realism and crude instrumentalism. on the one hand, he was certainly aware yet decidedly skeptical of aristarchus’ heliocentric hypothesis due to rational arguments based on the stout and well-grounded bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 empirically principles of aristotelian physics. on the other hand, since aristotle, all appearance, turned to be the only philosopher to whom ptolemy referred explicitly, the author of the ‘almagest’ was many times and oft accused of slavish adherence to the blunt principles of aristotelian natural philosophy. however, the trite dictum is an obvious oversimplification. one should recall that, according to aristotle, the rest is nobler than the motion, and the sky is much more perfect and nobler than the earth. hence, the ‘almagest’ subtle model of the solar system did substantially deviate from orthodox aristotelianism at least in the two crucial respects. (i) aristotle persistently maintained that heavenly bodies should move around the earth in single uniform circles. yet, in the ptolemaic complicated models, the odd motion of the planets is an intricate combination of two circular motions; moreover, at least one of them is non-uniform. (ii) aristotle also maintained – alas, again from the elevated and abstract ontological grounds – that the earth should be located at the exact center of the universe. yet in the ptolemaic feasible distinctive system, the earth is decidedly displaced from the center of the universe. furthermore, in ptolemy’s inextricable cosmology there is no unique center of the universe; the central orbit of the sun and the planetary local deferents all have slightly different geometric centers, none of which coincides with the earth. in the ‘almagest’ and in other writings as well, ptolemy had frequently demonstrated that the non-orthodox (concerning the aristotelian natural philosophy) aspects of his subtle models all were directly dictated by stubborn facts of observations. as is well-known, ptolemy’s most controversial contrivance was the notorious ‘equant’: a planet revolves around the sun at a significantly non-uniform rate. however, it can facilely be exhibited that the non-uniform rotation of the radius-vector connecting the planet to the sun implies a uniform rotation of the radius-vector connecting the planet to the so-called ‘equant’. the latter is the subtle point directly opposite the sun relative to the geometric center of the orbit (fitzpatrick 2010). it is merely from the modern historically unilateral standpoint that ptolemy’s equant turns out a precursor of the celebrated kepler ellipses. yet for such caustic yet objective critics as the islamic /arabic astronomers and subsequently copernicus (since the works of the maragha school might be known to the author of ‘de revolutionibus’ – see, for instance, swerdlow & neugebauer 1985) and his associates, the compelled insertion of the equant was a typical lakatosian ’ad hoc3 hypothesis’. it obviously contradicted the distinctive spirit of the aristotle ptolemy program – the pivotal tenet of uniformity of motion in respect to the center of the universe. however, according to lakatos & zahar’s alluring stance, the ‘adhocness’ should be taken, within the flexible frames of the srp methodology, not as a narrow property of an isolated hypothesis but as a multilateral relation between two consecutive theories. incidentally, even ibn al-haytham (965-1040) initiated the first sober critique of ptolemy’s physics for the violation of the basic principle of uniform circular motion. it is no coincidence that after eudoxus’ primeordial model (made up of the system of concentric rotating spheres) was resolutely abandoned, actual progress in the realization of geostatic program ran counter to the powerful heuristic of platonic protoprogram (zahar 1973). the eccentric resolutely displaced the earth from the center of the circle; the apollonian and hipparchan deft epicycles provided that the actual path of the planets about the earth was not circular; and, eventually, the ptolemaic notorious equants entailed that even the motion of the epicycle’s empty center was not simultaneously uniform and circular. the perfidious insertion of the equant was the strongest blow upon the stale heuristic of the platonic protoprogram: it was almost equal to its full wreck. so, within the ptolemaic intricate program mathematical exactness that insisted on the insertion of noncircular orbits and the bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 12 centers of rotation not coinciding with the earth center began to diverge increasingly and irreversibly from the stout and empirically sound principles of aristotelian physics. hence eventually one can take ptolemaic inextricable cosmology as a substantially dual fundamental theoretical scheme waywardly mixing the basic principles of ‘platonic immaculate mathematics’ with those of ‘aristotelian sober physics’. to retain the indubitable advances of the aristotelian dazzling doctrine and the conspicuous achievements of the mathematical astronomy, ptolemy in the ‘planetary hypotheses’ had to advance further and at the same time attenuate the blatant rupture between the mundane and celestial phenomena. since the ‘almagest’ confined itself to subtle mathematical models, ptolemy had to propose preliminary physical models for the same constructions, yet in vain. an apparent example of his numerous failures is represented by the attempt to construct the ingenious ‘tambourine-like’, ‘sawn-off’ mechanism able to transform motion from outer spheres of his cosmos to inner ones (murschel 1985). however, after the ‘planetary hypotheses’ the profound abyss between the physical and mathematical facets became even deeper (jones 2005). so, ptolemy’s inextricable cosmology could not help but be exposed to stout repeated attacks during the european middle ages (linton 2010). it apparently confronted the strict principles of monotheism not admitting the stiff demarcation line between the celestial and mundane worlds; all seemingly different worlds nevertheless should have one and the same creator. the copernican farsighted breakthrough: an origin and advancement all appearance, the ultimate motive of contrivance of the heliocentric program consisted not at all in sedulous elimination of the wonted discrepancies between the ptolemaic ‘wry’ cosmology and stout observational ‘hard facts’. in our humble opinion, copernicus was invigorated predominantly by aesthetic and metaphysical (essentially theological) considerations. they aimed at effectively eliminating the profound rupture between refined mathematical astronomy and aristotelian blunt qualitative physics so eloquently depicted by a. koyré (1957). however, it did not prevent him from applying standard aristotelian ‘argumentative technique’ to posit the greater probability of his assumptions over those of his geocentric opponents. “all these arguments make it more likely that the earth moves than that it is at rest. this is especially true of the daily rotation, as particularly appropriate to the earth” (copernicus [1543], 1972, de revolutionibus, book i, ch.8, 17). but certainly, it was his christian weltanschauung that made the rupture between physics and astronomy especially bigoted. namely this monotheistic standpoint moulded the staff provided by the three pivotal sources: the cosmological views of pythagoreans, aristotle’s fine cosmology (goddu 2010) and (last but not least!) its inexorable critique provided by the’ buridan school’ (embracing john buridan, nicole oresme, and albert of saxony): “copernicus developed a critical approach to natural philosophy but one that enabled him to modify aristotelianism while remaining a participant in a broadly conceived aristotelean tradition […] he developed his own version of aristotelianism, very much influenced by renaissance platonism, neoplatonism, stoicism […] it was also a version of aristotelianism that was anti-averroistic and more flexible in its approach to mathematics” (goddu 2010, xxii, xxiv). bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 13 in that respect copernicus can be taken as a scholar which belonged to a respectable ancient tradition of reconciling ptolemy’s mathematical models with the concentric cosmology of aristotle (barker & vesel 2012) though now in favorable socio-cultural context of christian weltanschauung enforcement. it is no coincidence that the celebrated introduction to his opus magnus ‘de revolutionibus orbium coelestium’ (1543) was by right dedicated to ‘his holiness pope paul iii’. the respectable canon at frombork cathedral, doctor of theology, whose maternal uncle (and powerful promoter) was lucas watzenrode, the honorable bishop of warnia, openly admits that he have been inevitably “impelled to consider a different [from ptolemy] system of deducing the motions of the universe’s spheres for no other reason than the realization that astronomers do not agree among themselves in their investigations of this subject”. furthermore, “those who devised the eccentrics seem thereby in large measure to have solved the problem of the apparent motions with appropriate calculations. but meanwhile, they introduced a good many idea which contradict the first principles of uniform motion. nor could they elicit or deduce from the eccentrics the principal consideration, that is, the structure of the universe and the true symmetry of its parts”. on the contrary, “we discover a marvelous symmetry of the universe, and an established harmonious linkage between the motion of the spheres and their size, such as can be found in no other way” (copernicus, [1543], 1972, i, 22). it was copernicus’ christian weltanschauung that determined his discreet attitude towards the sober arguments of the pagan aristotle. therefore, he is not limited to referring to the authority of stagiritul to justify the unacceptability of uneven movement. instead, he proffers a stout metaphysical argument of his own: variable speed can only be caused by variable force. yet god, as the primordial cause of all the movements, is always constant. consequently, “i began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the [pagan] philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world” (copernicus [1543], 1972; my italics). secondly, while for aristotle gravitation constitutes the tendency of heavier bodies to long to the center of universe, for copernicus it is merely the tendency of heavier bodies to get to the centers of any spherical masses of matter. the true origin of the inextricable paradoxes, due to copernicus’s distinctive standpoint, consists in the non-ideal odd movement of the planets. however, according to the aristotle ptolemy sober doctrine, resolutely elevated to dogma by the christian faith, the planets necessarily belong to ideal spheres and should be engaged in uniform motions along with the perfect circles or along with their artful combinations. following not so much aristotle as his own stout theological arguments, copernicus was convinced that the supposed perfection of the heavens requires celestial bodies to execute uniform circular motion only. whereupon he was spurred to decisively stave off first and foremost the dubious equant model. bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 14 the resolute rejection of the equant was connected with that copernicus not only employed a great deal of observational data from arabic astronomical sources, but also many subtle theoretical components as well. the latter first and foremost included the famous ‘tusi couple’, applied by copernicus to exchange ptolemy’s clumsy geometrical equant construction. thus he willingly agreed with the blunt criticism of ptolemy’s model by ibn alhaytham, ibn rushd, nur as-din al-betrugi and other moslem conspicuous astronomers (kokowski 2012). in his ‘de revolutionibus’ copernicus realizes the task targeted first in the ‘commentariolus’. the motivation for contriving the heliocentric system consisted in the assertion, that if the planetary orbs are ordered around a single center according to a strict principle, then the earth cannot be that center. invigorated by the ‘best intentions to layout the divine order of the heavens’ copernicus craves to return to aristarchus’s queer proposal to place the center of the universe on the sun. but this attempt generated the profound paradoxes within the aristotelian physics inextricably connected with the stale notions of ‘natural’ and ‘violent’ movements. as a result, copernicus had gradually invented merely a sophisticated crossbred theory. it incepted to pave the way to divine immaculate mathematics and mundane qualitative physics significant interpenetration. as outstanding french historian punctuated, “copernicus in an insinuating manner and probably unconsciously had inserted into the stout aristotelian fortress two innocent premises through which kepler, galileo, and descartes vigorously blew it up” (chaunu 1984, 430). in the eminent introduction to ‘de revolutionibus’, copernicus passionately appeals to a highly influential coterie of respectable clergy including pope paul iii (to whom the opus magnus was dedicated), pope clement vii (who not only adopted the ‘de revolutionibus’ but even strongly insisted on its publication), nicholas schonberg, cardinal of capua, lucas watzenrode, bishop of warmia, tiedemann giese, bishop of chelmno, et al. throughout the whole ‘de revolutionibus’ its author consistently condemns the author of ‘almagest’ for inherent paganism. copernicus’s scathing criticism of ptolemy’s stale system is grounded on the weighty argument, according to which the pagan’s inextricable medley system (deftly embracing tens and hundreds of epicycles, abstruse epicyclets, and quirk equants) is nevertheless lacking strict, monotheistic order, pre-established by the lord, ‘the best and most systematic artisan’. incidentally, sometimes the instrumentalism of the notorious ‘almagest’ went so far that one and the same movement of the same planet was displayed by two substantially different mathematical models. (recall, for instance, ptolemy’s queer math models of mars’s odd motion). all appearence, the multifarious components of the ptolemaic motley system vividly epitomize the various plans of different pagan ‘artisans’, of warring hellenistic gods, densely inhabiting both dazzling olympus and the dismal tombs of the pharaohs as well. not by chance, “their [the ptolemy partisans’] experience was just like someone taking from various places hands, feet, a head, and other pieces, very well depicted, it may be, but not for the representation of a single person; since these fragments would not belong to one another at all, a monster rather than a man would be put together from them” (copernicus [1543], 1972). likewise, copernicus probably paved the broad way for galileo’s and newton’s mighty mathematical physics. if the stringent and robust demarcation line between divine and mundane worlds is lacking since the earth is just an ordinary planet of the solar system, the mathematical subtle notions and elevated principles will apply both to its rotations around its axis and the sun, as well as to all the bodies moving along its surface. moreover, in subsequent galileo’s works, the graphical aristotelian ‘natural’ movements had to be decidedly transformed into abstract and sublime ‘inertial’ ones. it should be specially pointed bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 15 out, in the wake of latour’s path-breaking writings, that this rationalization, this ‘geometrization’ of space took place within ‘simultaneous transformation of science, art, theory of vision, organization of craft and economic powers’ (latour 1990,30). likewise, galileo commenced with descending mathematics from the skies to the earth, being inspired not so much by ‘de revolutionibus’ as, in the all-pervading spirit of the renaissance, by plato’s ‘timaeus’ (and the corresponding renowned yet highly controversial discoveries provided by the new-fangled telescope). as a true copernican, salviati famously points out in the ‘dialogues’ in his dispute with the stubborn aristotelian simplicio, “and [as] to the earth, we try to ennoble it and make it more immaculate, striving to liken it to celestial bodies and, in a sense, to place it in heaven, from where your philosophers expelled it”. in path-breaking ‘the assayer’ ([1623], 1957) galileo famously maintains that “philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes — i mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. this book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it” (galilei [1632], 2001, quoted from burtt 2003, 75; see also stillman drake’s distinctive translation, 1957, 237-238). and to calm down the reader by whom the magnificent book was written, in his renowned introduction to the ‘dialogue concerning the two chief systems – ptolemaic and copernican’ galileo punctuates that “he who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze. and though whatever we read in that book is the creation of the omnipotent craftsman, and is accordingly excellently proportioned, nevertheless that part is most suitable and most worthy which makes his work and his craftsmanship most evident to our view” (galilei [1632], 2001) . eventually (for faithful galileo) immaculate “mathematics is the language with which god has written the universe “(quoted from lial et al.,1995,2). alexander koyré famously insisted that galileo’s alluring interpretation of christian theology was inspired by plato’s ‘timaeus’; specially by the whimsical myth of the creation of the universe. the pivotal figure of the renowned dialogue – the almighty demiurge, a divine craftsman – punctiliously constructs the stout mathematical order out of the preexistent chaos to put up the universe (the ‘cosmos’). for that grand purpose he punctiliously cuts out small triangles to erect four regular solids; and then he artfully applies them to construct real bodies, plants, and even animals out of them (plato [386 bc], 2000). moreover, in ‘timaeus’ the notion of a divine craftsman was enriched by the notion of pre-established harmony devised by him. thus, nature becomes empty and ordered: in the process of its creation god discreetly put strict mathematical necessity in it. and mathematical knowledge is not merely true but is substantially sacred even more than the holy bible. forsooth, while there are plenty of interpretations of the bible, the mathematical truths are unique and should be resolutely kept out of discussions. at the sake of mathematization, galileo had decidedly transformed the subtle methodology of natural science and had relentlessly elevated mathematization, as well as (real and thought) experimenting up to the highest ranks of leading scientific methods (husserl [1936], 1970). eventually, it made it possible for the florentine to contrive the ‘principle of inertia’ before newton. yet the very opportunity of implementation of mathematical methods in natural science turned out to be grounded on the elevated procedure of idealization. thus, the exact science of modernity commenced with taking all natural phenomena as more or less bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 16 adequate approximations of some platonic ‘ideal essences’. the latter lack, contrary to aristotle, profound existence within the natural phenomena. they exist alongside them as the ‘certain limits of infinitely small sensory becoming’; hence they can be freely invented by the ingenious human mind. and they are the stiff relations between the ideal ‘quasi-essences’ that are immaculately depicted by the exact laws of nature. at the same time, relations between the real objects (e.g. rods and clocks / tables and chairs) are fixed merely by the approximations to the strict laws. just as galileo himself had humbly put it, ‘the search for essences, in my judgment, is a vain and hopeless kind of pursuit”. just to quote hermann weyl’s exposition of husserl’s 1913 “ideen zu einer reinen phanomenologischen philosophie” in stupendous “raum-zeit-materie”: “it is the nature of a real thing to be inexhaustible in content; we can get an ever deeper insight into this content by the continual addition of new experiences, partly in apparent contradiction, by bringing them into harmony with one another. in this interpretation, things of the real world are approximate ideas. from this arises the empirical character of all our knowledge of reality” (weyl 1922, 5). consimilar platonic (and neo-platonic) motives that found their guileless expression in the alluring tenet of ‘delightful accordance between the [base] cosmos and the holy trinity’ induced johann kepler to the strenuous search for the stout mathematical laws stiffly governing the planet motions. properly educated in strict lutheran faith, kepler had passionately devoted himself to delving into the sacred ‘book of nature’. “we astronomers are priests of the highest god concerning the book of nature” (quoted from barker & goldstein 2001). nevertheless, the brave views of kepler and copernicus differed significantly. in copernicus’s blunt theory, the planetary motions were impeccably circular. they demanded no causes and took part due to the inertia of the bodies. consequently, the sun was not the actual center of force. only kepler’s profound reflections on the true source of planetary motion revealed the leading role of the sun and buttressed him in unfolding the subtle mechanics of planetary motion. on the relentless grounds of trinitarian thoroughgoing doctrine, kepler decidedly took the sun as the geometric and dynamical center of the cosmos. the startling coequality of father, son, and spirit implied the continuity of the center, periphery, and space of the cosmos. the gorgeous sun epitomized god the father, the stars respectively referred to god the son, while the wonted planets humbly incarnated the holy ghost. furthermore, kepler plied to reveal an immaculate universal law that would meticulously picture the motion of both the earth and the planets. his assiduous quest was invigorated by the alluring analogy between the base cosmos and the holy trinity. kepler took the second resolute step towards the deep interpenetration of mathematical astronomy and qualitative physics and elicited the laws roughly breaking the aristotelian stiff principle of uniform rotation of divine bodies. his perspicuous laws were famously the first scientific laws taking math form. the skies relentlessly started ruining the qualitative physics of aristotle. masterful reconciliation of the divine and sublunary realms masterly moved aristotelian physics aside (kepler [1609], 2005). the epistemological import of the copernican-galilean scientific revolution (unification of the celestial and terrestrial physics) found its fine expression in the title of kepler’s masterpiece: ‘astronomia nova seu physica coelestis’ (the new astronomy of physics of the heavens). kepler was not alone in rejecting aristotle’s natural philosophy from the stringent standpoint of christian theology. in 1644 rene descartes had published ‘principia philosophiae’ where he proffered a theory of motion directly grounded on heliocentric model. eventually, descartes’ epoch-making writings epitomized the final elimination of the aristotelean stale system. according to modern historians, it was cartesianism which turned bruno latour and peculiar structure of the first scientific revolution tanzilia a. burganova rinat m. nugayev transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 17 the handy heliocentric surmise into a dominant paradigm (chaunu 1984). isaac newton’s main purpose was to reveal the stringent laws that firmly dictate the motion of both terrestrial and divine bodies. he had pioneered in exhibiting, thanks to powerful heuristic of copernicus and galileo, that it was the same force that attracted all the bodies to the earth that compelled the moon to obediently orbit the earth. sir isaac deftly amended the ‘hard core’ of the copernican celebrated program by efficaciously unifying and generalizing the partial theoretical schemes of copernicus, kepler, hook, descartes, and galileo and coming up to the whimsical conjunction of three laws of dynamics altogether with the mysterious gravitation law. eventually, in the ingenious science of modernity aristotelian qualitative ‘essences’ had been ingeniously replaced with immaculate mathematical abstract objects. look at “principia”. “since the ancients (as we are told by pappus) made great account of the science of mechanics in the investigation of natural things; and the moderns, laying aside substantial forms and occult qualities, have endeavoured to subject the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics; i have in this treatise cultivated mathematics, so far as it regards philosophy” (newton [1687], 1846, 1). in newton’s stiff methodology the relentless dictum ‘to subject the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics’ constitutes the most robust one. a man of science should while sedulously examining the intricate phenomena of nature, force his sense data in such a dry and suitable for experimental purposes way as to proffer them for stringent analytical treatment. conclusion the drawbacks of well-known epistemological models of scientific revolutions are connected with one and the same reason – lack of proper scrutiny of the subtle interconnections of cognitive and social aspects of scientific research. the epistemological models, as a matter of fact, ignore to varying degrees the relentless hallmark that science is a ‘community effect’. regrettably, epistemologists hold a ‘great genius’ vision of the progress of science. according to the romantic standpoint, the startling insights of very peculiar individuals, the ‘chosen ones of the gods’, are what drive science forward. though this is an apparently distorted picture. the great luminaries like newton, maxwell or einstein can only start a revolution in scientific thinking at best – but only when a broader community of researchers relentlessly prepared the field. the goal of the present paper is to strengthen efforts in landing the sky-high epistemological models of scientific revolutions in the wake of bruno latour’s sociology of knowledge approach by taking a further step on the path of reasonable explanation for the mundane reasons for the incipience and triumph of the copernican breakthrough program. in our humble opinion, the renowned accounts of the ptolemy-copernicus breakthrough unfortunately miss a substantial point. viz., copernican and ptolemaic congenial programs were realizing the radically different from each other ways of astronomy and physics stout reconciliation. correspondingly, the copernican revolution is envisaged in the context of intense interaction and interpenetration of aristotelean and ptolemaic sophisticated research practices. eventually, the aristotle – ptolemy pagan cosmology could not help but be exposed to repeated cogent attacks during the middle ages since it apparently confronted the renowned principles of monotheism, not admitting the impervious demarcation line between the celestial and mundane realms. all the opposite worlds should have one and the same creator. commencing with the unification, copernicus, in effect, paved the way for the 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(translated from the german by henry l. brose). l.: methuen & co, ltd. woolgar s.1981. interests and explanation in the social study of science. social studies of science 11: 365-394. woolgar s. 1983. irony in the social study of science. in science observed: perspectives on the social study of science, edited by k. knorrcetina and m. mulkay. london and beverly hills: sage. zahar, e. 1973. did einstein’s programme supersede lorentz’s? the british journal for the philosophy of science, 24 :95-123, 226-262. microsoft word braunstein layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-8 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal article labeling, branding or reality? the french invention of “historical epistemology” in 1907 jean-françois braunstein1 abstract: the article discusses the creation of the expression and idea of historical epistemology. it problematized the context of the rise of what would be historical epistemology and who would have been the pioneer author in the introduction of the expression, traditionally considered as resulting from dominique lecourt’s book, l’épistémologie historique de gaston bachelard (1969). the possible options for affiliating the idea of historical epistemology are explored, and the pertinence of attributing the invention of the neologism to lecourt or lesser-known names is reassessed. finally, the french philosopher and historian of science abel rey is proposed as a precursor to the use of the expression and the idea of historical epistemology. in his doctoral thesis, rey explored this expression when reflecting on the history and philosophy of science. in effect, pioneeringly, rey presented a proposal for historical epistemology almost seventy years before what is conventionally accepted as the beginning of this approach. keywords: historical epistemology; abel rey; historiography of science; epistemology doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i13.01 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction in recent years there have been plenty of conferences dedicated to historical epistemology. in the last two years alone, three conferences on this topic have met in berlin, columbia and leuven. the first conference dedicated to historical epistemology was organized by ian hacking in montreal in 1993. this wealth of conferences has prompted some to think that such a craze is a mere fad: historical epistemology would only be a useless label “naming without necessity,” according to gingras (2010), or even a brand that would only serve an advertising purpose: that of justifying the applications for funding of a particular institution. in other words, all the fuss about historical epistemology would merely amount to creating a market from nothing. however, anybody working in the advertising business knows very well that it is impossible to create a market from nothing: nothing can be sold if it does not answer a certain need, albeit more or less vaguely felt. in fact, it seems that there exists today, as the title of this article suggests, a real necessity to bring epistemology and history closer together. if we have chosen as a title for 1 jean-françois braunstein is a professor at the université paris i – panthéon sorbonne. address: 17 rue de la sorbonne 75005 – paris. e-mail: jean-francois.braunstein@univ-paris1.fr labeling, branding or reality? the french invention of “historical epistemology” in 1907 jean-françois braunstein transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 our conference history and epistemology: from bachelard and canguilhem to today’s history of science,2 it is indeed because we did not want to stick to the current meaning of historical epistemology. we hope that one of the original features of this conference will be that it will also be interested in the long-term history of the concept of historical epistemology. it indeed seems to me that the least that an epistemology which boasts to be historical can do is to look into the historical conditions of its own production. we will not content ourselves with asking what historical epistemology is or what it is worth; we will also wonder what its history has been. in that sense, we merely pay tribute to hans-jörg rheinberger and carry on the work of the one who had been able, most notably in his book historische epistemologie, to look into this one-hundred-year long history of “historicizing epistemology”. it is also for that reason that our conference has chosen to go back to the french origins of that historical epistemology. like hacking, rheinberger has always kept in mind the french setting in which the first invention of historical epistemology took place. our conference on historical epistemology is indeed one of the few to welcome such an important number of french attendees, and i would like to take advantage of the opportunity given to me here to thank my co-organizers for granting something like political asylum to an historical epistemology which probably is no longer welcome, for all sorts of reasons that we will certainly have the chance to discuss, in the country where it was born. a marxist oriented invention? the history of the term historical epistemology is apparently well-known today. if one sticks to the received view, the locution was invented by dominique lecourt in his work l’épistémologie historique de gaston bachelard, first published in 1969. lecourt would later credit canguilhem, who supervised and wrote a preface to this piece of research, with this invention: “since i am told that this point of lexicological history has been raised, i must say that i owe the locution ‘historical epistemology’, which referred to gaston bachelard’s philosophy of science (in my master’s thesis of 1969 which bore that title), to canguilhem” (lecourt 2007, 30). however, as it has been quoted somewhere else, canguilhem would have preferred the expression “epistemological history” to that of “historical epistemology” (gayon 2003, 53). by way of this difference in emphasis, canguilhem probably indicates where the major difference lies between his own work and bachelard’s. as some commentators have noted, following dominique lecourt the expression “historical epistemology” was also used in a marxist-oriented context by marx wartofsky in 1973: “a few years later, i discovered that the same (expression) had been used in english, completely independently, by marx wartofsky, one of the two founders of the boston studies in the philosophy of science, to describe his own marxist-leaning methodology in the history of science” (lecourt 2007, 30). yves gingras has also remarked that polish logician jerzy kmita had published his problems in historical epistemology in polish in 1980 (the english translation is from 1988), which was also marxist in inspiration. accordingly, for gingras the expression “historical epistemology” would have appeared in a marxist–oriented context and would have been constructed using the model of the expression “historical materialism” (gingras 2010). i do not find this hypothesis convincing, at least in the french context. the two expressions are not homothetic since one refers to a discipline, epistemology, while the other refers to a philosophical doctrine, materialism. the french writers of the 1970s, who, even though they were marxists, were far from being true fans of historical materialism, do not seem to have made the connection. on the other hand, however, i do think that such a historical survey might nonetheless 2 this article is based on a lecture held in this conference at the max-planck institute for the history of science, berlin, in july 2012. transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 3 be relevant for the lessons that can be drawn from it. but it will have us go back way further. it indeed turns out that the expression “historical epistemology” did not emerge in the marxist-oriented context of the 1970s but almost seventy years earlier – used by a writer who was no marxist, even though lenin read him carefully. the dating of the appearance of the expression “historical epistemology” is no mere anecdotal curiosity: it also allows a better grasp of the philosophical intentions of those who created this phrase that is so discussed today. an old expression for an old style of thinking i have realized that the expression “historical epistemology” first appeared in the writings of an author who was a great coiner of neologisms in philosophy and history of science and who was also the founder, in 1932, of the institut d’histoire des sciences et des techniques of the université de paris, an institution to which many of us have been affiliated and of which i was still a member until recently. i am talking about abel rey (1873-1940), who as i have noted, described his own work, many years before foucault, as “archaeology of scientific ideas” (rey 1930, 384). this writer is mostly forgotten, but as is often the case with minor figures, he articulated ideas in a very clear way that would later be taken up and developed in a more complex fashion by more original and important writers – in this instance, bachelard and canguilhem. it turns out that abel rey had used the expression “historical epistemology” as early as 1907 to describe his own work in his phd thesis la théorie de la physique chez les physiciens contemporains. in his introduction to the book, he offered to build, alongside formal logic, a different kind of logic based on the history of science and, more specifically, on what he called “a history of the conceptions and institutions of scientists with respect to methods, where science is advanced enough for its methods to spark off fruitful investigations” (rey 1907, 13). abel rey notes that philosophy, especially “american philosophy”, calls “these transcendent investigations on the general principles and conditions of the sciences” epistemology but he adds so as to mark his difference, that this word, restricted to a positive meaning, might happily refer to the research of documents, the set of historical observations required for the establishment of an exact view of the different sciences, a positive science of the sciences. historical research bearing on the general spirit of each science would then constitute one of the great sections of this historical epistemology. (rey 1907, 13) the philosophy of the sciences could only be historical. it is to this kind of investigation that he intended to contribute. “what i primarily intend to do here,” he wrote, “is precisely to contribute to these historical investigations bearing on the scientific spirit” (rey 1907, 13). this historical approach to the philosophy of the sciences went hand in hand with a determined hostility toward any theory of knowledge. in the first issue of thalès, the periodical published by the institut d’histoire des sciences, rey introduced the following agenda, which sounds quite canguilhemian: “the theory of knowledge, without a philosophical history of science, is only a vague ideology or a verbal dialectics” (rey 19341935a, xviii). moreover, and that is a second basic point made in the introduction to la théorie de la physique, if one is to practice the history of the sciences, one should never “lose sight of the methodological goal to which this history contributes” (rey 1907, 13): the history of the sciences always remains a history with a “philosophical” purpose. elsewhere, still in the first issue of the periodical thalès, rey explains that “the history of the sciences is no mere work of erudition.” it introduces “a crucial component of the history of civilization,” which is not labeling, branding or reality? the french invention of “historical epistemology” in 1907 jean-françois braunstein transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 4 only “material” but also “intellectual”, and even “spiritual” (rey 1934-1935b, p. v). here, one deals with a “philosophical history of the sciences,” which rey also describes, following tannery and, above all, comte, as a “general history of the sciences.” one of the volumes of his science grecque is dedicated to the memory of paul tannery, who “reformed the history of the sciences by treating it as a true historian should, by linking it, as auguste comte already intended it, to the history of ideas and the history of human thought” (rey 1933, 1). this general history of the sciences, as “comte properly saw it, […] is either philosophical or it does not exist” (rey 1935-1936, 34). thirdly rey, in la théorie de la physique, emphasizes that such a philosophical history of the sciences results in the complete transformation of our conception of truth, which would no longer conform to the traditional, motionless idea of truth, but which would not disappear either: truth “would be the becoming of an evolution; but it would exist, since it would constantly realize and complete itself” (rey 1907, 396). he continues: “the history of science, continuing the psychological history of perception and conception, would be the history of the acquisition of that truth, the human and necessary outcome of a human and necessary evolution, within the limits of human nature” (rey 1907, 396). that history would enable one to establish a new conception of truth which rey describes in very bachelardian terms as a “new rationalism” and which he holds to be part and parcel of the tradition of the “philosophical spirit” of “comtean positivism” (rey 1907, 396, 392). elsewhere rey notes that this new rationalism “in no way excludes a psychological history of reason” (rey 1921, 91). eventually, and that is the last important point made in the introduction to la théorie de la physique, abel rey explains in what lies the crucial “present interest” of such a research. the critics of “traditional mechanism” wanted to take advantage of the “crisis of contemporary physics” to proclaim the “failure of science”, of “reason” and of the “positive spirit” and to revert to a “mystical intuition”, to a “mystical sense of reality”, to “mystery” (rey 1907, 19). according to abel rey, it is, therefore, clear that “this work is not merely theoretical, for it can also answer serious and current concerns” (rey 1907, 20). it might help in the fight of the enlightenment against mysticism and rey would keep on emphasizing the “humanistic” dimension of the history of science and the “humanism conveyed by the positive sciences” (rey 1934-1935, v). for rey, as it would also be the case for canguilhem later, the history of science is always, in a certain sense, a political history of the sciences. it would be possible to draw other comparisons between abel rey and, on the one hand, his primary inspiration, auguste comte, and on the other hand, such followers of his as bachelard and canguilhem, but also in some ways, michel foucault and contemporary german-american historical epistemology. rey also maintains that science is the result of a choice between different possibilities and that truth is a “value” among others: “truth is a value, just as the beautiful and the good; the search for truth, which is what both science and philosophy are after, is the pursuit of a value” (rey 1936, 3). in that respect, rey anticipated canguilhem’s most iconoclastic claims when the latter explained that saying that there is no other knowledge than scientific knowledge “does not amount to saying that there are no other goals or values for the human mind except truth” (canguilhem 1993, 22). curiously enough, both in rey and canguilhem, beyond max weber’s “polytheism of values” one finds the same reference to nietzsche lurking in the background. canguilhem’s theory of the “axiological bias for truth” refers to nietzsche, for whom “truth is a value that is to be situated among a plurality of values” and certainly “not the only value man may devote himself to.” (canguilhem 1971, 177). references to nietzsche are also significant in rey, who considers “eternal return” to be “one of the basic guiding ideas of our science” and regards nietzsche as some sort of a scientific philosopher – pointing out that nietzsche “in 1881, by way of a brilliant intuition, an intuition originating in one of the greatest philosophical geniuses of our human history, intended to devote ten years of his life to studying the natural sciences so as to be able to base his idea transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 5 of eternal return on atomic theory” (rey 1927, 308-309). and when rey represents the history of humanity as a “sinusoidal curve” or as a “cyclical fate” joining apollo with dionysos, it is also to nietzsche that he refers (rey 1939, 554, 556). four features of french epistemology the four characteristic features of what rey calls “historical epistemology” seem to be widely shared by most of the representatives of what i would like to call the “french style” in the philosophy of science – originating with the one who invented it in the middle of the 19th century, auguste comte, and extending at least as far as michel foucault. accordingly, at least in france, historical epistemology is no recent trend that is bound to disappear. its discrete but insistent presence in abel rey’s work testifies to this fact. let me summarize these four features of french epistemology. 1) french epistemology always consists of an a posteriori reflection on the sciences. one may wonder how this epistemology may succeed in being more than an ill-informed repetition of science. in fact, it is its historical approach that enables french epistemology not to merely repeat the sciences: the philosophy of the sciences “à la française” is always a history of the sciences. canguilhem states this relationship very clearly à la manière d’abel rey: “without a reference to epistemology, the theory of knowledge would be an empty meditation; without a relation to the history of the sciences, epistemology would amount to a completely superfluous doublet of the science it is supposed to discuss” (canguilhem 1994, 11-12). the relationship between philosophy and the sciences can be fruitful only if it rests on the history of the sciences. french epistemology expects to find answers to some traditional philosophical problems, such as the problem of scientific objectivity or the question of truth and especially error, within the history of the sciences. accordingly, but quite paradoxically, canguilhem maintains that historicity constitutes a genuine criterion of demarcation between what is and is not scientific. the proof of the scientific nature of a discipline lies in its historical dimension: “a science deprived of history, that is a science within which the rejection of some conditions of objectivity at a given moment and their replacement by other conditions of objectivity more objectively defined had not taken place, such a science is not a science” (canguilhem 1970, 235). historicity is what distinguishes “true sciences” from “false sciences,” such as astrology, whose proper feature is to have no history. 2) however, this history of the sciences is not a history in the classical sense of the word: it claims to be a “critical” or “philosophical” history and differs from traditional history in two main respects. on the one hand, this history does judge and value what it studies. “to the model of the laboratory,” claims canguilhem, “one can oppose, in order to understand the function and meaning of the history of the sciences, the model of the school or the model of a court of justice, that is of an institution, and a place where judgments are passed on the knowledge of the past” (canguilhem 1994, 13). on the other hand, it is a history that judges by way of recurrence, that judges the past in the light of the present. 3) thirdly, the epistemology developed by these authors leads them to address the question of the development of reason, which is grasped only through the development of the sciences. a consequence of this view is that the different forms of reason are said to be dependent on historical or “geographical” conditions. bachelard explains that since “reason must obey science” the former must follow the “dialectics” of the latter: “the traditional doctrine of an absolute and immutable reason,” claims bachelard, “is only a philosophy. it is an outdated philosophy” (bachelard, 1983, 145). the new rationalism or “arch-rationalism” labeling, branding or reality? the french invention of “historical epistemology” in 1907 jean-françois braunstein transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 6 (“surrationalisme”) advocated by bachelard, after abel rey, is a perpetual conquest. foucault also keeps in mind the bachelardian and canguilhemian lesson regarding the historicity of rationality and acknowledges the fact that he has benefited from bachelard’s idea that “reason works on itself at the very moment it constitutes its objects of analysis” (foucault 1994, 56). what is at stake here is the constitution of “a form of rationality that is presented as prevailing and to which the status of the reason is granted so as to make it appear as one of the possible forms of rationality at work” (foucault 1983, iv, 56). foucault refuses “the blackmail that has very often been directed at any critique of reason or critical questioning concerning the history of rationality,” and he holds that it is possible to write “a contingent history of rationality” just as it is possible to attempt a “rational critique of rationality” (foucault 1983, iv, 56). if foucault refers several times to kant’s text what is the enlightenment?, for example, in his introduction to the english edition of the normal and the pathological, it is because he reads it as the first attempt to “question the history and geography of reason, to question its immediate past and the conditions of its working, to question its moment, its location, and its actuality” (foucault 1985, 5). rationality, notwithstanding its claim to universality, adopts historically determined forms. 4) fourthly, and finally, the history of science is always linked to political goals, broadly construed, either in comte, where going through the whole history of the sciences only aims at the establishment of sociology, the science that would enable the reorganization of society, or in canguilhem, with the demonstration that the deterministic conception of the “milieu” is not scientifically valid, which he already judged to be unfair in his early polemical writings against taine et barrès, as he would also argue in his later paper “le vivant et son milieu” (braunstein 2007). but it is also true of foucault. when he contrasts a “philosophy of experience, of meaning, of the subject,” that of sartre and merleau-ponty, with a “philosophy of knowledge, rationality and concept,” that of cavaillès, bachelard and canguilhem, which he endorses, it should not be forgotten that the remainder of his text echoes remarks made by canguilhem on the occasion of various tributes to the memory of jean cavaillès: “outwardly, the latter has remained the most theoretical, the most circumscribed to speculative tasks, the most remote from current political concerns of the two. yet during the war, it was that philosophy that took part, very directly, in the fight, just as if the question of the foundation of rationality could not be separated from the question of its present conditions of existence. this philosophy also played a crucial role in the ‘sixties when a crisis emerged that was not only that of the university but that of the status and role of knowledge itself. one can then wonder why such a reflection, whilst following its own logic, ended up being linked so deeply to the present” (foucault, 1985, 4). historical epistemology has always been a “history of the present.” * * * if one does not take into account french parochialism – which always results in having the french discovering anglo-saxon philosophies with the time-lag of a generation – there is no doubt that the obviousness of the four features, i have pointed out, explains why french epistemology did not in recent years manifest the same amount of interest exhibited by the learned community for the issues raised by the new “historical epistemology.” let us hope that this article might contribute to the awakening of such an interest. conclusion this article aimed to denaturalize the pioneering of the creation of the idea of historical epistemology mistakenly projected by the specialized bibliography, to a greater extent, on the figure of the french philosopher dominique lecourt (1969) and, to a lesser extent, on transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 7 other authors such as the american historian marx wartofsky (1973) and the polish logician jerzy kmita (1980). however, the historical epistemological expression and a reflection on its importance were first located in the work of the french philosopher and historian of science, abel rey. more than mapping the expression presented by this author, the paper traced his philosophical purposes in using the concept. furthermore, considering rey as the inventor of the idea of historical epistemology allows us to perceive important repercussions in the works of bachelard and canguilhem. finally, it is concluded that it is up to philosophers and historians of science to invest in continuing the vital process of historicizing epistemology as a mechanism to harness the full potential of the alliance established between philosophy and history in studies dedicated to the development of the sciences. references bachelard, g. 1940 [1983]. la philosophie du non. paris: puf. braunstein, j.-f. 2007. “psychologie et milieu: éthique et histoire des sciences chez georges canguilhem,” in j.-f. braunstein (ed.), canguilhem. histoire des sciences et politique du vivant, paris: puf. canguillhem, g. 1965 [1993]. “philosophie et science”, cahiers philosophiques, hors série, juin. canguilhem, g. 1966 [1994]. “l’objet de l’histoire des sciences,” in: id., études d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences, 7ème éd., paris: vrin. canguilhem, g. 1970. “objectivité et historicité,” in collectif, structuralisme et marxisme, paris: 10-18. canguilhem, g. 1971. “de la science et de la contre-science,” in: s. bachelard et al., hommage à jean hyppolite. paris: puf. foucault, m. 1980 [1994]. “entretien avec michel foucault”, dits et écrits, t. iv, paris : gallimard. foucault, m. 1983 [1994]. “structuralisme et poststructuralisme”, dits et écrits, t. iv. paris: gallimard. foucault, m. 1985. “la vie: l’expérience et la science”, revue de métaphysique et de morale, 90(1) : 3-14. gayon, j. 2003. “bachelard et l’histoire des sciences,” in: j.-j. wunenburger (ed.), bachelard et l’épistémologie française, paris : puf. gingras, y. 2010. “naming without necessity: on the genealogy and uses of the label ‘historical epistemology’,” note de recherche, 01, cirst. lecourt, d. 1969 [2002]. l’épistémologie historique de gaston bachelard. paris: vrin. lecourt, d. 2007. “georges canguilhem, le philosophe,” in: j.-f. braunstein (ed.), canguilhem. histoire des sciences et politique du vivant, 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des labeling, branding or reality? the french invention of “historical epistemology” in 1907 jean-françois braunstein transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 8 techniques de l’université de paris. première année. rey, a. 1935-1936. “histoire de la médecine et histoire générale des sciences,” thalès recueil annuel des travaux de l’institut d’histoire des sciences et des techniques de l’université de paris. deuxième année. rey, a. 1936. “[foreword to]” alfred stern, la philosophie des valeurs. regard sur ses tendances actuelles en allemagne. paris: hermann. rey, a. 1939. la science dans l’antiquité. tome iii: la maturité de la pensée scientifique en grèce. paris: albin michel. microsoft word sager layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-15 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager1 [http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3405-9962] abstract: in the birth of the clinic, foucault sweeps both bibliographical references and academic deference aside, thumbing his nose at historians of medicine and initiating a bras d’honneur towards traditional historiography. in this article, we will first recall the context of the reception of foucault’s translation, where we see anglo-saxon readers swinging between admiration and repulsion when reading the birth of the clinic. an archeology of medical perception. we will then demonstrate how jean starobinski’s account of it, “gazing at death”, differs from those of his english-speaking peers. finally, we will explain why we read in it the critical relationship, in every sense of the word, that foucault and starobinski maintained throughout their lives. keywords: birth of the clinic; writing style; historiography; system of thought; french philosophy received: april 11, 2022. reviewed: may 11, 2022. accepted: may 30, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “foucault’s book is extraordinarily difficult to read”, deplores one early reviewer of the birth of the clinic (aronson 1973). it’s no surprise that foucault’s writing style has aroused some reticence, and sometimes outright hostility, in the english-speaking world. for english-speaking readers, foucault’s language is indeed a major obstacle, as noted in most reviews of the birth of the clinic. an archaeology of medical perception (foucault 1973a, 1973b). while some terms pose no difficulty in translation, others have no “normal equivalent”, notes the translator of the birth of the clinic.2 this is the case, for example, of the locution “la clinique”, which sheridan smith prefers to translate as “clinic” to express the complex unity of the concept: the clinical method and the hospital, as a place for treatment of illnesses and teaching of medicine. he also explains that he used the term “gaze”, although it is unusual in english, to render the french word “regard” – except in the subtitle where he chooses to retain the original term “perception”. sheridan was also confronted with the problem of the critical edition of the text. indeed, the english 1 malika sager is a phd from the university of lausanne – institut des humanités en médecine. address: chuv, institut des humanités en médecine, bugnon 46, ch-1011 lausanne, switzerland. e-mail: mlksager@gmail.com 2 we used the reprint in vintage books editions (april 1994) of the edition published in 1973 in new york. foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 translation is a hybrid text between the first french edition (foucault 1963) and the second (foucault 1972). therefore, the english-speaking reader finds himself reading paragraphs of the birth of the clinic translated from the original 1963 text and others from the text reworked by foucault for the 1972 edition; since there is no english translation to date that is based entirely on either of the two french editions.3 this philological embarrassment has not failed to produce its share of misunderstandings. but far from blaming the translator, let us judge the difficulty of the task by mentioning some of the first reviews of the english text the birth of the clinic, before coming to starobinski’s “gazing at death”, thus shedding light on the ambiguous relationship that foucault and the geneva-based critic maintained throughout their lives. “medical change” (caws 1973) is one of the first reviews of the english translation of the birth of the clinic. it was published in november 1973 in the prominent american centreleft political and cultural opinion magazine the new republic. peter caws criticises foucault’s writing in an acerbic manner. he also criticises certain translation choices, notably that of the french term “regard” by gaze, whose multiple meanings and various connotations sometimes seem comical to him (gaze would be too close to gawk, according to him). why didn’t the translator simply keep the french word “regard” in english? caws then remarks with malicious sarcasm that only in foucault’s book do doctors “gaze at their patients” rather than examine them. however, if it is difficult to avoid foucault’s “frequent sense of linguistic outrage” (caws 1973), the blame lies as much with the author as with the translator. for example, caws considers it unnecessary to form the adjectives “tissual” or “tissular” from the english noun “tissue”, as sheridan does.4 at first glance, the question of foucault’s style might seem insignificant. this is not the case. the numerous criticisms from english-speaking readers who complain, as caws does, that “all one can do is grit one’s teeth” reading the birth of the clinic, attest to its importance. especially since “there are plenty of reasons to read this book”, he concedes, “but it cannot be recommended as a pure delight to those who are sensitive to english style or care about clarity of expression. foucault needs more than a translation, he needs editing”, caws quips. “faute de mieux”, he admits in french, foucault “is worth having as he is, mainly because of his ingenuity in thinking up new and surprising combinations of topics for investigation. the birth of the clinic is a case in point”. in the same vein, the review by alfred lars aronson, published in the autumn of 1973 in the oldest american literary journal, the yale review, illustrates the ambivalence of the reactions that the birth of the clinic aroused in the english-speaking readership. aronson credits foucault for the novelty of the historiographical enterprise: “it is to foucault’s credit that the birth of the clinic attempts a minor revolution in medical-history writing” (aronson 1973), and also for the benefit he derives from his work as a physician, scientist, and teacher. on the other hand, he expresses certain reservations about the difficulties one encounters when reading the text. indeed, he finds “foucault’s book the birth of the clinic extraordinarily difficult to read. the sentences, the paragraphs even, are sometimes so convoluted that they escape analysis. aronson’s disagreement with foucault’s thesis on the 3 thus, it sometimes happens that one passes from one edition to the other in the same sentence, stuart elden notes, regretting that a systematic comparison of the texts of the two french editions has not been undertaken to date. available in: https://progressivegeographies.com/2019/02/11/whichedition-of-foucaults-birth-of-the-clinic-did-alan-sheridan-actually-translate/ consulted october 8, 2019. 4 sheridan returns to the question of foucault’s style to shed light on it. according to his translator, “it is not so much that foucault writes well […]. it is rather that he writes with ostentatious brilliance: his writing betrays a quite shameless delight in his own skill, that calls to mind the sumptuous prose of our own pre-classical period [in english literature], that of a john donne or a thomas browne. to write in this way is no affectation or self-indulgence. it is, if it requires justification, functional. like all style, it is both natural and cultivated”. see (sheridan 1980, 223-224). foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 problem of perception is not, however, due to the use of terms –admittedly difficult to translate– such as “gaze”, “presence” or “individualities” and “a multitude of others that serve to confuse rather than to clarify”. the difficulty, he argues, lies primarily in foucault’s vision, a vision that is “essentially foreign” (to not say strange) to the anglo-saxon reader, yet one to which this particular language fits adequately. it is less the strangeness of the language than that of a french philosopher proposing to treat the problem of perception from a critical historical point of view, which leaves a doctor and scientist such as aronson perplexed.5 moreover, the strangeness is due to the general foucauldian project, which he understands, quite rightly, as an attempt “to structure this history of ideas [those ideas of the eighteenth century which provide the foundations for the modern conception of disease] into a systematic philosophy [founded] in a sea of semantic whirlpools”. the fundamental point of aronson’s disagreement with the foucauldian thesis of a “causalist” reversal of perspective is precisely that he is situated at the opposite point of view, as he himself recognises. indeed, aronson thinks “it is the application of the scientific method [to the investigation of disease] which enables the new “perception”, and not vice versa” (aronson 1973). in 1974, it was paul j. korshin’s turn to review the birth of the clinic in the academic journal of the history of medicine and health clio medica. the professor of english literature and specialist of the 18th century uses the subtitle “archaeology of medical perception” as a key to reading foucault’s work, which he rightly considers as an “archaeologist of medical perception”. as such, korshin expects the birth of the clinic to provide a “systematic explanation for changes in medical theory and patterns of perceptions that were largely invisible to practitioners at the time” (korshin 1974). he, therefore, believes that it would be more correct to see foucault as “a mythographer of the actual”, in his words, “for he strives to give coherent, narrative form to a vast and disparate body of knowledge, much of it now virtually forgotten” (korshin 1974). in an interesting remark, korshin values the part of this vast body of knowledge that is limited not only to the clinic or to the evolution of the modern hospital, but also mainly concerns “eighteenth century nosology, changes in medical administration and teaching, and accomplishments in the areas of morbid anatomy and fevers between 1790 and 1830” (korshin 1974). just as other authors (keel 1977, 1985, 2001, porter 1995, 1999) after him, he criticises the fact that the scope of the inquiry is almost exclusively french medicine and complains that “we hear practically nothing of medical science in any of the other european countries. but the most interesting remark in korshin’s review is undoubtedly the following one: foucault is clearly no medical historian, for he never alludes to modern studies of medical history or to contemporary methodologies of this branch of inquiry. he is interested mainly in modes of discourse and theories of perception; medicine happens to be his subject, just as in later books [the order of things (les mots et les choses), archaeology of knowledge (l’archéologie du savoir)] he turns to other branches of knowledge, like economics or the science of classification. (korshin 1974) if the clinic is an ideal subject for foucault’s research, korshin summarises, it is on the one hand that his study aims at establishing the existence of what the french philosopher calls “‘systems’ (others would call them ‘structures’ or ‘epistémès’) of perception, each of them different methodologies whose separateness from the previous bodies of thought is 5 on the functionality of foucault’s style and “nietzsche’s ‘influence’” on french thought and american thought, where nietzsche is also “widely read” compared to england, see (sheridan 1980, 225): “in england, where intellectual life so often appears to be in the grip of a narrow, smug, mentally lazy (il)liberal consensus, threatened on its fringes by a small band of marxists, it is almost non-existent”. foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 4 so clear that no explanation is needed to distinguish among them.” (korshin 1974). and on the other hand, it is that foucault believes he sees in the clinic, korshin analyses, “a unit of inquiry characterised mainly by silent empiricism without potentially muddying discourse.” the literature professor then asks how the method works in this book. he begins by considering the preface (he is one of the few reviewers to do so) as an important contribution to the methodologies of intellectual history. however, korshin immediately finds regrettable that the following ten chapters “are uneven and often unclear, sprinkled here and there with arcane dicta and unexplained obscurities, sometimes poetic in imagery, sometimes seemingly unaware of recent medical history” (korshin 1974). through these chapters and these obscurities, the professor of literature nevertheless spots a narrative thread, reminding us that “every historian needs a classifying notion to order his thinking”. according to this specialist of the eighteenth century, the classifying notion implemented by foucault would therefore be that of the creation of the clinic as “a political act”. namely, the implementation of the new laws enacted in the 1790s to regulate medical practice and teaching. in other words, it is a political act, first and foremost, that will allow the establishment of public health centres in which the “empirical observation of diseases could take place on a broad scale”. in this way, the medical “free gaze” can be trained. until then, it must be recognised that the perceptual structure of the eighteenth century showed little sign of such change. this point seems difficult to contest, if one is willing to consider the medical and political inadequacy of hospitals in the eighteenth century. after five chapters of “politico-medical history, then, foucault gets down to the revolution in medical perception in two very good methodological studies” that are, in korshin’s opinion, the chapters “signs and cases” (ch. vi) and “seeing and knowing” (ch. vii). in fact, he only reads the last three chapters (ch. viii “open up a few corpses”, ch. ix “the visible invisible”, and ch. x “crisis in fevers”) as studies in the history of medicine proper. rightly so, since foucault does indeed mention at the very end of his book bichat’s contribution to pathological anatomy, laennec’s invention of the stethoscope, and broussais’ study of fevers. another significant point, in our view, of korshin’s reading of foucault’s archaeology of the medical gaze, is that he considers these last chapters do not bring anything new to medical history, whereas they are “central to foucault’s systems of perception”. and especially the last two pages of the chapter “the visible invisible” in which the professor of literature finds foucault’s style “at [its] most poetic and arcane”. at the same time, he finds these pages “illuminating to foucault’s theories of medical description” up to their outcome in the medical “triumph of the gaze”. the quotation of laennec’s description of “the first cirrhotic liver in the history of medical perception” (foucault 1972, 174, 1973b, 169170) is undoubtedly linked to this enlightenment, as well as foucault’s accompanying commentary. indeed, foucault introduces this description by highlighting laennec’s “extraordinary formal beauty of the text links, writes the author of the birth of the clinic, in a single movement, the internal work of a language in pursuit of perception with all the strength of its stylistic originality, and the conquest of a hitherto unperceived pathological individuality” (foucault 1972, 174, 1973b, 170). despite all the obscurities of foucault’s language, korshin has grasped the fundamental question of the birth of the clinic, by situating the methodological problematic in the space of language and its history, as he acutely summarises: “we see language opened up to a new galaxy of perceptions; this is what foucault’s method is all about”. such an observation shows that despite the difficulties of style and beyond the divergences of the anglo-saxon and french scientific traditions, it is quite feasible to identify foucault’s objective in the birth of the clinic. it is still necessary to know how to read – or rather to want to read – as korshin seems to say at the conclusion of his review. he reminds us that the “bulk of [foucault’s] examples come from medical prefaces, where methods are set forth, not from the bodies of medical texts, where medicine is discussed”. the professor of literature thus encourages readers to “plough through its difficult rhetoric” for their perseverance will be rewarded by the significant foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 5 discoveries contained in this book, which has a greater logic and continuity than foucault’s previous works. it was necessary to recall this context of reception in which we see anglo-saxon readers swinging between admiration and repulsion when reading the translation of foucault’s book, before being able to show how jean starobinski’s account differs from those of his english-speaking peers, as we shall see in what follows. “gazing at death. the birth of the clinic. an archaeology of medical perception” (starobinski 1976) was published in the young and ambitious new york review of books, which prided itself on offering a space for deep discussion of contemporary books and issues to the most interesting and qualified minds. in this article, unpublished in french and arriving late compared to the reviews we have just mentioned, starobinski presents foucault’s book in a review that looks very much like a text explanation. he announces at the outset that he considers the work to be a work of history, while refraining –with difficulty, but not without elegance– from saying what he thinks of its author: “the birth of the clinic is a description of the changes in the language of medicine, particularly french medicine, between 1794 and 1820”. but this work is much more than that. it is “an experiment in a new way of writing the history of science”, as the literary critic and historian of ideas will explains. the birth of the clinic is actually “a testing ground for a radically redefined historical epistemology and methodology.” according to starobinski, therein lies the “double appeal” of this work. it will find readers not only among those who are interested in this “seminal” period in the history of medicine, but also among “those who are dissatisfied with the traditional procedures of intellectual history and who would like to see historians of ideas rethink their objectives and methods”. it must be said that in 1976, starobinski was already able to place the birth of the clinic in the general panorama of foucault’s work. he can safely say that this book “is an important element in the inquiry, which is the basis of [foucault’s] current theorising.” starobinski believes that the absence of biographies of scientists and the way in which foucault constructs “impersonal schemes” show very clearly that foucault’s approach is that of a history of science “more interested in systems of thought, their appearance and disappearance, their way of organising scientific discourse and in the conditions which make them possible, than in the individual destiny of their ‘inventors’”. this is the reason why seeking to characterise the book rather than to classify it, starobinski insists on the “stylistic” aspect of the book. the birth of the clinic is an expression of style: “we could call this book a study of the styles of medical knowledge, or more precisely a study of the differences in such styles, an inquiry concerned with the mutations, discontinuities, incompatibilities, and displacements which make the medical discourse of the nineteenth century totally unlike that of preceding centuries”. here we must distinguish between the literal and the literary sense of the term “style”. indeed, starobinski does not seek by means of such a distinction to highlight the obscurity of foucault’s style or the muddled reading of his book, contrary to aronson’s comments, but also those of poynter (poynter 1964), reiser (reiser 1976) or figlio (figlio 1977), to mention a few. the geneva critic is attentive to the literary difference in writing style. if foucault’s writing can be very attractive to a french-speaking reader, it can also be difficult to read and sometimes even irritating, starobinski concedes, but never obscure. if foucault is disconcerting, it is because his writing is full of “dazzling insights”. the difference in style between the “scientific” language of linguistics or semiology, and the specifically philosophical descriptions of the birth of the clinic, are expressed, in the critic’s opinion, in a “splendid literary language, full of figures, dramatic turns of phrases, metaphors, wordplay, allusions and poetic inventions, all of which present an unexpected element in the treatment of such a subject.” in this regard, starobinski does not fail to note the faithful and subtle work of the english translator, sheridan smith, mentioned above, who achieves real “tours de force” (in french in the text), although he has some foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 6 reservations about the translation of certain turns of phrase and about the rendering of foucault’s deliberate insolence. we shall see that this last point is anything but trivial. from a critical point of view, starobinski continues, foucault is interested not only in the “internal rules” that govern a particular corpus of documents, and in their exceptions, but also in the rules that govern the next corpus of documents, because it is at a different stage of scientificity than the first corpus studied. this “structuralist” methodology, as starobinski calls it and quotes it, leads foucault to reject both the heroic role attributed to innovative individuals and the traditional evolutionary perspective in the history of ideas. while it is clear to starobinski that foucault’s “own style, as one might guess, is frequently polemical when he seeks to refute the old historiography”, the polemical game of refutation plays only a secondary role in the birth of the clinic. according to starobinski, the “essential thing” in foucault’s book is “his description of the different styles of knowledge, the social “space” in which these styles are practically deployed – at home or in a hospital for example – the objects they select or reject, the concepts they use, and the metaphors they favour”. the style issue is primordial in starobinski’s eyes, for it implies a distinction between (objective) method and (personal) style, more broadly, a division between science and non-science.6 the literary critic and historian of ideas sees in foucault’s simple omission of references to previous studies of clinical medicine not so much a sign of his distrust of traditional scholarship, but rather the mark of “his personal style of interpretation”.7 the rest of the review is devoted to the medical-historical side of the birth of the clinic. starobinski confronts foucault’s historiographical critique with the traditional way of writing the history of medicine. let us take a closer look, on the one hand, to make o. temkin (1902-2002) influence on starobinski’s work on the history of medicine felt. then, on the other hand, to read some of the stylistic criticisms that starobinski addresses to foucault through the personalities of other historians.8 we want to show how starobinski compares foucault’s presentation of events with that of three “traditional” historians of medicine: e. h. ackerknecht (1906-1988), whose way of working is, according to starobinski, “exactly the opposite of foucault’s autistic and self-sufficient way” (starobinski 1976); o. temkin, whose idea of the clinic is essentially taken from that of k. a. wunderlich (1815-1877), who "knew parisian medicine very well from his own experience"; and h. e. sigerist (1891-1957), defender of a “living” history of medicine.9 in what follows, we will 6 (trucchio 2016, 114). see also the book based on this thesis disserattion (trucchio 2021, 10). 7 a. trucchio notes that “al centro del pensiero maturo di starobinski troviamo ancora la questione della distinzione tra scienza e non-scienza, anche se stavolta prendono piuttosto il nome di methodi e stili” [“at the center of starobinski’s mature thinking is always the question of the distinction between science and non-science, although this time they are rather called methods and styles”, our translation] (trucchio 2016, 114). the example given by starobinski and quoted by a. trucchio to deepen the distinction between method and style, shows the persistence of this question for starobinski: “i recognize the existence of a freudian style of interpretation; but i have difficulty seeing in psychoanalysis a method [...]. for freud proposed (to the point of imposing) his personal style of interpretation, in a field where the precise methods of his time (i am thinking of the anatomical-clinical methods) remained silent: he occupied the ground left vacant". see (bonnet 1985, 10). what is at stake, in short, is the judgment of knowledge of the living and the beautiful. the question is to know which idea would provide a “foundation of knowledge” (erkenntnisgrund) proper to this type of knowledge and was already the object of starobinski’s reflexion in a speech on the idea of organism pronounced in the 1950s (starobinski 1956). 8 the influence of o. temkin on starobinski’s work would only be comparable to that of canguilhem. see (trucchio 2016, 92-93, 102). 9 sigerist believes that “a lively history of medicine should refer to actual medicine and attempt to bridge the chasm between literary studies and the social and natural sciences” (mörgeli and blaser 1989, 53). however, sigerist recognized that “to know the living, we dissect the dead” (sigerist 1932, 10). foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 7 take the scope of starobinski’s criticism, which is aimed less at the theses of the birth of the clinic than at the “non-scientific” historiography on which the archaeology of the medical gaze is based. we will see that foucault’s attempt to throw away both bibliographical references and academic deference is received as a snub to the authors and a bras d’honneur towards traditional historiography. for foucault, it is the changes brought about by the french revolution in the reorganisation of medical education, its centralisation, its submission to state control, and the establishment of new hierarchies which come first, as starobinski summarises: “the revolutionary reorganisation of the university was at first no more than a necessary condition for the rise of clinical medicine” (starobinski 1976). and he quotes foucault as saying that “what clinical medicine lacked and what it had to create was ‘a new coherent and unitary model for the formation of medical objects, perceptions, and concepts’”. the foucauldian version of history thus poses only one necessary condition for the birth of clinical medicine, namely the revolutionary reorganisation of the university. a political act, in a word. traditional historians, on the other hand, line up a series of factors, the combined effect of which will play a determining role in the birth of the clinic. starobinski summarises this theoretical viewpoint as follows: “according to them [traditional historians], the rise [of clinical medicine] depended on the decline of dogmatic causal interpretation and the rejection of galenic, cartesian and other preconceptions, which had provided a speculative foundation for nonverifiable physiology and pathology.” still, according to the “other historians”, in addition to the decline of causal interpretation, the primacy given to unbiased observation also belongs to the series of determining factors in the birth of the clinic. placed under the patronage of hippocrates, unprejudiced observation is set up as a non-dogmatic model –thus following in a way the version of a rebirth of the clinic across the centuries, which foucault virulently criticises as a historiographical myth. finally, and only at the end of the series of factors, the traditional historiography of medicine gives birth to the clinic from “the suppression of old hierarchies and privileges, which made it possible for the revolution to unify the domain of medical science and bring together medicine and surgery, enabling them to share their experience and methods.” in contrast to foucault, again according to starobinski’s reading, for the traditional historians of medicine, it was the combined effect of these causes that, in sum, enabled medicine to establish its scientificity. foucault, on the other hand, mentions these facts only briefly, without using any of them to provide a causal explanation, showing, moreover, as much distrust towards socio-economic “causal attributions” as, towards expressive or psychological ones, starobinski points out. in the same way, he refuses a freudian explanation of the “scientific genius” or a marxist interpretation of science as a superstructure. he proposes instead a theory of the “formation of systems”, developed more elaborately in the archaeology of knowledge, as starobinski notes. here he quotes the definition of “system formation" given by foucault in this book: “by formation system we must therefore understand a complex network of relationships which performs the function of rules”, he explains to the english reader. this definition suffices to show the gap between the work of “traditional” historians of medicine and foucault’s attention to “the specific characteristics of the new medical discourse”, that is, to the style of language giving form to the expression of a new content. starobinski comes to compare foucault’s and th. s. kuhn’s treatment of “the same ‘revolutionary’ phenomenon in science”. although in a more radical and more abstract way with foucault, it concerns the appearance of a new paradigm indeed, to put it in terms of th. s. kuhn, taken up precisely by starobinski: “the ‘rules’ he [foucault] again and again refers to could best be defined as the patterns of thought which prevail in each dominant paradigm”. in foucault’s eyes, starobinski insists, the principal changes resulting from this “scientific revolution” are, “in the broadest sense, of a stylistic nature”. finally, the last part of starobinski’s account relates the interest of f. x. bichat (17711802) and his successors in “the structure of tissues, the configuration of diseased organs, foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 8 and the visible aspect of morbid conditions”, with foucault’s stated intention to “describe the structure of the descriptive systems of bichat and the other parisian clinicians and anatomo-pathologists of the early nineteenth century”. structure, configuration, visibility of conditions, this interest that foucault’s project shares with bichat, laennec, and broussais, manifests a common impatience with the “various causalist forms of historiography, such as existentialism, which looks for the “original project” behind a particular event, or marxism, which tries to show the interests or relations of production underlying “ideological discourse”, according to starobinski. this impatience they share, which tends to insolence in foucault, would be the expression of “the will to set themselves free from the causal interpretations which tradition and even their immediate predecessors have imposed on them [foucault, bichat, laennec, and broussais]”. indeed, writes starobinski, “there is a striking parallel between what foucault develops as his own method and the method he ascribes to, say, bichat.” this remark deserves to be considered because this striking parallel leads starobinski to consider the birth of the clinic as a projection of the foucauldian undertaking. the swiss critic and historian of ideas, who was also a psychiatrist, points out here what no historian of medicine, to our knowledge at least, has noted. namely that “foucault is perhaps depicting in emblematic form his own undertaking, his own break with traditional intellectual history”. the striking parallel that starobinski establishes between bichat and foucault is on the methodological level and concerns “the gaze at death”, an anatomical, analytical glance. on the other hand, when he writes “it is as if foucault recognised in bichat something of himself and his own attitude”, starobinski also situates this parallel on the individual level. as if for him both plans do not go together. for example, when foucault writes about bichat’s method in terms of a rupture in relation to the old nosological system or in terms of a reversal in relation to methodological principle, starobinski wonders if “when foucault shows how bichat and laennec derive medical knowledge from the scrutiny of a corpse, and give priority to the lessons learned from the dead, he is not describing the position of his own archaeology of knowledge, analysing as it does vanished systems which are separated from us by one or more ‘breaks’”. even more significant in relation to his rejection of foucauldian mortalism, he asks: “doesn’t his [foucault’s] epistemology presuppose the isolation and death of the systems whose rules it studies?”. bichat’s interest in structures (tissues), configuration (diseased organs), and visibility (morbid conditions) are the three points that allow starobinski to draw a parallel between the method of 19th-century clinicians and anatomo-pathologists and foucault’s intention with the archaeological method tested in the birth of the clinic. he goes on to describe the methodology of bichat, laennec and broussais “which can broadly be described as structuralist”, since like foucault, these clinicians and anatomo-pathologists sought to break with causal interpretation. with bichat as with foucault, the “structuralist” methodology would be the expression of the same impatience towards tradition. for starobinski, foucault’s method is a refutation of the “old historiography”, the one written by doctors and medical historians such as k. a. wunderlich (wunderlich 1859), e. h. ackerknecht (ackerknecht 1953, 1955, ackerknecht and wieries 1957, ackerknecht 1967, 1986) – “whose way of quoting fellow scholars is exactly contrary to foucault’s autistic and self-sufficient manner”, he adds not hiding his irritation –, o. temkin (temkin 1929, 1950, 1977), or h. e. sigerist (sigerist 1924, 1932, 1944). however, between the lines of this striking parallel between bichat and foucault, we are also tempted to read the divergence of method in the analysis of texts and in the historiography of ideas that existed between starobinski and foucault, and this from their first works in the 1950s. in other words, the impatience one feels while reading “gazing at death” is rather that one of starobinski himself. the critic and historian of ideas does not hide his disapproval of foucault’s historiographical practices, as we quoted above, nor his foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 9 irritation at certain difficulties.10 on the other hand, he refuses the qualifier of “obscure” attached to foucault’s writing and takes advantage of it to point out the “bold playfulness and elegant originality” of his prose in the birth of the clinic, thus recognising the strong attraction that his style can have on the french-speaking reader. in sum, in addition to the historiographical gap, the divergence in method between starobinski and foucault sheds light on the critical view that the historian of ideas takes of the whole foucauldian undertaking. indeed, starobinski presents it to the english-speaking reader as a trilogy of the history of science, of which histoire de la folie [madness and civilisation] is the first part, naissance de la clinique [the birth of the clinic] the second and les mots et les choses [the order of things] the third. l’archéologie du savoir [the archaeology of knowledge] would then be the methodological postscript of this trilogy (foucault 1972 [1961], 1966, 1969). one could thus see in the birth of the clinic a foucault indulging in a historiographical autopsy of the “sujet” [human person], the essay offering the opportunity to its author of a methodological “testing ground” of the death of man, before officially proclaiming it, so to speak, in the following work the order of things, subtitled an archaeology of the human sciences. more than starobinski’s impatience, let us retain above all his clear-sightedness when he notes that “one cannot fully understand the birth of the clinic unless we are aware of its position in this series” of works. it is probably necessary to have a thorough knowledge of the french intellectual and philosophical context of the 1950s and 1960s to be able to appreciate foucault’s enterprise in all its singularity. this is precisely the case with starobinski. the profound intelligence of starobinski’s reading should not, however, mask the critical relationship between the two historians of ideas. this critical relationship, betrayed by a decade-long silence, is finally broken by this account in the form of a “living demonstration” of starobinski’s method – the antithesis of foucault’s. a critical relationship, tied up around a seemingly superficial disagreement that could almost go unnoticed, but that we nevertheless sense in this remark by starobinski, where he insists once again on foucault’s historiographical style, as if to deny the mortalist thesis of the birth of the clinic and to minimise the paradigmatic change that takes place in it both historically and historiographically: “having rejected any belief in cumulative progress in medicine, foucault’s view of “scientific revolution” insists that the principal changes are in the broadest sense, of a stylistic nature”. to understand what starobinski means by this, it is necessary to recall that he defines stylistics as the “science of expression” (starobinski 1970, 55-56). starobinski here agrees with leo spitzer’s (1887-1960) notion of style because of its “balanced” sense, which implies “the revolt of the individual, and his reconciliation through the work” (starobinski 1970, 56, spitzer 1970). the work studied according to spitzerian stylistics is indeed considered as the product of the (psychic) activity of a singular speaking individuality –an artist, an author. translated into literary language, this means that “the pathological deviation becomes inventive power” (starobinski 1970, 56). the stylistic gap, explains starobinski, “if it is the work of singularity, it designates all together an “ineffable” will that wants the gap, and an activity that fills the gap by manifesting it”. the product of such an activity can thus be translated into scientific language, as for example in the concepts forged by the neurobiologist kurt goldstein (1878-1965), for whom the essence of biological knowledge is founded “by a creative act” (goldstein 1951 [1934], 312-313)11. an act, in other 10 georges steiner gives an account of the english translation of les mots et les choses [the order of things] where he shows himself exasperated by foucault’s academic inconvenience. see (steiner 1971a, b). one can read the first “reply” of foucault to steiner in (foucault 1971b) or in (foucault 2001, n° 97), and the second one in (foucault 1971a) or in (foucault 2001, n° 100). 11 goldstein explains the object of his research in his book the structure of the organism as follows: “we are not looking for a foundation of reality that founds the being, but we are looking for an idea, a foundation of knowledge that allows us to verify all particularities. we look for an “idea” from foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 10 words, founded by a creative personality. it does not matter whether he is a scientist or an artist. what matters to the author of “gazing at death” is that this act is the creative expression of an individuality. moreover, starobinski used a reading procedure similar to the one that allowed him to identify this “striking parallel” between bichat and foucault, when he underlined “the striking concordance” (starobinski 1953, 785-786) between canguilhem’s assertions and georges bataille’s ideas on life. in substance, he retains from it that “a same view on the life can thus impose itself at the end of a reflection on the methodology of the biological sciences as in canguilhem, and at the bend of an ‘interior experience’”, such as the “paradoxical mystical” experience of which bataille makes the account in le coupable [the guilty] (bataille 2021 [1961; 1944], 1988 [1961; 1944]). what starobinski fails to mention – unless he has decided to forget it– is the point of view from which bataille looks at life. yet bataille explicitly states his point of view in the introduction to the second edition of his book in 1961: bataille considers life from the point of view of death. and death as a “départir” of language. let’s read it: mankind is the only animal that knows just how –heavily– to make his own death an impossibility, since we’re the only animal to die in this constricted sense. consciousness is the condition of a death that’s achieved. i die to the degree i’m aware of dying. and as death takes my consciousness away from me, i’m not just aware that i’m dying: death is also taking away this awareness… maybe humankind’s a pinnacle, but only a disastrous one. [...] * to be honest, the language i’m using can’t be complete until my death. provided that death isn’t confused with the violent, theatrical form, chance gives it. death is a disappearance. it’s a suppression so perfect that at the pinnacle utter silence is its truth. words can’t describe it. here obviously i’m summoning a silence i can only approach from the outside or from a long way away. [...] this is how we finally reach the end of language, which is death. potentially the question’s still one of language, but the meaning of this language (already meaning’s absence) is implicit in words that put a stop to language. but these words acquire meaning only to the extent that they take place immediately before silence –a silence that puts a stop to them. only forgotten [bataille emphasises] would they take on full meaning, falling suddenly, conclusively, into oblivion. (bataille 2021 [1961; 1944], 14-15, 1988 [1961; 1944], 7-8) with this long quote, we wanted to prevent the meaning of the “inner experience” lived by bataille from falling silently into oblivion. having done so, we can now return to “gazing at death” and to the “striking parallel” that starobinski sees between bichat and foucault, which seems to us ultimately much less striking than the divergence between which all the particularities become understandable, considering the conditions of their formation. we can only arrive at this idea by a creative act. biological knowledge is the creative act, always identified, by which the idea of the organism becomes for us more and more a lived event, a kind of “view” in the sense of goethe, a view that never loses contact with very empirical facts.” for goldstein, it is from the edifice itself, and not from its keystone, that we must understand the phenomena, that is, “as part of an ordered, relatively constant construction with a definite unity and structure.” (our translation). foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 11 starobinski and foucault on the topic of mankind [l’homme, le sujet]. these are two antithetical conceptions that we read in the thread of the “gazing at death” account. the whole paradox of this non-relationship is indeed illuminated from the point of view that the two historians of ideas pose on the rational and biological human being. on the one hand, starobinski’s “living eye” insists on seeing an individuality composed of a “consciousness” and a “life”. on the other hand, foucault’s style of analysis aims at breaking down the idea’s unity in terms of death. the question is not therefore whether one should consider “le sujet” from the living eye, from the synthetic angles of the “global and ‘totalitarian’ view” (starobinski 1953, 788-789)12 of biological knowledge, in the manner of goldstein, canguilhem and starobinski, or from the point of view of death, following the localising and isolating analytical view of bichat and foucault. our aim was to shed light on the critical relationship that foucault and starobinski maintained throughout their lives by highlighting what allowed the geneva-based critic to understand the archaeology of the medical gaze as a projection of the foucauldian methodological originality. and thus, to give to grasp the true subject of this contradiction that the historian of the ideas finds characteristic of the birth of the clinic and on which he concludes “gazing at death”: not the least of the attractions of his book’s attraction [the birth of the clinic] is that it repeatedly allows us, writes starobinski, to glimpse the face, the personal and distinctive features of a philosopher-historian, whose declared aim is nevertheless to get rid of [we emphasise] the subject and subjectivity, to disappear in his own discourse (perhaps to disappear from his discourse), and to leave the way open for a formulation of the anonymous rules which govern human knowledge and behaviour. (starobinski 1976) this contradiction finally reveals the fundamental disagreement – visceral as much as intellectual – of the author of the living eye facing an undertaking deliberately dedicated to the destitution of the rational and biological subjectivity in human knowledge. it also confirms, in the light of a moribund historiography, the profound acuity of a stylistic reading of the birth of the clinic. by way of conclusion, i would like to evoke the vagaries of my own reading of “gazing at death”. i will therefore switch from we to i to tell how i personally discovered the existence of “gazing at death” and what a surprise it was to find that this text had remained unpublished in french. in writing this article, i just have to copy out the passages i quoted above in english, although they were originally written in french by starobinski and later translated into english by peter france13. it is another of life’s ironies – which must have to do as much with the subject of my article as with the subject of the birth of the clinic (i. e. the history of the birth and death of the human being [l’homme, le sujet] as subject of knowledge and the philosophical problem that this poses for french philosophy) –, that the editors of the journal transversal asked me to translate my own article into english. if the exercise was painful for a french writer like me, it also gave me the opportunity to realise that ideas collide more than they circulate, according to simone weil’s (1909-1943) rightful formula (weil 2014 [1942]). the gesture of translation is indeed 12 starobinski details canguilhem’s vitalism as follows, quoting the book the knowledge of life (canguilhem 2009 [1965; 1952]): “what [canguilhem] adopts from the vitalist themes is the notion of totality, the idea of the originality of life, the integrative conception of the organism. “the causality is that of a whole on itself and not of a part on another” (canguilhem 2009 [1965; 1952]). but these are not specifically vitalist ideas. they have been taken up by goldstein and his school in the sense of a biology of the organic totality”. 13 i would like to thank heartily peter france for sharing with me some of his own memories about his literary relationship with jean starobinski. foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 12 confronted with the difficult treatment of a material composed of a language and a culture. the translator is faced with the task of transmitting ideas formulated in a certain way of discourse, which in itself is the expression of a particular way of life. finally, in the birth of the clinic, it is not so much the french language translated into english that causes difficulty for the english-speaking reader. it’s foucault’s own language and the ideas he carries that have offended historians of medicine, who are scholars trained in the german-english scientific tradition. in the english-speaking world, the circulation of the ideas contained in the birth of the clinic will thus have encountered as its main obstacle foucault’s writing style as much as the philosophical and literary questions posed by french intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s, and whose concerns are soberly summed up by gillesgaston granger – in stark contrast to foucault’s baroque style: “philosophy, like art and history, but in different senses of the word, is essentially a question of style” (granger 1968, 302). the most ironic reversal in the history of the reception of the birth of the clinic is that the diverted reading by the german-anglo-saxon academic tradition has made this essay of methods in the history of ideas an unavoidable bibliographical reference for those who are interested in the history of medicine and its historiography. conclusion foucault’s book the birth of the clinic is an unavoidable bibliographical reference for those who are interested in the history of medicine. however, initially the foucauldian project was rather a “testing ground” for a new method in the history of ideas. by this mean foucault virulently criticizes the historiographical myth of the clinical medicine’s rebirth across the centuries. in the birth of the clinic, he proposes instead a history of the idea “clinic” grounding the modern medical system of thought breaking with the causalist interpretation of the “old historiography” and its continuist approach. starobinski’s review “gazing at death” comes on the scene as a kind of text explanation intended for englishspeaking readers of the birth of the clinic, who were often taken aback by foucault’s writing style. in so doing, the swiss critic and historian of ideas points out a “striking parallel” between the historiographical method experimented by foucault in his work and the method of the parisian clinicians and anatomo-pathologists of the early nineteenth century, whose formation he describes. according to starobinski, the birth of the clinic is a projection of the foucauldian undertaking that is foucault’s own split with traditional intellectual history. the methodological parallel that starobinski draws between bichat and foucault concerns their analytical approach to observation (of diseased tissues, of texts), which he names “gazing at death”. far more significant, precisely because starobinski is silent about it, is the critical relationship between the latter and foucault, transpiring in this parallel. starobinski’s rejection of foucauldian mortalism becomes remarkably eloquent because it strikes at the heart of his own historiography of ideas and critical method – the antithesis of foucault’s. this critical relationship, betrayed by a decade-long silence on both sides, is finally broken by starobinski’s account “gazing at death”, which is presented as a “living demonstration” of his own method: starobinski’s living eye reads the birth of the clinic as foucault’s gaze at death, that is to say: the death of the subject. the issue in this critical relationship is a clash of two antithetical conceptions of mankind, which do not identify themselves, but which become clear thanks to this tacit polemic on the rational and biological subject. on the one hand, starobinski insists on seeing the individual subject composed of a “consciousness” and a “life” (that is human life). on the other hand, foucault’s “mortalist” analysis aims to break down this composite idea of the subject historically and structurally, in other words by recounting its birth and thus its death. this explains why philosophers and historians of ideas in france, pretending to ignore foucault’s book for at least two decades, have in fact complacently allowed anglo-saxon critics to foucault and starobinski: a critical relationship or the living eye vs. “gazing at death” malika sager transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 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issue research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4620-1388 caio maximino2 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3261-9196 abstract: it is proposed the description of the “circulatory system” (sensu latour) of technoscience around covid-19 in particular regarding the development of vaccines and scientific evidence on treatment as a didactic study case for science teaching, showing how current events can and should also be mobilized for the critical understanding of the nature of science in the classroom. from the description of the various actors involved in the covid-19 event, we discuss how it is possible to articulate scientific knowledge and critical discussions about the nature of science to mobilize scientific literacy that is, the mastery and internalization of a properly scientific way of reading the natural and social world, rejecting denialism and absolutism about a supposedly univocal and linear science. the goal of reaching scientific literacy can be developed by using the case study presented here, facilitating the articulation of these elements of science education through a contemporary episode. thus, it is expected that the content and reasoning proposed in this paper can be used as a theoretical basis to be used in the classroom and can be adapted to a methodology that the teacher and students feel more comfortable with and to the educational context in question. keywords: covid-19; bruno latour; helen longino; circulatory system of technoscience; science teaching received: april 28, 2023. reviewed: may 05, 2023. accepted: may 08, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.07 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction the importance of overcoming a content-driven approach in science education has long been emphasized, especially in understanding scientific work, the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, and the role of the internal logic of science and the external context in decisions 1 camila maria sitko is a professor at the federal university of technology – paraná (universidade tecnológica federal do paraná – utfpr) in the national professional master’s degree in physics teaching (mnpef-utfpr/cm) and professor in the science and mathematics teaching program (ppgecm), at the federal university of south and southeast of pará (universidade federal do sul e sudeste do pará – unifesspa). address: via rosalina maria dos santos, 1233 vila carolo, campo mourão pr, 87301-899. brazil. email: camilasitko@yahoo.com.br 2 caio maximino is a professor in the science and mathematics teaching program (ppgecm) at the federal university of south and southeast of pará (universidade federal do sul e sudeste do pará – unifesspa). address: rod. br-230 (transamazônica), loteamento cidade jardim, av. dos ipês, s/n.º cidade jardim, marabá pa, 68500-000. brazil. e-mail: cmaximino@unifesspa.edu.br research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 about scientific theories, models, and hypotheses. this understanding is not restricted to the training of future scientists, but mainly to scientific literacy as an instrument of citizenship (yurij castelfranchi and fernandes 2015). before we advance in this text, we follow chassot’s definition of scientific literacy as follows: “being scientifically literate is to be able to read the language [of science]” (chassot 2003, 91), understood as the language that men and women build to explain the natural world. despite this notion, there is not necessarily agreement on the minimum elements of scientific work (bejarano, aduriz-bravo, and bonfim 2019). one perspective that is gaining ground among educators is whole science, which suggests as minimum elements “of the reliability dimensions of science” (allchin 2013, 24): an observational dimension (with observation and measurement, experiments, and instruments); a conceptual dimension (with patterns of reasoning, historical dimensions, and human dimensions); and a sociocultural dimension (with institutions, biases, the funding of research, and science communication). several attempts have been made to describe some of these elements in science teaching (izquierdo-aymerich and adúriz-bravo 2003), mainly by using events from the history of science (matthews 2015). the use of contemporary events is rarer, but the covid19 pandemic presents an important case for reflecting the role of various elements of scientific work in everyday life and their appropriation by science education (reiss 2020). in this paper, we propose an analysis of the sociocultural dimension of scientific discourses on covid-19, vaccination, vaccine development, and drug efficacy through the lens of “science’s blood flow” (sensu latour) as a way of improving critical science teaching. among the elements cited by allchin (2013), the sociocultural dimension is often the least explored, in part because the sociology of science view is often interpreted as relativistic (bunge 1991). in addition, there seems to be confusion between descriptive and normative aspects of the sociology of science the notion that describing science as influenced by external factors and highlighting the role of the sociocultural dimension somehow means relativizing scientific knowledge or asserting that science must be this way (allchin 2004). an important contribution to give nuance to the debate can be found in the work of helen longino (1990). longino argues that external (“sociocultural”) factors interact with factors internal to the sciences (the observational and conceptual dimensions elaborated by allchin (2013)) to determine which theories and hypotheses advance. her contextual empiricism assumes that social values are fundamental to justifying scientific knowledge as objective. the observations and data produced by scientists are not themselves evidence for or against a particular hypothesis; rather, the relevance of any particular data or observation is decided by the assumptions of what types of data can support each type of hypothesis (longino 1990). even when the relevance of a piece of data is defined, there is still a logical gap between the empirical evidence and the justification given to the theories (the duhem-quine thesis). this logical gap must, in turn, be filled by assumptions about what kinds of reasoning are legitimate, helping scientists use evidence to decide which hypotheses are true (longino 1990). longino (1990) argues that these assumptions are not only based on internal factors but, importantly, on external factors as well. many interpretations of the underdetermination problem led to counterproductive relativism, as do the difficulties in producing an answer to what kind of evidence is needed to judge the truth or falsity of a hypothesis (estany 1999). an intermediate way out is also suggested by helen longino: the use of diverse perspectives to criticize scientific hypotheses and theories can guarantee objectivity and the status of scientific theories to some of these hypotheses (longino 1990). a hypothesis becomes knowledge when scrutiny from diverse perspectives supports objectivity (crasnow 1993). similarly, values that are not necessarily internal to science are crucial to objectivity, and science can be objective precisely because it research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 is not value-free (i.e., because external factors influence it) (longino 1990). critical dialogue within the scientific community can allow it to overcome some biases (eigi 2012). an associated conception, with a much greater focus on the sociocultural dimension of scientific work, can be found in the formulations of bruno latour, especially in his books science in action (latour 1988), pandora’s hope (latour 1999), and reassembling the social (latour 2007). latour’s approach is a radical empiricist one and, therefore, compatible with the contextual empiricism of helen longino. both understand the scientific endeavor not as a matter of discovering fundamental truths about the world, but of stabilizing phenomena through the wider interaction between actors in the network. for both longino and latour, constructivism is not about how kantian categories determine the world, but how interactions with the world surpass the mere representational. thus, for both latour and longino, the classical dichotomies evoked by scientists are not given, but constructed; the question ceases to be one of merely “un-naturalizing” or “unmasking” these constructions and turns to which of these constructions are more productive and politically acceptable, given the values that are negotiated and renegotiated between scientists and the wider milieu. the present work aims to describe a use of latour’s technoscience blood flow in understanding and describing the actors involved in formulating the scientific understanding of the covid-19 event, including the public health strategies and the development of vaccines, as a tool for science education. latour’s technoscience blood flow has been presented before, but this work brings a current example that has affected the entire world, showing science under construction. furthermore, the case study presented and discussed here based on the sociological basis of latour can be adapted to different methodologies and educational contexts as a way of helping the teacher to bring current and controversial scientific topics to the classroom, as a way of exemplifying to the students how science is actually constructed. thereby, initially, the blood flow (circulatory system) of technoscience, proposed by latour, is presented. then, the construction of the scientific facts involving covid-19 is discussed on the theoretical basis mentioned. after that, the implications of using discussions of this nature for science teaching are developed. finally, the final considerations of the work are presented. technoscience’s blood flow for the late anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist of science bruno latour, in order to understand the science-making activity, it is necessary to strip ourselves of any preconceptions and ideas of cold, impartial and objective science so that we can understand that scientific activity is, in fact, dynamic and alive. in this sense, the first necessary rupture is with the subject-object dichotomy: starting from the adoption of the idea that scientific activity occurs from interactions between humans and nonhumans – that is, all actors in the network, such as objects, mathematical formulas, nonhuman living organisms, and even abstract “institutions” such as the market, economy, church, etc., with no differentiation between them, and no privileged position (latour 2007). what exists are associations in a network, a tangle of propositions which describe the ways of constructing scientific facts. latour calls this network a socio-technical network formed by heterogeneous links, which encompass social and economic relations as well as cognitive developments. the comparison with a network occurs precisely to show that if one of the actors (whether human or nonhuman) in the process is disconnected, the whole network changes or, in some cases, ceases to exist (latour 2007). to guide the understanding of the construction of science, again using analogies with networks, latour (1999) points out five main activities in the development of scientific work: research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 peers, allies, mobilization of the world (or instruments), public representation, and links or nodes. for him, it is as if these five elements were the “blood flow” or circulatory system of science: there is no vascularization without the veins, or the blood, or the heart; all are equally important. instruments, also called by latour (1999) the mobilization of the world, are the way in which nonhumans are inserted in discourse and how instruments are used to mobilize the world. in this sense, from these instruments, the world is converted into arguments, giving scientists authority and certitude to talk about a certain subject. the second activity refers to peers, or autonomization (latour 1999), and is also essential for the scientific activity to develop. for latour, autonomization refers to how an area becomes independent with its own evaluation criteria. alliances are the third activity of the circulatory system. it is necessary to make the funding public interested and mobilized to invest in scientific activity. in this sense, the scientist needs to have the ability to persuade and attract attention, and it is not only the attention of the peers inside the laboratory, but of those outside, as a way to ensure the existence and continuity of that science (latour 1999). such alliances do not necessarily interfere in an experiment, for example, or in data, but on the contrary, they accelerate the blood flow of this system through this unnatural but inevitable partnership. as the case of covid-19 illustrates, however, one can also speak of foes, those that oppose and critique findings from laboratory life, or who are not (yet) fully turned into allies. in addition to the alliances, in which convincing is necessary, a fourth scientific activity that also depends on convincing (but this time of the “lay public”) is public representation. even if the instruments pointed to new knowledge, there was funding and acceptance by peers, still, such novelty would affect the daily life of the population only to the extent that it is publicly represented. at this stage, the dissemination of new knowledge to civilians, reporters, the curious, etc., is necessary for it to be accepted as science. the fifth scientific activity latour (1999) describes is the links or nodes, which relate specifically to conceptual content. latour compares this activity to a very tight node in a network, which is responsible for holding together very heterogeneous sources. however, just as you cannot separate the heart in a circulatory system, you cannot separate the nodes from the rest of the vascularization, as if the “scientific” contents were on one side and the context on the other: the heartbeats and pumps blood through the veins and arteries, and if any of these parts fail, the whole system fails. the asepsis that scientists try to do in describing scientific work, placing the conceptual contents in a place free from the “pollution” of the sociocultural world, actually brings about a simplistic misconception of how scientific work actually occurs, leaving aside the connections with peers, the public, with alliances and instruments, which, in turn, bring the conceptual contents into the discourse, and into the world (richard and bader 2010). a concept becomes scientific not because it is detached from its context, but because it is closely linked to everything it involves, to the rest of your circulatory system (latour 1999). this is similar to longino’s (1990) idea that objectivity in the construction of scientific discourse is actually dependent on “bringing together” multiple perspectives, including then “external” factors (context). the laboratory, for example, is a network (latour and woolgar 1986) that organizes outsiders, those loaded with the “cultural” and “social” worlds, and categorizes, and translates, infers about, and produces scientific facts by returning its results to the world outside the laboratory. “returning”, here, refers to autonomization and public representation (latour 1981). it is possible to identify the elements of the blood flow of science described here in classic episodes of the construction of scientific knowledge throughout the history of science, such as galileo and heliocentrism (feyerabend and hacking 2010), joliot and artificial radioactivity (latour 1989), newton and the construction of the laws of motion (sitko and research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 silva 2021), priestley and photosynthesis (matthews 2015), among many others. however, such episodes occurred in periods that were different from today’s, not only in the cultural, but also in the economic and political senses. this can lead to doubts regarding the applicability of such scientific activities in the contemporary world, marked by the digital age and the consequent acceleration of information circulation (yuri castelfranchi and pitrelli 2009), by epistemic and epistemological disputes about what counts as “science” and “scientific fact” (moura, nascimento, and lima 2021), and by denialism (leung and cheng 2021). in this sense, aiming at the understanding of contemporary scientific activity, we can imagine the possibility of going through the vascularization of a knowledge still under construction, having access to the instruments, allies, public, scientists and colleagues in real time, observing the scientific fact still under construction (latour 1999). in the next section, we will trace the “blood flow” of the research episode for creating covid-19 vaccines, leading to the goal of providing a technoscientific event to be discussed in the classroom as a way to mobilize science teaching. the construction of a scientific fact in real time: the case of covid-19 the covid-19 pandemic represents an interesting case study for the classroom, in which the virus, prevention of infection, vaccine and drug development, etc, are hybrids, in a sense presented by latour (2012) in we have never been modern. hybrids get entangled between politics, technique and science, always-already involved in collectives and objects, and thus there is no way to separate social context, power interests, and the production of scientific concepts. moreover, it would not be possible to reduce scientific facts to sociopolitical dimensions, because it is populated by objects mobilized to construct it (latour 2012). the social context of the 21st century will never be the same after it is constructed by those (people, industries, politicians, market) affected by covid-19; people redefine themselves, their politics, their interests. and this means that the disease, and even more so, the production of vaccines, becomes incomprehensible if its social and political dimension, its financiers, and its infected are removed: without people infected, what impact would the disease have? what would be the need for vaccine research? if the virus did not provoke these disruptions in politics, the economy and the health system, it is possible that it would not even emerge into discourse, nor would it come into existence (bump, baum, sakornsin, yates, and hofman 2021). several studies regarding diagnostics (hanson et al. 2021), treatment (chilamakuri and agarwal 2021), prevention (wilder-smith and freedman 2020), and possible cures for covid19 (rodriguez-guerra, jadhav, and vittorio 2021) have been conducted since late 2019. in this text, however, we will restrict ourselves to discussing one of the preventive processes against virus infection: the development of vaccines. the studies mentioned are not limited to pipettes, centrifuges, microplates, syringes, and charts. many actors needed to act in this episode so that vaccines could be developed. at first, the virus needed to be known, that is, it was necessary to mobilize instruments that would bring it into the discourse. we can consider the world health organization (who) report of january 05, 2020 (https://www.who.int/news/item/29-06-2020-covidtimeline), describing the outbreak of cases of what later came to be identified as the new coronavirus in wuhan (china), as the kick-off (or, in latourian terms, instrument) that allowed us to grasp some of the characteristics of the new actor. it is important to stress the “some”, because the fact is still under construction, and the virus still has facets unknown by humans. moreover, we stress the “new” actor given the catastrophic dimension that the covid-19 research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 pandemic produced and the many differences this outbreak had with previous pandemics, including increased capacity to produce vaccines, but also the speed and reach of infection given a globalized world. on january 9, 2020, who reported that chinese authorities communicated a newly identified coronavirus as the cause of the outbreak of respiratory illness cases in wuhan. in the following days, a series of guidelines were produced and disseminated containing key technical aspects, including infection control and prevention (world health organization 2020b), laboratory testing (world health organization 2020c), and clinical management (world health organization 2020a). however, for who to confirm the existence of the virus, the case was already autonomized by the scientific community. in the same period, the world health organization posted on social media that it had received genetic sequences of the new coronavirus (world health organization 2020d) and, two days later, published a protocol for diagnostic detection of the new coronavirus using rt-pcr (corman et al. 2020) (exercising the activity of public representation). to better understand the new actor, genome sequencing of sars-cov2 was performed, which provided not only a greater understanding of the structure of sars-cov2 and its relationships to other coronavirus species (touati et al. 2020), but mainly more refined diagnostic detection protocols (guan et al. 2020) and, later, the description of variants (duong 2021). in addition, rapid sequencing was instrumental in developing vaccines (li et al. 2021). this characterization of the virus, through the mobilization of sequencing, is one link or node, that is, it is the conceptual part of this network of this flow. in addition to data on sars-cov2, another instrument that brought the new actor into the world is quite distant from the laboratory: the statistics of hospital admissions and deaths, which grew daily, until starting to fall due to vaccination and social distancing measures (suthar et al. 2022); a decline can be observed at the end of january 2022 (https://covid19.who.int/). however, as health systems faced growing pressure from patients with respiratory problems, more icus were requested, more deaths added up, and the virus “gained” more existence. such instruments also help in the execution of another important activity of scientific work, which is public representation. the same statistics that brought the virus to the discourse are now distributed in the collective as a way to seek popular acceptance and awareness (vergara, sarmiento, and lagman 2021). likewise, the conclusions about its form of action in the human organism, transmission and lethality, coming from the genetic sequencing, were also made public, so that the seriousness of the pandemic could be understood (leung and cheng 2021). and this is a fundamental activity, because if the public does not accept the fact, science cannot be developed (a fact that occurred with galileo, when he presented his results of observing the moon through the telescope (latour and woolgar 1986)). both instruments and public representation are important for the establishment of alliances (yurij castelfranchi 2002). if governments do not accept the problem, for example, and do not invest in public policies to confront the virus, the development of vaccines (and its use) and other forms of prevention (such as the use of masks and social distancing) simply do not happen. this is not the same as saying that “public communication” is sufficient to mobilize governments to implement policies, as the case of bolsonaro in brazil makes clear (lopes and leal 2021). if the pharmaceutical industry does not know genetic mapping and statistics, it will not test the products created by scientists (vaccines), or these products might not even have the opportunity to be created. if corporations (not necessarily in the health field) do not know the statistics, they will not project the long-term economic losses due to the future economic, personnel and resource crisis that would result from a health crisis. in this case, these companies will not offer resources and alliances for scientists to manufacture vaccines. again, this is not to say research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 that public communication is sufficient to mobilize the health industry to ally with scientists to offer resources to manufacture vaccines, but it is necessary. in this sense, public representation helps to produce allies. moreover, as we have also pointed out, foes are also produced, many of which in the scientific community and allied professions (in brazil, for example, a group of physicians, the ‘doctors for life’, which were against covid-19 vaccination strategies, were highly influential in the federal government; ferrari et al., 2022). once the funds had been collected and resources amassed, studies and testing of the vaccines began to take place. several laboratories around the world worked tirelessly and came up with different products, which all show some degree of effectiveness against the virus. and who will ultimately attest which product works and which doesn’t? the peers, who are part of yet another scientific activity brought by latour (1999). it is the peers (or autonomization) that will peer-review the gene sequencing papers, the in vitro and clinical tests done by other scientists, and that will finally validate if the product created can be considered an effective vaccine against covid-19. after being validated at the level of scientific journals (and, frequently, preprints; vlasschaert, topf, and hiremath 2020), it is necessary to pass through the sieve of larger organizations: the who, worldwide, and national regulatory agencies at the country level. it is important to note that in the sequence of activities presented here, there seems to be a certain order for the scientific activities to occur, but it is just a way of writing; if one were to read the paragraphs randomly, one would see that the order of the factors mentioned does not matter because they occur concomitantly during the production of the scientific fact. once the elements of this blood flow of the instant of the production of vaccines are described, it is possible to perceive a transition of flow to another direction, which is the vaccination campaign that has also been a scientific and political problem faced in many territories (vergara et al. 2021). indeed, this represents, as vergara et al. (2021) suggest, a sociocultural and sociopolitical situation that involves another set of actors in the network – specifically, while the development of vaccines involves primarily scientific communities and their alliances with the pharmaceutical industry and governmental agencies, the second is more related to public acceptance of the produced vaccines. due to such fact, the public representation needs to exercise a much more insistent “publicity” about the scientificity of the fact constructed in the laboratory (the vaccines), counting on the support of peers and instruments, characterized by drops in the number of infected and deaths among the vaccinated public. nonetheless, vaccine and covid-19 denialism have become a major problem worldwide, especially in marginalized communities due, in part, to what has been called “epistemic ignorance” (timmermann 2020). in this sense, it can be said that the scientific community produces allies, but also foes. in fact, latour expressed concerns about the misappropriations of the critique of science that he built: in which case the danger would no longer be coming from an excessive confidence in ideological arguments posturing as matters of fact—as we have learned to combat so efficiently in the past—but from an excessive distrust of good matters of fact disguised as bad ideological biases! while we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? and yet entire ph.d. programs are still running to make sure that good american kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. was i wrong to participate in the invention of this field known research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 as science studies? is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like it or not? why can’t i simply say that the argument is closed for good? (latour 2004b, 227) we see here that if the goal is to provide an episode of technoscientific development to facilitate critical science teaching, it is important to consider the distortions that can arise from assessing latour’s and longino’s position as “relativistic”. thus, it is important to show how the support of alliances, which involves the major companies responsible for producing and distributing the vaccines, and especially the governmental bodies, is crucial for the blood flow. if any of these elements fail, it is as if one of the veins or arteries is blocking the blood flow. for example, if governments spread the wrong message and do not ally themselves with what the scientists say, the vaccine network breaks down, this scientific fact diminishes, and, in turn, the viruses gain more existence. we now turn more explicitly to the implications of this episode for science teaching. implications for science teaching science, as is often seen in the school environment, has not brought the expected results from the point of view of scientific literacy (fourez 2002) – that is, while report after report shows that students might be able to talk about scientific “facts”, they do not seem capable of using this information to decode the language of science and to critically understand the world through scientific lenses (see, e.g., stacey, 2010). in this sense, many attempts have been made to renew teaching, such as the use of problems involving science, technology, and society (sts) (désautels 2008). in this kind of critical teaching, it is paramount that real and current issues are discussed, as a way to mobilize a non-naive conception of science. it is understood that the goal of this type of teaching is not to make science in the classroom, as scientists do, but to cultivate a more critical and engaged view of scientific knowledge and its current productions (izquierdo-aymerich and adúriz-bravo 2003). as richard and bader (2010) argue, many science education researchers realize that understanding scientific studies can help students to better understand various practices of science, and to better articulate this understanding in science education. it is in this sense that we look for an alternative for teaching science, using problems of technoscience from a social, current point of view (that is, not only from the history of science, but also from cases that can help to understand how science is practiced today (weinstein 2008)), which includes science studies – the name introduced by latour (1999) to refer to the work that philosophers and sociologists of science do, which is, in short, to study how the science enterprise works, that is, to understand how scientific facts are created while they are still under construction. latour’s formulations can be understood as a “post-constructivist” framework as applied to science education (wink 2020) – especially since pandora’s hope (latour 1999) and politics of nature (latour 2004a), in which latour proposes a way in which human discourse and activities can be allied to the properties and the agency of the natural and social worlds in the construction of knowledge. wink (2020) argues that this post-constructivist approach lends science educators a way out of the constructivist/realist tension: “one possible place to study how humans and nonhumans interact in education is to consider how concepts in science, which might seem linked to constructivist discourse, actively engage with objects in the world” (wink 2020, 4273). this is consistent with chassot’s (2003) concept of scientific literacy as the mastery of the language of science. attempts to engage science education with latourian thought have been made before, especially in the case of a “school science” (sensu izquierdo-aymerich and adúrizbravo 2003). rezzadori and oliveira (2021) described how actor-network theory, fully research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 described by latour (2007), can be used to understand the dynamics of a chemistry school laboratory. they argue that school laboratories can also be understood as a network composed of several elements and that overlooking this socio-technical network, as well as the elements to which laboratories are connected, makes it difficult to understand the dynamics of science education in these contexts. importantly, then, this post-constructionist approach allows researchers and educators to better understand how knowledge construction in the classroom (or laboratories, in that case) is entangled in a network that surpasses school science, even though school science can be understood as a pedagogical transposition of professional science. despite not using latour’s circulatory system, christodoulou et al. (2021) show how latour’s model provides a superior theoretical framework for interpreting the participation and discourses of diverse actors. the study of a problem such as covid-19, and the process of producing and distributing vaccines, goes along with what these authors are looking for. the context of vaccine denialism and distorted opinions regarding the efficacy of preventive and curative treatments for covid-19 (hallal and victora 2021) brings up the importance of critical contextualization in science education, especially regarding the sts relationships (liu 2012), from a nature of science perspective and its implications for school science (adúrizbravo 2004). lima and nascimento (2021) argued that, in the context of denialism, science education needs to “land” (sensu latour (2020)) and, for that, it is necessary to forge diplomatic alliances with actors of the old “constructivist/realist” axis of tension. latour promotes a new way of understanding science through the mutual and constant transformation of the scientific and the social worlds (richard and bader 2010), which can be beneficial for science teaching in order to avoid the arbitrary distinction of society and science as two distinct and non-communicating entities (yurij castelfranchi 2002). this approach to education could promote in students not only an interest in science, but especially critical attitudes towards the misuse of science in a consumerist and technocratic society, as well as a recognition of the social in the operational processes of research. reiss (2020) suggested that the covid-19 pandemic, incorporating historical knowledge from previous pandemics, should be included in science education as a way of deepening understanding of the nature of science and deepen the ethico-political discussions that students typically meet in science classes. again, our case of covid-19 is a promising example, as it clearly shows the uncertainties, the social, the collective, the virus and the financing all in the same frame, breaking with the naive dichotomy between science and society. the circulatory system model of science is useful for this purpose of critical science teaching, as it assists in the process of revealing the social character of the construction of scientific knowledge for classroom use, facilitating its reconstruction (izquierdo-aymerich and adúriz-bravo 2003), since it reveals all the actors and their actions as the scientific fact is constructed. however, the educational intent is that it can be used as it is most convenient for the teacher and for the educational context. concluding remarks the case of discoveries surrounding covid-19 and the development of vaccines present one case of how critical science can be presented in the context of science education, one that instigates curiosity, motivation, interest, and engagement of students in situations that involve scientific knowledge, and especially their relationship with the world around them. this has been done in a few works before, as in rezzadori and oliveira (2021) and in christodoulou et al. (2021), and from which now we present a current case where the science is still in construction involving the covid-19 case. research on covid-19: a microcosm to discuss scientific work in science teaching from a latourian standpoint camila maria sitko caio maximino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 in this sense, we emphasize here the importance of developing a critical conception of school science, starting from the proposition of an operational definition of the social construction of science, bringing as an example one based on the blood flow model/circulatory system of science proposed by latour (1999), in order to promote a conceptualization of science as a social enterprise. the definition of the social construction of scientific discourse provides a basis for an alternative to renewing the image of science taught at school, in consonance with technoscience, i.e., with current problems that involve the students’ environment. it is in this sense that we discussed covid-19 and the production of vaccines as a way of seeking to bring school science to reality, to make it relevant and motivating to the students’ understanding of the production of scientific facts, and to try to reveal several facets of the social nature of science. with that, it is expected that more and more problems like these be addressed in the classroom using a critical theoretical framework, such as the latourian one presented here, in order to present how scientific work operates while science is still being built, breaking with the dichotomy between science and society, and overcoming a naive and simplistic image of how science is done. references adúriz-bravo, agustín. 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[tweet]. retrieved from https://twitter.com/who/status/1216108498188230657 microsoft word chen layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-16 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal bruno latour – special issue separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5905-2102 abstract: latour’s endeavor to unite the dichotomic categorizations of “objects” and “things” in the ant-based reality has inherent limitations. therefore, the author undertakes three enterprises. first, with the theoretical reinforcements of realist philosophy, we shall appreciate why “things” and “objects” cannot be treated as two related manifestations of the same entity. second, by exemplifying the victorian history of medicalized opium addiction, this article suggests a divorce of the “humanistic things” from the “nonhuman objects” through which ant (actor-network theory) is refined by moral externalism and interaction theory to explain the about-face of british drug values. third, the epistemological argument of how the de-unification of “things” and “objects” in ant can facilitate us to combat the “invasions” of what latour vehemently called the “conspiracy theorists” is explicated. taken together, the take-home message is that the ontology of an ant-based reality is not about contextually integrating things with objects, but about distinguishing facts from concepts. keywords: ant (actor-network theory); things; objects; history of opium addiction; externalist moral philosophy; theory of interaction received: march 07, 2023. reviewed: april 20, 2023. accepted: may 08, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction in an attempt to counteract the wrongs of “critical barbarians (aka the conspiracy theorists)”, latour maintained in his 2004 discourse that the factuality and certainty of constructionist philosophy are achievable if we were to start marrying the “concern of things” with the “fact of objects” in a grand context of ant’s reasoning improvements (latour 2004). by passionately denouncing climate change deniers in the beginning paragraphs, the father of science and technology studies rebutted the polemics which, in his view, maliciously exploited the ant characterizations of scientific knowledge as something of subjectivity to please their evil needs of opposing what is supposed to be “the undeniable truth” (latour 2004). accordingly, he used the metaphor of mugs and cans, thereby 1 xianle chen is a phd research fellow in the department of history at the peking university. address: no.5 yiheyuan road, haidian district, beijing p.r. china 100871. email: markchenxianle@hotmail.com separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 indicating the inter-transformation of things and objects in a reality where the spiritualities of human concerns constantly turn themselves into the physicality of factual beings, and vice versa (latour 2004). needless to say, it was through such unification of humanity and substantiality that latour tried to convey a point of how the social constructionism of science and technology has contributed to the establishment of objectivity in the rationalizations of nature and society. emphatically, in order to eliminate the vulnerability of ant in the war with conspiracy theorists, he insisted on the inseparability of things and objects when accusing the dichotomy between our cognitions and external worlds as being a fragmented and armchair portrayal of reality (latour 1999a; 2004). frankly, i worry about the future of critique as latour did in 2004. there are so many unfounded conspiracy theories in our times that even the nonhuman and non-contextual science is receiving skepticisms and suspicions. personally, i have met with people who, for some reasons unknown to rationality and critical thinking, still wholeheartedly believe in the fabricated stories of why the riemann hypothesis is a “big lie” in mathematical history. like what the french philosopher of social constructionism had judged about the need to defend rational thinkers against the critical barbarians dismissing the american moon landing as a hoax, we too, are expected to develop an “intellectual weapon” which persuades laymen to duly respect the factual impartiality of the function conjecture proposed by the german mathematician. having said that, i do not agree with latour’s ant-based idea of simply amalgamating conspiracy theories (i.e., a matter of concern) with tangible technicalities (i.e., a matter of fact), not least because it unintentionally risks the emergence of extreme relativism that further empowers the critical barbarians to discredit the fundamental veracity of material existences by making all kinds of outrageous and ridiculous claims about how a bidirectional and mutually-inclusive metamorphosis of things and objects corroborates the relativist and bias-centering refutation of universal actuality (luckhurst 2006; stamenkovic 2020). rather, the best way to handle the illiteracy of such people as global warming controversialists and the riemann hypothesis objectors is to acknowledge their propositions as “a thing of human subjectivities” which is independent of “the objects of concrete facts” in the overall structure of our world. in doing so, we restore the dualist separation of spirituality and factuality in the system of reality formation so that we don’t have to unconditionally accept the messages delivered by the barbaric interpretations of real occurrences even though they exist alongside with the objective entities. instead of ardently debating with the conspiracy theorists, we only need to understand the underlying reasons for which their beliefs and poorly informed logics are being encompassed in the makings of phenomenalism and realism. take saberwal’s study on perception and reality (1996). it was asserted that one element through which the all-inclusive world inhabiting biological organisms and material matters finds reality is our explanations and thoughts (saberwal 1996). by extension, mankind’s effort to picture the realist representations of everything is also a foundational part of permitting all beings on this earth to be involved in the production and display of manifestations, so to speak (grant 2015). expressed differently, the spiritual domains in which human minds functionally maximize their cognitive and perceptive capacities to make sense of palpable universe and social developments are at the same time an intrinsicality that allows the whole of our reality to take shape (trager 2019). along these lines, we will be able to comprehend how the discourse articulations of intellectualized views are different from the actual objectivity of substantial existences (baggerman and durston 2017). to paraphrase latour, without supplementing the factuality of nature, we generate constructionist and idealist elucidations by employing observations, inscriptions, transmutations and translations of the very objects that we come across in the physical world (latour 1996; 1999a). indeed, some of these elucidations which may lack capability to mirror the separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 truthfulness of concrete actualities due to human subjectivity’s expected detachment from the material reality are destined to include conspiracy theories and fabricated accounts. nevertheless, just because barbaric critiques are an attribute for us to realize realism, it doesn’t mean that we ought to unite them with objectivity. afterall, a thing of human concerns can be both existent and false. figuratively, the purpose of admitting conceptualized beliefs’ role in the construction of overall reality is to not miss the forest of everything in this world for the trees of futilely disproving the likes of climate change deniers. thus, for upgrading the ant in light of promoting academic authority for the philosophy discipline, we are required to pivot our attentions away from the “latourian laments” which issued us with unnecessary discussions on anti-fetishism and fact position to show how “ideological things” and “material objects” are to be fused into one entity (latour 2004). specifically, this article begins its life by highlighting the reductionist statement that human concerns can be divorced from factual matters when the ontology of reality is appraised in the pre-2004 framework of ant (blok and jensen 2011). to achieve this, the author will cite the history of opium addiction in considerations of the externalist moral philosophy and the interaction theory to expound why latour was initially right about distinguishing between “people” and “sciences” as two different actants in the explorations of ant-based realism before he suffered a quasi-crisis of faith in the first decade of 21st century (blok and jensen 2011). evidently, this article then gains novelty by reinforcing the dichotomic classifications of “things” and “objects” originally implied in ant which were sadly abandoned by the french philosopher nineteen years ago. notably, as a drug historian, i have been constantly told that the philosophical analysis of medical history is most unusual and very unconventional. however, to quote lorenz, “doing history is a more philosophical activity than most historians realize (1994).” moreover, “historians can profit from philosophy because ‘doing history’ can be improved by philosophical insight (lorenz 1994).” in actuality, yu has already engaged in the examinations of chinese medical history which have heavily focused on the historiographical philosophies of plagues and public health in medieval china (yu 2022). on this wise, the multidisciplinary convergence of drug historiography and constructionist philosophy forms the basis of a theoretical improvement for ant as well as the narcotic history. with the dualist identification of realist world as a network comprised of minds and substantial items and the additions of externalist moral philosophy and interaction theory to the ant, it is easy to see the revisionist grounds on which the author utilizes the historical uturn of opium values and the technological advancements of drug science to estimate the de-unification of “things” and “objects” in the “latourian realm.” furthermore, through the orthodoxy-reviving modifications of ant, i will functionalize my “knowledge of narcotic historiography” in the hope of illustrating the “correct” form of reality probe laid bare in the laboratory life (latour and woolgar 1986; collins 1988). seemingly, the earliest scholarly campaign to frame our memories about opium abuse from the perspectives of addiction medicalization and sociocultural dynamics was inadvertently spearheaded by berridge and her contemporaries. in 1980s, she wrote that “the reality of the [diseased narcotic addiction] was affirmed, but medical values were not scientifically autonomous; and the moral and class analysis which, reformulated, lay at the basis of disease theory justified increased medical intervention where the profession apparently even by the end of the century had little to offer (berridge and edwards 1987).” meanwhile, courtwright explained the socialization of public morality by which clinical studies on opium dependence helped the establishment of prohibitionist drug regime in the 20th century us (courtwright 1982; peters 1983). similarly, peters and harding, on two separate occasions, related the ant-styled interactions between medical sciences and human thoughts that forged the reality of narcotic control (peters 1981; harding 1988). taken in tandem, the notion of disuniting the latourian marriage of things and objects is becoming separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 increasingly credible in terms of what senior drug historians have connoted about treating opium ethics (i.e., a thing of concerns) and medicalization of addiction (i.e., an object of facts) as two different elements in the realist dimension of narcotic history. to encapsulate, when it comes to the intellectualization for the historical clinicalization of opiate misuses, the concrete actuality stemming from the disciplinary developments of drug science has always been sharing a duality with humanity’s opium morality. granted that they are persistently interacting with one another to materialize the reality in which the international war on drugs has defined our current relationship with the addictive substances, mankind’s opioid values and the pathology of narcotic dependence can never be recognized as a phenomenalist unity in the theorization of realism. otherwise, we will not be able to explicate the causality between which such human ideologies as anti-imperialism, liberalism and penal welfarism brought about the end of unregulated opium trade in late 19th and early 20th centuries through the amplification and promotion of medical professionals’ scientific discoveries of diseased addiction (rimner 2018; gibbon 2020). above all, judging by inglis’ remarks concerning the so called “differentiation of number games and personal experiences” in our opium memories, we can understand why it is philosophically logical to divide the factuality of the narcotic’s pharmaceutical properties from human minds in a history depicting the reality of drugs against the continuous progress of time (inglis 2019). therefore, with regard to what kim (2020) has done in her inquiry of colonial vice, the contention is explicit that, for the reappraisal of ant, constructionist philosophers and narcotic historians have to recognize the dichotomous system of realist world in which the psychological spirituality of things interacts with the factual substantiality of objects to form what we would consider as observable existences of phenomenalism and realism (e.g., the current status of drug criminalization). in turn, this article reaches a stage at which the author defies latour’s 2004 enterprise of foregrounding the “post-truth” unity of human concerns and tangible objectivity in the ant-based reality by referencing the epistemological comprehension of realist philosophy in the wake of applying the opium historiography to the methodological practices of latourian critique (kofman 2018). as such, we can avoid what some deemed as “the french philosopher’s unfair treatments of poststructuralism and epistemology” to reinvigorate the intellectual authority of rationales and reasonings against the backdrop of conspiracy theorists poisoning the minds of crowds (flatscher and seitz 2020; latour 2004). particularly, the paradigm with which philosophical constructionists and critical thinkers use to structure the theory of knowledge needs to be bettered to reflect how beliefs interact with facts to manifest the realist world so that the barbaric interpretations of relativist nature can also be an enduring being in our epistemological realm even if they were, to put it mildly, imagined and groundless. in other words, by upholding the divorce between humanity and substantiality, conspiracy theories obtain their places in the ant-based reality without distorting the evidence-gathering rationalities of various sorts. thereafter, we can cognize and simultaneously reject the untruthful elucidations. the separation of things from objects in ant by realist philosophy first and foremost, i want to make myself absolutely clear that i believe in an undeniable coexistence of minds and mind-independent entities in our reality even though i am a philosophical constructionist for most part of my academic career. in my view, the delineation of all things in this physical universe by bradley as the “dualist collective of existence and character” did not bring realism and constructionism into conflict (1888). on the contrary, without consciously knowing it, the 19th century british idealist ironically paved the way for introducing a representational realism to the “existentialization” of what we call a facts-mirroring reality (candlish 1989; sayers 1991). at the center of bradley’s philosophy, it separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 was shown that the relativist and ideological representations of objective knowledge were also an ingredient of that knowledge itself when cognitive interpretations were disengaged from the factuality (bosanquet 1885). by conceptually reverse-engineering what the idealist philosopher postulated, we acquire an insight to how the realist world is actually a material extension of dichotomous interactions between things of human concerns and objects of substantial truth. what is more, as opposed to the post-truth theory of discerning the reality as a merger of thoughts and tangible beings, the representative realists, who have been accidentally released by bradley’s metaphysics, emphasize the interactivities betwixt the perception-dominated picturing of constructs and the objective qualities of matters for “chemical reactions of reality-making” to take place (candlish 1989; glouberman 1994). in this regard, the latourian things, which are a “code name” for mankind’s cognitive psychologies, can be said to be in parallel with what the french constructionist described as the objects of fact. for one thing, the ant exhibits, to some degree, the reasoning traditions of representationalism that intrigue the critical thinkers to elaborate the realist ontology in association with an interactive relationship shared between humanity and substantiality (kind 2007; elder-vass 2008). consequently, this article investigates the philosophical mechanism established by ant to demonstrate why latour’s explanation of reality is to be improved in a realist fashion that separates things of concern from objects of actuality. to begin with, we need to firstly remind ourselves of what the father of science and technology studies and others said about “doing ant and doing ant on ant (gad and jensen 2010).” in 1987, latour speculated about practicalizing the framework of dualist representational realism in his ant surveys by publishing the science in action (latour 1987). afterwards, he unwittingly furthered this pattern of engraving the marks of realist critique on the “bones” of his philosophy to sustain the weight of a latourian argumentation that relied on differentiating the “non-human facts” from the “human ideas” in the fabric of reality to generate influences and enlightenments (latour 1991). likewise, in the aramis, the french philosopher illustrated how the sociopolitical mindsets of the mass prevented the technological developments, thus revealing a de-unification of things and objects in the structure of realist world formation (latour 1993). yet, all of these discussions on identifying ant-based reality as a dichotomy between subjectivity and factuality were abruptly terminated in 1996 when latour started to underscore “the circulation and the movement of actors in the networks of phenomena (latour 1996).” hence, in the immediate years prior to the watershed moment of the infamous “2004 incident,” the father of science and technology studies changed the course of his research by suddenly devoting most of his time to assess the “shifting motion” of a dynamic ant (1999b). concurrently, law and hassard stressed that everything involved in the ant system “is traveling endlessly through circulations (1999).” later, luckhurst related the entanglement of ideas and sciences in the daily continuations of universe which was recognized by latourian thinkers as the “new truth of reality (2006).” recently, latour challenged what he termed “the subject/object division” to visualize for the readership of the an inquiry into modes of existence an anthropological modality of the ant realism (latour 2013; tresch and latour 2013). based on the contents of the above paragraph, two judgements can be made on the developmental chronology of ant. first, before the final decade of 1900s, the path along which latour rode the horse of philosophical wisdom would eventually lead him to a destination that had the majestic tower of “the division of things from objects in reality” as its prominent landmark. supposedly, this was how the latourian specialists achieved their intellectual successes, should they stop short of imagining a scenario where “doing ant” just wasn’t enough. on this ground, with such assessment in mind, we encounter the second judgement which sees the efforts by the french philosopher to unite humanity with separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 substantiality in late 20th and early 21st centuries as a perfect case in point for realizing the self-amending methodology of “doing ant on ant.” like i said, after enduring the pains caused by the conspiracy theorists, latour woke up to the danger of allowing a “post-truth” world to prosper uncontrollably. in desperation, he fell into the trap of self-doubt that forced him to work out an alternative for the sake of combating ignorance. expectedly, the “latourian revision” culminated in a declaration which promoted a hybrid of subjectivity and objectivity for the reasoning structure of ant-based realism by performing an ant examination on what was essentially the ontology of ant. from this we get a restructured expression of latour’s philosophy that contextually revolves around a “reality metamorphosis” in which manifestations are frequently shifting back and forth from things to objects. put simply, with the desire to “explain” the fundamental characters of barbaric critiques, the father of science and technology studies assimilated their logics and therefore challenged the complementary coexistences of ideas and materials in the duality of realist world unmasked by the representational realism. while latour’s analytical and revisionist methods to polish the ant were epistemologically sound, i question his philosophical evaluation which denounced the subject/object division as a compromised articulation of the brains in the vats (latour 1999a). especially, in the “post-truth” era, the author has thought about the proper handling of conspiracy theories that can acknowledge the perceptive beings of absurd claims without granting them validity and authenticity. in fact, the motive for the french philosopher to dismantle the boundary betwixt human psychologies and physical objects in 2004 was the wish to rationally domesticate the “21st century monster of philosophy (i.e., the fabricated stories)” created by the “new dr. frankenstein (i.e., the conspiracy theorists)” amid the ongoing crisis of factual degradation. but what he did wrong was that he destroyed the basics of intellectual formulation in the name of critique revolution. if we take a step back from all of these “latourian panics” for a moment, it becomes obvious that an ontological clarification of irrational interpretations’ discourse power will be sufficient to revitalize the explanatory authority of ant in the face of growing skepticism cultivated by critical barbarians’ tireless endeavor to discredit sciences. namely, we have to ascertain the factors which contribute to the massive influences of narrative manipulations. the benefit of doing so is that latour’s disciples can begin to understand why actors in the ant system are to be classified in a realist manner which designates everything in a phenomenological collective as being either a thing or an object. thus, we are back at the original starting point where the dichotomic categorizations of “subjectivity” and “substantiality” in the ant-based reality is an inevitable yet logical deduction to elaborate how the inaccurate beliefs observed in conspiracy theories are a part of the all-embracing universe’s overall picture in the absence of factual verifications. in brief, from the ontology’s standpoint, ideas have helped the trans-populational spreads of lies and made-up stories despite their subjective artificiality because “physicality” is accompanied by “autonomous human concerns” in the existentialization of reality. nonetheless, the realist duality requires philosophical modifications for the ant refinement. the conviction is that we need to uncover the essence of a relationship shared between subjects and facts since latourian thinkers always treat the world as a network of associations. that is, in a foundational sense, the self-materialization of our reality as a livedthrough experience is achieved by the phenomenological reactions resulted from the reciprocal interactions among the ant collectives of things and objects. in views of chen’s interactive theory and externalist moralism, this article argues for an interplay betwixt humanity and substantiality which produces the mutual influences to shape the latourian manifestation of opium history in this realist world (chen 2022; zangwill 2003). by way of illustration, we shall finally comprehend why the separation of human psychologies from factuality in the ant-based system by philosophical realism is appropriate for us to devise the separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 revisionist methods of doing ant on ant given latour’s emphasis on interactions and the dire need to battle the conspiracy theorists. estimating “things” and “objects” in the ant-based history of opium addiction for generations, drug historians from nations on both sides of the atlantic ocean have been greatly intrigued by the unforeseen and drastic turnabout of british opium morality in the late 19th century. as a matter of course, it is commonly thought that historical explanations about the arrival of prohibitionist narcotic sentiments in britain at the end of 1800s can assist the policy makers worldwide to optimize the efficacy of contemporary opioid controls (chen 2022). that being the case, specialists of drug history have been tasked with significant and impactful undertakings to preserve our opium memories which would play a major role in the reconstruction of a past reality for addictive substances. probing these undertakings in accordance with their epistemological attributes sets the condition for us to estimate the dichotomic categorizations of “objects” and “things” in the ant-based history of opium. according to inglis, technicalities are as important as emotional psychologies when we try to inquire the complicated actuality of narcotic consumption against the passage of time (2019). by implication, in connection with constructing the realist representation of opium’s past, we must embrace a dualist structure within which human perceptions about drug dependence have constantly interacted with the physiological and chemical sciences of addiction to occasion the materializing happening of an opiate reality. on account of what is said about the divorce of things from objects in the ant philosophy of realism, the duality of narcotic addiction’s scientific medicalization and the advent of british anti-opiumism in history is amounted to the dichotomy between substantiality and humanity in the revised latourian certitude. subsequently, the surveys for opium dependence in victorian britain can be categorized into studies of nonhuman sciences and examinations of human concerns in line with the author’s reappraisal of ant. specially, berridge was one of the most influential drug historians to take on the assignment of investigating opiate addiction by discoursing on the hypodermic use of morphine in britain in late 1800s (berridge and edwards 1987). by the same token, lefebure described how humphry davy had experimented with opioids in laboratory to come up with clinical explanations for the symptoms of diseased addiction (1979). also, the conceptualization of addiction as a pharmacological abnormality was elucidated by a 1981 paper (peters 1981). then, jack and laugher related a historical analysis of opium assay that gives us an overview of british drug chemistry in 19th century (1982). later, derks reviewed the statistical data for opiate consumptions and narcotic purifications in the qing china which mirrored the technological advancements of drug science in the far east in the years post the end of opium wars (2012). manifestly, everything in the above-mentioned literature is about historically featuring the “scientification” of narcotic dependence as an object in the opium reality that exists in parallel with our subjectivities. correlating drug moralities with latourian things for the theoretical formulation of narcotic-centered realism is an entirely different topic of discussion. hence, on the other hand, there are people whose dedications are found in their constructionist and interpretive assessments of what i refer to as “opiate humanity (chen 2022).” for instance, under different circumstances, chandola and harding evaluated the sociopolitical backgrounds against which opium addiction became a “moralist affair” in 19th century britain (chandola 1976; harding 1986). comparably, a 1996 book by lodwick enabled us to gauge how religious conscience motivated the protestant missionaries to embark on a decades-long “drug crusade” in the dynastic and revolutionary china (1996). additionally, the socialization, culturalization, politicalization and internationalization of an increasingly separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 apparent victorian recognition that habitual narcotic use was a problematic vice were studied by academics including caquet and rimner (caquet 2015; rimner 2018). recently, kim penned an empires of vice in which the readers get an opportunity to contextualize mankind’s relationship with opium in the values-driven bureaucracy of colonial states (2020). in short, what we are seeing here is that a good portion of research works for opiate history concentrates on the ideological dimension of drug dependence. ultimately, the past reality of pharmaceutical entities surpasses factuality in some senses because, as much as we would like to scientize the medicalization of narcotic addiction, thoughts and beliefs have always been independently existent in the consumption history of opioids (yu 2022). undoubtably, the frequent employment of the term “opium ethics” in the aforementioned writings indicates a strong presence of human concerns in the issue formation of drug indulgence. therefore, the author sees no reason why the latourian things are to be excluded from the whole of a realist world inhabiting the phenomenological manifestations of narcotic dependence. however, establishing the dichotomic categorizations of subjectivity and objectivity in the historical reality of opioids is insufficient to demonstrate the philosophical betterments which, once functionalized, would effectively remedy the logical weakness observed in ant. at the end of the day, doing battles against the post truth conspiracy theories requires the author and like-minded latourian thinkers to reflect on “the inter-actions of agencies” since latour viewed all facets of this universe as network systems of relationships (martin 2005; wakeham 2017). put another way, with the aim to right the individualist misrepresentation of knowledge in a realist inspection of world’s anatomy, we ought to detail the qualitative characters of ant-styled interrelations that have built the foundation for the opiate realism to exist. eventually, this is to outline the reasoning model around which barbaric critiques are exposed as ill-informed intelligentsias with little understanding on the appropriate uses of critique (lynch 2012). naturally, this article is now well-suited to assume the mission of confirming the separation of things from objects in the ant-based reality of opium addiction history by taking into consideration the theory of interaction and moral externalism (chen 2022). in essence, the current opiate historiography dictates that our memories about the narcotic have been the end product of a series of reactions in which non-mystical facts of opium interacted with humanity’s drug-centered psychologies to generate “chemistries” for the existential occurrences of opioid prohibitions in the historical realm (see buxton et al. 2020). by deduction, without the complement of “opiate substantiality,” a mere writing of the drug’s humanized influences impairs the full portrayal of a realist past for substance addictions. conversely, the same can be said of excluding the “opiate humanity” from the factual discourses on the narcotic history. no wonder inglis began her cultural examination of opium history with the botanical and pharmaceutical descriptions for the papaver somniferum (2019). yet, as a demonstration of what it is like to do exactly the opposite, a 1995 study by morson objectively reported the antique condition of some ancient opiumweights that, in the absence of sociocultural interpretations, the essay contents are underwhelming, to say the least (morson 1995). candidly speaking, reconstructing the historical reality of drug dependence demands a latourian framework in which the philosophical identification of opium phenomena as the collective network of interactions should become the key to intellectualizing the narcoticcentered realism. as proposed by scholars, the history of opiate addiction is all about the interactive relationship shared between humanity and the drug in question (chen 2022; plant 1999). therefore, the analyses of how human cognitions responded to the biological and medical factualness of narcotic abuse are to be a prominent part of the ant revision when we disunite “things” from “objects” to combat the conspiracy theorists in a post truth war. to rephrase, for the sake of preventing rational critiques from outliving their logical separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 usefulness, this article spotlights the “subject/object division” observed in the realist materialization of opium’s past to hammer in the verdict that, although the interplay of opioid substantiality and humanistic perceptions has defined the structural integrity of an ant-based universe in the historical surveys of drug realism, students of social constructionism need to be cautious about equaling the idea appreciations with truthfulness. in this respect, nothing is better than the confessions in exemplifying the author’s statement pertaining to the dualist reevaluation of latourian philosophy’s methodology. generally, experts address the importance of acknowledging spirituality in de quincey’s “opium experiences” as of 2023 (fay 2010; strang 1990). what is noteworthy here is that, in addition to exhibiting the narcotic as a source of cultural enlightenments for the english writer, the specialists of literature and history also discussed the public controversies surrounding the disturbing documentations of diseased addiction found in the confessions (see morrison 2013). de quincey’s self-damning of opiate misuse from which the prohibitionist drug morality emerged is given a special attention by today’s scholarship for the humanization of opium history. understandably, debates on the ideological and literary roots of british drug control cannot satisfy this article’s appetite for rationales. thus, the author, who is a revisionist thinker of ant, would like to speak the language of representational realism when presenting the formulation of opiate addiction in the confessions as a latourian event. on the whole, we can get a layered interpretation for the ant-centric ontology of drug dependence from investigating the english opium eater’s condemnations against his narcotic-filled walk of life in a dualist way that practicalizes the representative doctrine upheld by some realists. taken at face value, the heated disputes in the early 19th century ignited by the controversial confessions connoted a british fondness for the habitual use of opioids. if de quincey’s lifetime saw an unmistakable presence of opiate hostility, there would be a measurable discount at which his addiction-lamenting book sold its influences. the fact that the publication of confessions marked the beginning of a victorian anti-opium movement has displayed for us the extent to which the british society in the first half of 1800s actively consumed the drug. and this gives the ant revisionists like me an opportunity to think about how truthfulness can occasionally be incompatible with the existence of human ideas in a reality where, in the framework of interactive theory, the “chemical reaction” betwixt subjectivity and substantiality is the underlying mechanism for universe construction. in simple terms, the victorian popularity for opium, which can be explained by an amended latourian philosophy as having derived from the interplay of our craves for cures and the narcotic’s medical potency, was in effect a false conceptualization comparable to that of modern conspiracy theories. bluntly, the truth deprivation characterizing the widely-circulating nonsense of the so called “opiate miracle” in 19th century britain comes back to haunt us again in the 21st century by manipulating the same ignorance that has laboriously rebuffed rationalities behind the medicalization of narcotic addiction in the 1800s and the institutionalization of a climate-friendly regime in the 2000s. so, the unlettered bigotry of critical barbarians and their followers is really not worthy of us to have a post-truth crisis of epistemology, let alone give serious responses. but our journey to locate a sanctuary for the revised ant in the land of drug history continues. in recalling what i said about “the de quincey controversy” as having layers in its phenomenological makeup, we will find an internal film of ontological constructs beneath the surface of “moralization of narcotic dependence” which provides us with an alternative scenario of how the reciprocal interactions of things and objects can strengthen the healthy unfolding of a realist world when all appropriate factors are in place. by this i mean the introduction of moral externalism to the gradual development of drug prohibitions. from a materialist angle, objective externality determines humanistic activities. as the result, externalist thinkers of philosophical moralism promote the view that mankind’s ethics separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 are an extension of physical universe (wong 2006; zangwill 2003). in this way, we can utilize the substantial realm’s causal relationship with human psychologies to achieve the theoretical betterments of ant by showing that the moralization and criminalization of opium abuse in britain was the aftermath of a “chemical reaction” between ideologies and such tangible beings as communication technologies, clinical sciences and economic growths. in reference to the investigation conducted by bonea and her team, the impacts of telecommunications on the narcotic attitudes in the 19th century victorian society have been thoroughly explored to exposit an assertion about how an externality-induced sentiment changed britons’ ethical perception for opium (2019). relevantly, analyses are found in holloway’s masterpiece that have regarded the growing awareness of accidental opiate poisonings in victorian britain as the fruit of knowledge advancements in clinical studies (1991). lastly, pollard noted the powerful influences of outstanding economic performance which “could comprehensively shape the tone, the good temper and the humanity of political and public life (2014).” by acting as a revisionist latourian philosopher, i cannot help but think of what has been quoted above as a practical answer to the question of why ant can be used to rationalize the historical reality of drug dependence. put differently, communication technologies, developments of professional practices and social accumulation of wealth are the “appropriate factors” of externalist origin that have interacted with the “soul” of victorian mass to form a realist world for the morally justified opiate memories. thus, the misrepresentation of opioids as a cure-all was eliminated in this case because, with the “factual guidance” of the progressively accurate substantiality of narcotic, the mutual interplay between things and objects inherently created a feedback of penal welfarism to the ant system for the realist conceptualization of addiction through which a blinded enthusiasm for drug indulgence in the previous victorian society was “corrected” to prepare the continuation of history for a prohibitionist world of opium realism in the 21st century. in a nutshell, the degree of existentialization for conspiracy theories like the contemporary false beliefs pertaining to the misuse of addictive substances in 19th century britain has been relative to the balance of objective truthfulness and humanity’s ability to “psychologically absorb these truths.” since the term “reality” itself encompasses the baseless stories, we can’t avoid possible encounters with critical barbarians. yet, with a rightful ratio of factuality to logical soundness, we have a choice not to be harmed by them either. as a final note, the author shall now explicate how the “lessons” learned in our historical examination of british narcotic dependence can help us understand the epistemological containment of conspiracy theories by the revised interpretation of ant interactions. battling the conspiracy theorists: an epistemological de-unification of “things” and “objects” in ant in the pandora’s hope, latour recounted a scientific expedition during which he tried to diagnose the theoretical faultiness in the existing interpretations of ant (1999a). pointedly, he refused accepting divorce of things from objects as a fundamental element to understand reality by arguing that, on their research trip to the amazon forest, the inscription, translation and transmutation of natural samples carried out by his fellow scientists of multidisciplinary expertise were tantamount to a unification of humanity and substantiality (latour 1999a). in consequence, there was a tacit suggestion in his re-assessment of scientific philosophy which preferred to omit the uncrossable boundary separating subjective ideas from the non-contextual science. ironically, the danger of being convinced by this latourian explanation is the unintentional opening of a truly devastating pandora’s box in the critique universe when the separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 french thinker of social constructionism clearly named his book for a positive and hopeful outlook. as painful as it may be, the author feels the need to point out that, in identifying scientific discussions as an activity of human mind, latour failed to see how the intellectualization of the “natural philosophers” is vastly different from the unenlightened elucidations generated by the conspiracy theorists. honestly, the former has credibility due to evidence-based practices and experimental repeatability whereas the latter is just unsubstantiated. it is the differentiation between these two actors of human concerns in the ant-based reality that this article will now appraise to refute the post truth theories. let us go back to what we have discovered about the latourian version of opium history for one last time. few paragraphs ago, in association with the revisionist philosophy of ant realism, i have made a conclusion which accentuates interactions of the humanity and the “appropriate factuality” for the sensible development of the prohibitionist narcotic morality in the late 19th century. before then, most britons saw the habit of opiate indulgence as a social norm because, with drug science being virtually non-existent, their understandings of opioids were a historical example of what a conspiracy theory would look like in the victorian era. without the care to follow the rules of scientific elaborations, de quincey and other critical barbarians invented a “truth” of opium dependence that was an outcome of an antstyled reaction betwixt the absolute subjectivity and the compromised objectivity. ontologically, this is how conspiracy theories come into being. and the guarantee of truthfulness doesn’t always go hand in hand with the makings of discourse assertions. therefore, a quick revisiting of the sokal affair will be very helpful for my readership to grasp the idea of condemning critical barbarians from an uninvolved position of strength. as you may be aware, the editors of social text decided to publish an “essay” by sokal in 1996 after which the american physicist’s longstanding proposition about the possibility of infiltrating the academic community with nonsense through the competent use of stylistic and sophisticated rhetoric was experimentally and undeniably confirmed (ross 1997). in relation to the discussions made in this article, we must direct our ant-cultivated attention to the hidden motivations which encouraged sokal to go ahead with the infamous “behavioral art.” apparently, this whole episode was his way to illustrate that some of the most celebrated intellectuals in the history of mankind have been “throwing around scientific jargon in front of their non-scientific readers without any regard for its relevance or even its meaning (sokal and bricmont 2011).” by speaking in the latourian tongue, we can see why these comments are important for critical thinkers to limit the detrimental effects of conspiracy theories. to reiterate, the father of science philosophy made the network theory of actors an integral element of his critique. that being so, the eventful occurrence of sokal affair was effectuated by the interaction of a thing (i.e., human misuse of scientific concepts in countless papers) and an object (i.e., the natural science). such is the reason for which people studying the fashionable nonsense have almost unanimously surveyed sokal’s deliberate abuse of factuality in the writing of his parody essay (hilgartner 1997). to be more specific, the textualization and publishing of the american physicist’s “satirical experiment for intellectual writings” attest to the creation of an ant-based reality for false knowledge which is very much like the existentialization and manifestation of conspiracy theories. of course, it is required of us to dispassionately examine the fallacious descriptions provided by the critical barbarians as the realist products of a latourian interplay between subjectivity and substantiality that have thrived upon the illiteracy of human minds to materialize. obviously, i am referring to a revisionist framing of ant established in this article when i say “latourian interplay.” underscoring a duality of humanity and factuality in the ant realism is essential because the post truth marriage of things to objects in the constructionist reality which has triggered endless anxieties in the field of philosophy is nothing but surrendering our common sense to the tyranny of insanity and ignorance. separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 12 arguably, the french philosopher of science and technology doubled down on his proposal of uniting ideologies with tangibility in 2004 to reassure himself of a theoretical stability that is desperately desired by all rational thinkers in an era when logical judgements are greeted with relativist suspicions. howbeit, emotions such as panic don’t save us from an exacerbating situation where conspiracy theorists constantly make a mockery of intelligence and wisdom. there is a demand for logical calmness if the critique discipline is to be rejuvenated against the formidable pressure exerted by the makers of bulls. so here comes that calmness in the form of an epistemological analysis. after this article has clarified for its readership a re-establishment of the subject/object division in a historical reality of opium addiction that serves as a dictate of intellectualization for the prospect prosperity of ant-based realism, we can see why gross representations of truth including de quincey’s cultural portrayal of opiate dependence, sokal’s parody essay and barbaric critiques in general are inevitable as long as the crowds refuse the visit of knowledge enlightenment at their doorsteps. explicitly, since conspiracy theories take advantage of uneducated subjectivity in human thoughts, their social cultivations and endemic disseminations are the latourian materialization of a mutually interactive relationship betwixt a thing (i.e., mankind’s ignorant cognition) and an object (i.e., nonhuman and noncontextual factuality). with an outstanding refinement of linguistics, unlearned people can easily fall for the fashionable nonsenses which, in the course of a dualist reaction between concerns and physicality, give rise to a reality of revisionist ant. in this reality, everything is existent but not true. whereupon, we arrive at the final destination of this article’s long tour to explore the latourian epistemology of conspiracy theory in a revisionist manner. the take-home message is that the ant-system doesn’t have to self-destruct when confronting critical barbarians. by discerning the phenomenological manifestations of unsound elucidations as a latourian output of reciprocally interacting actors undergoing the realist reactions of things and objects, we can come to terms with a novel theorization of social constructionism which epistemologically dissects the ontological anatomy of disinformation to unravel the impracticality of inventing a “post-truth philosophy.” straightforwardly, the antcharacterized interplays betwixt human psychologies and physical objectivities through which the cognitive faculties of nonsense talkers translate the partial factuality into illinformed stories allow the barbaric critiques to be existentially real. with this in mind, my readers can start to appreciate that the hastily-devised strategy of employing unification of subjectivity and tangibility in the war against conspiracy theorists is unnecessary. more than that, we can certainly face backfire if climate change deniers and others alike were to incorporate what latour proposed in 2004 in their arguments. imaginably, they would just deem every rationality as “fake news” because the father of science and technology studies approved the interchangeability of ideas and facts by way of subject/object unity. thus, the revisionist philosophers of ant need to play the role of an outsider so that we can prevent ourselves from re-suffering latour’s fate of being trapped in the eternal selfdoubt. the ability to be emotionally uninvolved in the handling of conspiracy theories clears our brains for understanding the appropriate response to disinformation. on balance, three points are to be marked with attention. first, the separation of things from objects which conditions the ant philosophy by the dualist functionalization of representational realism is to be punctuated. second, it is absolutely crucial for us to recognize that the birth of barbaric critiques is the result of an ant-styled interaction between the ignorant subjectivity (i.e., a thing) and the impartial factuality (i.e., an object). third, under the revisionist framework of latourian constructionism, the actualization of conspiracy theories doesn’t support the judgement of fabricated stories being true. when viewed altogether, these three points surely give us the confidence to treat the fashionable nonsense as nothing more than a daily separating “things” from “objects” for the history of opium addiction: a philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 13 and unavoidable normality of intellectual life. despite our wishful thinking, the logical capability to root out the existence of barbaric critiques through the cultivation of polymath wisdoms is simply not a quality that everybody has. alas, the accompany of disinformation in this earthly world is always inevitable. more importantly, our job, as the critical thinkers, is to probe the abstract and metaphysical epistemology of conspiracy theories without being distracted by personal feelings. concluding remarks what latour wrote in 2004 about the dim future of critical reasoning and the urgency of upgrading ant are a wake-up call for philosophers reading the social conceptualization of intellectually-disguised nonsense. in his discourse, the french thinker of science philosophy warned us of a growing threat posed by the conspiracy theorists. after questioning the reliability of existing “critique tools,” he basically advocated for a “post-truth” model of theorization. truth be told, even as i am agreeing with his assessment that the framing of ant needs a “makeover” to effectively combat the lies spread by critical barbarians, i don’t share latour’s desperation and pessimism. opportunely, this article which is on latourian revisionism is penned to resurrect ant against the overwhelming influences of disinformation. i have hoped to deliver my message to the intended audience by breaking this article into three sections. to start with, the author has referenced the dichotomy betwixt humanity and substantiality in the reality of dualist representationalism to deny latour’s effort of uniting things with objects so that the subject/object division can be restored in the ant-based constructions of everything in this universe. then, a historiography of opium addiction has been brought in to facilitate the comprehension of a notion which accentuates how the chemical reactions of things and objects in the structural duality of a realist world complete the totality of reality. plainly, this article has practicalized the externalist moral philosophy for the inquiry of british anti-opiumist sentiment in late 19th century to demonstrate the functioning of interactive relationships for the formation of a world encompassing both ideas and materials. finally, in an epistemological sense, this article ends with a conclusion that, as latourian specialists, we don’t have to suffer a crisis of faith when we realize the inevitability of ignorance and the normality of using the revised ant to appraise nonsensical stories as a daily affair in the critique life. in the main, the problem of conspiracy theories penetrating every aspect of society has nothing to do with the incompetence of critical thinkers. we must confidently declare the proclamation of the philosophy discipline continually having plenty of steams. references baggerman, ton and durston, sarah. 2017. the universe, life and everything: dialogues on our changing understanding of reality. amsterdam 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philosophical reappraisal of latour’s ant xianle chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 16 wong, david. 2006. moral reasons: internal and external. philosophy and phenomenological research. 72 (3): 536-558. yu, gengzhe. 2022. from diseases to ideas: a rediscovery of social history in medieval china (in chinese). zhonghua book company. zangwill, nick. 2003. externalist moral motivation. american philosophical quarterly. 40 (2): 143-154. . microsoft word santos layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 2022 (12): 1-18 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal special issue michel foucault and the historiography of science heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos1 [http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4589-068x] abstract: this paper proposes an analysis of the work the order of things by michel foucault, based on the notion of heterotopia, to demonstrate that the author develops there an original procedure of re-reading the history of ideas, which consists of the rearrangement of elements canonized by historiography, creating new relations between them, as well as in the insertion of unusual or heterodox elements. we then show how ian hacking reappropriates this heterotopic procedure in the emergence of probability and how it influences the heart of the author’s philosophical project, whose unique reading of archaeology brings it back to epistemology, either through the idea of “immature science” or through his notion of “styles of scientific reasoning.” understanding the conditions for the formation of our ideas denaturalizes our current ways of thinking, opening new possibilities for thought and action. the relevance and potential that this heterotopic procedure has for contemporary epistemology are thus evident. keywords: foucault; hacking; archaeology; heterotopia; epistemology received: april 15, 2022. reviewed: may 11, 2022. accepted: may 30, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.03 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction although many scholars recognize the importance of the archaeological method for the later development of foucault’s thought, the idea that genealogy is born from the need to correct flaws or gaps in archaeology remains strong and is linked to how the role of the order of things2 is understood in the author’s intellectual experience. in general, such a reading is linked to the fact that the archaeological trajectory culminated in this work where discourses are analyzed autonomously, apart from their relations with non-discursive practices.3 in ot, 1 débora bráulio santos is a phd candidate in the philosophy program at the federal university of minas gerais – ufmg (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: deborabraunn@gmail.com 2 we will use the abbreviation ot to refer to this work. 3 this idea is mainly due to dreyfus and rabinow, who claim that archaeology “failed” due to the “illusion of autonomous discourse”: “the project of the archaeology founders for two reasons. first, the causal power attributed to the rules governing discursive systems is unintelligible and makes the heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 2 foucault studies the isomorphisms between the discourses that came to allow the constitution of our modern human sciences, without relating them to social, political, economic, or cultural institutions and practices, as he had done with medicine in birth of the clinic, or with psychology and psychiatry in history of madness. at the time of the work’s release, foucault received heavy criticism from representatives of the humanist currents that he criticized there, focusing on the fact that the epistémê (that is, the epistemological configuration of each epoch) functions as a structure and determines, before the subject, the historical possibilities of knowledge, which would make it have a deterministic character concerning human freedom. moreover, it would allow pointing out ruptures and discontinuities without presenting their causes, which would consist of denial or “murder” of history and, therefore, of the praxis and conscious action of man in the world. the consequences of this in the political sphere would be reactionary, favoring the status quo. at the same time, foucault was greatly criticized by historians who considered illegitimate his heterodox choices regarding the authors and thoughts that support the descriptions of epistémês, as well as the unique temporal cuts and periodizations that he created.4 the criticisms mentioned, added to the fact that the author himself modified the method and object of his later studies, ended up obscuring the importance and novelty of the epistemological method for analyzing the historical conditions of possibility of discourses that emerged there.5 it becomes patent, therefore, to demonstrate how the question of the historical conditions for the existence and functioning of discourses with a claim to truth allows us to modify these conditions and open the way for new types of discourses. this can be demonstrated through the notion of heterotopia, which we take as the guiding thread of ot’s archaeological procedure. this notion, which appears only in the preface of the work in allusion to jorge luis borges’ chinese encyclopedia, has the function of highlighting the importance of the space of order for the constitution of knowledge, by disturbing “all the familiarities of thought” and pointing to its limits. according to foucault, borges highlights this space of order and does so precisely by ruining it. we believe that foucault does the same with the history of ideas. the mention of borges would then be a way of presenting what the work intends to do, functioning as a metaphor for the archeological undertaking carried out in it: it is about analyzing the foundations of thought and what happens when they are shaken. second, it is worth investigating possible ways of continuing this archaeological method after foucault. so far there are few initiatives of this kind, as far as studies with imminent epistemological interest are concerned, one of them being that of ian hacking, a kind of influence the social institutions have (…) incomprehensible. second, insofar as foucault takes archaeology to be an end in itself, he forecloses the possibility of bringing his critical analyses to bear on his social concerns” (dreyfus and rabinow 1983, xxiv-xxv). 4 according to gutting, “of all foucault’s books, ot has been the most severely criticized by historians. some see it as a free-floating prose fantasy rather than a serious work of historical scholarship. (...) most historians who have discussed ot have found the more ambitious conjectures of its constructive history not only unsupported but also highly questionable. (...) specialists in particular periods maintain that foucault’s characterizations of epistemes are gross oversimplifications that not only ignore important differences between individual figures but also contradict major aspects of the periods’ thought” (gutting 1989, 175-177). 5 according to philippe sabot, “the set of debates and polemics that, around the question of structuralism, accompanied the publication of ot, led to (...) a double effect of ignorance. no doubt they contributed to its being thrown into oblivion (...): everything is happening as if the 'archaeology of the human sciences’ represented a ‘flaw’, an unfortunate excrescence within foucault's work, which the perspectives opened by earlier (on madness or illness) and later (on power, sexuality, the self) texts would have allowed being corrected, even erased” (sabot 2006, 2-3). heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 3 philosopher of science who applied the method to a new object – the concept of probability. in this study, hacking replicates the main heterotopic procedures we have identified in foucauldian work, which aim to destabilize the canonical way in which the history of probability had been narrated until then, offering a new version of this history that, like ot, has renewed studies about its object. hacking also appropriates ot’s archeology in other ways, either with his notion of styles of scientific reasoning or in his way of defining the very task of philosophy. the canadian shows us how foucauldian archeology can renew epistemology, offering it new objects and original research. borges’ encyclopedia: heterotopias and the space of order the text that, according to foucault, provoked the birth of ot is entitled the analytic language of john wilkins. in it, borges comments on the attempt of a 17th-century philosopher to create a universal language, which would organize and contain all human thought, based on a table that classifies all things in the world into 40 categories. borges ironically compares this classification with that of a certain chinese encyclopedia, entitled heavenly emporium of benevolent knowledge. in its remote pages, it says that the animals are divided into (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) trained, (d) piglets, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous, (g) loose dogs, (h) included in this classification, (i) that flutter about like madmen, (j) innumerable (k) drawn with a fine brush of camel’s hair, (l) etcetera, (m) that have just broken the vase, (n) that from afar look like flies (borges 1999, 94). the fictitious classification of the encyclopedia makes explicit and exacerbates the absurdity of exhaustive classifications that claim to account for reality as a whole, highlighting the arbitrary and imprecise nature of all taxonomies. borges, therefore, raises a question concerning language, the possibility of describing and organizing reality through it – the problem of the relationship between words and things. but he also raises a properly epistemological question, by stating that “the impossibility of penetrating the divine scheme of the universe cannot, however, dissuade us from planning human schemes, even though we know that they are provisional” (borges 1999, 95). it is impossible to know reality in itself, but one cannot give up the pretense of knowing. this is why wilkins’ artificial language is not only the target of the author’s debauchery but also of his admiration, as he recognizes the limitless possibility offered by language. if these totalizing schemes reveal the smallness of language before the world, don’t they also show its greatness and infinite openness? the human capacity to create and recreate orders from different logics, offering us completely different visions of things? starting from the first mention of the encyclopedia, foucault examines where the disturbance caused by borges comes from. according to him, unusual encounters cause us strangeness, but many of them still take place in a coherent, apprehensible space. “it is there that they all have their commonplace, like, on the worktable, the umbrella and the sewing machine; if the strangeness of their encounter is manifest, it is on the basis of this and, this in, this on, whose solidity and evidence guarantee the possibility of a juxtaposition”.6 6 foucault alludes to a phrase by isidore ducasse, the “count of lautréamont”, which became an icon of surrealism, as a reference to the processes by which the unconscious manifests itself in artistic creation. the author also stated that the concept of epistémê was intended to highlight the unconscious order that governs knowledge. not in the sense of what escapes the consciousness of scientists, that is, a “negative version” of science the “implicit philosophies”, “unformulated themes”, or “invisible obstacles”. it is a “positive unconsciousness of knowing: a level that escapes heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 4 however, in borges’ classification, “the very common space of encounters is ruined” (foucault 2007, xi). the rubrics of the encyclopedia have determinable meanings, separating mermaids and fabulous animals from those that are real, like piglets or loose dogs. their monstrosity does not lie in the unusual encounters, but “in the narrow distance according to which real and fictional animals are juxtaposed”: “what transgresses (...) every possible thought, is the alphabetical series (a, b, c, d)” (foucault 2007, xi). there, the common space is none other than the “non-place of language,” an abstract, empty space that offers no solid ground for the coexistence of such disparate beings, although it is possible only there. borges’ procedure is radical because it subtracts “the ground, the soil”, the operating table: where (…) the umbrella encounters the sewing-machine; and also a table, a tabula, that enables thought to operate upon the entities of our world, to put them in order, to divide them into classes, to group them according to names that designate their similarities and their differences – the table upon which, since the beginning of time, language has intersected space. (foucault 2007, xii) the metaphor refers to the impalpable space of language and thought, highlighting the underlying order that governs the criteria by which we define similarity and difference. worse than the uneasiness of the disorder generated by the approximation of disparate things, says foucault, is that of the realization that there are a great number of possible orders. by ruining the commonplace, borges generated in foucault the laughter and uneasiness that gave rise to the work. the author then introduces the concept of heterotopia, defined from its opposition to that of utopia: “utopias console”, whereas “heterotopias disquiet” (foucault 2007, xiii). the former, having no real place, creates an ideal, wonderful space, which cannot, however, be accessed. therefore, utopia (“nonplace”) is situated in the dimension of fable. heterotopias, on the other hand, “secretly undermine language, because they prevent us from naming this and that, (...) they ruin beforehand the ‘syntax’, and not only that which constructs sentences – that less manifest one, which authorizes ‘keeping together’ (...) words and things” (foucault 2007, xiii). the object of the book would then not be the words or the things, but “that which authorizes keeping them together”, this “syntax” that is not the grammatical syntax of the language, but another, previous one, which makes it possible. it is the cognitive, epistemological space that allows us to put language into operation and relate it to the world. heterotopias contest “every possibility of grammar” (foucault 2007, xiii). foucault analyzed the concept of heterotopia in a 1967 text entitled of other spaces.7 according to defert, the author’s use of this concept would be “totally different” from the one made in ot, in that it turns “no longer to an analysis of discourses, but of spaces” (foucault 2013, 37). however, it would be fitting to ask whether such uses are indeed discrepant or whether this concept would have implications in both the political and epistemological fields. in the 1967 text, foucault reaffirms that utopias are “allocations without real place”, which “maintain with the real space of society a general relation of direct or inverted analogy. it is society itself perfected, or it is the inverse of society. heterotopias, on the other hand, would be the consciousness of the researcher and yet is part of scientific discourse as he contests its validity and seeks to minimize its scientific nature” (foucault 1994 [2], 9). 7 this text, although written in 1967, therefore a year after ot and within the archeological phase, was published only in the 1980s and tends to be read under the viewpoint of the later development of foucault’s thought, the genealogy of power, with the resistances and counter-conducts forged by subjected bodies. heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 5 real places, effective places, places that are designed in the very institution of society and that are species of counter-allocations, species of utopias effectively realized, in which (...) all other real allocations that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted; species of places that are outside all places, although they are effectively locatable. (foucault 1994 [4], 755) the author then describes heterotopias from six principles.8 the third of them states that they have “the power to juxtapose in a single real place several spaces, several allocations that are in themselves incompatible” (foucault 1994 [4], 758), such as theater and cinema. in the case of the epistemological space, these would be domains of knowledge that are strange to each other, such as economics, philology, biology, and philosophy. the fourth principle is that they are linked to heterochronies, that is, they also represent cutouts or ruptures with traditional time, such as museums and libraries. isn’t this rupture with the traditional chronology of the history of science precisely what epistêmês propose? the sixth principle states that heterotopias have a function in relation to other spaces: they create spaces of illusion that denounce real spaces as even more illusory (as in the case of brothels), or spaces of compensation all the more perfect and organized as real space is disordered (as in the case of the jesuit colonies in america). wouldn’t the construction of another order for the history of ideas (a kind of absolutely systematic “fiction”, as ot is usually viewed) have the effect, after all, of denouncing traditional, continuist history as illusory? the fifth principle states that “heterotopias always presuppose a system of openness and closure that at the same time isolates them and makes them penetrable” (foucault 1994 [4], 760), that is, they are places where one cannot enter or leave without restrictions, such as prison. it becomes clear that heterotopias are bound to the current order, neither entirely within nor outside it. they move us between one and the other, and this connection is what produces contestation; after all, it is because utopias exist totally outside the current order that they do not challenge it. the clash between naturalized forms of the order and other possible forms provides “glimpses of the governing principles of order” (topinka 2010, 60), without abandoning the latter, but rather destabilizing it. the ship is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, (…) and that was for our civilization, (...) the greatest reserve of imagination. the ship, that is the heterotopia par excellence. in civilizations without ships, dreams languish, espionage replaces adventure, and the police, corsairs. (foucault 1994 [4], 762) thus, foucault concludes this brief and beautiful text. the boat or ship is the heterotopia par excellence because it promotes the most radical displacement, the discovery of the unknown, of cultures with ways of ordering the world totally different from our own. in ot, foucault reminds us that borges gives the “words and categories without time or place” of the encyclopedia a “precise region”: china, a country that represents for us westerners, a radical otherness. but this strange space is not at all separate from our own: the chinese encyclopedia classifies objects according to the abecedarian order of our western alphabet. its “ordering of extension” reflects that which is familiar to us, while simultaneously destroying it, by highlighting its mode of operation: enumeration, temporal sequence, categorization, totalization. as a culture that privileges space over time, china exposes this space between words and things, which is why borges uses it to create his heterotopia. this is also why foucault uses borges to explain what he wanted to do in ot: highlight the space of order under which 8 the first is that heterotopias exist in every culture and civilization, being a constant of every human group, although they assume varied forms. the second is that a society can, over time, give new meanings to the same heterotopia. heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 6 our knowledge was constituted, through an experience of estrangement comparable to the anthropological or ethnographic experience. i wanted us to be able to consider our own culture as something also alien to us, like the culture, for example, of the arapesh, the nambikwara, or the chinese culture (...) i believe that until now our own knowledge has never been considered as a phenomenon alien to us. (...) it is this ethnological situation of our knowledge that i wanted to reconstitute.9 in both ot and the 1967 text, foucault does not exactly offer a definition of heterotopia, but rather descriptions of what they do. following topinka, we believe however, what defines them is their capacity to make the order visible and legible by mapping existing spaces (whether the epistemological, discursive space of knowledge or concrete physical spaces), functioning as sites of reordering.10 by making the naturalized spaces of the prevailing order visible, they allow such order, hitherto implicit, to appear, but also to make its interstices, fissures, and limits11 appear, announcing other possible forms of ordering. the order requires a space for its constitution, and our thinking needs both to arrange things in specific places and to operate on them so that they make sense to us. if the objects of knowledge are indistinguishable, they also become unknowable. when we encounter the incongruous, the inconceivable, we need to turn to this space that sustains orderliness, and it becomes evident that our ability to know depends on it. if there is an invisibility to the dominant forms of order (political and epistemological), when we turn to this space and observe it from the outside, as an ethnologist of our own culture, we realize that it, like every space, has a history, as foucault says in the 1967 text. if the epistemological space is that over which what appears to us as the “truth” is constituted, then the truth also has a history, and “it is upon this operating table that this history sits, waiting to be recovered” (topinka 2010, 62). inspired by borges, foucault, with his heterotopia concerning the history of certain human sciences, removes the habitual space that supports our production of knowledge by highlighting the order that underlies it, based on historical continuity, on the idea of progress, and on the universality of the subject; he makes disparate objects coexist, by intersecting areas of knowledge that in principle are independent among themselves and in relation to philosophy; reveals, therefore, such usual order as arbitrary, but does so because it presents another possible order – based on discontinuity and on the historicity of the subject – which, nevertheless, remains linked to the first, since it makes use of procedures with methodological legitimacy, theories, and authors that make up the scientific and philosophical canon.12 in addition to affirming the inherent spatiality of our way of knowing, foucault revealed the ground on which the history of ideas rested, allowing us to inquire more deeply 9 interview with pierre dumayet in 1966, in the program lectures pour tous, available on the website of the publisher gallimard. free translation of the original audio. 10 see topinka 2010, 56. 11 “order is at the same time that which is offered in things as their inner law, the secret network according to which they look at each other in some way, and that which exists only through the sieve of a look, of an attention, of a language; and it is only in the white houses of this checkerboard that order manifests itself in-depth as already existing, waiting in silence for the moment to be enunciated” (foucault 2007, xvi). 12 sabot analyzed archives of the national library of france with the preparatory studies for ot, including more than 850 reading sheets, notes from foucault's “intellectual diary”, and handwritten versions of the book. he offers examples “in which archaeologization follows the veins of a constituted history of science and extends over a pre-established corpus”, as in analyses of natural history based on the work of historian of science henri daudin (sabot 2016, 755-756). heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 7 into “what is unconscious in the very thickness of what we think”.13 making a critique of knowledge was the task that philosophy seemed to be responsible for, and, according to the author, “this experience of order, in its massive and primary being, always plays a critical role” (foucault 2007, xvii). heterotopic gestures in the order of things having defined the notion of heterotopia and its central role in ot, we must then illustrate how it functions throughout the work, since it is effectively cited only in the preface. there are numerous cases, which we could call “heterotopic gestures”, that is, procedures of displacement or change in the position traditionally occupied by certain elements in the history of ideas, be they authors, currents of thought, or canonized historiographical theses. since it is not possible to address all cases, we will present examples of the way foucault describes epistémês and creates new relations, by which elements that seemed incompatible find the common space that allowed their coexistence, while others, at first congruent or consonant, are shown to be disparate or irreconcilable. these new relations offer historical explanations for discursive or epistemological phenomena rarely investigated in their simultaneity, such as: the coexistence of magic, science, and exegesis in the renaissance; the emergence of philosophies of language and thoughts that study representation in the classical epistémê; or, in the modern epistémê, the emergence of kantian philosophy alongside biology, economics, and philology. regarding the choice of authors, one notices a miscellany between marginal or heterodox authors concerning the historiographical canon and canonical authors who are, however, displaced from the positions they occupy – either by removing their centrality or by identifying it for unusual reasons. this results in a typical and recurrent ot operation: the claim that many of the most well-accepted theses in the history of ideas are nothing but misunderstandings or “surface effects” of more fundamental epistemological events, which only an archaeological analysis of knowledge can highlight by asking about the conditions of possibility. the epistemological configuration of the renaissance, marked by the similarity,14 would be the first great ot heterotopia, for it is defined by ideas and knowledges that did not come to receive scientific status in our western knowledge. pierre grégoire, giovanni battista della porta, ulisse aldrovandi, tommaso campanella, philippus aureolus von hohenheim (known as paracelsus), oswald croll (latin, crollius), girolamo cardano, are all authors who, although recognized also for studies in domains of knowledge that came, in foucauldian terms to become epistemological or scientific – such as anatomy, medicine, pharmacy, biology, botany, optics, physics, chemistry, mathematics, meteorology, law, and grammar, in addition to philosophy – are also linked to knowledges or practices such as alchemy, magic, occultism, natural religion, astrology, and demonology. foucault identifies in this period an intrinsic relationship between scientific and non-scientific knowledge, which differentiates him from the traditional approach that sees in these authors precursors of future sciences, which would have developed and “purified” themselves, gradually getting rid of the remnants of magical thinking until they reached an objective and rational character. 13 interview with pierre dumayet (see note 9). 14 to say that similarity defined the experience of order in this period means to say that things were ordered by knowledge from it. the condition of possibility for the knowledge of similarities lies in the principle that god marked things with external signs that allowed them to be identified, that is, it lies in the nature of signs themselves similar to what they indicate. this explains why renaissance knowledge is presented in the form of semiology and hermeneutics, which allow one to know the signs themselves and, the other to make them speak and discover their meaning. heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 8 for foucault, on the contrary, the link between magic, science, and erudition is foundational to the knowledge produced in this period.15 the heterotopic gesture of displacement of positions and relations between authors is strongly manifested in the famous refusal of the precursor. in the renaissance epistémê, we find andrea cesalpino,16 a 16th-century author who, unlike most of the others, is not linked to heterodox knowledges or practices. but the archaeologist aims only to show that the studies of this author, recognized as rational and scientific, do not contradict the logic of similarity that then ordered thought. “the old analogy of the plant with the animal (...), cesalpino neither criticizes it nor puts it aside; he reinforces it, on the contrary, when he discovers that the plant is a standing animal” (foucault 2007, 29-30). moreover, by positioning cesalpino in this epistémê, the idea that he is a precursor to lineu, whose thought will operate on a logic entirely distinct from similarity, is dismantled. the same is done with pierre belon, a frenchman who studied botany and dedicated himself to descriptive and classificatory studies of plants and animals, being also an author not linked to any “magical thinking”. belon is considered to have marked the beginning of modern embryology and comparative anatomy, notable for his analysis of similarities between the skeletal systems of humans and birds. according to foucault, by comparing the wing to the hand, its extremities to the fingers, and the legs of birds to our heels, belon was not laying rational foundations of the future comparative anatomy, for such a description “only proceeds from the positivity which, in his time, made it possible. (...) it is neither more rational nor more scientific than a certain observation of aldrovandi, when he compares the lower parts of man to the infected places of the world, to hell, to its darkness” (foucault 2007, 31). in the rupture that marks the passage from the renaissance to the classical epistémê, appears the critique of similarity and the institution of comparison as the universal method for the construction of true knowledge. the ordering principle of objects becomes that of relations of identity and difference, which leads to a series of changes in the characteristics of knowledge, among them the separation between history and science. while allowing us to identify such changes – notably the removal of language from the world and its new status as an arbitrary and representational system – foucault explains the emergence of certain domains of knowledge and their coexistence with others with which they seem to have nothing in common. in yet another important heterotopic gesture, he questions canonical views of the supposed rationalism of the classical period, the emergence of science and the abandonment of magical thinking. the approach by which “the seventeenth century marks the disappearance of the old superstitious or magical beliefs and the entry, at last, of nature into the scientific order” cannot restitute, as archaeology does, the modifications that alter knowledge “at the archaic level” of what makes it possible, as well as the mode of being of its objects (foucault 2007, 75). although mechanicism and the mathematization of the empirical are present in this period, the most fundamental thing resides in the relationship that all classical knowledge maintains with the máthêsis, understood as the universal science of measure and order. it would be wrong to define classical rationalism as the attempt to make nature mechanical and calculable. the relationship with the máthêsis “does not mean an absorption of knowledge in mathematics”, and the proof of this is that, at this time, 15 if the world is covered with signs left by god as marks to be deciphered, it is perfectly logical that knowing is synonymous with interpreting and that divination (in latin, divinatio) is not a concurrent form of knowledge, but an immanent part of it. predicting the future from present signs is an inference that goes from the sign to the relation of similarity that it designates. in the same way, the words left in the scriptures and texts by the wise men of antiquity (the eruditio) are also signs to be deciphered, having a deep relation of similarity with things. 16 this author did vast work in describing and systematizing plant species, as well as studying the anatomy and physiology of human blood circulation. historians consider his work de plantis libri xvi (1583), cited by foucault, as the first book on botany, and claim its influence on lineu, who is at the center of foucault’s classical epistémê. heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 9 empirical domains arise that did not exist until, in which there is no trace of mechanicism or mathematization, although they are based on a science of order: “their particular instrument was not the algebraic method, but the system of signs. thus, appeared general grammar, natural history, the analysis of wealth, sciences of order in the domain of words, beings and needs” (foucault 2007, 78-79). this heterotopic displacement does not neglect or deny the elements canonized by the history of ideas – on the contrary, it offers an alternative space for it, without entirely abandoning its principles. here, for example, foucault claims that it is indeed in this period that science becomes autonomous and properly defines scientific rules and methods. in the same way, he destabilizes the position traditionally granted to descartes as a precursor of this rationalism, without, however, eliminating the central place of this thinker by systematizing a method to reach truth and a science of order, excluding similarity as the first form of knowledge. another important heterotopic gesture consists of offering explanations for disparate phenomena, elucidating the common background that explains their coexistence. if in the renaissance we saw the coexistence of magic and science, in the classical era we have the conditions of possibility for the emergence of analytical philosophies of language. there is a change in the status of the sign, which is no longer a figure of the world, established by god, and that existed independently and before the cognitive act. the relation of signification now takes place in our spirit, so that the connection of the sign with what it designates can be certain or only probable: “the knowledge that guessed, by chance, absolute signs and older than itself, was replaced by a network of signs built step-by-step by the knowledge of the probable. hume became possible” (foucault 2007, 83). in the face of this separation between words and things, arbitrary systems of signs allow for analysis with greater precision. archaeology then shows that the “approach of all knowledge to language” and the quest to replace languages with artificial symbol systems of a logical nature are not the individual creations of thinkers like hobbes, berkeley, leibniz, condillac, and the ideologues, as one would think “on the level of a history of opinions.” it explains how “a play of apparently contradictory simultaneous opinions” becomes possible (foucault 2007, 83). in his analyses of the empirical domains, foucault shows how the general theory of signs and representation (which replaces similarity) operates in each of them. when speaking of natural history, he lists several canonical theses in order to deconstruct them and show their superficiality in the face of archaeological findings. the main one is that, in the 17thcentury, a new “curiosity” for the life sciences emerged, manifested in the form of theoretical conflicts, such as between mechanicism and vitalism, fixism and transformism. such conflicts, called “points of heresy”, would only be “surface effects.” the way they are elaborated is anachronistic, by presupposing modern categories that did not exist in the period, such as life. natural history cannot be a biological proto-science because, in the classical period, life itself did not exist, but living beings, which emerged for knowledge through a conception of history different both from the histories of the renaissance17 and from the historicity of the living that will appear in modern biology. the historian ceases to be a compiler, but the sense of time here is neither that of a principle of development internal to the living being, seen as an organized system of functions, as it will be in the modern epistémê, being impossible to speak of precursors of evolutionism. contrary to what one would think from the perspective of continuous progress of knowledge, a classical natural historian does not know more than a renaissance compiler, quite the contrary. the latter described not only the anatomy of the animal but also ways of capturing it, allegorical uses, legends, etc. hence another reversal concerning canonical theses: “natural history did not 17 when signs were part of things, making the story of a plant or animal implied gathering everything that was seen and heard about it, the myths, everything that was told by the language of the world, that of nature, and that of men. that is why there were specific stories of different species. heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 10 become possible because it looked better and more closely. (...) the classical age strove, if not to see as little as possible, at least to voluntarily restrict the field of its experience” (foucault 2007, 181). just as there is no biology in the classical age because the concept of life does not exist, “there is no political economy because, in the order of knowledge, production does not exist” (foucault 2007, 227). here foucault also denounces the error of the “retrospective reading that would only confer on the classical analysis of wealth the ulterior unity of a political economy in the process of constituting itself gropingly” (foucault 2007, 228). historians suppose that in the classical period a scientific economy was not yet possible due to extraand intra-epistemological factors, such as the existence of moral problematics of profit and conceptual confusions that were being undone in the 18th-century, such as the distinction between the theory of exchange price and intrinsic value, which allowed the analysis of the production mechanism. little by little, economics would have established its theoretical bases, its own object, and its inner coherence. a great misunderstanding, because such concepts “were not thought out from a future that awaited them in the shadows, but rather on the ground of a rigorous and general epistemological disposition” (foucault 2007, 229). again, archaeology offers us an explanation for the coexistence of disparate or inconsistent elements according to traditional explanations. the opposition between physiocrats and utilitarians is commonly justified in political or sociological terms, with the physiocrats being landowners and the utilitarians being merchants and businessmen. for the former, the value of a good arose from the fact that it was superfluous or surplus and could be put into the circuit of exchange, its primary cause being the fruitfulness of nature and exchange that which confers value, even if, because it is costly, it tends to reduce it. for the latter, value arises from the utility of a good, therefore it pre-exists the exchange and arises rather from lack than from excess, but exchange only increases it, since, whoever desires a good, values it more than whoever possesses it. according to foucault, this is yet another “point of heresy” in which the same theoretical elements are arranged in reverse order. for both, all wealth is born of the earth, but some see superabundance where others see insufficiency; the value of things is always linked to exchange, but for some, the exchange is both a creator and a reducer of it, while for others, it does not create it, but increases it. for both, money is valued as the representation of the wealth in circulation. the supposed contradictions are sustained on a common backdrop – the role of representation as defining the space of order of classical knowledge. the beginning of the rupture with this knowledge, from which modern political economy will be born, will only effectively occur when value is no longer linked to the exchange system (and to the necessity or scarcity that produces it) and arises from the productive power of labor, which causes adam smith to be considered the founder of this science, by introducing this concept. according to the archaeologist, however, the novelty brought by smith marks the beginning of the transition but does not put the author in total rupture with the classical analysis of wealth, since, for him, labor is the measure and not the source of value. the latter is still born linked to the representational system of exchange. if smith in fact innovated, it was not by “introducing” the concept of labor or using it as a measuring instrument, but by thinking of it as an absolute measure, not relative, so that the exchange value is not reduced to the needs or desires of men, “imposes itself on them from the outside: it is their time and effort” (foucault 2007, 308). smith’s analysis relates work to laborious time, and thus points “to an anthropology that calls into question the essence of man (his finitude, his relation to time, the imminence of death),” opening up the “dimension of a possible history” (foucault 2007, 309-310). foucault displaces the central position granted to smith without denying the relevance of his thought, emblematic of a transitional period in which knowledge will no longer be ordered on the basis of representation and will have temporal succession, that is, history, as its ordering principle. the total rupture with the heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 11 analysis of wealth occurs in fact with ricardo, when he thinks of labor not as a measure, but as the source of value, causing the latter to stop being a sign and become a product. the fundamental figure of production appears, therefore, as the condition of possibility of the economy and introduces in it the dimension of time.18 similarly, in the field of natural history, there is a partial transition with authors such as jussieu, lamarck, and vicq d’azyr. if, before, beings were classified based on a comparison of their visible structures, which performed representative functions, they will now be classified based on an internal principle, invisible and irreducible to representation: organization. it will be based on the essential functions of the living being, no longer on its description. this points to the emergence of the notion of life, since the relationships between superficial and hidden organs that ensure essential functions will be sought in the depth of the body. the predominant parallel in the age of representation between classification and nomenclature, between distinguishing and naming, is broken. this distinction, which “will render natural history obsolete” is, according to foucault, due to “the genius of lamarck,” who placed the determination of the name and the classification of species (according to the internal organization) as two distinct tasks of botany. this is why the author “closed the age of natural history and opened that of biology,” and not because he spoke of the progressive transformation of species, which leads historians to consider him a precursor of evolutionism. as with smith or descartes, foucault displaces the role attributed to lamarck, while still recognizing his relevance. the distinction made by lamarck is brilliant because it modifies the methods of taxonomy without refusing its fundamental conditions of possibility. but it also points to the division between organic and inorganic, between the living being with essential functions and the non-living, the inert, the death that will mark the decisive break with natural history and the beginning of modern biology. this will only happen, however, with cuvier, the author who frees the organic structure from its taxonomic function and thinks of it from the function performed by the organ. since the living being is a complex and unified functional system, the notion of life emerges as a fundamental force that resists external threats, aiming to preserve itself in the face of death. once again foucault challenges the history of ideas by stating that it was cuvier, and not lamarck, who opened the possibility for darwin’s theory of evolution, since it would not be reduced to a continuous transformation of the species. lamarck thought of such a transformation based on the ontological continuity of natural history, as an uninterrupted improvement of beings forming one from another. cuvier, although considered a “fixist,” banned transformation in order to think about the maintenance of the conditions for the existence of life from its own historicity, given by its relationship with changing environmental conditions. the total rupture with the classical epistémê finds in philosophy one of its most manifest effects, and kant’s thought is the one that inaugurates the modern epistémê. kantian critique removes thought from the space of representation, by posing the question of how consciousness can form representations, a question that simply had no place in the classical epistémê, where representation reigned in its absolute transparency. kant asks what makes all representation possible, that is, he questions its foundation, its limits and 18 in this sense, another controversial heterotopic gesture consists in the claim that marx’s thought is based on the same epistemological ground as ricardo’s. for both, time reduces the resources available to man, and man finds himself increasingly threatened by death. on the same basis, the authors present alternative theories of historical becoming, ricardo with the “pessimistic” view of stabilization in a permanent state of scarcity, with history compensating human finitude by a selflimitation of rarity; marx with the “optimistic” view by which history leads to the apex of scarcity and inequality but is reversed by the emergence of a new consciousness among men. labor as an alienated form of finitude then shows itself not as natural but historical, dialectically transformable into a disalienated relation. two opposite ways of dealing with the same triad history-anthropologysuspension of becoming. heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 12 conditions of possibility. the separation between being and representation embodied by kantian critique has as an important consequence “the simultaneous emergence of a transcendental subject and new empirical fields” (foucault 2007, 335), which explains the coexistence of kantian philosophy and the new human sciences that gain positivity from these new empiricities – life, work, and language. as it is not possible to discuss all the heterotopic dislocations of ot, it is only worth noting that one of the most remarkable of them resides in what would be the counterpart of the famous thesis of man’s “death” – that is, his moment of birth, which takes place here, in modernity. to affirm that it is at this moment that man emerges to knowledge as an epistemological figure is no less controversial a thesis than the one that announces his disappearance. but such a statement is due to the fact, although not always well understood, that foucault is talking about man as an empirical-transcendental double. that is, the moment in which he emerges properly to knowledge as an object of knowledge (with the new human sciences) is also the moment in which he discovers himself effectively as a subject of this same knowledge, which is when his representations about the world cease to be transparent and are questioned in their foundation. heterotopia in ian hacking the emergence of probability,19 as well as the book that follows it, the taming of chance, according to hacking, were conceived as contributions to what foucault called the history of the present. after all, we live in a world where everything comes to us through probabilities and statistics: sports, sex, drugs, sleep, cancers, muggings, earthquakes, global warming... even for physics, we live in a universe whose fundamental particles are waves of probability. but when and how did we come to live in a world governed by probability? how did “chance pass from what hume called the ‘superstition of the vulgar’ to become the foundation of the physical world and the cement of the social universe?” (hacking 2006, 15). hacking says he sought an explanation for foucault’s ot diagnosis of the moment when “hume became possible”: “philosophical problems are created when the space of possibilities in which we organize our thoughts has mutated. following this speculation, i have given my own explanation of ‘how hume became possible’” (hacking 2009, 26). the work is pioneering on the topic and opened up a whole new field of study on the idea of probability. in it, the author argues that such an idea emerged around 1650 as part of “a certain organization of concepts which persisted. the tensions in that new system of thought arose in part from a submerged residue of the preceding arrangements with which there was a radical break” (hacking 2006, 12-13). such a rupture takes place at the moment where foucault identified the shift from renaissance to classical epistémê, with the transition from one organization in terms of resemblance to another in terms of representation, so that hacking applies this central ot thesis, as well as its chronology, to a new object. the emergence of probability is demonstrated by the simultaneous appearance of disparate phenomena that, to the archaeologist, are part of the same formation at once, statistics appear in law, mathematics, economics, and even theology. this process of emergence conditions the later development of the theory, that is, we can understand the structure of current problems regarding probability by understanding what made this concept possible. this is an important lesson resulting from the archaeological method, which hacking calls 19 in the 2006 second edition of the work, hacking inserted a preface explaining foucault’s influence. “it was the first long piece of writing, in any language, that captured, adapted and applied the new kind of analysis that michel foucault called archaeology. (...) i hardly ever acknowledged debts to foucault, because i wrongly thought they were obvious and did not need to be stated” (hacking 2006, 10). heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 13 an anti-positivist model which, for all its obscurity, may at this point have some appeal. we should perhaps imagine that concepts are less subject to our decisions than a positivist would think, and that they play out their lives in, as it were, a space of their own. if a concept is introduced by some striking mutation, as is the case with probability, there may be some specific preconditions for the event that determine the possible future courses of development for the concept. all those who subsequently employ the concept use it within this matrix of possibilities. whatever the overall value of this strange model in the history of ideas, we can at least agree that since 1660 the concept of probability has been curiously autonomous and steadfast to its origins. (...) perhaps an understanding of our space and its preconditions can liberate us from the cycle of probability theories that has trapped us for so long. (hacking 2006, 39-40) like foucault, hacking displaces what is most canonical in the history of ideas and begins his book by enumerating different theories about the emergence of probability, to argue that they all lie “on the surface of things”. it is considered, for example, that the origins of probability would lie in bayes in the 18th-century, but “from an archaeological point of view this is incorrect”. this author “was a memorable figure on the surface of things. most of the important new transitions in probability occurred after the napoleonic era and were caused by events in which probability was never mentioned” (hacking 2006, 14). the emergence of probability was a more fundamental change than any revolution: a “new thinking cap”.20 this notion currently carries two dimensions: an objective aspect, linked to facts, to the frequency with which certain types of events occur, and a subjective aspect, linked to the degree to which we trust something we are not completely sure of. this dual aspect, identified since its beginnings, is what allows us to say that it was born in 1660. before this date, it appears sporadically in the history of ideas, but in other forms. we see here another central similarity with ot: if foucault claimed that man is a recent figure in our history of ideas, it is because he spoke specifically of this as an epistemological figure marked by the empirical-transcendental double. the man may have been present in our discursive practices under various forms, but the peculiarity of the way we think of him today was born precisely in modernity. according to hacking, a current thesis is that, until the 17th-century, an obsession with determinism prevented any thought about randomness, to which he responds by claiming that this is an anachronism. the model of determinism invoked only became dominant in the 17th-century, so that “europe began to understand concepts of randomness, probability, chance and expectation precisely at that point in its history when theological views of divine foreknowledge were being reinforced by the amazing success of mechanistic models” (hacking 2006, 29). paradoxically, the problem of chance and probability emerges as an object for thought while “mechanical” determinism is strengthened, the latter having in fact been necessary for the formation of those concepts. this is a typical heterotopic “inversion”: instead of explaining the absence of probability before the 17th-century by the fetish with determinism, it must be explained precisely by the absence of such a fetish. other explanations for the emergence of probability that hacking refuses are those strictly external or internal to the theories of the time, as foucault does in his analyses of the political economy. an external explanation, for example, says that the stimulus for the development of probability theories came from economic needs. however, problems related to probability already existed before the 17th-century but could not yet be solved. there is also an inside story: mathematics would not be rich enough to generate the probabilistic 20 when talking about revolution, hacking is dialoguing with kuhn, to argue that kuhn’s concept of “scientific revolution” cannot account for such an event, which, however, can be better explained by the foucauldian archaeological model. heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 14 calculus. but, says hacking, the concept of probability requires only simple arithmetic: why didn’t it develop in the western world before pascal? the answers usually resort to these elements: a deterministic view of the world, belief in the gods, the lack of a local numbering system, and economic incentive. but such explanations are mistaken because they try to find what was missing in the pre-pascalian period for the concept of probability to be thought of, taking for granted the very existence of such a concept as an intellectual object. this would only make sense if the “conceptual scheme” of the time contained a concept of probability. “no one denies that arithmetic and nascent capitalism were lacking, nor that one or the other may be essential for the development of probability theory, once probability is a possible object of thought” (hacking 2006, 34). but the question to be asked is not why people did not study these objects, but rather how they came about, how they became possible. hacking takes one of the main legacies of ot seriously, which analyzed the emergence of certain objects of knowledge – life, work, and language – based on the search for their epistemological conditions of possibility, showing that it is wrong to retrospectively narrate the history of ideas based on the patterns of our current rationality, that is, to think of the previous periods based on what was missing or insufficient in their configurations of knowledge. hacking does not speak of epistémê as foucault does, but rather of a conceptual schema, a choice relevant to thinking about the usefulness of archaeology for epistemology. in the same way, instead of talking about archeology, hacking talks about “prehistory”, another interesting way of interpreting foucault’s choice of terminology: it is about investigating what happened before a certain object of knowledge emerged and began to have a history. the importance of such a study lies in the fact that the way an object emerges for knowledge determines the space within which it can be thought from then on, so that understanding such an emergence can radically modify the way we think today – hence the political dimension of this epistemological gesture. the preconditions for the emergence of probability determined the space of possible theories about probability. that means that they determined, in part, the space of possible interpretations of quantum mechanics, of statistical inference, and of inductive logic. (...) it makes the prehistory of probability more important than the history (hacking 2006, 35). it is also worth noting how the canadian philosopher, like foucault, repositions certain widely accepted landmarks in the history of ideas. he states, for example, that blaise pascal is indeed a determining author for the emergence of probability, as is widely recognized, but not because of his correspondence with pierre fermat, considered an emblem of this emergence because it contains the resolution of two problems through the use of the arithmetic triangle. on the contrary, such correspondence would be “a minor incident in the history of mathematics” (hacking 2006, 13). pascal’s importance lies in having identified the structure of decision theory, which comes about when he discusses the choice of the atheist in a christian world. we have seen how foucault does something similar with some memorable names in the history of ideas, such as lamarck, descartes, and adam smith. since it is not possible to address all hacking’s procedures that could be called “heterotopic”, it is also important to point out that the archaeological influence in the emergence of probability goes beyond what is analyzed in this text. we seek only to point out that one of the central aspects of this method, linked to the notion of “heterotopia”, is strongly present in this appropriation that the canadian philosopher makes of foucault’s work.21 finally, we would like to emphasize the centrality of such appropriation for hacking’s 21 in this sense, we must also note that foucault’s influence on hacking goes beyond the 1975 book, and is also evident in other works by the canadian philosopher, which also incorporate the archeology of knowledge (as in why does language matter to philosophy?, 1975), as well as the genealogy of power heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 15 philosophical project as a whole. from it springs his own conception of philosophy: “a way of analyzing and coming to an understanding about the conditions of possibility of ideas” (hacking 2009, 92). the fundamental contribution of archaeology would lie in creating a method for thinking about something that epistemologists had not yet dealt with, “immature science.” that is, it is about “investigating the preliminary workings of bodies of knowledge” (hacking 2009, 104). rather than a body of theses, one seeks systems of possibilities, which define what is possible to say in an epoch, allowing one to find order in “rudimentary domains”: “what counts as a reason or evidence may be part of a system of thought, such that modalities of ‘rationality’ are topical and dated” (hacking 2009, 105). when it comes to reflective discourse, there is always a process of object constitution that takes place in – and by – discourse itself, and the one who teaches us this is immature science. but “what if no science counts as mature?” (hacking 2009, 103). there is something “immature” about all knowledge, so that “trying to understand how objects constitute themselves in discourse” is one of the tasks of hacking’s philosophical project, which he titles, using a foucauldian expression, as a “historical ontology”22 (hacking 2009, 114). foucault used this expression to refer to a study that concerned the “truth by which we constitute ourselves as objects of knowledge,” the “power by which we constitute ourselves as subjects who act upon others”, and the “ethics by which we constitute ourselves as moral agents” (hacking 2009, 14). according to hacking, his historical ontology would be close to what has been called “historical epistemology”, or, more specifically, to what he calls “historical metaepistemology”, since it is not about seeking foundations for knowledge (which the term “epistemology” often suggests, especially in english-speaking analytical philosophy), nor is it about proposing or refuting theories of knowledge, as bachelard would have done, using this label to qualify his studies. historical metaepistemology, as done by authors such as lorraine daston, takes as its object the epistemological concepts themselves, that is, the organizing ideas of the field of knowledge and science (that is, notions such as “truth”, “knowledge”, “objectivity”, “reason”, “fact”, etc.), considering them as historical objects, which change over time. where bachelard insisted that historical considerations are essential to the practice of epistemology, the historical metaepistemologist examines the trajectories of objects that play certain roles in thinking about knowledge and belief. (...) historical metaepistemology, thus understood, fits into the generalized concept of historical ontology that i am now developing (hacking 2009, 22). the main differences between the two, however, or what singularizes hacking’s philosophical project is, first, the fact that historical metaepistemology investigates the coming into existence of objects as objects of scientific inquiry, whereas his historical ontology “concerns objects, or their effects, which do not exist in any recognizable form until they are objects of scientific study” (hacking 2009, 23). if daston is interested in how certain phenomena and objects (such as atoms, tuberculosis bacilli, and centers of gravity, for example) come into existence and disappear as objects of scientific investigation, many of them certainly existed in the world long before they became objects for science. hacking, on the other hand, is interested in the very emergence of previously non-existent objects and phenomena, that is, not in the “coming into existence of objects of study, but in the coming into existence of objects, period” (hacking 2009, 23-24). moreover, and above all, his historical ontology must maintain a close connection with the three foucauldian axes of and ethics, which is evident in works such as the taming of chance (1990), rewriting the soul (1995), and mad travelers (1998). 22 the expression is taken from the text qu’est-ce que les lumières? [what is enlightenment?] (in: foucault 1994 [4], 562). heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 16 knowledge, power, and ethics. this being so, within the realm of science, there are many objects and phenomena that did not exist in the world in any form until they were forged by human knowledge and praxis. nonetheless, not all of them will be objects for historical ontology insofar as they do not fit these three axes, giving sight to some process of constituting ourselves – either as objects or subjects of knowledge, or as moral agents. the canadian philosopher gives an epistemological focus to the foucauldian expression “historical ontology” by saying that he wants to reflect on “how our naming practices interact with the things we name”, which could define him as a “dynamic nominalist”, or even “on the interactions between what exists (and what comes into existence) and our conceptions of it”, also being a “dialectical realist” (hacking 2009, 14).23 at the heart of this ontology is the thesis of the existence of what the author calls “deeplevel knowledge,” foucault’s savoir”: a framework within which surface assumptions acquired their meaning. savoir is not knowledge in the sense of a handful of solid propositions (...) [but] a postulated set of rules that determines what kinds of assertions will count as true or false in some domain (hacking 2009, 93). given this, it is evident how the notion of “styles of scientific reasoning” is tied to this foucauldian legacy. according to hacking, “whether or not a proposition is available as a candidate for being true-or-false depends on whether we have modes of reasoning about it” (hacking 2009, 180). these “modes of reasoning”, which have much in common with foucault’s “epistemological configurations”, emerge historically, which makes for different styles of scientific reasoning. “each of them came to the fore and came to maturity in its own time, in its own way” (hacking 2009, 180), and an important part of the canadian philosopher’s project is to understand these various types of reasoning used in the sciences. hacking lists six styles, following the historian of science alistair crombie:24 (1) the simple postulation established in the mathematical sciences; (2) the use of experiments, observation and measurement of observable relationships, or what he calls “laboratorystyle”; (3) the hypothetical construction of analogical models; (4) the ordering of variety by comparison and taxonomy; (5) the statistical analysis of regularities and the calculation of probabilities; and, (6) the historical derivation of genetic development. it is worth noting that among them are the statistical style studied in the emergence of probability and the classificatory/taxonomic style studied by foucault in ot. 23 some of these objects whose “coming to be of their own possibility” interested hacking, and which resulted in some of his books, are the concept of “psychic trauma”, whose emergence modifies our constitution of selves, the notion of “child development”, which organizes our thinking about children, as well as the very idea of “probability” already discussed, which “has totally modified our experience of the world” (hacking 2001, 2). in explaining the use of the term “ontology”, the author says he is interested in “everything we individuate and allow ourselves to talk about. this includes not only ‘material’ objects, but also classes, types of people, and, indeed, ideas” (hacking 2009, 14). “historical ontology is about the ways in which possibilities of choice, and of being, arise in history. it is not to be put in terms of grand abstractions, but in terms of the explicit formations in which we can constitute ourselves, formations whose trajectories can be plotted as clearly as those of trauma or child development, or, to a second degree, which can be followed more obscurely by larger organizing concepts such as objectivity or even facts themselves. historical ontology is not so much about character formation as it is about the space of possibilities for character formation that surrounds a person and creates the potentials for ‘individual experience’” (hacking 2009, 36). 24 hacking claims to have taken the term “style” from alistair crombie and adapted it to metaphysics and epistemology, changing the idea of “style of scientific thinking”, used by the historian, to that of reasoning. “the reason is that thinking is very much in the head. reasoning is done in public as well as privately: thinking, yes, but also talking, arguing, and showing” (hacking 2009, 202). heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 17 a style of reasoning introduces new ways of finding the truth, insofar as it defines its own criteria of proof and demonstration. “a style of reasoning is more than a set of techniques designed to bring out new kinds of facts, to integrate them into this universe in which we live, think, and act together. i argue that a style creates its truth criteria, it selfjustifies itself” (hacking 2001, 3). to say that the way a proposition points to truth or falsity depends on the style of reasoning appropriate to it is to say that, if there is no certain “configuration” of thought that allows us to elaborate a certain proposition and, above all, that offers us an appropriate way to verify it, it does not become possible. what matters for epistemology would then not be bivalence (determination of truth or falsity), but the fact that a proposition is available as a candidate for truth or falsity, that is, its condition of possibility. according to hacking, one is not denying the objectivity of scientific propositions by claiming that each style introduces the criteria that determine the truth conditions proper to the domains to which they apply, in other words, that the very thing that counts as objectivity is defined by the styles of reasoning we employ. but there is a germ of relativism there: “although which propositions are true may depend on the data, the fact that they are candidates to be true is a consequence of a historical event” (hacking 2009, 187), namely, the emergence of a certain style of reasoning corresponding to them. conclusion the notion of “style of scientific reasoning”, although influenced by several other authors, is strongly indebted to the central thesis of the order of things, according to which it is necessary to understand the conditions of possibility that allow certain objects to emerge for knowledge and for statements to be made about them, insofar as this process of formation also allows us to understand the epistemological configuration within which our thinking operates at the present moment – and thus also to modify it.25 in this text, we seek to show how this thesis is built in the foucauldian work linked to a central aspect of the archaeological method, which resides in the notion of “heterotopia,” forged by foucault to express the inherent spatiality of the knowledge process, as well as the need to create other possible orders to structure the history of our western knowledge. by denaturalizing the epistemological order space that is familiar to us, the heterotopic procedure reveals what is unconscious and arbitrary in this space, allowing us to understand the common background between objects and phenomena that seemed extrinsic to each other, as well as to highlight the difference and historical novelty where we saw only similarities and continuities. by appropriating this archaeological method, hacking not only demonstrates that it can be developed and applied to new objects, but also systematizes some of its main theses, demonstrating its relevance and potential for contemporary epistemology – such as the claim that it is the only method so far developed to deal with “immature science”, or the way his notion of “style of scientific reasoning” is indebted to the idea of “historical condition of possibility” of statements. the canadian philosopher’s historical ontology is distinguished in that it concerns objects that do not exist until they are objects of scientific study. these “entities that come to be (...) as objects of knowledge reveal new possibilities for human choice and action” 25 in this sense, hacking claims that the notion of “style of scientific reasoning” certainly leads to the inference that “there are other categories of possibilities beyond those that have emerged in our tradition” (hacking 2009, 196) and that “to compel people to reason in approved ways is to limit us and our potential for novelty” (hacking 2009, 183). “our general interest in truth and reason may well benefit from allowing other styles of reasoning to evolve in their own ways, freed by a more magnanimous kind of rationalism” (hacking 2009, 198). heterotopia as a reconstruction of the history of ideas: michel foucault’s archeology and its appropriation by ian hacking débora bráulio santos transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 12 (june) 2022 18 (hacking 2009, 16-17). if our discursive practices constitute the objects and rules of operation of our knowledge, the things and phenomena that exist or may come to exist depend on the possibilities we create to say and produce them, which allows us to state that it is, as in foucault, not only a historical epistemology, but also a political one. references borges, jorge luis. 1999. o idioma analítico de john wilkins. in: obras completas ii. são paulo: globo. dreyfus, hubert and paul rabinow. 1983. michel foucault, beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. chicago: the university of chicago press. foucault, michel. 2007. as palavras e as coisas: uma arqueologia das ciências humanas. trad. salma tannus muchail. 9. ed. são paulo: martins fontes. foucault, michel. 1994. des espaces outres. in: dits et écrits, vol. iv. paris: gallimard. foucault, michel. 1994. qu’est-ce que les lumières? in: dits et écrits, vol. iv. paris: gallimard. foucault, michel. 1994. préface à l’édition anglaise. in: dits et écrits, vol. ii. paris: gallimard. foucault, michel. 2013. o corpo utópico, as heterotopias. posfácio de daniel defert. trad. salma tannus muchail. são paulo: n-1 edições. foucault, michel. 1996. lectures pour tous, ina document, diffusion océaniques, fr3, 13.01.1988. gutting, gary. 1989. michel foucault’s archeology of scientific reason. cambridge: cambridge university press. hacking, ian. 2009. ontologia histórica. trad. leila mendes. são leopoldo, rs: unisinos. hacking, ian. 2006. the emergency of probability: a philosophical study of early ideas about probability, induction, and statistical inference. 2 ed. cambridge: cambridge university press. hacking, ian. 2001. philosophie et histoire des concepts scientifiques. leçon inaugurale, collège de france. available at: https://www.college-de-france.fr/media/ianhacking/upl7027195376715508431_le__on_inaugurale_hacking.pdf consulted june 2, 2022. sabot, philippe. 2006. lire les mots et les choses de michel foucault. paris: puf. sabot, philippe. 2016. dans les “archives” de l’archeologie. relire les mots et les choses aujourd’hui. revista aurora 28 (45): 747-766. topinka, robert. 2010. foucault, borges, heterotopia: producing knowledge in other spaces. foucault studies (9): 54-70. microsoft word lucena laranjeiras chiappin layout the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-19 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2023 – this is an open-access journal article the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6097-0066 cássio c. laranjeiras2 – http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4158-8077 j. r. n. chiappin3 – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3202-2274 abstract: this article revisits aspects of thermodynamics’ history by applying the cartesian conception of a machine to sadi carnot’s work. by defining mechanically geometric curves, descartes placed mechanical science at the centre of geometry and natural philosophy. with this, the autonomous machine a product of this science starts to correspond to an operational definition with the power to understand and generate new ideas in addition to a general explanation model. after nearly two centuries, carnot presented a reversible thermal machine theory mechanically inspired and defined operationally as an ideal model and represented it analogically. that addressed the problem of maximizing the production of motive power. although still limited in its ability to solve problems, it inaugurated a progressive sequence of representations with an ever-widening phenomenological reach. as suggested in this article, classical thermodynamics’ emergence and development correspond to a cartesian style theorization. keywords: carnot’s machine; heuristic of representation; descartes; mechanical geometry received: november 21, 2022. reviewed: april 10, 2023. accepted: june 02, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.11 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license ____________________________________________________________________________ introduction in general, works on the history of thermodynamics up to clausius highlight particular aspects of this area of physics. the debate about the nature of heat and the teleological character of entropy (callendar 1910, newburgh 2009, cardwell 1971, bernal 1953) are 1 jojomar lucena is a researcher in faculty of philosophy, languages and human sciences (fflch), university of são paulo (usp) address: rua do lago, 717, cidade universitária, são paulo, sp, cep: 05508080, brazil, e-mail: jojomarls@gmail.com 2 cássio c. laranjeiras is a professor of physics in the institute of physics at the university of brasilia – unb. address: campus universitário darcy ribeiro – asa norte, brasília – df, 70919-970, brazil. e-mail: cassio@unb.br 3 j. r. n. chiappin is a professor of economics in the department of economics at the university of são paulo – fea – usp. address: av. prof. luciano gualberto, 908 – butantã, são paulo – sp, 05.508-010, brazil. e-mail: chiappin@usp.br the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 examples where ontological aspects are at the core of the discussion. the role of technology and industry in the emergence and development of heat science and its relationship to human progress based on control over nature are other aspects traditionally addressed (cardwell 1971, bernal 1953). although the mathematical resources used and available in the 19th century to theorize in this field of physics usually appear in historical approaches (truesdell and bharatha 1977, erlichson 1999), few have explored the origins and the role of representation and its heuristics as an instrument of solving problems.4 the practical aspects are often contingent here. except for the work developed by mayer and joule on the equivalence between heat and mechanical work (joule 1884) which led to the abandonment of caloric theory -, such aspects seem to be in the background in thermodynamics when we compare them to concepts and models. a possible explanation is that thermodynamics was born (with carnot) as a field of idealizations in the cartesian sense. the so-called carnot reversible engine was the first and most important of these idealizations. regarding the relationship between industry and science, especially during the development of heat science, bernal makes a generalization stating that “all physical science throughout the 19th century depended entirely on the support and largely on the inspiration of industry” (bernal 1953, 5). indeed, industry inspired the developing science of heat, raising questions and proposing ideas. nevertheless, this differs from claiming that external factors completely shaped thermodynamics’ formal and conceptual content until the 19th century. science had a certain autonomy to develop its theories.5 the industrial age and the new technological demands connected with it inspired and favoured the development of thermodynamics. there are other ways to address this issue. here, we want to frame it according to the cartesian conception regarding the relationship between science and technology (or industry). yet, although this conception may be of interest mainly to philosophy and the history of science, this approach brings to light a theorizing dynamic that interests science. it expresses its ways of representing problems, inseparable from its solving patterns. especially in physics, this way of theorizing establishes the heuristic range (heuristic power) of a theory and explains why the extension of this range and the incorporation of new phenomena or alternative descriptions to the original approach change the representational substrate. first, we will understand the relationship between industry (and its technical and technology surrogates6) and science in the period when the ideal of mechanization emerged, that is, in the way descartes understood it. the cartesian notion of a mechanized geometry the mathesis universalis project presented by descartes in the 17th century is traditionally understood as a synonym for the mathematization of knowledge. however, in the last few 4 representations and their heuristics are the core of a research program coordinated by one of the authors of this paper. 5 leon rosenfeld historian of science, physicist, and philosopher, with a marxist bias similarly argues that we cannot underestimate the role of artisans in the development of science. however, he criticizes bernal for his tendency towards marxist-leninist dogmatism, which can only discredit the cause of historical materialism (jacobsen 2012, 230,232). 6 in the present context, these terms are equivalent, and, given the cartesian framework of the problem, they are considered synonyms for ars. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 decades, a series of works have shown the other side of this program (arnatu 2017, burnett 2005, gauvin 2006, ribe 1997), from the analysis of its evolution initially due to the renaissance metaphor according to which the craftsman, like plato’s demiurge, would order the world according to a principle that would be intrinsic to him, namely, his ordered soul (âme réglée). this evolution was motivated by descartes’ disappointment with the artisans of his time, including jean ferrier, who failed to implement his design for a machine to produce hyperbolic lenses. in descartes’ eyes, the artisans’ souls were not so ordered and required rigorous training in the logic of practice. in this context, the autonomous machine replaces the renaissance metaphor as a scientifically determined problem-solving rule where (arbitrary) human intervention is not required. therefore, the cartesian proposal involves the alienation of the artisans’ hands and the complete automation of mechanics (gauvin 2006, 196-199). the basis for this review of the role of mechanical art in the cartesian system is the redefinition of geometric curves. according to descartes, the greek (ancient) classification of “geometric curves” concerned only those lines whose traces resulted from the use of the ruler and compass. the curves, whose features required other instruments, received the classification of “mechanics”.7 therefore, the mesolabe, the nemenesis’ instrument, and the dercles compass generated mechanical curves. however, descartes saw no sense in this classification criterion, as he considered all of these instruments to be machines: i am surprised, however, that they did not go further, and distinguish between different degrees of those more complex curves, nor do i see why they called the latter mechanical, rather than geometrical. if we say that they are called mechanical because some sort of instrument has to be used to describe them, then we must, to be consistent, reject circles and straight lines, since these cannot be described on paper without the use of compasses and a ruler, which may also be termed instruments. (descartes 1996, vi, 315) there are two moments in the above process: 1. the redefinition of geometric curves incorporating machines in their generation and thus, including mechanics as a science in the scope of geometry; 2. since it is not the intervention of an instrument that establishes the distinction between curves, it is necessary to proceed with the characterization of movement of instrument that results in one or another curve. it seems very clear to me that if (as is customary) we consider geometrical that which is precise and exact, and mechanical that which is not, and if we consider geometry as the science that furnishes a general knowledge of the measures of all bodies, we have no more right to exclude the more composite lines than the simpler ones, provided that one can imagine them as described by a continuous motion or by several motions that follow each other, and of which the last ones are completely regulated by those that precede. (descartes 1996, vi, 389) the acceptable movements that generate geometric curves must be continuous and successive, each one completely controlling its successor. the action is similar to those obtained by an autonomous machine where the gears are interconnected, and the 7 descartes was careful and synthetic in this classification because he recognized the greeks’ lack of clarity and unanimity (bos 1081, 1986, 1998; crippa 2014, merli 2016). the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 movement of one determines the others’ movement and the movement of the entire mechanism or system. at both moments, the geometry is mechanized, either by introducing a machine to define curves or by specifying the type of appropriate movement the machine must perform. a machine that performs this type of movement works as an autonomous machine. it is worth mentioning that the continuous and orderly movement that governs the operation of machines generating geometric curves also characterizes the logical movement of the cartesian method itself. according to burnett, the excellent operations of reason are said to involve a continuous motion of truthtransfer by means of discrete stages in the order of reasons (…) the steps of this reasoning, like the geometry in which they are rooted, are ground in the deep metaphor of the machine, a mental model that follows mechanical guidelines. (burnett 2005, 34) like the method, our minds must incorporate this autonomous machine as a system of relationships between discrete and clearly defined parts. as a mental model, the matter that constitutes it is not physical but a pure extension, in the cartesian style. the composition of extension and movement that explains the law of refraction in dioptrique, the movement of the stars in the sky in meteors, also explains the generation of geometric curves in geometry.8 however, there is a difference here: res extensa is not the shape of a small sphere used to model light as it passes from one medium to another but “an ordered series of relationships between discrete parts, following one another exactly and ordered to an end” (burnett 2005, 39). going back to geometry, accuracy a necessary condition for scientific knowledge is no longer a mere synonym of simplicity expressed in the possibility of drawing curves with a ruler and compass. it is associated with continuous movements ordered constructively, modelable and executable by an autonomous machine. this reification of geometry occurs by mechanization, and the resulting geometry is mechanized. although mechanical art is at the heart of geometry, the mechanisms that implement this mechanization are not physical; they are not physical machines; they are not linked to the possibility of building the mechanisms that implement these curves but rather to the ability to imagine such means. it is not the physical machines that define the geometric curves but the idea of a machine. to put it in another way, the mechanical systems for drawing curves occupy a new place in descartes’ geometry: instead of being merely tools for generating dilapidated appearances of ideal curves, the machine is re-conceived precisely as an ideal system that generates our ideas. (burnett 2005, 33) philosophically, to assert that a system generates ideas means to say that it is an epistemological instrument with heuristic value. this is the case with machines in the cartesian conception. it is in this sense that we interpret the carnot machine. in the simplest case, we do not need to define a circumference as the set of points equidistant from a centre but by the movement of a compass with one fixed end and another rotating 360 degrees. thus, we can specify the circumference and the other geometric curves by their properties and genesis, the latter related to the instrument that traces the curve. 8 dioptrics, meteors, and geometry are essays published as annexes to descartes’ discourse on the method. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 there are two ways of expressing the same quantity: 1. highlighting its intrinsic properties, the relationships between the curve’s points, and another element (such as a point, a line, a plane, etc.). for example, an ellipse (a closed plane generated by a point moving in such a way that the sum of its distance from two fixed points is a constant); 2. second, by genesis, the generating machine operates in continuous movement. its neatly arranged parts regulate and create the line whose set of points corresponds to a geometric curve (an ellipse, according to the present example). we can still speak of a third way of expressing this quantity: by the curve equation. although without providing any proof, for descartes, every acceptable geometric curve has an algebraic representation. subsequently, the existence or not of an equation becomes the criterion for establishing the distinction between geometric and transcendental curves, proposed by leibniz (bos 1981). this third way of expressing a quantity is not independent of the previous ones. in descartes, the algebrization of curves requires introducing the unit to reinterpret the product of line segments as another line segment, regardless of whether it is the product of two, three, or more segments. until then, the effect of the multiplying of two line segments constituted an area; of three, a volume; more than that, it had no geometric sense. at first glance, this might seem like a degeometrization, considering the geometry that prevailed until that moment. descartes had something more significant in mind: to create a new geometry, an analytic geometry, without which it is impossible to establish the general connection between algebraic and geometric curves. when we think of algebraic equations representing curves, we are in a space that is no longer neither geometry nor algebra. according to this procedure, algebra is reframed by geometry and vice versa, resulting in a fusion with new heuristic resources. these features allowed descartes to solve some classic problems that lasted for centuries; pappu’s problem is an example (descartes 1996, vi, 37779). underlying the possibility of representing the same object differently is the analysis of heuristic resources specific to each of these representations. in the endless task of problem solving, science seeks alternative representations that provide more adequate tools. descartes highlighted this strategy by formulating geometric problems through equations, solving them algebraically, and returning to geometry. so, in this context, there are three ways to represent a quantity: based on its genesis, property, or equation. however, it is essential to consider that representations are not just symbolic systems that express the elements of knowledge but incorporate a heuristic or operating system that aims to expand that system’s problem-solving capabilities. as noted, algebraic representation (equations in the conceptual space of analytic geometry), by merging elements and features of geometry and algebra, is the way that offers more tools to solve problems.9 such is the power of algebraic representation that descartes proposes a method to solve any geometric problem in this space. first, an equation represents the problem, whose solution is its algebraic answer. then, we return to pure geometry to order the elements (lines, segments, circles, conics, etc.) according to the solution found, which corresponds to the construction of the proof (bos 1986). this highlights the historical relevance of geometric problems in mathematics. in ancient geometry, heuristic resources to solve such problems were scarce, leaving them almost always open. descartes refers to this by stating that the 9 it is essential to maintain the distinction between mechanized geometry and analytic geometry, although both are syntheses proposed by descartes. the first refers to the resources (machines) used to delineate and define curves. the second is equivalent to the new space (cartesian), which corresponds to a quantity’s algebraic and geometric representation. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 ancients did not have a general method of solving problems of this nature. in particular, faced with pappus’ problems, that is, an indeterminate problem whose infinitely many solutions form a one-dimensional locus, descartes develops an algorithm solution that describes the problem geometrically and assumes it to be solved. then, as analytic geometry allows the algebraic translation of geometric structures, the geometric characteristics or properties of the problem are algebraically expressed. these algebraic expressions combine known and unknown quantities, and then the unknown is isolated and determined in terms of the known. if there is more than one unknown, the number of equations available determines whether the solution consists of a point or a set of points, such as a plane curve, etc. having found the solution, we return to geometry and arrange the elements (points, lines, arcs of circles, etc.) as determined by algebra (descartes 1925, 21-30, bos 1996, 313-325). without analytic geometry understood as a set of translation rules between geometry and algebra the combination of its elements is done by trial and error, and there is no method (algorithm) that leads to the solution (descartes 1925, 17). in this sense, we argue that a representation has greater heuristic power when it has more and better tools for problem-solving. however, geometry and algebra alone, although less heuristically effective, have their relevance and interest, especially if we look at the problem from a historical perspective according to which the evolution or alteration of concepts, operations, arguments, and methods, in general, change from more concrete figures to more abstract forms. this mathematical outcome is fraught with consequences for the cartesian system and for physics in general. we intend to explore this second consequence here, using the thermodynamics of carnot’s thermal machine as an example. first, we formulate carnot’s problem the construction of the heat engine that produces the most significant possible amount of driving force from the movement of caloric. as we will have the opportunity to clarify, the mechanical reduction of this heat engine enables its regular continuity, where the action of the caloric entirely controls the operating cycle. then, the protagonist is clapeyron, who performs the mathematization of the theory through the diagrammatic representation of carnot’s machine. lastly concerning the mentioned analogy diagramming provides the inference of fundamental laws (expressed algebraically) that allow us to deduce experimental laws and rationally explain physical phenomena. however, the return to previous representations of the theory does not aim to build the solutions found algebraically, neither in diagrams nor by mechanisms. it does not seek to complete any logical movement, such as the geometric proof of the algebraic solution. physics does not need such logical cohesion. the objective is to alter, create and abandon concepts and thus reinterpret phenomena. additional clarifications are necessary before moving on to the main topic. it is relevant to point out that, according to descartes, the machines used to illustrate geometric curves’ were not material but only ideas of machines. thus, on the one hand, the problems and defects in the execution of machine designs proposed by descartes do not directly affect his project. on the other hand, this same characteristic explains why descartes’ projects were not carried out satisfactorily in the particular case of lens making: his idea of the machine could not be translated into a material object because wood, horn, and string did not behave like the mental matter that descartes set in motion in his mind (burnett 2005, 64). in fact, his hyperbolic lens-polishing machine was a product of mechanized geometry, but neither ferrier nor huygens carried out the project.10 10 in a letter dated september 8, 1837, huygens asked descartes to send him a small treatise on mechanics’ fundamentals, illustrated with some instruments. in october of that same year, descartes replied with the description of six simple machines (descartes 1996, i, 435-447), whose association the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 and even with the implementation of a machine like this, its result would not imply, as descartes expected, an increase in telescopes and microscopes capacity. the defects in the formation of images that the hyperbolic lenses promised to correct would arise again due to the chromatic aberrations explained by newton in his theory of light. then, attention turned again to the spherical lenses. this event meant the artisans’ revenge due to their refusal to submit practice to theory (burnett 2005, 120 -121). for the above, one should not ignore the fruitfulness of descartes’ dream. it is undeniable, according to this reinterpretation, especially from dioptrique, that, for example, knowledge of the law of refraction opened up the (theoretical) possibility not only of correcting defects in human vision but of increasing its potency, both for considerable distances and to tiny dimensions through hyperbolic lenses. the analysis of human vision through the law of refraction provides descartes with the horizons for its improvement, leading him to conclude that natural and artificial organs are functionally equivalent but with different evolutionary reach (ribe 1997, 55). nature, exemplified in the human vision, needs improvement according to rational rules established by science; that is, nature is perfectible both in the search for the correction of defects concerning its normal functioning and in the enhancement of its power. modern revaluation of science is precisely that: natural human organs have evolved to provide adaptation to the environment and the survival of the species, which, in the first stages, is not yet in possession of scientific knowledge and, therefore, is subjugated to nature. artificial organs, projected from scientific knowledge and which result in a further increase of it, put humankind in the leading position over nature. technology, in this scenario, must therefore be seen as an applied mathematical science (arnãtu 2017, 108). here there is a clear break from the previous historical period. indeed, “for scholasticism, mechanics is a combination of geometry and physics, but geometry and physics are profoundly distinct, studying different realms” (aunãtu 2017, 116). however, in modernity, this distinction is abandoned and perfectly expressed in galileo’s claim that mathematics is the language of nature. in the period between the end of scholasticism and the beginning of modernity, the power of this assertion led to the fusion between mathematics and physics and the perception that “physics is coextensive with mathematics, the principles of geometry and pure mathematics being the principles of physics, and thus the principles of the entire cartesian natural philosophy” (arnãtu 2017, 117). descartes summarizes this idea: “my entire physics is nothing but geometry (…) my entire physics is nothing but mechanics” (descartes 1996, ii, 268). therefore, technology as applied science is indebted to geometry and mechanics: mechanics as a machine idea generated by geometry (mechanics = geometry = physics = science) is equal to knowledge and capable of generating knowledge. in descartes, mechanics is elevated to a status of science and not only of application as occurred in the medieval aristotelian tradition. but, these two meanings remain in descartes: mechanics as science and mechanics as technology. what makes mechanics a science is its identification with physics and mathematics, from which springs its ability to explain natural phenomena. differently, when descartes refers to the division of knowledge and puts mechanics on the same level as medicine and ethics, he means mechanics as applied science, a technology (aunãtu 2017, 117). this argument does not intend to misrepresent descartes’s ideas in this matter (gauvin 2006, 201). on the contrary, he is even more radical in stating “we are not sufficiently accustomed to thinking of machines, and this has been the source of nearly all error in philosophy” (descartes 1996, v, 174). results in more complex machines, such as an apparatus for polishing hyperbolic lenses, which he had proposed to ferrier in 1629 (descartes 1996, vi, 218). the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 using the demiurge image replaced by the man himself organizing everything according to an idea of a machine the primordial chaos is transformed into order according to it. this is not foreign to the universe that, like a machine, is composed of matter (descartes 1996, v, 546). the cartesian mechanism contains, at its base, extension, and movement combined mechanically, according to the idea of a machine, which orders the system while expressing the relationship between the parts and their respective movements. while affirming that “having mechanized his geometry by defining curves in mechanical terms, he came to believe that he could construct a machine out of his geometry” (burnett 2005, 34), descartes not only embarks on a project realizing the two-way street between geometry and mechanics poles that remain separate and independent -, but he accounts for the original synthesis of his mechanized geometry. renaissance appreciation attributed to leonardo da vinci according to which those who are enchanted with practice without science are like helmsmen who enter the ship without a tiller or compass, never being sure of their destination by way of mechanized geometry and its operability in the explanation of the natural phenomena: the cartesian project aims to explain, among other things, natural phenomena as the operation of science conceived machines understood as a synonym for geometry or physics or mechanics. this conceptual and historical picture is relevant to understanding modernity’s peculiarities, besides illustrating and illuminating some episodes of science development. in particular, is the case of thermodynamics and the role that sadi carnot’s theory plays in it. from the industrial point of view, his reversible thermal machine was not even made because it was considered a theoretical delusion. however, as a theoretical representation capable of generating ideas, it was an instrument that aggregated and ordered the concepts related to engineering and heat science, not only of the time but afterward, with unparalleled fertility in the history of physics. it is precisely this aspect that we intend to elucidate here. carnot’s thermal machine until the mid-1960s, sadi carnot was believed to be an isolated figure, a singular case in the history of science who inexplicably leaped two and a half decades ahead of his time. the historians of science thomas kuhn and d. s. l. cardwell11 were the ones who contributed most decisively to the revision of this idea, noting the debt carnot owed to the writings of the time on energy engineering practice (fox 2014). from james watt (1736-1819), for example, carnot took the principle of the production of motive power through the expansion of steam and the need for a separate condenser which, in the ideal engine, transforms into the cold body or heat reservoir. this last technical detail enabled him to implement the condition of maximum production of motive power by analogy with the hydraulic machine. the context of this analogy exports the concept of reversibility to the science of heat. carnot had learned this very idea of an ideal hydraulic mechanism that transfers all the power from falling water into a driving force from the works of his father, lazare carnot (1753-1823)12. carnot’s merit and genius brought all these 11 cardwell's central aim in “from watt to clausius” is to criticize the idea that “science was established in the 17th century and that everything that followed this period was stacked up almost automatically, as an inevitable progress, thanks to the application of the scientific method in the framework established by newton” (cardwell 1971, p xi). he does not take into account, however, that another personality of the 17th century also formulated an even more comprehensive theory of science, in which thermodynamics does not appear as a foreign body in a sense we will show here. 12 according to gillespie and pisano, there was a respectful and substantive relationship between the work of father and son. sadi applied the analysis that his father had developed in his study of ordinary the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 elements together in a coherent argument (cardwell 1971, 192-200). these principles and practices were not only part of the general heritage in the field of power engineering of the era, but the central question carnot sought to answer in his réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propres à développer cette puissance and also belonged to this scope of technological knowledge (carnot 2005, 6). however, the method and the intention he applied, enabled him to develop a theory that led to the establishment of a new science, thermodynamics. but the rationalization of heat engines required the adoption of a conception of the nature of heat. in carnot’s time, heat was predominantly seen as a substance, called the caloric, which could not be created or destroyed, nor transformed into mechanical work or in what we recognize today as other forms of energy. to this extent, heat engines did not turn heat into work or vice-versa; they didn’t transform anything! this point is crucial. for carnot, heat engines functioned as a carrier of the caloric, communicating heat from a source to a reservoir, maintained at different temperatures. it is against this background that we should read the statement that the production of motive power is then due not to the actual consumption of caloric, but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body. this expresses carnot’s commitment to the substantial theory of heat in réflexions.13 the machine must receive heat from the hot source and transmit it to the cold source (reservoir) using an intermediate substance. then along with the substance, the machine is moved away from the hot source and brought into contact with the reservoir. at this point, the substance transfers heat to the reservoir. continuing the process, the cycle is repeated, responding to a requirement of continuous operation. the generalization of the circumstance of power production lets carnot state: wherever there exists a difference of temperature, motive power can be produced. reciprocally, wherever we can consume this power, it is possible to produce a difference of temperature, it is possible to occasion destruction of equilibrium in the caloric (carnot 2005, 9). it is in this context that carnot recognizes that a necessary condition for the maximum production of mechanical work is that “in the bodies employed to realize the motive power of heat there should not occur any change of temperature which may not be due to a change of volume” (carnot 2005, 13). this condition, which we will call assumption 1 or principle of expansion, is inspired by watt’s expansion law and immediately becomes a principle: [this condition] “should never be lost sight of in the construction of heat engines; it is its fundamental basis. if it cannot be strictly observed, it should at least be departed from as little as possible” (carnot 2005, 13). in fact, if the engine and the source are at the same temperature during contact, the transferred caloric would lead to the expansion of the working fluid without increasing its temperature. another thing is that, since every re-establishment of equilibrium in the caloric may be the cause of the production of motive power, every re-establishment of equilibrium which shall be accomplished without production of this power should be considered as an actual loss. now, very little reflection would show that all change of temperature which is not due machines' operation to the functioning of heat engines. specifically, sadi's idea of a reversible process originated in his father's use of geometric motions in the analysis of machines in general (gillespie and pisano 2014). 13 for convenience, in this article, power, motive power, driving force and mechanical effect are all similar expressions of what is today understood as mechanical work. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 to a change of volume of the bodies can be only a useless re-establishment of equilibrium in the caloric. (carnot 2005, 12-13) the connection between temperature variation and volume variation with the consequent production of motive force enables the conception of a heat machine from a mechanical machine. in other words, assumption 1 implements the mechanization of the heat engine, in the cartesian sense, which is different from reducing the science of heat to newtonian mechanics since the temperature variation is said to be equivalent to the variation in volume: it generates one variation from the other and vice versa: the temperature variation is not reduced to the volume variation. if this were the case, the former could be excluded and described as the most fundamental variable. but it is not. the phenomenology of the heat engine cannot do without the concept of temperature and its variation. according to our understanding, this mechanization is cartesian. by demanding such a close link between variations in temperature and volume, carnot parameterizes the thermodynamic quantity par excellence by a quantity translatable as an extension. thus, the temperature variation starts to be manipulated by continuous movements of clearly defined discrete parts, understood not as physical but as geometric parts. therefore, mental modelling under mechanical guidelines is analogous to that of descartes’ lens-polishing machine. similar to how the fusion of geometry and algebra gave rise to analytic geometry, which has properties and resources that the parts in isolation did not have, the fusion of thermology and mechanics (geometricized mechanics) engenders a new area of knowledge with its laws: thermodynamics. therefore assumption 1 is the (scientific) principle that should guide the construction of the thermal machine and establishes a heat science geometrized by the equivalence between temperature and volume variation. but, the above-stated principle is an idealization, and it is impossible to avoid such waste in a real machine. when these processes are represented mechanically, assumption 1 requires that the piston container be removed from the source after the isothermal expansion and continue to expand adiabatically until the temperature drops to a value equal to the reservoir; only then are the two brought into contact. therefore, the condition that the caloric transfer entails just a variation in the working fluid’s volume also imposes limits on the adiabatic expansion or contraction of the fluid. however, this second phase of expansion occurs because of inertia: the isothermal transfer of heat during contact of the source with the engine produces an expansive movement in the volume due to the substantial nature of the caloric, that tends to continue even after the removal of the container. when the temperature drops to the reservoir value, the container is in contact with the latter. a volume contraction will occur from then on with the transfer of caloric from the working fluid to the reservoir. but what amount of caloric is allowed to flow in this direction? here the caloric theory is of use once again. the quantity is precisely the one transferred to the machine by the source. this way, the amount of heat in the working fluid at the end of the isothermal contraction movement is identical to the initial state before contact with the heat source. the container is then removed from the reservoir. still, its volume will continue contracting adiabatically, causing an increase in temperature until a final value, which, given the system’s initial condition, is the temperature of the heat source. carnot’s engine operates this way (carnot 2005, 10,18). engineering is not the source for the operations that intercalate the isothermal processes and allow for the cycle’s closing. in 1816, the engineer robert stirling patented a closed cycle machine where two isometric processes intersperse the isothermal processes. carnot was unaware of this work (mendoza 1976, 180). like the carnot engine, the stirling engine also satisfies assumption 1, showing that this principle can be cyclically schematized the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 in other ways. it is a principle subject to a diversity of mechanical schematizations.14 the important thing is that the increase in volume implies a precise and unique drop in the temperature of the working fluid, corresponding to the temperature of the heat reservoir. this link makes the system reversible: variation in volume generates a temperature change; conversely, the same change in temperature produces an identical shift in volume. back to the intercalation of isotherms by adiabatics, the source refers more to the theory of gases. according to robert fox, carnot introduced the adiabatic processes that interspersed the isothermal dilation and contraction under the influence of clément and desormes, whom he knew personally. they calculated the motive power produced by an adiabatic process, assuming that steam would obey the law of mariotte and gay-lussac (fox 2014, 242-245). clément, desormes, carnot, and others inaugurated and established a way of studying steam engines that was detached from strictly technological activity. for example, in his analysis of the principle of expansion, hachette, whose works were widely known in france in 1820, considers the immediate problems of engineering practice particularly. that is, those relating to the functioning of actual heat engines and not those in ideal conditions. clément, desormes, and carnot, seem to consolidate a tradition in which the abstract style of carnot’s treatment of an idealized engine was by no means out of place: when clément, navier and charles dupin noted the huge disparity between their predictions and the actual performance of the engines they were discussing, they did so with no sense of failure, for like carnot, but unlike hachette, for example, they were seeking to define a theoretical maximum which they knew was unattainable (fox 2014, 166-167). their intention was scientific, but carnot was the first to propose its complete scientific rationalization. his rationalization of steam engines serves as the cartesian stratagem for reducing the unknown to the known. it is the understanding of the heat engine as a mechanical machine that produces motive power as a water wheel would from dropping water.15 in the hydraulic engine, the motive power produced depends on the amount of water and the height of the fall. analogically, in the heat engine, the production of motive power depends on the quantity and on the height of the drop or transport of the caloric, which is the difference in temperature between the source and the heat reservoir.16 by reversing the operation of the water wheel, meanwhile, it is possible to raise water to its original height. so by performing work on the heat engine, it is possible to return the caloric to the heat source. in other words, according to carnot, the ideal heat engine must be reversible. as such, two of these engines can be coupled, one working in one direction and the other in the reverse one; whatever the first produces in motive power, the second one uses to return caloric to the heat source, resulting in a continuous movement, but without production of mechanical work external to the coupled system. although assumption 1 already indicates the possibility of reversibility, the analogy 14 although conceived before the carnot engine, the stirling engine was not presented as a machine that maximizes the production of mechanical work; this conceptual achievement is carnot’s merit. 15 lazare carnot, the father of sadi carnot, presents a reversible hydraulic machine in (lazare 1803). as a military engineer and mathematician, he continues cartesian project and offers mathematical formulations of general principles that govern the operation of mechanical machines. even in this sense, the link between sadi carnot and the cartesian project is very close machines. 16 according to this analogy, the caloric plays the role of the water substance whose quantity is conserved. differently, in the energy paradigm, the heat must be associated with an accidental quality of water that is partially transferred to the wheel. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 12 with the mechanical machine allows the concept of reversibility to be imported into the heat engine. besides, the reversibility is equivalent to the admission of perpetual-motion-type systems. this is not a problem for carnot, as it was also not for mechanics even before newton’s principia. this way, the answer to the question about how much caloric can be recovered from the reservoir by applying a certain amount of motive power becomes simple: the same amount that, flowing, would produce this motive power. in heat engines, reversibility follows as a result of the principle of least waste; that is, in the substances used for creating motive power from heat, there is no change in temperature other than the one due to a volume change. in this ideal regime, it is possible to manipulate the values of one of these variables (temperature or volume) using exclusively the other as a control variable. in a nutshell, reversibility meets the requirement for the operating scheme of the ideal thermal engine, inspired by a mechanical machine, which is irreversible but taken purposely as reversible. the question about the role of the working fluid in the ideal engine arises. with the theoretical substrate at hand, this question is settled quickly. the coupling of two reversible machines the first one functioning to produce motive power from caloric transport and the second one using the motive power of the former and returning caloric to the heat source allows for the (ideal) implementation of a perpetual motor where neither an external motive force to the coupling is produced, nor caloric is accumulated at the source or in the reservoir. but if the efficiency of the reversible heat engine depends on the nature of the working fluid employed, one case or another may occur because the use of a better-working fluid could further improve the efficiency of the reversible heat engine. in his réflexions, carnot emphasizes only the case of the unlimited production of motive power, presenting the following conclusion: this would be not only perpetual motion but an unlimited creation of motive power without consumption either of caloric or any other agent whatever. such a conception is entirely contrary to ideas now accepted, to the laws of mechanics and sound physics. it is inadmissible. we should then conclude that the maximum of motive power resulting from the employment of steam is also the maximum of motive power realizable by any means whatever. (carnot 2005, 11-12) this conclusion is commonly expressed by stating that the carnot machine has the highest efficiency among all thermal machines. this argument is not based on efficiency as the quotient between the energy obtained and the energy supplied, but on the prohibition of unlimited creation of motive power. in principle, his commitment to the caloric theory would not allow him to follow this path since the quantities involved in this quotient are of a different nature. however, clapeyron, either by mistake or audacity, proposed this quotient and gave rise to the process of the mathematization of carnot’s theory. the level of detail in the previous paragraphs sought, among other things, to emphasize the scientific assumption used by carnot in the construction of his theory and characterize it according to the mechanization of knowledge proposed by descartes. in addition to the expansion principle, which is presented below according to carnot’s formulation, there are still three other principles: (1) that any temperature variation occurs as a result of the variation in volume; (2) the analogy with the hydraulic machine and (3) the prohibition of unlimited creation of motive power without consumption of either caloric or any other agent. these assumptions articulate the theory of a heat engine’s maximum production of motive power and establish the reversible machine as a thermodynamics principle. a heat engine of mechanical inspiration is now at the heart of the science of heat: it is, indirectly, the mechanization of that science, as we will justify better in the next section. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 13 from this viewpoint, the carnot machine generates knowledge by bringing a phenomenology of the generation of driving force through the transport of caloric. it is an extension of the caloric theory. in parallel, this level of detail also allows us to analyze the logical role of the caloric hypothesis in carnot’s theory. according to klaster, the hesitant use of caloric theory by carnot only comes to light when reading his letters and manuscripts (klaster 1976). although rarely mentioned in reflexions, the adoption of the caloric theory is explicit. it is part of the argument that leads to the enunciation of the ideal heat engine principle. this principle states there is no heat engine operating between the exact temperatures of the source and the reservoir that can have a better performance than the carnot engine. furthermore, every heat engine with a reversible operating cycle is an ideal engine that maximizes power output. given the subsequent development of the science of heat, the above principle would be the second law of thermodynamics in carnot’s version. his first law, in turn, would not be that of conservation of energy, since he had not conceived the equivalence between heat and work, but that of the conservation of caloric. the combination of both principles results in the theorem: “the motive power of heat is independent of the agents employed to realize it; its quantity is fixed solely by the temperatures of the bodies between which is effected, finally, the transfer of the caloric” (carnot 2005, 20). the agent responsible for producing motive power is the working fluid. and since motive power is dependent only on the movement of caloric, (...) when a gas passes without change of temperature from one definite volume and pressure to another volume and another pressure equally definite, the quantity of caloric absorbed or relinquished is always the same, whatever may be the nature of the gas chosen as the subject of the experiment. (carnot 2005, 22) mathematically, the caloric theory allows us to identify the quantity of heat of a body as a property, that is, to describe it as a state function (lervig 1976). following carnot’s reasoning, there is no doubt that caloric theory plays a role in his work of aligning engineering with the theory of gases and watt’s principle in the form of an ideal heat engine. this fact reinforces the impression that réflexions can be an analysis regarding the nature of heat and its application in the conceptualization of a heat engine. finally, the conclusion is that the nature of heat is such that its transport from a hot body to a cold one can result in the production of motive power, which is maximized under the condition of reversibility of the operating sequence of the heat engine. in this scheme, the independence of the engine’s efficiency concerning the nature of the working fluid finally becomes necessary. analyzing the relationship between work and heat in the context of steam engines required incorporating a theory about the heat. although the theory chosen by carnot in réflexions was abandoned two decades later and replaced by the mechanical interpretation, it works as an auxiliary hypothesis in the set of principles (1), (2), and (3). as an auxiliary hypothesis, the caloric can be replaced by another hypothesis without abandoning carnot’s theory. initially, not everyone understood the logical link between carnot’s heat engine theory and the caloric. heat theory imposes an interpretation on the nature of the operation of the heat engine. if one adopts the caloric theory, the engine is interpreted as a heat conveyor pump, which carries heat from a source to a reservoir. this is, moreover, carnot’s interpretation. if one subscribes to energetic theory, the machine works by converting one type of energy, heat, into another, mechanical work. the auxiliary hypothesis regarding the heat theory sheds an interpretative light on the general argument of the ideal heat engine. the engine must be a conveyor or converter because, as an engine, its operation needs to be specified, the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 14 and to this end, a heat theory with its metaphysics and phenomenology must be engaged. in other words, the theory of heat provides semantics to the heat engine. without that, the thermal machine is pure syntax. in this sense, truesdell’s attempt to operationally build classical thermodynamics from simple and natural assumptions about heat engines developed by simple and rigorous mathematics, with no physical arguments and no appeal to metaphysics, following the axiomatic thermodynamics of carathéodory, has been fallacious from the beginning, since he considers the thermal machine to be a convert. metaphysics, which he says is unnecessary, quietly underlies the thermal machine’s operability (truesdell and bharatha 1977, 578). the analogic representation of the carnot machine of the three cartesian modes of representing a quantity, in the genesis mode, the machine operationally defines a curve and then realizes it as an idea in the realm of mechanized geometry. the concept of a geometric curve, following the idea of an autonomous machine, must be incorporated into our minds as a system of relationships between discrete and clearly defined parts (burnett 2005, 33, 39). this system of relationships must be such that each movement determines its subsequent one. it is not enough for the machine components to be connected. it is necessary that, in this mechanism, the pieces move relatively according to a specific order of successive determinations. the carnot engine, due to the constraint that no temperature variation does not result from volume variation illustrated in the previous section -, makes the thermal engine that works according to this constraint (principle 1) correspond to a system of relationships between discrete and clearly defined parts: the movement (the change in the volume of the container) initiated with the caloric transfer is continued (following principle 1) until the fluid temperature reaches the value of that of the reservoir. the expansion is interrupted due to contact with the reservoir, and then the contraction is started. thus, the first movement produced by the caloric transfer is orderly regulated, the later movements being defined by the previous ones according to the rule imposed by principle 1: movement of the caloric moves the volume of the container; the volume variation generates a drop in temperature and the contact with the reservoir with the restart of the caloric movement but now with a decrease in the volume of the container, and so on until the system returns to its initial conditions. the fact that the role of water in a water wheel inspires the action of caloric in the carnot engine contributes to the mechanical understanding of the element that controls the ordered sequence of movements of the parts that make up the machine. although invisible and subtle, the action of caloric to initiate and determine the movements of the piston of the container that contains the working fluid is real and sensitive. it is as if the first movement of caloric univocally generates, following the constraint of principle 1, the following movements until the system returns to its initial state. this is the meaning of the analogy: machines that generate acceptable curves correspond to clearly defined discrete parts in which their movements are regulated; in the carnot engine, components (furnace, container with working fluid and piston, heat reservoir) of heat engines move by the transfer of heat governed by principle 1. following his argument when carnot establishes the analogy with the hydraulic machine (principle 2), importing the notion of reversibility and implementing a reversible heat engine and, finally, stating that mechanical work does not arise from anything (principle 3) the property that makes his machine the most efficient is reversibility. by emphasizing this property, a study can be carried out in which the heat engine components become unnecessary. components or discrete parts and their movements, mechanisms, and structures disappear when the machine is reduced to its reversible cycle, referring to the the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 15 sequence of pressure and volume values the gas is subjected to. as the set of points equidistant from a central point or the drawing made with a compass provide us with the characterization and geometric properties of a circle, the reversibility or diagrammatic representation of the values of pressure and volume of the substance along an operating cycle can provide us with the characterization and properties of the carnot engine. carnot’s machine corresponds to a scientific project built on mechanical and metaphysical assumptions, the roots of which go back to the cartesian notion of a machine. such assumptions are the principle of expansion (1), the ideal hydraulic machine model (2), and the restrictive condition of limited driving force creation (3). these principles made it possible to implement a sequence of processes in a thermal machine with maximum efficiency. therefore, the carnot machine is an operational definition of maximizing driving power. thus, in the same way that mechanical systems for drawing curves have taken a new place in descartes’ geometry, the carnot machine has acquired the status of an ideal system that generates new ideas about the production of driving force by heat, realizing the idea of maximum performance and originating thermodynamics as a science. this ideal system is a theoretical model represented in terms of the elements inherent to thermal machines. while in descartes’ mechanized geometry, this way of expressing a quantity was called representation by genesis, we propose that its equivalent for thermodynamics be called analogic representation.17 the problem of maximum production of motive power is formulated, articulated according to the heuristic resources provided by engineering, physics, and mechanics specific to that representation, and solved there. the development of the problem requires auxiliary hypotheses, including the caloric theory. understanding representation as a conceptual space with problem-solving capabilities is equivalent to understanding it as a language to write an algorithm capable of accomplishing a specific task. at first, the algorithm with problem-solving capabilities that originated from the confluence of several fields of knowledge (heat engine engineering, heat metaphysics, gas science, etc.) solves the motivating problem of réflexions, corresponding to carnot’s machine processes. but carnot recognizes that his machine is only one of several whose operation would result in the maximum driving force production. suppose we identify a machine that performs the maximum production of mechanical work. in that case, the general property corresponding to the original problem’s solution will emerge by inference (not induction). and with this principle, other thermal machines with the same purpose can be designed. in this representation, however, there are no resources to express the machine’s efficiency mathematically and experimental laws concerning the change of state of substances. the mechanical and metaphysical assumptions mentioned above make it possible to carry out carnot’s project of designing a machine that maximizes motive power production. they also identify this machine as reversible, characterizing an ascendent logical movement. while the carnot machine is specific, reversibility is a general property. even though initially understood in another context, the stirling engine is also reversible. maximum production of driving force and reversibility become synonymous, identifying the latter as the property of efficient thermal machines. here too, only science can propose and design efficient 17 we have already commented that representation by the property, in thermodynamics, is made by the diagrammatic representation. we will not have the opportunity to explore the heuristic resources that this representation has and its role in constructing the science of heat. in a forthcoming paper, when we present the analysis performed by clapeyron, we will see that the carnot engine will be devoid of its mechanical elements, leaving only the cyclic sequence of thermodynamic processes represented diagrammatically. here the operation of the mathematization of this science begins. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 16 machines. on the other hand, we can create other efficient machines according to fundamental principles, but now in a downward logical movement based on the general property (reversibility). like descartes, for whom the representation by the property is suitable for algebraization, reversibility the property that maximizes the efficiency of a heat engine is also. clapeyron will carry out this work. despite other programs that implemented reversibility, none was as fertile as the one proposed by carnot, which stimulated and promoted the birth of classical thermodynamics. although represented in different conceptual spaces, these programs run a more or less reliable version of carnot’s program. different representations with additional heuristic potentials responded to new problems and expanded the thermodynamics’ phenomenological reach, including the changes in the state of matter and the “critical points” ‘of thomas andrews. in the analogic representation, the carnot machine is the one that performs the maximum production of driving force with reversibility as a condition for this realization. subsequently, in the face of new problems, this representation proved limited in its heuristic resources and was replaced by another. clapeyron’s work, with a diagrammatic representation of carnot’s theory, is an example of this. given the fundamental role of the carnot machine understood as an ideal model the construction of thermodynamics occurred in a similar way to what we saw in other areas of physics: newtonian mechanics (with the use of point mass models and the principle of inertia), the kinetic theory of gases (with the ideal gas model), quantum physics (in its initial stage with the modelling of radiation absorption processes in spring-mass systems), etc. thus, idealization is an intrinsic part of the construction of science, functioning as a model of reality and reconstructing it through logical demands. in the case of thermodynamics, the model of a machine is at the origin of this reconstruction. as suggested in this article, classical thermodynamics more than any other branch of physics corresponds to a theorization in the cartesian style, understood as the mechanization of nature, that is, an understanding of nature as a machine (scientifically) formulated from mechanized geometry. according to a tradition that goes back to the ancient greeks, geometry shapes rationality, first in its most logical, deductive aspect, as in euclid’s elements. then, as in descartes, in its most methodological aspect the method as the ordered movement of a machine. thus, knowledge and nature are understood in mechanical terms. the need for ordering is such that “if we cannot discern an apparent order, we have mentally to forge one by the power of cogitatio” (gauvin 2006, 192). before, geometry was the language of nature. with mechanized geometry, machines started to work as methodological guidelines to discover the laws of nature. machines have become an epistemological instrument. the carnot engine is the heat engine with the highest possible efficiency, which forges an order, a kind of law of nature. however, in the future representations that this theory assumed, this principle acquired more and more abstract forms until arriving at the second law of thermodynamics as enunciated by clausius: the universe’s entropy tends to the maximum (jaynes 1996). like descartes’ projects, the carnot machine is the result of scientific knowledge and generates scientific knowledge. however, given the need for the mathematization of this theory, carnot’s analogic representation becomes limited. another representation is necessary. other scientists will be in charge of unfolding this instrument’s heuristic fertility. however, such fertility will come from changing the representation of the problem and not altering the reversible machine’s mechanism or the underlying heat theory. the unfolding of this heuristic potentiality will be the subject of a forthcoming paper. the mechanical representation of knowledge: from descartes’ mechanized geometry to carnot’s heat engine jojomar lucena – cássio c. laranjeiras – j. r. n. chiappin transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 17 conclusions the contextualized reconstruction proposed here based on the cartesian mathesis universalis of a mechanized geometry and applied to carnot’s work allowed us to identify scientific intentions materialized in the idea of the perfect heat engine and the theory of heat. from a logical point of view, this commitment emerged as an auxiliary hypothesis preceding propositions of a general character, which explains why the theory of the ideal heat engine and its consequences survived even with the decline of the materialist theory of heat. we consider the role of representations central in this work with their intrinsic heuristic resources and the internal dynamics established between them in developing a theory aiming to solve problems or incorporate new phenomena. in this fashion, carnot’s machine is a theoretical representation that incorporates the engineering of its time, the concept of caloric, and the empirical laws of the behaviour of gases, articulating them and establishing the reversibility as the condition of the maximum production of motive power. mechanical assumptions, in the form of idealizations, derive the condition of reversibility, transforming the art or technique of building heat engines and their related areas into the science of thermodynamics. in this sense, reversibility corresponds to the condition that summarizes carnot’s solution to maximize the motive power obtained from heat. here, we emphasize carnot’s originality in recognizing that it is the theory of a heat 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journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-13 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal bruno latour – special issue bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9823-5884 abstract: bruno latour (1947-2022) was a prominent philosopher who critically interpreted the anthropocene discourse. in this article, i highlight the impact of his legacy, particularly in political and philosophical anthropocene debates. i attempt to position latour’s critical philosophical thinking legacy within the framework of anthropocene debates. bruno latour has a strong position in explaining current anthropocene issues, especially related to actor and network reposition, political gaia, and criticism of the new climate change regime. however, despite the anthropocene debate, i position latour’s notion as an entry point to open up explanations concerning the ontology of anthropocene that can begin by understanding latour’s breakthroughs in the context of surpassing the metaphysical demarcation of subject/object by radicalizing pluralistic ontology. instead of glorifying flat ontology, this article aims to emphasize the possibility of affirming the hybrid world of the anthropocene by pluriversalizing the lifeworld. keywords: latourian; ontological demarcation; anthropocene actors received: may 10, 2023. reviewed: may 24, 2023. accepted: june 04, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.05 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction the intellectual legacy of bruno latour (june 22, 1947 october 9, 2022) remains relevant today. many contemporary philosophers, like graham harman, ian hacking, and levi bryant, are influenced by latour’s critique of modernity in many aspects. latour was widely recognized as a prominent philosopher and was the recipient of the holberg prize in 2013 and the kyoto prize in 2021. he has authored several monumental works focusing on the anthropology of science, the sociology of science, technological critique, and political ecology. his most recent essays, which are shorter, primarily deal with the climate crisis and the politics of the environment in the times of the anthropocene. as an anthropocene reader, i personally have attempted to summarize some of latour’s ideas that have contributed to the development and debate of the anthropocene within the context of philosophy, anthropology, and the social sciences. bruno latour’s epistemological breakthrough began with his investigation of the anthropology and sociology of science concerning how science operates in the context of policy decisions, scientific work, and everyday practices among scientists within a scientific 1 rangga kala mahaswa is a lecturer in the department of western philosophy, faculty of philosophy, universitas gadjah mada, yogyakarta, indonesia. address: fakultas filsafat, olahraga street, bulaksumur, yogyakarta, indonesia 55281. email: mahaswa@ugm.ac.id bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 community. around three classical works, namely laboratory life (1986), science in action (1987), and the pasteurization of france (1988), resulted in his initiation of a more anthropologically-informed point of view that scientific work is not merely about seeking objectivity or discovering scientific “facts”. instead, it uncovered the possibility of creative constructions among scientists and non-scientific actors. as a result, scientific investigation is not solely based on the anchor of scientific research in laboratories, but also involves a range of “agents” that allow science to be “developed” and explained more objectively. in essence, latour’s work challenges the traditional notion that scientific facts and knowledge are the outcomes of an objective process that exists independent of social and cultural contexts. science is a human endeavor, shaped by social, political, and economic factors. this perspective has profound implications for the way we understand science, its role in society, and the relationship between scientific knowledge and public policy. philosophically speaking, latour appreciates non-human entities, which is one of the reasons why his work is compelling. however, latour’s thought cannot be detached from the influence of early 21st century mainstream postmodernism. he became one of the contemporary french philosophers who constantly criticized the dualism of western philosophy and modernity’s failure. latour’s critique of this dualism led him to adopt a relational approach, which emphasizes the interdependence of humans and non-humans in producing knowledge. that means, scientific knowledge is not solely produced by human subjectivity but is co-constructed through a network of human and non-human actors. this approach challenges the traditional view that scientific knowledge is solely the result of human reasoning and observation. in latour’s view, non-human entities such as microbes, machines, and even climate change have agency and can shape human behavior and knowledge. this perspective trailblazes new avenues for understanding the complex relationship between humans and the environment and non-human entities’ role in shaping our world. it also represents a significant contribution to the postmodern critique of modernity and the development of a relational approach to science and knowledge production because it invites us to challenge and rethink our relationship with the environment and the non-human entities that shape our world. in we have never been modern (1993), latour challenges the assumption that modernity categorization has brought about a clear separation between nature and society. the boundaries between the two have always been blurry and the so-called “modern” world has always been a hybrid of both. according to latour (1993), the idea of modernity relies on a dichotomy between nature and culture, with culture being seen as something that transcends nature. this dichotomy is problematic because it creates a false sense of objectivity and obscures the complex relationships that exist between humans and nonhumans. instead, the world’s workings are inherently networked and intertwined, resulting in hybrids that form a parliament of things. this means everything is interconnected, whether natural phenomena, social constructs, or even political discourse. this idea of a parliament of things means that we cannot simply reduce things to their individual parts but must consider their relationships and connections. it suggests that we need to repudiate a hierarchical view of the world and move towards a more relational one, where everything is interconnected and equally important. it also highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches that can consider the complex relationships between different fields of knowledge. latour’s attempts to surpass modern thought traditions do not just challenge our assumptions about what is considered “subject” and “object.” in fact, he goes at great length to argue that entities need to be understood as symmetrical actors—hence acknowledging their equal value in causal agency. in politics of nature (2004), latour advocates for ecological politics, asserting that “modern constitution” never really existed. the reality is that the world is constructed through simultaneous representations in the networks between humans and non-human bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 entities. this perspective serves to highlight the absence of absolute dichotomies, thus affirming that everything collectively works together, inseparable and interdependent. nonhuman entities like garbage, ecological objects, the atmosphere, trains, speed bumps, and everything in between—whether considered natural or artificial all work together in this manner (harman 2014). it is necessary to emphasize that the differentiation between humans and non-humans is no longer about a dualistic separation. this distinction serves only to reconfigure the understanding that the principles of natural purity or subjective autonomy of the object world are impossible. therefore, everything, even if it does not have intrinsic value to human needs, has a certain relationship that allows for an ecological constitution that brings together ‘life’ in its social, political, cultural, and scientific dimensions. the rejection of the dualistic separation between humans and non-humans is an essential component of latour’s philosophy. this rejection is not just a simple matter of rethinking the distinction between subjects/objects, mind/world, nature/culture, but rather an attempt to overturn the notion that natural purity or subjective independence of the object world is impossible. instead, all entities, irrespective of their intrinsic value for human needs, have a certain relationship that allows for an ecological constitution that brings together various aspects of life, including the social, political, cultural, and scientific realms (conty 2018). latour’s perspective on this matter is significant because it challenges the traditional modernist approach to understanding the world. modernist thinking is often based on the separation between humans and the natural world, where humans are considered superior and objective, while nature is viewed as passive and subordinate. however, latour’s philosophy emphasizes the interconnectedness and co-constitution of human and nonhuman entities, leading to the idea that nature and society are mutually constitutive and cannot be understood in isolation. by recognizing the interdependence of humans and nonhumans, we can move away from a human-centered approach to environmental issues and begin to understand the complex ecological relationships that sustain life. similarly, by acknowledging the role of non-human actors in political and cultural processes, we can better understand how power and meaning of nature are constructed in society. with those being said, it seems that many of latour’s philosophical outlook on science and nature can certainly identify with the anthropocene ideals, particularly the pluriverse. in the same breath, latour’s philosophy, among others, aims to conceptualize and reposition actor and network, political gaia, and criticism of the new climate change regime. by positioning latour’s notion as an entry point for understanding the ontology of the anthropocene and surpassing the metaphysical demarcation of subject/object by radicalizing pluralistic ontology (tummons 2021), this study seeks to emphasize the possibility of affirming the hybrid world of the anthropocene by pluriversalizing the lifeworld. through a critical analysis of latour’s ideas and their application to the anthropocene discourse, this research aims to provide a new perspective on the ontology of the anthropocene and its implications for understanding the relationship between humans and non-humans in the current era of global ecological crisis. actor-network-anthropocene actor-network theory (ant) is a social approach offered by latour in reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory (2007) to understand the interwoven materiality among various actors/actants. the theory proposes that actors or actants work within symmetrical relational networks, equalizing the relationship between humans and non-humans. illustrated by the pasteur network, which tells us the story of louis pasteur’s brilliant victory and formidable contributions in discovering the relationship between microbes and diseases behind his remarkable achievements in medical microbiology. his bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 discovery made ‘pasteurization’ the spokesperson for quasi-objects the life of microbes in the complexity of networks of other species. pasteur even made the invisible germs visible, translating all changes in power networks and interests outside the pasteur laboratory, such as public health policies, food hygiene, and the like. this view can be seen as a departure from the dualistic conception of agency and the dichotomy of human and non-human actors. another philosophical question that can be raised is: how does the ant theory challenge the traditional view of causality? in oldfashioned philosophy, causality is often understood as a linear trajectory between cause and effect, with humans being the primary cause of actions. however, in the ant theory, causality is understood as a network of relations and interactions among various actors, including non-human actors. this view challenges the traditional view of causality by highlighting the complex interdependence and co-creation of actors in a network (harris 2005). in general, ant theory provides a unique perspective on social relationships and the agency of actors in a network, by encouraging a more symmetrical understanding of human and non-human actors in shaping social phenomena. undoubtedly, pasteur did not work alone in the isolated laboratory. as a scientist working in a laboratory with rigorous scientific methodologies, he collaborated with many “actors.” one of them was the microbe as the object of his research. there are facts that have been considered unreasonable by many scientists, namely the “networking power of non-human actors.” this network is like a piece of note paper, a report sheet, a research photo, a scientific instrument, and even bacterial or microbial cultural behavior that significantly impacts a scientific revolution. science becomes “social” not only because science is carried out by human subjects alone, which undermines the reductionist view. latour argues that it is reasonable for science to be social because it can unite various entities, both human and non-human, and utilize their collective power to act and change the world (vries 2016). from a different perspective, as illustrated by pasteur’s laborious scientific effort, science is not only a product of individual knowledge but is a collective and collaborative effort of various entities, both human and non-human. science is not only about conducting experiments in a controlled laboratory setting but also about building networks of connections and collaborations between those different actors. those actors can be in the form of equipment, tools, materials, data, and other non-human entities, as well as human researchers, scientists, and other stakeholders. by recognizing the social aspect of science, we can understand the importance of collaboration and cooperation in scientific research. we can also appreciate the role of non-human actors in shaping scientific discoveries and innovations. such expression of appreciation posits that science is not only about discovering new knowledge and technology but also about building relationships and networks that facilitate the creation of new knowledge and technology. what is interesting about latour’s work is that he expands the notion of networks in a small laboratory setting to the social world and even planetary scale. it did not only rely on speculative abstractions, but he embarked on experimental field trips during his lifetime, gathering data from places such as san diego, the amazon rainforest, the savannahs of kenya, and the vosges mountains in france. latour traveled across different regions just to align and verify the idea of modernity that we have taken for granted about the world we live in. instead of accepting the social lifeworld as pre-given dualistic binaries that seem like modernity doctrine, latour illustrated an excellent example of how climate change works at the complexity level, from small communities to global society in the entanglement proposition (latour 2017a). for instance, latour worked with climate scientists to explore the critical zone that is currently occurring. one of his observation sites is located in the vosges mountains, alsace-lorraine, france (kofman 2018). he realized that the critical zone became a network of survival modes for humans. this term is similar to thresholds, planetary bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 boundaries, or the great acceleration, which is synonymous with the surplus of civilization progress and vulnerable to damage caused by that progress. from a new interpretation perspective, latour’s work is not just about studying networks and collaborations in the laboratory setting. instead, it is about recognizing that scientific research is inseparable from the social and environmental contexts in which it takes place. latour’s excursion to different places across the world shows that to fully understand scientific discoveries and innovations, we must also consider their impact on society and the environment. by studying the critical zone and other planetary boundaries, we can better understand the challenges facing humanity and the urgent need to develop sustainable solutions that protect both people and the planet. thus, making latour’s work a call to action for scientists, policymakers, and society as a whole to work together to create a more just and sustainable future in terms of defining a new regime of climate. latour also participated in the critical zone project to understand how the impact of anthropogenic mass affects planetary degradation. the critical zone observatory (czo) is an interdisciplinary project that involves various scientific instrumentation and collaborations (arènes, latour, and gaillardet 2018). latour supported this project for the reason that allows for a rethinking of the system of localizing the impact of human activity during the anthropocene epoch. comparing the limited and small scale of human involvement over time with the vast expanse of earth change represented through various geophysical phenomena presents new challenges in translating the networks of anthropocene actions. the influence of humans is not as clearly visible on the geological layer and biological evolution compared to hundreds of millions of years of paleo-geological time before civilization. this is where it becomes interesting to discuss how the massive anthropogenic activities projected so far have accelerated the circulation of co2, which has not occurred for the past 150 years. the simple illustration shows how industrialization has become an accelerator of the acceleration of the exchange and transformation of interconnected bioand geo-chemical cycles. the project also emphasizes the urgent need to address the acceleration of anthropogenic activities that have disrupted the balance of biogeochemical cycles and the environment (arènes, latour, and gaillardet 2018). by studying and understanding the critical zone, scientists and researchers can develop more effective solutions to mitigate the negative impact of human activity and create a more sustainable future. latour’s early thoughts on actor-networks of humans and non-humans were initially dismissed and deemed provocative when it came to discussing limits on climate policymakers (latour 2016). this was due to latour’s objection towards climate denialists who arrogantly denied climate change, irrational political decisions, and scientists who manipulated scientific facts about the global crisis across networks (hamilton, bonneuil, and gemenne 2015). however, in-depth conversation and dialogical interviews with many anthropological perspectives, including donna haraway, noboru ishikawa, scott f. gilbert, kenneth olwig, anna l. tsing, and nils bubandt, defended latour as one of the thinkers who successfully brought the discourse of the anthropocene to the level of social sciences, particularly anthropology (haraway et al. 2016). broadly speaking, this conversation highlights the fact that latour’s ideas were initially met with resistance and criticism, particularly from those who were unwilling to accept the reality of climate change and the role of human agency in the global crisis. however, his work was eventually embraced by scholars in various fields, including anthropology, who recognized the importance of considering the interconnectedness of human and non-human actors in shaping the anthropocene. furthermore, in his work facing gaia: eight lectures on the new climate regime (latour 2017b), latour further critiques the anthropocene and climate change. he argues that gaia has become a surpassing concept of the climate leviathan. in this sense, gaia is no longer just a social contract but a natural contract. latour’s gaia is different from james lovelock’s gaia hypothesis, which emphasizes the earth as a single organism living with its own rules. latour is very clear that gaia refers to the anthropocene climate regime today. the tendency bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 to understand the gaia hypothesis only as a metabolic and holistic life form, and ignore the relations that it encompasses, is teleological (lenton, dutreuil, and latour 2020). it seems as though the biological life form fails to understand the broader sense of life as [l]ife (with capital l). by expanding on the gaia hypothesis, latour encourages a shift in our understanding of gaia as a way to understand the complex interplay between human societies and the environment, and emphasizes the importance of a natural contract, where humans are seen as part of a larger ecosystem, rather than separate from it. it is reasonable that gaia is no longer understood as a harmonious biological organism that interacts with each other and forms regulatory phenomena at the planetary level. this reference to regularity is often not fundamentally understood by different disciplines, for example, biologists only focus on biological life, chemists on geochemistry, or earth scientists only focus on the regularity of earth cycles. therefore, rather than understanding gaia as a single entity, gaia should be seen as a [l]ife that accompanies the habitability of various actors in networks. gaia and life are co-existent and relational. anthropocene and gaia are two different concepts, but they have a point of convergence that life on earth is a challenging point to recognize, the terra incognita. as with the crisis of the anthropocene, the position of latour is no longer limited to a single perspective of life, but rather should be viewed from multiple perspectives and levels of interaction, including social, political, economic, and cultural aspects. gaia should be understood as a complex network of relationships between various actors, including humans, non-human beings, and the environment. by acknowledging this complexity and interconnectedness, we can begin to address the challenges of the anthropocene and the urgent need to rethink our relationship with the planet. in this way, latour’s concept of gaia offers a new perspective on how to approach environmental issues that are rooted in a deep understanding of the interdependence between human and non-human actors in the planetary system, and not falls or traps of romanticizing the past when gaia is always establishment or in the harmonia of earth-human. another latour’s view of the anthropocene is the time of destruction, rather than a techno-optimistic belief that future technology can solve the problems of the new climate regime. he vehemently opposes any talk of the greatness of technological engineering as a means of solving climate problems in the future, while gaia in the era of the anthropocene, will never wait for established and efficient technology to address the crisis (yaneva 2017; latour 2017b). instead, humans must adapt and become “survivors.” the limits of humanity today only work imaginarily in the geopolitical realm. there is no way to escape the planetary crisis by changing to “earth b” or finding a new planet in the solar system, because humans will always be earthbound creatures, and there is no longer any modernity or romanticization of gaia. politics-gaia is a new way of reimagining the anthropocene world and mapping the planetary crisis intergenerationally (latour and lenton 2019). it provides a mapping of the new ecological crisis as a threat to every nation, and political policy is no longer about development or domination over everything that is tread upon (land, earth, the world space projects). through his work down to earth: politics in the new climate regime (2018), latour radicalizes his thinking about concrete strategies for addressing climate change by reconsidering the possibility of the marginalized world of local life when facing crises. against the modernist notion regarding global crises that can only be solved by global politics, this approach often overlooks the marginalized communities who are disproportionately affected by these crises. latour believes that the utopian visions of techno-futurism, such as space exploration, interplanetary agriculture, or a new civilization on mars, are mere daydreams if they ignore the pressing crises at hand. politics should focus on addressing the specific needs of local communities and building more sustainable and resilient societies. this new approach to politics requires a radical rethinking of our values and priorities, as well as a recognition of the interconnectedness of all life on earth. rather than viewing ourselves as separate from the natural world, we must recognize that we are bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 part of a complex web of relationships that includes both human and non-human actors. only by embracing this new vision of politics and reimagining our relationship with the planet can we hope to overcome the challenges of the new climate regime. the assumption of the new climate crisis prompts a shift in agency status, which is no longer merely to valiantly take responsibility for a particular condition. however, the crisis itself never has a specific working boundary, so people must be able to respond to the “our monster” that has lived from the reflection of humanity, whether it is science or technology that creates crises that are invariably intertwined, which live and sustain civilization (latour 2011). this “monster” represents the non-human entities, such as carbon that have been created by human activity and have contributed to the crisis. the politics of the new climate regime, for example, shifting carbon explicitly has an important position in political decisions as a non-human thing that is experienced, engineered, and continuously politicized (latour 2014a; 2014b). at this stage, the translation of the anthropocene is not just a social translation of science. however, it transforms the boundaries of nature and culture into natureculture (malone and ovenden 2016) or multi-(in)stability politics of things, humans, and non-humans as actors-who-are-no-longer-stable—this whole act always interconnects, continuously. in his observations on the issue of the anthropocene, latour (2016) notes that the debate on the status of the anthropocene is largely driven by political epistemology among scientists, rather than a focus on the core issues of the anthropocene itself. he argues that the concept of the anthropocene does not inherently bring about good or peace for human civilization, but instead marks a transition from the romanticized notion of the “state of nature” to the “state of war.” (luisetti 2016). this transition has led to the formation of a naturalistic biopolitical framework to combat the tendency towards collective irrationality based solely on existential anxiety (latour 2014b). during times of crisis, territorial boundaries become blurred or even nonexistent as every social group tends to defend their “ownership” and “right to survival.” this creates a new enlightenment amid catastrophism, where traditional boundaries and beliefs are challenged and new ways of thinking and acting emerge. this highlights the importance of reconsidering our relationship with the environment and the need for a more collaborative and holistic approach towards addressing environmental challenges. ultimately, the anthropocene requires a fundamental shift in our understanding of the role of humans in shaping the natural world, and a renewed focus on building sustainable systems and practices that prioritize the health of the planet and its inhabitants. in the discourse surrounding the anthropocene, latour engaged in extensive discussions with dipesh chakrabarty to formulate the geo-story of the anthropocene. additionally, noah heringman (2015) actively criticizes how the humanistic perspective has influenced the debate on the transition to modernity within the anthropocene. since humans began leaving geological footprints on a temporal scale during the transition of holocene epochs, the term “modern” has been in existence of human civilization timescale, considering a sociological perspective that encompasses geological deep-time. however, heringman (2015) reinforces chakrabarty and latour’s conviction to reexamine the influence of humans as a species and their effects on geo-history. this highlights the requirement for interdisciplinary approaches, including archaeology, history, culture, and paleontology. chakrabarty’s engagement with latour’s anti-colonial humor in discussing human colonization efforts towards non-human agents throughout history towards the anthropocene highlights the global south’s issues (chakrabarty 2016). the global south, comprises of developing nations, has been disproportionately affected by the environmental crises caused by the actions of developed nations in the global north. the exploitation and extraction of natural resources by developed nations have caused irreversible environmental damage and affected the lives and livelihoods of communities in the global south. latour’s obscurity is reflected when he rejects the kantian legacy of the idea of things-in-themselves and called “irreductionist” tendency. humans have no privilege at all; they only can speak in bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 the same way of the relationship between what they experience and feeling. according to harman (2009), latour's irreductions refers to “latour said that translations also occur between non-human things and did not add the proviso that humans must be there to observe it.” chakrabarty’s critique of human-animal mortality doctrine challenges the eurocentric notion that human beings are the only actors who shape history and the world. this critique is particularly relevant in the global south, where indigenous communities have lived in differentiation harmony with nature and shaped their environments for centuries. by recognizing the agency of non-human actors, chakrabarty’s critique advocates for the global south’s epistemologies and ways of knowing. moreover, chakrabarty’s call for a crossdisciplinary approach that includes archeology, history, culture, and paleontology is crucial in understanding the global south’s issues. many communities in the global south have a deep understanding of their environment and ecosystems based on their cultural and historical knowledge. the incorporation of this source of knowledge into scientific research can lead to a more holistic understanding of environmental issues and better-informed policy decisions. after bruno latour: latourian and the future anthropocene bruno latour’s latest work, titled after lockdown: a metamorphosis (2021), is a profound reflection and closure on how the global pandemic has interrupted us all to momentarily rethink the drastic changes in the existence of global society. lockdown forced everyone to ‘submit’ to rules in the name of large-scale social restrictions or in the name of public health together. for latour (2021), the ‘new climate regime’ that reaches the peak of the crisis will move like a pandemic, in which we will all be forced to retreat, forced to limit our movements as much as possible because there is no more room for movement that can be lived in. this means that there is no more human “old” life; they are forced to continue living in crisis with other actors. latour argues that the pandemic has exposed the fragility of human existence and the interconnectedness of everything. the pandemic has also revealed the deepening crisis of the environment, and that the new climate regime we are facing is not just about reducing carbon emissions, but a profound transformation of how we live our lives. this transformation requires us to rethink our relationship with nature, technology, and other actors in the world. latour’s influence in the political dimension of the anthropocene highlights the importance of sensitivity towards the “noise” of “quasi-objects” that have been ignored, considered dead, closed, and final, like the teleological gaia hypothesis. the anthropocene demands the realization of a parliament of things, in which subjects and objects are not abolished but reconsidered, given our forgetfulness of the quasi-objects that are always reduced in the subject-active or object-passive dichotomy (simons 2017). after latour, a new post-humanist thinker emerged and began to distance from the old modernist doctrine of the relationship between subjects, objects, matter, non-humans, and everything that is more-than-human. graham harman (2009) refers to latour as a metaphysical philosopher, a contemporary thinker who inspired the emergence of objectoriented philosophy. latour radicalizes the traditional term “substance” into “actor.” these actors are entirely real, competing and collaborating with each other without losing their qualities. what makes them actors is not just their materiality or their accessibility to subjects, but rather their existence that should transcend beyond imagined objects. this perspective poses a challenge to traditional modernist thinking, which considers humans as the center of the universe, with the power to dominate and control everything around them. instead, latour’s philosophy that emphasizes the interdependence and bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 interconnection of all entities, including non-human ones (animals, plants, and even objects) suggests that we should acknowledge the latter’s agency as significant in shaping our world. the metamorphosis of the anthropocene based on actor-network theory cannot rely solely on the assumption of a flat ontology, where all actors work on symmetrical equality. one significant criticism of flat ontology within the context of the anthropocene-network theory is its failure to provide an adequate explanation for causation. the assumption that “are all things all the same?” is often treated as a fundamental principle, but it is clearly problematic and lacks sufficient justification. there is also a need for speculation on how strong our intentions are towards symmetry, as this is where the possibilities of new nonsymmetric hierarchies always exist. the impossibility of fully understanding the anthropocene seems to create an incomplete network. the anthropocene will inevitably be entangled in various forms, and eventually, it will depend on humans to choose whether to live life in geotrauma as a leap or obstacle on the brink of crisis. however, by acknowledging the agency and importance of non-human actors, such as quasi-objects, humans can develop a more comprehensive understanding of the anthropocene event and its crisis. in practical terms, latour’s anthropocene prevails because he provides a series of basic argumentation that shows the epistemic violence of universalism dominance and western modernity doctrine and its limitation in today’s world. i would like to draw attention to link the term pluriverse that is presented as a philosophical concept to revitalize and advocate for multior transversal worlds and worlding practices during the post-climate regime. it means that the division between nature and culture is an artificial epistemological construct that can be dismantled through a reunion under the same constitution. while latour acknowledges the agency of objects and the importance of relationality, his proposed solution involves a merger and unification, which differs from indigenous relational ontologies such as the andean cosmology (mercier 2019). according to this worldview, the pluriverse does not necessarily require a unification of what has been separated (mahaswa and kim 2023). instead, interconnections between different worlds and realms are enough, and these worlds exist independently while constantly interacting with each other. querejazu (2016) presents an argument against the prevailing notion of reality as a single, unified world. instead, the author suggests that rupturist narratives play a crucial role in dismantling the veil of universalism. mario blaser (2013) proposes that there are three main streams in the rupturist narrative that seek to challenge and distance from modernity. the first stream is the theory of network actors, which aims to destabilize the dualist system that separates nature/culture and subject/object (latour, harding, and law belong to this mainstream). the second stream is feminist theory, which challenges hierarchical relations between mainstream thought and the “others” who are considered as non-human (e.g., haraway, harding, tickner). the last stream comprises critical theories such as cultural, subaltern, and postcolonial studies that question epistemic asymmetries and the politics inherited from colonial differences between the modern and non-modern (e.g., escobar, lander, mignolo). given that a eurocentric view of humanity lacks recognition of other forms of life, latour (latour 2017b) proposes the term “terrans” instead to give affirmation of other forms of life and automatically elevate them to the same level with humans (who have been traditionally known as “earth dwellers”). he describes the ecological crisis as a “generalized state of war” (latour 2017b, 73), emphasizing the urgency of the situation and calling for a collective response. to deal with the increasing tensions and polarized perspectives during the anthropocene crisis, latour proposes posthuman diplomacy for the “end times.” this approach involves remixing politics and the earth and confronting the specific historical challenges we face today. in this context, latour’s view of science as a way of understanding the world becomes crucial. the political implications of latour’s proposal for anthropocene diplomacy are also significant. as conty (2018) mentioned about latour’s proposal for “a new bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 materialist ecological politics” that acknowledges the urgency of the ecological crisis and embraces the interconnectedness of all actors in the ecosystem. for further consideration, bruno latour and the future of anthropocene discourse, the anthropocene must bring science that does not de-animate the earth. gaia is not only limited as a figure of harmony between humans and nature. povinelli (2021) also emphasizes four fundamental principles regarding gaia and ground relations, which include the entanglement of existence, the uneven distribution of power, the significance of events in political discourse, and the enduring impacts of racial and colonial histories. meanwhile, latour (2019) emphasizes the importance of treating the earth as a being in disequilibrium, attending to its physical characteristics such as color, smell, texture, and so on. he relies on the gaia theory introduced by james lovelock and lynn margulis, which portrays the earth as a complex organism, and not simple metabolic homeostasis. however, there are concerns about the limitations of the concept of organisms in understanding the earth. gaian bio-geopolitics has had a significant impact on systems theory and continues to echo in the work of contemporary scholars. still, there is a need to more explore other scientific shifts and paradigms during the anthropocene circumstance. the anthropocene requires an inquiry and engagement that is deeply immanent, considerate of the effects and consequences of human activity. this form of immanence fuses the finite with the infinite, but not in a theological sense of an emanation of god in matter. instead, latour argues that immanence must be self-causing, bringing causality down to earth and better reckoning with human activity in the flesh. reclaiming causality of the anthropocene to be of the world and in the world will bring new research orientation as a metatheory. it focuses on integrative metatheory and its application to more concretely and practically solving planetary flourishing in the anthropocene. finally, i assume that how latour’s legacy is to substantiate the position of environment, because the environment and the maintenance of our immediate natural surrounding is crucial to our survival and our ending. rather, the earthbound must always recommence, aware of the historical flow of time. the end is an achievement, finite and only revealed through time. the anthropocene is a complicated and contested idea, but it provides a way to conceive of the end times in the present. to put it differently, according to voegelin (1987), the western concept of ‘the end times’, which was part of religious discourse, actually prevented the earth from experiencing those “end times.” the moderns, whether they are misguided transcendentalists of the scientific or religious type, have disrupted the vital connection with the flow of historical time. the end is only possible because of the passage of time. thus, the metamorphosis of the anthropocene is a way of multiple-realization of the end of the world. today is one small step for humanity to decide what they will do as children of extinction as well as accept the legacy of calamity. conclusion in the end, i have put forth arguments that bruno latour’s ideas on the anthropocene need further investigation, given that the findings on this topic are very limited. in the meantime, a latourian anthropocene work is a work in progress. in this increasingly fragile world, latour’s thoughts on the politics of a new climate regime become highly relevant. he introduced and contributed many new perspectives on the climate regime to advance anthropocene discourse further by questioning the failure of modernity and proposing an alternative ontological project called actor-network theory, ontological pluralism, and modes of existence. as we know, bruno latour reveals scientific action as a collective endeavor that arises from ordinary entanglements in-between human and non-human worlds dimension. it means that in reality, all individuals will create the necessary changes bruno latour and actor-network-anthropocene rangga kala mahaswa transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 and play a crucial role in ontological conflicts. as agents capable of worlding the society within earth, they have the ability to establish their relationship with others. in this anthropocene rift, a world of many worlds would form an inseparable and becoming network, defining our new existence in the uncertainty world. furthermore, latour’s philosophy pushes us to reevaluate our assumptions about the nature of reality, especially regarding the relationship between humans and their environments. by rejecting the categorical and constitutive assumptions of modernity, latour offers a new way of understanding the interconnectedness of the world and the role of non-human entities in shaping our understanding of it. this approach provides a valuable contribution to current debates on the anthropocene, which seeks to understand the impact of human activities on the environment and the implications for our future. despite its flat ontological baggage, i also emphasized that bruno latour's metaphysics can be characterized by its pragmatic realism, anti-essentialism, and social constructivism. this suggests that latour's philosophical approach is pragmatic in its orientation, which favors practical considerations and the importance of practical consequences, with a commitment to realism. as for his anti-essentialism, latour emphasizes the rejection of fixed ontology, predetermined essences, or inherent characteristics, instead focusing on the dynamic and contingent nature of entities. his social constructivism refers to the emphasis on human actions and practices shaping reality with an understanding that reality is constructed through ongoing network processes. by integrating these perspectives, latourian theoretical framework acknowledges the complexities and interplay between human and non-human actors, highlighting the contingent and constructed nature of our shared reality, specifically beneficial in the world of the anthropocene. acknowledgement i would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and critical comments on an earlier draft of the article. also, i would like to extend my special thanks to dyl basri for technical correction. i declare that this article is part of extended discussion from collected writings on bruno latour (antinomi institute & kelas isolasi, 2023) and panel discussion “legasi bruno latour” by masyarakat filsafat indonesia (october, 2022). references arènes, alexandra, bruno latour, and jérôme gaillardet. 2018. “giving depth to the surface: an exercise in the gaia-graphy of critical zones.” the anthropocene review 5 (2): 120– 35. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019618782257. blaser, mario. 2013. “ontological conflicts and the stories of peoples in spite of europe: toward a conversation on political ontology.” current anthropology 54 (5): 547–68. chakrabarty, dipesh. 2016. “humanities in the anthropocene: the crisis of an enduring kantian fable.” new literary history 47 (2–3): 377–97. 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https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315545721. microsoft word bohang chen layout transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2022 (13): 1-16 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2022 – this is an open-access journal article on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen1 – http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7507-4854 abstract: eliminativism is a peripheral (if not dead) position in the current biological function debate, and it is roughly presented as the thesis that function terms are eliminable in biological discourse. while eliminativism is often assumed inadequate, a detailed examination of eliminativism is lacking in current literature. accordingly, this article provides a critical examination of eliminativism. this examination consists of three parts: a clarification of three supporting arguments for eliminativism (based on historical literature), a unified account of eliminativism (inspired in particular by larry wright 1976), and a discussion of its validity and some of its implications. this article concludes by briefly addressing the persistent presence of function terms in biological discourse. keywords: biological function; eliminativism; the descriptive-prescriptive distinction; life received: july 14, 2022. reviewed: october 20, 2022. accepted: november 09, 2022. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i13.02 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. introduction the biological function debate is now making a comeback. in recent years, one of the leading scholars in the biological function debate justin garson has revived old controversies and advanced new accounts in several articles and monographs (2011, 2012, 2016, 2017a, b, 2018, 2019a, b). at the same time, a few other scholars have also made contributions to renewing the biological function debate (mossio et al 2009; nanay 2010; artiga 2011, 2014; saborido et al 2011; kraemer 2013; huneman ed. 2013; saborido 2014; artiga and martínez 2016; mossio and saborido 2016; de prado salas 2017; neander 2017; cusimano and sterner 2019; matthewson 2020). while most scholars have tended to sharpen and clarify their own standpoints, it is also fair to claim that, as garson (2018) does, “many philosophers of biology have embraced function pluralism… the idea that biologists use the term ‘function’ in different ways on different occasions” (p. 1101; see earlier formulations of pluralism also in godfrey-smith 1993, mitchell 1993, and preston 1998). the biological function debate dates back to the 1960s and has since then generated a variety of accounts of biological function. due to the limit of space here, it is impossible to 1 bohang chen is an assistant researcher in the school of philosophy at zhejiang university. address: school of philosophy 535, zhejiang university (zijingang campus) hangzhou, zhejiang, p. r. china, 310058. email: chenbh20@zju.edu.cn on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 2 give an informative overview of these different accounts (but see walsh and ariew 1996; wouters 2005; garson 2008, 2016). yet, the main approaches are of two, the etiological approach (williams 1966; ayala 1970; ruse 1971; wimsatt 1972; wright 1973; millikan 1989; neander 1991; griffiths 1993; godfrey-smith 1994; garson 2011, 2012, 2017a) and the system approach (beckner 1969; cummins 1975; prior 1985; bigelow and pargetter 1987; enc and adams 1992; amundson and lauder 1994; walsh 1996; schlosser 1998; davies 2001; boorse 2002; mclaughlin 2003; wouters 2003; mossio et al. 2009).2 the basic idea of the etiological approach is that the function of a biological trait is to be understood through its etiological history, mainly (but not exclusively) its evolutionary history in relation to natural selection (for this reason, the etiological approach is often termed the evolutionary approach. see saborido 2014, for a recent example). in contrast to the etiological approach, the system approach is notably ahistorical, and it claims that the function of a biological trait is to be analyzed through its current contribution to the maintenance of a larger system with certain characteristics. given the existence of so many different accounts of biological function and the pluralist consensus, it appears difficult to hold the eliminativist position in the current biological function debate. in general, philosophers of biology today treat eliminativism as a peripheral (if not dead) position. in current literature on biological function, it is often difficult to find even a brief reference to eliminativism (but section 2 starts by discussing a rare exception, garson 2008). the difficulty of seriously examining eliminativism is not diminished by surveying historical literature. while voices of eliminativism are often heard and some philosophers are labelled as eliminativists in historical literature, a detailed account of eliminativism-not to say a critical examination of it-remains unavailable. it is therefore the intent of the present article to critically examine the eliminativist position. this examination consists of three parts. first, based on historical literature, it clarifies three supporting arguments for eliminativism (section 2). second, inspired in particular by larry wright (1976), it offers a unified account of eliminativism (section 3). third, it discusses the validity of eliminativism and its implications (section 4). this article concludes by briefly addressing the persistent presence of function terms in biological discourse. 2. three supporting arguments for eliminativism this section clarifies three supporting arguments for eliminativism, the translatability argument, the matter-of-interest argument, and the metaphor argument. yet, as mentioned above, it is often difficult to find a reference to eliminativism in current literature. the only exception comes from garson (2008), a review article on biological function and teleology. in this review garson depicts eliminativism as follows: …biological entities do not “really” have functions (or refuse to countenance them in one’s explanations) since they are not typically designed with purposes in mind. 2 there is a terminological issue here. some might object that it is impermissible to place currently popular organizational accounts under the system approach, because, first, current organizational accounts (mossio et al. 2009; saborido et al. 2011; saborido 2014; mossio and saborido 2016), in contrast to earlier ones (schlosser 1998; mclaughlin 2003), claim to have integrated the virtues of both etiological and system approaches; second, they are also interpreted as belonging to the etiological approach (artiga and martinez 2016). in this particle, i hope to evade this terminological issue, by following earlier organizational accounts (especially schlosser 1998) to explicitly place them under the system approach as against the etiological approach; supporters of current organizational accounts, i believe, will not object to this classification, because, in line with the system approach they stress the ahistorical character of their accounts (mossio and saborido 2016) and oppose the interpretation of artiga and martinez (2016) on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 3 accepting this eliminativist position with respect to the existence of function does not, however, imply that scientists should never ascribe functions to biological entities or that it is illegitimate or counterproductive to do so. they may legitimately do so, so long as they recognize that such usage is metaphorical (i.e., it involves examining biological forms “as if” they were created for a purpose) and that it performs a purely heuristic role in stimulating actual scientific theories. (2008, 528-9) in this passage, garson touches upon the metaphor argument (“such usage is metaphorical”) and the matter-of-interest argument (“it performs a purely heuristic role in stimulating actual scientific theories”). however, he appears to miss the perhaps most forceful argument for eliminativism, that is, the translatability argument. 2.1. the translatability argument the translatability argument is often expressed in historical literature. here are several different formulations from john canfield, morton beckner and ernest nagel: can all functional analyses containing the locution “function” be translated into sentences which contain neither “function” nor any other teleological term? …perhaps the standard answer…is that functional analyses can be translated into sentences containing no teleological terms. i believe that this answer is right…(canfield 1964, 285) given any single case of an activity which is describable in teleological language, that case is also describable in non-teleological language. by this i mean that every observable aspect of the activity which in fact serves as the basis for our application of teleological concepts can also be described by means of a conceptual apparatus that is not teleological in character. (beckner 1969, 162)3 if the goal-supporting view of biological functions is correct, functional statements, as well as the presuppositions of functional ascriptions, can also be rendered without using functional concepts. (nagel 1979a/1977, 314) the last formulation from nagel contains a clear argument for eliminativism. nagel is now regarded as an early representative of the goal-contribution account of biological function (garson 2008). according to this account, in nagel’s own words, “a function of item i in system s and environment e is f, presupposes…that s is goal-directed to some goal g, to the realization or maintenance of which f contributes” (1979a/1977, 312). nagel’s argument for eliminativism is easy to follow. given his goal-contribution account, “a function of item i” is simply f in relation to certain goal g, system s and environment e; as a result, function terms can be replaced by the latter and are therefore eliminable. nagel’s argument applies easily-and perhaps a bit strikingly-to any other account of biological function. it is useful to refer to two latest examples. within the etiological approach, the most up-to-date account is garson’s “general selected effects theory of function”: 3 however, morton beckner literally holds the view that “eliminability does not mean translatability” (beckner 1969, 164). yet, he also confesses that he does not know “how to prove it” (p. 164) and maintains still that function terms “can be eliminated without loss from sciences” (p. 164). despite the complexity of his general standpoint, this article treats beckner as an eliminativist who endorses the translatability argument, even though he has perhaps a different conception of translatability in mind. on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 4 gse: the function of a trait consists in that activity which historically contributed to its differential reproduction or its differential retention within a biological population. (2012, 460; also see 2016, 2017a) in contrast, mossio et al (2009) provide the latest account of biological function within the system (they might call “organization”) approach: a trait t has a function if and only if: c1: t contributes to the maintenance of the organization o of s; c2: t is produced and maintained under some constraints exerted by o; c3: s is organizationally differentiated. (p. 828) these two accounts are both unnecessarily complicated, and the scholars are also tedious in their elucidations of key concepts and their responses to possible criticisms (garson 2016; 2017a; saborido et al. 2011; mossio and saborido 2016). yet the intent of the present article is not to discuss these elucidations and responses. the point is that their accounts support the translatability argument well. in garson (2012)’s case, the function of a trait, according to his account, is simply identical to “that activity which historically contributed to its differential reproduction or its differential retention within a biological population” (p. 460). so, functional statements about the trait can be replaced by statements describing the respective activity. similarly, in mossio et al (2009)’s case, the function of a trait t is identical to its contribution in related conditions (c1, c2, c3). as a result, functional statements about t can be replaced by statements about its contribution in those conditions. in both cases, therefore, functional terms are eliminable. more generally speaking, it is easy to see that the possibility of such eliminative translations is inherent in all accounts of biological function, which essentially share the same logical structure, as peter schwartz has summarized: [in the biological function debate] philosophers offer short lists of necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the [functional] concept-where the conditions involve only acceptable physical or biological notions-and claim that the set of conditions captures the import of function statements. (2004, 136) clearly, if philosophers offer accounts of biological function as such to capture “the import of function statements”, then it is not mistaken to replace functional concepts and statements with those “lists of necessary and sufficient conditions” involving “only acceptable physical or biological notions”. in other words, if the meanings of function terms are exhaustively captured by philosophical accounts, they can simply be replaced by respective biological terms in those accounts, with no loss of meanings. as a matter of fact, all accounts of biological function appear to have presupposed the translatability argument, which necessarily entails eliminativism. the translatability argument for eliminativism appears simple, if not trivial. yet, as the case of garson’s review article (2008) attests, philosophers are in general unaware of it, and they have made no attempt to reject it. some might wonder why this is the case. while a detailed discussion is only possible in section 4, here it is enough to give a brief illustration. in my view, the main reason is that the current biological function debate is exclusively concerned with a descriptive question, that is, how to capture actual biological usage? as a result, the proposed accounts or translations, often very sophisticated, are intended to describe how biologists actually use function terms. but eliminativism, as a matter of fact, deals with a different question of a prescriptive nature, that is, how could actual biological usage be? and the eliminativist answer is that biologists could (not must) do without function on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 5 terms. having different questions in mind, eliminativism does not contradict any existent account of biological function at all. 2.2. the matter-of-interest argument garson in his review article (2008) already alludes to the matter-of-interest argument, when he characterizes eliminativism as relying on the idea that “it [the term function] performs a purely heuristic role in stimulating actual scientific theories” (p. 529). here are some more explicit formulations of the idea in historical literature from e. w. prior, j. bigelow and r. pargetter, and kenneth schaffner: …the ascription of a function is both theory and interest relative-the function of a particular organ will be that of its effects which features in our best account of some interesting (higher-level) capacity of the organism in question. (prior 1985, 324) a variant on this eliminativist view adds an account of why the attributions of function seem to serve a useful purpose in everyday and scientific discourse…an eliminativist can interpret talk of “functions” as being merely the specification of effects one happens to be interested in. which effects are deemed to relate to “functions” of a character, will depend not on the nature of the character itself, but our interests. (bigelow and pargetter 1987, 183) such [functional] language has important heuristic roles in focusing our attention on entities that satisfy the secondary sense of function and that it is important for us to know more about practical and theoretical aspects of research program development. (schaffner 1993, 390) the matter-of-interest argument can be presented as follows. function terms play a role in helping biologists stipulate some portions of biological knowledge, determined by their research interest. it follows that, function terms are extra to biological knowledge and are therefore eliminable. it should be noted that the matter-of-interest argument enlists more philosophers who are not explicit eliminativists into the eliminativist camp. for instance, j. bigelow and r. pargetter (1987) surprisingly include cummins (1975) as an eliminativist. garson (2014), in a response to schyfter (2015), terms this type of eliminativists conventionalists, and summons, other than cummins (1975), hardcastle (1999) and craver (2013).4 cummins’ formulation is not so explicit, but here are what hardcastle and craver claim: most functional explanations gloss over the details, cover relatively few items, and are simply correlations discovered between the parameters defined in theoretical models of phenomena picked out by the historical interests of the discipline...functions are simply what t is doing in o, relative to a domain of inquiry. (hardcastle 1999, 40) functions, on this view, are roles within mechanisms, defined ultimately in terms of a topping-off point selected for its relevance to observer interests and perspectives. (craver 2013, 142) 4 garson also labels davies (2001) as a conventionalist of this type, but my reading of davies (2001) indicates no evidence for garson’s claim, and what davies explicitly declares is that “our explanatory interests may be important in the discovery of systemic functions, but our interests are neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of such functions” (pp. 8-9). on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 6 since these philosophers appear to accept the premise of the matter-of-interest argument, and if the matter-of-interest argument is sound, they are necessarily eliminativists. taken at its face value, however, the matter-of-interest argument is more difficult to accept than the translatability argument. its premise assumes that function terms are extra to biological knowledge and their use is solely determined by the arbitrary interests of biologists. this implies that function terms lack resultantly literal meanings in biological discourse. but clearly, this consequence is unacceptable because it is incompatible with function pluralism, i.e., the existence of a variety of accounts of biological function, which simply presupposes that function terms have literal meanings. nevertheless, for proponents of eliminativism, it is not obvious that the matter-ofinterest argument necessarily contradicts pluralism, if a slightly different reading of this argument is adopted. indeed, the matter-of-interest argument can be understood as suggesting that the pluralism stems from different research interests of biologists. garson presents pluralism as “the idea that biologists use the term ‘function’ in different ways on different occasions” (2018), and this formulation of pluralism sits well with the matter-ofinterest argument. to put it more explicitly, an account of biological function can be read as having captured a possible research interest of a biologist, and it is this research interest of the biologist that determines his/her choice of a particular account. moreover, it is clear that research interests of biologists are not necessarily arbitrary, and function terms can indeed be used by them, in a fairly regular and stable manner. this is well attested by the existence of accounts of biological function, which are simply regular and stable translations. finally, it is still possible to claim that function terms lack literal meanings in biological discourse. when those against the matter-of-interest argument claim that function terms do have literal meanings, they intend that the meanings of function terms are contained in the translated results. yet, when a careful proponent of the matter-of-interest argument claims that function terms lack literal meanings, he/she can mean that function terms express nothing more than the translated results. understood as such, function terms are indeed extra to biological knowledge, and the matter-of-interest argument runs close to the translatability argument: since respective biological terms in the translated results have already expressed these literal meanings, function terms are at least unnecessary and appear still eliminable. 2.3. the metaphor argument garson (2008) also touches on the metaphor argument, when he characterizes eliminativism as endorsing that “such usage is metaphorical” (p. 529). the metaphor argument claims that, since function terms are mere metaphors and lack resultantly literal meanings in biological discourse, they are eliminable. the metaphor argument is apparently more difficult to accept than the matter-of-interest argument, since it relies on an even stronger premise that function terms in biological discourse are mere metaphors. to elaborate, this premise is supported by two further assertions: the use of function terms implies the existence of intentions (or mental purposes); yet biological entities are not typically associated with these. as a result, the presence of function terms in biological discourse at best indicates that biological entities are often treated as if they were associated with intentions, and for this function terms are mere metaphors that allude to intentions. it is therefore clear that the metaphor argument relies on a particular account of function terms, that is, the intentional account. the intentional account suggests that function terms must be understood through the existence of intentions. indeed, if the intentional account is to be read also as a translation proposal, it simply presupposes that translated results must include terms denoting intentions. nevertheless, this presupposition is not welcome by philosophers of biology and is almost universally repudiated in the on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 7 biological function debate. moreover, it does not accord with present biological usage, to capture which non-intentional accounts of function terms are clearly more adequate. overall, this presupposition is too strong to be reasonable, at least from the descriptive point of view. however, even though the intentional account often fails to capture actual biological usage, it is less problematic if viewed as issuing a mere prescription. given this prescription, it is adequate to judge that function terms in biological discourse amount at best to metaphors and lack resultantly literal meanings. here, perhaps a more interesting question is, is there any fatal consequence of issuing such a prescription? admittedly, this prescription goes radically against actual biological usage today; yet, it seems quite compatible with an important consequence of the translatability argument. indeed, the translatability argument entails a hypothetical scenario in which all function terms in biological discourse were translated and replaced thereafter by conventional biological terms. in that scenario, function terms would be absent. and, in my view, that absence accords well with the prescriptive intentional account. 3. a unified account of eliminativism section 2 has presented three supporting arguments for eliminativism in historical literature. as i have shown, the matter-of-interest argument and the metaphor argument, although problematic taken at face values, could find support from the translatability argument. indeed, the connections between the three arguments are more than that. this section offers a unified account of eliminativism, by taking in the insights of all three arguments. the unified account is inspired in particular by larry wright (1976). it is helpful to start with the matter-of-interest argument. section 2 has shown that the matter-of-interest argument is compatible with actual biological usage, and that the current pluralist consensus can be read as resulting from different research interests of biologists, which can be stabilized and expressed through various different accounts of biological function. however, the matter-of-interest argument has more implications on biological usage, and one of them is that, if function terms are read as indicating research interests of biologists, then it is inevitable that the use of them exhibits a creative appearance. in other words, by using function terms, biologists with new research interests can of course refer to new biological knowledge. as a result, actual biological usage can be updated, and new accounts of function terms are in need. indeed, philosophers are also free to devise such new accounts, and in that case, these new accounts are simply stipulative recommendations (or prescriptions, to speak in a stronger manner) for new biological usage. in sum, the matter-of-interest argument indicates that meanings of function terms can change. very interestingly, the chief supporter of the etiological approach in the early biological function debate, larry wright (1976), already discusses such a scenario in detail. for wright, the original meanings of function terms indicated exclusively “human, conscious, intentional behavior” (p. 12), and given their original meanings, using function terms in any nonhuman case would be “to traffic in dubious metaphor” (p. 12). however, in later passages wright claims: a metaphor dies when the metaphorically extended use of a term becomes established more or less independently of the original paradigm. perhaps because of an unusual demand for the insight or appreciation afforded by the extended use, it will develop a life of its own. a new concept will be formed within its own characteristics, which are related to, but no longer logically so dependent upon the original use of the term. (pp. 19-20) on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 8 for wright, since a new, “metaphorically extended” use of function terms arises, he has a new task of meeting “the requirement of literal translatability” (p. 18), namely, to elucidate the new meanings of function terms, with an updated translation. as a matter of fact, this is the often-ignored background of wright’s classical etiological account of biological function.5 wright touches unmistakably on both the metaphor argument and the translatability argument. importantly, he does not see any contradiction between viewing function terms as metaphors and treating them as having literal meanings. indeed, he understands well that the meanings of function terms are likely to change: the original meanings of function terms indicated exclusively intentions, and they lacked resultantly literal meanings in biological discourse; yet, new meanings later emerge and become standard, and there follows the need of updated accounts.6 now a unified account of eliminativism is ready at hand: in biological discourse function terms have long been present; their original meanings merely refer to intentions, and in that case the use of function terms in biological discourse is at best metaphorical; but gradually, through helping biologists stipulate different research interests, the use of function terms becomes stabilized (although in pluralistic circumstances) and becomes open to stable translations; so, they evolve to a stage in which they possess non-intentional meanings; as a result, in biological discourse they become more than metaphors; yet, they are still eliminable, since they can be translated and thus replaced by conventional biological terms. in this unified account, the metaphor argument, the matter-of-interest argument and the translatability argument are united to support the eliminativist position. finally, to further understand this account, a comparison between biology and physics is particularly illuminating (nagel 1979b/1961, 407-8). similar to biologists, physicists are also abhorred by intentional accounts of function terms (and teleological terms in general). but the physicist strategy of dealing with them is rather different. physicists today are almost universally eliminativists and they think that function terms necessarily refer to intentions outside the physical realm and are therefore eliminable. thus, it is easy to see that, while physics has no issue with the entire elimination of function terms in its own territory, as it considers only intentional accounts of function terms to be legitimate, biology retain function terms by offering new and safe accounts, which are necessarily non-intentional. both strategies work well. however, to emphasize, function terms can only be saved in biological discourse after their intentional meanings, as wright rightly emphasizes, have been discarded.7 5 nagel also briefly considers this scenario and he observes that “it is a plausible claim that the primary meaning…is stated by the intentional view; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the prevailing more inclusive sense of the phrase is a ‘metaphorical extension’ of its initial meaning” (nagel 1979b/1977, 280). yet, in line with wright’s basic concern, nagel also states that the intentional account has “no application in most parts of biology” (p. 280) and “contributes little to the clarification of the concept as it is used in biology” (p. 281). 6 here an unavoidable question is, has wright given a plausible story of the history of the use of function terms (and teleological terms in general)? some pieces of evidence appear to support this story. for instance, kant in his time did not even consider any non-intentional accounts of teleological terms (2000/1790); c. j. ducasse claimed in 1925 that “it follows from this definition of purposiveness that only the acts of entities capable of belief and desire, are capable of being purposive, and therefore that the occurrences of ‘inanimate nature’ cannot be spoken of as purposive without contradiction, unless belief and desire be injected into nature…” (p. 154); and even in wright’s time, there were still several philosophers who considered only intentional accounts to be legitimate (taylor 1950; woodfield 1976; nissen 1993; 1997). overall, this question is empirical in nature and goes far beyond the concern of the present article. here it seems enough to keep in mind that wright’s story depicts a logically plausible scenario. 7 moreover, an awareness of meaning change of function terms indicates the possibility of viewing function terms as anthropomorphic vestiges. even though function terms in biological discourse have on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 9 4. a discussion of eliminativism sections 2 has shown that in historical literature there are at least three supporting arguments for eliminativism. section 3 has offered a unified account of eliminativism by taking in insights from all three arguments. overall, the translatability argument for eliminativism appears the most forceful. on the one hand, it supports the other two arguments indirectly; on the other hand, it directly engages the current biological function debate and tries to show that eliminativism is a necessary consequence of all existent (nonintentional) accounts of biological function. as mentioned in 2.1, the translatability argument for eliminativism is simple if not trivial. however, in the current biological function debate, eliminativism is a peripheral position rarely mentioned in literature, and the translatability argument is surprisingly not even touched on in the most recent presentation of the eliminativist position (garson 2008). then, some might wonder why philosophers who have offered a variety of accounts of biological function have simply ignored the translatability argument, and the biological function debate has so far failed to address eliminativism. the most important reason, as briefly mentioned in 2.1, lies in an oblivion of the descriptive-prescriptive distinction. but before elaborating the importance of this distinction to eliminativism, it is worth discussing another more obvious reason for the general negative attitude towards eliminativism. indeed, often such a negative attitude is simply driven by a particular conception of eliminativism, in which eliminativism is understood as arrogantly dictating that function terms in biological discourse must be eliminated. yet, given the abundance of such terms in biological discourse, eliminativism understood as such goes radically against actual biological usage and appears rather absurd. however, this form of eliminativism is a strawman, more or less designed for a ready rejection. indeed, as the previous clarification has shown, more serious arguments for eliminativism have never embraced such an absurd conception, and their conception of eliminativism is more moderate. accordingly, eliminativism can be understood as suggesting that function terms could be eliminated. here follows the most important reason for which eliminativism in general and the translatability argument in particular are often neglected. indeed, eliminativism is more concerned with a prescriptive question, that is, what could biological usage be? in contrast, the current biological function debate deals with a descriptive question concerning actual biological usage.8 yet, the pluralistic presence of function terms in biological discourse does not entail that they cannot be eliminated at all.9 the translatability argument shows exactly the contrary. as a matter of fact, nagel’s view of teleological terms (for him, these include both function terms and terms like “goals”, “purposes” and “ends”) touched on both questions. in nagel’s own words, given the fact that “biologists do use it [teleology], and say non-intentional meanings today, they still allude to, as wright observes, an anthropomorphic past in which only intentional accounts of function terms were treated as legitimate. indeed, it might even be possible to suggest that the presence of function terms in current biological discourse represents an anthropomorphic tendency that has been made safe, although only by re-defining function terms. this suspicion is recently expressed in a largely neglected article by björn brunnander (2011a). for him, function terms “have too much of a biologically unfortunate pre-theoretical (i.e., mentalistic) load for them to be successfully implemented as technical biological tools” (p. 388). 8 this echoes the distinction between descriptive semantics and normative/pure semantics made by rudolf carnap (1942/1948, 11-15). also see brunnander (2011b). 9 while this descriptive question is certainly interesting in itself, it is more like a socio-linguistic question concerning linguistic habits of biologists rather than a genuinely biological question about living entities. note that this is not to dismiss the importance of the biological function debate, but to make its contribution clearer. on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 10 they are giving a teleological explanation” (nagel 1979b/1961, 402), he offers accounts of biological teleology to capture actual biological usage; at the same time, nagel is convinced that eliminativism still holds, because he is aware of the translatability argument: “if the goalsupporting view of biological functions is correct, functional statements, as well as the presuppositions of functional ascriptions, can also be rendered without using functional concepts (nagel 1979a/1977, 314)”.10 keeping the descriptive-prescriptive distinction in mind, it is easy to see that eliminativism is more difficult to reject than many think. one major objection to eliminativism assumes that function terms have literal meanings and play certain cognitive roles in biological discourse, then goes on arguing that function terms cannot be eliminated. however, this objection cannot shake the translatability argument, since the latter stresses that those literal meanings can already be exhaustively expressed by conventional biological terms in the translated results and those cognitive roles can accordingly be played well. the essential point is that function terms are not necessary to express those literal meanings and play those cognitive roles. as a matter of fact, it is possible to offer a variety of pragmatic reasons (to benefit biological exchange, biologists are unlikely to change their linguistic habits, etc.) for preserving function terms in biological discourse, but all these fail to undermine eliminativism. a good eliminativist (like nagel) has no issues with, and perhaps even welcomes them. in a nutshell, out of pragmatic concerns, eliminativism in its proper form could find it acceptable not to eliminate function terms in biological discourse. therefore, in an important sense eliminativism invites us to go beyond the questions often addressed in the current biological function debate, either what function terms mean in different circumstances or whether they should be preserved for some pragmatic reasons. indeed, eliminativism raises an important question about the logical status of function terms in biological discourse: while function terms can be acknowledged to have literal meanings and play cognitive roles, they are still different in a way from conventional biological terms. to express biological knowledge, unlike conventional biological terms, function terms are indeed not necessary, and, to speak metaphorically, they are merely “parasitic” on conventional biological terms.11 finally, eliminativism is also capable of offering a “global” overview of the biological function debate. in the hypothetical scenario envisaged by eliminativism, all biological knowledge were expressed by conventional biological terms, without invoking function terms at all. this scenario would also be achieved, according to the translatability argument, if all translations were carried out and all function terms were eliminated. then, put on the one side biological knowledge expressed in conventional biological terms, function terms on the other. then, it is easy to see that in the entire biological function debate, biological knowledge itself is maintained as uncontroversial, what philosophers do, in giving a variety 10 peter mclaughlin expresses the same point in his observation that “biologists could in general probably get along fairly well, if they had to, without function terms by substituting either causal role or selective advantage or adaptive value” (mclaughlin 2003, 10). 11 indeed, as i will argue in a different article, regarding the logical status of function terms (and teleological terms in general), kant’s view does not seem outdated: by using function terms, “reason certainly plays a role that is magnificently instructive and purposive in many respects”; yet, function terms provide “no information at all about the origination and the inner possibility of these forms [organisms], although it is that with which theoretical natural science is properly concerned” (kant 2000/1790, 5: 417). in more familiar kantian vocabularies, function terms provide at best regulative ideas, and they fail to contribute constitutive principles. admittedly, this reading of kant’s regulativeconstitutive distinction in biology, although inspired by existent literature, friedman (1992), quarfood (2006), van dyck (2006), toepfer (2012), van den berg (2015) and chen (2019), is unconventional in current kant scholarship (e.g., zammito 2006). on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 11 of accounts of biological function, is to relate some parts of it to function terms.12 while some of these accounts might have captured actual biological usage from a descriptive point of view, they have nevertheless suspicious values if a prescriptive standpoint is adopted. as a matter of fact, if a certain account is prescribed, biological usage, that is, how biological knowledge is related to function terms, changes accordingly; yet this change has little influence on biological knowledge itself, which is already exhaustively expressed by conventional biological terms. 5. conclusion aiming at a critical examination of eliminativism, this article does three things. first, it clarifies from historical literature three supporting arguments for eliminativism. second, it offers a unified account of eliminativism. third, it discusses the validity of eliminativism as well as its implications. a tentative conclusion is that a properly understood eliminativism only claims that function terms could (not must) be eliminated and remains defensible. importantly, eliminativism understood as such does not contradict the current pluralist consensus, and it does not deny that, for all kinds of pragmatic reasons, function terms can be preserved in biological discourse. yet, by maintaining that function terms could be eliminated, it is concerned more with the logical status of function terms; as the translatability argument shows, function terms are not necessary to express biological knowledge, and this task can be well completed by conventional biological terms. however, eliminativism raises at least one further intriguing question concerning the persistent presence of function terms in biological discourse: given eliminativism as a possible option, why has not the history of biology simply eliminated function terms, and why have not biologists simply discarded function terms? to be sure, there are pragmatic answers to this question; yet, perhaps the key point is to be sought in the almost inevitable tendency to adopt function terms developed in biological discourse. what does this tendency indicate? one possible answer is that this tendency is anthropomorphic in nature. footnote 5 has shown that, through eliminativism, it is even possible to view function terms in biological discourse as anthropomorphic vestiges, which are made safe by new definitions. it seems that biologists are quite willing to adopt function terms, despite possible confusions caused by intentional meanings of them. biologists prefer to use or even invent new non-intentional meanings rather than opt for a direct elimination of function terms. then, for some hard-core eliminativists, such a social-linguistic habit only attests subjective projections of mind onto life and is a sign of being unable to think through precise concepts. this might be true in some cases; yet, there is a more objective reason, in relation to the simple fact that biology claims to be the science of life. in other words, the almost inevitable tendency to adopt function terms in biological discourse, although anthropomorphic in some circumstances, alludes to an important part of the empirical reality, that is, the reality of life itself. while a detailed clarification of this point has to wait for a different article, it is possible to give a brief illustration here. to start, it is to be noted that, resonating with eliminativism in the biological function debate, there is also an eliminativist position in the life definition debate. life eliminativism attempts to eliminate the so-called folk concept of life from biology (machery 2012; mariscal and doolittle 2018); correspondingly, there are also biologists and philosophers who attempt to relate life, like those who relate biological function, to different portions of biological knowledge (bich and green 2016; smith 2016). 12 within the etiological approach, philosophers have placed emphasis on the recent past (e.g., godfrey-smith 1994), other types of selection (e.g., garson 2011, 2012), or the non-selective history in weak etiological theories (e.g., buller 1998). within the system approach, philosophers have focused on plasticity (e.g., enç and adams 1992), negative feedback (e.g., faber 1984), reproduction (e.g., schlosser 1998), and self-maintaining networks (e.g., mossio et al. 2009). on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 12 then, speaking of their logical statuses, biological function and life appear strikingly similar. while both of them can be acknowledged to have literal meanings and play certain cognitive roles, they are also merely “parasitic” on ordinary biological knowledge in current biology. as a result, some argue that life eliminativism is also a plausible option. nevertheless, life eliminativism is implausible for a different reason. as a matter of fact, as long as the distinction between “knowledge about life itself” and “knowledge about living objects, i.e., objects predicatable of life (ordinary biological knowledge)” is made clear, it is always possible to argue that the latter is not necessarily relevant to the former. 13 the pursuance of knowledge about life itself-often dubbed as theories of life-often leads to grand proposals aiming at general applicability to all living things. while these proposals remain largely speculative today, it cannot be denied that there is a possibility, however small it is, of future success.14 given such a possibility, it is inadequate to adopt life eliminativism.15 function eliminativism is defensible, but life eliminativism is not. function terms in biological discourse can be eliminated, but the term life cannot. while they are at the same logical status in current biological discourse, a general theory of life remains possible in the future. therefore, the persistent presence of eliminable function terms in biological discourse does indicate an ineliminable reality, that is, the reality of life itself. 6. acknowledgements i thank charles wolfe and maarten van dyck for their help in improving the contents of this article. 7. references amundson, r., and lauder, g.v. 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(2016). the organizational account of function is an etiological account of function. acta biotheoretica 64 (2): 105-117. 13 by “life itself” is meant the pure concept or phenomenon of life. it is important to distinguish extension and intension of life, or we might say, objects predicatable of life and life itself. what we general call biological knowledge is only knowledge about the former, rather than the latter (voegelin 1998/1933, 144; ben-naim, ms). moreover, it is safe to say that we possess no theoretical knowledge about life itself, even though in ordinary experience we recognize many things as alive in the world. carol cleland and her colleague give a particularly insightful analogy to help understand the status of the life concept today. according to cleland and chyba (2002, 2003, 2007) (and also see cleland’s independent articles, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2019), the current situation in which a general theory of life is lacking is analogous to that in which a general theory of water was unavailable until the molecular theory came up with a theory of h2o; and the fact that life can be defined today only in terms of conventional biological properties (inheritance, development, reproduction, etc.) reminds us of the time when water could only be defined through conventional sensible properties (wetness, transparency, odorlessness, etc.). 14 examples of such theoretical proposals can be found more often in the works of mathematical biologists, such as robert rosen (2005), stuart kauffman (1993), and brian goodwin (1982). towards these often-speculative proposals, cleland and her colleagues adopt a reasonable wait-and-see attitude, which can indeed be expressed through kantian terminologies: even though life is a mere regulative idea in current biological knowledge, the possibility is open that it will become a constitutive principle in future biology. 15 the editors of nature in 2007 detect a peculiar phenomenon termed by them “chronic vitalism”: vitalistic or quasi-vitalistic proposals to understanding life have been emerging and disappearing chronically. indeed, chronical vitalism is good evidence for the claim that, despite great biological progress, the problem of life remains unsolved. on biological function: a critical examination of eliminativism bohang chen transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 13 (december) 2022 13 artiga, m. 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(2006). teleology then and now: the question of kant’s relevance for contemporary controversies over function in biology. studies in history and philosophy of science part c: studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences 37(4): 748-770. microsoft word biacino layout comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-39 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the author 2023 – this is an open-access journal article comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7035-3993 abstract: after the publication in 1904 of lebesgue’s leçons, many mathematicians had the idea of obtaining a simpler and more natural theory of integration, sometimes for a technical or philosophical purpose, sometime for a didactical purpose. among them borel, riesz, young, hahn, pierpoint, radon, fréchet, daniell and in italy tonelli, vitali, caccioppoli dealt with this fundamental tool. in this paper, their theories are exposed and compared. keywords: lebesgue’s integral; integration without recourse to lebesgue measure theory: integral as limit of integrals of elementary functions; lebesgue’ integral as functional prolongation of cauchy integral; abstract integration spaces received: february 17, 2023. reviewed: may 30, 2023. accepted: june 15, 2023. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.10 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ introduction in a series of papers (biacino 2018, 2019, 2020) i examined many aspects of the history of the real function theory during the second halph of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century. in (biacino 2018) i dealt with the studies about the evolution of the concept of function after the definitions of dirichlet and riemann till the classification by baire, with the discussions between baire, borel and lebesgue at the beginning of the twentieth century about sets and functions, with their purposes and polemics reported often by their own words. all these manifestations were related as the fertile soil on which the mathematics of the twentieth century grew. in the other previous quoted papers, many technical results about the development of the lebesgue measure and integration theory and many linked properties and studies are discussed in detail and placed in their proper historical context, underlining, in particular, the contributions of the italian scholars. this paper can be considered as the natural conclusion of the previous study, even if it was written almost at the beginning to have a complete picture of the situation under investigation. i expose in it a lot of ideas lebesgue’s genial work engendered, comparing the many ways the mathematicians thought to introduce lebesgue’s theory of integration in a simpler and more natural manner, often reducing the recourse to the measure theory as riesz, or resorting to the cauchyriemann integral as borel and hahn, or adopting a 1 former associate professor at the d. m. a. of university “federico ii” of naples. address: via blundo, 42, 80 128 napoli, italy. e-mail: loredana.biacino2@unina.it comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 2 functional method as young and daniell. it is very interesting to remember that some attempts were made almost contemporarily to the born of lebesgue theory and were only after proved to be equivalent to it, as for example a first proposal by young. there were also attempts with a more emphasized didactical and philosophycal interest, as tonelli’s theory of integral, where the functions that are produced by the choice axiom are banished. his method is clearly linked to borel’s constructive set and function theory. the method used by pierpoint too has a didactical interest and, as young’s one, allows the recourse to infinite partions constituted by measurable sets of the interval where the function is defined. on the other hand this survey is completed by the exposition of the ways to extend integration to a wider framework, as the methods of radom and fréchet, that reflect the tendency to the abstraction pervading some parts of the mathematical world and also other cultural circles in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. lebesgue’s measure theory it is well known that riemann introduced the definition of integrable function in his habilitationsschrift presented at göttingen in 1854; it was published posthumous as a memoir and known only in 1867: in it, riemann proved the famous characterization of the integrable functions and built a bounded function which is integrable on every bounded interval of the real line but is such that its set of discontinuities is dense in every interval. riemann’s memoir gave rise to the proliferation of researches and studies about the integrable functions there defined, with a special emphasis about the need to characterize the measure of the set of the discontinuities of such functions: and it was a great merit of lebesgue’s measure theory to solve it by the introduction of the notion of the null measure sets. but before lebesgue the following theories, strictly linked to the previous problem, emerged: cantor’s set theory (1874-1884); harnack’s (1881) and du bois-reymond (1882) content theory; stolz’s and cantor’s (1884) content theory; peano’s (1887) and jordan’s (1893) measure theory; borel’s (1898) measure theory. only in 1904, by the contemporary introduction of the null measure sets by lebesgue and of the minimal null extension sets by vitali it was possible to characterize the riemann’s integrable functions. during this long period, the statement borel gave of the problem was fundamental since it allowed us to take a step forward with respect to peano-jordan’s measure theory by the demand for a countably additive in place of finitely additive measure. henry lebesgue (1875-1941) claims in his doctorate thesis, where the theory of measure and integration is formulated and the results already present in many notes on the cr of 1899, 1900 and 1901 are combined, that he was deeply influenced by borel’s formulation of the problem. lebesgue’s theory was highly innovative in the academic world of the first years of twentieth century and this is why at the beginning it met with difficulties: fubini remembers that when lebesgue wrote his doctorate thesis, picard turned towards dini, who edited the annali di matematica, and wrote him that one of his students has devoted himself to the foundation of the calculus, a subject cultivated in italy (and particularly by dini) and therefore it would be better to publish his thesis in italy (fubini 1907); clearly picard did not think highly of his student’s work and the previous thesis was published on the annali in 1902. but not long after picard had to change his mind so that in 1917 in les sciences mathématiques en france depuis un demi siècle he wrote: “riemann seemed to have investigated as deeply as possible the idea of the indefinite integral. lebesgue showed that is not true” (picard 1917, 21). as it was predictable lebesgue’s thesis met with strong opposition and its theories turned into the object of lively criticism. so, when lebesgue in 1902 gave a copy of the just written thesis to jordan, the old professor said him more or less: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 3 persist in scientific research, and you will experience great joys. but it would help if you learned to enjoy them alone. you will be a source of amazement to others. the learned world will not better understand you: mathematicians have a special place in it, and they do not always read each other (lebesgue 1923).2 the forecast turned to be not much truthful: indeed , even if lebesgue was not lacking in cultural opposition during his life, he made a good academic career, teaching at the cours peccot of the college of france from 1902 to 1905 and then continued his work, crowned by prizes and honours, at poitiers, at the sorbonne and in other universities, becoming at last professor at the academy of france in 1922. lebesgue deals with the problem of the measure of the sets in chap. vii of his leçons, after a long introduction historical in nature about integral calculus. he begins his exposition giving the axioms for the sets of the real line in borel’s style: 1) two equal sets have the same measure; 2) the measure of the union of a finite number of sets, or of countable many sets, pairwise disjoint, is equal to the sum of the measures; 3) the measure of the interval (0,1) is 1. axiom 1) signifies that the measure is invariant with respect to translations; axiom 2 expresses the fundamental property of countable additivity; axioms 1), 2) and 3) postulate that the defined measure is an extension of the elementary measure to a larger frame. after the list of the fundamental requisites a measure has to satisfy, lebesgue passes to its construction: given a bounded set e, he covers it by a finite or countable set of intervals, pairwise disjoint, the elementary measure of such a cover being the finite or infinite sum of the lengths of the disjoint intervals that compose it; lebesgue calls external measure of e the greatest lower bound of the elementary measures of the previous covers, while the covers vary and, given an interval (a, b) containing e, defines the internal measure of e as the measure of (a, b) minus the external measure of (a, b)-e. then lebesgue proves that the internal measure is not greater than the external one and that the two just defined measures are situated between the corresponding jordan measures. a set is called measurable if its internal measure coincides with the external measure (lebesgue 1904a). as riesz observed, “lebesgue’s measure has the merit of being inclusive without being sensitive” (riesz 1920, 191), that is it faces up the delicate themes risen after the introduction of peano-jordan’s measure, solving the open questions and absorbing in the same time the previous theories, but avoiding the inconveniences they presented: so there are borel measurable sets that are not peano-jordan measurable and vice versa, there are lebesgue measurable sets that are not peano-jordan nor borel measurable, but all peano-jordan and borel measurable sets are lebesgue measurable. by the way lebesgue observes that the set obtained by the borel’s procedure,3 he calls b measurable, are measurable in the new sense, but, while the lebesgue measurable sets have the power greater than the continuum (as also the peano-jordan measurable sets), the b measurable sets have the power of the continuum, and lebesgue claims: “but this does not mean defining a non-measurable set b 2 persévérez dans le recherche scientifique, vous y éprouverez des grandes joies. mais il vous faudra apprendre à les goùter solitairment. vous serez pour le vòtres un sujet d’étonnement. vous ne serez guère mieux compris du monde savant: les mathématiciens y ont une place a part et ils ne se lisent mème pas toujours les uns les autres (lebesgue 1923). 3 that is obtained by finite or countable unions and complements from the real intervals. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 4 is possible... we will only ever encounter measurable sets b” (lebesgue 1904 a, 109, note 1).4 it is possible to give examples of lebesgue measurable sets that are not b measurable using the choice axiom. but, as lusin showed, it is also possible construct sets of this type without the use of the axiom choice. in other words, it is possible to prove that the class of lebesgue measurable sets is larger than the class of the b measurable sets without the use of the axiom choice. after lebesgue passes to the definition of the measurable functions and proves the theorem: the limit of a convergent sequence of measurable functions is a measurable function. he claims that he does not know whether it is possible to name a function that is not b measurable and whether there exist functions that are not measurable. this last question would be answered soon by vitali (vitali 1905 d), and lusin, who gave examples of not lebesgue measurable functions, obtained applying the axiom of choice. in the sequel, lebesgue did not admit the not constructive methods by which the previous examples had been built. so in a letter of february 16, 1907 addressed to vitali he wrote: this kind of idealist reasoning does not have great value in my opinion; but we must consider the information it gives (vitali 1984, 457-460).5 and also: several authors [vitali ..., lebesgue ..., ed. van vleck] have indicated some procedures of formation of not measurable sets, but these procedures suppose some operations that is impossible to carry out or to characterize logically (lebesgue 1910 note p. 371).6 robert solovay proved that it is impossible to define not measurable sets without the use of the choice axiom (solovay 1970). then lebesgue’s position consisted in considering as subsets of the real line only the lebesgue measurable sets. so notwithstanding a large group of mathematicians, the same lebesgue, baire, borel, … , and also in italy vitali, beppo levi, … , wanted to put in order the concepts of space, time, continuity, in such a way to assign, as buhl said, superior rights to the logic than to the evidence, yet some of them insisted that it should be possible to give constructive procedures for the new defined entities. from this point of view the position of lebesgue was very close to the position of the more severe borel, who wrote in his introduction to a generalization of riemann’s integral, where he did not want to resort to lebesgue measure: the idea that guided me is the utility to distinguish between the calculations that can be actually performed and those that cannot be. only the first ones can be effectively used in the applications of mathematics. i do not want to say that the applications are the ony purpose of mathematics, this is very far from my thought ... . but i only say that there is a 4 mais cela ne veut pas dire qu’il soit possible de définir un ensemble non mesurable b … nous ne rencontrerons jamais que des ensembles mesurable b” (lebesgue 1904 a, 109, note 1). 5 ce mode de raisonnement idéaliste n’a pas, à mes yeux, grande valeur; mais il est nécessaire de tenir compte des indications qu’il donne (vitali 1984, letter of february 16, 1907). 6 divers auteurs [vitali … , lebesgue … , ed. van vleck … ] ont indiqué des procédés de formation d’ensembles non mesurables, mais ces procédés supposent qu’on emploie des opérations qu’on ne sait ni effectuer, ni méme caractériser logiquement (lebesgue 1910 note p. 371). comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 5 great theoretic and practical interest in studying separately the calculable numbers and functions (borel 1912, 161).7 the matter roused much controversy, and many mathematicians were involved in it: with regard to this see (monna 1972) and also (biacino 2018). in (gispert 1995) the positions of lebesgue, baire, borel and other mathematicians with respect to set theory are compared. in order to outline a survey of the measure and integral theory in the history of mathematics between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, see (nalli 1914) and (hawkins 2002), where a detailed history of the riemann and lebesgue integral is exposed. see also the chapter on integration of (bourbaki 1963) and (bottazzini 1990, 1994). the theory of integration by lebesgue lebesgue defines his integral and the concept of a summable function already in his doctorate thesis (lebesgue 1902); here the exposition he adopts in the not technical paper of 1926 sur le développement de la notion d’intégrale (lebesgue 1927) will be reported. he starts observing that in the definition of riemann’s integral only partitions of the interval (a, b) constituted by a finite number of intervals whose lengths tend to zero are considered: in such a way, if the function is discontinuous, we are not sure whether the differences of the bounds of the function in such intervals tend to zero too. the construction proceeds in this way: the interval (a, b) is divided by the points x0 = a < x1 < x2< …. < xn = b and for every i, zi is a point of the interval (xi, xi+1). if f(x) is continuous in (a, b) then the cauchy’s integral of f is the limit of the sums ∑ 𝑓(𝑧 )(𝑥 − 𝑥 ) when the greatest length of the intervals of the subdivision tends to zero. riemann considers bounded functions and after having carried out the subdivision of (a, b) into partial intervals as before, considers the greatest lower bound mi and the least upper bound mi of f(x) in the interval (xi, xi+1); then he puts: s = ∑ 𝑚 (𝑥 − 𝑥 ); s=∑ 𝑀 (𝑥 − 𝑥 ). the function is called integrable by riemann if, as for the cauchy sums, the difference s-s tends to zero when the greatest length of the intervals tends to zero. some year after darboux will observe that the two limits of s and s exist whatever the function is (darboux 1875): they will be called the lower integral and the upper integral by volterra in 1881 and they coincide if and only if the function is riemann integrable, in such a case the common value being the riemann integral. lebesgue says: “the previous definitions are very natural, isn’t it?” but he observes also that they are not useful from a practical point of view. riemann’s definition has the fault that it applies only in very rare occasions and almost by chance. on the contrary let us suppose f(x) is a measurable function8, and instead of the interval (a, b) let us divide the interval (c, d), where c is the greatest lower bound and d is the least upper bound of f(x) in (a, b), in intervals whose length is less than ԑ, inserting the points y0=c < y1 < y2 < … < yn = d. let ei be 7 l’idée qui m’a guidé est l’utilité qui me paraìt évidente de distinguer entre les calculs qui peuvent étre réellement effectués et ceux qui ne peuvent pas l’étre. les premiers, seuls, sont actuellement utilisable dans les applications des mathématiques. je ne veux pas dire, bien entendu, que les applications soient l’unique but des mathématiques; rien n’est plus loin de ma pensée; … ce que je dis simplement, c’est qu’il y a un grand intérét théorique et pratique à étudier à part les nombres et les fonctions calculables … (borel 1912, 161). 8 a real function defined in an interval i is measurable if, for every real number a, the set {x𝜖𝐼: f(x) > a} is measurable. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 6 the set {x ϵ (a, b): yi ≤ f(x) < yi+1}. ei is measurable since such is the function f(x). let ui whatever point between yi and yi+1 and consider the sum ∑ 𝑢 𝑚(𝐸 ). it is possible to prove that when ԑ tends to zero such a sum tends to a finite limit for every bounded measurable function: this limit is by definition the lebesgue’s integral of f(x). lebesgue gives an example to show his point of view. a tradesman can count his money as he gets it, but he can also proceed in a different way, assembling first all the pieces of a given value and then summing. so he sums m1 pieces of 10 euros, m2 pieces of 20 euros, m3 pieces of 50 euros and so on, obtaining the result m1 x 10 + m2 x 20 + m3 x 50 + … lebesgue observes that the two results are obviously equal because, in this case, we deal with finite sums, but he underlines: for us that have to sum infinitely many indivisibles the difference between the two methods is of capital importance (lebesgue 1927, 153). in an analogous way it is possible to apply the previous procedure to measurable but unbounded functions; in this case however the integral sum may be not convergent. if the integral sums tend to a finite limit the function is called summable. the use for unbounded functions of integral sums is rather difficult. it is for this reason that de la vallée poussin introduced another definition of integral for measurable unbounded functions basing it on the notion of “truncated” function (de la vallée poussin 1915, 1916). the new integral, equivalent to the lebesgue’s one, is defined in the following way: given a nonnegative function f on a bounded measurable set e, let, for every given natural number n, fn(x) be equal to f(x) if f(x)≤n, and to n if f(x) >n. the function fn is bounded and measurable so it is integrable. consider the sequence of the integrals of fn: it is not decreasing and therefore it has a finite or infinite limit. in the first case the function is called summable and by definition ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 = limn∫ 𝑓 (𝑥)𝑑𝑥. if f is of whatever sign it is called summable if its absolute value is summable in the previous sense; in such a case, the function is written as the difference between its positive part f1(x)=max{0, f(x)} and its negative part f2(x)=max{0, -f(x)}, which are two measurable and nonnegative functions, they are also both summable and the integral is given by definition by: ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 =∫ 𝑓 (𝑥)𝑑𝑥 − ∫ 𝑓 (𝑥)𝑑𝑥. observe that yet in 1905 vitali had given the notion of “truncated” function in the following way: let f be a function and let p and q be two real numbers such that p<q. let {𝑓} be equal to f(x) if p ≤ 𝑓(𝑥) ≤ q, equal to p if f(x)< p, equal to q if f(x)> q. but this notion was used by vitali in another frame (vitali 1905 b). the lebesgue integral is a distributive and additive functional: it has the great merit to be a powerful instrument to carry out difficult calculations allowing the passage to the limit under the integral sign in many interesting cases. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 7 other ways to introduce lebesgue’s measure and integral: the riesz approach it is evident from the previous exposition that lebesgue’s integral is strictly linked to measure theory: but this theory was considered by many mathematicians too abstract, not much intuitive and not constructive. consequently, after a first period in which the new and revolutionary approach to integration penetrated the mathematical world and was absorbed, some attempts to generalize riemann’s theory in a different manner from lebesgue were made. the hungarian mathematician frigyes riesz (1880-1956) was interested in lebesgue’s integral since he read the memory that lebesgue had dedicated to the trigonometric series, but as he relates in (riesz 1920, 1949), he was also interested in an alternative method to lebesgue’s theory that borel was the first to expose with a note on the c.r. of 1912, followed in the same year by a memory on the journal de mathematiques (borel 1912). riesz took these papers has an opportunity to expose his own ideas on the same question, ideas very different from borel’s ones: riesz defined the integral by a functional method using only the notion of null measure set and deducing all the measure theory as a chapter on the integration, the measurable sets being those sets whose characteristic functions are summable. on the other hand borel started his treatment by means of the measure theory he firstly had introduced since 1898 and tried to extend the integration to discontinuous unbounded functions generalizing cauchy’s method. he intended in this way to give a foundation of measure and integration theory based on a constructive method. indeed among other things in the memoir of 1912 the definitions of a constructive number and of a constructive function were given for the first time. because of these opposite approaches, a controversy followed where borel and lebesgue were involved: even if it went on in a calm tone (borel in the memoir of 1912 counts lebesgue among his friends), it revealed two very different way to look up mathematics: while lebesgue had some reservations about not constructive methods, borel had these reservations in a more accentuated manner. the controversy finished by the memoir of 1918 by lebesgue, where the author observes that borel thinks that: the constructive method is more natural, more simple, more direct and more rapid; it is more general but it makes to know more exactly the significance of the results vitiated by a too great (apparent) generality in my works (lebesgue 1918, 192).9 as a consequence, lebesgue refutes borel’s arguments and criticism in the following way: i apologize for the length of this work, but, since i could not find, in the mémoires of m. borel, the exposition of his reasons and the explanation of what is a constructive definition, either, i had to examine all the hypotheses i thought (lebesgue 1918, 192).10 the english mathematician young also dealt with the same question from different perspectives, in 1905 and 1911, but unfortunately his interesting works passed almost 9 la méthode constructive serait plus naturelle, plus simple, plus directe et plus rapide; serait plus générale et cependant ferait connaı̂tre plus exactement la portée des résultats, entachés d’une trop grand généralité (apparente) dans mes travaux (lebesgue 1918, 192). 10 je m’excuse de la longueur de ce travail; mais, comme je n’ai plus pu trouver, dans les mémoires de m. borel, l’exposé des raisons qui motivent son opinion, ni m e me l’explication de ce qu’est une définition constructive, j’ai du examiner toutes les hypothéses auxquelles j’ai pensé (lebesgue 1918, 192). comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 8 unnoticed in the first moment. even so, his functional method, as riesz’s one, was the starting point for the more general theory of the integral exposed by daniell in 1918. other attempts to develop an integration theory without referring to lebesgue’s measure on the whole or partially were made also: for example sierpinski (1882-1969) in 1916, in order to give a simpler proof of vitali-lusin theorem, simplifies the definition of a measurable set, basing it on the fundamental notions of set theory. precisely he calls a subset m of the real line measurable if it is such that for every ԑ > 0 there exist two sets f and n such that m = f∪n, where f is a closed set and n can be covered by a sequence of intervals such that the sum of their lengths is less than ԑ. sierpinski does not say what is the measure of a measurable set. but, given the notion of a measurable set he can deduce consequently a notion of measurability for functions, essentially in the manner of lebesgue, obtaining equivalent definitions even if not identical to lebesgue’s ones (sierpinski 1916). riesz approach forms part of the same scheme of things, but with a more well made argument, since this author, as already said, considers the integration problem in its generality, using of lebesgue measure theory only the sets whose lebesgue’s measure is zero. his exposition has the great merit to make easier the proofs of the fundamental theorems of integration theory. he starts calling a function measurable if it is defined almost everywhere on a closed interval [a, b] and is the limit of an almost everywhere convergent sequence of step functions. a step function in turn is a function which is constant on each open interval of some partition of [a, b] by a finite number of points a = x0 < x1< … < xn = b. together with the step functions, whose integrals are obviously known in the usual manner, riesz considers the class of the functions f that can be represented as the limits in the sense of convergence almost everywhere of a monotone increasing sequence of step functions, whose integrals are bounded: such a function can be proved to be almost everywhere finite and measurable in the previous sense. for such a function the integral is the limit of the sequence of the integrals of the step functions whose limit is f (obviously riesz proves that, given f, all the previous sequences of integrals have the same limit). a function that is the difference of two functions of the previous class is called summable and its integral is the difference of the integrals of the two functions which represent it. it is possible to prove that the class of the riesz measurable functions coincides with the class of the lebesgue measurable functions and so for the class of summable functions and for the integrals. this is not surprising since every lebesgue measurable set can be obtained from a borel set by adding or subtracting a set of null measure. young’s first methods of integration william henry young (london 1863lausanne 1942) proposed an original approach to lebesgue’ integral where the upper and lower semicontinuous functions play a fundamental role. in 1905 young publishes on upper and lower integration: the paper, arrived at the editorial office in 1904, january, was written when young was not informed yet of lebesgue’s work, but, as the author claims in the introduction of the paper, once he had known it, he could notice his paper agreed perfectly with it, having moreover the merit to consider functions of more variables. the author wants to calculate the upper or lower integral, in the sense of (darboux 1875), of a bounded discontinuous function of one or more variables by reducing it to an ordinary integration: in the scheme of things of baire this problem is faced essentially for the bounded upper and lower semicontinuous functions, which, introduced by baire in his thesis comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 9 (baire 1899), are lebesgue integrable; the analogous problem for whatever discontinuous function is reduced to the previous case. young reduces the upper integral to an ordinary riemann’s integration in the following way: given a bounded function f(x) defined on a bounded and simply connected region d of the n-dimensional space, the upper integral of f(x) extended to d is given by: k|d|+∫ 𝐼(𝑘)𝑑𝑘, where |d| is the content (the exterior jordan’s measure) of d, i(k) is the content of the set of the points of d such that f(x)≥k, k and k’ are the greatest lower bound and the least upper bound respectively of f(x) in d (young 1905a, 57). notice that i(k) is a not increasing function of k and therefore is riemann integrable. moreover, if the function f(x) is upper semicontinuous then i(k) is the exterior jordan’s measure of a close set and therefore coincides with lebesgue’s measure; so in this case the upper integral coincides with lebesgue’s integral. analogously young deals with the lower integral of a lower semicontinuous function. in order to define the integral in general young uses a theorem given by baire in the following way. given a bounded discontinuous function f(x) defined on a region d it is possible to associate f(x) with three other functions:  the function that associates every point of d with the maximum limit of f(x) in such a point;  the function that associates every point of d with the minimum limit of f(x) in such a point;  the oscillation of f(x), that is the function that associates every point of d with the difference of the values of the first and the second function in that point. the first and the third functions are upper semicontinuous, while the second one is lower semicontinuous. the result proved by young is the following: the upper integral of a discontinuous function coincides with the upper integral of its maximum limit function, that is integrable in the previous sense, since this function is upper semicontinuous; analogously the lower integral coincides with the lower integral of its minimum limit function (young 1905a, 56). again in 1905 another paper on integration by young appeared on the philosophical transactions (young 1905 b). in this work the author considers a measurable set, not necessarily reduced to an interval and not necessarily a subset of the real line, he calls fundamental: given a function on a fundamental set, he divides it in a finite or a countable number of components in an arbitrary manner and multiplies the content of every component for the least upper (resp. greatest lower) bound of the function in that component; he adds all these products and defines the exterior (resp. interior) measure of the integral as the greatest lower bound m (resp. least upper bound m) of all the sums relative to the upper (resp. lower) extremes. if these two measures coincide, then the function is called integrable in the new generalized sense and the integral is their common value. this method of integration is very similar to riemann’s integration method if the fundamental set is an interval but in it countable partitions of the domain of the function constituted by lebesgue measurable sets instead of intervals are considered. it is why in the second edition of the leçons lebesgue dwells upon young’s method and proves carefully the comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 10 equivalence of the two formulations in the case the fundamental set is an interval and the function is bounded and lebesgue measurable (lebesgue 1950, 135). in such a case, indeed, given the function f(x) defined in the fundamental set e, lebesgue considers for every sequence constituted by the following subsets of e: en = e[n𝜀 ≤ 𝑓(𝑥) < (𝑛 + 1)𝜀], the sums sl = ∑ 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠(𝑒 )n𝜀 and sl = ∑ 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠(𝑒 )(n+1)𝜀. consider now whatever partition of the fundamental set e constituted by the sets of whatever sequence (en); let 𝛿 be the measure of ei and let li and li be respectively the greatest lower and the least upper bound of f in ei: on the other hand, young considers the sums of the series: s=∑ 𝑙 𝛿 ; s=∑ 𝐿 𝛿 . he considers the least upper bound, m, of the sums s and the greatest lower bound, m, of the sums s. now the en are particular sets among those considered by young: therefore, if ml is the least upper bound of the sums sl considered by lebesgue and ml is greatest lower bound of the sums sl, we have: m ≤ ml ≤ ml ≤ m. therefore, every function that is young summable is also lebesgue summable. but vice versa, since it is possible to consider among the partitions made by young those whose elements are all contained in one of the en then the difference m – m is less than 𝜀meas(e), therefore since every bounded and lebesgue measurable function is lebesgue integrable it is also young summable and the integrals coincide. observe that the way to define the integral used by young, differently from the riemann’s integration method can be applied also to unbounded functions: indeed, since the considered partitions are not necessarily finite, but can be countable, even if the function is unbounded around a point or a finite or countable number of points, it is possible to consider partitions constituted by a countable number of sets such that in every set of the partition the function is bounded. for example, consider the function f(x) defined in the following way: f(x) = √ if 0 < x ≤ 1. consider the partition of the interval (0, 1) constituted by the intervals ] , ] with n belonging to the set n of natural numbers. consider the l.u.b. of f(x) in the n-th interval, √𝑛 + 1, multiply it for the length of the n-th interval and consider then the infinite sum ∑( − )√𝑛 + 1 =∑ √ . since such a series is convergent, the exterior measure of the integral of f(x) extended to the interval (0, 1) is finite. analogously the interior measure of the integral of f(x) is not less than ∑ √ . therefore the function f(x) is young summable and is easy to verify that its integral is equal to 2. pierpoint’s definition of integral the previous definition by young was generalized by james pierpoint (1866-1938), a united states mathematician, who for many years was appointed as a full professor at yale. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 11 in the second volume of his theory of functions of real variable (1912) pierpoint considers firstly a new notion of partition of a set that may be also not measurable into sets that may be also not measurable. precisely the set e is divided into the separate sets e1 and e2 if there exist two lebesgue measurable sets m1 and m2 such that: e1⊆ m1, e2⊆ m2 and meas(m1 ⋂ m2) = 0. if e is divided into the separate sets e1 and e2, then the following equality with respect to the exterior lebesgue measure holds: 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠(e) = 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (e1) + 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (e2) and an analogous equality holds for the interior lebesgue measure. pierpoint introduces also the notion of measurability with respect to a set e in the following way: given a not measurable set e, a set f is measurable with respect to e if there exists a lebesgue measurable set m such that f= e⋂m. obviously every set is measurable with respect to itself. if f is measurable with respect to e then also e-f is measurable with respect to e and if e is lebesgue measurable then a set is measurable with respect to e if and only if it is lebesgue measurable. it is possible to prove that e is divided into the two separate sets e1 and e2 if and only if they are measurable with respect to e. pierpoint also proves that: if the set e is divided in a finite or countable number of sets ei all measurable with respect to e, or equivalently, constituting a separate division of e, then 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠(e) = ∑ 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (𝐸 ). (*) the same holds for the interior measure. once he has proposed these definitions, pierpoint gives for the integral a definition like young’s one, but, instead of dividing the not necessarily measurable set e in a finite or countable number of measurable sets, he divides it in sets measurable with respect to e and considers their exterior measures. the previous definitions caused a sharp criticism, expressed in two brief papers on the bull. of the amer. math soc. by m. fréchet, (fréchet 1916) and (fréchet 1917), who in those years wrote from the french front of the first world war, pierpoint replied immediately (pierpoint 1916) and (pierpoint 1917). substantially fréchet had misunderstood the way to make the partitions. indeed, if we consider traditional partitions, then in place of (*) we have the relation 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠(e) ≤ ∑ 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (𝐸 ). this entails the following difficulty: consider the function f(x) = 1 in the interval [0,1] and consider a partition constituted by the only interval [0,1] and another partition constituted by two not measurable sets a1 and a2 such that 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (a1) + 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (a2) >1; then the upper integral of f extended to e = [0,1], that is equal to the g.l.b. of the sums ∑ 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (𝐸 ) where the partition (ei) varies, is not greater than 1, while the lower integral which coincides with the l.u.b. of the same sums is not less than 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (a1) + 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠 (a2) >1; therefore in this case the lower integral is strictly greater than the upper integral, a fact that damages the theory. but, as we have seen, pierpoint avoids such situations considering only particular partitions, precisely those which satisfy (*). moreover, fréchet observes that it is not essential to consider countable not finite partitions, but if his observation is perfectly pertinent for bounded functions, for unbounded functions countable partitions are necessary as we noticed exposing young’s integral. pierpoint answered fréchet’s criticism making clear the french mathematician had misunderstood his definitions and added: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 12 to be historically accurate, i had no intention whatever of generalizing lebesgue’s integrals. when years ago i hit on my definition of integration, i did not know how it was related to lebesgue’s theory. i found out later that when the field of integration is measurable my integrals are identical with lebesgue’s and i have therefore called them lebesgue integrals throughout my book. to prevent misunderstanding let me note that my definition is not restricted to a single variable … (pierpoint 1916). however, fréchet’s criticism pointed out that pierpoint’s definition is not very useful for not measurable sets, while in the case of measurable sets it coincides with young’s one. young’s second method of integration in 1911, after he had published a series of results about sequences of continuous and discontinuous functions, and almost as a completion of that study young wrote a paper where he gave a functional definition of the integral for a larger class than the semicontinuous functions. even if (young 1911) passed over in silence almost completely, it would be in the sequel one of the main sources of inspiration for the generalization of integral carried out by daniel in 1918. young begins from the class of the continuous functions on a bounded interval whose cauchy integral is well known: as a first step, since if a bounded function is lower semicontinuous it is the limit of an increasing sequence of continuous functions, it is possible to define its integral as the limit of the integrals of such functions; analogously if the function is upper semicontinuous, since in such a case it is the limit of a decreasing sequence of continuous functions; the second step consists in giving the definition of lower generalized integral of whatever bounded function f(x) as the least upper bound of the integrals of the upper semicontinuous functions not greater than f(x) and of upper generalized integral of f(x) as the greatest lower bound of the integrals of the lower semicontinuous functions not less than f(x). young proves that: it is possible to determine an increasing (decreasing) monotone sequence of upper (lower) semicontinuous functions not greater than f(x) (not less than f(x)) whose integrals have the lower (upper) generalized integral as their limit (young 1911, 27). in this way upper and lower generalized integrals are not more looked on as lower and upper extremes of integral sums in the manner of darboux, but they are lower and upper extremes of integrals. a function is called summable if the upper and lower generalized integrals coincide; the preceding definition is then extended also to unbounded functions. young proves that obviously every bounded and lebesgue measurable function is summable in the new sense. notice that if a function is lebesgue summable then young’s condition is a theorem, known as vitali-caratheodory theorem. moreover he proves that: every bounded summable function coincides almost everywhere with the least upper bound of a sequence of upper semicontinuous functions and with the greatest lower bound of a sequence of lower semicontinuous functions (young 1911, 16). thus he concludes that every summable function can be modified on a null measure set in such a way to be included in baire’s first class of functions. indeed he proves, denoting comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 13 by lu (ul) a function that is least upper bound (greatest lower bound) of an increasing (decreasing) sequence of upper (lower) semicontinuous functions: a function belongs to the baire’s first class if and only if it is both lu and ul (young 1911, 24). following baire, young iterates the second step, alternating limit of increasing sequences with limit of decreasing sequences. in this way he defines the integral for every baire function of the first class. what class do measurable functions belong to? baire functions were introduced by baire in his already quoted doctorate thesis in 1899; they are defined by steps: at step 0 there are the continuous functions; at step 1 the bounded or unbounded discontinuous functions that are punctual limits of continuous functions; at step 2 the discontinuous functions that do not belong to class 1 but are punctual limits of sequences of functions of class 1 and so on functions of every finite order are defined; now it is possible to imagine that a function is a limit of functions of finite increasing orders but does not belong to anyone of the previous classes. then this function is said to belong to the first transfinite class 𝜔. if a function is the limit of a sequence of functions of class 𝜔 is called of class 𝜔 + 1 and so on it is possible to define functions of every transfinite order. the subject was widely discussed at the beginning of the twentieth century and studied from different points of view. immediately some mathematicians observed that all the baire’s classes are constituted by measurable functions. for example, in june 1905 guido fubini wrote in a post card addressed to vitali: all the baire’s functions are measurable being limits of measurable functions. therefore they are the sum of a function of second class and of a function whose integral is zero … therefore it is useless to study functions of class 3, 4 and so on … (vitali 1984, 454). also lebesgue had written in 1902, in his thesis, that all the baire’s functions are summable (but at that time he still used the world summable in place of measurable); in 1904 he affirms that the baire’s functions are all b measurable (lebesgue 1904a, 111-112). in other papers lebesgue often considered baire’s functions, for example (lebesgue 1904b) is devoted to an important analysis of functions of the first class. also vitali dealt with this topic in a brief note (vitali 1905a) where he proves that: a real measurable function defined in an interval (a, b) is the sum of a function of class not greater than 2 and a function which is zero everywhere except on a null measure set. this note is worthy of great attention since in it vitali enunciates and proves the theorem that will become famous under the name of lusin’s theorem. vitali alludes in a doubting form to a possible coincidence with statements by borel and lebesgue that appeared on the c. r. in 1903, without demonstration and that were taken up in the leçons in 1904, where in a note lebesgue writes: every measurable function is continuous except on the points of a null measure set, when one neglects the sets of measure ԑ, whatever ԑ is (lebesgue 1904a, 125, note 1).11 11 toute fonction mesurable est continue, sauf aux points d’un ensemble de mesure nulle, quand on néglige les ensembles de mesure ԑ, si petit que soit ԑ. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 14 lebesgue will remember his priority in the formulation (even if incomplete) of this fundamental property in the letter of 1907 february 16 (vitali 1984, 457). again in 1905, in a brief note, vitali demonstrates what fubini had affirmed in the postcard not long before: a measurable function can be decomposed in the sum of a function of the second class and a function with null integral (vitali 1905c). vitali considers again the problem where he proves the reverse proposition of a proposition from lebesgue’s leçons: every b measurable function is a baire function (vitali 1905b). the paper is also interesting since in it vitali introduces the notion of truncated function. a deep study of the baire’s classes of finite or transfinite order was achieved by de la vallée poussin in his treatise of 1916 (de la vallée 1916); and in (de la vallée 1915), he operates even a detailed classification of the b measurable sets, following (borel 1912). indeed, afterwards the complete equivalence between belonging to a baire’s class and being a b measurable function was made clear both borel and de la vallée poussin intended to establish a sort of hierarchy for the constructive functions and sets. in the preface of (de la vallée 1916) the author underlines that these notions define a completely sufficient sphere of activity for the mathematician, beyond which every generalization cannot induce more real contributions, but has only a philosophic or an aesthetic meaning. let us come back to see how young proves that the bounded measurable functions are a. e. least upper bounds of upper semicontinuous functions and greatest lower bounds of lower semicontinuous functions and concludes that: every bounded measurable function coincides a. e. with a baire function of the first class (young 1911). analyse the proof by young: he remembers his result that the limit of a decreasing (increasing) sequence of upper (lower)semicontinuous functions in a point p is upper (lower) semicontinuous in p. now, he asserts, a semicontinuous function defined in an interval i belongs to the first class, then, for a theorem by baire, it is continuous with respect to i in the points of a dense subset of i. then, given an increasing sequence of upper semicontinuous functions, in every interval there are points where the functions are continuous and therefore lower semicontinuous (but all the functions in the same points? no word is spent about this problem); therefore, the limit function is lower continuous. reasoning in this way young concludes that every function that is both ul and lu is continuous in all the points of a dense perfect subset of i and therefore belongs to the baire first class. he does not explain why, given a sequence of upper semicontinuous functions (and therefore baire functions of the first class) there exists a dense subset where all the functions are contemporaneously continuous: this is a crucial point in his demonstration, its prove is present in the literature of those years and is given in the following section. pointwise discontinuous functions the german mathematician hermann hankel (1839-1873) first introduced a new notion about discontinuous functions in an important memory presented by him to the university of comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 15 tubingen in 1870 and published after his untimely death in 1873. in such a memory he proved that: if a function f is riemann integrable in an interval i then for every 𝜎>0 the set of the points x such that the oscillation of f in x is greater than 𝜎 is a nowhere dense subset of i. hankel believed incorrectly that the previous condition was also a sufficient condition in order that a function is riemann integrable, but we are not interested in such a question about which see for example (letta 1994). instead let us consider now the following hankel’s theorem: if for every 𝜎>0 the set of the points x such that the oscillation of f in x is greater than 𝜎 is a nowhere dense subset of i then the set of the points where f is continuous is a dense subset of the interval i. indeed, let us suppose that, for every 𝜎>0, the set 𝐷 constituted by the points where the oscillation is greater than 𝜎 is nowhere dense; then given whatever interval u there exists a closed interval [a1, b1]⊆u where there are not points from 𝐷 ; for the same reason there exists a closed interval [a2, b2]⊆[a1, b1] where there are not points from 𝐷 . iterating this procedure it is possible to construct a decreasing sequence of intervals {[an, bn]} such that in [an, bn] there are not points from 𝐷 . all these intervals have at least one point in common which is a point where the function is continuous. then in every interval u there is a point where the function is continuous. the discontinuous functions such that the set of the continuity points is a dense subset of i, are called by hankel punktirt unstetige functionen in contrast with the total unstetige functionen. they are studied by ulisse dini (1845-1918) in his treatise (dini 1878), where he calls them in italian punteggiate discontinue. in the english literature they are known as pointwise discontinuous functions. vito volterra (1860-1940), dini’s disciple, wrote in 1881 a paper about them, where, using skilfully hankel’s technique, among other things, he proves that: if a pointwise discontinuous function defined in an interval i has discontinuity points in every subinterval of i, then there is no pointwise discontinuous function that is continuous in the points where the first function is discontinuous and is discontinuous where it is continuous (volterra 1881, 76-77). indeed, let f and g be two pointwise discontinuous functions defined in the interval (a, b). let (𝛼, 𝛽) a subinterval of (a, b) and let ԑ > 0; since f is continuous at least in a point of (𝛼, 𝛽), there is a subinterval of (𝛼, 𝛽) where the oscillation of f is less than ԑ and inside this interval for the same reason there is another closed interval (a1, b1) where the oscillation of g is less than ԑ too. this reasoning can be repeated starting from the interval (a1, b1) and considering in place of ԑ; it is possible to determine a closed interval (a2, b2) ⊆(a1, b1) where both the oscillations of f and g are less than . iterating the procedure it is possible to determine a sequence of closed intervals {(an, bn)} such that in the interval (an, bn) both the oscillations of f and g are less than . all the intervals of the sequence have a common point, m, where both the oscillations of f and g are zero, therefore both f and g are continuous in m. a corollary of the previous proposition is the following: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 16 given a finite number of pointwise discontinuous functions defined in the same interval i, there exists a dense subset of i where all the functions are continuous contemporaneously. the following theorem given in 1904 by lebesgue (lebesgue 1904 b, 236) generalizes volterra’s result to the case of infinitely many functions; it is proved repeating substantially volterra’s demonstration: given a sequence of baire functions of the first class, all defined in the same domain, there exists a dense subset of the domain where all the functions are continuous contemporaneously. observe that, as we have already seen, baire had proved the following theorem: a function belongs to the first class if and only if it is pointwise discontinuous. therefore, the baire’s first class functions which lebesgue is concerned to are the pointwise discontinuous functions used by volterra. we can at this point conclude completely young’s argumentation: if the function f is both ul and lu then there exist two sequences, one increasing of upper semicontinuous functions, the other decreasing of lower semicontinuous functions, whose limit is f. now by the just quoted theorem by lebesgue, there exists a dense subset where all the functions of the two sequences are continuous: therefore, in such points f is both lower and upper semicontinuous, and therefore continuous. then it is pointwise discontinuous and belongs to the baire’s first class. the definition of integral by borel and hahn a new definition of integral originates from an idea by (borel 1912); with a polemic purpose towards lebesgue, borel resumes riemann’s definition and its generalizations by jordan and harnack and avoids the recourse to lebesgue’s measure theory considered not much natural, not much direct and not much constructive. indeed, borel’s definition of a measurable set takes into account its composition out of intervals, a quality which borel found constructive and therefore philosophically attractive, but, as we will see, it is not completely adequate in order to build on it a general theory of integral, see also (hawkins 2002, 105). in the same paper borel gives the definitions of computable number and computable function he extensively comments since he thinks that only constructive methods can be useful for mathematics. afterwards, in 1915, the new definition and the correlated theory were improved and emended from some of their imperfections by the austrian mathematician hans hahn (18791934). to improve the new theory, he proposed to extend riemann’s integral to bounded functions defined in a closed set h contained in a closed and bounded interval [a, b] (hahn 1915). he observed that this can be obtained easily in the following way: consider a partition of the interval [a, b] obtained by inserting the points x0 = a < x1 < … < xn = b: in the sum ∑ 𝑓(𝜑 )(𝑥 − 𝑥 ) in place of the length (𝑥 − 𝑥 ) put the content12 of the set h⋂ [xi-1, xi] h[xi-1, xi] and chose whatever point 𝜑 in such a set. continue in the usual way. borel furnished the following: 12 the content in general coincides with the exterior peano-jordan’s measure. but the set we are considering is a closed set and in this case the content coincides with the lebesgue’s measure. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 17 definition – let f(x) be a not bounded function, continuous in the interval [a, b] except in the points of an enumerable set z, contained for every ԑ > 0 in the union 𝐴 of a sequence of open intervals each of them containing at least a point of z and whose total length is less than ԑ. then the riemann’s integral exists on the complement 𝐻 of 𝐴 that is a closed set. if there exists finite the 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → ⟆ f(x)dx independent from the choice of the intervals 𝐴 , the function f(x) is called borel integrable and the previous limit is by definition the borel integral of f(x) on [a,b], denoted by (b)∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥. obviously if the absolute value of a function is borel integrable then also the function is borel integrable. borel considers only unbounded functions but his reasoning can be used also for bounded functions: it is evident that in such a case we do not obtain more than the riemann’s integral. hahn observed that if a function is absolutely borel integrable then it is also lebesgue integrable and the two integrals coincide; indeed by the preceding definition if f is nonnegative and 𝜀 = then we have, considering an increasing sequence of closed sets hn ⊆ [a, b] such that m(hn) > b – a for every n: (b)∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥 = 𝑙𝑖𝑚 (𝐵)⟆ f(x)dx = 𝑙𝑖𝑚 (𝐿)⟆ f(x)dx = (l)∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥, where beppo levi’s monotone converge theorem has been applied. notice that if a function is lebesgue integrable then it is also absolutely integrable, but there exist borel integrable functions that are not absolutely integrable as for example the function f1(x) = sin . moreover there exist nonnegative functions which are lebesgue integrable but not borel integrable as for example the characteristic function of [0, 1] ⋂ q, where q is the rational numbers set: indeed this function is lebesgue integrable, but totally discontinuous and therefore not borel integrable. borel in the second edition of his leçons sur la théorie des fonctions (borel 1914) highlights a fault of his definition: the sum of two borel integrable functions is not necessarily borel integrable since the intervals of exclusion of one of the two functions must be chosen in some particular case in such a way to make divergent the integral of the other function. for example consider the functions in the interval [0,1]: f1(x) = sin ; f2(x) = ∑ | ( ) | . while f1(x) has only one singular point, the point x = 0, the function f1(x) + f2(x) has obviously the singular point x = 0 but has also all the singularities of f2(x), that is all the points x = for n = 1, 2, … . both the considered functions are borel integrable but for their sum it is not possible to apply previous borel’s definition (borel 1914). borel’s example is somewhat imprecise and will be emended and clarified in 1915 by hahn, whose reasoning is exposed in this paper in the sequel. besides, borel’s definition of (b)-integral presents two excessively restrictive conditions: a) the singularities have to constitute a countable set: it is evident that this condition can be easily removed and can be substituted by the hypothesis that the set of the singularities is a zero measure set; b) in borel’s definition every open interval that constitutes the set aԑ to be excluded has to contain at least one singular point and as we will see in detail in the following pages this can involve difficulties when considering the sum of two borel integrable functions. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 18 for these reasons hahn resumed successively borel’s formulation and changed it in some points to avoid the previous difficulties (hahn 1915). here is his definition, where he uses the riemann’s integral extended to a closed set we have exposed before. let f(x) be a function defined on the interval [a, b] such that: a) for every ԑ > 0 there exists a perfect set hԑ whose measure is greater than a-b-ԑ and such that the riemann’s integral ⟆ f(x)dx exists; b) the limit 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → ⟆ f(x)dx exists, whatever the system of sets hԑ satisfying previous conditions is. then such a limit is called (b*)-integral of f on [a, b]. if the previous limit is finite then the function is (b*)-integrable. obviously the previous definition holds also for the integral extended to a measurable set e different from [a, b]. observe that condition a) entails, by vitalilebesgue’s theorem that the function f(x) is almost everywhere continuous in the perfect set hԑ and therefore, by vitali–lusin’s theorem, this condition implies that f(x) is lebesgue measurable. hahn proves that: if f is bounded in [a, b] and condition a) holds then the (b*)-integral of f on [a, b] exists and is finite, that is the function f is (b*)-integrable. moreover: if f is lebesgue integrable then it is also (b*)-integrable. indeed, let f be measurable on [a, b]: by vitali-lusin’s theorem for every natural n it is possible to modify f on a set whose measure is less than in order to obtain a continuous function fn on [a, b]. it is possible to prove that the sequence (fn ) converges almost everywhere on [a, b]. then by severini-egoroff’s theorem for every n it is possible to extract a subsequence (𝑓 ) that is uniformly convergent to f in a closed set hn such that m([a, b]-hn)< ; since f is continuous on hn it is then possible to consider the integral ⟆ f(x)dx; since m([a, b]-∪ 𝐻 )=0 and f is lebesgue integrable, the lebesgue integral of f extended to [a, b] coincides with limn ⟆ f(x)dx. then this limit exists and is finite, that is f is (b*)-integrable. if f is (b*)-absolutely integrable then it is immediately seen that, as in the case of a (b)absolutely integrable function, f is also lebesgue integrable. but now what is very interesting is the fact that if f is (b*)-integrable then it is also lebesgue integrable, that is: f is (b*)-integrable if and only if f is lebesgue integrable. indeed: if f is (b*)-integrable then it is also (b*)-absolutely integrable. the demonstration of this implication given here is deduced from that of the original paper (hahn 1915) and from the version given in the memoir (hildebrand 1917), with some little changes to make it more understandable. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 19 let f be (b*)-integrable, but not (b*)-absolutely integrable. let f+ = (|f| + f), 𝑓 = (|f| f). then, since (b*)∫(𝑓 -𝑓 ) <+∞ and (b*)∫(𝑓 +𝑓 ) =+∞, it has to be (b*)∫ 𝑓 =+∞ and (b*)∫ 𝑓 =+∞. by condition a) for every ԑ>0 a perfect set 𝑃 exists such that m13(𝑃 ) > b-a-ԑ and 𝑓 is riemann integrable and therefore bounded on pԑ, let 𝑓 < mԑ on pԑ. then ⟆ 𝑓 < mԑ(b a). since (b*)∫ 𝑓 =+∞ for every m > 0 and ԑ > 0 there exists a positive number r’ such that for every r ˂ r’ a perfect set pr exists such that m(pr) > b-a-𝑟 and ⟆ 𝑓 > m + mԑ(b a). it is possible to suppose pԑ ⊆ pr. let e1 = {x∊ pԑ: f(x) < 0}; e2 = {x∊ pr: f(x) ≥ 0}: these sets are measurable and disjoint and their union e is measurable, pԑ ⊆ e ⊆ pr and therefore m(e) > b-a-ԑ. moreover: (l)⟆ 𝑓 = ⟆ 𝑓 ⟆ 𝑓 > m. then for every m > 0 and ԑ > 0 a measurable set e exists such that m(e) > b-a-ԑ and (l)⟆ 𝑓 > m, f being lebesgue integrable on e. now, by lebesgue’s theorem, for every increasing sequence of closed sets enclosed in e such that m(e) = 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → m(pn) it is: (l)⟆ 𝑓 = 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → (l)⟆ 𝑓 = 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → (r)⟆ 𝑓. and therefore, since (l)⟆ 𝑓 > m there exists a natural number 𝜇 such that for every n > 𝜇 it is (𝑅)⟆ 𝑓 > m. it is possible to choose n such that m(pn) > b – a 2ԑ. then for every ԑ > 0 and for every m > 0 there exists a closed set h (=pn) ⊆ [a, b] such that m(h) > b-a-2ԑ and (𝑅)⟆ 𝑓 > m, that is f is not (b*)-integrable, contrarily to our hypothesis. there exist (b)-integrable functions that are not (b*)-integrable, for example the function f1(x) = sin . such a function is not absolutely (b)-integrable, therefore it is not lebesgue integrable, thus it cannot be (b*)-integrable. it is possible to prove directly that f1 is not (b*)integrable in the following way. indeed, given ԑ > 0 let u be an even natural number such that <𝜀 and let k be whatever natural number. consider: 𝑃 = [ , ]∪ … ∪ , ∪ [ , 1]; here we suppose that, except the last one, only and all those intervals whose second extreme is the reciprocal of an even number are considered. the function f1 is positive in these intervals, except in the last one. it is m(𝑃 )>1-𝜀. moreover: ⟆ 𝑓 =∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑥 + … +∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑥 + ∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑥= = ∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝜋𝑡𝑑𝑡 + … +∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝜋𝑡𝑑𝑡 + ∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑥 ≥ [ + + … + ] + ∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑥 13 m is the lebesgue measure. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 20 ≥ [ + ( ) + … + + ] + ∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑥. then we have: 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → ⟆ 𝑓 ≥ [ + … + + ] + (b)∫ 𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑥, whence, since k is arbitrary, we deduce that the limit on the right is not finite and therefore f1 is not (b*)-integrable. this situation is linked to the nature of the (b*)-integral: in the case of the (b)-integral the sets p𝜀 have to exclude only the singular point x = 0 and no other intervals that do not contain singularities. instead in the case of the (b*)-integral we have included in 𝑃 the intervals where the function is positive that do not contain singularities of the function and they are not automatically compensated by the intervals where the function is negative as in the case of the (b)-integral. observe also that the sets p𝜀 considered above exclude a neighbourhood of the origin and some open intervals that are neighbourhoods of the points x= where n is an odd natural number. by means of the previous argument it is then possible to state precisely the not completely clear example given by borel about the sum of two (b)-integrable functions. consider the function f1 and the function f2’ obtained modifying the function f2 proposed by borel in such a way that the sum is extended only to the odd natural numbers n. then the previous argument proves that the function f1 + f2’ is not (b)-integrable. lebesgue stieltjes integral the dutch mathematician thomas johannes stieltjes (1856–1894) was not motivated for his definition of integral by the purpose to give a generalization of cauchy’s theory of integral but by his own study of continuous fractions. on this subject in his interesting memory recherches sur les fractiones continues, published on the comptes rendus de l’académie des sciences, he had introduced ever since 1894 the concept of distribution of mass, much utilized in physics but in that time unusual in mathematics. suppose that a distribution of n positive masses mi is given on the positive x-axis, each placed at a distance di from the origin. the moment of order k of the system is then defined by ∑ 𝑚 𝑑 . stieltjes introduced the notion of a continuous distribution of mass: it is completely determined when 𝛼(x), the total mass between 0 and x, is given for every positive x. obviously the function 𝛼(x) must be positive and not decreasing. the moment of order k in this case is defined as the limit of the sums ∑ 𝑡 [𝛼(xi) – 𝛼(xi-1)], where a = x0 < x1 < x2 <… < xn = b is a partition of the interval [a, b], ti is any point of [xi-1, xi] and the maximum length of the intervals of the partition tends to 0. in general, if f(t) is any continuous function the previous sum becomes: ∑ 𝑓(𝑡 ) [𝛼(𝑥 ) – 𝛼(𝑥 )] and it is possible to see that it tends to a limit. stieltjes does not go any further, but, obviously, it is possible to extend the previous definition to the case 𝛼 is a function of bounded variation. in such a way, as for the lebesgue integral, a functional arises associating with every continuous function its stieltjes integral. in the first years of the twentieth century some papers of great interest about the integral representation of functionals appear. in 1909 riesz proves that for every linear and continuous functional a on c(a, b), the class of the continuous functions in (a, b) defined in (a, b) and equipped with the norm of the maximum, there is a function 𝛼 of bounded variation such that for every f ∊ c(a, b) the functional is expressed by the stieltjes integral: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 21 a(f) = ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝛼(𝑥). as riesz himself writes in 1949, in a paper of historical character, also hadamard had dealt with this problem in 1903: in those times he had proved that for every such a functional a there exists a sequence of riemann integrable functions {an} such that a(x) = limn ∫ 𝑎 (𝑡)𝑥(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 (riesz 1949). in 1909 riesz improves this result and determines the previous expression of the functional as a stieltjes integral. a year later riesz establishes the integral representation of the linear and continuous functionals in the space lp (riesz 1910). lebesgue was much interested in this result, and in the second edition of his leçons sur l’intègration, in the chapter xi, extends the notion of stieltjes integral to a larger class of functions (lebesgue 1950, preface of the second edition 1926 december 3). he introduces a measure correspondingly to any function not decreasing and nonnegative 𝛼(𝑥) in the following way. for any interval [a, b] lebesgue sets: ([a, b]) = (b+)-(a-) = 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → (x) 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → (x), where the function and the arising set function are denoted by the same symbol; then for every set e he observes that it is possible to construct interior and exterior measures of e starting from the definition on the intervals and therefore it is possible to define the corresponding measurable sets in lebesgue style. proceeding in the construction further it is possible to see that every measurable set obtained in this manner is a lebesgue measurable set. in such a way lebesgue obtains a completely additive measure 𝛼, defined on the lebesgue measurable sets. he then defines the prolongation of the measure α to the measurable sets and, in order to define the lebesgue stieltjes integral for a measurable function, he proceeds as in the case of the lebesgue integral but in this case, he values the sets by the prolongation of the measure α instead of valuing them by the lebesgue measure (lebesgue 1950, 277-281). the new integral is denoted by ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝛼(𝑥). in the case the function is whatever function of bounded variation it can be written, by a jordan’s theorem, as the difference p-q, where p and q are nonnegative and not decreasing. therefore if 𝛼 is a function of bounded variation then 𝛼 =p-q and the stieltjes integral with respect to 𝛼 is defined in the following way: ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝛼(𝑥) =∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑝(𝑥) -∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑞(𝑥). lebesgue underlines that for the new integral ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝛼(𝑥) all the properties of the classical integrals can be proved directly if we observe that it is possible to give it also another form. to this purpose if 𝛼(x) is a continuous and strictly increasing function it admits an inverse function of the same kind, x = x(𝛼) and the previous integral can be written as an usual integral in the form: ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝛼(𝑥) = ∫ 𝑓[𝑥(𝛼)]𝑑𝛼 ( ) ( ) . the integral on the right does make sense even if f is not continuous but is measurable and bounded or in the case f is not bounded but [𝑓[𝑥(𝛼)] is summable. an analogous relation can be written even if 𝛼(x) has some jumps or is constant in some interval. in the case 𝛼(x) is of bounded variation, as we have already seen, it is possible to express it as the difference of two increasing functions and to refer to the previous case. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 22 the generalizations of the lebesgue stieltjes integral by radon and fréchet about twenty years after the memory by stieltjes some authors introduced approaches more abstract for the notions of measure and integral: in this scheme of things johann radon (1887-1956) carried out a general study (1913) where the definitions of integral by stieltjes and lebesgue are still included and referred to the n-dimensional euclidean space and lebesgue’s measure. radon considers integrals of the type: 𝐹(𝑃)𝑑𝛼(𝑃) where the integrand is a function f(p) of the point p and the integral is referred to a function 𝛼(𝑃) of bounded variation: since he still considers lebesgue measurable sets, his definition coincides with lebesgue’s one if the function 𝛼 is linear and with the definition by stieltjes if f is continuous. fréchet completes the process of abstraction two years after, removing the restriction to the n-dimensional space (fréchet 1915). he takes radon’s definition as a starting point and observes that the great advantage of the extension of the integral obtained by him, perhaps escaped even to radon, consists in the fact that it is possible to write it in the form: 𝐹(𝑃)𝑑𝑓(𝑒) where the integral is extended to a subset e of the real or n-dimensional space and f(e) is an additive function of the varying subset e of e. fréchet thinks that it is no more necessary to refer to the lebesgue measurable subsets of an euclidean space, but it is possible to define integrals of functions (that fréchet calls functionals) defined in an abstract set e . he supposes that a family ғ of subsets of e is given on e, he calls an additive family of sets and today is called a 𝜎-algebra of sets. in place of a function of bounded variation 𝛼 or the lebesgue measure he introduces any additive function of sets, today called a relative measure, that is a real function defined on ғ such that given any sequence {an} of elements of ғ, pairwise disjoint, whose union is a, it is: f(a) = ∑ 𝑓(𝐴 ), and defines the integral of any function defined in e with respect to this relative measure in a rather natural manner. in such a way it is possible to obtain a theory wider than the theory of lebesgue’s integral and the theory of stieltjes integral, that is a generalized radon theory. let us see the first steps of his construction: fréchet proves that as any function of bounded variation can be written as the difference of two nonnegative non decreasing functions, by the jordan’s decomposition, also the relative measure f can be decomposed in the difference of two additive set functions, 𝛾 and 𝛿 , both nonnegative. then, given a bounded function f defined in e, the integral of f extended to e is defined in the following way: consider a partition {en} of e constituted by a finite number of elements of ғ and form the sums s’ = ∑ 𝑀 𝛾(𝐸 ), s’ = ∑ 𝑚 𝛾(𝐸 ), where mn and mn are the least upper bound and the greatest lower bound respectively of f in en. as the partition varies s’ has a finite greatest lower bound that is called upper integral of f in e with respect to 𝛾 and the family ғ. it is denoted by ∫ 𝐹(𝑃)𝑑𝛾(𝑒). comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 23 in the same way s’ has a finite least upper bound that is called lower integral of f in e with respect to 𝛾 and the family ғ. it is denoted by ⨜e f(p)d𝛾(𝑒). fréchet proceeds in an analogous way with the additive function 𝛿. then by definition the upper integral of f on e with respect to f and the family ғ is the following finite number: ∫ 𝐹(𝑃)𝑑𝑓(𝑒) = ∫ 𝐹(𝑃)𝑑𝛾(𝑒) ⨜ e f(p)d𝛿(𝑒) the lower integral of f on e with respect to f and the family ғ is defined analogously by: ⨜ e f(p)d𝑓(𝑒) = ⨜ e f(p)d𝛾(𝑒) ∫ 𝐹(𝑃)𝑑𝛿(𝑒). as for the integral of darboux it is possible to prove that the lower integral of f on e with respect to a measure f is not greater than the upper integral. if the upper integral of f on e coincides with the lower integral, then the function f is called integrable on e and its integral is by definition the common value of the upper and lower integrals: it is denoted by ⟆e f(p)df(e). in such a case the function f is also integrable with respect to 𝛾 and 𝛿 and, analogously to the decomposition of the stieltjes integral, it is: ⟆e f(p)df(e) = ⟆e f(p)d𝛾(𝑒) ⟆e f(p)d𝛿(𝑒). fréchet deals also with the case of not bounded functions, but the preceding exposition can be sufficient to understand how he proceeds in his construction. lebesgue stieltjes integral by caccioppoli we expose now the original contribution to the definition of stieltjes-lebesgue integral in more dimensions given by the young napolitan mathematician renato caccioppoli (19041959) in one of his first papers [caccioppoli 1926 a]; there he extends riesz theorem about the dual space of c([0, 1]), in the simplified version published in 1914, to the case of functions of more variables and the definition of the functions of bounded variation to the case of more variables in accordance with vitali’s pioneering work (vitali 1908) and a paper by fréchet (fréchet 1910). to this end he considers a real bounded function f(x, y) defined in a set i enclosed in a rectangle r whose edges are parallel to the axes x, y. he subdivides r in a finite number of partial rectangles by means of the right lines of equation x = xi, y = yj i = 1, 2, …n, j = 1, 2, …m and considers the rectangle rij defined by the inequalities: xi ≤ x ≤ xi+1, yj ≤ y ≤ yj+1. it is also given in r a function u(x, y), whose double variation in the rectangle rij is given by: ∆ ∆ u = u(xi+1, yj+1) – u(xi+1, yj) – u(xi, yj+1) + u(xi, yj). the function u(x, y) is of (double) bounded variation if ∑ |∆ ∆, 𝑢| is upper bounded when the partition {rij} varies and, if this is the case, the total variation of u(x, y) is the l.u.b of ∑ |∆ ∆, 𝑢|. let fi,j be a value between the extremes of f(x, y) in ri,j and form the sum: ∑ 𝑓 , ∆ ∆, 𝑢, where the sum is extended only to those ri,j such that ri,j∩i is not empty. if this sum tends to a finite limit when the maximum diameter of the ri,j tends to zero, this limit is called the stieltjes integral of f(x, y) with respect to the function u(x, y) extended to i. it is easily proven that if f(x, y) is continuous and u(x, y) is of bounded variation then the stieltjes integral exists finite. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 24 at this point caccioppoli proves that given a linear continuous functional a in the set of the continuous functions in a closed and bounded plane set i, c(i), there exists a function of bounded variation u(x, y) such that for every function f(x,y) continuous in i a[f(x, y)] = ∬i f(x, y)dxdyu(x, y) (*) where the stieltjes integral of f(x,y) with respect to u extended to i appears on the right. the proof is as follows: the author considers the set c(r) of the continuous functions in a rectangle r and a linear and continuous functional a(f) defined in c(r), that is such that if fn∊ c( r) tends uniformly to f then a(fn) tends to a(f). such a functional is also bounded that is there exists a constant k such that a(f) ≤ k max |f(x, y)|. it is possible to prove that if fn∊ c(r) constitute an increasing sequence that tends pointwise to a bounded function f then a(fn) tends to a finite limit, that depends only on f, that is it is the same for every increasing sequence tending to f. now caccioppoli considers a rectangle r(o, q) whose opposite extremes are o = (0, 0) and q = (xq, yq) and the function fr(0, q)(x, y) = 1 if (x, y) ∊ r(o, q) and x ≠ xq, y ≠ 𝑦q , fr(0, q)(x, y) = 0 otherwise. this bounded function is discontinuous but it is the limit of an increasing sequence of continuous functions fn(x, y), that assume the value 0 out of r(o, q) and 1 in a rectangle as r(o, p) with p interior to r(o, q). then the functional a can be prolonged to these new bounded functions obtaining a function 𝜑 defined in r: 𝜑(q) = 𝜑(x, y) = a(fr(0, q)) = limn a(fn). let u(x, y) be such that ∆∆u = u(x, y)–u(x, o)–u(o, y)+u(o, o) = 𝜑(x, y). consider a rectangular domain r(p’, p”), where p’= (x’, y’), p” = (x”, y”), x’<x”, y’<y”, and the functions: 𝐹 ( , ")= 1 for (x, y)ϵr(p’,p”), x ≠ x”, y ≠ 𝑦", 𝐹 ( , ")= o otherwise. let q’ = (x’, y”), q” = (x”, y’); it is 𝐹 ( , ")=𝐹 ( , ") 𝐹 ( , ) − 𝐹 ( , ") + 𝐹 ( , ) whence, since a is linear: a(𝐹 ( , ")) = ∆∆ ( , ")𝜑 = ∆∆ ( , ")𝑢. decompose now r in partial rectangular domains by means of the right lines of equation x = xi, y = yj and define a function f that assumes the value fi,j in ri,j except in the edges of equation x = xi+1 and y = yj+1. it is a(f) = ∑ 𝐹 , 𝐴 [𝐹 , ] = ∑ 𝐹 , ∆ ∆ 𝑢, whence we deduce that the function u is of bounded variation, putting 𝐹 , =1 for every i and j. moreover let f(x, y)∊ c(r): there exists a sequence of discontinuous functions of the previous type, f1,, …, fn, … , that uniformly converges to f, then there exists finite the limit: a(f) = limn a(fn) = limn ∑ 𝐹 , ∆ ∆ 𝑢 = ∬rf(x, y)dxdyu(x,y). caccioppoli then extends the procedure to the functions defined in a closed bounded set i, obtaining (*). so, in this paper the author extends the linear bounded functional a, firstly defined in the class of the continuous functions, to the class of the bounded discontinuous functions comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 25 that can be obtained as limits of continuous functions, in such a way that, as in the simpler case, it is: |a(f)| ≤ sup |f|∙ tot.var. u. this is the starting point for a new general paper published in the same year on the c. r. ac. sc. paris, where caccioppoli proves that given a linear and bounded functional defined in the field of the continuous functions, as the stieltjes integral or the riemann integral, it is possible to extend it by continuity to a functional defined in all the set of the baire functions, obtaining a constructive definition of the generalized integral of stieltjes and also of lebesgue [caccioppoli 1926 b]. he anticipates in this way in a particular case the well-known hahnbanach theorem. applications of lebesgue’s integration theory and daniell’s definition of integral lebesgue’s theory lends itself to a wide class of applications in an admirable manner, many of them being linked just to the developments and the generalizations of the idea of integral: in 1906, fatou established in his thesis the famous theorem that the integral of the minimum limit of a sequence of measurable nonnegative functions is not greater than the minimum limit of the sequence of the integrals: this theorem joint with lebesgue’s theorem about the passage to the limit under the integral’s sign (given for the first time by lebesgue in his thesis in 1902 and proved in general in 1908) and with beppo levi’s theorem also proved in 1906, gives a very powerful tool for the applications; in 1907 the theory enriches itself by the method of reduction of the multiple integrals introduced by guido fubini (fubini 1907). moreover, in 1907 riesz, who had took an interest in the lebesgue’s theory of integral after reading lebesgue’s monograph, proves that the square-summable functions on an interval (a, b) constitute a complete space of functions, today known as an hilbert space (riesz 1907); a result obtained in the same year but independently by e. fisher (1875-1954). the theorem of fisher-riesz being one of the great achievements of lebesgue’s theory, fréchet determines immediately in 1907 the form of the functionals on this space and riesz also obtains the same representation theorem: their fundamental papers about this topic are published on the same volume of the c. r. acad. sci. soon other results of great interest for the integral equations theory follow: riesz determines the representation of the linear and continuous functionals on the space of the continuous functions as we have already said and in 1910 establishes the expression of the linear and continuous functionals in the space lp. after the generalization of lebesgue’s theory of integration in 1915 given by frèchet, our treatment could be considered concluded: but here we can consider as a last step of our way the definition of integral which percy john daniell (1889-1946) proposed in 1918 as a procedure very close to the functional methods used by riesz and young. his definition of integral does not need any initial development of measure theory and is so general that includes higher-dimensional spaces and lebesgue-stieltjes integral. the starting point is a set t0 of numerical functions defined in an arbitrary set x. daniell supposes t0 closed with respect to addition, multiplication for a constant, finite upper and lower bounds: in a first time the functions of t0 are supposed bounded. then he considers a linear operator i on t0 such that 1) if f1, …, fn, … is a not increasing sequence of elements of t0 such that limnfn(x) = 0 for every x belonging to x then limn i(fn) = 0; comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 26 2) the operator i is isotone, that is if f(x) ≥ 0 for every x∊x then i(f) ≥ 0. such an operator is nowadays called a daniell measure. if for example t0 coincides with the set of the riemann integrable functions on an interval (a, b) then the application that associates every f ∊t0 with its riemann integral extended to the interval (a, b) is a daniell measure on t0. but t0 may be also the set of continuous functions on (a, b) and i the application that associates every f ∊ t0 with its stieltjes integral with respect to some not decreasing function or to some function of bounded variation. now the following question arises: is it possible to widen the set t0 in a suitable way in order to prolong the definition of the operator i to a larger class of functions, preserving the fundamental properties of the integral and, if possible, improving the condition for the passage to the limit under the integral? to answer positively this question daniell constructs the lower and upper integral, by an analogous method to the construction of the lower and upper young’s integrals and also in this case the integrals are defined for all the functions on x and therefore also for the unbounded ones which may assume infinite value. here is daniell’s construction: firstly, a set t1, wider than t0 is constructed and the operator i is extended to it. precisely t1 consists of those functions f such that there exists a not decreasing sequence of functions of class t0, {fn}, such that f = limn fn. then i(f1)≤ i(f2)≤ ⋯ ≤ i(fn) ≤ … and therefore limn i(fn) exists, finite or infinite. well, for every f ∊ t1, daniell puts i(f)= limn i(fn), where {fn} is whatever not decreasing sequence of elements of t0, whose limit is f. it is possible to prove that i(f) is well defined since its value is independent from the particular sequence that individuates f. the function f is summable if f is of class t1 and i(f) is finite. at this point daniell defines upper and lower integrals of whatever function f. precisely, given the function f , the upper integral, denoted by 𝐼(̇f) is by definition the greatest lower bound of i(g) where g varies in the class t1 in such a way that g≥f. for this integral many properties analogous to the properties of the upper riemann integral hold but also, differently from the upper riemann integral, the passage to the limit under the integral sign for not decreasing sequence is allowed. analogously, given the function f, the lower integral, denoted by i.(f), is defined by i.(f) = 𝐼(̇-f). the function f is called summable if both upper and lower integrals are finite and coincide and their common value is the integral of f and denoted by i(f). daniell establishes the fundamental theorems of the theory, that is the analogous of the beppo levi’s theorem and the lebesgue’s dominated converge theorem. the formulation of the theory of integration by daniell is very general, in line with the abstraction process that characterizes part of the mathematics in the twenties of the twentieth century. then, in particular, we obtain lebesgue’s measure and integral in rk considering as a functional the ordinary riemann’s integral. observe that in such a case the procedure coincides exactly with young’s procedure and it is clear that the method here exposed is a generalization of it. as in the case of young’s definition of integral, it is very simple to prove the vitalicharatheodory theorem, that is f is lebesgue summable if and only if for every 𝜖 > 0 there exist two functions g and h, g lower semicontinuous g ≥ f, h upper semicontinuous h ≤ f, such that ∫(𝑔 − ℎ)d𝑥 < 𝜖. indeed in this case, since t1 consists of the lower semicontinuous functions, if f is summable then i.(f) = 𝐼(̇f), where: 𝐼(̇f) = inf {i(g), g ∊ t1, 𝑔 ≥ f} = inf {i(g), g lower semicontinuous, g ≥ f} comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 27 and i.(f) = 𝐼(̇-f) = inf{ i(-h), -h ∊ t1, h ≥ − f} = sup{-i(-h), h upper semicontinuous, h ≤ f} = sup{ i(h), h upper semicontinuous, h ≤ f}; whence the thesis follows. the contribution of italian mathematicians in the twenties of the twentieth century: tonelli, vitali and caccioppoli an interesting study to give a new version of lebesgue theory of integral was made in italy by leonida tonelli (1885-1946). in the first volume of [tonelli 1921] this author intends to introduce lebesgue’s theory of sets in a completely new way, because he nearly wants to unveil the very nature of measurable sets, characterizing them from inside, by a construction from the bottom, closer to the constructive borel’s measure theory than to lebesgue’s one. here his try to give a good constructive counterpart of the definition of a measurable set and a lebesgue integrable function is extensively reported to underline the interest this problem had in the thirties. he introduces previously, for a subset e of the real line, the notion to be equivalent to an interval (also null, that is consisting of one point only) in the following way: the set e is equivalent to an interval i if 1) e is equal to i, that is it can be translated until it is placed upon i; 2) e is the union of a finite or countable number of disjoint intervals, such that if they are disposed consecutively, they form a limit interval equal to i; 3) e is the difference between an interval i’ and a set equivalent, according to 1) and 2), to an interval i”; 4) for every interval i’ less than i, there exists a subset of e that is equivalent, according to 1), 2) and 3) to an interval greater than i’; and for every interval i” greater than i there exists a set containing e that is equivalent, according to 1), 2) and 3), to an interval less than i”. tonelli proves some properties of the sets equivalent to an interval, for example: a set e cannot be equivalent to two intervals of different lengths; two linear sets are called equivalent if they are equivalent to equal intervals; every linear closed set is equivalent to an interval; all the countable linear sets are equivalent to a null interval, a set e is equivalent to an interval if and only if it is lebesgue measurable. tonelli proves that the following characterization holds: a linear set is equivalent to an interval if and only if the maximum limit of the lengths of the intervals equivalent to his closed components is finite and equal to the minimum limit of the lengths of the intervals equivalent to the sequences of not null and disjoint intervals which cover it (tonelli 1921, 118-119). since the previous condition holds even for lebesgue measurable sets, tonelli observes that a set is equivalent to an interval if and only if it is lebesgue measurable. but he adds: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 28 a lebesgue measurable set is supposed to be bounded, on the contrary a set equivalent to an interval can be also unbounded (tonelli 1921, 118-119 note 2). from the characterization the following proposition follows: a linear set e is equivalent to an interval if and only if for every natural number n there exist a closed component c of e and a sequence d of not null and disjoint intervals that covers e in such a way that the difference of the measures of the intervals equivalent to c and d is less than 1/n (tonelli 1921, 122). now, using and modifying the previous characterization, tonelli restricts the class of the measurable sets, in order to eliminate the sets generated by the use of the choice axiom. to this end he gives a definition of a constructive measurable set, he calls pseudo-interval, as: a couple formed by a set e equivalent to an interval and a law which associates every natural number n with a closed set cn enclosed in e and a sequence dn of not null and disjoint intervals whose union covers e, such that the difference between the lengths of the intervals equivalent to dn and cn is less than 1/n. the measure of a pseudo-interval e, m(e), is the length of the interval equivalent to e (tonelli 1921, 122). the law in the previous definition is obviously supposed to be a constructive law, but tonelli did not have yet the means to express it in a rigorous way. it is interesting to observe that in the thirties of the twentieth century the notion of computable function was introduced (but only for functions of integer numbers). this notion excluded the completely general functions that arise from the use of the choice axiom; almost surely tonelli was influenced by the papers of borel that in some way is a forerunner of the computable function theory. but realizing the difficulty of borel’s approach in defining constructive functions he explicitly requires that only operations that do not imply to turn to the choice axiom are admitted. the class of the pseudo-intervals is closed with respect to the finite disjoint unions, the complements, the countable disjoint unions (but in this case tonelli supposes that the sum of the series of the measures of the pseudo intervals is finite, since in his definition the sets can be boundless, but they must have finite measure.) in the same way, again to eliminate functions generated by the use of the choice axiom, he gives the definition of almost-continuous function: a function f(x) defined in the interval (a,b) is called almost-continuous if there exists a law that associates every natural number n with a closed subset en of (a,b) such that m(en) ˃ a-b -1/n and f(x) is continous in en (tonelli 1921, 131). in this case also, the considered law must be thought as a constructive function. many properties of the almost-continuous functions are studied, particularly tonelli observes that the analytic functions, that is “the functions of x that can be constructed, with a given law, by means of a finite or countable number of additions, multiplications and passages to the limit”, are almost-continuous: for such functions he quotes (lebesgue 1905). as a matter of fact, tonelli proves that all the almost-continuous functions he has defined constitute a subset of the set of the measurable lebesgue functions, but he does not quote vitali lusin’s theorem and does not prove the contrary implication since he clearly claims that in his construction “the functions obtained by infinitely many arbitrary choices are not defined.” moreover, he adds: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 29 until now we do not know functions defined in an interval (a,b) that are not quasicontinuous. as we have already observed, only some years after robert solovay proved that if the choice axiom is eliminated all the functions are lebesgue measurable and therefore almostcontinuous. it would be possible also to believe that the measurable functions considered by tonelli were all borel measurable, but this is not true since few years after lusin proved that there are simple measurable functions, obtained without the use of choice axiom, that are not borel measurable (lusin 1927). the previous definitions are a try to obtain a constructive measure set theory. but this try was too complex, in fact some years after in a memoir tonelli does not consider any more the equivalent sets to an interval but works only with sets that are unions of a finite or countable number of intervals (tonelli 1923-24). in the introduction tonelli claims: this paper is an attempt to make easier, more elementary and therefore more acceptable by all, lebesgue integral theory, by setting it free completely from measure theory. the new treatment, similar to those given by young and pierpoint, is proposed by defining lebesgue’s integral as an extension of mengoli cauchy integral, basing it on the notions of union of a finite or countable number of intervals, almost-continuous function and associated function with an almost-continuous function by a union of a finite or countable number of open intervals d. precisely: a function f(x) defined on the interval (a, b), is called an almost continuous function in (a, b) if there exists a law that associates with every natural number n a union of a finite or countable number of open intervals dn ⊆ (a, b) such that its length is less than and f(x) is continuous in (a, b)-dn (tonelli 1923, 110). a union of a finite or countable number of open intervals d such that the function f(x) is continuous in (a, b)-d is said associated with f(x). given an almost-continuous function f(x) on (a, b) and a union of a finite or countable number of intervals d associated with it, tonelli calls function associated with f(x) by d and denotes by fd(x) the function equal to f(x) in (a, b)-d and such that in every interval of d, it varies linearly between the values it assumes in the extremes of the interval. so, every function associated with an almost-continuous function is continuous. now the treatment is in some way like that of young and the following theorem holds: given a bounded almost-continuous function f(x), consider a sequence of unions of a finite or countable number of intervals dn enclosed in (a, b) such that the length of dn is less than and such that f(x) is continuous in (a, b)dn, then the sequence of the associated functions 𝑓 (x) is a sequence of continuous functions converging to f(x) almost everywhere. given the bounded almost-continuous function f(x) on the interval (a, b), tonelli proves that: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 30 the limit of the sequence of the cauchy’s integrals ∫ 𝑓 (𝑥)𝑑𝑥 of the functions 𝑓 (x) associated with f(x) when the lengths of the unions of a finite or countable number of open intervals dn tend to zero exists and is finite (tonelli 1923-24, 117). he defines this limit as the integral of f(x) on (a, b) and denotes it by the symbol ∫ 𝑓(𝑥)𝑑𝑥; for unbounded functions he follows the method of de la vallée poussin. tonelli underlines the analogy with riesz integral: but while riesz approximates the integral of the given function by integrals of step functions, in his method the integral is approximated by integrals of continuous functions. in a series of papers (tonelli 1920) tonelli deals with the problem of the research of the primitive functions; he briefly outlines the origins of the problem and observes that in the leçons lebesgue pointed out that every function which has a bounded derivative is the primitive of its integral and f(x) -f(a)=∫ 𝑓 (𝑡)𝑑𝑡. (*) if the function does not have a derivative, but a derivative number is bounded then (*) holds with the derivative number in place of f’(x). the equality (*) holds for every absolutely continuous function defined in accordance with vitali, that is for every function f(x) defined in the interval [a, b] such that for every 𝜀 >0 it is possible to determine 𝛿 >0 such that for every finite set of intervals [a1, b1], [a2, b2], … [an, bn] contained in [a, b] whose overall measure is less than 𝛿, it is ∑ |𝑓(𝑎 ) − 𝑓(𝑏 )| < 𝜀 . now it may be that a continuous function does have finite derivative in every point but is not absolutely continuous: arnaud denjoy solved this case by means of a method, he called totalisation, extending integration to a class of finite-valued not summable functions including all the functions with finite-valued derivatives. then the problem was solved for every function with a finite derivative number. hahn and beppo levi gave examples of functions with a derivative number which is infinite on a perfect set and are not determined by it up to a constant (biacino 2020, 30). tonelli concludes this study proving the theorem: a continuous function is determined up to a constant by one of its derivative numbers if and only if: 1) the derivative number is known almost everywhere; 2) neither of the two sets where the derivative number is +∞ or ∞ is a perfect set. besides tonelli, some other italian mathematicians devoted in the twenties their efforts to re-examine lebesgue’s integral and measure theory especially for a didactical purpose. for example, vitali in 1929, in a lecture at varsaw, gave the notion of integral for unbounded functions defined in unbounded sets (vitali 1929). it is clear the didactical purpose of vitali, that had been engaged until 1922 in the secondary school, with an active participation to the problems of the school teaching from 1908 until 1922. it is interesting how he reproposes in part, as we will see, the riesz method revisited and exposed in a simplified manner without neglecting measure theory. as a matter of fact, since 1903 vitali had developed, independently from lebesgue, his own measure theory, equivalent to lebesgue’s one, proving a series of results by original methods. the measure of a set is defined by him as the exterior lebesgue measure, once established that the set is measurable in the following way. vitali calls a simple borel set every set that is the finite or denumerable union of intervals, bounded or not, pairwise without comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 31 interior points in common. he calls cover of a subset a of a right line r every simple borel set such that the given subset is enclosed in it. he calls extension of a the greatest lower bound of the lengths of the covers of a. given a set a and a cover c of a, the points that belong to some interval of c but do not belong to a form a set a’. the greatest lower bound of the extensions of the sets a’ corresponding to the covers of a is called anomaly of a. a set is said measurable if its anomaly is zero and in this case its extension is called its measure. then vitali gives some preliminary definitions to determine under what conditions a not bounded function in a not bounded measurable set is summable. a function f(t) defined almost everywhere in a measurable set g is called almostconstant if f(t) assumes only a finite or countable number of different and finite values and if every set on which it assumes the same value is measurable. if ln (n = 1, 2,… ) are the different values f(t) assumes and gn is the set where it assumes the value ln, then f(t) is called summable if the series ∑ 𝑙 𝑚(𝐺 ) is with finite terms and is absolutely convergent (with the condition 0∙ ∞ = 0). in such a case the sum of the series is the integral of the function f(t) extended to g. if f(t) is a measurable (in the usual way) function in g then every almost–constant function f(t) such that f(t) ≤ f(t) almost everywhere in g is called a majorant of f(t); and a minorant of f(t) is an almost-constant function h(t) such that h(t) ≤ f(t) almost everywhere in g. a measurable function defined in the measurable set g is called summable if it admits a summable majorant function and a summable minorant function in g. it is simple to prove that this happens if and only if the function is lebesgue summable. in such a case the integrals of its summable majorants and of its summable minorants form two contiguous classes of real numbers, whose element of separation is called integral of f(t) extended to g. it is possible to prove that this new integral coincides with the lebesgue integral. we conclude this section exposing the original contribution to the definition of lebesgue’s integral given by the young renato caccioppoli (1904-1959) who represents the ideas of the italian school of analysis of those years, dominated by the teacher of caccioppoli, mauro picone (18851977) and by l. tonelli and animated also by the ambition for a role in the international competition. in 1928 caccioppoli published an important memoire devoted to the integration of discontinuous functions (caccioppoli 1928a), very close to the ideas of borel, riesz, tonelli, young, daniell, but his main problem is not only to make his theory independent from the lebesgue measure theory as it has been for many other authors, but, in the same order of ideas of (caccioppoli 1926b), what is essential for the author is to produce a theory that starts with the cauchy integral considered as a linear and continuous operator on the field of the continuous functions and gives a prolongation of it by means of a natural extension to a wider field of functions, every one of them being continuous except in a set of arbitrarily small measure. in (caccioppoli 1928a) the following program is exposed: to search a definition built on an abstract basis in such a way that it can be applied both to multiple integrals and to the stieltjes integral; moreover, the fundamental theorems about the passage to the limit under the integral sign must be preserved and improved. the author carries out his program resorting to a general theory of the limits, introduced few years before, in 1923, by m. picone 14 , in this way: he first considers whatever function f defined and bounded in a bounded rectangle r. for every closed subset i of r, where f is continuous, he considers a function fi that is continuous in r and coincides with f in i and suppose that there exists a constant m such that fi is not greater than m for every i. consider the values ⟆ fidt, they 14 the notion of ordered variable or net had been introduced almost contemporarily by e. h. moore and l. h. smith in 1922 in: a general theory of limits, on the amer. journ. of math. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 32 constitute a bounded set. caccioppoli applies at this point the theory of the ordered variables exposed in the first chapter of (picone 1923). the maximum and minimum limit of the ordered variable so defined are finite: if they coincide their common value is called the integral of f on r and is denoted by ⟆ f(p)dt or by ⟆ f dt and f is said integrable. caccioppoli introduces at this point an additive function on the open subsets of r in this way: let e be an open set and put: 𝜑(e) = sup {|⟆ f dt|: f continuous in r, f(x)=0 for x∊r-e, |f(x)|≤1}. he proves the following fundamental theorem: the bounded function f is integrable if and only if for every 𝜀>0 there exists a closed set i such that f is continuous in i and 𝜑(r-i) < 𝜀. if e is a bounded set the integral of whatever function f defined on e is given in the usual way considering a bounded interval r that contains the set e and introducing the function 𝐹 coinciding with f on e and with 0 in r-e. then f is integrable on e if and only if 𝐹 is integrable on r and the integral ⟆ f(p)dt is by definition given by ∫ 𝐹 𝑑𝑇. caccioppoli proves that the sets whose characteristic function is integrable constitute a family which contains all the borel sets and the integral of the characteristic functions that are integrable is an additive measure that coincides with the lebesgue measure. the set function previously defined on the open sets, 𝜑 (e), coincides with the integral of the characteristic function of the set e. moreover, every integrable function on a measurable set is also lebesgue measurable. it follows that the so defined integral coincides with the lebesgue integral, the stieltjes integral can be analogously defined. then, by the previous characterization, it follows that a bounded function is integrable if and only if it is, in accordance with tonelli’s definition, almost continuous. caccioppoli proves in general, that is for functions of more variables, the severini egoroff theorem about the almost continuity of the sum of a converging series of continuous functions. for the proof he uses a noteworthy generalized arzela’s lemma, established by him, that with modern words can be exposed in the following way: given an abstract space x, a 𝜎 – algebra f of elements of x and a countably additive measure 𝜑 on f, consider a sequence i1, i2, …, in, … of elements of f: if there exists 𝜎 >0 such that for every n∊n it is 𝜑(in)>𝜎 then there exist points which belong to infinitely many in. a series of theorems about the passage to the limit under the integral sign follows. the first is of course a new form of the lebesgue integral theorem for the limit function of a sequence of bounded integrable functions: if a sequence of integrable functions: f1, f2, …, fn, … converges almost everywhere in e to the bounded function f, then f is integrable on e; and if the functions are uniformly bounded then it is possible to pass to the limit under the integral sign. because of this theorem, a limit of a sequence of integrable functions is a measurable function. caccioppoli adds to the previous theorem the following proposition: comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 33 if the function f is such that, given ԑ > 0, it is possible to find two integrable functions on e, hԑ and kԑ, such that |f-hԑ| < kԑ on e and ⟆e kԑdt < ԑ, then f is integrable on e. for the proof consider an infinitesimal sequence 𝜀 , 𝜀 , … , 𝜀 , … such that the series ∑ 𝜀 is convergent and let 𝜎 > 0 and hn be the set of the points of e where 𝑘 > 𝜎 . now it is: 𝜀 > ⟆e 𝑘 dt > 𝜎⟆ 𝑑𝑇. therefore: |f ℎ | < 𝑘 < 𝜎 in e–hn with 𝜑(hn) < . given 𝜀 >0 there exists a natural m such that ∑ 𝜀 < 𝜀𝜎 and therefore for every n ≥m it is |f ℎ | < 𝜎 in e ∪ hn, with 𝜑 (∪ hn) < 𝜀. therefore |f – lim ℎ | < 𝜎 in e – h with 𝜑(h) = 0; since 𝜎 is arbitrary we conclude that f(x) = lim ℎ and by the previous theorem f is integrable. finally, caccioppoli proves the following extension and completion of the last theorem: given a function f, a number 𝜇 > 0 and two sequences of functions integrable on e, {hn}n∊n and {kn}n∊n, such that |f hn| < kn on e and limn ⟆e kndt = 0, then f is integrable and if 𝜇 ≥ 1 then limn ⟆e hndt = ⟆e fdt. caccioppoli defines also the integral of an unbounded function. let f be a function defined in a rectangular domain r, suppose the function f almost continuous and constantly nonnegative and consider the ordered variable defined by ⟆ fi dt, where for every 𝜀 >0 there exists a closed set i such that 𝜑(r – i) < 𝜀, fi is continuous in r and coincides with f in i. the ordered variable in this case is not bounded and therefore his maximum limit is +∞ . if its minimum limit is finite, it is called the integral, is denoted by ⟆ f dt and the function f is called summable. in every case a function f is called summable if the nonnegative functions |f| and |f|f are summable and the integral is defined by ⟆ f dt = ⟆ |f| dt ⟆ (|f| f) dt. caccioppoli observes that his construction gives an equivalent definition to that of de la vallée poussin; he proves that: if f is nonnegative and summable then for every 𝜀 >0 there exists 𝛿 >0 such that for every subset i of r such that 𝜑(r -i) <𝛿 it is ⟆ f dt ⟆ fi dt < 𝜀. the previous property is then extended to a family of functions by the following new notion. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 34 the functions of a family of nonnegative summable functions f are called uniformly summable if for every 𝜀 > 0 there exists 𝜎 >0 such that if 𝜑(r-i) < 𝜎 then ⟆ f dt ⟆ fi dt <𝜀 for every function f of the family. summable functions of a family are also called uniformly summable if their absolute values are uniformly summable. the following theorem holds: if the functions of the almost everywhere convergent sequence (fn)n are uniformly summable, then the limit function f is summable too and ⟆ fdt = limn⟆ fn dt. caccioppoli in general proves that the integral function of a summable function ⟆ fdt as a function of the set e is absolutely continuous and writes the following proposition: let f be a summable function: then for every 𝜀 > 0 there exists 𝛿 >0 such that for every set e if 𝜑(e) < 𝛿 then ⟆ |f|dt < 𝜀. a sufficient condition in order that the summable functions of a family are uniformly summable is that for every 𝜀 > 0 there exists 𝛿 >0 such that for every set e if 𝜑(e) < 𝛿 then ⟆ |f|dt < 𝜀 for every function f of the family15. in particular, this condition is satisfied if there exists a nonnegative summable function such that the absolute values of all the functions of the family are not greater than it, that is the lebesgue’s theorem holds. given the sequence fn of summable functions tending to a function f, if there exists a nonnegative summable function g such that fn ≤ g for every natural n, then f is summable and ⟆ fdt = limn ⟆ fn dt. among many other things caccioppoli observes that: the functions of a family of uniformly summable functions have uniformly absolutely continuous integrals (caccioppoli 1928 a, 26). then the functions of a family are uniformly summable if and only if they have uniformly absolutely continuous integrals. if we compare tonelli’s and caccioppoli’s approaches to integration it is evident that they are equivalent, but the second is much more abstract; tonelli considers preferably functions of one variable on which he operates almost physically, see for example the way he prolongs an almost continuous function in a continuous function, while caccioppoli uses more general theorems to prolong for example a continuous function in a closed bounded set enclosed in a rectangle r into a continuous function on r. moreover, tonelli starts with the definition of integral for an almost continuous function, as lebesgue starts equivalently with measurable functions, whilst in the construction of caccioppoli the definition of integral 15 the integrals of a family of functions for which the previous condition holds are called uniformly absolutely continuous in (vitali 1907), where it is proved that a sufficient condition in order to pass to the limit under the integral sign for a sequence of converging functions defined in a measurable subset of the real number set r whose measure is finite is that their integrals are uniformly absolutely continuous. the condition is also necessary if it is possible to pass to the limit under the integral extended to every subset of the given one. the first definition of an absolutely continuous real function was given by (vitali 1904-05). it is formulated again for a function of two variables in (vitali 1908). the notion is deeply studied in 1910 by lebesgue: the central part of (lebesgue 1910) indeed is a re-examination of the definitions and the proofs of the vitali’s widely quoted paper of 1908: real additive set functions are considered instead of integral functions, for them a notion of derivative is defined, in general. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 35 is independent from this preliminary hypothesis, which is obtained after as an equivalent condition in order a function to be integrable. in the same year in (caccioppoli, 1928 b) the author introduces a definition of stieltjes integral 16 with respect to a function of bounded variation u for a measurable and not necessarily bounded function f 17, also in this case, as for the lebesgue integral (caccioppoli 1928a), in application of the theory of the limits of the ordered variables in the following way: given 𝜀>0 let i be a closed set such that the summable function f, defined in the rectangle r, is continuous in i and 𝜑(r-i) < 𝜀 and let 𝑓 be a continuous function in r that coincides with f in i. let us suppose u nonnegative, f and 𝑓 nonnegative and order the stieltjes integrals ⟆ 𝑓 (𝑃)𝑑𝑢 as the intervals i. then the maximum limit of the ordered variable ⟆ 𝑓 (𝑃)𝑑𝑢 is infinite; if the minimum limit is finite then the function f is called summable on r with respect to u and the minimum limit is called the lebesgue stieltjes integral of f on r. one can proceed in a canonical way if the functions f and u are of variable sign. given a family of functions f defined in the interval r and summable with respect to a function of bounded variation u, they are called uniformly summable with respect to u if for every 𝜀 > 0 there exists 𝛿 >0 such that if 𝜑(r-i) < 𝛿 then | ⟆ |𝐹(𝑃)|𝑑𝑢 − ⟆ 𝑓 (𝑃)𝑑𝑢| < 𝜀, for every function f of the family, fi being a continuous function in i that coincides with |f| in i. the previous condition allows a partial generalization of vitali’s theorem about the passage to the limit under the integral sign: if the functions 𝐹 (𝑃), 𝐹 (𝑃), … are uniformly summable with respect to u and f(p) = limn 𝐹 (𝑃) then f(p) is summable with respect to u and ∫ 𝐹(𝑃) 𝑑𝑢 = limn∫ 𝐹 (𝑃) 𝑑𝑢. the next step done by the author is to avoid in the previous condition the dependence from the function 𝑢. he succeeds in this program introducing the notion of family of functions of uniformly bounded variation. indeed, the functions of a sequence 𝜑1(p), 𝜑2(p), … are called of uniformly bounded variation if the limit relation limn v(𝜑m, en) = 0, where v(𝜑m, en) is the variation of the set function 𝜑m in the set en, is uniform with respect to m for every sequence of pairwise disjoint sets {en}18. caccioppoli proves that the integrals ∫ 𝐹 (𝑃) 𝑑𝑢 , ∫ 𝐹 (𝑃) 𝑑𝑢 , … are of uniformly bounded variation if and only if they are uniformly absolutely continuous with respect to u, that is if 𝜑(e) tends to zero then ⟆ 𝐹 (𝑃)𝑑𝑢 tends to zero uniformly with respect to n. it is now possible to prove the generalized vitali’s theorem: 16 a study on the stieltjes integral in the most general conditions is present in the last paper published by caccioppoli in 1955. in it the author considers the derivative, or the minimum and maximum derivative, of a function f(x) of a real variable with respect to another function g(x) given by 𝑙𝑖𝑚 → ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) or by the minimum or maximum limit of the previous ratio. in order to determine a primitive of f(x), given g(x), petrovski and caccioppoli in the same year 1934 have proved that, if g(x) is continuous, a function that is derivable with respect to g(x) is determined by its derivative on an interval up to a constant. in 1955, among other things, caccioppoli proves that, for the lebesguestieltjes integral ∫ 𝐹𝑑𝑔, if g(x) is continuous but not of bounded variation, a primitive exists if and only if the integrand is summable and every integral function is a generalized primitive, that is it admits the integrand function as a derivative almost everywhere, in a sense specified by the author. the theory is dominated by the hypothesis of the absolute continuity of f(x) with respect to g(x), case in which every primitive coincides with the integral function up to a constant (caccioppoli 1955). 17 that is such that for every 𝜀>0 there exists a closed set i such that f is continuous in i and 𝜑(r-i) < 𝜀, as in the definition of almost continuous function given by tonelli. 18 obviously all the considered sets are supposed borel measurable. the variation of a set function g in a set e is defined as the least upper bound of the sums 𝜑(e1)+ 𝜑(e2) + … + ∈(en) where e1, e2, … en varies in the class of the partitions of e. comparison between several ways of defining lebesgue’s integral after lebesgue loredana biacino transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2023 36 if f(p) = limn 𝐹 (𝑃) and if the integrals of the functions 𝐹 (𝑃), 𝐹 (𝑃), … are of uniformly bounded variation then ∫ 𝐹(𝑃) 𝑑𝑢 = limn∫ 𝐹 (𝑃) 𝑑𝑢. notice that the condition about the indefinite integrals to be of uniformly bounded variation is more flexible than the condition to be uniformly absolutely continuous with respect to u since it is independent from the function u: indeed, it suggests a more general theorem about the passage to the limit under the integral sign caccioppoli expresses in the following way: if f(p) = limn 𝐹 (𝑃), if limn un(p) = u(p) and if the indefinite integrals, ∫ 𝐹 (𝑃) 𝑑𝑢 1, ∫ 𝐹 (𝑃) 𝑑𝑢2, … are of uniformly bounded variation then ∫ 𝐹(𝑃) 𝑑𝑢 = limn∫ 𝐹 (𝑃) 𝑑𝑢n. the notion of a family of functions of uniformly bounded variation will be found independently in 1947 by the mathematician v. m. dubrowskii19 who considers families of uniformly additive set functions, the name used today. some results of j. diedonné20 about the convergence of sequences of measures are in the same order of ideas. and a deep study of the uniformly additive families of measures is given in the chapt. 5 of (cafiero 1959). note that in the previous exposition of the lebesgue stieltjes integral the author still refers to functions of bounded variation as in vitali’s definition, that is as point functions and not set functions, while in other papers of the same year (he wrote fourteen papers in 1928) he considers generally set functions of bounded variation. this is a little difficulty when compared with the richness of new ideas and results in his work of that period. conclusion we conclude here the treatment of the many presentations of the fundamental theory of the lebesgue integral after lebesgue: they were proposed by many mathematicians of many countries of europe and usa, french, english, belgian, austrian, german, russian, polish, italian, hungarian, united states authors were deeply interested in the new theory and thought to build other versions of it, sometimes exclusively for didactical purposes, some time giving generalizations and new correlate notions that would contribute to create the completely general character of the mathematics of today. we have investigated the various aspects of their theories, and we can now observe in how many ways they have solved a so delicate and unavoidable problem. more than the technical aspects, the inventiveness and the fantasy of the various authors, that however are not underestimated, and the important didactical purpose just evoked, we have pointed out to the philosophy below their formulations: almost all are animated by a modern constructive idea to make mathematics; but someone as well is driven by the also modern spirit of the time that is the idea of abstractionism which in mathematics becomes functionalism. a purpose of this exposition is to show that they wanted, besides opening new areas of research, to link the new ideas to the use of methods that took root in their cultural own tradition, with the prospects to perpetuate and to hand 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(2) t.ix: 15-50. microsoft word condé salomon from the editors transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2022 1 transversal: international journal for the historiography of science, 2023 (14): 1-2 issn 2526-2270 belo horizonte – mg / brazil © the authors 2023 – this is an open-access journal from the editors bruno latour: a thinker for the challenges of our times mauro l. condé1 – http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4156-2926 marlon salomon2 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2446-2141 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license _____________________________________________________________________________________________ in addition to a regular issue on the historiography and the history of science, in its 14th issue, transversal: international journal for the historiography of science presents a special issue on bruno latour. although latour was not precisely a historian of science, as we know, his thought has provoked reflections on science and technology in recent decades. an author such as latour is the fruit of the development of the historiography of science after 1960, when the emphasis given to social aspects in the construction of scientific knowledge came to the fore, especially after thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions (1962). in other words, after the history and philosophy of science emphasized the importance of social aspects in the production of scientific knowledge, the field of knowledge called science studies rose as a natural way to reflect on science, technology and society. if the relationships between science, technology and society became increasingly complex – coupled with the epistemological understanding of the great weight of the social in the construction of science – then it became necessary to map these relationships to understand all their implications. however, to carry out this mapping, it would not be the methodological apparatus of history and philosophy that would offer adequate tools, but the field of social sciences with disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. in this path, david bloor, in his strong program, states that “knowledge for the sociologist is whatever people take to be knowledge” (bloor 1991 [1976], 5) and, in the famous words of tim ingold, “anthropology is philosophy with the people in” (ingold 1992, 696). in effect, the sociological and anthropological approaches are about understanding the real relations of scientific and technological knowledge production with clear implications in society and the citizen’s life. however, these new sociological tools for science studies were not heir from merton’s sociology of science (merton 1938) since the new objects and new approaches to science needed not only the methodologies of the social sciences but also an epistemology that was far from the mertonian ideal and more attuned to what the history and philosophy of science presented. to understand these new relations between science and society, several authors 1 mauro l. condé is a professor in the department of history at the federal university of minas gerais (universidade federal de minas gerais). address: av. antonio carlos, 6627 – belo horizonte – mg. 31.270-901, brazil. e-mail: mauroconde@ufmg.br 2 marlon salomon is a professor in the faculty of history at the federal university of goiás (universidade federal de goiás). address: av. esperança, s/n, campus samambaia – goiânia – go, 74.690-900, brazil. e-mail: marlonsalomon@ufg.br. from the editors transversal: international journal for the historiography of science 14 (june) 2022 2 sought this reconciliation between a type of socio-constructivist epistemology on the one hand and the methodologies and objects of the social sciences on the other. following this road, latour was a master in the consolidation of science studies. this special issue is a tribute to him who, with his way of approaching these new relations between science and society, brought new objects of analysis, but above all, warned us about the absolute need to take a stand against the directions that the “politics of nature” has taken. in one of his latest works, latour orientates a path to be followed concerning the future of our planet. these and other concerns of latour reflect the interest that his work causes in authors from different parts of the world present here, from indonesia to latin america, from the united states to russia and china. we are very grateful to these authors, without whom our tribute would not exist. have an excellent read! references bloor, david. 1991 [1976]. knowledge and social imagery. the university of chicago press, chicago ingold, tim. 1992. editorial. man, new series, 27 (4): 693-696. kuhn, thomas. 1970 [1962]. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago: university of chicago press. latour, bruno. 2018. down to earth: politics in the new climatic regime. medford: polity press. merton, robert. 2001 [1938]. science, technology and society in seventeenth-century england. new york: howard fertig.