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Researchers who cross a discipline may experience culture shock at the different worlds of science and medicine. This paper outlines the differences in concepts and philosophies and in presentation styles. The acute difficulties when attempting to read or write works in different disciplines are also addressed, as well as the differences in perceptions and values when approaching written works in unfamiliar branches of academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers Australian receptions of C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), and of the controversy over the literary critic F. R. Leavis's combative 1962 response to it. Taking a lead from conceptual insights in global histories of science and the history of knowledge, the paper considers the ways knowledge claims iterate differently in different geographic and cultural contexts. Elements of the Snow–Leavis dispute resonated among Australian scientists, cultural critics, journalists and poets, while others did not. Snow's diagnosis of a disciplinary antagonism between the humanities and the sciences was central to Australian receptions of the controversy, but wider political issues, emphasised in much of the more sophisticated historiography of the 'two cultures' as a British-American controversy, were largely ignored. This reception reflected the post-war expansion of Australian higher education, and the shifting relations within it between the humanities and the sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author subjects the narrative of "interculturality" to a critique from an intercultural perspective, invoking the critical potential of intercultural philosophy in contrast to a culturalist "interculturality" light. The background of this analysis is the epistemic violence exercised by the West in the fields of knowledge, science, and education. This violence is particularly noticeable in the case of philosophy, leading to a sort of "philosophical homicide" (philosophicide) with respect to indigenous philosophies such as the Andean one in the case of Abya Yala. The paper concludes with some guidelines for the challenges that a critical intercultural philosophy must face in the XXI century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Truth" and "cause" are essential issues in theology. Truths of faith are meant to remain solid and fundamental and can be traced back to the unique truth of God. The same God is conceived of as the Creator who brought everything into existence before every other cause. Recent discussions about scientific rationality and causality have engaged with the same ideas of "truth" and "cause", even though they have done so according to different methodologies and from different points of view. Can those discussions stimulate theology, and if so, in what manner? In this paper, we begin by considering the subject of scientific change and rationality, arguing that scientific change leads to the recognition of the connection between any scientific theory and what remains intelligible in nature. Next, we show some of the outcomes from new mechanistic philosophy, focusing on the idea of cause, which unveils a strong correspondence between epistemology and ontology and provides a unique way of speaking about causality. Finally, we conclude that science can support theology through new approaches to nature and that a theology of science is required today as an intertwined perspective between science and theology. The main virtue that guides this approach is humility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This critical essay evaluates the potential integration of distinct kinds of expertise in policymaking, especially during situations of critical emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This article relies on two case studies: (i) herd immunity (UK) and (ii) restricted access to ventilators for disabled people (USA). These case studies are discussed as examples of experts' recommendations that have not been widely accepted, though they were made within the boundaries of expert epistemic authority. While the fundamental contribution of biomedical experts in devising public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic is fully recognized, this paper intends to discuss potential issues and limitations that may arise when adopting a strict expert-based approach. By drawing attention to the interests of minorities (disenfranchized and underrepresented groups), the paper also claims a broader notion of "relevant expertise." This critical essay thus calls for the necessity of wider inclusiveness and representativeness in the process underlying public health policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: YouTube is widely used for learning about scientific issues in and out of school. However, much of the scientific information on YouTube is inaccurate. Prior studies have mostly focused on how students evaluate textual online information sources and have not yet systematically examined how they evaluate authentic scientific YouTube videos. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine how students evaluate authentic scientific YouTube videos in comparison to scientific webpages. Methods: Eighth grade students ranked six YouTube videos on the topic of climate change, justified their rankings, and responded to metacognitive prompts designed to elicit their evaluation criteria and strategies. Students also responded to a parallel webpage evaluation measure. We analysed and compared students' evaluation strategies and criteria. We also examined which evaluation criteria predict students' judgments of YouTube video quality. Results and Conclusions: Students predominantly relied on evaluation of video content, focusing mainly on criteria of communicative quality and explanation quality. Students tended to neglect source expertise and information validity criteria. Students evaluated videos mostly similarly to how they evaluated webpages. However, affective experiences played a greater role in video evaluation; whereas task relevance and verbal quality played a smaller role. Students' evaluation criteria predicted their judgments of video quality. Implications: The findings suggest that students are unprepared for critically evaluating scientific YouTube videos and that digital information literacy instruction should address this gap. The study also identifies some unique challenges of video evaluation that educators should attend to. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Students often use YouTube for learning about scientific issues.However, much of the scientific information on YouTube is inaccurate.Prior studies have found that students can find it difficult to evaluate scientific websites.Little is known about how students evaluate scientific YouTube videos. What this paper adds: Students mostly focused whether the videos include good explanations and if they are well‐designed.Students tended to ignore the sources of the videos and the accuracy of the information.Students evaluated videos mostly similarly to how they evaluated webpages.However, emotional experiences played a greater role in video evaluation compared to webpage evaluation; whereas the content played a smaller role. Implications for practice and/or policy: The findings suggest that students are unprepared for critically evaluating scientific YouTube videos.Digital information literacy instruction should also focus on teaching video evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present the position of two philosophers associated with the hermeneutic tradition, Gianni Vattimo and Charles Taylor, about the status of scientific knowledge in our contemporary world. Through a brief exposition of the fundamental features of their respective ontologies and epistemologies, I seek to offer a critical comparison. In the conclusion, I defend the superiority of Taylor's formulation, inasmuch it allows to put in question the primacy of the natural science model without abandoning a realist conception of the world and of the category of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the fundamental axes that currently converge for the needs of nature and humanity. The philosophical statements contained in this reflection become valid when it comes to articulating ethical codes with the advancement of science and, at the same time, educating through an axiological system that leads to sustainable human development. In this order of ideas, it is pointed out how Western progress has led to catastrophic events for life on the planet, coupled with the excessive use of science, without any ethical criteria to regulate their actions. However, as a result of the moral reflection of recent times, of the voices of various social groups, scientific improvements have been questioned and directed towards the production of knowledge that allows human activity to be deployed positively on nature and on society, taking into account that, to make this possible, it is necessary to combine ethics, science and education, to walk towards progress in terms of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The erudite James Burnet, Lord Monboddo (1714–1799), member of the Select Society and judge of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, wrote many pages about the existence of 'men with tails' and orang-utans' humanity. For this reason, he has been labelled as 'credulous', 'bizarre' and 'eccentric' both by his contemporaries and by modern scholars. In this paper, I shall try to take his argument seriously and to show that throughout his work Monboddo searched for evidence. If his belief in mermaids, giants, blemmyes, daemons and oracles was far from reflecting the general attitude of the age of Enlightenment and empiricism, Monboddo contributed to place the 'science of man' at the centre of the map of knowledge, where Nicholas Phillipson had also located it. He did this by emphasising the variety and historicity of humankind and stressing how mind and body changed over time and space. This article is also an attempt to connect Monboddo's erudite production with his position as a lawyer and a judge. I shall argue that Monboddo founded his 'science of man' on an epistemology of legal evidence, employing the same inquisitive approach that he practiced at the bar and in the court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper articulates and defends three interconnected claims: firstly, that the debate on the role of values for science misses a crucial dimension, the institutional one; secondly, that institutions occupy the intermediate level between scientific activities and values and that they are to be systematically integrated into the analysis; thirdly, that the appraisal of the institutions of science with respect to values should be undertaken within the premises of a comparative approach rather than an ideal approach. Hence, I defend the view that the issue be framed in reference to the following question: "What kind of institutional rules should be in place in order for the scientific process to unfold in such a way that the values that we deem more important come to the fore?" Addressing this concern is equivalent to conducting a debate on institutions and their role for science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific epistemology is a topic that has sparked centuries of philosophical discourse. In particular, understanding the role that scientists play in the creation and perpetuation of scientific knowledge is a subject that continues to be hotly debated. A relative new-comer to scientific epistemology is the field of virtue epistemology, which positions knowledge creation as integrally linked to specific character traits held by the scientist. Positioning scientific research as a distinct practice, virtue epistemologists strive to understand what virtues foster robust knowledge creation. Examinations of current scientific virtue epistemology, however, reveal how framings of "the scientist" tend to be highly individualistic and position the individual scientist as an actor with a high level of agency and autonomy. Such approaches, while following more conventional scientific epistemology discourse, contrast significantly with a growing body of social science literature that emphasizes the group nature of scientific research and education. This paper makes use of this social science literature to critically examine current deficits in narratives of scientific virtue epistemology. It highlights the need for the prioritization of virtues that enable scientists to work and learn in social environments through social processes. In particular, it discusses how the virtue of docility, best understood as being "open to learning", is a key virtue for training new scientists and for establishing robust processes of knowledge creation. By identifying current deficits in the manner in which science is taught, it demonstrates the considerable epistemic consequences of training scientists who do not embody docility in all aspects of their research activities. The paper concludes by discussing how docility may be considered a key factor in an alternate understanding of the current reproducibility crisis in modern science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of the problem of illusion in sense perception, using the methods of critical exposition and content analysis as tools of engagement. For decades, post-modern epistemology was steeped in the murky waters of the brilliant, skeptic argument from illusion, according to which the senses could not be relied upon for knowledge of the external world of reality, due to problems believed to be inherent in sensory perception. Why was the argument from illusion so important to epistemologists as to elicit enormous interest for such a long time? What are the implications of the argument for science? Did the argument from illusion portend any real danger for the foundations of empirical knowledge claims, as supposed by many frontline epistemologists? Exploring the concept and science of perceptual illusion, and the implications of the argument from illusion for science and epistemology, the paper found that the argument failed as a refutation of direct realism because it views illusion as the norm rather than an exception, and portrays human knowing process as an automatic, rather than a procedural, gradual phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Machiavelli's method, his inductive and comparative use of history and experience for political analysis, and his fashioning of historical-political analysis as 'science', played an important and still unrecognised role in his reception in the sixteenth century. It makes the case that Machiavelli's inductive reasoning and stress on historia and experientia offered a model for scientific method that open-minded sixteenth-century scholars, eager to understand, organise and augment human knowledge (scientia), could fit to their own epistemology. By focusing on the question of method—a crucial issue for sixteenth-century contemporaries—the paper offers more than a key to the understanding of Machiavelli's positive reception. It also helps in apprehending the crucial importance of Lucretius to Machiavelli's scholarship; the role of the late Renaissance fascination with historia in his reception; and the breadth of appropriation of his method exactly in the decades when anti-Machiavellianism became official politics all over Europe. These claims are sustained through the cases of Machiavelli's early translators and promulgators; the French legal humanists and historiographers; the Swiss, Italian and French scholars engaging with medicine, Paracelsism and astronomy; the authors of political maxims from all over Europe; and finally Francis Bacon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of cognitive penetration has been pointed out concerning three fields within philosophy: philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. This paper argues that this phenomenon is also relevant to the philosophy of language. First, I will defend that there are situations where ethical, social, or cultural rules can affect our taste perceptions. This influence can cause speakers to utter conflicting contents that lead them to disagree and, subsequently, to negotiate the circumstances of application of the taste predicates they have used to describe or express their taste perceptions. Then, to account for the proper dynamics of these cases, I will develop a theoretical framework build upon two elements: the Lewisian idea of the score of a conversation (Lewis, 1979), and Richard's (2008) taxonomy of the different attitudes speakers can have in taste disagreements. In a nutshell, I will argue that speakers can accommodate these conflicting contents as exceptions to the rule that determines the circumstances of application of taste predicates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophy of Immanuel Kant has been important in education theory, especially in the historical context of the Enlightenment and its legacies on contemporary understandings of global education. Particular reference is given to Kant’s writing on Enlightenment thinking and especially to his 1803 Über Pädagogik/Lectures on pedagogy whose groundwork tends to be thought from an empirical anthropology. This paper aims to question education, though from the perspective of a Kantian understanding of aesthetic experience, a perspective developed initially from my reading of Denis J. Schmidt’sLyrical and Ethical Subjects(2005). In theCritique of Judgement(1986), Kant develops an ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ that offers transcendental grounds for the possibility of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he discusses, somewhat briefly, training in the fine arts and even more briefly offers, somewhat indirectly, a far-reaching transcendental ground for pedagogy. It is these two brief accounts that form the substance of this paper, requiring a somewhat extended introduction to Kant’sCritique of Aesthetic Judgementin order to develop its analysis. From this analysis, two key questions arise: if fine art cannot be learned, and if imitation would ultimately aim at producing an objectively determinable rule—via a determinable concept—for the production of art works, how does one proceed with education in the fine arts? And, secondly, as a corollary, if genius is reserved for precisely what cannot be learned but yet can be conceived and communicated, what possible purpose is served by aesthetic ideas with respect to cognition itself? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that morality is objective in a specific sense that accords with a broadly expressivist stance in metaethics. The paper also explains that although there is a kind of subjectivity in moral inquiry, the same holds for other kinds of normative inquiry, including epistemic and even scientific inquiry, and moreover that this kind of subjectivity is no threat to morality's objectivity. The argument for the objectivity of morality draws strong parallels between ethics, epistemology, and science, but does not depend on equally strong parallels between ethics and mathematics. I argue that there is more to learn from a comparison between ethics and mathematics than I used to think, but the difference between the issues that come up in thinking about objectivity in ethics and those that come up in thinking about objectivity in mathematics is substantial, and we cannot carry over results from the philosophy of mathematics to the case of morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes, in comparison with Brazil, the critical experiences of Chilean field of Physical Education after the 1990s. In methodological terms, the study is based on a review of articles that publish on the theme in Chile. The results highlight similarities but, also, differences in the trajectory of critical pedagogy in both countries. The analysis aims to produce a common agenda for critical pedagogy of Physical Education in sense of Latin-Americans reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important fact about human labor is that it can result not just in reproduction of what it started with, but in something new, a surplus product. When the latter is a means of production, it makes possible a mechanism of change consisting of reproduction by means of the expanded means of production. Each iteration of the labor process can differ from the preceding one insofar as it incorporates the surplus generated previously. Over the long-term, this cyclical process can lead to the self-transformation of labor and, through it, of human societies and cultures. In this paper, I argue that this mechanism of change is also at work in the history of science. I argue that the form this mechanism takes in science is that of a feedback loop between discovery and instrument construction. This process requires the integration, and transformation into material form, of different kinds of knowledge. Based on this mechanism, I defend a concept of scientific progress as transcendence of the limitations of native human epistemic abilities. I also criticize narrowly biologistic approaches to the history of science for ignoring the role of surplus generation in transforming the labor process, and discuss some problems associated with viewing science as labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several fields of research associated with the history of the early modern Iberian world have experienced a significant boost in recent decades: Iberian science as it relates to the Atlantic world, the history of European colonial empires, and the study of knowledge production in Latin American cultures. This expansion has coincided with a renewed interest of historians of the early modern period in practical knowledge and artisanal cultures. This paper presents an updated historiographic review of both lines of research as well as of their close interconnections. In addition, it offers a re‐interpretation of Iberian imperial science in the context of the European maritime expansion through the lens of artisanal epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the 15th anniversary of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), one can definitely say that this relatively young society has come of age. Through regular meetings, a journal, a prize, fellowships and various other activities, the ESHS has been striving to create a space fostering diversity, plurality and internationalization among historians of science, located in Europe and elsewhere. This paper revisits my own research on the past of the sciences in Portugal, examining in particular the role of the 18th century naturalist and diplomat Abbé Correia da Serra. As a member of an extended network of estrangeirados (Europeanized intellectuals), Correia da Serra played a decisive role in the circulation of knowledge in Europe and also in the world, a role forgotten by his peers within the time interval of a generation. This case study acts as a springboard to discuss the importance of geographical and methodological diversity in the past of the sciences in Europe. In the present historiographical predicament in which the international community finds itself, I advocate that one of the main challenges faced by the ESHS is to turn its historical gaze to Europe again, while fiercely repudiating Eurocentrism. This enables to show how much the building of the European spaces of scientific practice were never a prerogative of a few regions or a small set of countries, but, on the very contrary, took shape as the result of complex interactions between diverse spaces and cultures, not only intra‐European but also non‐European. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In biology and medicine, a scientist's legend is most commonly determined by their sphere of influence, either on surrounding peers, on clients in the case of medical practitioners, or on the wider scientific public in the case of research scientists. A scientific paper still constitutes the most effective portal through which ideas, knowledge and opinions can be shared among academics and scholars. Thus, legends in science are built upon a scientist's published literature. Legend was always assumed to be safe in its final form, i.e., a published paper. Yet, a powerful movement of post-publication peer review has begun to identify that not all has been well with the vetting process that led to the publication of a tranche of the scientific literature, and that editorial oversight and weakness has prevailed in a number of cases, leading to retractions and a more critical re-assessment of the literature. One could say that the half-life of a scientific paper has only just begun once it is published. Within this context of science publishing that has given a sense of false security, legends may evolve from boom to bust within the space of weeks or even months. The legendary status of a scientist is therefore no longer safe if there are hidden or undiscovered errors, fraud or misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relation between the singular and the universal in mythical thinking. The initial problem holds that, conventionally, due to its fantastic expressions, mythical thought is non-objective knowledge of the world; however, I will argue the opposite. Based on Cassirer's Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, I will present two results: firstly, an evaluation of how myth relates singular events with universal concepts, which allows the reassessment of myth as a valid epistemological form. Secondly, the main epistemological resource of myth is the idea of mutation, unlike science, which uses concepts to relate the singular with the universal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore Kant's account of normativity through the prism of the distinction between the natural and the human sciences. Although the pragmatic orientation of the human sciences is often defined in contrast with the theoretical orientation of the natural sciences, I show that they are in fact regulated by one and the same norm, namely reason's demand for autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the epistemological tensions generated due to the search for legitimization of scientific knowledge. It stems from the discussion about science seen through "nomothetic" and "ideographic" standpoints, coming to the conclusion that there is a tendency to theorize from a vision that comes from an organizational order, putting on the back burner, to a large extent, the legitimizer tension that occurs in the socialization of scientific knowledge. The paper also values possibilities to analyze social sciences from Bourdieu's scientific field concept, who breaks up certain inertias about the official positions that theorize about science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines some provisional steps toward a theory of culture grounded in computational thinking. I begin by describing computational thinking, drawing on Marr’s hierarchy for the analysis of information processing systems. I then address the definition of culture, arguing that culture is a property of causal chains, rather than a thing-in-the-world. I briefly address contemporary debates over the nature of culture—embodied versus embedded—and argue for an ecological approach in which culture-in-action unfolds as embodied schemas recognize (and produce) “handles” in the environment. When schemas are “objectively adapted” to the handles, they generate action that is ecologically rational. To explain ecologically rational culture-in-action, I outline a formal approach to cultural learning based on Probably Approximately Correct (PAC)-learning theory. I illustrate my approach throughout with examples drawn from the sociology of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically evaluates Foucault’s relation to Bachelard and Canguilhem. It reconsiders the relevance of the concept of “influence” for treating this relation in order to register the more sceptical position Foucault adopts towards knowledge practices than either of these figures from twentieth-century French epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and technology studies concerned with the study of lay influence on the sciences usually analyze either the political or the normative epistemological consequences of lay interference. Here I frame the relation between patients, knowledge, and the sciences by opening up the question: How can we articulate the knowledge that patients develop and use in their daily lives (patient knowledge) and make it transferable and useful to others, or, `turn it into science’? Elsewhere, patient knowledge is analyzed either as essentially different from or similar to medical knowledge. The category of experiential knowledge is vague and is used to encompass many types of experience, whereas the knowledge of the `expert patient’ may be assumed to have the shape of up-to-date medical information. This paper shows through a case study of people with severe lung disease that patient knowledge can be understood as a form of practical knowledge that patients use to translate medical and technical knowledge into something useful to their daily life with disease. Patients coordinate this with homegrown know-how and advice from fellow patients, weighing different values - of which `taking good care of one’s body’ is but one - that may conflict in a specific situation. These practices result in sets of techniques that may be made useful to others. The paper argues for two alternatives to state-of-the-art medical research to turn patient knowledge into science: ethnographies of knowledge practices (how patients know) and the collection and making accessible of techniques (what patients know). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rather than focus on effects, the isolatable and measureable outcomes of events and interventions, the papers assembled here offer different perspectives on the affective dimension of the meaning and politics of human/non-human relations. The authors begin by drawing attention to the constructed discontinuity between humans and non-humans, and to the kinds of knowledge and socialities that this discontinuity sustains, including those underpinned by nature-culture, subject-object, body-mind, individual-society polarities. The articles presented track human/non-human relations through different domains, including: humans/non-humans in history and animal welfare science (Fudge and Buller); the relationship between the way we live, the effects on our natural environment and contested knowledges about ‘nature’ (Whatmore); choreographies of everyday life and everyday science practices with non-human animals such as horses, meerkats, mice, and wolves (Latimer, Candea, Davies, Despret). Each paper also goes on to offer different perspectives on the human/non-human not just as division, or even as an asymmetrical relation, but as relations that are mutually affective, however invisible and inexpressible in the domain of science. Thus the collection contributes to new epistemologies/ontologies that undercut the usual ordering of relations and their dichotomies, particularly in that dominant domain of contemporary culture that we call science. Indeed, in their impetus to capture ‘affect’, the collection goes beyond the usual turn towards a more inclusive ontology, and contributes to the radical shift in the epistemology and philosophy of science’s terms of engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is the result of two recent e-workshops organized by The World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), one on the Science of Networks, the other on Complexity. These Sciences have emerged in the last few decades and figure among a large group of ‘new’ sciences or knowledge acquisitors. They are connected with one another and are very well exposed in the diagram available under the name ‘Map of Complexity Science’ on Wikipedia. Networks exist in extremely diverse contexts: in the biological world, in social constructions, in urbanism, climate change and many more. The novelty appears in the correlations and the laws (e.g. power laws), which were discovered recently, and indicates a totally different appraisal from what was generally expected to exist. The Science of Complexity is directly related to networks. Networks are an essential part of the complexity phenomenon. Their applications, which are highly diverse, are recommended by several scientists; decision makers and politicians have to make use of this knowledge for better evaluation of the impact of their decisions in increasingly complex societies and as a function of time. The paper mentions a recent report on Complexity in Economics and the Economic Complexity Index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What follows from the suggestion to pay attention to what is in-between science and politics? Karen François's paper 'In-between science and politics' follows Latour in arguing for the need for political theory to get out of the Platonic cave that it still inhabits. Political theory needs to be brought into the wild through empirical studies of how science and politics in fact intermix. And the Latourian proposition needs to be strengthened by focusing on the embodied knowledges that enable situated objectivities to emerge. Though worthwhile, these arguments are weakened by a superficial treatment of political theory and by a lack of attention to the difficulties involved in combining Latourian actor-network theory with the 'strong objectivity' of standpoint theory. Most problematically the paper purports to define as an agenda (exploring the in-between of science and politics) what whole fields of inquiry have already been in full swing exploring for quite a while. The 'turn to ontology' in STS and social anthropology and the development of 'empirical philosophy' suggests what might be at stake in such explorations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is growing more interconnected, and Asian societies are increasingly able to play leading roles in global society. However, Asian psychologists and social scientists have yet to draw from their cultural roots to create social sciences able to make a difference in their home societies. This paper articulates an epistemology for the aspirational practice of Height Psychology as a human science informed by Kantian epistemology in dialogue with other philosophies, especially Confucianism and Taoism. The possibility of 'intellectual intuition' (direct knowledge of thing-in-itself, or noumenon) is allowed in Eastern philosophical traditions that open a more agentic and human-centred philosophy of science for action that goes beyond natural science epistemologies originating in Cartesian dualism. Kant's practical postulates are invoked to develop a moral and ethical philosophy that through civilizational dialogue can lead to a philosophy of science robustly incorporating culture and human agency. A thought experiment is offered where practical postulates of Chinese culture are held to be yin-yang cosmology, human-heartedness, and relationalism. It is argued that these facilitate an holistic science of practice that complements the sophistication of Western methods. Principles and an approach to theory-building for human science are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short communication explores the collection and collecting activity of the Hawke’s Bay Philosophical Institute and its precursor in Napier, New Zealand, during the late nineteenth century. Affiliated to the New Zealand Institute (NZI), two well-known figures of New Zealand science, museums and collecting were influential: William Colenso, FLS, FRS, who placed an emphasis on natural history collecting by members; and Augustus Hamilton, who sought to professionalise the museum and its objectives. Collection items were an essential source of scientific knowledge used for research, illustrating papers and as a prompt for learned discussion. Many New Zealand collections owe their origins to similar collecting by NZI members during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to explore and describe the philosophical consequences of Quine's naturalized epistemology, Quine's semantic and confirmational holism, his project of regimenting the language of science into a canonical notation, and his behavioristic notion of stimulus meaning. In the present paper, I focus on the changes in Quine's attitude toward analyticity, Quine's rejection of truth by convention, his idea of how language could be regimented to reveal or remove ontological commitments, and his holistic metaphor of our knowledge as consisting of a man-made fabric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changes that occurred on digitization have produced profound variations in the world of work in general, and academic one in particular. Considering the transformations in terms of production, use and appropriation of knowledge, mainly taking this situation as a kind of social relationship described as "cognitive exploitation of scientific knowledge". From this characterization, I shall discuss in this paper the impact over the work of the social scientist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I provide a brief history of the emerging science of conceptual systems, explain some methodologies, their sources of data, and the understandings that they have generated. I also provide suggestions for extending the science-based research in a variety of directions. Essentially, I am opening a conversation that asks how this line of research might be extended to gain new insights-and eventually develop more useful and generally accepted methods for creating and evaluating theory. This effort will support our ability to generate theory that is more effective in practical application as well as accelerating the development of theory to support advances in other sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception in the early 1990s, evidence-based medicine (EBM) has become the dominant epistemic framework for Western medical practice. However, in light of powerful criticisms against EBM, alternatives such as casuistic medicine have been gaining support in both the medical and philosophical community. In the absence of empirical evidence in support of the claim that EBM improves patient outcomes, and in light of considerations that it is unlikely that such evidence will be forthcoming, another standard is needed to assess EBM against its alternatives. In this paper, I propose a set of criteria for this purpose based on Helen Longino's criteria for assessing the objectivity of a knowledge productive community. I then apply these criteria to assess EBM against a casuistic framework for medical knowledge. I argue that EBM's strict adherence to a hierarchical organization of knowledge can reasonably be expected to block it from fulfilling a high level of objectivity. A casuistic framework, on the other hand, because it emphasizes critical evaluation in conjunction with the flexibility of a case-based approach, could be expected to better facilitate a more optimal epistemic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest the Erklären-Verstehen debate is usually interpreted as primarily epistemological. By raising the possibility that there are fundamentally different methods for fundamentally different types of science, the debate puts into play all the standard issues-that is, issues concerning scientific explanation and justification, the unity and diversity of scientific disciplines, the reality of their subject matter, the accessibility of various subject matters to research, and so on. In this paper, however, I do not focus on any of these specific issues. I start instead from the fact that the very existence of the debate itself is an issue; in fact, it poses a philosophical problem that almost everyone but the hardest line logical empiricists has come to realize cannot be resolved epistemologically. In my view, however, that it cannot be resolved ontologically, either. I think the problem is at bottom hermeneutical, and its resolution requires that we focus first, not on the objects of science or the methods of studying them, but on the character of the philosophical orientation assumed by those who would try to resolve it. In this paper, I explain why I think this is so by analyzing (1) Dilthey's contribution to the original debate, (2) Husserl's reaction to Dilthey, and (3) Heidegger's critical evaluation of both. This line of philosophical development-this movement of self-understanding from critiques of objectivism to hermeneutical phenomenology-is of course already a central feature of much work in continental philosophy of science. In my conclusion, however, I argue for the less well-established-even if apparently approved-idea that it ought to be a central feature of technoscience studies as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that Don Ihde's 'postphenomenology' may constitute a proper access to the question concerning sustainable technology and I do so in three steps. First, I lay bare how a modern framework that systematically separates facts and instruments from values, choices and responsibilities yields no space for engaged decisions and responsible action towards more sustainable societies. In a second step, I elaborate how postphenomenology's 'in-between' perspective opens up the possibility of questioning science and technology as an inherent part of our human existence. Building on this, I argue how a 'normativity of the in-between' may be developed around the concept of 'topical measure' and which is grounded in the foundationless foundation of postphenomenology's relational ontology. In a last step, I show how such a 'topical measure' opens up two fields of normative action vis-à-vis the question concerning sustainable technology: one critical, the other empowering. Whereas 'topical criticism' focuses on bringing into the open the powerful subpolitics of science and technology, the field of 'topical responsibility' rather aims at actively assuming responsibility in these political circles. Besides its main interest, which lies in forging a genuine and adequate way into the issue of sustainability, this paper also constitutes an entry into Ihde's philosophical oeuvre. The question concerning sustainable technology does not only touch upon Ihde's relational trinity human-technology-world, it also deals with the degree of normative inquiry present in Ihde's philosophy, an issue he has been repeatedly questioned about by his interlocutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, different scenarios in which the concept of "probable" is faced in Aristotle's work on physics are developed and deepened. This concept, indeed, plays a central and diversified role in Aristotle's physics, even though it is inserted into an idea of physics as science in a strong sense. Generally speaking, the idea of the probable is applied at three different levels: 1) a methodological level where it is linked to the value of truth, whose recognition is given to the predecessors' doxai and endoxai; 2) it is related to the contingent nature of the object that is becoming; 3) it is related to the deep awareness of the limit of human knowledge. In this paper, these three levels are detected and analyzed in order to show how, in physical field, Aristotle seems to "move" within the limits of a "probable reconstruction", but his physics remain always episteme in the highest and strictest meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses intertwined issues in the conceptualization, implementation and evaluation of multilevel dynamic systems intervention science (MDSIS). Interventions are systematically planned, conducted and evaluated social science-based cultural products intercepting the lives of people and institutions in the context of multiple additional events and processes (which also may be referred to as interventions) that may speed, slow or reduce change towards a desired outcome. Multilevel interventions address change efforts at multiple social levels in the hope that effects at each level will forge synergistic links, facilitating movement toward desired change. This paper utilizes an ecological framework that identifies macro (policy and regulatory institutions), meso (organizations and agencies with resources, and power) and micro (individuals, families and friends living in communities) interacting directly and indirectly. An MDSIS approach hypothesizes that change toward a goal will occur faster and more effectively when synchronized and supported across levels in a social system. MDSIS approaches by definition involve “whole” communities and cannot be implemented without the establishments of working community partnerships This paper takes a dynamic systems approach to science as conducted in communities, and discusses four concepts that are central to MDSIS—science, community, culture, and sustainability. These concepts are important in community based participatory research and to the targeting, refinement, and adaptation of enduring interventions. Consistency in their meaning and use can promote forward movement in the field of MDSIS, and in community-based prevention science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper’s main contention is that some basically methodological developments in science which are apparently distant and unrelated can be seen as part of a sequential story. Focusing on general inferential and epistemological matters, the paper links occurrences separated by both in time and space, by formal and representational issues rather than social or disciplinary links. It focuses on a few limited aspects of several cognitive practices in medical and biological contexts separated by geography, disciplines and decades, but connected by long term transdisciplinary representational and inferential structures and constraints. The paper intends to show a given set of knowledge claims based on organizing statistically empirical data can be seen to have been underpinned by a previous, more familiar, and probably more natural, narrative handling of similar evidence. To achieve that this paper moves from medicine in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century in England among gentleman naturalists, following its subject: the shift from narrative depiction of hereditary transmission of physical peculiarities to posterior statistical articulations of the same phenomena. Some early defenders of heredity as an important (if not the most important) causal presence in the understanding of life adopted singular narratives, in the form of case stories from medical and natural history traditions, to flesh out a special kind of causality peculiar to heredity. This work tries to reconstruct historically the rationale that drove the use of such narratives. It then shows that when this rationale was methodologically challenged, its basic narrative and probabilistic underpinings were transferred to the statistical quantificational tools that took their place. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

H-J Rheinberger's book Toward a History of Epistemic Things contains a sophisticated account of scientific reference and scientific method worked out in conjunction with a case study of the laboratory synthesis of proteins. This paper offers a detailed critical analysis of Rheinberger's position from the standpoint of the sociology of scientific knowledge. The central thesis is that Rheinberger's account of reference, whether deliberately or unwittingly, assimilates discourse about the natural world to discourse about the social world. The result is an inadequate account of scientific terms, which does not do justice to the independent character of the objects of scientific knowledge. A further feature of Rheinberger's approach is a commitment to an extreme form of methodological pluralism. This is challenged in the paper on the basis of a sociological reading of Carnap's famous identification of a "continuum of inductive methods." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at an analysis of the oeuvre of the French historian of science and epistemologist Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). Bachelard was the founder of a tradition of French thinking about science that extended from Jean Cavaillès over Georges Canguilhem to Michel Foucault. In the past, he has become best known and criticized for his postulation of an epistemological rupture between everyday experience and scientific experience. In my analysis, I emphasize another aspect of the work of Bachelard. It is the way he conceptualizes the relation between scientific thinking and technology in modern science. Within this framework, the notion of "phenomenotechnique" is of crucial importance. It is one of the organizing concepts of Bachelard's historical epistemology, and it serves as the organizing center of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a preliminary analysis of conceptual change between event concepts. It begins with a brief review of the major fındings of cognitive studies on event knowledge. The script model proposed by Schank and Abelson was the fırst attempt to represent event knowledge. Subsequent cognitive studies indicated that event knowledge is organized in the form of dimensional organizations in which temporally successive actions are related causally. This paper proposes a frame representation to capture and outline the internal structure of event concepts, in particular, their causal connections. The frame representation offers an effective method to analyze the relations between event concepts, and to expose the unique cognitive mechanisms behind conceptual change involved event concepts. Finally this paper shows that the frame representation of event concepts is instrumental to understanding an important historical episode of conceptual change in the context of nineteenth-century optics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by examining the response of the organised scientific community to the claims of the indigenous knowledge lobby, and with some observations on the dichotomy between science and traditional technical knowledge. It reiterates the view that the potency of the distinction arises from a fusion of the general human cognitive impulse to simplify the processes by which we understand the world, reinforced by the socially-driven need of science to maintain an effective boundary around the practices which scientists engage in. The paper goes on to argue that the existence of these two epistemological metacategories obscures the presence of different ways of securing predictive knowledge of the material world, each of which is characterised by a distinctive configuration of cognitive and technical features, and which in several ways cut across the usual dualism between science and traditional knowledge. The argument is illustrated using examples from the history of biology and the ethnography of ethnobiological knowledge. It engages critically with insights drawn from cognitive psychology, the philosophy and sociology of science, and cognitive anthropology, as well as with scientists' own descriptions of what distinguishes the mental operations in which they engage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the questions concerning the relationship between scientific and cognitive processes. The fact that both, science and cognition, aim at acquiring some kind of knowledge or representation about the ``world'' is the key for establishing a link between these two domains. It turns out that the constructivist framework represents an adequate epistemological foundation for this undertaking, as its focus of interest is on the (constructive) relationship between the world and its representation. More specifically, it will be shown how cognitive processes and their primary concern to construct a representation of the environment and to generate functionally fitting behavior can act as the basis for embedding the activities and dynamics of the process of science in them by making use of constructivist concepts, such as functional fitness, structure determinedness, etc. Cognitive science and artificial life provide the conceptual framework of representational spaces and their interaction between each other and with the environment enabling us to establish this link between cognitive processes and the development/dynamics of scientific theories. The concepts of activation, synaptic weight, and genetic (representational) spaces are powerful tools which can be used as ``explanatory vehicles'' for a cognitive foundation of science, more specifically for the ``context of discovery'' (i.e., the development, construction, and dynamics of scientific theories and paradigms). Representational spaces do not only offer us a better understanding of embedding science in cognition, but also show, how the constructivist framework, both, can act as an adequate epistemological foundation for these processes and can be instantiated by these representational concepts from cognitive science. The final part of this paper addresses some more fundamental questions concerning the positivistic and constructivist understanding of science and human cognition. Among other things it is asked, whether a purely functionalist and quantitative view of the world aiming almost exclusively at its prediction and control is really satisfying for our intellect (having the goal of achieving a profound understanding of reality). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scientific paper focuses the problem of classification of methods of scientific research. Probably covered in theoretical research, not just what they have been awarded scientific knowledge that it is obtained, but also the method by which it is obtained. Is there any chance that supports logical methodological consistency of classification methods in this science are instituted? What reason attends the defense of the idea, that the methodology of scientific research stands through empirical methods, where, regardless of the empirical constitutes the above to the scientific level, the theoretical and the empirical are exclusive natures of knowledge? What arguments invoked in order to demonstrate the falsity of the thesis in which I become identical knowledge and methods according to their scientific nature? Why cling undoubtedly the medieval universal educational thought to absolute canons and the concept of method as a way or path holding?, we would not be far from the scientificity that he quintessential definition and it should be given? The basal idea is to defend and to subsume questions formulated above is to be irrevocably dialectical relationship between the method and theory, which necessarily comes first classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Islamization of Knowledge process is considered as one of the most important and intellectual movements of the 20ih century. It is also one of the most credible and longstanding contemporary Muslim intellectual responses towards modernism. The undefined structure and framework of the Islamization process makes it a challenging task and recognized more as a theory rather than effective methodology plan. This paper focuses on the Islamization of Knowledge in general, comprising with its history, definition and pioneers. Moreover, Islamization of science subjects in specific with the objective of introducing a framework for this phenomenon, based on Al-Farouqi's 12-step work-plan and Berghout's framework using a descriptive theoretical theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper distills core lessons about how researchers (scientists, engineers, planners, etc.) interested in promoting sustainable development can increase the likelihood of producing usable knowledge. We draw the lessons from both practical experience in diverse contexts around the world and from scholarly advances in understanding the relationships between science and society. Many of these lessons will be familiar to those with experience in crafting knowledge to support action for sustainable development. However, few are included in the formal training of researchers. As a result, when scientists and engineers first venture out of the laboratory or library with the goal of linking their knowledge with action, the outcome has often been ineffectiveness and disillusionment. We therefore articulate here a core set of lessons that we believe should become part of the basic training for researchers interested in crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. These lessons entail at least four things researchers should know, and four things they should do. The knowing lessons involve understanding the coproduction relationships through which knowledge making and decision making shape one another in social-environmental systems. We highlight the lessons that emerge from examining those coproduction relationships through the ICAP lens, viewing them from the perspectives of Innovation systems, Complex systems, Adaptive systems, and Political systems. The doing lessons involve improving the capacity of the research community to put its understanding of coproduction into practice. We highlight steps through which researchers can help build capacities for stakeholder collaboration, social learning, knowledge governance, and researcher training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we outline a framework for understanding the different kinds of knowledge required for medical practice and use this framework to show how scientism undermines aspects of this knowledge. The framework is based on Michael Polanyi's claim that knowledge is primarily the product of the contemplations and convictions of persons and yet at the same time carries a sense of universality because it grasps at reality. Building on Polanyi's ideas, we propose that knowledge can be described along two intersecting 'dimensions': the tacit-explicit and the particular-general. These dimensions supersede the familiar 'objective−subjective' dichotomy, as they more accurately describe the relationship between medical science and medical practice. Scientism, we argue, excludes tacit and particular knowledge and thereby distorts 'clinical reality' and impairs medical practice and medical ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]