The article demonstrates the historically and philosophically overlooked common phenomenological roots of Goethe’s Farbenlehre and Plato’s theory of color mixture in the Timaeus, as well as the shared epistemological background to Goethe’s and Plato’s abhorrence of the experimental study of natural phenomena, including light and colors, as the ‘torture of nature’, which is the basis of their equally

Stöltzner coined the expression ‘Vienna indeterminism’ to describe a philosophical tradition centered on the Viennese physicist Exner, serving as the ‘historical link’ between Mach and Boltzmann, on the one hand, and von Mises and Frank, on the other. During the early 1930s debate on quantum mechanics, there was a ‘rapprochement’ between Vienna indeterminism and Schlick’s work on causality. However

We deal with the issue of whether large cardinals are intrinsically justified set-theoretic principles (Intrinsicness Issue). To this end, we review, in a systematic fashion, the abstract principles that have been formulated to motivate them and their mathematical expressions, and assess their intrinsic justifiability. A parallel, but closely linked, issue is whether there exist mathematical principles

Neologicism (NL) invokes a “syntactic-priority thesis” (SPT) to derive existence of numbers, etc., from abstraction principles. Innumerable counterexamples to the SPT, however, are seen to arise from fiction, e.g., “Pegasus is (entirely) fictive”. Examination of possible defenses of the SPT leads to just one viable option, based on quasi-modal “in-fiction” operators. This, however, applies just as

David Headley Green AM, FAA, FRS was an outstanding Australian geologist and world leader in experimental petrology and geochemistry. His research, initially at the Australian National University with A. E. Ringwood, and later at the University of Tasmania, shaped our understanding of the composition of the Earth’s mantle and the origin of the wide spectrum of volcanic rocks erupted in different global

The International Humanities Council has established a new international research network Diversity of Mathematical Research Cultures & Practices (DMRCP) at the Universität Hamburg. In a tripartite contribution, we outline and discuss the specific philosophical approach that DMRCP seeks to promote for which we use the term ‘empirical philosophy of mathematics’: the contribution is therefore programmatic

For four decades from the mid 1970s, Dr Michael Robin Raupach (Mike) was recognised around the world as a pre-eminent researcher in the fields of micrometeorology and Earth System science. A scientist who combined a fertile imagination with outstanding analytical and mathematical skill, he played a pivotal role in transforming the way we understand and model interactions between those key components

Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley used abductive reasoning to draw conclusions about the ionic basis of the action potential. Here we build on that initial proposal. First, we propose that Hodgkin and Huxley’s constitutive abductive reasoning has four features. Second, we argue that Hodgkin and Huxley are not alone in giving such arguments. Tolman, 1948, and Baumgartner, 1960, also gave such arguments

In operational quantum mechanics two measurements are called operationally equivalent if they yield the same distribution of outcomes in every quantum state and hence are represented by the same operator. In this paper, I will show that the ontological models for quantum mechanics and, more generally, for any operational theory sensitively depend on which measurement we choose from the class of operationally

Many philosophers have explored the extensive use of non-universal generalizations in different sciences for inductive and explanatory purposes, analyzing properties such as how widely a generalization holds in space and time. In the present paper, we concentrate on developmental biology to distinguish and characterize two common approaches to scientific generalization—mechanism generalization and

How to understand new encounters between the living and the technological? Exemplary of such new encounters are the biotechnological creations of synthetic biology, where life and technology are increasingly intertwined in complex and intimate ways. This developing biotechnological field frames its novel entities as ‘artificial life’, ‘living technology’, and ‘biohybrid systems’. While synthetic biology

Sever Sternhell DSc AO FAA FRACI CChem was a prominent figure in Australian organic chemistry, academia and public life for more than forty years. He held the Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Sydney from 1977 until his retirement in 1998. He was very influential, not only directly through his science and his leadership in Australian Chemistry, but also indirectly through the graduate

G. E. (Tim) Wall was one of Australia’s leading algebraists, whose work intersected many of the important algebraic themes of his era (roughly 1960–95). This biographical memoir follows his life from his birth in 1925 in Adelaide, through his professional career, mostly at the University of Sydney, giving some details of his family, personal interactions and research.

Performativity of science refers to the phenomenon that the dissemination of scientific conceptualisations can sometimes affect their target systems or referents. A widely held view in the literature is that scientists ought not to deliberately deploy performative models or theories with the aim of eliciting desirable changes in their target systems. This paper has three aims. First, I cast and defend

Modal potentialism argues that mathematics has a generative nature, and aims to formalise mathematics accordingly using quantified modal logic. This paper shows that Øystein Linnebo’s approach to modal potentialism in his book Thin Objects is incoherent. In particular, he is committed to the legitimacy of introducing a primitive modal predicate of formulae. However, as with the semantic paradoxes,

Modal Empiricism in philosophy of science proposes to understand the possibility of modal knowledge from experience by replacing talk of possible worlds with talk of possible situations, which are coarse-grained, bounded and relative to background conditions. This allows for an induction towards objective necessity, assuming that actual situations are representative of possible ones. The main limitation

This paper aims to evaluate the relevance of Kant’s much discussed essentialism and mechanism for present-day philosophy of psychiatry. Kendler et al. (Psychological Medicine 41(6):1143–1150, 2011) have argued that essentialism is inadequate for conceptualizing psychiatric disorders. In this paper, I develop this argument in detail by highlighting a variety of essentialism that differs from the one

Globalization and the digital revolution have forced a rethink of many philosophical works of the 20th century. Among them, Martin Heidegger’s ideas attract special attention. The main purpose of the article is to study the dichotomy of opposition between the image of technology and the pre-technological era in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art. Research methods include the possibility of recombination

This paper examines the development of key Pan-African collections in the United States during the interwar period, a time of heightened Pan-African consciousness among African Americans. The emergence of professionally trained Black curators and the growth of major US philanthropic organisations fostered a concerted effort to archive and document the global Black experience. These collections, housed

The role of climate modelling groups in the development of international agreements that aim to assess future climatic risks and limit greenhouse gas concentrations is not well recognised. It is arguable that no such agreements would have been possible without carefully designed and managed research programs that provided the data upon which these risks and thus, decisions were made. Many groups contributed

The CSIRO Priorities Method is a way to rank and display research priorities for publicly funded research. This paper describes the development and evolution of the method that was employed in CSIRO throughout the 1990s and, since that time, in several other research organisations in Asia and Europe. It comprises three elements: a framework, a process, and a results screen, and has been used for priority

Empiricism has a long and venerable history. Aristotle, the Epicureans, Sextus Empiricus, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Mill, Mach and the Logical Empiricists, among others, represent a long line of historically influential empiricists who, one way or another, placed an emphasis on knowledge gained through the senses. In recent times the most highly articulated and influential edition of empiricism is undoubtedly

This paper investigates the status of inference to the best explanation (IBE), in contrast to inference to the only explanation (IOE) against the background of Woodward's what-if-things- had-been-different (w) account of explanation. It argues that IBE is not a defensible form of inference. By contrast IOE is defensible and objections to its use (e.g., on the basis of claims about underdetermination)

This paper proposes that mathematicians routinely use inference to the best explanation (IBE) to confirm their conjectures. Mathematicians can justly reason that the ‘best explanation’ of some mathematical evidence they possess would be a proof of it that likewise proves a given conjecture. By IBE, the evidence thereby confirms that such an as-yet-undiscovered proof exists and that the conjecture holds

In this paper, we will focus on a specific way in which non-epistemic values can influence scientific inquiry, i.e., how they affect the way in which members of a scientific community apply epistemic values. We will first introduce the concept of epistemic niche construction in science, that is, the idea that the epistemic commitments underlying the practice of a scientific community result from a

Free choice sequences play a key role in the Brouwerian continuum. Using recent modal analysis of potential infinity, we can make sense of free choice sequences as potentially infinite sequences of natural numbers without adopting Brouwer’s distinctive idealistic metaphysics. This provides classicists with a means to make sense of intuitionistic ideas from their own classical perspective. I develop

We analyze Michael Heim’s significant concept of the metaphysics of virtual worlds and show that his concept does not meet the two basic metatheses of metaphysics understood as ontology. First, Heim defines virtual worlds as knowledge, more specifically as informational equivalents of physical things; and worlds understood in this way are not objects in the ontological sense of the term. Secondly,

Philosophers of science have variously tried to characterize how-possibly explanations (HPEs) and distinguish them from how-actually explanations (HAEs). I argue that existing contributions to this debate have failed to pay attention to the different, but complementary, functions possibilities play in scientific explanations. To bring these functions to the fore, I introduce a distinction between what

The received view of scientific experimentation holds that science is characterized by experiment and experiment is characterized by active intervention on the system of interest. Although versions of this view are widely held, they have seldom been explicitly defended. The present essay reconstructs and defuses two arguments in defense of the received view: first, that intervention is necessary for

Explanatory Essentialism (EE) is the view that a property is the essence of a kind because it causally explains the many properties that instances of the kind exhibit. This paper examines an application of EE to biological species, which I call Biological Explanatory Essentialism (BEE). BEE states that a particular biological origin is the essence of a species on the grounds that it causes certain

From Antiquity onwards, the need to keep mines dry has given rise to the development of water-raising machines. In early modern Europe a series of technological innovations, such as suction-lift pumps, were pioneered underground. Mines were an ideal site for hydraulic experimentation for four reasons: the incentive to dig deeper, the availability of capital, the presence of a skilled workforce, and

The Jesuits’ commitment to paperwork and bureaucracy was a distinctive quality of the Society of Jesus since its foundation in 1540. By examining the catalogues produced in Portugal between 1555 and 1754, we argue that this evaluation of the bodily and spiritual qualities of individual Jesuits, especially of their temperament and ingenuity, left a profound mark in the Jesuits’ way of proceeding and

The theological and eschatological dialogue De sera numinis vindicta (“On the Slowness of the Divinity to Punish”) by Plutarch of Chaeronea (first–second century CE) contains precise references to scientific and technical notions of his time, primarily within analogies and symbolic images. Assuming that understanding these symbolic elements requires an examination of the terminology and concepts that

Famously, Adrian Moore has argued that an absolute representation of reality is possible: that it is possible to represent reality from no particular point of view. Moreover, Moore believes that such absolute representations are a desideratum of physics. Recently, however, debates in the philosophy of physics have arisen regarding the apparent impossibility of an absolute representation of certain

We showed in a recent article (Lawrence et al. 2023. Quantum, 7, 1015), that relative facts (outcomes), a central concept in Relational Quantum Mechanics, are inconsistent with Quantum Mechanics. We proved this by constructing a Wigner-Friend type sequential measurement scenario on a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state of three qubits, and making the following assumption: “if an interpretation

Commercial coal mining in Turkey's Zonguldak region began in the mid-nineteenth century and played a significant role in both the late Ottoman period and, with increasing importance, the subsequent republic. This paper examines the processes through which Zonguldak's coal reserves became the most important national energy resource during the early republican period (1920s–1940s). Building on critical

Hume’s Principle (HP) does not determine the truth values of ‘mixed’ identity statements like ‘$ \#F $ = Caesar’. This is the Caesar Problem (CP). Still, neologicists such as Hale and Wright argue that (1) HP is a priori, and (2) HP introduces the pure sortal concept Number. We argue that Neologicism faces a Caesar-problem Problem (CPP): if neologicists solve CP by establishing that ‘$ \#F\neq $ Caesar’

For some post-structuralist complexity theorists, there are no epistemic meta-perspectives from where to judge between different epistemic perspectives toward complex systems. In this paper, I argue that these theorists face a dilemma because they argue against meta-perspectives from just such a meta-perspective. In fact, when we understand two or more different perspectives, we seem to unavoidably

We rigorously describe the relation in which a credence function should stand to a set of chance functions in order for these to be compatible in the way mandated by the Principal Principle. This resolves an apparent contradiction in the literature, by means of providing a formal way of combining credences with modest chance functions so that the latter indeed serve as guides for the former. Along

Several philosophers of science have taken inspiration from biological research on niches to conceptualise scientific practice. We systematise and extend three niche-based theories of scientific practice: conceptual ecology, cognitive niche construction, and scientific niche construction. We argue that research niches are a promising conceptual tool for understanding complex and dynamic research environments

A family of arguments for black hole evaporation relies on conservation laws, defined through symmetries represented by Killing vector fields which exist globally or asymptotically. However, these symmetries often rely on the idealizations of stationarity and asymptotic flatness, respectively. In non-stationary or non-asymptotically-flat spacetimes where realistic black holes evaporate, the requisite

The degreed view is an influential account in the debate on quantum value indefiniteness, linking the gradedness of quantum properties to quantum indeterminacy. This paper challenges the connection between degrees and indeterminacy by presenting an example of a graded quantum property that does not entail metaphysical indeterminacy. Through an investigation of two graded approaches to location in quantum

This study formulates the basic premises of materialism, which has largely lost its visibility despite being one of the fundamental philosophical approaches that have been effective in the development of modern scientific practice and the construction of philosophy of science, in an alternative way, and aims to develop a new materialist interpretation of it that is non-reductive, pluralistic and open

This article examines the climatic resilience of farms in Jämtland and Västernorrland in northern Sweden during the crucial period of agricultural transformation in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a particular focus on livestock production. Until recently, detailed studies of the impact of climatic change and variability on livestock-oriented regions has been lacking. This article

This article serves as a lens for understanding — in extremis — the tensions generated when state-sponsored modernity and amenity collide. In examining the origin of Britain's largest military-civil atomic complex at Sellafield alongside the delineation of the Lake District National Park's boundaries, the article demonstrates how the dual post-war reconstruction objectives of amenity and modernity

This article investigates the concept of ‘complex systems’. While not searching for some necessary and sufficient conditions that are valid for all of them, it acknowledges that complex systems can take different shapes, mainly depending on the features of their internal organization and how they interact with their environment. It then advocates a networked notion of complex systems that can accommodate

Some philosophers of physics have addressed criticisms of the so-called Received View (RV) of non-individual quantum objects, also called the orthodox view. Dennis Dieks made a very good resume of these criticisms in Dieks (in: Non-reflexive logics, non-individuals, and the philosophy of quantum mechanics: essays in honor of the philosophy of Décio Krause, Synthese Library, Springer, 2023) and Bigaj

Research about the evolution of morality suffers from the lack of a clear, agreed-upon concept of morality. In response to this, recent accounts have become increasingly pluralist and pragmatic. In this paper, I argue that 1) both the concept of morality and the broader understanding of what makes us moral include ethical and metaethical assumptions; 2) there is no uncontroversial descriptive notion

In a recent paper (Arroyo and Arenhart in Found Sci 28:885–910, 2013) Arroyo and Arenhart presented a detailed critical analysis regarding some essential aspects of representational realism and the logos approach to Quantum Mechanics (QM) addressed in terms of (i) “a diagnosis of what is wrong with currently available solutions”; (ii) “a proposal of a new methodology for addressing the problem”; and

This paper explores the use of cartography in circulating geopolitical ideas about the seas. It focuses on the texts and maps produced by Therezinha de Castro (1930-2000), a Brazilian geopolitical thinker who influenced practical and popular geopolitical reasoning about Antarctica and the South Atlantic from the 1950s until her death in 2000. Through her papers, books, atlas and lectures, Castro addressed

The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization (ETC) is active on Earth today, is taboo in academia, but the assumptions behind this taboo are faulty. Advances in biology have rendered the notion that complex life is rare in our Galaxy improbable. The objection that no ETC would come to Earth to hide from us does not consider all possible alien motives or

Multi-agent scenarios, like Wigner’s friend and Frauchiger–Renner scenarios, can show contradictory results when a non-classical formalism must deal with the knowledge between agents. Such paradoxes are described with multi-modal logic as violations of the structure in classical logic. Even if knowledge is treated in a relational way with the concept of trust, contradictory results can still be found

Critics frequently target Ernest Nagel’s model of reduction for its purported inadequacy in addressing the issue of approximation. In response, proponents of Nagel’s model have integrated approximations into the more comprehensive Generalized Nagel-Schaffner model, or the GNS model. However, this article contends that the pertinent criticisms and responses are both misplaced: There are no barriers

In this article, which testifies the European dimension of Federigo Enriques, an essential question is raised: is it conceivable to admit a radical antithesis between logical empiricism or neo-empiricism and the Enriquesian view of scientific thought? This paper therefore analyses the relationship between Enriques’ conception of science and that of Otto Neurath, one of the main representatives of neo-empiricism