Abstract This essay aims to show the emergence of a network of periodicals devoted to scientific issues that were promoted by the Society of Jesus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Considering periodicals as dynamic collectives in themselves, rather than solely as builders of scientific communities, as recent historiography of the scientific periodical press has suggested, it examines the textual network as a result of the intersection of the Society’s scriptural culture with its polyvalent and transnational communication system. It shows how this network was characterised by its wide variety of discursive genres and modes and its multifunctionality (apologetic, popular science, specialised, collegial and corporate). The essay suggests that the introduction of this diversity of genres and modes provided multiple discursive perspectives that contributed to the dimensionalisation of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, it suggests that the co-construction of the textual network and the knowledge network was the driving force behind this interrelation.
Abstract This study examines Bacon’s critique of the Unity of Matter Thesis (UMT) as articulated in his Opus maius. In this work, he refutes UMT using mathematical reasoning, particularly targeting its implication of material holenmerism. He argues that if prime matter were numerically identical across all things, it would possess infinite potency, which in turn necessitates an infinite essence. The latter would mean equating matter with God, a heretical conclusion. Bacon focuses particularly on the link between infinite potency and essence. He advances three “geometrical” demonstrations that reject the idea of infinite potency of matter. These demonstrations appeal to the paradox of unequal infinities to show that if actual infinities exist, some would be greater than others, violating mathematical principles. Beyond their specific use in discussing UMT, Bacon’s geometrical demonstrations, modeled after the Euclidean proof, not only exemplify his commitment to “mathematical epistemology” in metaphysics, but also prefigure later attempts to replace logic with mathematics.
Abstract Nicholas of Autrecourt, a philosopher of the fourteenth century, is renowned for his advocacy of atomism in opposition to Aristotle and his followers. While scholars unanimously acknowledge the pivotal role of the atom in his works, there remains considerable debate about the nature of these atoms: are they corporeal particles or mathematical points? Do they exist in finite or infinite quantities? Is there a discrepancy between physical theory and the mathematical analysis of the continuum? This paper examines these diverse interpretations and offers a novel exegesis of Nicholas of Autrecourt’s principal work, his Useful Treatise to See Whether the Arguments of the Aristotelians Were Demonstrative, usually referred to as the Exigit ordo. The paper aims to demonstrate his acceptance of the existence of atomic bodies, minima, and mathematical points, within a physical theory that could admit different mathematical interpretations. Consequently, this paper seeks to elucidate the internal coherence of this physical system and its congruence with the epistemology of our philosopher, which is based upon a rigorous analysis of sensible phenomena.
Abstract Drawing an explicit parallel with Felix Klein’s account of the arithmetization of nineteenth-century mathematics, Ernst Cassirer maintains that nineteenth-century physics likewise underwent a process of arithmetization that culminated in the twentieth-century. This paper argues that this constitutes an original insight and a unifying thread running through Cassirer’s philosophy of physics over several decades, one that has yet to receive adequate scholarly attention. In contrast to his fellow Marburg neo-Kantians, Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, who regarded the continuum as central to modern scientific knowledge, Cassirer treated number-formation as the prototype of scientific concept-formation in general. The number-sequence combines the structuralist view that each individual number has no intrinsic identity apart from its reciprocal relation to all other numbers with the constructivist view that such a relation is a productive relation, generating ordered sequences of all possible numbers. The paper concludes that, for this reason, Cassirer may be said to have defended a form of structural constructivism, rather than structural realism, as is often claimed.
Abstract Nineteenth-century readings of ornamental plenitude as an expression of “fear of emptiness” dismiss the style as a naïve rhetorical mannerism devoid of meaning. In contrast, in this article I introduce the dense ornamental systems of Romanesque sculptural programs and the later Gothic development as deeply embedded in the theological conceptualizations of creation out of nothing—an active opposition to privation through an infinite creative plenitude that bridges the gap between nothing and something. Horror vacui is revisited here considering ancient and medieval philosophies of nature. Christian industries designed theological insights for their communities. Observing the function of words and images as Christianized conduits of spiritual epistemology highlights visuality as a theoretical caption, which may enfold or unfold theological insights, given the right epistemic context.
Abstract Aristotle is typically interpreted as a strict finitist who universally rejects actual infinity. Consequently, it is often assumed that he views the variety of colors as finite. This paper challenges this generalization. First, I argue that the infinity of color variety is not reducible to mathematical infinity. While Aristotle explicitly limits the number of color species, I demonstrate that he does not categorically rule out an infinite variety of colors. Second, I examine how Avicenna (d. 1037) and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) explicitly acknowledge this infinity. Echoing pseudo-Aristotle’s De coloribus, they grounded the infinity of colors in the infinity of mixtures. As Avicenna claims, the ways of mixing colors are infinite in the mind and can be realized by nature. Thus, beyond the stipulated finitude of species, the Aristotelian tradition, at least in the case of Avicenna, contains a clear argument for the infinity of color variety.
Abstract Recent studies on Richard Kilvington’s philosophical and theological texts reveal that he was one of the most ingenious and influential thinkers of his times, even though his followers frequently adopted and adapted his ideas without mentioning his name. Some of his ideas were, however, too much ahead of his times, and thus were either overlooked or harshly criticized by traditionally minded philosophers. This was surely the fate of Kilvington’s concept of infinity. In his question Utrum omnis creatura sit certis limitibus circumscripta (from his commentary on the “Sentences”) Kilvington introduces a distinction between absolute infinity (simpliciter), and relative infinities (secundum quid). According to him there can exist relative infinities regarding quality (qualitative), quantity (quantitative), or number (discretive). A closer look at Kilvington’s analyses reveals that he considers all such infinities as actual. Some of the reasonings Kilvington included in the above-mentioned question he first discussed in the question Utrum continuum sit divisibile in infinitum (from his commentary on De generatione et corruptione). The article presents the sophisticated Kilvington’s accounts on infinities of different kinds, focusing especially on the reasonings related to his concept of infinitum discretive, that are surprisingly similar to the presentations of the properties of infinite sets given much later by David Hilbert and by Georg Cantor.
Abstract This paper examines how scientific articles aim to secure scientific objectivity. It begins by reconstructing the historical and rhetorical context of the research paper as the dominant medium of scientific communication. The central claim is that the paper’s rhetorical-editorial features—IMRaD structure, clarity, suppression of subjectivity, and stylistic flattening—seek to reinforce the credibility and legitimacy of science while also functioning as evaluative criteria within the publish-or-perish regime. The thesis defended is that the conception of the article as an objective vehicle for producing and communicating knowledge has persisted over time and, rather than weakening, has been reinforced by editorial transformations, impact metrics, and movements such as open science, which together consolidate its centrality. The argument is supported by historical cases and theoretical contributions from historians and philosophers of science.
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to review, organize, and analyze disparate kinds of biases that can impact the quality of scientific research. We offer an analysis of what constitutes a bias and then provide a novel taxonomy of biases in science based on the criteria used to individuate them in the literature, i.e., based on the different criteria researchers use to identify biases. We identify five criteria: mechanism, effect, content, stage, and feature. We then conceptualize the impact of different biases using the notion of a ‘research pipeline.’ Furthermore, we identify a type of bias that can permeate the research pipeline as a whole, called ‘systemic bias,’ which includes biases that are likely to be more pervasive and thus more difficult to counteract. We conclude by stressing the importance of classifying biases in ways that are epistemically useful for science.
How do different experimental control strategies shape the production of biological knowledge? This paper examines Emil du Bois-Reymond’s electrophysiological investigations and Claude Bernard’s toxicological research in 19th-century physiology. Rather than viewing these as opposing methodologies, I analyze their approaches to nerve-muscle communication as complementary responses to shared epistemic challenges. Using Schickore’s framework for experimental control (2025), I show through a detailed historical analysis that experimental control functioned constitutively rather than merely technically in both research programs. Both scientists engaged in extensive second-order experimentation, systematically exploring their experimental setups to determine what factors needed controlling. Du Bois-Reymond’s non-polarizable electrodes made possible new ways of understanding biological electricity as quantifiable phenomena, while Bernard’s ligature preparation constituted a method for understanding physiological functions as systematically separable within integrated organisms. Control practices and theoretical commitments co-evolved such that what counted as legitimate operationalization of theoretical principles was shaped by experimental practice. This analysis shows how experimental methodology and biological knowledge co-develop, suggesting implications for understanding methodological tensions in contemporary biological research.
My objective is to analyze the controversy of the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Maunakea, a sacred mountain for Native Hawaiians, and the role that beliefs about Western science play in arguments about whether TMT should be built on this land. I found these arguments often rely on characterizations of scientific knowledge as objective and universal, thus allowing its prioritization over Indigenous religious concerns. Yet these characterizations are based on a long defunct view of scientific objectivity, which makes their prominence in these arguments problematic. In this paper I will argue that these kinds of characterizations of scientific knowledge should be laid to the side in these debates, so that the actual political and ethical problems at hand can receive proper attention.
This study examines the intellectual and personal relationship between Robert K. Merton and Thomas S. Kuhn, and its lasting influence on the emergence of science studies as a distinct field. While Merton is often positioned as a founder of the sociology of science and Kuhn as the architect of the modern philosophy and history of science, their correspondence and collaborations reveal a deeper and more reciprocal exchange. Drawing on archival sources, including letters, notes, and memoirs, the research demonstrates that Merton and Kuhn’s interactions shaped each other’s academic trajectories in ways often overlooked in standard narratives. Merton’s sociological frameworks helped provide Kuhn with a lens for thinking about scientific communities and norms, while Kuhn’s historical and conceptual innovations, like his articulation of paradigm, redirected Merton’s attention toward new intellectual currents. In particular, their exchanges in the 1970s show a mutual effort to resist being cast as opposites by external commentators. This study concludes that the dialogue between Merton and Kuhn was not incidental but formative, providing a connective tissue that helped establish science studies as an interdisciplinary domain bridging history, philosophy, and sociology of science.
This article examines how psychoanalysis became a metaphysical question in French philosophy between 1913 and 2000. The philosophical issue is to solve the problem of the Subject. How could a subject of existence become an object of knowledge? Is Freud breaking with this reduction of the Subject to an object? Or does he merely exemplify it? In this debate, an epistemological judgment quickly emerges: describing unconscious facts is valuable, but bad metaphysics distorted interpretations. Three philosophical objectives follow: (i) to criticize a scientific psychology, (ii) to underpin the cure, (iii) to locate Freud’s philosophical place. In conclusion, psychoanalysis reveals a French philosophical tradition trying to eliminate abstract Cartesian metaphysics, thanks to the renewal of a concrete ontology of the Subject.
The understanding of the concept of “fact” in modern (post-WWII) cosmology has been fluid. Some philosophers assert the virtual indisputability of certain general cosmological facts, others deny that astronomy, let alone cosmology, can produce proper natural-scientific facts since they lack experimentation, and still others contend the way fact is used is an impediment to cosmological research. Producing observational facts from detected signals in cosmology is not as straightforward as producing facts in many experiment-centered fields because of unique limitations. This came to the fore in both a multi-decade debate over the observed properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background and the current controversy over the James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of supposed very early galaxies’ signals. These episodes show that the same stable signal can be equally constitutive of: 1) an “arch(e)-fact,” i.e., a crucial fact about the origin of the universe, 2) a generic structural fact, or 3) an unfortunate “natural artefact.” Cosmology advances through a succession of underdetermination episodes, with debates unfolding via feedback between observational signals and competing models. The ensuing facts of winning interpretations—temporary dips in the pool of plausible alternative models and explanations—should be cautiously qualified. This warrants a moderately optimistic epistemic attitude.
In 1618 Girolamo Sirtori published his book, Telescopivm: Siue Ars Perficiendi Novvm Illvd Galilaei Visorivm Instrumentum ad Sydera. The Telescopium is a workshop manual, one of the most detailed optical handbooks published at that time. Sirtori constructed several telescopes but acknowledged that they performed poorly. He consulted authors in the field of optics as sources of optical knowledge but maintained a critical stance since he realized that none of the optical authors had contributed anything of substance to the body of optical knowledge. The Telescopium exposes the nature of the tension between theory and practice: how did it happen that authors who wrote on optics failed to construct advanced telescopes, while practitioners who successfully constructed telescopes good for terrestrial and naval usage, were unable to improve the performance of these devices? The construction of a high-quality telescope requires theories for determining the interplay among material and optical features and methods for controlling these relations. Such methods are based on optical theories which are categorically different from the “hands on” skills applied in the spectacle craft industry. We exhibit the properties of spectacle and telescope lenses which Sirtori used and discuss the optical setups of his telescopes. We ask: what is an optical theory? Did Sirtori have a theory to explain how telescopes function? We argue that Sirtori’s Telescopium is grounded in empirically derived rules of thumb from the spectacle-making craft and did not develop into a coherent instrumental theory capable of advancing telescope construction.
The Frenchmen Gilbert Simondon and René Thom were at odds with scientific reductionism. Despite traveling in the same intellectual circles and having a commonality of ideas, they had little if any influence on one another’s work. Each proposed an alternative ontological framework to serve as a new basis for inquiry rather than accepting the flaws of reductionism or setting aside scientific and technological practices altogether. Both the theory of individuation (Simondon) and catastrophe theory (Thom) begin, conceptually, from an interpretation of Aristotle’s hylomorphism while diverging in their conception of the individual. It is their recasting the individual, as opposed to an indivisible atom, as the basis for scientific enquiry, whether as mathematical prescription or philosophical reflection, which underlies their vision of scientific practice. In this paper, we highlight the similarities and dissimilarities between Simondon’s and Thom’s philosophical views of individuation. Thom uses philosophy as metaphysical foundation for his own mathematical practice and discoveries, while Simondon uses established scientific and technological knowledge in order to bring forth a metaphysics and ontology of individuation.
Behavioural ecologists have recently begun to study individuality, that is, individual differences and uniqueness in phenotypic traits and in ecological relations. However, individuality is an unusual object of research. Using an ethnographic case study of individuality research in behavioural ecology, we analyse concerns that behavioural ecologists express about their ability to study individuality. We argue that these concerns stem from two epistemic challenges: the variation-noise challenge and the generalisation challenge. First, individuality is difficult to distinguish from noise, as standard practices lump variation between individuals together with noise. Second, individuality is difficult to capture in generalisations, as they typically involve ignoring idiosyncratic factors. We examine how these challenges shape research practices in behavioural ecology, leading to epistemic strategies for studying individuality via alternative approaches to measurement, experimentation, and generalisation.
By the second half of the twentieth century, rational choice models—formal frameworks representing decision-making through quantified preferences, utilities, and probabilistic expectations—had risen to unprecedented prominence. These models became central not only to social and behavioral scientific inquiry but also influenced a broad array of rather unrelated fields such as philosophy, psychology, computer science, and biology. Yet as their reach expanded, so too did skepticism among scientists about modeling individuals as rational actors, quantifying human behavior, and modeling non-human entities as rational decision-makers. This development—that I refer to as the “rational choice phenomenon”—raises a central question: how did these mathematically driven, extensively disputed models of human behavior gain such wide scientific traction? Focusing on the case of economics, I argue that the appeal of rational choice models lay not merely in their flexibility and capacity to quantify human choice for the purposes of formal analysis and modeling. Their extensive transfer was also shaped by a historically contingent constellation of non-epistemic factors—social, institutional, and political—that enabled their adoption across disciplinary boundaries.
When the term “physicalism” is not used interchangeably with “materialism” it typically names a meta-linguistic or methodological view that is intended to sidestep metaphysical debates like those between materialists, dualists, and idealists. Well-known versions of this anti-metaphysical outlook were defended in the 1930s by Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. Indeed, according to a standard account, these thinkers introduced the word “physicalism” into philosophy. In this paper, I explore the pre-history of physicalism as an anti-metaphysical articulation of the unity of science. The terms “physicalism” and “physicalists” were first used in the 1850s, far earlier than is commonly recognized, to refer to a cluster of views developed by phrenologists and early positivists such as Franz Joseph Gall and Henri de Saint-Simon. I argue that this fact has more than mere etymological significance. These nineteenth-century thinkers expressed a distinctive proto-physicalist position that contained two core components of the Vienna Circle’s physicalism—the unity of method and unity of laws. They also contributed to a tradition that influenced the Vienna Circle’s agenda of using the unified conceptual structure of the sciences, which results from physicalism, to enable social progress.
