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599On the epistemological foundations of the law of the leverStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (3): 315-318. 2009.In this paper I challenge Paolo Palmieri’s reading of the Mach-Vailati debate on Archimedes’s proof of the law of the lever. I argue that the actual import of the debate concerns the possible epistemic (as opposed to merely pragmatic) role of mathematical arguments in empirical physics, and that construed in this light Vailati carries the upper hand. This claim is defended by showing that Archimedes’s proof of the law of the lever is not a way of appealing to a non-empirical source of informatio…Read more
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41The practical value of spurious correlations: selective versus manipulative policyAnalysis 68 (4): 298-303. 2008.In the past 25 years, many philosophers have endorsed the view that the practical value of causal knowledge lies in the fact that manipulation of causes is a good way to bring about a desired change in the effect. This view is intuitively very plausible. For instance, we can predict a storm on the basis of a barometer reading, but we cannot avoid the storm by manipulating the state of the barometer (barometer status and storm are effects of a common cause, viz. atmospheric conditions). In §1 we …Read more
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768The roles of one thought experiment in interpreting quantum mechanics. Werner Heisenberg meets Thomas KuhnPhilosophica 72 (3): 79-103. 2003.Recent years saw the rise of an interest in the roles and significance of thought experiments in different areas of human thinking. Heisenberg's gamma ray microscope is no doubt one of the most famous examples of a thought experiment in physics. Nevertheless, this particular thought experiment has not received much detailed attention in the philosophical literature on thought experiments up to date, maybe because of its often claimed inadequacies. In this paper, I try to do two things: to provid…Read more
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20Helen Hattab, Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (1): 157-161. 2011.
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15RedactioneelAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 107 (2): 123-123. 2015.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
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26Causal discovery using adaptive logics. Towards a more realistic heuristics for human causal learningLogique Et Analyse 185 (188): 5-32. 2004.
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665Gravitating towards stability: Guidobaldo's Aristotelian-Archimedean synthesisHistory of Science 44 (4): 373-407. 2006.
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137Script and Symbolic Writing in Mathematics and Natural PhilosophyFoundations of Science 19 (1): 1-10. 2014.We introduce the question whether there are specific kinds of writing modalities and practices that facilitated the development of modern science and mathematics. We point out the importance and uniqueness of symbolic writing, which allowed early modern thinkers to formulate a new kind of questions about mathematical structure, rather than to merely exploit this structure for solving particular problems. In a very similar vein, the novel focus on abstract structural relations allowed for creativ…Read more
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1241Constructive empiricism and the argument from underdeterminationIn Bradley John Monton (ed.), Images of empiricism: essays on science and stances, with a reply from Bas C. van Fraassen, Oxford University Press. 2007.It is argued that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Bas van Fraassen nowhere uses the argument from underdetermination in his argument for constructive empiricism. It is explained that van Fraassen’s use of the notion of empirical equivalence in The Scientific Image has been widely misunderstood. A reconstruction of the main arguments for constructive empiricism is offered, showing how the passages that have been taken to be part of an appeal to the argument from underdetermination should actuall…Read more
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21Machiel Karskens (2012). Foucault. Amsterdam/ Leuven: Boom/Lannoo Campus, 145 pp., 16,90 € (review)Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 105 (1): 59-60. 2013.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
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64Being in or Getting at the Real: Kochan on Rouse, Heidegger and Minimal RealismPerspectives on Science 21 (4): 453-462. 2013.The debate between realism and antirealism has been central in the general philosophy of science of the last decades. But ever since the heydays of the debate in the 1980s, there have been authors who have tried to argue for the overcoming or dissolution of the debate itself, by proposing a position that is neither realist nor antirealist. Prominent among these is Joseph Rouse (Rouse 1987). Yet, Jeff Kochan has recently argued that Rouse, despite his efforts to transcend the realism/antirealism …Read more
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763The Paradox of Conceptual Novelty and Galileo’s Use of ExperimentsPhilosophy of Science 72 (5): 864-875. 2005.Starting with a discussion of what I call Koyré’s paradox of conceptual novelty, I introduce the ideas of Damerow et al. on the establishment of classical mechanics in Galileo’s work. I then argue that although the view of Damerow et al. on the nature of Galileo’s conceptual innovation is convincing, it misses an essential element: Galileo’s use of the experiments described in the first day of the Two New Sciences. I describe these experiments and analyze their function. Central to my analysis i…Read more