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22Ronald N. Giere. Scientific Perspectivism. iv + 151 pp., illus., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. $30 .Stephen H. Kellert;, Helen E. Longino;, C. Kenneth Waters . Scientific Pluralism. xxix + 248 pp., figs., tables, index. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. $50 (review)Isis 100 (1): 206-207. 2009.
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21Mendel the fraud? A social history of truth in geneticsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 93 (C): 39-46. 2022.
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19STEPHEN G. ALTER, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Pp. xiii+193. ISBN 0-8018-5882-8. £32.50 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 33 (1): 115-124. 2000.
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18Race and language in the Darwinian tradition (and what Darwin’s language–species parallels have to do with it)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (3): 359-370. 2008.
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17Cultures of evolutionary biologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (1): 187-200. 2003.
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17Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, A Cultural History of Heredity. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. Originally published in German in 2009. Pp. xiii+ 323. ISBN 978-0-226-54570-7. $50.00 . - Bernd Gausemeier, Staffan Müller-Wille and Edmund Ramsden , Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century. Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 15. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. Pp. xviii+ 302. ISBN 978-1-848-934269. £60.00 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 47 (4): 747-748. 2014.
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15Historiographic Evidence and ConfirmationIn Aviezer Tucker (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: What Is Historiographic Evidence? Bayesianism Bayesianism as a Model of Historiographic Reasoning Explanationism Towards an Explanationist Bayesianism Applications: Skepticism Applications: Underdetermination References Further Reading.
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14Darwin and the Argument by Analogy: From Artificial to Natural Selection in the ‘Origin of Species'Cambridge University Press. 2020.In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as well…Read more
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14The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal LanguageUniversity of Chicago Press. 2007.In the early 1890s the theory of evolution gained an unexpected ally: the Edison phonograph. An amateur scientist used the new machine—one of the technological wonders of the age—to record monkey calls, play them back to the monkeys, and watch their reactions. From these soon-famous experiments he judged that he had discovered “the simian tongue,” made up of words he was beginning to translate, and containing the rudiments from which human language evolved. Yet for most of the next century, the …Read more
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14Essay Review: The Ethologist’s World (review)Journal of the History of Biology 40 (3): 565-575. 2007.
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14The Social Construction of What? (review)British Journal for the History of Science 35 (1): 97-123. 2002.
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13Ian Hacking, the social construction of what? Cambridge, ma and London: Harvard university press, 2000. Pp. X+261. Isbn 0-674-00412-4. £11·50 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 35 (1): 97-123. 2002.
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12Nathan Crowe, Forgotten Clones: The Birth of Cloning and the Biological Revolution, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021, ISBN: 9780822946274, 299 pp (review)Journal of the History of Biology 56 (3): 559-561. 2023.
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11Biomachine dreamsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4): 790-792. 2013.
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11Evidence-Based Darwinism: Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science Elliott Sober Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 (review)Biological Theory 5 (3): 289-291. 2010.
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10Theory-Ladenness as a Problem for Plant Data LinkageIn Hugh F. Williamson & Sabina Leonelli (eds.), Towards Responsible Plant Data Linkage: Data Challenges for Agricultural Research and Development, Springer Verlag. pp. 27-36. 2022.This paper draws upon the history of scientific studies of inheritance in Mendel’s best-remembered model organism, the garden pea, as a source of two parables – one pessimistic, the other optimistic – on the challenges of data linkage in plants. The moral of the pessimistic parable, from the era of the biometrician-Mendelian controversy, is that the problem of theory-ladenness in data sets can be a major stumbling block to making new uses of old data. The moral of the optimistic parable, from th…Read more
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7Evidence-Based Darwinism: Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science Elliott Sober Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008Biological Theory 5 (3): 289-291. 2010.
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6Darwin’s Fishes: An Encyclopedia of Ichthyology, Ecology, and Evolution (review)Isis 97 578-579. 2006.
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4Origin’s Chapter I: How Breeders Work Their MagicIn Maria Elice Brzezinski Prestes (ed.), Understanding Evolution in Darwin's “Origin”: The Emerging Context of Evolutionary Thinking, Springer. pp. 205-219. 2023.Darwin begins his “one long argument” not in the natural world of the deep past but – surprisingly and, for some readers, disappointingly – on the present-day world of the farm, providing a detailed look at domesticated plants and animals as well as the humans who breed them. Darwin’s opening chapter divides roughly into two halves. In the first half, Darwin surveys the amazing variability of plants and animals under domestication and some of the main causes of that variability. In the second ha…Read more
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4Darwin in IlkleyThe History Press. 2009.When the Origins of Species was published on 24 November 1859, its author, Charles Darwin, was near the end of a nine-week stay in the remote Yorkshire village of Ilkley. He had come for the 'water cure' - a regime of cold baths and wet sheets - and for relaxation. But he used his time in Ilkley to shore up support, through extensive correspondence, for the extraordinary theory that the Origin would put before the world: evolution by natural selection. In Darwin in Ilkley, Mike Dixon and Gregory…Read more
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3Charles Darwin's Notebooks from the Voyage of the ‘Beagle’ (review)British Journal for the History of Science 46 (2): 349-351. 2013.
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1The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2003.The naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin ranks as one of the most influential scientific thinkers of all time. In the nineteenth century his ideas about the history and diversity of life - including the evolutionary origin of humankind - contributed to major changes in the sciences, philosophy, social thought and religious belief. This volume provides the reader with clear, lively and balanced introductions to the most recent scholarship on Darwin and his intellectual legacies. A distinguishe…Read more
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1Darwin's Argument by Analogy: From Artificial to Natural SelectionCambridge University Press. 2021.In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as well…Read more
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1Fielding the question-primatological research in historical perspective: IntroductionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. forthcoming.
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Genetics, Misc |
Darwinism |
Philosophy of History |
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Genetics, Misc |
Darwinism |
Philosophy of History |
History of Science |
General Philosophy of Science, Miscellaneous |
Explanation |