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28Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, For and Against Method, ed. by Matteo Motterlini (review)Annals of Science 57 456-457. 2000.
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12Heterogeneous nucleation of icosahedral phase from FCC phase in cast Al87Mn4Si2Be7alloyPhilosophical Magazine 86 (3-5): 349-354. 2006.
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39Acidity: Modes of characterization and quantificationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 65 121-131. 2017.
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21Přemýšlet o věcech různými způsoby: Rozhovor s Hasokem ChangemTeorie Vědy / Theory of Science 45 (1): 115-123. 2023.An interview with Hasok Chang, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the publication of his book Is Water H2O?, which won the Fernando Gil International Prize for the Philosophy of Science. So far, the last work of prof. Changa is a book of Realism for Realistic People. A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science, published in late 2022 by Cambridge University Press.
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27Second Biennial Conference of the Society for Philosophy of Science in PracticeJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 41 (1): 233-235. 2010.
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111Contribution to a symposium on Kostas Gavroglu and Ana Simões, Neither Physics nor Chemistry, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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56Infrared metaphysics: the elusive ontology of radiation. Part 1Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (3): 477-508. 2005.Hardly any ontological result of modern science is more firmly established than the fact that infrared radiation differs from light only in wavelength; this is part of the modern conception of the continuous spectrum of electromagnetic radiation reaching from radio waves to gamma radiation. Yet, like many such evident truths, the light-infrared unity was an extremely difficult thing to establish. We examine the competing arguments in favour of the unified and pluralistic theories of radiation, a…Read more
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51Infrared metaphysics: radiation and theory-choice. Part 2Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (4): 687-706. 2005.We continue our discussion of the competing arguments in favour of the unified theory and the pluralistic theory of radiation advanced by three nineteenth-century pioneers: Herschel, Melloni, and Draper. Our narrative is structured by a consideration of the epistemic criteria relevant to theory-choice; the epistemic focus highlights many little-known aspects of this relatively well-known episode. We argue that the acceptance of light-heat unity in this period cannot be credibly justified on the …Read more
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234Introduction: philosophy of science in practice (review)European Journal for Philosophy of Science 1 (3): 303-307. 2011.Introduction: philosophy of science in practice Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Article Pages 303-307 DOI 10.1007/s13194-011-0036-4 Authors Rachel Ankeny, School of History & Politics, University of Adelaide, Napier Building, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia Hasok Chang, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH UK Marcel Boumans, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Amsterdam…Read more
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19Dead or “undead”? The curious and untidy history of Volta’s concept of “contact potential”Science in Context 34 (2): 227-247. 2021.ArgumentMuch of the long controversy concerning the workings of electric batteries revolved around the concept of the contact potential (especially between different types of metals), originated by Alessandro Volta in the late eighteenth century. Although Volta’s original theory of batteries has been thoroughly rejected and most discussions in today’s electrochemistry hardly ever mention the contact potential, the concept has made repeated comebacks through the years, and has by no means complet…Read more
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The coherence of Feyerabend's pluralist realismIn Karim Bschir & Jamie Shaw (eds.), Interpreting Feyerabend: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2021.
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40Pragmatic RealismRevista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 8 107-122. 2016.In this paper I seek to articulate and develop Roberto Torretti’s advocacy of pragmatic realism. At the core of Torrietti’s view is a rejection of the notion that the truth of scientific theories consists in their correspondence to the world. I propose to understand correspondence in that sense as a metaphorical notion. I articulate a notion of pragmatist coherence, on the basis of which I make new coherence theories of truth and reality. Then it becomes possible to say that pragmatic realism co…Read more
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33Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology (edited book)College Publications. 2022.This volume contains papers based on invited lectures from the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology, descriptions of congress symposia, and other materials relating to the congress and DLMPST.
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125Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of ScienceCambridge University Press. 2022.In this innovative book, Hasok Chang constructs a philosophy of science for 'realistic people' interested in understanding and promoting the actual practices of inquiry in science and other knowledge-focused areas of life. Inspired by pragmatist philosophy, he reconceives the very notions of reality and truth on the basis of his concept of the 'operational coherence' of epistemic activities, and offers new pragmatist conceptions of truth and reality as operational ideals achievable in actual sci…Read more
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251The absolute and its measurement; William Thomson on temperatureAnnals of Science 62 (3): 281-308. 2005.In this paper we give a full account of the work of William Thomson on absolute temperature, which to this day provides the theoretical underpinnings for the most rigorous measurements of temperature. When Thomson fashioned his concepts of ‘absolute’ temperature, his main concern was to make the definition of temperature independent of the properties of particular thermometric substances . He tried out a succession of definitions based on the thermodynamics of ideal heat engines; most notably, i…Read more
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129Presentist History for Pluralist ScienceJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (1): 97-114. 2020.Building on my previous writings on presentism, pluralism, and “complementary science”, I develop an activist view of historiography. I begin by recognizing the inevitability of presentism. Our own purposes and perspectives do and should guide the production of our accounts of the past; like funerals, history-writing is for the living. There are different kinds of presentist history, depending on the historians’ purposes and perspectives. My particular inclination is pluralist. Science remembers…Read more
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54Introduction: systematicity, the nature of science?Synthese 196 (3): 761-773. 2019.Introduction to Synthese SI: Systematicity: The Nature of Science?
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1Is pluralism compatible with scientific realism?In Juha Saatsi (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism, Routledge. pp. 176-186. 2017.
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13Water: The long road from Aristotelian element to H2OCircumscribere: International Journal for the History of Science 12 1-15. 2012.In today’s science-based civilization, people tend to accept without question the most basic things that science tells us. This is the case even for people who do not know much science or like it very much. For example, anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with modern science knows and accepts that water is H2O. Yet it was a very difficult thing for scientists to learn. That is the subject of my recently published book, Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism. If we take a closer lo…Read more
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26Realismo PragmáticoRevista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 8 107. 2016.En este trabajo intento articular y desarrollar la defensa que Roberto Torretti hace del realismo pragmático. En el núcleo de la visión de Torretti existe un rechazo a la idea de que la verdad de las teorías científicas consista en su correspondencia con el mundo. Propongo entonces entender la correspondencia como una noción metafórica. Articularé una noción de coherencia pragmática sobre la cual establezco una nueva teoría de la coherencia entre verdad y realidad. En consecuencia, resultará pos…Read more
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44The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam. The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 34Philosophical Review 127 (2): 240-247. 2018.
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57How Historical Experiments Can Improve Scientific Knowledge and Science Education: The Cases of Boiling Water and ElectrochemistryScience & Education 20 (3-4): 317-341. 2011.
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55No evidence amalgamation without evidence measurementSynthese 196 (8): 3139-3161. 2019.In this paper we consider the problem of how to measure the strength of statistical evidence from the perspective of evidence amalgamation operations. We begin with a fundamental measurement amalgamation principle : for any measurement, the inputs and outputs of an amalgamation procedure must be on the same scale, and this scale must have a meaningful interpretation vis a vis the object of measurement. Using the p value as a candidate evidence measure, we examine various commonly used approaches…Read more
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51The making of measurement: Editors’ introductionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 65 1-7. 2017.
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123VI—Operational Coherence as the Source of TruthProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 117 (2): 103-122. 2017.
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Physical Science |
General Philosophy of Science |