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56The evaluation of measurement uncertainties and its epistemological ramificationsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 65 21-32. 2017.The way metrologists conceive of measurement has undergone a major shift in the last two decades. This shift can in great part be traced to a change in the statistical methods used to deal with the expression of measurement results, and, more particularly, with the calculation of measurement uncertainties. Indeed, as we show, the incapacity of the frequentist approach to the calculus of uncertainty to deal with systematic errors has prompted the replacement of the customary frequentist methods b…Read more
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49The epistemological virtues of assumptions: towards a coming of age of Boltzmann and Meinong’s objections to ‘the prejudice in favour of the actual’?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (1): 41-57. 2010.Two complementary debates of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century are examined here: the debate on the legitimacy of hypotheses in the natural sciences and the debate on intentionality and ‘representations without object’ in philosophy. Both are shown to rest on two core issues: the attitude of the subject and the mode of presentation chosen to display a domain of phenomena. An orientation other than the one which contributed to shape twentieth-century philosophy of science is explor…Read more
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29On the Philosophical Significance of the Reform of the International System of Units (SI): A Double-Adjustment Account of Scientific EnquiryPerspectives on Science 30 (4): 549-620. 2022.The philosophical significance attached to the construction of systems of units has traditionally been confined to the notion of convention, while their adoption was considered to be the exclusive province of the history and sociology of science. Against this tradition, a close articulation between history, philosophy, and sociology of science is needed in order to analyse the recent reform of the International system of units. In the new SI, units are redefined on the basis of certain fundament…Read more
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24Introduction: Measurement at the CrossroadsPerspectives on Science 29 (6): 681-700. 2021.The guest editors would like to thank the University of Paris and the ENSA Paris-Val de Seine for having provided premises to successfully host the 2018 "Measurement at the Crossroads" conference in Paris.Our thanks extend to our funding sources: the conference was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Institut Humanités, Sciences et Sociétés, the SPHERE laboratory and the Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques of the University of Paris, the department of History and Philo…Read more
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21Systems of units still fail to attract the philosophical attention they deserve, but this could change with the current reform of the International System of Units. Most of the SI base units will henceforth be based on certain laws of nature and a choice of fundamental constants whose values will be frozen. The theoretical, experimental and institutional work required to implement the reform highlights the entanglement of scientific, technological and social features in scientific enterprise, wh…Read more
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20Boltzmann et le réalisme scientifique (I) : de l'épistémologie des sciences de la nature à la philosophie comme clarification du langagePhilosophie 137 (2): 18-38. 2018.
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16Boltzmann et le réalisme scientifique (II) : de la théorie des autres esprits au « point de vue objectif »Philosophie 138 (3): 22-45. 2018.
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14The Role of Models in Boltzmann’sVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 9 103-119. 2002.During the mathematics lesson dealing with imaginary numbers, Törless, the young hero of Robert Musil’s novel, The Confusion of Young Törless, is truly amazed. Imaginary numbers are impossible: numbers which, put to the square, give a negative number cannot exist. Still, these imaginary numbers seem to be used to reach quite definite and concrete results. This looks to Törless as if mathematics could make you walk steadily on a bridge which had only a beginning and an end and nothing in between,…Read more
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4Ludwig Boltzmann—The Man Who Trusted AtomsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (1): 125-128. 2002.
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1Ludwig Boltzmann-the man who Trusted atoms - cercignani, Carlo, oxford university press, oxford, 1998, 348 pp., price US $60.00, UK £29.50 hardback, ISBN 0-19-850154- (review)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (1): 125-128. 2002.