Nicholas Jardine

This book advocates a radical shift of concern in philosophical, historical, and sociological studies of the sciences — from answers and doctrines to questions and problems — and explores the consequences of such a shift. This book is at once naturalistic and historicist: naturalistic in considering the philosophy of the sciences, in particular as it relates to questions concerning the methods of the sciences and their justifications, to be continuous with the sciences themselves; naturalistic in connecting reality and truth in the sciences with the procedures and outcomes of scientific inquiry; historicist in taking as the basis of sound historical interpretation awareness of past material and social conditions, together with sensitivity to past agents' own modes of interpretation; historicist in holding all questions, categories, and meanings to be historicist constructs; and historicist in taking history to be the primary domain of reflection and criticism for all disciplines.

Nicholas Jardine offers here an edition and the first translation into English of Johannes Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus. He accompanies this with essays on the provenance of the treatise - the circumstances which provoked Kepler to write it, an analysis of its strategy, style and historical sources and of the contents of Ursus' Treatise on Astronomical Hypotheses to which Kepler was replying. Dr Jardine also provides three extended interpretive essays on the intrinsic interest and historical significance of the work.

In Higher Superstition, published early in 1994, biologist Paul R. Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt denounced an `Academic Left' at once militant and ill-informed in its criticisms of science. Gross and Levitt showed sharp eyes for the pretentious and absurd in the works of American postmodernists, feminists, multiculturalists, radical environmentalists and, alas, exponents of science studies -- that is, historians, philosophers and sociologists of science. In the Autumn of 94, physicist Alan Sokal, inspired by Gross and Levitt's book, submitted a spoof article portentously entitled `Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' to Social Text, a leading journal in the expanding field of cultural studies. As he later told Janny Scott of the New York Times : I structured the article around the silliest quotations about mathematics and physics from the most prominent academics, and I invented an argument praising them and linking them together. All this was very easy to carry off, because my article wasn't obliged to respect any standards of evidence or logic. The editors of Social Text were hoodwinked. By an unhappy coincidence, shortly after receiving Sokal's article they decided to produce a special `Science Wars' collection, including the unrefereed article together with responses to Higher Superstition. `Transgressing the Boundaries' duly appeared in the Spring/Summer 96 double issue, accompanied by articles from a number of those denounced by Gross and Levitt and lampooned by Sokal -- the perfect setting!

Gerd Buchdahl’s international reputation rests on his masterly writings on Kant. In them he showed how Kant transformed the philosophical problems of his predecessors and he minutely investigated the ways in which Kant related his critical philosophy to the contents and methods of natural science. Less well known, if only because in large part unpublished, are the writings in which Buchdahl elaborated his own views on the methods and status of the sciences. In this paper I examine the roles of hermeneutics in Buchdahl’s reconstruction of Kant’s philosophical system and in his own ‘transcendental methodological’ approach to the philosophy of science. The first section looks at Buchdahl’s views on the theory and practice of historical interpretation and at the Husserlian hermeneutic scheme of reduction and realisation that he used in his later accounts of the philosophies of science of Kant and himself. The second section concentrates on Buchdahl’s treatment of the grounds of science in Kant; and the third on the hermeneutic strategies Buchdahl employed in articulating and justifying his own views. The paper closes with reflections on the impact and importance of Buchdahl’s interpretation of Kant’s critical philosophy in relation to the sciences and of his own hermeneutically based philosophy of science.Author Keywords: Buchdahl; Kant; Hermeneutics; Methodology; Transcendental philosophy.

This article proposes that a general theory of assessment of historical testimony should do justice to the long tradition of adjudication in accordance with maxims of reliability and competence. I argue that an explanatory genealogical theory (along lines first adumbrated by Charles Seignobos) satisfies this condition, and that it has further notable virtues: respect for the strengths of rival theories, regard for the links between adjudication of testimony and other basic procedures of historical inquiry, and the promise of profitable lines of investigation

The historian and philosopher of science Hélène Metzger (1889–1944) delivered “Le rôle des précurseurs dans l’évolution de la science” in 1939 as a lecture of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et Techniques of the University of Paris, later published in their journal Thalès. In this talk, Metzger not only attacks the notion of “precursor” and a history of science focused on “great men” and their discoveries, but also makes a strong case for the philosophical value of the history of science. We here offer a translation of this witty and subtle essay in the historiography of science, followed by our commentary.

The Scenes of Inquiry advocates a radical shift of concern in philosophical, historical, and sociological studies of the sciences, from answers and doctrines to questions and problems, and explores the consequences of such a shift. Nicholas Jardine has expanded the book considerably for this paperback edition, adding a substantial preface, an extensive bibliography, and three new essays which develop the book's themes and pursue its aims further. 'Philosophers, historians, sociologists, and not least scientists, should read it' Times Higher Education Supplement.

Nicholas Jardine offers here an edition and the first translation into English of Johannes Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus. He accompanies this with essays on the provenance of the treatise - the circumstances which provoked Kepler to write it, an analysis of its strategy, style and historical sources and of the contents of Ursus' Treatise on Astronomical Hypotheses to which Kepler was replying. Dr Jardine also provides three extended interpretive essays on the intrinsic interest and historical significance of the work.