Over time, philosophers and historians of science have introduced different notions of 'ways of thinking'. This book presents, compares, and contrasts these different notions. It focuses primarily on Ian Hacking’s idea of 'style of reasoning' in order to assess and develop it into a more systematic theory of scientific thought, arguing that Hacking’s theory implies epistemic relativism. Luca Sciortino also discusses the implications of Hacking’s ideas for the study of the problem of contingency and inevitability in the development of scientific knowledge
Author(s): Luca Sciortino
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 349
City: Cham
Preface
About the Book
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’: Introduction and Plan of Work
1.1 The Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’: Early Notions
1.2 The Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’ from Kant to Hegel and Comte
1.3 Historicized Kantianism and the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’
1.4 Sociology of Knowledge, Artistic Styles and the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’
1.5 Phenomenology and the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’
1.6 Classical Historical Epistemology and the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’
1.7 Modern Approaches of Historical Epistemology and the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’
1.8 Main Questions Addressed in This Work
1.9 Plan of the Work
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Notions of the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’: From Classical Historical Epistemology to Kuhn
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Lévy-Bruhl’s ‘Mentalities’
2.3 Brunschvicg’s ‘Ages of Intelligence’
2.4 Metzger’s ‘A Priori’
2.5 Bachelard’s ‘Eras of Scientific Thought’
2.6 Koyré’s ‘Types of Thinking’
2.7 Fleck’s ‘Thought Styles’
2.8 Foucault’s ‘Epistemes’
2.9 Feyerabend’s ‘Styles of Thought’
2.10 Kuhn’s ‘Paradigms’
2.11 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Notions of the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’: From Hacking to Daston and Galison
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Roots of Hacking’s ‘Styles Project’: The Emergence of Probability as a Study on the Statistical Style of Reasoning
3.3 From Crombie’s Styles of Thinking to Hacking’s ‘Styles Project’
3.4 Hacking’s ‘Styles of Reasoning’
3.4.1 The ‘Styles Project’
3.4.2 A List of Styles of Reasoning
3.4.3 The Characterizing Properties of Styles of Reasoning
3.4.4 Doing
3.4.5 The ‘Styles Project’ as a Study in Cognitive History
3.5 The Laboratory Style of Reasoning
3.5.1 New Evidence and Discontinuity
3.5.2 A New Way of Thinking and Doing
3.5.3 Techniques of Self-vindication
3.5.4 New Candidates for Truth or Falsehood
3.6 Daston and Galison’s ‘Epistemic Virtues’
3.7 Reinterpreting Styles of Reasoning
3.7.1 Truth and Truthfulness
3.7.2 Styles of Reasoning and Epistemic Virtues as Ways of Telling the Truth
3.8 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Taxonomy of the Notions of ‘Ways of Thinking’
4.1 Introduction
4.2 ‘Characters’ of the Notions of the Concept of ‘Ways of Thinking’
4.2.1 Techne
4.2.2 Sociological and Archaeological Perspectives
4.2.3 Discontinuity and Accumulation
4.2.4 Selection and Exclusion
4.3 A Combined Framework for Studying Objectivity
4.4 Problems in Historical Epistemology: Ways of Thinking and Relativism
4.5 Problems in Historical Epistemology: Ways of Thinking and Contingency
4.6 Styles of Reasoning, Relativism, Contingency
4.7 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 5: Developing the ‘Styles Project’: Towards a ‘Theory of Styles of Reasoning’
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The ‘Algorithmic Style of Reasoning’
5.2.1 Algorithmic Thinking: An Example
5.2.2 Techniques of Self-vindication
5.2.3 Mathematical Ways of Thinking in Egypt, Babylonia and Greece
5.2.4 Doing
5.2.5 The Emergence of the Algorithmic Style of Reasoning
5.2.6 New Sentences, Evidence
5.3 The Postulational Style of Reasoning
5.3.1 Greek Mathematics
5.3.2 Postulational Thinking
5.3.3 Doing
5.3.4 Techniques of Self-vindication, New Evidence, New Objects
5.3.5 New Sentences
5.3.6 Discontinuity
5.4 The Historico-genetic Style of Reasoning
5.4.1 Historico-genetic Thinking Versus Laboratory Thinking
5.4.2 Doing
5.4.3 Discontinuity
5.4.4 A New Kind of Evidence
5.4.5 Techniques of Self-vindication
5.4.6 New Sentences
5.5 The Taxonomic Style of Reasoning
5.5.1 Taxonomic Thinking
5.5.2 Emergence and Discontinuity
5.5.3 A New Kind of Evidence
5.5.4 Meaningful and Meaningless Classifications
5.5.5 Techniques of Self-vindication
5.6 Candidates for Being Styles of Reasoning
5.6.1 Are Religions Styles of Reasoning?
5.6.2 Internal and External Techniques of Self-vindication
5.6.3 A Scholastic-inquisitorial Style of Reasoning?
5.6.4 A Chemists’ Style of Reasoning?
5.6.5 An Astrological Style of Reasoning?
5.7 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 6: Styles of Reasoning and Relativism
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Styles of Reasoning in Action
6.2.1 One Problem, Two Alternative Styles of Reasoning
6.2.2 The Accumulation of Styles of Reasoning
6.3 Intelligibility, Understanding, Projectibility
6.3.1 Truth-value, Intelligibility, Pure Nonsense
6.3.2 Questions and Candidates for Truth-or-Falsehood
6.3.3 Intelligibility Versus Understanding
6.3.4 Projectibility
6.3.5 Taxonomy of Declarative Sentences: A Summary
6.4 The ‘Relativism Issue’
6.4.1 Trust and Presuppositions
6.4.2 What Kind of Relativism?
6.4.3 What Hacking Says
6.4.4 Solutions Proposed to the Relativism Issue
6.5 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 7: The Incommensurability of Styles of Reasoning: The Case of the Existence of Theoretical Entities
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Hacking’s Experimental Realism
7.2.1 Entity Realism
7.2.2 Experiments-with, Experiments-on
7.2.3 Causal Effects as Style-Independent Sentences
7.2.4 Putnam’s Theory of Reference and Experimental Realism
7.3 The Incommensurability of Styles of Reasoning
7.3.1 Incommensurability and Theory Anti-realism
7.3.2 The Incommensurability of Styles of Reasoning: First Argument
7.3.3 Supporting the First Argument: An Historical Example
7.3.4 The Incommensurability of Styles of Reasoning: Second Argument
7.4 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 8: Styles of Reasoning, Contingency and the Evolution of Science
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Styles of Reasoning, Contingency, Inevitability
8.2.1 Inevitability and the Algorithmic Style of Reasoning
8.2.2 Contingency and the Postulational Style of Reasoning
8.2.3 Contingency, Laboratory Style and ‘the evolutionary tree of styles of reasoning’
8.2.4 Contingency and Pseudo-styles of Reasoning
8.3 Why Do Styles of Reasoning Endure?
8.3.1 Explaining the World
8.3.2 Laboratory Style, Historico-genetic Style and the Time’s Arrow
8.3.3 Taxonomic Style of Reasoning and the Logic of Evolution
8.3.4 Algorithmic Style of Reasoning, Postulational Style of Reasoning and the Phyllotaxis
8.3.5 Statistical Style of Reasoning, Induction and Probabilistic World
8.4 Questions, Answers, Inevitability
8.5 The Long-Term Evolution of Science
8.6 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 9: Epilogue
Index
