Embora a questão do esclarecimento não fosse novidade na História das Ciências, Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) impôs-lhe várias mudanças ao demonstrar a historicidade da razão movendo-se para muito além das categorias a priori e negar uma continuidade necessária entre teorias e conceitos científicos. Por acreditar que a ciência é o local de onde emergem nossas verdades, Bachelard atribuiu à História das Ciências a tarefa de descrever as rupturas que marcaram os momentos em que o irracionalismo foi abandonado. A revolução metodológica imposta por seu trabalho e pelo etos responsável por ela deu dignidade filosófica à História das Ciências e fez com que os historiadores assumissem a postura de juízes, função que exige uma avaliação epistemológica do nosso passado científico através da sua persistência na ciência atual, razão pela qual podemos falar de uma História epistemológica. Por todas essas razões, ao escrevermos a história intelectual dessa nova disciplina pretendemos demonstrar que, não apenas a epistemologia bachelardiana se inscreve na tradição filosófica nietzschiana, como inaugurou a via de aproximação entre a história das ciências e a história social. / Although the question of enlightenment was no novelty in the History of Science, Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) imposed several changes on it demonstrating the historicity of reason moving itself away from the idea of a priori categories and denying a necessary continuity among scientific concepts and theories. Because he believed that Science is the place where our truths emerge from, Bachelard argued that the task of History of Science was to describe the ruptures that marked the moments when irrationalism was abandoned. The methodological revolution imposed by his work and the ethos responsible for it gave philosophical dignity to the History of Science and made the historians assume the obligation of judgment, an assignment which they need to evaluate epistemologically our scientific past questioning its persistence through the actual science, reason why we can say that Bachelard inaugurated an epistemological History. For all this reasons, we think that the intellectual history of this new discipline allow us to understand the bachelardian epistemology in relation with the nietzschean tradition of critical philosophy and to demonstrate how it sets the basis for an approximation between history of science and social history.

Pesquisas atuais na área de ensino de ciências têm enfatizado a importância de uma formação científica humanística que seja ampla e geral, mais significativa para estudantes em todos os seus níveis de ensino. Assim, considerando o âmbito das pesquisas sobre as potencialidades do uso da história da ciência no ensino e a importância de se ensinar sobre a natureza da ciência (NdC), torna-se relevante pesquisar a presença desses conteúdos nos livros didáticos, dada sua grande influência no ensino, já que assume um papel crucial na educação, e também o fato de o livro didático não ser totalmente desprovido de conteúdos desse tipo. Sendo assim, este trabalho analisa como a história da ciência é apresentada por alguns dos mais populares livros didáticos de física para o ensino médio no Brasil, bem como as concepções sobre a natureza da ciência envolvidas nestas narrativas históricas. Geralmente, a história da ciência encontrada nos livros didáticos é distorcida e simplificada, o que se chama de pseudo-história, reforçando alguns conhecidos mitos científicos e transmitindo falsas concepções acerca da natureza da ciência a estudantes e professores. Nesta análise, dois importantes norteadores educacionais brasileiros são considerados, os PCN e o PNLEM, dada sua estreita relação com a HFC e também a influência destes programas no conteúdo dos livros didáticos. / Contemporary standards in science education have emphasized the importance of a humanistic education, more meaningful for students in all its levels of instruction. In this context, great attention has been given to the use of history and philosophy of science (HPS) in science education. Current research on the potentialities of the use of science history and the importance of teaching aspects of the nature of science (NOS), have shown that it is essential to search how those contents appear in textbooks, since they assume a crucial role in education and are not totally absent of such contents. Thus, this work analyzes how history of science is presented in some of the most popular physics textbooks for secundary education in Brazil, as well as conceptions of the nature of science involved in these historical narratives. Often the history of science found in textbooks is distorted and oversimplified, known as pseudohistory, ratifying some popular scientific myths and transmitting false conceptions concerning the nature of science to students and teachers. The analysis considered two important Brazilian educational programs, the National Curricular Parameters and the National Program for Textbooks.

This timely book explores the troubled intertwining of religion, medicine, empire, and race relations in the early nineteenth century. John Rankin analyzes the British use of medicine in West Africa as a tool to usher in a “softer” form of imperialism, considers how British colonial officials, missionaries, and doctors regarded Africans, and explores the impact of race classification on colonial constructs. Rankin goes beyond contemporary medical theory, examining the practice of medicine in colonial Africa as Britons dealt with the challenges of providing health care to their civilian employees, African soldiers, and the increasing numbers of freed slaves in the general population, even while the imperialists themselves were threatened by a lack of British doctors and western medicines. As Rankin writes, “The medical system sought to not only heal Africans but to ‘uplift’ them and make them more amenable to colonial control . . . Colonialism starts in the mind and can be pushed on the other solely through ideological pressure.” / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1089/thumbnail.jpg

The following is a chronologically ordered internal intellectual history of Michel Foucault. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether or not Foucault provides a viable critical social theory of bourgeois society. In order to examine this topic, I trace the development of Foucault’s thought during his early, pre-archaeological stage, his archaeological stage, and his genealogical stage. I frame Foucault’s stages as attempts to overcome Kant’s subject/object division—or the paradox that man operates as both a meaning-giving subject and an empirical object—that one encounters in discourses pertaining to the social sciences. Foucault’s pre-archaeological stage is characterized by two humanistic modes of thought: hermeneutics and phenomenology. Hermeneutics involves the interpretation of historical events in pursuit of existential meaning. By contrast, phenomenology seeks to uncover meaning in subjective experience. After the publication of Mental Illness and Psychology, Foucault rejects hermeneutics and phenomenology on the grounds that the search for meaning through interpretation will inevitably obscure truth under endlessly multiplying interpretations. Neither method offers a coherent resolution to the subject/object division. Foucault’s archaeological method attempts to overcome the subject/object division by studying the relationships—or patterns appearing in language—between empirical observations. Archaeology does not account for the truth-value associated with codified empirical observations (or statements). In other words, archaeology studies the language patterns comprising claims to objective truth. Archaeology consequently assumes a relativistic and objective position that escapes the subject/object division. However, this method suffers from internal instabilities; the rules governing language pertaining to empirical observation are objective, yet the analysts are themselves a product of these rules. This contradiction casts doubt up archaeology’s claim to objectivity. Foucault’s genealogical method does not seek to resolve Kant’s subject/object division; rather, genealogy embraces the notion that the interaction between subject and object remains unknowable. Genealogy, therefore, retains archaeology’s relativistic stance regarding claims to truth while forgoing the former method’s pursuit of objective analysis. During his genealogical stage, Foucault directs his attention away from language patterns and toward the interaction between power and knowledge. Foucault conceptualizes power as a multidirectional, decentralized, and self-perpetuating force that manifests itself as the material result of interpersonal, institutional, and society-level conflicts. Knowledge complements power by defining normal and abnormal behavior. In doing so, knowledge establishes the cognitive field comprising the individual’s self-concept. Genealogy is an analytic of the power/knowledge interaction; the method provides a relativistic means of conceptualizing the reciprocal influence between force relations and discourses. While genealogy does not constitute an objective critical theory, the method has a concrete basis in the form of the positive manifestations of the power/knowledge interaction. Based on my assessment of the above methods, I conclude that genealogy is a viable social theory. Moreover, Foucault consistently deconstructs narratives comprising bourgeois society. From this recurrence it is apparent that Foucault is a para-Marxist; he provides a critique of bourgeois society and attempts to test the limits of individual experience within that society. This conclusion supports the continued relevance of Foucauldian analysis in the social sciences.

<p>The question this essay sets out to answer is what role God plays in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, in the book “Of a Christian Common-wealth”, in relationship to humans as moral beings. The question is relevant as the religious aspects of Hobbes’s thinking cannot be ignored, although Hobbes most likely had rather secular and sceptical philosophical views. In order to answer the research question Leviathan’s “Of a Christian Common-wealth” will be compared and contrasted with two contextual works: the canonical theological document of the Anglican Church, the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), and Presbyterian-Anglican document the Westminster Confession (1648). Also, recent scholarly works on Hobbes and more general reference works will be employed and discussed. Hobbes’s views provide a seemingly unsolvable paradox. On the one hand, God is either portrayed, or becomes by consequence of his sceptical and secular state thinking, a distant God in relationship to moral humans in “Of a Christian Common-wealth”. Also, the freedom humans seem to have in making their own moral decisions, whether based on natural and divine, or positive laws, appears to obscure God’s almightiness. On the other hand, when placing Hobbes in context, Hobbes appears to have espoused Calvinist views, with beliefs in predestination and that God is the cause of everything. Rather paradoxically it not unlikely that Hobbes espoused both the views that appear to obscure the role of God, and his more Calvinistic views.</p>

Historians have traditionally emphasized the sharp differences between Herbert Hoover’s vision of an associational state and the activism of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. This dissertation highlights an important area of continuity between the economic policies espoused by Hoover—during his tenures as Secretary of Commerce and President—and Roosevelt, focusing on federal efforts to promote the nascent aviation industry from the end of World War I until the passage of the Civil Aeronautics Act in 1938. These efforts were successful, and offer a unique arena in which to document the concrete gains wrought by Hoover’s associationalist ideology and Roosevelt’s New Deal. Moreover, both Hoover’s corporatist policies and New Deal efforts to create aviation infrastructure—largely through the auspices of public works agencies like the Public Works Administration and Works Progress Administration—form a striking example of the government’s ability to successfully foster the development of a new industry, even in the midst of the Great Depression. Significantly, both men’s efforts represented an alternative to nationalization, the path taken by virtually every European nation during the era. This period thus offers the opportunity to examine how both presidents’ aviation policies cohere with their larger visions of government’s proper relationship to the economy, to compare and contrast associationalism and New Deal, and to elucidate aviation’s role in promoting American economic development. During these years government actions expanded from having literally no engagement with commercial aviation to subsidizing airmail routes, creating a regulatory infrastructure to promote safe operations by licensing pilots, inspecting aircraft, approving manufacturing operations, and aggressively promoting flying to the American people. Contextualized by the American public’s well-documented enthusiasm for flying—particularly after Charles Lindbergh’s famous New York-to-Paris flight in 1927—these federal actions created America’s modern air transport network, culminating in the passage of the seminal Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, the construction and improvement of almost a thousand airports around the country, and the growth of a core group of airlines, including United, Delta, and American, that still dominate commercial flying today.

A basic assumption in the thesis is that every economic as well as political and ethical doctrine contains a conception of man, and, thus, that this conception needs to be scrutinised in order to achieve deeper understanding of the doctrine. The purposes of the thesis is (1) to account for conceptions of man within the rarely studied Swedish seventeenth-century economic thought, (2) to examine how conceptions of man and of society influence and shape this thought, and (3) to do this from a synchronous approach, by which emphasis is laid on economic thought as an integral part of the intellectual culture of the epoch. In chapter 2 is explored the conception of man as expressed in economic thought. Man is conceived as selfish and irrational. In chapter 3, this conception is explained as it is placed within a wider context, the most common psychological theory of the epoch, the theory of the passions, which is thoroughly examined. Chapter 4 consists of an analysis of the theory of householding, as it was expressed in the literature of the epoch. It is shown that this theory, not focused on by earlier research, to a large extent is a part of ethics and a prolongation of the theory of passions. The householder or “house-father” is obliged to control his own as well as the other household-member’s passions, and to maintain the hierarchical order within the household. Chapters 5 to 8 deal with the central areas within economic thought. These areas are domestic production and trade (ch. 5), the sumptuary laws and attitudes towards luxury (ch. 6), the use of the concept of free trade (ch. 7) and the issues of idleness and employment (ch. 8). It is shown that the king or government is viewed as the “house-father” of the realm, and that the core of the theory of the passions, the taming of the passions through reason and virtue, is vital also within economic thought, in which four virtues were central: justice, diligence, temperance and frugality; the same virtues as in the theory of householding.

This dissertation is a scientific biography of Astrid Cleve von Euler. She was Sweden’s first female Ph.D. graduate in the natural sciences (1898) and pursued a scientific career in spite of formal and cultural limitations. Though she failed to secure a professional position as a scientist, she published numerous papers throughout her life. The dissertation studies her life in general and analyses her research in particular. How did her research change over time in relation to the rest of her life? How did established scientists receive her research? How did her status as a woman on the fringes of academia affect her research? Sociologist Thomas F. Gieryn’s concepts of boundary-work and credibility contests are important analytical tools in the interpretation of these questions, as Cleve’sresearch was regulated by various boundaries: between professionals and amateurs, between men and women and between different academic disciplines. The study is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the dissertation, its objective and theoretical framework. The remaining chapters follow Cleve’s life in a chronological and sometimes thematic order and the source material is continually analysed. Chapter two accounts for Cleve’s childhood and student years in Uppsala, ending with her Ph.D. graduation. Chapter tree focuses on her research as a chemist and her ten years of marriage to a fellow researcher, Hans von Euler-Chelpin, a marriage that was closely intertwined with their academic studies. The fourth chapter studies Cleve’s controversy with some of the leading quaternary geologists in Sweden at the time, regarding the level changes of the Scandinavian land mass following the latest Ice Age. The fifth chapter diverges slightly from Cleve’s research, and investigates her undertakings in popular science and her political standpoints. Chapter six analyses her archaeological studies as part of the scientific controversy she was involved in, but also as influenced by political and religious views. Finally, the seventh chapter begins with a closer look at Cleve’s diatom studies, already part of most of the study but thus far not focused on as such, and ends with the main conclusions of the entire dissertation project. The dissertation shows that while science was part of Cleve’s life from childhood to death, factors other than her personal desire to uncover scientific truths governed her research opportunities and the topics of her studies. While she was consistently highly regarded as a diatom expert and gained some success as a chemist, disciplines she was formally educated in, she was met with scepticism and eventually silence when she tried to make an impact in quaternary geology and archaeology, fields of research in which she had no formal training. This demonstrates a possibility to simultaneously be regarded as credible and non-credible as a scientist, as credibility is not necessarily attached to the individual, but to his or her formal expertise in a particular area.

The object of this dissertation is to describe the opinions about the limits of natural science in their social and cultural context There exist two antagonistic positions to this matter restrictionism and expansionism. Restrictionism assumes that the natural sciences have no influence on metaphysics. Expansionism, on die other hand, argues that the natural sciences can legitimise the positions of beliefs and values. During the 1870b a restrictionist attitude on scientific knowledge established itself among influential German and British scientists. Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Rudolf Virchow, Hermann von Helmholtz and Thomas Henry Huxley were some of the famous scientists who rejected attempts to adduce science in religious and metaphysical matter. This restrictionism was rejected by other scientists and philosophers who believed that the modern natural sciences constituted a complete Weltanschauung, hostile to obsolete Christianity and philosophy. The thesis primarily deals with the debate on the limits of scientific knowledge in Sweden. We follow the development of the discussion from the 1870's to the years after the First World War. At the end of the 19th century Swedish scientists freed themselves from dominant natural philosophy and natural theology. Restrictionism was later on supported, in different ways, by recognized scientists, theologians, conservative critics, and philosophers. At the turn of the centuiy the restrictionist view of science was turned against metaphysical materialism, monism, naturalism, and an emergent, radical counter-culture. The controversies continued as long as the mechanical world picture dominated the natural sciences. With social and cultural changes, and the new physics of Rutherford, Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg, the debate slowly faded. / digitalisering@umu

The question this essay sets out to answer is what role God plays in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, in the book “Of a Christian Common-wealth”, in relationship to humans as moral beings. The question is relevant as the religious aspects of Hobbes’s thinking cannot be ignored, although Hobbes most likely had rather secular and sceptical philosophical views. In order to answer the research question Leviathan’s “Of a Christian Common-wealth” will be compared and contrasted with two contextual works: the canonical theological document of the Anglican Church, the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), and Presbyterian-Anglican document the Westminster Confession (1648). Also, recent scholarly works on Hobbes and more general reference works will be employed and discussed. Hobbes’s views provide a seemingly unsolvable paradox. On the one hand, God is either portrayed, or becomes by consequence of his sceptical and secular state thinking, a distant God in relationship to moral humans in “Of a Christian Common-wealth”. Also, the freedom humans seem to have in making their own moral decisions, whether based on natural and divine, or positive laws, appears to obscure God’s almightiness. On the other hand, when placing Hobbes in context, Hobbes appears to have espoused Calvinist views, with beliefs in predestination and that God is the cause of everything. Rather paradoxically it not unlikely that Hobbes espoused both the views that appear to obscure the role of God, and his more Calvinistic views.