18 found
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  1. Axiomatic Natural Philosophy and the Emergence of Biology as a Science.Hein van den Berg & Boris Demarest - 2020 - Journal of the History of Biology 53 (3):379-422.
    Ernst Mayr argued that the emergence of biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century was possible due to the demise of the mathematical model of science and its insistence on demonstrative knowledge. More recently, John Zammito has claimed that the rise of biology as a special science was due to a distinctive experimental, anti-metaphysical, anti-mathematical, and anti-rationalist strand of thought coming from outside of Germany. In this paper we argue that this narrative neglects the important role played (...)
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  2. Kant's Theory of Scientific Hypotheses in its Historical Context.Boris Demarest & Hein van den Berg - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 92:12-19.
    This paper analyzes the historical context and systematic importance of Kant's hypothetical use of reason. It does so by investigating the role of hypotheses in Kant's philosophy of science. We first situate Kant’s account of hypotheses in the context of eighteenth-century German philosophy of science, focusing on the works of Wolff, Meier, and Crusius. We contrast different conceptions of hypotheses of these authors and elucidate the different theories of probability informing them. We then adopt a more systematic perspective to discuss (...)
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  3. A blooming and buzzing confusion: Buffon, Reimarus, and Kant on animal cognition.Hein van den Berg - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 72:1-9.
    Kant’s views on animals have received much attention in recent years. According to some, Kant attributed the capacity for objective perceptual awareness to non-human animals, even though he denied that they have concepts. This position is difficult to square with a conceptualist reading of Kant, according to which objective perceptual awareness requires concepts. Others take Kant’s views on animals to imply that the mental life of animals is a blooming, buzzing confusion. In this article I provide a historical reconstruction of (...)
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  4. Kant’s Ideal of Systematicity in Historical Context.Hein van den Berg - 2021 - Kantian Review 26 (2):261-286.
    This article explains Kant’s claim that sciences must take, at least as their ideal, the form of a ‘system’. I argue that Kant’s notion of systematicity can be understood against the background of de Jong & Betti’s Classical Model of Science (2010) and the writings of Georg Friedrich Meier and Johann Heinrich Lambert. According to my interpretation, Meier, Lambert, and Kant accepted an axiomatic idea of science, articulated by the Classical Model, which elucidates their conceptions of systematicity. I show that (...)
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  5. Towards a Computational History of Ideas.Arianna Betti & Hein Van Den Berg - 2016 - Proceedings of the Third Conference on Digital Humanities in Luxembourg with a Special Focus on Reading Historical Sources in the Digital Age: Luxembourg. Ceur Workshop Proceedings, 1681.
    The History of Ideas is presently enjoying a certain renaissance after a long period of disrepute. Increasing quantities of digitally available historical texts and the availability of computational tools for the exploration of such masses of sources, it is suggested, can be of invaluable help to historians of ideas. The question is: how exactly? In this paper, we argue that a computational history of ideas is possible if the following two conditions are satisfied: (i) Sound Method . A computational history (...)
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  6. Theoretical virtues in eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition.Hein van den Berg - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (3):1-35.
    Within eighteenth-century debates on animal cognition we can distinguish at least three main theoretical positions: (i) Buffon’s mechanism, (ii) Reimarus’ theory of instincts, and (iii) the sensationalism of Condillac and Leroy. In this paper, I adopt a philosophical perspective on this debate and argue that in order to fully understand the justification Buffon, Reimarus, Condillac, and Leroy gave for their respective theories, we must pay special attention to the theoretical virtues these naturalists alluded to while justifying their position. These theoretical (...)
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  7. Kant and the scope of analogy in the life sciences.Hein van den Berg - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 71:67-76.
    In the present paper I investigate the role that analogy plays in eighteenth-century biology and in Kant’s philosophy of biology. I will argue that according to Kant, biology, as it was practiced in the eighteenth century, is fundamentally based on analogical reflection. However, precisely because biology is based on analogical reflection, biology cannot be a proper science. I provide two arguments for this interpretation. First, I argue that although analogical reflection is, according to Kant, necessary to comprehend the nature of (...)
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  8. The Wolffian roots of Kant’s teleology.Hein van den Berg - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4):724-734.
    Kant’s teleology as presented in the Critique of Judgment is commonly interpreted in relation to the late eighteenth-century biological research of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. In the present paper, I show that this interpretative perspective is incomplete. Understanding Kant’s views on teleology and biology requires a consideration of the teleological and biological views of Christian Wolff and his rationalist successors. By reconstructing the Wolffian roots of Kant’s teleology, I identify several little known sources of Kant’s views on biology. I argue that (...)
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  9. Kant’s conception of proper science.Hein van den Berg - 2011 - Synthese 183 (1):7-26.
    Kant is well known for his restrictive conception of proper science. In the present paper I will try to explain why Kant adopted this conception. I will identify three core conditions which Kant thinks a proper science must satisfy: systematicity, objective grounding, and apodictic certainty. These conditions conform to conditions codified in the Classical Model of Science. Kant’s infamous claim that any proper natural science must be mathematical should be understood on the basis of these conditions. In order to substantiate (...)
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  10. Explanation, teleology, and analogy in natural history and comparative anatomy around 1800: Kant and Cuvier.Hein van den Berg - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 105 (C):109-119.
    This paper investigates conceptions of explanation, teleology, and analogy in the works of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Richards (2000, 2002) and Zammito (2006, 2012, 2018) have argued that Kant’s philosophy provided an obstacle for the project of establishing biology as a proper science around 1800. By contrast, Russell (1916), Outram (1986), and Huneman (2006, 2008) have argued, similar to suggestions from Lenoir (1989), that Kant’s philosophy influenced the influential naturalist Georges Cuvier. In this article, I wish to (...)
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  11.  71
    Systematicity, the Life Sciences, and the Possibility of Laws Concerning Life.Hein van den Berg - forthcoming - In Gabriele Gava, Thomas Sturm & Achim Vesper (eds.), Kant and the Systematicity of the Sciences. New York: Routledge.
    In this paper I discuss in what sense physics, chemistry, and the life sciences constitute a systematic unity according to Kant. I start by discussing Christian Wolff’s views on the hierarchy of sciences. I then argue that in one specific sense physics, chemistry and several life sciences constitute a unity: physics and chemistry provide statements that can be used to provide proofs in the life sciences. However, the unity of physics, chemistry, and the life sciences is limited in scope, since (...)
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  12. The Essentialism of Early Modern Psychiatric Nosology.Hein van den Berg - 2023 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 45 (2):1-25.
    Are psychiatric disorders natural kinds? This question has received a lot of attention within present-day philosophy of psychiatry, where many authors debate the ontology and nature of mental disorders. Similarly, historians of psychiatry, dating back to Foucault, have debated whether psychiatric researchers conceived of mental disorders as natural kinds or not. However, historians of psychiatry have paid little to no attention to the influence of (a) theories within logic, and (b) theories within metaphysics on psychiatric accounts of proper method, and (...)
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  13. Induction and certainty in the physics of Wolff and Crusius.Hein van den Berg & Boris Demarest - 2024 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 32 (5):1052-1073.
    In this paper, we analyse conceptions of induction and certainty in Wolff and Crusius, highlighting their competing conceptions of physics. We discuss (i) the perspective of Wolff, who assigned induction an important role in physics, but argued that physics should be an axiomatic science containing certain statements, and (ii) the perspective of Crusius, who adopted parts of the ideal of axiomatic physics but criticized the scope of Wolff’s ideal of certain science. Against interpretations that take Wolff’s proofs in physics to (...)
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  14. Wolff and Kant on Scientific Demonstration and Mechanical Explanation.Hein van den Berg - 2013 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 95 (2):178-205.
    This paper analyzes Immanuel Kant’s views on mechanical explanation on the basis of Christian Wolff’s idea of scientific demonstration. Kant takes mechanical explanations to explain properties of wholes in terms of their parts. I reconstruct the nature of such explanations by showing how part-whole conceptualizations in Wolff’s logic and metaphysics shape the ideal of a proper and explanatory scientific demonstration. This logico-philosophical background elucidates why Kant construes mechanical explanations as ideal explanations of nature.
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  15. A philosophical perspective on visualization for digital humanities.Hein Van Den Berg, Arianna Betti, Thom Castermans, Rob Koopman, Bettina Speckmann, K. A. B. Verbeek, Titia Van der Werf, Shenghui Wang & Michel A. Westenberg - 2018 - 3Rd Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities.
    In this position paper, we describe a number of methodological and philosophical challenges that arose within our interdisciplinary Digital Humanities project CatVis, which is a collaboration between applied geometric algorithms and visualization researchers, data scientists working at OCLC, and philosophers who have a strong interest in the methodological foundations of visualization research. The challenges we describe concern aspects of one single epistemic need: that of methodologically securing (an increase in) trust in visualizations. We discuss the lack of ground truths in (...)
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  16. Evaluating the Validity of Animal Models of Mental Disorder: From Modeling Syndromes to Modeling Endophenotypes.Hein van den Berg - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (4):1-26.
    This paper provides a historical analysis of a shift in the way animal models of mental disorders were conceptualized: the shift from the mid-twentieth-century view, adopted by some, that animal models model syndromes classified in manuals such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), to the later widespread view that animal models model component parts of psychiatric syndromes. I argue that in the middle of the twentieth century the attempt to maximize the face validity of animal models (...)
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  17. Animal Languages in Eighteenth-Century German Philosophy and Science.Hein van den Berg - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 93:72-81.
    This paper analyzes debates on animal language in eighteenth-century German philosophy and science. Adopting a history of ideas approach, I explain how the study of animal language became tied to the investigation into the origin and development of language towards the end of the eighteenth century. I argue that for large parts of the eighteenth century, the question of the existence of animal languages was studied within the context of the philosophical question of whether animals possess reason. In Germany, the (...)
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  18. Studying the History of Philosophical Ideas: supporting research discovery, navigation, and awareness.Hein Van Den Berg, Gonzalo Parra, Anja Jentzsch, Andreas Drakos & Erik Duval - 2014 - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data-Driven Business.
    The use of computational tools in the humanities for science 2.0 practices is steadily increasing. This paper examines current research practices of a group of philosophers studying the history of philosophical concepts. We explain the methodology and workflow of these philosophers and provide an overview of tools they currently use in their research. The case study highlights a number of fundamental challenges facing these researchers, including: (i) accessing known relevant research content or resources; (ii) discovering new research content or data; (...)
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