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A Sulphurous Element

Teaduslugu (FLFI.03.098) [Kevad 2021]

Koyré, Alexandre 1943. Galileo and Plato. Journal of the History of Ideas 4(4): 400-428. [JSTOR]

The name of Galileo Galilei is indissolubly linked with the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century, one of the profoundest, if not the most profound, revolution of human thought since the invention of the Cosmos by Greek thought: a revolution which implies a radical intellectual "mutation," of which modern physical science is at once the expression and the fruit. (Koyré 1943: 400)

The mutability of intelligence. Randall's The Making of the Modern Mind was published in 1926, so its copyright might expire next year.

Still the attitude we have just described is much more that of Bacon - whose [|] rôle in the history of science is not of the same order - than that of Galileo of Descartes. Their science is made not by engineers or craftsmen, but by men who seldom built or made anything more real than a theory. (Koyré 1943: 400-401)

Can identify.

It neglects the lust for power and wealth which, throughout its history, inspired alchemy. (Koyré 1943: 401)

Passion.

Experimentation is the methodical interrogation of nature, an interrogation which presupposes and implies a language in which to formulate the questions, and a dictionary which enables us to read and to interpret the answers. For Galileo, as we know well, it was in curves and circles and triangles, in mathematical or even more precisely, in geometrical language - not in the language of common sense or in that of pure symbols - that we must speak to Nature and receive her answers. Yet obviously the choice of the language, the decision to empty it, could not be determined by the experience which its use was to make possible. It had to come from other sources. (Koyré 1943: 403)

A linguistic metaphor. Or, linguistics as a metaphor.

These two characteristics may be summed up and expressed as follows: the mathematization (geometrization) of nature and, therefore, the mathematization (geometrization) of science. (Koyré 1943: 404)

Maybe my "communicationalization" is not that bad of a term.

Aristotelian physics is false, of course; and utterly obsolete. Nevertheless, it is a "physics," that is, a highly though non-mathematically elaborated science. It is not a childish phantasy, nor a brute and verbal restatement of common sense, but a theory, that is, a doctrine which, starting of course with the data of common sense, subjects them to an extremely coherent and systematic treatment. (Koyré 1943: 407)

Phraseology.

We should be astonished and should seek for an explanation if, for instance, we saw the flame turn about and point "down." (Koyré 1943: 407)

Or when lava flows uphill.

Whole, cosmic order, and harmony: these conceps imply that in the Universe things are (or should be) distributed and disposed in a certain determined order; that their location is not a matter of indifference (neither for them, nor for the Universe); that on the contrary each thing has, according to its nature, a determined "place" in the Universe, which is in some sense its own. A place for everything, and everything in its place: the concept of "natural place" expresses this theoretical demand of Aristotelian physics. (Koyré 1943: 408)

An orderly concurrence of aptitudes?

On the other hand, movement strictly speaking is not a state: it is a [|] process, a flux, a becoming, in and by which things constitute, actualize and accomplish themselves. It is perfectly true that becoming has Being as its end; and that movement has rest as its goal. (Koyré 1943: 409-410)

Synchrony is not static, etc.

Aristotelian physics thus forms an admirable and perfectly coherent theory which, to tell the truth, has only one flaw (besides that of being false): that of being contradicted by everyday practice, by the practice of throwing. But a theoretician deserving the name does not allow himself to be troubled by an objection from common sense. If and when he encounters a "fact" that does not fit into his theory, he denies its existence. And if he cannot deny it, he explains it. (Koyré 1943: 411)

Well put. Facts are no obstacle to a true theoretician.

"All these mathematical subtleties," explains Simplicio, "are true in abstracto. But applied to sensible and physical matter, they do not work." In real nature there are no circles, no triangles, no straight lines. Therefore it is useless to learn the language of mathematical figures: the book of Nature, in spite of Galileo and Plato, is not written in them. (Koyré 1943: 423)

Reminiscent of a line in Prometheus: "God doesn't build in straight lines". The Ninety East Ridge is a hoax perpetrated by crafty bathymetrists.

I have just called Galileo a Platonist. And I believe that nobody will doubt that he is one. Moreover, he says so himself. In the very first pages of the Dialogue Simplicio makes the remark that Galileo, being a mathematician, is probably sympathetic to the numerical speculations of the Pythagoreans. (Koyré 1943: 425)

The seemingly infinite list of koino-Pythagoreans increases.

The allusions to Plato so numerous in the works of Galileo, and the repeated mention of the Socratic maieutics and of the doctrine of reminiscence, are not superficial ornaments born from his desire to conform to the literary mode inhertied from the concern of Renaissance thought with Plato. (Koyré 1943: 427)

"Asking a series of questions was considered by Socrates a method of “giving birth” to the truth, and a related word, maieutic, defined as “relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new ideas from another,” comes from the Greek word meaning “of midwifery.”"

Gyllenbok, Jan 2018. Encyclopaedia of Historical Metrology, Weights, and Measures. Volume 1. Basel: Birkhäuser.

The science that covers the knowledge of weights, measures, and scales is generally called metrology. It can be further subcategorized as legal metrology - dealing with the accuracy of measurements in the economic and fiscal domains, as well as legislation dealing with the use of different measurement systems; industrial metrology - dealing with the functioning of measurement instruments and the accurate testing processes for a specific quantity; scientific metrology - dealing with definitions of units, fundamental constants, measurement standards, and methods currently in use; historical metrology - dealing with the fundamental units of measurement, systems of units formerly or currently in use in various countries, and the devolpment of monetary units throughout their history; and social metrology or metrosophy - dealing with the political, religious, and spiritual significance of weights and measures and their patterns in a specific society. (Gyllenbok 2018: ix)

There really seems to be a special science for everything.

Another main difficulty for historical metrologists is our tendency to see patterns, even when patterns do not exist. One must constantly be aware of this urge and must ask oneself periodically whether there is a pattern or whether you have merely invented it. (Gyllenbok 2018: xi)

Problem of researching fictions, not uncommon in numerous fields.

I conservatively consulted many hundreds of sources, both primary and secondary. To minimize space in footnotes and elsewhere, all sources are provided with a three, four, or five letter reference, written in brackets. Hence, [DOUR] is used instead of writing: "Doursther, Horace. Dictionnaire universal des poids et mesures anciens et modernes, contenat des tables des monnaies de tous les pays. Brussels: M. Hayez, Imprimeur de l'Académie Royale, 1840. (Reprinted by Meridian Publishing Company in Amsterdam, 1965)." (Gyllenbok 2018: xii)

Not a bad system.

When one looks at the weights used in different societies in the past, it is obvious that most units, had they been shaped like a smooth, rounded stone, would have fit comfortably in the palm of a full-grown man. This means that most societies had use for a weight of about 450-600 g. Hence, the oldest unit of weight used by humans were probably weight units of this size. A "mina" weight made of stone from c. 2345 BCE, found in Lagasch, Mesopotamia, that weighed about 477 g, supports this theory. When civilizations began trading with precious metals and other precious goods, different grains, e.g., from wheat and barley, came into use for this purpose. (Gyllenbok 2018: 2)

Something for the rubric "man as the measure of all things". Here, specifically, the weight of stone that can comfortably sit in the palm of one's hand.

When it comes to the desire or ability to calculate the size of a parcel of land, this was particularly characteristic for sedentary civilizations, where land area units reflected the farmer's experience of the land. There were units representing the amount of land that could be cultivated in a day by hand, without mules or oxen, e.g. the French ouvrée and the Anglo-Saxon daies work. A more common type of land area units represented the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in one day. The Roman iugerum, the English acre and the German Morgen were all derived from this type of measures. (Gyllenbok 2018: 2)

This I've met in the Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on agriculture.

This confusing multiplicity of weights and measures in France led Bishop Talleyrand d'Autun to propose a project for developing a unique system of weights and measures to the constituting French National Assembly in 1790. The result of this project, the Decimal Metric System, and the subsequent deposition of two platinum standards representing the metre and the kilogram, on June 22, 1797, in the Archives de la République in Paris, was the first step in the development of an international system of units. (Gyllenbok 2018: 5)

Just recently I met somewhere on reddit a discussion of how the Decimal Metric System was established through several miscalculations.

Every country is somewhere in the process of going totally metric, though some are much further along than others. Nevertheless, in many countries, the older local and provincial units are still used in some extent, at least in colloquial expressions.
The United States continues to implement the use of SI units for an increasing number of goods and services, but the American public and most private businesses and industries still use the customary U.S. units. (Gyllenbok 2018: 5)

One mustn't talk ill of the americans' freedom units, hamberders and baldeagles.

Suppes, Patric; Zinnes, Joseph L. 1962. Basic Measurement Theory. Technical report no. 45. Stanford, California: Standford University.

While measurement is one of the gods modern psychologists pay homage to with great regularity, the subject of measurement remains as elusive as ever. A systematic treatment of the theory is not readily found in the psychological literature. For the most part a student of the subject is confronted with an array of bewildering and conflicting catechisms, catechisms which tell him whether such and such a ritual is permissible, or, at least, whether it can be condoned. To cite just one peculiar, yet uniformly accepted example, as elementary science students we are constantly warned that it "does not make sense" (a phrase often used when no other argument is apparent) to add together numbers representing distinct proporties, say, height and weight. Yet as more advanced physics students we are taught, with some effort no doubt, to multiply together numbers representing such things as velocity and time, or to divide distance numbers by time numbers. Why does multiplication make "more sense" than addition? (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 1)

The "ritual" bit is witty and timely.

A systematic approach to the subject of measurement may well begin by formulating what seem to be the two fundamental problems analysis of any procedure of measurement must consider. Briefly stated, the first problem is justification of the assignment of numbers to objects or phenomena. The second problem concerns the specification of the degree to which this assignment is unique. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 3)

Correspondence according to some numerical system of measurement.

The early history of mathematics shows how difficult it was to divorce arithmetic from particular empirical systems. The ancient Egyptians could not think of 2 + 3, but only of 2 bushels of wheat plus 3 bushels of wheat. Intellectually, it is a great step forward to realize that the assertion that 2 bushels of wheat plus 3 bushels of wheat equals 5 bushels of wheat involves the same mathematical consideration as the statement that 2 quarts of milk plus 3 quarts of milk equals 5 quarts of milk. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 3)

I'm reminded of E. R. Clay's "Genesis of numerical discernment".

From a logical standpoint, there is just one arithmetic of numbers, not an arithmetic for bulshels of wheat, and a separate arithmetic for quarts of milk. The first problem for a theory of measurement is to show how various features of this arithmetic of numbers may be applied in a variety of empirical situations. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 3)

"Arithmetic, the law of number, was before anything to be numbered or any mind to number had been created." (W 1: 169)

The formal definitions given thus far are not special to the theory of measurement. A more direct connection is made by first distinguishing between a numerical relational system and an empirical relational system. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 9)

Numbers = a numerical relational system; objects or phenomena = an empirical relational system.

An empirical relational system is a relational system whose domain is a set of identifiable entities such as weights, persons, attitude statements, or sounds. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 10)

Objects or phenomena.

Still another type of scale is one which is arbitrary except for order. Moh's hardness scale, according to which minerals are ranked in regard to hardness as determined by a scratch test, and the Beaufort wind scale, whereby the strength of a wind is classified as calm, light air, light breeze, etc., are examples. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 18)

These are: 0 - Calm; 1 - Light air; 2 - Light breeze; 3 - Gentle breeze; 4 - Moderate breeze; 5 - Fresh breeze; 6 - Strong breeze; 7 - High wind; 8 - Gale; 9 - Strong gale; 10 - Storm; 11 - Violent storm; 12 - Hurricane force.

Numbers are also sometimes used for classification. For example, in some states the first number on an automobile licence indicates the county in which the owner lives. The assignment of numbers in accordance with such a scale may be arbitrary except for the assignment of the same [|] number of people in the same county and distinct number to people in distinct counties. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 20-21)

Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.

Following Campbell (1919) most measurement theorists distinguish between quantities (or extensive properties) and qualities (or intensive properties) and between fundamental and derived measurement. Campbell defines these terms essentially as follows. Quantities are properties for each of which there exists an empirical operation similar to the arithmetical operation of addition. Qualities are characterized by an absence of this additive operation. (Suppes & Zinnes 1962: 24)

Number (quantity) involves some operation of addition; size (quality) does not.

Giere, Ronald N. 1999. Science without laws. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. [Ch. 5: "Science without Laws of Nature", pp. 84-96.] [ESTER]

One way of understanding the role that a concept plays in an interpretation of a practice is to examine the history of how that concept came to play the role it now has. Through the history one can often see the contingencies that led to that concept's coming to play the role it later assumed and realize that it need not have done so. (Giere 1999: 86)

In my experience this in not at all a simple thing to elucidate, my emphasis on "the history of how [a] concept came to play the role it now has"..

Laws of nature, it is typically said, are true statements of universal form. Many would add that the truths expressed by laws are not merely contingent, but, in some appropriate sense, necessary as well. Finally, laws are typically held to be objective in the sense that their existence is independent of their being known, or even thought of, by human agents. (Giere 1999: 86)

As Peirce put it, there was number before there was anything to count or anyone to do the counting.

What matters most for my purposes, however, is not which ideas one can find when. At almost any period in history one can find a vast range of ideas existing simultaneously. The [|] important question is which of the variety of ideas available at an earlier period got adopted and transmitted to later periods, and thus shaped later interpretations. (Giere 1999: 88-89)

Permanent dynamic synchrony of ideas.

An interpretive device that has considerable historical precedent would be to speak of Newton's Principles of Motion and the Principle of Gravitational Attraction. The title of his book, after all, translates as The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Whether or not thinkers in the seventeenth century, or even eighteenth, century recognized any significant distinction between "laws" and "principles," we can make use of the linguistic variation. Principles, I suggest, should be understood as rules devised by humans to be used in building models to represent specific aspects of the natural world. Thus Newton's principles of mechanics are to be thought of as rules for teh construction of models to represent mechanical systems, from comets to pendulums. They provide a perspective within which to understand mechanical motions. (Giere 1999: 94)

Principles as descriptive rules, laws as prescriptive rules.

Padgett, Alan G. 2003. The Roots of the Western Concept of the "Laws of Nature": From the Greeks to Newton. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 55(4): 212-221.

As with many of the root ideas of Western culture, the notion of a "law of nature" can be traced back to both Greco-Roman culture and to biblical religion. The notion of a law of nature (Latin: lex or regula naturae; Greek: nomos physeos) has two sources in the classical period: Hellenistic natural philosophy, especially Stoicism; and the Christian patristic tradition. In the Christian case, the God of the Bible is understood as Lawgiver (among other things), but also as Creator. (Padgett 2003: 212)

Plato's demiurgos creating the world according to paradeigma.

The gift of the Muslim philosophers to late medieval natural philosophy was their mathematics, based upon Greek and Hindu sources, that included several significant developments. The new mathematical learning could be used to describe the natural world, as especially the field of optics was making clear. This mathematical approach to metaphysics was upheld within a Christianized Platonic and Pythagorean tradition. The final combination of mathematics (Platonic-Pythagorean), observation and experience (Aristotelian) and voluntarism (bilblical-theological) provided the vital philosophical milieu in which early modern science could develop. (Padgett 2003: 213)

Indeed, Thomas Taylor's translations of the Pythagoreans are highly suspect because of this. They are rendered through a prism that may have been completely alien to the original material.

Grosseteste lectured on theology to the Fransciscans at Oxford and published a number of biblical-theological works. For all of his intellectual career, he was interested in the nature of light. In De luce, he developed a metaphysics of light as the first form of "prime matter" and the basic stuff of the human soul. (Padgett 2003: 214)

What else is light than a diffuse form of fire?

Bacon could use the term "natural law," as most medieval thinkers did, i.e., to refer to the moral law of God. But he also, like Grosseteste, could use the term to describe the mathematical order of the natural world, which, of course, also comes from God the Creator. For example, he held the principle that "nature works more effectively in a straight line than a curve" to be one of the laws or rules of nature. He notes in passing that all corporeal bodies are also material bodies (rather than spiritual) and so "they must obey the laws of material and corporeal things." (Padgett 2003: 216)

Directly opposite view: "In real nature there are no circles, no triangles, no straight lines" (Koyré 1943: 423; above)

Golinski, Jan V. 1990. Chemistry in the Scientific Revolution: Problems of language and communication. In: Lindberg, David C.; Westman, Robert S. (eds.), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. New York, etc.: Cambridge University Press, 367-396. [ESTER]

My aim is to make problematic the "influence" of natural philosophy on chemistry and thus to suggest the need to define each field more thoroughly as a historical practice. To this end, it seems to me, historical research in this area must be accompanied by a continual examination of its own past. A scrutiny of the primary sources must be supplemented by a critical awareness of our historiographic heritage. This twofold purpose explains the lack of historical localization in the first three sections of this essay. (Golinski 1990: 368)

Take both primary and secondary sources into consideration.

Metzger took her focus on the doctrine of the unity of matter from her mentor, Meyerson. Meyerson's Identity and Reality (1908) sought to explain this belief as a "secret propensity of the human mind," an outcome of "unconscious psychological processes" that transcends any particular historical context. (Golinski 1990: 369)

Available, thougfh poorly scanned in black and white.

In Metzger's view, the mechanical philosophy provided the language of pure description of chemical phenomena. Thus, to her, the abandonment of the allegorical, metaphorical style of discourse that characterized Renaissance alchemy in favor of the plain description of chemical processes was identified with the acceptance of the mechanical philosophy in chemical writings. (Golinski 1990: 371)

This style of language I think I've met in the writings of John Bulwer, though not in the field of chemistry but in the theory of communication, such as it was during the Renaissance era.

Hannaway claims that Libavius's views on appropriate modes of argument and communication, and on the very possibility of learned discourse, were formed in opposition to the Paracelsian-Hermetic view of chemistry exemplified by his contemporary and polemical adversary Osward Croll (c. 1540-1609). Croll saw knowledge as an externalization of that which is present within man, effected by a [|] sympathetic attraction between elements of macrocosm and microcosm. Because knowledge was conferred by divine grace, rather than by reason, it could not be "read" straightforwardly, either from nature or from books. (Golinski 1990: 372-373)

Bolus probably was not the first to employ the language of sympathetic attraction but it is remarkable that it lasted for so long. As to knowledge conferred by divine grace, Berkeley's theory of ideas comes to mind: humans and other finite beings merely partake in what is perfect in the mind of God.

By the time of Nicholas Lemery's Cours de chymie (1675), this had become a rather well-worn rhetorical ploy. Lemery began his preface: "Most of the authors who have spoken of chemistry have written about it with such obscurity that they seem to have done their best not to be understood." He, on the other hand, had followed "a short and simple method." In the case of Lemery, it is fairly apparent that such a statement functioned as a means of self-promotion. (Golinski 1990: 376)

Modesty was a thing unknown to the seventeenth-century chemists.

Previously, at least in some cases, initiation into the secrets of the chemical art had required a vow of silence from those initiated. Croll, writing his Admonitory Preface (1609), feared that he might be accused of breaking such a vow, "as one that hath not been taught the close Pythagorean silence." This kind of vow was clearly intended to bind the pupil to his master, even after instruction had ended. (Golinski 1990: 378)

Ever since learning about Pythagoras it has become a rare text that does not mention something connected with him.

In this decade, those English writers of a Puritan, or more radical Protestant, orientation who wrote about chemistry led a resurgence of the Paracelsian movement, calling for a more widespread use of chemical pharmaceutical remedies and a reduction in the exclusive privileges of professional physicians. Many of these writers sought an end to all restrictions upon the free communication of applicable knowledge. John French, for example, in works written in the early 1650s, made appeals for the publication of hithero secret commercial and pharmaceutical processes and proclaimed the imminence of the millenium. (Golinski 1990: 383)

Something like this is still ongoing. Academics across the globe are still baffled at how or why publishing companies can hold publicly funded research behind paywalls, essentially stealing both knowledge and finances from the public.

Insofar as Boyle attained a measure of critical detachment from the constraints upon communication among chemists, he ascribed this in part to his social and economic position: "Being a bachelor, and through God's bounty furnished with a competant estate for a younger brother, [...] I had no need to pursue luciferous [wealth-producing] experiments, to which I much preferred luciferous [illuminating] ones." (Golinski 1990: 384)

Neat little wordplay. His Sceptical Chymist might be interesting to read for language alone.

Butterfield, Herbert 1958. The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800. New Edition. London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd. [Chap. 11: "The Postponed Scientific Revolution in Chemistry", pp. 191-209.] [ESTER]

It would appear that experimentation and even technological progress are insufficient by themselves to provide the basis for the establishment of what we should call a "modern science". Their results need to be related to an adequate intellectual framework which on the one hand embraces the observed data and on the other hand helps to decide at any moment the direction of the next enquiry. (Butterfield 1958: 191)

Jreg lecturing to his son for fifteen minutes about the necessity of having a framework comes to mind.

Robert Boyle had set out to bring about a marriage between the chemical practitioner and the natural philosopher; and from this time the story does at least become more comprehensible to us - there are recognisable aspirations in the directions of science, with less of what to us seems mere capriciousness or mystification. (Butterfield 1958: 192)

Mystery is simply "something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain". I've become somewhat uncomfortable with this word ever since learning that it signified attempts to achieve communion with God (a difficult or impossible thing to understand or explain, for sure, but very limited in its application).

When we study the history of science, it is useful to direct our attention to the intellectual obstruction which, at a given moment, is checking the progress of thought - the hurdle which it was then particularly necessary for the mind to surmount. In mechanics, at the crucial moment, as we have seen, it had been the very concept of motion; in astronomy, the rotation of the earth; and in physiology, the movement of the blood and the corresponding action of the heart. (Butterfield 1958: 192)

Makes me wonder what the obstruction might be in phatics. The inherent ambiguities of phatic conceptions?

For thousands of years, air, water and fire had been wrapped up in a myth somewhat similar to the myth of the special ethereal substance out of which the heavenly bodies and celestial spheres were thought to have been made. Of all the things in the world, air and water seemed most certain to be irreducible elements, if indeed - as Van Helmont suggested - everything in the world could not be resolved into water. (Butterfield 1958: 193)

Reminds me of that one episode of SG-1 where genetic experiments lead people to burst into water. The human body might be 70% water but not skin and bones.

Even fire seemed to be another element - hidden in many substances, but released during combustion, and visibly making its escape in the form of flame. Bacon and some of his successors in the seventeenth century had conjectured that heat might be a form of motion in microscopic particles of matter. Mixed up with such conjectures, however, we find the view that it was itself a material substance; and this latter view was to prevail in the eighteenth century. (Butterfield 1958: 193)

And why does fire appear to escape upwards if not because it is a divine element reaching towards the heavens, hmmm?

Under the system of the Aristotelians it was the "element" of fire which had been supposed to be released during the combustion of a body. During most of the seventeenth century it was thought to be a sulphurous "element" - not exactly sulphur as we know it, but an idealised or a mystical form of it - materially a different kind of sulphur in the case of the different bodies in which it might appear. (Butterfield 1958: 195)

A tidbit for the mystery of why surphur was connected with soul or anima in Paracelsus' iatrochemistry (cf. Vihalemm 1981: 46).

Furthermore, the last two decades of the eighteenth century give one of the most spectacular proofs in history of the fact that able men who had the truth under their very noses, and possessed all the ingredients for the solution of the problem - the very men who had actually made the strategic discoveries - were incapacitated by the phlogiston theory from realising the implications of their own work. (Butterfield 1958: 199)

When theory blinds you from the facts.

Next, he [Lavoisier] decided that common air consisted of two "elastic fluids", one of which was this eminently respirable part. Further than this, he decided that all acids were formed by the combination of non-metallic substances with "eminently respirable air", so he described this latter as the acidifying principle, or the principe oxygine. As a result of this theory oxygen acquired the name which it now possesses, and in the mind of Lavoisier it ranked as an irreducible element, save that it contained "caloric", which was the principle of heat. (Butterfield 1958: 206)

""Õhu puhas osa" (hapnik) saigi nimeks oxgygen ehk "happe sünnitaja" (õhuhapnikku kui gaasi vaatles Lavoisier sealjuures seotuna "soojusainega")" (Vihalemm 1981: 93).

Lavoisier was not one of those men who are ingenious in experimental devices, but he seized upon the work of his contemporaries and the hints that were scattered over a century of chemical history, and used them to some purpose. Occasionally his experimental results were not as accurate as he pretended, or he put out hunches before he had really been established by others. If he used the word "phlogiston", he soon did his structural thinking as though no such thing existed, and he disliked the doctrine before he knew enough to overthrow it. (Butterfield 1958: 206)

When your gut feeling (intuition) is correct.

In England the resistance was stronger and Cavendish refused to surrender, though he withdrew from the controversy later; Joseph Black went over to Lavoisier very late in the day; while Priestly held out, publishing in 1800 his Doctrine of Phlogiston Established and the Composition of Water Refuted. Like the controversy between Newton and Descartes, the new scientific issue produced something like a national division. Priestley showed an amazing liveliness and ingenuity, possessing the kind of mind which quickly seized on the importance of "fixed air" for the commercial production of mineral waters, and of oxyfen for medical purposes, but could not clear the broad and redistribute all the pieces on it so as to clarify the situation. (Butterfield 1958: 207)

This may explain why the third edition of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1797 devotes, at least in the entry on "acid", so much space to Priestly (cf. e.g. p. 149 of vol. 1).

Cantor, G. N. 1975a. The Edinburgh Phrenology Debate: 1803-1828. Annals of Science 32(3): 195-218. DOI: 10.1080/00033797500200251

This type of debate may lead to victory of one group of protagonists over the other. However, direct conflict between two groups of scientists rarely leads to such a decisive outcome. Many case-studies suggest that frequently there exists a degree of incommensurability between the views held by the two groups of protagonists which prevents a constructive outcome of the debate through means of dialogue. (Cantor 1975a: 196)

I want to write an anti-vaxx term paper but all the sources in scientific databases appear to be pro-vaxx. Could anyone share any docs supporting my view? - seen online.

This incommensurability tends to confirm Planck's statement that 'a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it'. (Cantor 1975a: 196)

"In any case, they will eventually die." (Chalmers 1999: 117)

Scientific study of phrenology began with the anatomical researches on the brain by a Viennese doctor, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), at the turn of the century. Gall's anatomical discoveries were directed by the physiological assumption that specific functional significance was to be found in different parts of the brain. Together with his assistant Dr. Johann Caspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) he worked out the details of phrenology, which rested on three basic principles: firstly, the brain is the organ of mind; secondly, the brain is made up of a number of separate organs, each related to a distinct mental faculty; and thirdly, the size of each organ is a measure of the power of its associated faculty. (Cantor 1975a: 197)

These principles get increasingly more iffy. I wasn't aware that phenology was such a late development but it makes sense.

One of these traditions concerned the philosophy of the human mind, the subject taught by the professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University. The successive incumbents of this post, together with many of their students, explicitly rejected phrenology as being inimical to their philosophical precepts. At the turn of the century Dugald Stewart, a former pupil of Thomas Reid, held the Edinburgh chair and annually attracted about 100 students to his class. Following Stewart's retirement in 1810 his student Thomas Brown held the chair until the latter's death in 1820. The bitter contest of that year resulted in the appointment of John Wilson, who became renowned for his humorous contributions to Blackwood's magazine under the pseudonym 'Christian North'. On Wilson's resignation in 1836 Sir William Hamilton, previously professor of Universal History, gained the position which he held for the next two decades. (Cantor 1975a: 198)

Three out of these five names are already familiar from my brief acquaintance with Scottish common sense realism.

In 1836 Combe was a candidate for the Chair of Logic at Edinburgh University; but although his application was accompanied by about a hundred testimonials, he gained little support from either established medical men in Edinburgh or Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Despite Combe's attempts to convince the Senatus that phrenology provided a basis for studying the true science of mind, Sir William Hamilton, an opponent of phrenology, won the battle. (Cantor 1975a: 201)

Later, Hamilton was published in a philosophical classics series couched by Aristotle and Kant, and proclamed "one of the greatest logicians, perhaps the greatest, since Aristotle" (Meiklejohn 1855: 47) by one of Kant's translators.

Since the phrenologists believed that their science was true and based on indisputable principles, anyone arguing against phrenology was strongly suspected of evil motivation. As one writer in the Phrenological journal stated, 'If phrenology be true, no man can possibly oppose it who is not either uninformed concerning it, - limited in intellect [...] or destitute of honesty'. (Cantor 1975a: 203)

Anyone opposing phrenology must have been a satan-worshipping pedophile.

In Combe's opinion, philosophers had been wasting their time for the last two thousand years. Hence it had fallen to Gall and Spurzheim to correct these long-standing errors of approach. Taking as their maxim 'the brain is the organ of mind' they relate specific parts of the brain to the different functions of the mind. Thus, they claimed, while anatomists and philosophers studied respectively the body and the mind, each neglected the mind-body inter-relationship. In one conceptual leap the phrenologists considered that they had bridged the mind-body dichotomy, and in this they claimed their originality. This difference in approach, however, points to one of the major forms of incommensurability between the opposing factions. (Cantor 1975a: 205)

Here's a reply to anyone still venturing to breach the mind-body gap today: phrenologists already did it.

Although the philosophers differed from one another over which were the basic functions of the mind, they all considered mind capable of a number of different operations, usually called 'faculties'. For example, Stewart listed abstraction, association (of ideas) and memory as some of the mind's faculties. The mind was not regarded as cosisting of the sum of its various faculties, but rather its faculties were the states of activity which the indivisible mind could achieve. (Cantor 1975a: 206)

Nope, there are exactly 7 faculties: awaking, seeing, thinking, desiring, doing, enjoying, and loving (cf. W 1: 8). The faculty of kicking the leg, especially at someone else's buttocks, is missing from this list but this may be explained by this particular faculty being variously developed in different people.

After carrying out a series of experiments Hamilton produced several refutations; for example, he found that the size of the cerebellum in proportion to the brain was larger in all of the female skulls he examined than in male skulls. This was precisely the opposite of what the phrenologists taught, namely, that the cerebellum, containing the organ of sexual activity, is larger in men than in women. To his satisfaction Hamilton had successfully disposed of phrenology once and for all. (Cantor 1975a: 214)

"The cerebellum is like a “mini-brain” when it comes to movement and plays an important role in coordination, posture, and balance, as well as in speech and a number of important mental processes." - All very sexy things in themselves.

The phrenologists, Combe in particular, adopted a personal rather than an objective criterion of truth. He considered that each individual had to convince himself of the truth of phrenology by his own experience. Combe's leading precept was 'Observe nature for yourselves, and prove by your own repeated observations the truth or falsehood of phrenology'. (Cantor 1975a: 215)

There's a modern analogue: "Do your own research" is the common cry of the conspiracy theorists.

Shapin, Steven 1975. Phrenological knowledge and the social structure of early nineteenth-century Edinburgh. Annals of Science 32(3): 219-243. DOI: 10.1080/00033797500200261

Cantor's single-minded emphasis on the intellectual parameters of the controversy, and especially his treatment of intellectual methodology as autonomous, is addressed to the question of why the parties to the debate were prevented from agreeing as to the nature, facts and methods of a legitimate science of mind. They were, in his account, prevented from agreeing because they did not really 'understand' each other, that is, because they held 'incommensurable viewpoints'. Incommensurability, once identified, can then purport to be an explanation of prolonged disagreement among knowledge communities studying the same or similar phenomena. Thus, one might assume that members of a community will 'normally' agree upon the fundamentals of their knowledge, except where incommensurability blocks effective communication, obscures signals from one section of the community to another, and, therefore, hinders the achievement of consensus. So there is a tendency in the point of view (albeit never made explicit in Cantor's paper) to regard consensus as normal and the obstacles to consensus (incommensurables) as eccentric deviations. (Shapin 1975: 220)

He did point out, though, that the phrenologists and anti-phrenologists were not all that distinct communities - their followers later agreed on other ("social") issues, though he didn't really specify what those were.

If one has an interest in seeing a society as an organic, harmonious whole, the 'facts' to the contrary in no way dictate that one cannot see it that way and that one cannot elaborate a type of knowledge which reflects that perspective. Similarly, the 'facts' of social divisiveness and discord may impress themselves far more strongly on other sectors of a society, and the force with which they are felt may be stronger if one senses, as mayn of Edinburgh's mercantile 'new men' undoubtedly did, that the notion of social solidarity aided in the implementation of their oppression. In this case, such sectors of a society may elaborate or adhere to a type of knowledge which emphasizes the real differences between men. (Shapin 1975: 225)

A classic: the lower classes are intimately aware of their rank as second-class citizens whereas the higher classes aren't bothered by any wants to see the discord around them. To bring a modern example: if the police never stops and frisks you, never arrests and beats you for jaywalking or loitering, talk of "police brutality" may indeed sound overblown.

Edinburgh was a battleground for the new system and its critics; the size and esprit de corps of both camps was considerable. But one does not mass an army without an enemy, and the venom of the anti-phrenologists towards a body of ideas which they often characterised as being beneath their attention points to phrenology as a serious threat. (Shapin 1975: 227)

Heard a podcast recently about the reverse, how an army massed for one enemy will have to find a new one when that enemy falls away, i.e. how the U.S. army, which was build for the cold war, searched around (engaged in proxy wars) in the 90s, and when 2001 came around it was thrown into war with terrorism, which has become a "forever war", but is more prone to engage in another cold war, now with China.

Recent work has shown beyond any question that British phrenology was a social reformist movement of the greatest significance. Combe and his circle vigorously, and to some extent [|] successfully, agitated for penal reform, more enlightened treatment of the insane, the provision of scientific education for the working classes, the education of women, the modification of capital punishment laws and the re-thinking of British colonial policy. Phrenology-based reformism in Britain was founded upon a social optimism which maintained that the manipulation of environmental factors could improve the human condition. The various faculties of mind, according to the phrenologists, are given - they are innate. However, George Combe and the great majority of British and American phrenologists believed that environmental influences could be brought to bear to stir one faculty into greater activity, or to offset the undesirable hyperdevelopment of another. Not just the size of the organ of, say, amativeness, but also its tone was held to be responsible for the degree to which its possessor manifested amative behaviour. Thus, self-awareness and then training of the faculties might result in shifting human behaviour from what it would be if the innate faculties worked undisturbed. This environmentalism of the British phrenologists is what lent itself to legitimating a programme of social reform. (Shapin 1975: 231-232)

Curious mismatch, those believing the faculties to be innate advancing social social change.

In 1820 Mackenzie chose for the motto of his Illustrations of phrenology the dictum that 'the most effectual method' of checking error in slcience was 'to multiply, as far as possible, the number of those who can observe and judge'. Truth in mental science was therefore to be guaranteed by a participatory form of inquiry, based on facts that an ordinary person might observe for himself. Empiricist phrenology demanded participation, legitimated participation, and, reciprocally, used wide social participation as a sign of its validity. By 1836 The Scotsman could refer to phrenology as 'a system whose popularity is a strong presumption of its truth'. (Shapin 1975: 236)

The case is indeed similar to that of Paracelsus, who may have advanced a poor science but aimed at good things. Here, sadly, the conclusion is easily refuted by pointing out that the number of people believing in a thing has no bearing on its truth.

Cantor, G. N. 1975b. A critique of Shapin's social interpretation of the Edinburgh phrenology debate. Annals of Science 32(3): 245-256. DOI: 10.1080/00033797500200271

Shapin's historical programme involves 'tracing the roots of the relatively novel and seemingly idiosyncratic to the relatively familiar and known'. Thus he tells us that 'good' historians 'frequently employ our everyday understanding of people's behaviour and motives in explaining their actions in spheres which are far removed from the everyday'. Apparently Shapin is uneasy with ideas and considers that all intellectual activity has to be explained in terms of social activity. (Cantor 1975b: 245)

Tendentious hyperbole. In terms of the nature/nurture debate, Shapin did a pretty good job on the intellectual side of his analysis.

At best Shapin claims that his programme is sanctioned by 'common sense' and by that ubiquitous and often unimpressive body of writings known as the sociology of knowledge. (Cantor 1975b: 246)

Salty.

One of the greatest difficulties facing Shapin's sociological programme is the absence of an adequate translational theory linking the social and cognitive realms. There exists a logical and conceptual hiatus between Shapin's sketch of Edinburgh society and the concepts of phrenology; the social system and the belief system cannot readily be correlated. (Cantor 1975b: 247)

What were the tables about then? If you have one group as members of one type of institutions and another group, excluded from the first, who establish their own institutions to espouse their theories, where is the difficulty in connecting the social and cognitive realms?

Shapin is not consistent in his definition of the phrenological movement since sometimes he includes only the members of the Phrenological Society but elsewhere also includes those who attended popular lectures on phrenology. The members of the Phrenological Society were required to commit themselves to the basic tenets of phrenology, but what do we know about the beliefs of those who attended the popular lectures? How, then, is it possible to relate the movement with the belief system, let alone explain the belief system by the social system? (Cantor 1975b: 247)

Wasn't this one of the first things Shapin discussed? Likewise, what do we know about the students of the University of Edinburgh and their commitment to common sense realism? Cantor sounds like Thatcher here - "there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

The second section of Shapin's paper concerns 'social conflict' in early nineteenth century Edinburgh, yet many of the ordinary members of the Phrenological Society were not permanent residents of that city. Against many of the names on the membership list appear places of residence other than Edinburgh; for example' ames Ashwell of Nottingham', 'Thomas Uwins, Historical Painter, London' - who spent only two years in Edinburgh - and many others. It is not clear how these men related to Edinburgh society, but in all probability they were occasional visitors or perhaps temporary [|] residents. Furthermore, some of the clergy named were from parishes outside Edinburgh. The Royal Society of Edinburgh also recruited members from all over Scotland and England. I should like to question the validity of trying to correlate the social structure of Edinburgh with societies whose membership was not confined to residents of that city. (Cantor 1975b: 250-251)

That is a goooood point. Only those should be ranked in the number of citizens who are fit for war and pay taxes, the sole reasons for entering the someone into the censor's books being to see what number of persons are yearly fit to bear arms and to pay taxes towards the support of the state. Those who lived outside the city of Edinburgh or lived there only for a few years could not possibly have figure in or characterize the social structure of Edinburgh.

Shapin appears to have misinterpreted the meaning of this clause which specified a purely physiological relationship and was unconnected with education or environmentalism. George Combe the leading Edinburgh phrenologist discussed in detail the circumstances which modify the effects of size, namely, 'constitution, health, exercise, excitement from without, and, in some cases, the mutual influence of the organs'. None of these can legitimately be called environmental, indeed, Combe explicitly stated that the phrenologist must allow for the effects of education, but in this case, 'the requisite of caeteris paribus does not hold'. (Cantor 1975b: 254)

If "excitement from without" is not "environmental" then what is?

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