Luke Muehlhauser

Seeking case studies in scientific reduction and conceptual evolution

July 4, 2016 by Luke 14 Comments

Tim Minchin once said “Every mystery ever solved has turned out to be not magic.” One thing I want to understand better is “How, exactly, has that happened in history? In particular, how have our naive pre-scientific concepts evolved in response to, or been eliminated by, scientific progress?

Examples: What is the detailed story of how “water” came to be identified with H2O? How did our concept of “heat” evolve over time, including e.g. when we split it off from our concept of “temperature”? What is the detailed story of how “life” came to be identified with a large set of interacting processes with unclear edge cases such as viruses decided only by convention? What is the detailed story of how “soul” was eliminated from our scientific ontology rather than being remapped onto something “conceptually close” to our earlier conception of it, but which actually exists?

I wish there was a handbook of detailed case studies in scientific reductionism from a variety of scientific disciplines, but I haven’t found any such book yet. The documents I’ve found that are closest to what I want are perhaps:

  • Thagard’s “Conceptual Change in the History of Science: Life, Mind, and Disease” and his earlier Conceptual Revolutions
  • Grisdale’s Conceptual Change: Gods, Elements, and Water
  • Laureys’ “Death, unconsciousness and the brain“
  • Chang’s Inventing Temperature, Is Water H2O?, and some of his papers
  • Chalmers’ The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone

Some semi-detailed case studies also show up in Kuhn, Feyerabend, etc. but they are typically buried in a mass of more theoretical discussion. I’d prefer to read histories that focus on the historical developments.

Got any such case studies, or collections of case studies, to recommend?

Filed Under: Musings

Comments

  1. iarwain says

    July 4, 2016 at 3:58 pm

    I’m in the middle of reading Wootton, The Invention of Science. Is that the sort of thing you’re looking for?

    Reply
    • Luke says

      July 4, 2016 at 4:04 pm

      I’m not really looking for generalist histories of science or the scientific revolution. Rather, I’m looking for histories of how particular scientific reductions or eliminations — of pre-scientific concepts like “water” or “life” or “disease” — occurred. How did we learn what we learned? How did our concepts change in response to early learning, and how did that revised concept inform further scientific inquiry, which further revised our concept of the thing, etc.?

      Reply
      • iarwain says

        July 4, 2016 at 4:23 pm

        He goes through a lot of that in the course of the book. I’m only about 1/3 of the way through, so to this point he’s mainly focused on how our conceptions of the earth and the cosmos changed over the time period of the Rennaisance / early Enlightenment.

        Also, please post any other sources you find – I’m very interested in these topics. Thanks.

        Reply
        • Luke says

          July 4, 2016 at 4:35 pm

          Most general histories of science don’t go into as much detail as I’d like for any single reduction/elimination, because they’re trying to cover more ground rather than zooming in on particular case studies. I’m looking for documents that zoom in on particular case studies.

          Reply
      • Leon says

        August 2, 2016 at 5:53 pm

        I don’t understand the claim that “water”, “disease”, and “life” are pre-scientific concepts. Scientists use these terms all the time, and they’re reasonably precise.

        What are the differences between “reducing” the concept of X, “eliminating” the concept of X, and simply “learning about” X?

        I think “soul” is distinct and more interesting, because, as you point out, it hasn’t been re-mapped.

        Reply
  2. josef johann says

    July 4, 2016 at 4:30 pm

    My old professor Travis Norsen authored a paper on the historical development of the concept of temperature.

    Reply
    • josef johann says

      July 4, 2016 at 4:32 pm

      Oops, I may not have made it clear that there is a link in the above comment. The link is here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8332/1/temperature.pdf

      Reply
      • Luke says

        July 4, 2016 at 4:36 pm

        Thanks. At a glance that paper looks sorta like the kind of thing I’m looking for, though I’d prefer to find sources that cover a broader span of time, not just focused on two particular developments in the history of a concept.

        Reply
  3. Brian Muhia says

    July 5, 2016 at 1:42 am

    Arthur Koestler’s book “The Sleepwalkers” discusses the learning processes that some scientists (cosmologists) went through as they made their discoveries. It highlights the difference between the scientist’s expectations and their discoveries. There’s some amount of noise, but I think some of the case studies you seek could be found there, with some digging.

    Reply
  4. Dan Fitch says

    July 5, 2016 at 7:30 am

    Although it’s not a detailed case study like you’re seeking, “Soul Made Flesh” by Carl Zimmer is pop-sci covering the progress made on locating the human mind in the brain, and it covers quite a long span of time. May have some interesting references.

    Reply
    • Luke says

      July 23, 2016 at 1:41 pm

      Oh yeah, I think I read that a long time ago, and IIRC it is roughly the kind of thing I’m looking for. Thanks!

      Reply
  5. elijahlarmstrong says

    July 18, 2016 at 9:19 pm

    James Ladyman has an interesting paper in Synthese on the history of phlogiston theory:
    http://philpapers.org/rec/LADSRV

    Reply
  6. Enkidum says

    July 19, 2016 at 4:26 pm

    The book Creating Scientific Concepts by Nancy J Nersessian might be a good starting point. Among other things, it has a lengthy discussion of Maxwell’s development of the idea of the electron in terms of a series of metaphors and formal models based on those metaphors. (At least I think that’s right, it’s been a while since I read it.)

    Reply
  7. Sid says

    November 23, 2016 at 3:23 am

    Some suggestions:

    Ian Hacking’s philosophical history of the origin of probability, “The Emergence of Probability”.

    Lorraine Datson and Peter Galison have a book on the origin of the notion of objectivity called “Objectivity”.

    Reply

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