From natural philosophy to the sciences: writing the history of nineteenth-century science

2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (07) ◽  
pp. 41-4019-41-4019
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Century Science

Statistics as Social Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-40
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Statistical Thinking ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses statistics as social science. The systematic study of social numbers in the spirit of natural philosophy was pioneered during the 1660s, and was known for about a century and a half as political arithmetic. Its purpose, when not confined to the calculation of insurance or annuity rates, was the promotion of sound, well-informed state policy. Political arithmetic was, according to William Petty, the application of Baconian principles to the art of government. Implicit in the use by political arithmeticians of social numbers was the belief that the wealth and strength of the state depended strongly on the number and character of its subjects. Political arithmetic was supplanted by statistics in France and Great Britain around the beginning of the nineteenth century. The shift in terminology was accompanied by a subtle mutation of concepts that can be seen as one of the most important in the history of statistical thinking.

scholarly journals Natural Philosophy and the Sciences: Challenging Science’s Tunnel Vision

Philosophies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arran Gare
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Dialectical Thinking ◽  
Tunnel Vision ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Prior to the nineteenth century, those who are now regarded as scientists were referred to as natural philosophers. With empiricism, science was claimed to be a superior form of knowledge to philosophy, and natural philosophy was marginalized. This claim for science was challenged by defenders of natural philosophy, and this debate has continued up to the present. The vast majority of mainstream scientists are comfortable in the belief that through applying the scientific method, knowledge will continue to accumulate, and that claims to knowledge outside science apart from practical affairs should not be taken seriously. This is referred to as scientism. It is incumbent on those who defend natural philosophy against scientism not only to expose the illusions and incoherence of scientism, but to show that natural philosophers can make justifiable claims to advancing knowledge. By focusing on a recent characterization and defense of natural philosophy along with a reconstruction of the history of natural philosophy, showing the nature and role of Schelling’s conception of dialectical thinking, I will attempt to identify natural philosophy as a coherent tradition of thought and defend it as something different from science and as essential to it, and essential to the broader culture and to civilization.

(William T. Stearn Prize 2009) “The mighty cassowary”: the discovery and demise of the King Island emu

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Pfennigwerth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Record ◽  
Century Science ◽  
Printing Techniques

Nicolas Baudin's 1800–1804 voyage was the only scientific expedition to collect specimens of the dwarf emu (Dromaius ater) endemic to King Island, Bass Strait, Australia. The expedition's naturalist, François Péron, documented the only detailed, contemporaneous description of the life history of the bird, and the artist Charles-Alexandre Lesueur made the only visual record of a living specimen. Hunted to extinction by 1805, the King Island emu remains relatively unfamiliar. It is ironic that a bird collected as part of one of the most ambitious ordering enterprises in early nineteenth-century science – a quest for intellectual empire – has been more or less forgotten. This paper discusses how human error, assumption, imagination and circumstance hampered recognition and understanding of the King Island emu. Poor record-keeping led to the confusion of this species with other taxa, including the Australian emu and a dwarf species restricted to Kangaroo Island, contributing to the epistemological loss of the species. The expedition's agenda was equally influential in the perception and documentation of the species, with consequences for its conservation in the wild. The paper also argues that as a symbolic rather than a scientific record, Lesueur's illustration fostered inaccuracies in later descriptions of the King Island emu, especially when the image was taken out of context, subjected to the vagaries of nineteenth-century printing techniques and reproduced in more recent ornithological literature. Rather than increasing knowledge about this species, the Baudin expedition and its literature contributed, albeit unwittingly, to the King Island emu's textual and literal extinction.

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