Second UCLA Conference in History & Philosophy of Science

9:00

“Circumscrib'd Omnipresency”: More and Boscovich on Occupying Space
Thomas Holden, UCSB Philosophy

The seventeenth century divine Henry More and the eighteenth century natural philosopher Roger Boscovich share a model of extended simple beings. These entities have volume and figure: they occupy regions of space, and they have spatially distinct subparts. Nevertheless, they are genuinely simple beings, not composites or aggregates. Nor are they splittable, even by divine power. In this paper I introduce this model of extended simples and briefly explain its role in the systems of More and Boscovich. I then examine these philosophers' response to the objection -- pressed by numerous contemporaries -- that whatever has spatially distinct parts is necessarily both composite and splittable (at least by God). Finally, I close with a discussion of the implications of the model for our thinking about what it is for a being to occupy a region of space.

10:30

Beyond Natural Theology: Method and Technique in Eighteenth-Century Natural History
Mary Terrall, UCLA History

What were the ramifications of “insectology” in the Enlightenment? While most insect enthusiasts were hardly averse to final causes or to seeing the handiwork of God in nature, they were not primarily motivated by theological considerations. In the works of practicing observers and experimenters, even those committed to a providential form of theology, design arguments never take center stage, and often are remarkably understated. The practice of natural history in the Enlightenment drew on much more than a kneejerk providentialism, in spite of accusations to this effect by the detractors of insects. In fact, the study of insects became something of a flashpoint for competing claims about the goals and methods of natural history, about the value of close and systematic observation, and about the place of theory or general laws of nature in such an undertaking. This paper looks at some of the strategies and techniques (including experiments and other interventions) devised by observers of insects in order to see and to allow others to see into the world of the very small. I'm also interested in how they represented their science as a combination of hard work and passion, of rational attention and pleasure. Their accounts of insect life, show how the naturalists' world intersects with that of the insects whose “ingenuity” (or “genius”) provoked a corresponding ingenuity and attention from their observers.

1:30

Historical Narrative and Dirichlet's Concept of a Function
M. Norton Wise, UCLA History

In Berlin in 1829 Dirichlet produced a famous proof of the generality of the Fourier series representation of a function. He also generalized the concept of a mathematical function, claiming that it should be understood geometrically, as an arbitrarily drawn curve, rather than as an algebraically expressible law. With respect to this latter claim, I will consider what sort of account a historian can best give of how Dirichlet came to express his new perspective. The account I offer will stress conditions of possibility at a particular place and time rather than causes, reasons, or problems and their solutions. It will attempt to naturalize Dirichlet’s claim within a local Berlin network of people and values associated with “the curve” as the proper expression of natural forms.

3:30

Kant on Transcendental Laws
Eric Watkins, UCSD Philosophy

In this paper, I describe several features of Kant's account of transcendental laws, explaining how it differs in its essentials from Humean and Necessitarian positions. I also consider how the Kantian account can respond to objections that are based on foundational discoveries in mathematics and physics (non-Euclidean geometries and relativity theory, respectively).

5:00

Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
Michael Friedman , Stanford Philosophy

Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science appeared at the height of Kant's “critical” period in 1786, between the first (1781) and second (1787) editions of the Critique of Pure Reason. As such, this work on the foundations of physics played a crucial role in Kant's transformation of the very meaning of “metaphysics” more generally. In particular, Kant thus radically transformed the earlier metaphysical tradition represented by Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton as well, by attempting to synthesize the insights of Newton and Leibniz. Kant's appreciation of the details of Newtonian physics was central to this effort, and the final result is a more “humanistic” metaphysics denying any possibility of theoretical knowledge of supersensible objects such as God and the soul.