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Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem
Stanley L. Jaki
- Vol. 100, pp 1-472
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TLDR
Duhem as mentioned in this paper described a life at the University of Bordeaux where he became a physicist and became a leader of the French scientific community. But his life was not always easy.Abstract:
1. Young Pierre.- Parents, home and early years.- Eyewitness to a fateful year.- College Stanislas.- Life at Stanislas.- Young scholar.- Personal exploits.- Teachers remembered.- Ready for the grandes ecoles.- 2. The Normalien.- A far cry from 'normal' school.- Cacique general.- An ill-fated thesis.- Anticlericals versus Catholics.- Sailing on waters and events.- Under Pasteur's eyes.- Young man in pursuit of rigor.- 3. Lecturer in Lille.- Citadel against citadel.- Encomiums from officialdom.- A brilliant doctorate.- Students in awe.- A vibrant faculty group.- Portrait of a mind.- Politics: ordinary and academic.- Married and widowed.- Comforts and frustrations of science.- Crushing weight of stacked cards.- 4. In Transit in Rennes.- A not so somnolent town.- Frustrated teacher.- Creating a stir.- In the center of a debate.- Scholar in a wrong place.- 5. Bordeaux: A Road to Paris?.- From home to university.- A chair and a department.- A string of doctorates and their perspective.- A great first ignored.- Prodigious productivity and a recognition.- Life at home.- Avid hiker.- A chair and its political prize.- A small speech as a big crime.- In a clash for a sacred cause.- 6. Bordeaux: Journey's En.- A companionable solitary.- Intransigent integrity.- Twice bereaved.- Relentless work and growing recognition.- A drawn-out election.- A student forever.- Waging his war to the end.- 7. In Memoriam.- Din of war and summer lull.- Bordeaux remembers.- The first anniversary.- Postwar reminiscences.- Some noble efforts.- Missed anniversaries.- Illustrations.- 8. Duhem the Physicist.- The making of a physicist.- The physicist as seen by himself.- The physicist and his peers.- A narrowing advance.- The physicist and posterity.- 9. Duhem the Philosopher.- Common sense with a realist touch.- Attitude to metaphysics.- Rigor as strength and weakness.- Philosophy through history.- Philosopher on trial.- The Theorie physique.- Critics of the Theorie physique.- Christian positivism.- French philosophers.- American dissertations.- The crux of the matter.- 10. Duhem the Historian.- A special historian.- To unsuspected headwaters.- Continuity through Leonardo.- The source of continuous growth.- Scholarship as apologetics.- The quest for completeness.- A gamut of reactions.- Attitudes toward a new vision.- The Renaissance threatened.- Posthumous volumes.- An age in the middle.- List of Duhem's Publications.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.read more
Citations
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Pierre Duhem and Ernst Mach on Thought Experiments
TL;DR: The conventional interpretation that Pierre Duhem condemned outright any type of thought experiment in Ernst Mach's sense should be, at least in large part, rejected as mentioned in this paper, although Duhem placed particul...
Braucht die Theoretische Physik den Religiösen Glauben? Neo-Scholastik und Positivismus in der Dritten RepublikLa Physique Théorique A-T-Elle Besoin des Croyances Religieuses? Néo-Scolastique et Postivisme Sous la IIIe RépubliqueIs theoretical physics in need of religious faith? Neo-scholasticism and positivism in the Third RepublicLa Física Teórica Necesita las Creencias Religiosas? Neoescolástica y Positivismo Bajo la III República
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that Duhem's philosophical colleague Abel Rey played a central role in this connection, and this view is correct, but it needs to be supplemented by taking account of the discursive context of Duhem’s position.
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'Courage Not Under Fire': Realism, Anti-realism, and the Epistemological Virtues
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical perspective on two lines of thought in recent epistemology and philosophy of science, namely Michael Dummett?s anti-realist approach to issues of truth, meaning, and knowledge and Bas van Fraassen?s influential programme of constructive empiricism, is presented.
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The virgin birth and the birth of science
TL;DR: The Strasbourg cathedral clock is a chief ornament of the tower of St Mary the Virgin Church in Strasbourg as mentioned in this paper, and it has been used for hundreds of years to display the grandeur of the cathedral.
References
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Einstein and Duhem
TL;DR: The central role of a Duhemian holistic, underdeterminationist variety of conventionalism in Einstein's thought is examined in this paper, with special emphasis on Einstein's deployment of Duhem's arguments in his debates with neo-Kantian interpreters of relativity and in his critique of the empiricist doctrines of theory testing advanced by Schlick, Reichenbach, and Carnap.
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Cassirer, schlick and ‘structural’ realism: the philosophy of the exact sciences in the background to early logical empiricism
TL;DR: CASSIRER, SCHLICK, and as discussed by the authors as discussed by the authors present a theory of the exact-scribes in the background of early logical EMPIRICISM, which they call "structural realism".
BookDOI
John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought
TL;DR: The career of the sixteenth-century English mathematician and natural philosopher John Dee (1527-1609) has played a significant role in recent historiographical debates about the relationship between magic and science as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Better Red than Dead—Putting an End to the Social Irrelevance of Postwar Philosophy of Science
TL;DR: The authors argued that an adequate theory of science must be capable of theorizing the role of values and motives in science and that it must take seriously the irreducibly social nature of scientific knowledge.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Survey of the Hysteretic Duhem Model
TL;DR: The relationship between the Duhem model as a mathematical representation and hysteresis as the object of that representation is surveyed in this paper, where the authors present a survey of the relationships between the two models.