Peter Barker

University of Oklahoma, History of Science, Faculty Member

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Peter Barker has been professor of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma since 1995.He is the author or editor of six books and more than 60 articles on the history and philosophy of science, specializing in the Early Modern period (1450-1750). He has held major grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the United States and from the Danish National Research Council. From 2002-2010 he was the International Evaluator for the Danish national graduate program in his field, and from 2005-2018 he was associate editor, with special responsibility for the early modern period, of Centaurus, the official journal of the European Society for the History of Science. At OU, he recently revived the undergraduate course on Science and Civilization in Islam to complement his interest in history of science in the Persianate world.

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Papers by Peter Barker

Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies

Routledge eBooks, Jan 9, 2023

Process Concepts and Cognitive Obstacles to Change: Perspectives on the History of Science and Science Policy

Centaurus, 2009

Our recent research, much of it conducted with Hanne Andersen of Aarhus University in Denmark, ha... more Our recent research, much of it conducted with Hanne Andersen of Aarhus University in Denmark, has developed an approach to conceptual change in the history of science based on theories of concepts created by cognitive psychologists (Andersen, Barker, Chen, 2006). By using an empirical theory our work stands apart from that of most philosophers and historians of science, with the conspicuous exceptions of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Thomas S. Kuhn. The theories we have adopted are in fact direct empirical vindications of the accounts of concepts offered by Wittgenstein and Kuhn (Barker, Chen, Andersen, 2002). In the present paper we sketch our general position and indicate some of the cases to which it has been successfully applied. Perhaps the most consequential result of our earlier work was the recognition that the cases we had treated successfully all employed a single type of conceptual structure, called an object concept. But one of the main cases we considered, Kepler's innovations in astronomy, could only be adequately analyzed using a second and distinct type of conceptual structure known as a process concept. After introducing these ideas, we indicate their possible application to episodes from the history of science that we have not yet explored, including cognitive obstacles to the acceptance of Darwinism and climate change. We therefore offer these techniques as both a perspective on history and an approach to contemporary problems in public policy connected with science.

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Mudança científica: modelos filosóficos e pesquisa histórica

Estudos Avançados, 1993

Os autores deste ensaio entendem que é preciso testar de forma mais completa as afirmações empíri... more Os autores deste ensaio entendem que é preciso testar de forma mais completa as afirmações empíricas das recentes teorias da mudança científica. Tendo em vista facilitar tal empreendimento, apresentam-se em linguagem não-técnica as afirmações empíricas de Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos e Laudan, que estão organizadas por autor e por assunto. Ao final, inclui-se uma bibliografia de estudos de caso.

The Social Structure of Islamicate Science

Journal of World Philosophies, 2017

The view that Islamicate science went into decline while European science was getting started is ... more The view that Islamicate science went into decline while European science was getting started is still commonly held among historians of science and almost universal in general history and popular presentations. Different versions of the decline thesis make it start in the 11th century with the work of Ibn al-Haytham and al-Ghazālī; in the 13th century with the sack of Baghdad, or at latest with the beginning of the "Scientific Revolution" in Europe. However, it is now increasingly apparent that Islamicate science was healthy well into the period of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. There are many reasons for the continued attraction of the decline theses. In addition to the inaccessibility of sources, these include mistaking the nature of credentialing in Islamicate science, and mistaking the nature of the sources in which original science was appearing. In this paper, I will sketch a more appropriate social structure for understanding Islamicate science by describing t...

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Copernicus, the orbs, and the equant

Synthese, 1990

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Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions and cognitive psychology

Philosophical Psychology, 1998

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Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century

The American Historical Review, 2009

Kuhn's Theory of Concepts

by Hanne Andersen and Peter Barker

The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2006

Duhem on Maxwell: A Case-Study in the Interrelations of History of Science and Philosophy of Science

PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association

We examine Duhem&#x27;s critique of Maxwell, especially Duhem&#x27;s complaints that Maxw... more We examine Duhem&#x27;s critique of Maxwell, especially Duhem&#x27;s complaints that Maxwell&#x27;s theory is too bold or not systematic enough, that it is too dependent on models, and that its concepts are not continuous with those of the past. We argue that these complaints are connected by Duhem&#x27;s historical criterion for the evaluation of physical theories. We briefly compare Duhem&#x27;s criterion of historical continuity with similar criteria developed by&quot; historicists&quot; like Kuhn and Lakatos. We argue that Duhem&#x27;s rejection of theoretical ...