History of the Philosophy of Science

Ajīva is an umbrella term for a group of eternal non-living substances, namely, matter, medium of motion, medium of rest, space, and, as maintained by some proponents of Jain thought, time. Not possessing an attribute of consciousness, these are distinguished from living substances. They together represent one of the basic principles of Jain thought.

"Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."—Chicago Tribune

The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic.

Over a year on The New York Times bestseller list

Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." 

At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

Article reprinted in: Madill, A., & Gough, B. (2016). Qualitative research and its place in psychological science. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Methodological issues and strategies in clinical research (4th ed., pp. 437–458). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14805-028

In discussing the place of diverse qualitative research within psychological science, the authors highlight the potential permeability of the quantitative-qualitative boundary and identify different ways of increasing communication between researchers specializing in different methods. Explicating diversity within qualitative research is facilitated, initially, through documenting the range of qualitative data collection and analytic methods available. The authors then consider the notion of paradigmatic frame and review debates on the current and future positioning of qualitative research within psychological science. In so doing, the authors argue that the different ways in which the concept of paradigm can be interpreted allow them to challenge the idea that diverse research paradigms are prima facie incommensurate. Further, reviewing the ways in which proponents of qualitative research are seeking to reconfigure the links between paradigms helps the authors to envisage how communication between research communities can be enhanced. This critical review allows the authors to systematize possible configurations for research practice in psychology on a continuum of paradigm integration and to specify associated criteria for judging intermethod coherence.

This is a splendid book; it will be widely read and much discussed. Working from the assumption that philosophers ought to attend to 'the The Big E by Mark Lilla The New York Review of Books Most contemporary versions of the history of philosophy will view this claim to be less false. For the problem of evil is thought to be a theological one. .. I have called this an alternative history of philosophy because its aims are as different as evil in modern thought: an alternative history of philosophy Jun 18, 2009-2 min-Uploaded by jiyonruisu. interview Evil in Modern Thought.

The quest to provide a fundamental understanding and explanation of reality is an ambitious one. Perhaps it is too ambitious. The possible restrictions for such an enterprise to be successful must be inquired in order to determine the issue. Section 1 explores one’s understanding in reaching (scientific) conclusions: to what extent does a successful account testify to understanding? Section 2 focuses on the other side of such an account: does it provide an explanation in a more fundamental sense than pointing out causes of phenomena, or is it restricted to such a task? A critical stance vis-à-vis the (scientific) enterprise of unearthing reality’s structure remains necessary in order not to confuse a consistent and productive theory with one that demonstrates an understanding and explanation in the sense of this article.

Ian Hacking is among the few that have successfully undermined the Analytic/Continental divide, by working on the “trading zones” between these two strands, and forged their conceptual instruments by drawing these latter from different sources and applying them to widely diverse philosophical debates, across natural, social and medical sciences: debates ranging from the problem of induction and proofs and deduction in mathematics to the theories of meaning and truth as well as to the controversy between realism and constructivism in natural and social sciences.

Το διασημότερο απόσπασμα του Γενικού Σχολίου ξεκινά με την περίφημη εξαγγελία «hypotheses non fingo», αναφορικά με τον «λόγο (reason), την εξήγηση για τις ιδιότητες της βαρύτητας στις οποίες έχει αναφερεθεί αμέσως προηγουμένως ο Νεύτων: κατά κύριο λόγο, πρόκειται για την συμπεριφορά της βαρύτητας σύμφωνα με τον νόμο αντιστρόφου τετραγώνου, συμπεριλαμβανομένου του κεντρικού («κεντρομόλου») και παγκόσμιου-καθολικού χαρακτήρα της, και της αναλογίας της με τις ποσότητες ύλης (μάζες) των αλληλεπιδρώντων σωμάτων. Αυτό διότι, κατά τον ίδιο, ό,τι δεν «παράγεται (is deduced) από «φαινόμενα», θα πρέπει να αποκαλείται υπόθεση. Και δεν έχει μπορέσει -«μέχρι στιγμής»- να παραγάγει από φαινόμενα έναν τέτοιο «λόγο». Ενώ οι «υποθέσεις», ακόμη και αν είναι «φυσικές» ή «μηχανικές», δεν έχουν θέση στην «πειραματική φιλοσοφία». Στην (φυσική) φιλοσοφία αυτού του είδους, όπου ο ίδιος αυτοτοποθετείται, οι προτάσεις «παράγονται» από «φαινόμενα» και γενικεύονται μέσω επαγωγής. Κοινά παραδεκτές (τουλάχιστον για τότε) ποιότητες όπως η αδιαπερατότητα ή η κινητικότητα των σωμάτων, καθώς και νόμοι που τις διέπουν -όπως οι νόμοι της κίνησης που ο ίδιος διατύπωσε, καθώς και ο επίμαχος νόμος της βαρύτητας- έχουν ανακαλυφθεί με τέτοια μέθοδο, σημειώνει. Τελειώνοντας το απόσπασμα, βεβαιώνει πως είναι αρκετό ότι η βαρύτητα υπάρχει πραγματικά, δρα σύμφωνα με τους νόμους που έχει ο ίδιος παρουσιάσει, και επαρκεί ως εξήγηση όλων των κινήσεων, τόσο στην ουράνια όσο και στη γήινη σφαίρα -τις οποίες με αυτό τον τρόπο ενοποίησε. Η εξαγγελία του Νεύτωνα περί «υποθέσεων», και γενικότερα το υπό συζήτηση απόσπασμα, θα πρέπει ίσως, μέχρι ορισμένου βαθμού, να ιδωθεί υπό το φως μιας διάκρισης μεταξύ θεωρησιακής (speculative) και πειραματικής (experimental) φυσικής φιλοσοφίας. Η συνήθης κατανόηση της εναντίωσης του Νεύτωνα στις «υποθέσεις» τον παρουσιάζει ως κάποιον που αποφεύγει να βασιστεί στον θεωρησιακό και θεωρούμενο ως γνω-σιολογικά προβληματικό (στο πεδίο της φυσικής φιλοσοφίας, τουλάχιστον) a priori στοχασμό, και αντ΄ αυτού προχωρά με αυστηρό τρόπο από εμπειρικά παρατηρησιακά και πειραματικά δεδομένα («φαι-νόμενα») σε συμπεράσματα καλά θεμελιωμένα σε τέτοια δεδομένα, αποκλείοντας και απορρίπτοντας επισφαλείς εικασίες -ακόμη και αν αυτές θα εξηγούσαν τα δεδομένα, αν ήταν αληθείς. Προτείνεται ένα ιδεώδες εμπειρικής «απόδειξης», όπως φαίνεται να αξιώνει ο όρος «παραγωγή (deduction)». Ενώ ό,τι δεν πληροί τις προδιαγραφές που τίθενται από ένα τέτοιο ιδεώδες, θα πρέπει να εξοβελίζεται από την («πειραματική») φιλοσοφία. Θα δούμε ότι υπάρχουν περιορισμοί σε μια τέτοια αξίωση, καθώς και σε μια αντίστοιχη ανάγνωση του Νεύτωνα. Ωστόσο, δεν θα παρεκκλίνουμε πολύ από μια παρόμοια ερμηνευτική κατεύθυνση, καθότι, εκτός του ότι είναι αρκετά συνήθης, δίνει μια καλή αφετηρία για στοχασμό γύρω από τη μέθοδο, και οδηγεί με φυσικό τρόπο στις κατάλληλες γνωσιολογικές αλλά και ιστορικές «διορθώσεις» της απλουστευτικής εικόνας.

In physics, structures are good candidates for the role of transparadigmatic invariants, which entities can no longer play. This is why structural realism looks more credible than standard entity realism. But why should structures be stable, rather than entities ? Here, structural realists have no answer ; they content themselves with the mere observation that this is how things stand. By contrast, transcendental structuralism (derived from Kant's transcendental idealism) can easily make sense of this fact. Indeed, it shows that when knowledge bears on phenomena, namely on the emergent byproduct of a relation between the explorer and what is to be explored, this knowledge necessarily bears on relations between such phenomena. After a development on the clarifying power of transcendental structuralism, I turn to an early transcendental structuralist interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Jean-Louis Destouches (1909-1980). Destouches, an early French philosopher of physics, was a student of Louis de Broglie. He recasted in the 1940 the very concept of physical theory in the light of quantum physics. According to him, whenever phenomena are inextricably relative to the experimental setup , a physical theory cannot provide anything beyond a list of interconnected predictions for future facts given a relevant class of past facts. In his general mathematical theory of predictions, the Ψ-functions of quantum mechanics do not refer to some " real " waves; they are shown to be nothing but the formal expression of the phenomena's being relative to incompatible experimental contexts. Since the quantization of variables can itself be derived from a wave-mechanical formalism, it becomes clear that the most prominent features of quantum mechanics are a mere consequence of contextuality. Destouches thus proved that it is easy to make sense of quantum mechanics provided a reflective attitude is adopted. By contrast, too many difficulties arise when one tries at any cost to make quantum mechanics intelligible within a purely ontological framework.

La critica alla nozione sostanziale di Io è un tema particolarmente rilevante del tardo pensiero di Friedrich Nietzsche che merita di essere contestualizzato nel dibattito ottocentesco sulla psicologia scientifica. Tale dibattito trova in autori come Friedrich Lange ed Ernst Mach due punti di riferimento importanti. Entrambi, sulla scorta della lezione di Gustav Fechner, prospettano infatti uno sviluppo delle scienze cognitive che muova in direzione di una “psicologia senz’anima”, permettendo così un affrancamento di questa disciplina dalla vecchia metafisica della sostanza. A questi autori, entrambi letti da Nietzsche, si farà riferimento nel presente articolo, per comprendere se e in che senso quest’ultimo pensi alla necessità di un abbandono della nozione di soggetto da parte del pensiero filosofico."

When historians and philosophers of science discuss instrumentality, they are primarily referring to an epistemological and metaphysical position that holds that science is concerned not with making truth claims but rather with predictability. Scholars correctly locate the origins of instrumental natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, when a drive toward the practical, applied study of nature transformed natural philosophy from

Primarily between 1833 and 1840, William Whewell attempted to accomplish what natural philosophers and scientists since at least Galileo had failed to do: to provide a systematic and broad-ranged study of the tides and to attempt to establish a general scientific theory of tidal phenomena. I document the close interaction between Whewell's philosophy of science (especially his methodological views) and his scientific practice as a tidologist. I claim that the intertwinement between Whewell's methodology and his tidology is more fundamental than has hitherto been documented.

Hans Kleinpeter’s letters to Ernst Mach held in the Deutsches Museum Archive in Munich are of the greatest importance in order to learn some details of the relationship between these scholars. In the three letters here entirely published for the first time, Kleinpeter shows his interest for Nietzsche’s thought, and states that some of the latter’s ideas are in compliance with Mach’s epistemology.

During the second decade of the 20th century Hans Kleinpeter, an Austrian scholar devoted to the development of the modern science, published some brief papers on Nietzsche’s thought. Kleinpeter has been one of the main upholders of Mach’s epistemology and probably the first who connected his ideas with the philosophy of Nietzsche. In his book on Der Phänomenalismus (1913) he described a new world view that arose in the 19th century, a perspective that ‒ according to him ‒ completely contrasted the mechanistic and metaphysical world view of the old school of scientific inquiry. The main outcome of the scientists whose name was related with this perspective (e.g. Clifford, Maxwell, Kirchoff and, obviously, Mach himself) has been the refusal of the absolute value of any “truth”.
Kleinpeter’s statements on this topic are a good example of the rising of a Scientific Philosophy, whose development involved many scientists and thinkers that later set up the Verein Ernst Mach and the Wiener Kreis. On the other hand, his interest on Nietzsche is a relevant case of reception of the latter’s thought, that Kleinpeter puts into the context of the contemporary epistemology. In fact, he considers Nietzsche as one of the main upholders of the phenomenalistic world view, and states that he «took part at the same renewal of philosophical investigation that arose from the latest results of scientific inquiry» during the 19th century. A renewal whose main outcomes has been presented by John Stallo in his book on The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881), which Kleinpeter translated in German and published in 1901. According to Kleinpeter, in Nietzsche’s writings (mostly unpublished) one can find a theory of knowledge quite close to the one presented by both Mach and the new born Pragmatism, i.e. the complete refusal of an absolute truth and, therefore, the development of an antimetaphysical world view.
In my paper I’ll discuss the main statements presented by Kleinpeter on this topic and show which of Nietzsche’s ideas has actually been in compliance with the main outcomes of late 19th century science. Thus, I’ll carry out a reconstruction of an unfamiliar side of the first period of reception of the philosophy of Nietzsche and its relevance to the development of a new (scientific) world view.

In The Analysis of Mind (1921), Bertrand Russell stresses the importance of William James’ late neutral monist view of consciousness for the studies in psychology. In so doing, he focuses on a topic whose roots can be traced back to the nineteenth-century European debate on physiology and scientific psychology. In this introductory paper I shall briefly outline the path that, starting from the revival of Kant in the German scientific debate, leads to both Ernst Mach’s and William James’ questioning the value of the I or consciousness as a substance concept.

Creative problem-solving dreams virtually always occur only after the dreamer has done
extensive work on the issue awake. Most typically, a person is stuck at one particular step
of a multiple phase process and the dream solves that step. The dream of Dmitri Mendeleev
about The Periodic Table of the Elements is no exception. All accounts of this event agree
that he’d worked for years on the Table, produced other drafts, but that he attributed the
version he was most satisfied with to a dream. It is less clear whether Kedrov is correct in
his reconstruction that it was the reversal of columns vs. rows which the dream provided.
Accounts of dreams from contemporary scientists and inventors are a richer source for the
detail required to generalize about the role of dreams in problem solving.

While Collingwood’s Idea of History (ih) is an excellent resource for defending history’s autonomy, its invocation is not without problems. If history deals only in reflective thought, how can it encompass irrational action? How can history reconcile its subjective method of imagination with its claim to objectivity? The most successful solutions to these problems, such as those proposed by D’Oro and Mink, appeal to Collingwood’s greater philosophical system, but they typically attribute him a restrictive and unintuitive view of historical inquiry. We are left with a historical practice that is less equipped to address the problems we intuitively want it to solve – those dealing with past human experience as it actually occurred. Using The Principles of Art (pa), I present an interpretation of Collingwood’s philosophy of history in which emotions are communicable between individuals. His theory of art defines artistic creation as a process in which unconscious emotions are harnessed...

This essay series, titled "Huxley, Dewey, and Pinker: Evolution, Science and Enlightenment-The Virtue of Critical Inquiry?" examines the effort of Thomas Huxley, John Dewey, and Steven Pinker to account for and justify the transformative impact of Darwinian evolution upon the intellectual, emotional, and moral lives of humanity. The series explores the struggle of humanity first, to understand the cosmos that was revealed by the discoveries of Darwinian evolution, second, to manage the intellectual, emotional and moral implications of these discoveries, and third, to assess the dangers and the benefits of the processes of inquiry that created the revolution within which we all now must live.

Summary.
The Alexandrian Aristotelian-scholar Moses Maimonides (1138-1204 AD) is considered in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as ‘the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period’.  To the Jews Maimonides was the greatest of all expositors of the Hebrew scriptures after the great law giver. For this reason the Hebrews said; ‘From Moses to Moses there was none greater than Moses.’  It might be said that Maimonides was to Judaism what Aquinas was to Christianity. In the following selection from his ‘Guide for the Perplexed’  Maimonides explains the nature of Hebrew prophecy – where it starts and stops and how it is to be understood. (GUIDE Book II Chapter XLVII) In offering this selection it is not our purpose to quote a mere authority, but to supply the reasoning and justification for the authority’s conclusion – viz.  the prophets clearly used figurative and not ‘only plain’ language.

This paper spells out, on the basis of hitherto unexplored archival documents, the context in which Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism took shape, focusing on the influence of the 1960s student movement on the development of Feyerabend's later thought as epitomized by his influential book Against Method (1975). Feyerabend's exposure to the student protests in the 1960s was extraordinarily wide, timely and momentous. As a regular member of the faculty at Berkeley since 1958, Feyerabend could appreciate the evolution of the US student movement throughout the following decade in one of its main centres of propagation. In addition, Feyerabend taught in London (1967-70), Berlin (1968) and Yale (1969) on joint visiting professorships right at the time when the wave of protests reached Europe and the movement radicalized, turning increasingly violent on both sides of the Atlantic. The stimuli caused by the its impact on Western academic institutions and society at large occurred at a crucial stage in Feyerabend's intellectual life as he was reconsidering his allegiance to the Popperian School and striving to articulate an original theoretical position. Feyerabend's reaction was complex and the overall effects proved to be deep and lasting. Neither the bursts of student protests that repeatedly stormed the Berkeley campus between 1960 and 1968 nor the 1967 sit-in at the LSE that intensified the student struggle in the UK left significant traces in Feyerabend's published or private papers, including his autobiographical remarks, correspondence and diaries, despite the fact that Feyerabend's name ended up on FBI records and that he was close to some of the student movement's leaders. Indeed, Feyerabend apparently did not become directly involved in the movement until 1968, when he actively sympathized with the student protesters in Berlin, contributing to the critical discussion of political issues during his classes, partly on the grounds of the historically-based anti-methodological views that he was developing in the philosophy of science. It was within this strongly politicized context that Feyerabend promptly appropriated the " anarchistic " label which the radical students attached to his stance. He also became rapidly acquainted with the revolutionary literature, including the works of Marx, Trotsky, Mao, and Cohn-Bendit, with whose heterodox version of dialectical materialism Feyerabend started flirting. Moreover, he committed himself to the cause of the New Left by signing the book contract that eventually resulted in Against Method. In 1969, however, as violence escalated in the confrontation between the students and police forces and as the movement split into factions, Feyerabend became scathing of the students' strategies and of their intellectual leaders within academia, such as Marcuse. Fascinated by a major target of Marcuse's criticism, Mill's On Liberty, Feyerabend made its tenets a cornerstone in the development of his own Dadaistic approach. The latter combined Feyerabend's Millian understanding of pluralism as the most sensible implementation of critical thinking within a fallibilist framework with the acknowledgment of the ultimate impotence of arguments to settle disputes, the firm rejection of violence and a promotion of ridicule as an effective rhetorical means of theoretical and social change.

I analyse critically what I regard as the most accomplished empiricist account of propensities, namely the long run propensity theory developed by Donald Gillies (2000). Empiricist accounts are distinguished by their commitment to the ‘identity thesis’: the identification of propensities and objective probabilities. These theories are intended, in the tradition of Karl Popper’s influential proposal, to provide an interpretation of probability (under a suitable version of Kolmogorov’s axioms) that renders probability statements directly testable by experiment. I argue that the commitment to the identity thesis leaves empiricist theories, including Gillies’ version, vulnerable to a variant of what is known as Humphreys’ paradox. I suggest that the tension may be resolved only by abandoning the identity thesis, and by adopting instead an understanding of propensities as explanatory properties of chancy objects.

The focus of the talk is the status and, consequently, the tasks of historical epistemology. In particular, the question at stake is the following: can the history of an epistemic norm bear a normative value in turn? This question raises quite naturally when we consider inquiries in historical epistemology that deal with normative objects, such as the so-called epistemic norms. Indeed, I will use [Daston and Galison 2007] as a starting point for reaching the theoretical problem I want to discuss. I will try to distinguish three key meanings of normativity and then I will focus my attention on two historical moments where the notion of normativity was at the very heart of philosophy of science: I mean the times of logical empiricists, Hans Reichenbach in particular, and the Sixties Neo-positivistic reaction to Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions". I will show how these philosophical arguments, based on the notion of normativity, can be used as theoretical tools in order to provide an answer to my starting question. A line of reasoning borrowed from Kant's Critique of Practical Reason will be another useful theoretical source that I will use. Finally, by the means of these concepts I will provide an answer and, in the conclusion, I will reflect on what I think is the proper task of historical epistemology – a task that I will call “critique” in opposition to normativity.

The literature on thought experiments has been steadily expanding since 1986. And yet, it appears that several aspects of the philosophical conversation have recently stalled. We claim that the current philosophical literature has much to gain by a reappraisal of its origins: by identifying the historical contingencies that caused the contemporary discussion to take the shape it has, we will be in a better position to entertain other directions the current debate could go, identify and eliminate mistaken dogma, and revive forgotten insights. This special issue of HOPOS is an attempt to start such a conversation, and we hope it might inspire similar pursuits in the history of the philosophy of other scientific methods like modeling, experiment, and computer simulation.

Current theories of the division of cognitive labor are confined to the ``context of justification'', assuming exogenous theories. But new theories are made from the same labor that is used for developing existing theories, and if none of this labor is ever allocated to create new alternatives, then scientific progress is impossible. A unified model is proposed in which theories are no longer given but a function of the division of labor in the model itself. The interactions of individuals balancing the exploitation of existing theories and the exploration of new theories results in a robust cyclical pattern.

In this paper, I will discuss van Petrus van Musschenbroek’s (1692-1761)  philosophy of science and more particularly his views on the exemplary status of chemistry. Throughout his oeuvre, van Musschenbroek reflected on the nature of and the proper method for “experimental philosophy”. Characteristic for van Musschenbroek’s philosophy of science are his emphasis on the central role of experiments, the need to avoid hasty generalizations, the limitations of abstract mathematical models, and the variety and heterogeneity of nature. A recurrent theme in his writings on the method of “experimental philosophy” is the exemplary nature of chemistry. Although van Musschenbroek did not present any of his own research or teaching as pertaining to chemistry, he recurrently singled out chemistry as the clearest example of what experimental philosophy should look like.
I first provide a short overview of van Musschenbroek’s philosophy of science. Special attention will be given to his views on laws of nature and mathematical idealization. I then discuss van Musschenbroek’s “Oration on the method for performing physical experiments” (van Musschenbroek 1731). In this oration, he provides a detailed account of how one should design, plan, and use experiments in research. This oration also contains a lengthy discussion of the exemplary role of chemistry. Having introduced van Musschenbroek’s praise for chemistry, I show how his views on chemistry connect to his views on laws of nature and idealization. Next, I turn to an example from van Musschenbroek’s own research practice, namely the research on alloys conducted in the 1750s. Although he does not present this research as “chemical”, I show how it fits a definition of chemistry found in his manuscripts. The research on alloys thus provides a clear illustration of the points made on van Musschenbroek’s philosophy of science and the exemplary nature of chemistry. I conclude by providing a more general view on the place of van Musschenbroek’s views and research in the context of broader developments taking place in the eighteenth century regarding the place and nature of chemistry as an (academic) discipline.

This paper concerns Quine's classification of philosophies of mathematics as sketched in "On what there is" and offers a new reading of Quine's view. In his famous paper Quine defines three positions: Realism, Conceptualism, and Nominalism. Each of them, he says, has its modern expression, respectively, in Logicism, Intuitionism, and Formalism. According to Quine these foundational positions can be accepted or rejected on a clear and objective basis, according to their distinctive ontological commitments. Consistent with his own criterion for ontological commitment (buttressed by his view on impredicative definitions), Quine adopts the Realist (or the Platonist) position in mathematics. Later, it is shown that genuine Intuitionism is not definable by Quine but is easily defined in Vuillemin's classification scheme (in What are philosophical systems? C.U.P., 1986).

Mathematics for Hume is the exemplary field of demonstrative knowledge. Ideally, this knowledge is a priori as it arises only from the comparison of ideas without any further empirical input; it is certain because demonstration consist of steps that are intuitively evident and infallible; and it is also necessary because the possibility of its falsity is inconceivable as it would imply a contradiction. But this is only the ideal, because demonstrative sciences are human enterprises and as such they are just as fallible as their human practitioners. According to the reading suggested here, Hume develops a radical sceptical challenge for mathematics, and thereby he undermines the knowledge claims associated with demonstrative reasoning. But Hume does not stop there: he also offers resources for a sceptical solution to this challenge, one that appeals crucially to social practices, and sketches the social genealogy of a community-wide mathematical certainty. While explaining this process, he relies on the conceptual resources of his faculty psychology that helps him to distinguish between the metaphysics and practices of mathematical knowledge. His account explains why we have reasons to be dubious about our reasoning capacities, and also how human nature and sociability offers some remedy from these epistemic adversities.

I defend a threefold form of pluralism about chance, involving a tripartite distinction between propensities, probabilities, and frequencies. The argument has a negative and a positive part. Negatively, I argue against the identity thesis that informs current propensity theories, which already suggests the need for a tripartite distinction. Positively, I argue that that a tripartite distinction is implicit in much statistical practice. Finally, I apply a well-known framework in the modeling literature in order to characterize these three separate concepts functionally in terms of their roles in modeling practice