Abstract This study examines the intellectual and personal relationship between Robert K. Merton and Thomas S. Kuhn, and its lasting influence on the emergence of science studies as a distinct field. While Merton is often positioned as a founder of the sociology of science and Kuhn as the architect of the modern philosophy and history of science, their correspondence and collaborations reveal a deeper and more reciprocal exchange. Drawing on archival sources, including letters, notes, and memoirs, the research demonstrates that Merton and Kuhn’s interactions shaped each other’s academic trajectories in ways often overlooked in standard narratives. Merton’s sociological frameworks helped provide Kuhn with a lens for thinking about scientific communities and norms, while Kuhn’s historical and conceptual innovations, like his articulation of paradigm, redirected Merton’s attention toward new intellectual currents. In particular, their exchanges in the 1970s show a mutual effort to resist being cast as opposites by external commentators. This study concludes that the dialogue between Merton and Kuhn was not incidental but formative, providing a connective tissue that helped establish science studies as an interdisciplinary domain bridging history, philosophy, and sociology of science.

Abstract My objective is to analyze the controversy of the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Maunakea, a sacred mountain for Native Hawaiians, and the role that beliefs about Western science play in arguments about whether TMT should be built on this land. I have found these arguments often rely on characterizations of scientific knowledge as objective and universal, thus allowing its prioritization over Indigenous religious concerns. Yet, these characterizations are based on a long defunct view of scientific objectivity, which makes their prominence in these arguments problematic. In this paper, I will argue that these kinds of characterizations of scientific knowledge should be laid to the side in these debates, such that the actual political and ethical problems at hand can receive proper attention.

Abstract How do different experimental control strategies shape the production of biological knowledge? This paper examines Emil du Bois-Reymond’s electrophysiological investigations and Claude Bernard’s toxicological research in 19th-century physiology. Rather than viewing these as opposing methodologies, I analyse their approaches to nerve-muscle communication as complementary responses to shared epistemic challenges. Using Schickore’s framework for experimental control (2024), I show through a detailed historical analysis that experimental control functioned constitutively rather than merely technically in both research programmes. Both scientists engaged in extensive second-order experimentation, systematically exploring their experimental setups to determine what factors needed controlling. Du Bois-Reymond’s non-polarisable electrodes made possible new ways of understanding biological electricity as quantifiable phenomena, while Bernard’s ligature preparation constituted a method for understanding physiological functions as systematically separable within integrated organisms. Control practices and theoretical commitments co-evolved such that what counted as legitimate operationalisation of theoretical principles was shaped by experimental practice. This analysis shows how experimental methodology and biological knowledge co-develop, suggesting implications for understanding methodological tensions in contemporary biological research.

Abstract In 1618 Girolamo Sirtori published his book, Telescopivm: Siue Ars Perficiendi Novvm Illvd Galilaei Visorivm Instrumentum ad Sydera. The Telescopium is a workshop manual, one of the most detailed optical handbooks published at that time. Sirtori constructed several telescopes but acknowledged that they performed poorly. He consulted authors in the field of optics as sources of optical knowledge but maintained a critical stance since he realized that none of the optical authors had contributed anything of substance to the body of optical knowledge. The Telescopium exposes the nature of the tension between theory and practice: how did it happen that authors who wrote on optics failed to construct advanced telescopes, while practitioners who successfully constructed telescopes good for terrestrial and naval usage, were unable to improve the performance of these devices? The construction of a high-quality telescope requires theories for determining the interplay among material and optical features and methods for controlling these relations. Such methods are based on optical theories which are categorically different from the “hands on” skills applied in the spectacle craft industry. We exhibit the properties of spectacle and telescope lenses which Sirtori used and discuss the optical setups of his telescopes. We ask: what is an optical theory? Did Sirtori have a theory to explain how telescopes function? We argue that Sirtori’s Telescopium is grounded in empirically derived rules of thumb from the spectacle-making craft and did not develop into a coherent instrumental theory capable of advancing telescope construction.

Abstract The Frenchmen Gilbert Simondon and René Thom were at odds with scientific reductionism. Despite traveling in the same intellectual circles and having a commonality of ideas, they had little if any influence on one another’s work. Each proposed an alternative ontological framework to serve as a new basis for inquiry rather than accepting the flaws of reductionism or setting aside scientific and technological practices altogether. Both the theory of individuation (Simondon) and catastrophe theory (Thom) begin, conceptually, from an interpretation of Aristotle’s hylomorphism while diverging in their conception of the individual. It is their recasting the individual, as opposed to an indivisible atom, as the basis for scientific enquiry, whether as mathematical prescription or philosophical reflection, which underlies their vision of scientific practice. In this paper, we highlight the similarities and dissimilarities between Simondon’s and Thom’s philosophical views of individuation. Thom uses philosophy as metaphysical foundation for his own mathematical practice and discoveries, while Simondon uses established scientific and technological knowledge in order to bring forth a metaphysics and ontology of individuation.

Abstract Notions of ‘good’ science exert a powerful influence over scientists’ decisions about how research is conducted and rewarded. Rarely are broad interdisciplinary collaborations, such as those between scientists and philosophers of science, characterized as ‘good’ science, despite philosophy’s relevance to scientific inquiry. We draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus to explore how notions of ‘good’ science generate systemic barriers to scientists’ ability to collaborate with philosophers of science. We conducted semi-structured interviews with scientists and engineers who have engaged in research collaborations with philosophers of science and then used thematic codebook analysis to examine participant attitudes, disciplinary expectations, and academic incentive structures. We identify two different conceptions of ‘good’ science: field-aligned science, which is a more technical, data-driven approach that conforms to disciplinary incentive structures, and field-disruptive science, which asks more foundational questions but that tends not to be rewarded within scientific disciplines. Given how philosophy can enhance science, we argue that scientific communities would benefit from actively valuing science undertaken in collaboration with philosophers, but that doing so would require a shift in the field and the habitus that it encourages. Such a shift would also make science more conducive to other types of broad interdisciplinary collaboration.

Abstract When the term “physicalism” is not used interchangeably with “materialism” it typically names a meta-linguistic or methodological view that is intended to sidestep metaphysical debates like those between materialists, dualists, and idealists. Well-known versions of this anti-metaphysical outlook were defended in the 1930s by Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. Indeed, according to a standard account, these thinkers introduced the word “physicalism” into philosophy. In this paper, I explore the pre-history of physicalism as an anti-metaphysical articulation of the unity of science. The terms “physicalism” and “physicalists” were first used in the 1850s, far earlier than is commonly recognized, to refer to a cluster of views developed by phrenologists and early positivists such as Franz Joseph Gall and Henri de Saint-Simon. I argue that this fact has more than mere etymological significance. These nineteenth-century thinkers expressed a distinctive proto-physicalist position that contained two core components of the Vienna Circle’s physicalism—the unity of method and unity of laws. They also contributed to a tradition that influenced the Vienna Circle’s agenda of using the unified conceptual structure of the sciences, which results from physicalism, to enable social progress.

Abstract At the turn of the third millennium, the field of cosmology—broadly defined as the study of the mechanisms and structure governing the universe across different historical frameworks—faces challenges that echo those encountered at the turn of the second millennium in two foundational issues with both epistemological and methodological dimensions. Today, we grapple with substantiated ideas regarding the uncertainty surrounding the constancy of fundamental cosmological parameters, such as the speed of light, the cosmological constant, and the gravitational constant, which are presently considered invariant. While, from a Poincaréan perspective (Poincaré 1913, p. 131), we have not yet been compelled to accept their variability, it remains conceivable that, at some point in the future—whether sooner or later—we may need to abandon the notion of a finely tuned universe. A thousand years ago, during the culmination of astronomical inquiry in the medieval Islamic world, empirical investigations led some astronomers to lay the foundations for a new astronomy. This emerging framework challenged the long-standing assumption—rooted in Greek and Ptolemaic traditions—that certain fundamental parameters were immutable. Instead, it proposed that these parameters might undergo linear, periodic, or secular variations. At the time, the primary “cosmological” constants under scrutiny included precession, the solar orbital elements, and the obliquity of the ecliptic. The astronomical community remained deeply engaged with this issue until the revolutionary shift formed by the transition from mere kinematic constructions to dynamic explanations in the post-Newtonian era confirmed their variability and periodicity.1 The second issue concerns the geometrical shape and physical structure of the universe. Our current observable universe extends across a sphere with a radius of about 46 billion light-years, very likely falling short of the true boundaries of the cosmos. Neither the local geometry of the universe—dependent on its curvature (Flat: Euclidean, Closed: Spherical, or Open: Hyperbolic)—nor its global shape has yet been ascertained. While the flat model remains the prevailing consensus, debates over topology and curvature persist. A mathematically viable possibility is that a flat, finite universe with multiply-connected topology could take the form of a torus—a doughnut-shaped structure. A millennium ago, Abū al-Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (d. 1048),2 a practical astronomer from Khurāsān (a pre-Islamic Persian territory later incorporated into the Islamic domain) proposed that the long-standing principle of a spherical cosmos, upheld for some 1,400 years since Eudoxus and firmly entrenched in the Aristotelian tradition, might be nothing more than the consequence of a mere optical illusion stemming from the effect of the sky’s color and the gradual weakening of the human eyesight, occurring equidistantly from the earthbound observer. He also put forward the intriguing hypothesis of elliptical planetary orbits, which led him to envision a cylindrical universe, and noted the simple fact that other solid shapes could satisfy the arguments and conditions set forth by both the Stagirite and Ptolemy just as well as a sphere. The core of Bīrūnī’s groundbreaking ideas has reached us indirectly through the medium of a short essay titled Fī kuriyyat al-samāʾ (On the sphericity of the heavens) authored by his mentor, Abū Naṣr Manṣūr b. ʿAlī b. ʿIrāq (b. probably in 960 in Guilan, northern Iran, near the Caspian Sea), as a response to his ideas. This paper aims to introduce and examine the various technical peculiarities and philosophical aspects of this overlooked episode in the context of medieval astronomical thought.

Abstract This study explores how disciplinary identity construction in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) graduate education can hinder the development of interdisciplinary scientists. While past research exploring interdisciplinary science often highlights knowledge incompatibilities as the primary obstacle hindering collaboration, our findings suggest that identity incompatibilities also contribute significantly to the ongoing challenges in interdisciplinary research. To examine the identity construction processes during graduate education, we extend research on disciplinary identity by linking it to existing research in organizational discourse and discursive identity. Through this discursive identity framework, we analyze a cohort of science graduate students—half of whom participate in an NSF-sponsored interdisciplinary training program—to illustrate how social-disciplinary pressures inadvertently discourage trainees from embracing interdisciplinary identities. As a result, these pressures limit the formation of robust interdisciplinary identities among emerging scientists. We conclude by discussing implications involving potential paths toward overcoming the insufficiencies of interdisciplinary discourses.

Abstract In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Immanuel Kant famously diagnoses the poor condition of metaphysics at the time. While other disciplines, such as logic, mathematics, and natural sciences have sooner or later trodden the path of science, metaphysics has not been equally successful. Rather than reaching some kind of minimal scientific consensus, metaphysics is a notorious battlefield, and no proposition seems to be established beyond doubt. Kant is not the only one to diagnose the controversial status of metaphysics and its need for reform. We can find similar ideas in Leibniz, Wolff, and Meier. If this diagnosis is correct, it raises the question how metaphysics specifically in early modern Germany developed and what has led to its need for reform. Little is known about the development of the discipline of metaphysics in early modern Germany from the late sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century. This article analyses how metaphysics in early modern Germany unfolded and argues that the call for reform stems from the increasing influence of a new scientific paradigm of practical usefulness and material progress codified in the Berlin Academy on the one hand, and a strong anti-metaphysical agenda outside the universities on the other hand.