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Some subscribers to this list may find the following paper abstract of
"Methodology and the Birth of Modern Cosmological Inquiry" by Gale & Shanks
of interest. The abstract was posted to the historical sciences list run
by Bob O'Hara, and it deals with some of the issues recently discussed on
HES.
Greg Ransom
********************************************
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 12:47:08 CST
From: [log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Founder's Effect in Cosmology, ABS
Abstract of
METHODOLOGY AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN COSMOLOGICAL INQUIRY
by
George Gale
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Niall Shanks
East Tennessee State University
To appear: 1996: _Stud. Hist. Phil. Mod. Physics_
The central concern of this paper is with the ways in which issues,
questions and debates in the domain of the philosophy of science can
influence the birth, and subsequent development of a science. The case
study to be discussed is that of modern cosmology. We will argue that
the study of events in the early history of modern cosmology affords
ample evidence of the many ways in which philosophy of science and
science are inextricably intertwined.
To the extent that we are able to make our case we will (a) provide
evidence against the adequacy of rationalist reconstructions of the
history of science that pretend that science develops in a philosophical
vacuum, without regard to the conceptual and methodological debates
that are standard fare among philosophers of science; and (b) provide
evidence against the intellectual adequacy of (currently popular) social
constructivist attempts to "sociologize" the analysis of events in the
history of science in ways that downplay or eliminate the role of
philosophy of science and its history as factors shaping the development
of science.
It turns out that the following two questions are central to
understanding the nature of modern cosmology:
[1] Why were events surrounding the birth of modern cosmology marked
by vigorous indeed, sometimes downright raucous philosophical debates?
[2] Why was the subsequent development of modern cosmology so long
affected by the outcome of the debate?
The discussion which follows attempts to answer these questions, in
large part, by providing an historical narrative. Since many of the
elements of the historical narrative are still not widely known, the
narrative should be of some intrinsic interest, independently of its
interest as part of the answer to the two questions.
In our discussion of the second question, we will argue that there
is an interesting explanatory analogy to be drawn between certain
features of the initial community of cosmologists, and certain features of
initial biological-species communities. Our proposed analogy trades upon
principles developed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, and called by
him the "founder effect." We claim that events in the early history of
cosmology manifest analogs of biological "founder effect" phenomena.
We conclude by suggesting that the situation in modern
cosmology's origin may be generalizable. If this is correct, then to the
extent that modern cosmology manifests founder effect phenomena, so
also will the many scientific communities which originate as it did, in
initially small populations of investigator -- populations that need not
reflect the conceptual and methodological diversity found in larger, more
mature branches of science. In order to discuss the first of our two
questions, we begin with a brief historical prologue.
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