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Waves, Philosophers and Historians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Jed Z. Buchwald
Jed Z. Buchwald*
Affiliation:
Dibner Institute/MIT
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An odd sense of dissonance comes over me as I listen to the eloquent and eminently reasonable arguments presented by Professors Achinstein and Laudan. Nothing similar to either of their remarks would likely be heard today at a history of science meeting, much less at a convention, say, of the Modem Languages Association. Historians would be much more likely to ask what interests were served by the particular rhetorical characters of Whewell's or Brougham's or Mill's or even Young's or Fresnel's arguments. They would be deeply skeptical that arguments per se had anything much to do with the contagious expansion of wave methods during and after the 1830s. In their respective ways, and despite the obvious differences between them, Professors Achinstein and Laudan both feel that argumentation was a central aspect of the historical events involved in the establishrnent of wave optics.

Type
Part VII. Mill, Whewell, and the Wave-Particle Debate
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1992 , 1993 , pp. 205 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the Philosophy of Science Association

References

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