History and Philosophy of Science.

Chair: S. Kant Vajpayee, University of Southern Mississippi

Vice-chair: Robert Hamilton, Mississippi College 

THURSDAY MORNING

Atlantic

9:30 THE SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE ARTS FACULTIES AT THE UNIVERSITIES OF PARIS AND OXFORD IN THE 14TH CENTURY

Michael Fitzgerald, Independent Scholar, Hattiesburg, MS 39401

The presentation is primarily a historical discussion of the scientific contributions of the 14th century Arts Faculties at the Universities of Paris and Oxford, to early modern theories of Logic, Kinematics, and Dynamics. In particular, I shall discuss the contributions of the groups referred to as the Mertionian "Calculators" and the Parisian "Nominalists."

10:00 EDWIN J. COHN'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO TRANSFUSION MEDICINE 

Carolyn Beck, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

During World War I the majority of casualties were not caused by direct injury but rather by blood loss. As another world war approached in the late 1930s, a major challenge to medicine was the need for a blood product to stem shock until whole blood could be obtained. Such a product must have a useful shelf life, be easily transported to battlefields and be available in large quantities. Harvard biochemist Edwin J. Cohn was challenged by the problem and began experiments to determine methods to fractionate blood components. Cohn envisioned the production of each component in a concentrated form for use in surgery and medical treatments. The field of protein chemistry was in its fledgling years when Cohn undertook the complex project of fractionating blood plasma. The separation process developed by Cohen and collaborating scientists is today called cold fractionation as it consists of a series of precipitation steps using salts and alcohol at cold temperatures. The immediate impact of Cohn's work led to the purification of serum albumin for the treatment of shock and burns. Commercial plasma laboratories rapidly adapted the Cohn cold fractionation process and produced more than 2 million units of albumin before the end of the war in 1945. Albumin, as time would reveal, was only the tip of the iceberg that emerged from the cold fractionation process.

10:30 Divisional Business Meeting

10:45 NEW ORLEANS BATTLES THE PLAGUE, 1914-20

L. Margaret Barnett, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

Between 1906 and 1914, the New Orleans city government spent over $20 million on sanitary engineering, expecting to revise the city's image as one of the dirtiest and unhealthiest places in America. At a meeting held in April 1914, state and local officials agreed that the work had been a resounding success. Only two months later, however, the city was in the throes of a public health crisis that revealed how insanitary New Orleans still was. Two residents of the Volunteers of America home on St. Joseph Street had come down with plague, and more cases soon followed. The disease was being spread by the millions of rats that infested the city. The US Public Health Service directed the anti-plague program, but it took years of rat-catching and rat-proofing to render the city officially plague-free. While the epidemic was small in comparison with the one that occurred earlier in San Francisco, it was the first to appear on the US Gulf Coast. This paper would be illustrated with photos. Research locations include the National Archives and the National Library of Medicine (both in Washington, DC), the New Orleans Public Library, Tulane University, and other regional archives.

11:15 SCIENCE UNDER HOUSE ARREST

S. Kant Vajpayee, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

The term house arrest, unfamiliar to many living in a democracy, is a milder form of punishment, meted out to those refusing to toe the establishment line. It is a means of suppressing the opposing voices. Military dictatorships and totalitarian regimes have used--and continue to use--this mode of control. House arrest limits the freedom of those arrested, but is not as bad as imprisonment. The hypothesis of this presentation is that science--and by way of association its practitioners--can suffer from the constraints of house arrest if the public policy makers are not careful. In the past, several philosophers of the tangibles--called scientists today--lost their lives for sticking to what they thought were truths. Some fortunate ones were put under house arrest or forced to emigrate. The history is punctuated with such punishments. Is science free in a society like ours? We would like to say yes. But many a times, science does suffer from house arrest even here--though scientists rarely do. Theoretical scientists such as those at the universities may figuratively suffer house arrest when taxpayers' research dollars are allocated with an eye on commercial potential. Recent focus by the National Science Foundation and other government agencies such as NASA to fund as per their list of priorities, rather than as per the open and free minds of university science researchers, is putting science under house arrest.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

Atlantic

1:00 UNDERSTANDING ISSUES IN SPECIES ONTOLOGY 

Kenneth J. Curry* and Paula J. Smithka, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

The ease with which we group similar organisms into biological species and the sense of assurance we feel about the existence of some entity we call "species" stands in marked contrast to the problems that arise in any attempt to understand the nature of species or even to determine whether they exist at all. Here we evaluate recent contributions to the thirty-year debate over species-as-individuals where a species is considered philosophically to be an individual composed of organisms that share some degree of integration and a common history or lineage. Some understanding of the issues at stake include consideration of properties ascribed to the whole individual such as not having instances, being spaciotemporally restricted, being concrete, not functioning in laws, lacking defining properties, and being ontologically autonomous (Ghiselin, 1997, Metaphysics and the origin of species, SUNY Press). Contrasted with this are properties that address connections among the parts such as causal integration and connections established through a common history. Understanding the birth and death of a species is especially problematic. Casting species as individuals does not privilege cladogenesis. Character fixation during anagenesis is a reasonable alternative, but assumes that character evolution is the primary phenomenon of interest. Between birth and death we can profitably explore the concept of time-delimited slices (synchronic species) comprising a diachronic species passing through time and contrast this with the idea that time is an integral part of an individual species. In this latter sense the species does not pass through time but exists as part of the framework of time and space.

1:30 WHAT IS AN INDIVIDUAL?: LINGUISTIC AND ONTOLOGICAL CONFUSIONS REGARDING THE NATURE OF ORGANISMS AND SPECIES

Paula J. Smithka* and Kenneth J. Curry, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

The Species-As-Individuals (S-A-I) thesis has created a flurry of discussion concerning the nature of an individual. Exactly what is an individual? Suddenly, philosophers and biologists seem confused. For example, Jack Wilson has recently published a book entitled Biological Individuality (Cambridge U Press, 1999) which attempts to sort out the relationships between a 'particular,' an 'individual,' and an 'organism' and Stanley Salthe is concerned to specify the criteria for being an 'entity' (Evolving Hierarchical Systems, Columbia U Press, 1985). Furthermore, Wilson contends that there are different sorts of individuals: genetic individuals, functional individuals, developmental individuals, and historical entities/individuals. It is our contention that this much-ado-about individuals is a result of confusing linguistic conceptions with ontological ones. Grammatical individuals need not be ontological individuals; they are not necessarily extensionally equivalent. In this presentation we explore how these confusions arise within the context of organisms and species. We contend that the S-A-I thesis has turned the real ontological concern regarding the nature of species on its head. The real issue is how to generate and identify kinds, not individuals.

2:00 Break

2:15 TIME TO FACE REALITY: THE UNREALITY OF TIME COULD VERY WELL BE REAL

Michael Dodge, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

Without doubt, Time has been one of the most discussed topics in the history of philosophy and science. From Greece's Chronos to modern atomic clocks, what could be more fundamental for human experience than keeping the time? This presentation will attempt to tackle the ontological status of time, articulating a two-pronged approach that should force the realist (with respect to time) to admit that presuming that time is a real thing is, at the least, an uncertain position. Most scientists are realists as regards time's existence, and they use time to understand fundamental enterprises ranging from standard kinematics to space-time metaphysics. Indeed, many physicists now argue that time is a real component of the universe, but that it is stationary rather than flowing. This new understanding of time avoids some of the confusion created by maintaining that time "flows." Nevertheless, I shall show that neither time as a passing thing nor time as a stationary thing stands without criticism from anti-realist arguments. The ideas of numerous scientists and philosophers--most notably J. Ellis McTaggart--and some physicists--namely Julian Barbour--are critical here. While disagreeing on the reasons, both maintain one startling position: Time, at least as we commonly conceive of it, is unreal.

2:45 THE ANALYZATION OF THE REALISM/ANTI-REALISM DEBATE CONCERNING THE AREA OF SCIENCE

Derrick W. Leonard, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

The debate of realism versus anti-realism has divided many philosophers of science for years. The object of this paper is to critically analyze the debate between realism and anti-realism concerning science. Realists believe that the matter of scientific research and scientific theories exists independently of our knowledge of it. The realists also believe that the goal of science should be the description and explanation of both observable and non-observable aspects of the world. Anti-realists think that realism only promises theoretical knowledge, but does not deliver what it promises. Realists such as Boyd, Hacking and Laudan approach their realists' point of view from different aspects but fundamentally believe in the core concepts of realism such as: (1) "Theoretical terms" should be thought of as putatively referring expressions; scientific theories should be interpreted "realistically." (2) Scientific theories, interpreted realistically, are confirmable and in fact often confirmed as approximately true by ordinary scientific evidence interpreted in accordance with ordinary methodological standards. (3) The historical progress of mature science is largely a matter of successively more accurate approximations to the truth about observable and non-observable phenomena. Later theories build upon the knowledge of previous theories. (4) The reality which scientific theories describe is largely independent of our thoughts or theoretical commitments. (Boyd) Anti-realists such as Kuhn, Van Frassen, and Carnap tend to refute these concepts. Van Frassen agrees with the first concept but argues against the rest. At the conclusion of this paper I shall analyze both sides of the debate and show which position is more plausible concerning science.

3:15 Break

3:30 STEPHEN J. GOULD'S NOMA PRINCIPLE AND THE SOCIAL ROLE, LIMITS, AND SCOPE OF SCIENCE

Malachi Martin, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

The purpose of this study is to provide a philosophical analysis of a uniquely American social controversy, namely the creation-evolution conflict, and to furnish fresh epistemological grounds for resolving the conflict by appeal to the late Stephen Jay Gould's NOMA Principle. As Gould argues, the creation-evolution social controversy in America is predicated upon misconceptions about the nature, limits, and scope of science and scientific methodology. While philosophers of science such as Robert Pennock and Phillip Kitcher have sufficiently addressed the empirical claims emanating from creation science and ID proponents, the public controversy over 'origins' continues. After two and a half years of analyzing and researching the controversy, primarily from a philosophical perspective, I have come to the conclusion that the controversy is sociocultural in nature, it is rooted in misconceptions about the methodology of science, and it can be resolved only through a reexamination of the role of science and religion in society.

4:00 ROGER BACON: A MEDIEVAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION AND MEMORY

Linda M. Englade and Malachi Martin, Hinds Community College, Vicksburg, MS 39180, and University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406

This historical study will focus on the work of Roger Bacon, a thirteenth century philosopher of science. Bacon, a Franciscan, was interested in both the philsophical material he learned during his tenure at the University of Paris, and in the scientific application of such material. As Bacon was particularly interested in optics, this essay will focus on his theory of perception and its links to memory. It will attempt to situate him relative to the other perceptual theories of the time and relative to the greater history of mind.