When Historiography Met Epistemology

Stefano Bordoni, Ph.D. (2007), Pisa University, is Lecturer in Mathematics at Bologna University, and lecturer in Philosophy of Science at Urbino University. He has published several books and many articles on the history of science, and on the history of physics.

• Preface vii Acknowledgements xiIntroduction: The Emergence of an Intellectual Stream 11 Critical Analyses of Scientific Method 282 Between Experimentalism and Mild Naturalism 563 Different Attitudes Towards Reductionism 854 Mathematics and Determinism 1135 Scientists and Philosophers on Determinism 1386 Naïve versus Sophisticated Meta-theoretical Frameworks 1647 Histories of Ancient Science and Mathematics 1908 From Theoretical Physics to Meta-theoretical Commitments 2189 Scientific Practice between Metaphysics and Experiments 245Conclusion 273Afterword: Disappearances and Questionable Reappearances 277References 309Index to Names 330

"By and large this work is very well-researched and extremely interesting. For those interested in the history of science and scientists’ thinking regarding philosophical issues, especially on the continent during the nineteenth century, this work is a valuable addition to scholarship." - Richard Feist, Metascience (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-018-0307-1), published on 7 March 2018."By positioning itself chiefly in relation to the historiographic theories advanced by I. Benrubi, A. Brenner et J. Renn, [...] this book constitutes, on the whole, a veritable and most welcome plea in favour of recognizing the complexity of the natural world, as well as the no less important historical and philosophical complexity of the scientific approach which is called to investigate it!"- Jean-François Stoffel (Haute École Louvain-en-Hainaut), International Journal for the Historiography of Science (June 2017), pp. 163-165. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2017.i2.16