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SUMMARY:'Lies and frivolity': manners in scientific dispute in 19th-centur
 y Britain and Germany - Raf De Bont (KU Leuven/Imperial College London)
DTSTART:20110309T130000Z
DTEND:20110309T140000Z
UID:TALK28558@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau
DESCRIPTION:The idea that science is a conflict-driven enterprise is a ver
 y popular one among historians and philosophers of science ranging from Ka
 rl Popper to \nMarcelo Dascal. This might give us the false impression tha
 t an inherent conflict in the science profession has always been universal
 ly \nacknowledged\, and that the question of how to disagree in science is
  (and ever has been) an unproblematic one. Of course\, we know on the basi
 s of the existing historiography that in fact scientific disagreement has 
 been moderated by a historically shifting set of rules ̶ or\, to use the 
 words of \nShapin and Schaffer\, by changing 'manners in dispute'. In my p
 aper\, I will explore these manners in scientific dispute in the nineteent
 h century\, \ncomparing ideals that were developed in the United Kingdom w
 ith those in the German lands.\n\nMy talk will draw on the seldom cases in
  which codes of conduct were explicitly articulated (in handbooks\, offhan
 d remarks found in polemical articles or personal advice in correspondence
 ). My starting point will be the 'rules of controversy' as developed in lo
 gic and theological polemics around 1800\, followed by the newly set-up sp
 aces of scientific discussion \nat the British Association for the Advance
 ment of Science and the yearly Meetings of German Naturalists and Physicia
 ns. I will explore how the rules \nof discussion were adapted to the popul
 ar realm by\, amongst others\, the secularist George Holyoake and the pole
 mical geologist Carl Vogt\, to finally indicate how the latter men would i
 nfluence the confrontational ethos of late nineteenth-century career scien
 tists such as Thomas Huxley and Ernst Haeckel.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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