2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

Bruce␣ T. Moran University of Nevada, Reno
HSS Abstracts
Libavius, Polemics & Alchemy:
The Transmutation of Emotions and Rationality
One can’t read far in Libavius’s polemical writings without confronting
amazing mixtures of emotional, moral, and cognitive reasoning. Despite the
practical and analytical works for which he is best known, and his sometime
image as a stern German gymnasiarch, Libavius was a passionate man and a
passionate writer. His emotions, like most emotions, were based in beliefs,
that is, they contained a cognitive underpinning. Aristotle can be used to show
how emotions were thought to be rooted not only in individual psychology,
but also in social interaction. Libavius is an angry writer when it comes to
condemning Paracelsian secrecy and mysticism, and anger is an intensely social
emotion—all the more so since the social emotions reflected in Libavius’s
diatribes were played out not within strictly dyadic relationships but included
an audience, a reading public. Anger (an emotion prompted by a belief about
another’s actions) clearly turns to hate (a response to a belief about another’s
character) the latter, I will argue, becomes a durable passion consistent with
rational choice and action. In this regard, Libavius wished his adversaries to
feel shame while taking pride in his ability to endure abuse and thus being
immune from the same emotion. As Aristotle notes, it is for voluntary actions
that shame is felt, and a good man will never voluntarily do bad things. In this
sense an emotion itself becomes the object of cognition. On a wider level my
claim will be that paying attention to emotional responses such as contained
in Libavius’s polemical writings should be part of the work of the historian of
science. Emotional constructions should be accorded relevance not just as
rhetoric but as elements in the cognitive constitution of ideas, arguments, as
well as social norms. Only in this way, I would argue, can we find in the use of
language and in the interplay of ideas a way to relate emotional being (including
behaviors, moral judgements, as well as feelings of shame, guilt, anger and
the rest) to culturally influenced rational choices and decisions.
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Mary␣ S. Morgan London School of Economics and University of
Amsterdam
Thought Experiments and the Generation of Economic “Evidence”
Verbal reasoning from thought experiments is a traditional form of argument
in economics. From the 1930s, economists began to abandon verbal versions
of these experiments in favour of a more structured form which relied on the
use of mathematical and statistical models as a technology to extend the powers
of the mind. In one type of practise, these experiments used models to explore
the implications, limitations and range of applicability of economic theories.
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