2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
Robert␣ J. Richards The University of Chicago
Why Haeckel Became a Virulent Darwinian
The historical antagonism between Darwinian theorists and the religiously
minded has many sources, but Ernst Haeckel’s virulently anti-religious stance,
which became part of his many books and articles directed to the promotion
of Darwinism, must be regarded as a primary cause. But why did Haeckel
assume such a strident posture, a posture which not only antagonized religious
believers but fellow scientists as well? He might have argued—as he initially
did at the meeting of the Association of German Naturalist and Physicians in
1863—that God first breathed life into an original form, and natural processes
produced the variety of life we now observe. Haeckel first wrote Darwin after
the meeting, and received a very warm reception from the English scientist.
But a short time later an event occurred that altered everything. After this
event, Haeckel elevated his scientific convictions into a quasi-religious passion.
In a white heat he composed his Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, a
two-volume exposition and defense of Darwinism that was written in vitriol.
The battle against the forces of superstition and misery was joined, and the
resulting antagonism has hardly abated even today.
Alan␣ W. Richardson University of British Columbia
The Insecure Path of a Science:
Kant and the Rethinking of Logic in the 19th Century
Immanuel Kant was able to motivate his epistemological project by relying
on the status of particular disciplines as a priori. Among these disciplines,
logic was distinguished by both its age and it completion. Aristotle’s logic had
in all essentials completed the task of codifying the rules of judgment and
inference and had provided the “canon of reason.” Shortly after Kant, however,
mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers began seriously to rethink both
the theory and the subject matter of logic. Some (Boole, Grassmann, Schroeder)
wanted to convert it into a mathematical discipline investigating the algebra
of thought. Others (Herbart, Bolzano) wanted to rethink the objects
appropriately understood to be the subject matter of logic while yet others
(Fries, Mill) sought in various ways to tie logic to an increasingly empirical
study of the human mind. This talk seeks to explore the ways in which logic
strayed from “the secure path of a science” (Critique of Pure Reason, Bvii) by
looking to Kant’s work itself as the primary locus of the destabilization of the
understanding of logic that Kant himself took for granted. The paper proceeds
by exploring a number of ways in which the “formal” nature of logic might be
understood after Kant.
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