The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxxix

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2. The Galileo that Feyerabend Missed: An Improved Case Against Method

   • Alan Chalmers

   Pages 1-31

3. Cartesian Method as Mythic Speech: A Diachronic and Structural Analysis

   • John A. Schuster

   Pages 33-95

4. Steady as a Rock: Methodology and Moving Continents

   • H. E. Le Grand

   Pages 97-138

5. Methodology as a Normative Conceptual Problem: The Case of the Indian ‘Warped Zipper’ Model of DNA

   • T. D. Stokes

   Pages 139-165

6. Inside the Cell: Genetic Methodology and the Case of the Cytoplasm

   • Jan Sapp

   Pages 167-202

7. The Order of Ideas: Condillac’s Method of Analysis as a Political Instrument in the French Revolution

   • W. R. Albury

   Pages 203-225

8. Method and the ‘Micropolitics’ of Science: The Early Years of the Geological and Astronomical Societies of London

   • David Philip Miller

   Pages 227-257

9. Scientific Method And The Rhetoric of Science In Britain, 1830–1917

   • Richard R. Yeo

   Pages 259-297

10. Back Matter

    Pages 299-305

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The institutionalization of History and Philosophy of Science as a distinct field of scholarly endeavour began comparatively earl- though not always under that name - in the Australasian region. An initial lecturing appointment was made at the University of Melbourne immediately after the Second World War, in 1946, and other appoint­ ments followed as the subject underwent an expansion during the 1950s and 1960s similar to that which took place in other parts of the world. Today there are major Departments at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia and in New Zealand. "Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science" aims to provide a distinctive publication outlet for Australian and New Zealand scholars working in the general area of history, philosophy and social studies of science. Each volume comprises a group of essays on a connected theme, edited by an Australian or a New Zealander with special expertise in that particular area. Papers address general issues, however, rather than local ones; parochial topics are avoided. Further­ more, though in each volume a majority of the contributors is from Australia or New Zealand, contributions from elsewhere are by no means ruled out. Quite the reverse, in fact - they are actively encour­ aged wherever appropriate to the balance of the volume in question.

• Artes
• Cartesian
• French revolution
• Galileo Galilei
• Great Britain
• Indian
• concept
• evolution
• french
• methodology
• model
• politics
• rhetoric
• structural analysis

`... the historiographical standards to which this volume as a whole conforms are of the highest. For a state-of-the-art methodology with which to deal with methodology, it is compulsory reading.'
ISIS, 78:1 (1987)

• Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Wollongong, Australia

  John A. Schuster

• School of Humanities, Griffith University, Australia

  Richard R. Yeo

Policies and ethics