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Seminar Courses at Stanford
Moral Foundations of Capitalism
EthicSoc 157, with cognate listing in American Studies
Winter 2010, Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:15–5:30 |
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| American capitalism, at least as originally promulgated, presumed a
moral foundation of selfish individualism. Critics of such a morality
have consequently denigrated capitalism. But others have tried to defend
it either by appealing to an alternate foundation or by defending the
morality of selfish individualism. In this course, we will explore three
such groups of defenders: free-market economists who have defended
capitalism on social, economic, or collective grounds; theologians and
conservatives who have defended capitalism using a religious or altruist
foundation; and Ayn Rand, who has proposed to defend the morality of
selfishness. |
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Nineteenth-Century Philosophy of Science
HPS 220, with cognate listings in Philosophy and History
Autumn 2009, Wednesdays, 3:15–5:05 |
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| The nineteenth century was the center of what has been called the
Second Scientific Revolution. John Dalton revolutionized chemistry with
his atomic theory, Adolphe Quetelet social sciences with his development
of statistics, Charles Darwin life sciences with his theory of natural
selection, Louis Pasteur medicine with his germ theory. Whole sciences
of electricity, electromagnetism and thermodynamics were built up
virtually from scratch. The foundations were laid for relativity and
quantum mechanics. |
| With all this there was also a revolution—or rather several
overlapping revolutions—in the philosophy of science. The century opened
with a virtually universal belief in a Newtonian world of deterministic
laws and in the method of inductive inquiry developed by Francis Bacon.
By the end of the century, statistically oriented science was replacing
deterministic and Bacon's inductive method was mocked. |
| In this course we will explore this revolutionary shift in the
philosophy of science, giving particular attention to the complete
reversal in admiration for Bacon's inductive method. How did it happen
that by the end of the century philosophers of science were saying that
the method all those revolutionary scientists said they used was in
fact worthless? |
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What is Science? Explaining Nature from Pythagoras to Popper
HPS 154, with cognate listings in Philosophy and History
Will be taught again in 2010–11 |
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| How do scientists know what they know—or
claim to know? It’s an important question, not just for scientists
themselves, but for any of us who drive on bridges without fear,
subject ourselves to doctor’s prescriptions, or must decide whether
grade-school teachers should teach evolution or intelligent design.
Science and its products pervade our personal, political,
institutional, and cultural lives. We need to know where it comes
from and whether it is reliable. How do scientists know what they
know? Well, we might say, they use the “scientific method.” But,
alas, there are now and have long been vigorous disagreements over
exactly what a proper scientific method is.
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| Past student evaluations |
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- “The readings were so inspiring for discussion:
controversial, challenging, incomprehensible at times (in an insightful
way)”
- “The best professor I’ve had at Stanford—intelligent, interesting
and interested, enthusiastic and endlessly encouraging.”
- “McCaskey’s
passion for the material influences his students, and results in an
incredibly enjoyable and informative 2 hour discussion seminar.”
- “Excellent teacher. Very excited about the material, very interested in
what the students have to say. The best class I have taken here.”
- More . . .
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Scholarship
| My research is on the history of the philosophy of science, especially
the history of the concept of induction from Socrates to Popper, with Francis
Bacon seemingly always at the center.
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| Jacopo Zabarella, De Methodis and De Regressu |
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| Big current project. A collated Latin edition and original English translation
for Harvard University Press’s I Tatti
Renaissance Library. Manuscript should be finished in mid 2010. (Want
to read the draft?) |
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Bacon’s Idols and Harvey’s Eggs
In the introduction to De Generatione Animalium, William Harvey used distinctly Baconian tropes and vocabulary; in the transition from the first part of the book to the second, he said he was following a key part of Bacon’s method; in surviving marginalia, he cited one of Bacon’s works for elaboration of his own views on scientific method. The mistaken belief that Harvey and Bacon advocated opposing methods has two sources—an over-reading of a biographical note by John Aubrey and a misunderstanding of Bacon’s method and Harvey’s Aristotelianism. Addressing the first is a small matter of correcting a misreading of the historical record. Addressing the second, however, is much more important—important for our understanding of a crucial transition in early modern philosophy of science.
A presentation to be given at the eight congress of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science,
June 2010. |
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Whence the Uniformity Principle
Where did we get the idea that every induction includes some uniformity principle as a presumed premise? The idea is not in Socrates, Aristotle, or Cicero; it is not in medieval writings, Arabic or Latin; it is not in the Scholastics or the Renaissance Humanists; it is not in Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Thomas Reid, or William Whewell; in fact, it is not even per se in David Hume. It is definitely in John Stuart Mill, but Mill claims to have gotten it from someone else. It turns out we got the idea from Richard Whately (1787-1863), Oxford professor, author of Elements of Logic (1826), and later bishop of Dublin. This paper recounts the relevant background and then how the idea originated, spread, and became in the second half of the nineteenth century a canonical part of our understanding of induction.
A presentation to be given at the eight congress of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science,
June 2010. |
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Review of Steven Matthews, Theology and Science in the
Thought of Francis Bacon
Technology and Culture 50, July 2009 |
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Jacopo Zabarella: The Last of the Renaissance
Aristotelians and His Influence on Early Modern Science
A presentation given at Northern California Renaissance
Conference, May 2009. |
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“Freeing Aristotelian Epagôgê from
Prior Analytics II 23”
APEIRON, December, 2007, pp. 345–74. |
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Review of Stephen A. McKnight,
The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought”
Technology and Culture 48, July 2007. |
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Myths in the History of Induction
Colloquy talk at St. John’s University, Queens, NY, October 2007. |
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| Regula Socratis: The Rediscovery of
Ancient Induction in Early Modern England |
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| My dissertation of 2006. A revisionist account of how
philosophical induction was conceived in the ancient world and how that conception
was transmitted, altered, and then rediscovered. I show how philosophers of late
antiquity and then the medieval period came step-by-step to seriously misunderstand
Aristotle’s view of induction and how that mistake was reversed by humanists in the
Renaissance and then especially by Francis Bacon. I show, naturally enough then,
that in early modern science, Baconians were Aristotelians and Aristotelians were
Baconians. |
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Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
An edition constructed for wikisource.org. Includes Latin original
and multiple translations. |
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“Induction and Concept-Formation in Francis Bacon and William Whewell”
Concepts Workshop, Department of HPS, Pittsburgh, May 2004. |
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| A paper about the relationship between concept formation and induction in Bacon and Whewell.
This includes what I think is the world’s best 2000-word introduction to Whewellian induction. |
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