IHPST Review History & Philosophy of Science and Technology

History & Philosophy of Science and Technology

IHPST Review

Stories, ideas & perspectives — thoughtfully written, beautifully told.

The Semantic Fault Lines of Science: Linguistic Instability and the Crisis of Cumulative Knowledge
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The Semantic Fault Lines of Science: Linguistic Instability and the Crisis of Cumulative Knowledge

Beneath the widely discussed methodological dimensions of the replication crisis lies a less examined but equally consequential problem: the progressive semantic instability of scientific terminology across disciplines and, increasingly, within them. When the same term carries genuinely different meanings in molecular biology, computational neuroscience, and machine learning, the possibility of cumulative knowledge—science's most foundational epistemic aspiration—is placed in serious jeopardy. T

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Latest Articles

Institutionalized Uncertainty: How the American Research University Made Doubt a Professional Virtue 02
History of Ideas

Institutionalized Uncertainty: How the American Research University Made Doubt a Professional Virtue

The modern American research university did not merely tolerate intellectual skepticism—it codified it, bureaucratized it, and elevated it into a moral obligation binding on every scholar who sought professional legitimacy. Tracing this transformation from the Humboldtian ideal through the postwar proliferation of institutional review, this article examines how systematic doubt became embedded in the administrative machinery of knowledge production. The consequences, both liberating and paralyzi
From Art to Algorithm: The Epistemic Displacement of Clinical Judgment in Contemporary American Medicine 03
Philosophy of Science

From Art to Algorithm: The Epistemic Displacement of Clinical Judgment in Contemporary American Medicine

The ascendancy of evidence-based medicine and algorithmic prediction in American clinical practice represents more than a methodological shift—it constitutes a fundamental reorganization of the epistemic authority that governs medical decision-making. This article traces the philosophical trajectory from the bedside reasoning of the experienced clinician to the probabilistic outputs of predictive models, asking what categories of knowledge are systematically excluded when medicine redefines rigo
Adjudicated Heat: How American Courtrooms Certified the Thermometer Before Science Did 04
History of Ideas

Adjudicated Heat: How American Courtrooms Certified the Thermometer Before Science Did

Decades before physicists arrived at a coherent theory of heat, American courts were routinely treating thermometric readings as settled fact in insurance, labor, and public health proceedings. This article argues that juridical practice—not laboratory consensus—first conferred epistemological authority on temperature measurement in the United States. The case reveals a largely overlooked pathway through which legal necessity shaped the boundaries of scientific credibility.
Neutral by Design: The Engineered Rhetoric of Scientific Prose 05
Philosophy of Science

Neutral by Design: The Engineered Rhetoric of Scientific Prose

The passive voice, the third-person narrator, the equation standing in for argument—these are not simply stylistic conventions but deliberate rhetorical architectures that came to signify objectivity itself. This article traces how the linguistic norms of scientific writing were historically constructed and institutionally enforced, and asks whether the celebrated 'view from nowhere' was ever a genuine epistemological achievement or merely a persuasive fiction dressed in the grammar of neutralit
Governed into Legibility: How the Administrative State Determined What Biology Was Allowed to Find 06
History of Ideas

Governed into Legibility: How the Administrative State Determined What Biology Was Allowed to Find

Long before a biologist selected a research question, bureaucratic structures had already narrowed the field of possibility. This article traces how government classification systems, regulatory mandates, and federal funding architectures quietly dictated which organisms, diseases, and ecosystems became scientifically visible—and which remained perpetually outside the frame of legitimate inquiry.
Code in the Dark: The Epistemological Erasure of Scientific Software 07
Philosophy of Science

Code in the Dark: The Epistemological Erasure of Scientific Software

Modern scientific knowledge is increasingly produced not by human hands alone but by layers of computational code that remain unnamed in the literature and unexamined in the archive. As software moves from peripheral tool to epistemic engine, the attribution systems science relies upon have failed to keep pace, leaving a widening gap between how knowledge is actually made and how it is formally acknowledged. This article examines the philosophical consequences of that gap.
When the Gavel Defined the Data: Litigation, Legal Discovery, and the Remaking of Scientific Evidence 08
Philosophy of Science

When the Gavel Defined the Data: Litigation, Legal Discovery, and the Remaking of Scientific Evidence

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, American courtrooms became unexpected arbiters of scientific legitimacy, as product liability suits and environmental disputes forced judges and attorneys to adjudicate what constituted credible evidence. The adversarial logic of litigation gradually infiltrated research institutions, establishing a parallel epistemological framework that frequently operates in tension with peer review and established scientific methodology. This article trace
Measured Into Existence: How the Standardized Test Became Science's Epistemological Blueprint 09
Philosophy of Science

Measured Into Existence: How the Standardized Test Became Science's Epistemological Blueprint

In the early twentieth century, American psychologists borrowed the logic of the standardized test and installed it at the center of scientific legitimacy. This article traces how measurability became the gatekeeper of credible knowledge, and asks what forms of understanding were quietly discarded in the process.
The Invisible Tribunal: Anonymity, Authority, and the Hidden History of Peer Review 10
History of Ideas

The Invisible Tribunal: Anonymity, Authority, and the Hidden History of Peer Review

Blind peer review now functions as the unquestioned arbiter of scientific legitimacy in the United States and beyond, yet its dominance is historically recent and philosophically contested. This article traces the contingent emergence of anonymous evaluation as science's central credentialing institution, examining what epistemic assumptions it encodes and what verification traditions it displaced. Understanding peer review as a historical artifact rather than a natural necessity opens critical

Authorized Origins: The Philosophical Cost of What American Science Textbooks Chose to Forget 11
History of Ideas

Authorized Origins: The Philosophical Cost of What American Science Textbooks Chose to Forget

For much of the twentieth century, American science textbooks did not merely teach facts—they constructed a particular genealogy of legitimate inquiry, one that routed all credible knowledge through European and North American institutions. The philosophical consequences of that construction persist in how students today understand who counts as a knower and which traditions count as science. This essay examines the curricular architecture that made such exclusions feel natural, even inevitable.
Enclosing the Scientific Commons: How Patent Expansion Turned Fundamental Research into a Credentialed Marketplace 12
Philosophy of Science

Enclosing the Scientific Commons: How Patent Expansion Turned Fundamental Research into a Credentialed Marketplace

Since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, the boundary between proprietary invention and open scientific inquiry has eroded in ways that carry profound epistemological consequences. Licensing regimes originally conceived to accelerate the translation of federally funded discoveries into commercial products have instead constructed a tiered system of knowledge access that systematically disadvantages under-resourced institutions. This article argues that the philosophical stakes of intellec
Epistemic Equity and the Price of Proof: How Reproducibility Became a Privilege 13
Philosophy of Science

Epistemic Equity and the Price of Proof: How Reproducibility Became a Privilege

The infrastructure required to make scientific findings verifiable—open data repositories, replication studies, computational auditing—carries costs that not all research institutions can absorb equally. This disparity has produced a quietly stratified knowledge system in which epistemic credibility tracks institutional wealth rather than methodological soundness alone. Examining this structural asymmetry raises unsettling questions about whether scientific verification, as currently practiced,

From Bench to Cloud: The Epistemological Stakes of Digital Scientific Record-Keeping 14
Philosophy of Science

From Bench to Cloud: The Epistemological Stakes of Digital Scientific Record-Keeping

The migration of laboratory notebooks from paper to cloud-based platforms is not merely a technological convenience but a fundamental reorganization of how scientific evidence is constituted, controlled, and remembered. As algorithmic systems assume responsibility for archiving experimental data, the philosophical assumptions embedded in their design quietly reshape which discoveries endure and which dissolve into inaccessibility. This article examines the epistemological and institutional conse
Procedures as Pedagogy: The Epistemological Authority of the Laboratory Manual in American Scientific Training 15
History of Ideas

Procedures as Pedagogy: The Epistemological Authority of the Laboratory Manual in American Scientific Training

Laboratory manuals and the embodied traditions of scientific apprenticeship have exerted a formative influence on how scientists learn to think, measure, and reproduce results—yet these instructional artifacts remain conspicuously marginal in the historiography of science. This article examines the epistemological weight of procedural knowledge, arguing that the codified steps in a laboratory manual function not merely as technical instruction but as a hidden curriculum that determines what coun
Behind Closed Doors: How Industrial Secrecy Dismantled the Foundations of Scientific Verification 16
History of Ideas

Behind Closed Doors: How Industrial Secrecy Dismantled the Foundations of Scientific Verification

When private corporations assumed dominance over scientific research across the twentieth century, they imported with them a culture of proprietary control fundamentally at odds with the open verification principles that had long defined scientific legitimacy. The consequences—structural barriers to independent replication, eroded public trust, and contested definitions of what constitutes credible knowledge—remain deeply embedded in contemporary scientific practice. This article traces that tra
Proprietary Darkness: Actuarial Science and the Invention of Justified Opacity 17
History of Ideas

Proprietary Darkness: Actuarial Science and the Invention of Justified Opacity

Long before machine learning algorithms became synonymous with inscrutability, nineteenth-century insurance actuaries constructed statistical models they deliberately shielded from public scrutiny under the banner of competitive necessity. Tracing this lineage reveals that the 'black box' problem animating contemporary debates over artificial intelligence is not a novel artifact of computational complexity, but rather an inherited business philosophy with roots in Victorian-era commercial practi
Fisher's Threshold and the Architecture of Unreliable Knowledge: A Philosophical Reckoning with Statistical Gatekeeping 18
Philosophy of Science

Fisher's Threshold and the Architecture of Unreliable Knowledge: A Philosophical Reckoning with Statistical Gatekeeping

The near-universal adoption of the p < 0.05 threshold as the arbiter of scientific credibility was never a philosophically neutral act. Tracing the frequentist revolution inaugurated by Ronald Fisher through the institutional machinery of modern research funding and publication, this article examines how a provisional statistical heuristic hardened into an epistemological dogma—one that has systematically rewarded the production of unreliable findings while punishing the honest acknowledgment of
Spectacle and Skepticism: The Theatrical Roots of Scientific Authority 19
History of Ideas

Spectacle and Skepticism: The Theatrical Roots of Scientific Authority

From the candlelit demonstrations of the early Royal Society to the polished visual grammar of televised science programming, the public presentation of scientific knowledge has always carried a performative dimension. This theatrical heritage has done as much to shape public distrust as it has to cultivate credibility, leaving contemporary science communicators to manage an epistemological debt centuries in the making.
When Precision Becomes a Blindfold: Methodological Rigor and the Suppression of Scientific Discovery 20
Philosophy of Science

When Precision Becomes a Blindfold: Methodological Rigor and the Suppression of Scientific Discovery

The modern scientific enterprise prizes procedural exactitude above nearly all other virtues, yet that very exactitude may be systematically filtering out the unexpected findings that have historically driven the most consequential advances. Examining case studies from psychology, clinical medicine, and high-energy physics, this article argues that the formalization of scientific method carries an underappreciated epistemic cost. The protocols designed to guarantee truth may, under certain condi