<i>Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Kepler to Einstein</i>

Holton, Gerald; Toulmin, Stephen

doi:10.1063/1.3128445

Cited by 97 publications

(130 citation statements)

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“…Holton maintains that understanding how scientists make discoveries and accept or reject ideas requires analysis of the role of themata, which he describes as ''those fundamental preconceptions of a stable and widely diffused kind that are not resolvable into or derivable from observation and analytic ratiocination.'' 44 Examples of thematic hypotheses that have been prominent in science include the claims that certain properties are strictly conserved, that certain processes are symmetric in various ways (an important thema for the developments surveyed here), that processes are directed toward some purpose, and so on. Some of these themata survive, while others have been rejected.…”

Section: Discussion: Dogmatism Themata and Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost Origins of the Third Generation of Quarks: Theory, Philosophy, and Experiment

Staley

2001

Phys. perspect.

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Section: Discussion: Dogmatism Themata and Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost Origins of the Third Generation of Quarks: Theory, Philosophy, and Experiment

Staley

2001

Phys. perspect.

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“…They both stressed the role of imagination in science, but they focused on science as an institution. Holton (1973Holton ( , 1998 opened the door wide. By moving his analysis of the role of imagination in scientific endeavor into the individual investigator and into their unconscious, Holton gives a finer grain analysis of the potential role of intuition in scientific investigation.…”

Section: The Role Of Unconscious Emotion In Reasoning and Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Trusting Your Gut, Among Other Things: Digestive Enzyme Secretion, Intuition, and the History of Science

Isenman

2009

Found Sci

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The role of intuition in scientific endeavor is examined through the lens of three philosophers/historians of science-Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Gerald Holton. All three attribute an important role to imagination/intuition in scientific endeavor. As a case study, the article examines the controversy between the generally accepted Vesicular Sequestration/Exocytosis Model of pancreatic digestive enzyme secretion and an alternative view called the Equilibrium Model. It highlights the intertwining of intuition and reason in the genesis of the Equilibrium Model developed in response to findings that could not readily be explained by the consensus view. It suggests that tacit knowledge/understanding works in conjunction with philosophical and aesthetic presuppositions that function to a greater or lesser extent below awareness. Together they guide judgments about whether falsification has occurred and help frame alternative theories.

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“…Why, for example, did we choose to study chemiosmotic systems and osmochemistry in the field of fundamental biology when we started work at Glynn? The answer to that question represents what Gerald Holton might have described as the thematic origin of the theory of chemiosmotic systems (Holton, 1973).…”

Section: Molecular Biodynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foundations of Vectorial Metabolism and Osmochemistry

Mitchell

2004

Bioscience Reports

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Chemical transformations, like osmotic translocations, are transport processes when looked at in detail. In chemiosmotic systems, the pathways of specific ligand conduction are spatially orientated through osmoenzymes and porters in which the actions of chemical group, electron and solute transfer occur as vectorial (or higher tensorial order) diffusion processes down gradients of total potential energy that represent real spatially directed fields of force. Thus, it has been possible to describe classical bag-of-enzymes biochemistry as well as membrane biochemistry in terms of transport. But it would not have been possible to explain biological transport in terms of classical transformational biochemistry or chemistry. The recognition of this conceptual asymmetry in favour of transport has seemed to be upsetting to some biochemists and chemists; and they have resisted the shift towards thinking primarily in terms of the vectorial forces and co-linear displacements of ligands in place of their much less informative scalar products that correspond to the conventional scalar energies. Nevertheless, considerable progress has been made in establishing vectorial metabolism and osmochemistry as acceptable biochemical disciplines embracing transport and metabolism, and bioenergetics has been fundamentally transformed as a result.

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Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Kepler to Einstein

Cited by 97 publications

References 0 publications

Lost Origins of the Third Generation of Quarks: Theory, Philosophy, and Experiment

Lost Origins of the Third Generation of Quarks: Theory, Philosophy, and Experiment

Trusting Your Gut, Among Other Things: Digestive Enzyme Secretion, Intuition, and the History of Science

Foundations of Vectorial Metabolism and Osmochemistry

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