Henry M Cowles
Biographic Data
| ID | 1103637 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Henry M Cowles |
| GIVEN NAMES | Henry M |
| FAMILY NAME | Cowles |
| SIGNATURE | COWLES H M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2491-497X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Inventing Philosophy's Other: Phenomenology in America
Journal Article Inventing Philosophy's Other: Phenomenology in America Get access Inventing Philosophy's Other: Phenomenology in America. By Jonathan Strassfeld. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 363 pp. Cloth, $95.00. Paper, $30.00.) Henry M Cowles Henry M Cowles University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 110, Issue 3, Decembe…
The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences by Katja Guenther
Is history a mirror? One steals glimpses of this question throughout this excellent book, even though the author never steps through the looking-glass to answer it directly. Guenther’s subject is the mirror test, defined broadly as the use of mirrors to probe the capacity for self-recognition. This is a serious and superb intellectual history, tracking how mirrors function as material and metaphorical reflections of cognition across a range of fi…
David Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene
Where are the wild things? And where are they going? These are pressing questions in the midst of what has been called ‘the sixth extinction’, the dark era in which we live and in which one species is driving so many others out of existence. That species, of course, is us, and growing alarm about our murderous impact is the subject of a new book by the historian of science David Sepkoski. Entitled Catastrophic Thinking, the book is an intellectua…
History Comes to Life
“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” So recalled Victor Frankenstein, reflecting on the creative act. By its end, however, Frankenstein has less to do with the scientist's creativity and more to do with his monster's. This is why Mary Shelley inverts this Promethean moment in the book's final scene, as the m…
On the Origin of Theories: Charles Darwin’s Vocabulary of Method
This is an essay on the origin of theories. It argues that methodology can do more than shape scientific theories—sometimes, vocabularies of method become such theories. The origin of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is a case in point: Darwin’s well-known attention to methodological matters not only framed but bled into his theory of nature. A careful student of contemporary methodology, Darwin sought guidance for using …
The Age of Methods: William Whewell, Charles Peirce, and Scientific Kinds
For William Whewell and, later, Charles Peirce, the methods of science merited scientific examination themselves. Looking to history to build an inductive account of the scientific process, both men transformed scientific methods into scientific evidence. What resulted was a peculiar instance of what Ian Hacking calls “the looping effects of human kinds,” in which classifying human behavior changes that behavior. In the cases of Whewell and Peirc…
Hypothesis Bound: Trial and Error in the Nineteenth Century
Like so many things, "trial and error" has a history. The term first emerged as the name for a technique in eighteenth-century mathematics pedagogy. In the nineteenth century, psychologists and biologists transformed "trial and error" from a mathematical tool into a developmental theory, one that could explain both the learning mind and life on earth. "Trial and error" can thus be seen as a case of the larger process whereby the tools we use to e…
A Victorian extinction: Alfred Newton and the evolution of animal protection
The modern concept of extinction emerged in the Victorian period, though its chief proponent is seldom remembered today. Alfred Newton, for four decades the professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge, was an expert on rare and extinct birds as well as on what he called ‘the exterminating process'. Combining traditional comparative morphology with Darwinian natural selection, Newton developed a particular sense of extinction that he…
Selection bias: Stephen G. Brush: Choosing selection: The revival of natural selection in Anglo-American evolutionary biology, 1930–1970. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2009, viii+183pp…
The Age of Methods: William Whewell, Charles Peirce, and Scientific Kinds
For William Whewell and, later, Charles Peirce, the methods of science merited scientific examination themselves. Looking to history to build an inductive account of the scientific process, both men transformed scientific methods into scientific evidence. What resulted was a peculiar instance of what Ian Hacking calls “the looping effects of human kinds,” in which classifying human behavior changes that behavior. In the cases of Whewell and Peirc…
A Victorian extinction: Alfred Newton and the evolution of animal protection
The modern concept of extinction emerged in the Victorian period, though its chief proponent is seldom remembered today. Alfred Newton, for four decades the professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge, was an expert on rare and extinct birds as well as on what he called ‘the exterminating process'. Combining traditional comparative morphology with Darwinian natural selection, Newton developed a particular sense of extinction that he…
On the Origin of Theories: Charles Darwin’s Vocabulary of Method
This is an essay on the origin of theories. It argues that methodology can do more than shape scientific theories—sometimes, vocabularies of method become such theories. The origin of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is a case in point: Darwin’s well-known attention to methodological matters not only framed but bled into his theory of nature. A careful student of contemporary methodology, Darwin sought guidance for using …
Hypothesis Bound: Trial and Error in the Nineteenth Century
Like so many things, "trial and error" has a history. The term first emerged as the name for a technique in eighteenth-century mathematics pedagogy. In the nineteenth century, psychologists and biologists transformed "trial and error" from a mathematical tool into a developmental theory, one that could explain both the learning mind and life on earth. "Trial and error" can thus be seen as a case of the larger process whereby the tools we use to e…
Selection bias: Stephen G. Brush: Choosing selection: The revival of natural selection in Anglo-American evolutionary biology, 1930–1970. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2009, viii+183pp…
A Victorian extinction: Alfred Newton and the evolution of animal protection
The modern concept of extinction emerged in the Victorian period, though its chief proponent is seldom remembered today. Alfred Newton, for four decades the professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge, was an expert on rare and extinct birds as well as on what he called ‘the exterminating process'. Combining traditional comparative morphology with Darwinian natural selection, Newton developed a particular sense of extinction that he…
Hypothesis Bound: Trial and Error in the Nineteenth Century
Like so many things, "trial and error" has a history. The term first emerged as the name for a technique in eighteenth-century mathematics pedagogy. In the nineteenth century, psychologists and biologists transformed "trial and error" from a mathematical tool into a developmental theory, one that could explain both the learning mind and life on earth. "Trial and error" can thus be seen as a case of the larger process whereby the tools we use to e…
The Age of Methods: William Whewell, Charles Peirce, and Scientific Kinds
For William Whewell and, later, Charles Peirce, the methods of science merited scientific examination themselves. Looking to history to build an inductive account of the scientific process, both men transformed scientific methods into scientific evidence. What resulted was a peculiar instance of what Ian Hacking calls “the looping effects of human kinds,” in which classifying human behavior changes that behavior. In the cases of Whewell and Peirc…
History Comes to Life
“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” So recalled Victor Frankenstein, reflecting on the creative act. By its end, however, Frankenstein has less to do with the scientist's creativity and more to do with his monster's. This is why Mary Shelley inverts this Promethean moment in the book's final scene, as the m…
On the Origin of Theories: Charles Darwin’s Vocabulary of Method
This is an essay on the origin of theories. It argues that methodology can do more than shape scientific theories—sometimes, vocabularies of method become such theories. The origin of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is a case in point: Darwin’s well-known attention to methodological matters not only framed but bled into his theory of nature. A careful student of contemporary methodology, Darwin sought guidance for using …
David Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene
Where are the wild things? And where are they going? These are pressing questions in the midst of what has been called ‘the sixth extinction’, the dark era in which we live and in which one species is driving so many others out of existence. That species, of course, is us, and growing alarm about our murderous impact is the subject of a new book by the historian of science David Sepkoski. Entitled Catastrophic Thinking, the book is an intellectua…
Inventing Philosophy's Other: Phenomenology in America
Journal Article Inventing Philosophy's Other: Phenomenology in America Get access Inventing Philosophy's Other: Phenomenology in America. By Jonathan Strassfeld. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 363 pp. Cloth, $95.00. Paper, $30.00.) Henry M Cowles Henry M Cowles University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 110, Issue 3, Decembe…
The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences by Katja Guenther
Is history a mirror? One steals glimpses of this question throughout this excellent book, even though the author never steps through the looking-glass to answer it directly. Guenther’s subject is the mirror test, defined broadly as the use of mirrors to probe the capacity for self-recognition. This is a serious and superb intellectual history, tracking how mirrors function as material and metaphorical reflections of cognition across a range of fi…
Epistemology (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Environmental ethics (3 works) · History (3 works) · Psychology (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Archaeology (2 works)