Welcome to the
homepage of Dr Steffen Ducheyne, Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Research
Foundation – Flanders (FWO). Dr Ducheyne took his PhD on 1st March 2006
(entitled: “Virtuosi
at Work: Historical-philosophical Essays on Causality and Methodology in the
Natural Philosophy of Galileo, Huygens and Newton” (see History of Science Society Newsletter,
vol. 35 (3) (July 2006), p. 16) at Ghent University
(Faculty of Arts and Philosophy > Department of Philosophy and Moral
Sciences > Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science) and considers his work as
being part of an integrated history and philosophy of science. His current three-year post-doctoral project,
entitled “Historical cum Systematic Study of Experimental
Procedures, Idealizations, and Model-theoretical and Representational Aspects
in the Development of Post-Principia Mechanics and Astronomy (1687-ca.1850),” is funded by the Research
Foundation – Flanders (FWO). He is currently associated with the Centre
for History of Science and the Centre
for History of Philosophy both at Ghent University.
Contact Information:
Dr. Steffen Ducheyne
Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science
Blandijnberg 2, room 2.03
B-9000
Phone: ++32 (0) 9 264 39 52; Fax: ++32 (0) 9 264 41 87
§ 1. Professional Interests:
§ 1.1. History of Science:
† Newton’s philosophia
naturalis and its eighteenth-century legacy
† “The” “Scientific Revolution”
(historiography and conceptual issues)
† History of scientific methodology
† Whewell
§ 1.2. Philosophy of Science:
† Scientific
methodology
† Induction
† Representation and models in science
§ 1.3. Early Modern Philosophy:
† Early modern philosophy
(especially Bacon, Hume, Reid, Kant, etc.)
† Origins and evolution of empiricism
† History of the philosophy of science
† Philosophy of induction
(Bacon, Hume, Newton, Reid, Whewell, Mill, etc.)
§ 1.4. Miscellanea:
† Paul Otlet (1868-1944), the Belgian pioneer of
information science
§ 2. Selected Representative Publications:
Note that the full
version of papers marked with a red star (*) can be found by going to http://logica.ugent.be/centrum/writings/pubs.php
and then selecting my name or via http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/perl/search.
Other papers can be requested by e-mailing me.
§ 2.1. Articles:
† Ducheyne, Steffen
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† {2005}. Michele
Camerota's New Biography of Galileo: Three Essay Reviews, Review Essay III, Early Science and Medicine, 10(4), pp. 560-565. [Review I by M. Finocchiaro; review
II by P. Palmieri.]
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{2005}. Paul Otlet’s Theory of Knowledge and Linguistic Objectivism, Knowledge Organization, 32 (3): pp.
110-116.
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{2007}. Huygens’s Understanding of Trajectories: Via media between Galileo and Newton, Historia Scientiarum, International Journal of the History of
Science Society of Japan, vol. 17(2), pp. 1-19.
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Steffen Ducheyne
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{2008}. Scientific
Research Papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of
London, 1665–1800: The Development of
Physics in the footsteps of Sir Isaac Newton, Indian
Journal of the History of Science”, vol. 43, pp. 589-630.
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{2008}. Towards a Fruitful Formulation of Needham's Grand
Question, Philosophica, vol. 82, pp. 9-26.
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{2009}. “To treat of the World”: Paul Otlet's Epistemology and Ontology and the
Circle of Knowledge, Journal of Documentation, vol.
65 (2), pp. 223-244.
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{2009}. Whewell, Necessity and the Inductive Sciences, South African Journal of Philosophy. vol. 28(4), pp. 333-358.
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(2009).
Understanding (in) Newton’s Argument of Universal Gravitation, Journal of General philosophy of Science,
vol. 40(2), pp. 227-258. [NEW]
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{2009}. Newtonianism in Locke, Hume, and Reid: or, How far can one stretch a
label?, Enlightenment and Dissent - Special
Issue on Isaac Newton and Eighteenth-Century Thought, Stephen D. Snobelen (ed.),
vol. 25, pp. 62-105. [NEW]
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{2009}. J.T. Desaguliers: Freemason and
Newtonian, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, vol.87, 2009, pp. 349-364. [NEW]
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{2010}. Fundamental Questions and Some New Answers on Philosophical, Contextual and
Scientific Whewell: Some Reflections on Recent Whewell Scholarship and the
Progress made therein, Perspectives on
Science, vol. 18(2), pp. 242-272. [NEW]
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{2010}. Whewells Tidal Researches: Scientific Practise and Philosophical
Methodology*, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, vol. 41(1), pp. 26-40. [NEW]
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{2010}. Essay review on Reenacting Galileo’s Experiments, Aestimatio, vol 7, pp. 59-68. [NEW]
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{2011}. Kant and Whewell on bridging principles between metaphysics and science*, Kant Studien, vol. 101(1), pp. 1-24. [NEW]
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{forthcoming}. Newton on action at a distance and the
cause of gravity – Discussion Note, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A. [NEW]
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{forthcoming}. “The Status
of Hypothesis and Theory*”, in: Peter R. Anstey (ed.), Oxford
Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, Oxford University Press: 2010). [NEW]
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{forthcoming}. Mathematical
and Philosophical Newton, Metascience. [NEW]
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{forthcoming}. Testing Universal Gravitation in the Laboratory, or the Significance of
Research on the mean Density of the Earth and Big G, 1798-1898: Changing
Pursuits and long-term methodological-experimental Continuity, Archive for History of
Exact Sciences. [NEW]
§ 2.2. Reviews in:
Philosophy of Science (1), Annals of Science (4), Ambix
(2), Isis (2), Algemeen Nederland Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte (1), Early Science and Medicine (1), Knowledge organization (1), British Journal for the History of
Philosophy (1), Eighteenth-Century
Studies (3), Archives internationales
d’histoire des sciences (1).
§ 2.3. Editorship:
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(appeared in 2007), “The Challenges for Early Modern Philosophy”, Philosophica 76, 2005, pp. 135. Full
text of this issue is available here.
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(to appear early 2009), “Future
Perspectives on Newton Scholarship and the Newtonian Legacy in
Eighteenth-century Science and Philosophy Europe,” Koninklijke Vlaamse
Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten. This is a collection of
papers presented at a contact-forum funded by the Royal Academy on 28 September
2007. Click here
for the corresponding piece which appeared in the newspaper De Standaard (in Dutch).
§ 2.4. Organization of Conferences:
† See 2.3, † 2.
† “Induction: Historical and Contemporary Approaches”
(8th-10/11th July 2008, Ghent) [website]. A conference report
appeared in The
Reasoner, vol. 2(10), 2008, pp. 8-9.
§ 3. Informatie voor Studenten (in Dutch)
† Alle cursusmateriaal bij Wetenschapsgeschiendenis,
potentiële examenvragen, de slides van de colleges, de vragen bij “Kennis ontrafeld”
zijn beschikbaar op Minerva.
† Spreekuur: altijd op afspraak via e-mail of 09/264.39.79.