Abstract
As a discipline of its own, the philosophy of science can be traced back to the founding of its academic journals, some of which go back to the first half of the twentieth century. While the discipline has been the object of many historical studies, notably focusing on specific schools (e.g., logical empiricism) or major figures of the field (e.g., Carnap, Kuhn), little work has focused on the journals themselves. Here, we investigate contemporary philosophy of science by means of computational text-mining approaches: we apply topic-modeling algorithms to eight major philosophy of science journals, from the 1930s up until 2017. Based on the full-text content of some 15,897 articles, we identified 25 research themes and 8 thematic clusters that show how the research agenda of the philosophy of science has changed in its content over the course of the last eight decades, up to the philosophy of science we now know. We also show how each one of the journals contributed in its own way to this thematic evolution.
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Notes
Note that metaphoric language and homonymy may affect the effectiveness of such tools as topic-modeling. Yet, depending on how it is implemented, topic-modeling can be used to reveal distinct meanings and contexts associated to specific terms.
As with any quantitative approach, results depend on different technical choices among many equally valid options, but ones that are more or less fit for purpose. These options appear at different stages of the methodology, including iterative rounds of parameter settings, simulations and results inspections (Von Luxburg et al. 2012; Hu et al. 2014).
The Journal for General Philosophy of Science was founded in 1970 under the name Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie/Journal for General Philosophy of Science. The journal renamed itself Journal for General Philosophy of Science/Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie in 1990, and then simply Journal for General Philosophy of Science in 2014, which is the name we use here (or JGPS in short).
This set of articles only includes regular articles, meaning that we excluded book-reviews, editorials, errata, and very short texts such as discussion notes (less than 4,000 characters). The articles were downloaded from JSTOR and the publishers Internet platforms: Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Springer, Taylor and Francis and University of Chicago Press.
This decision led us to set aside 1015 other articles (72% of which were in German, 17% in Dutch and 11% in French). About 44% of these articles were published in the 1930s–1940s. During these decades, non-English articles represented 41% of publications, but this share substantially decreased over time, down to 2% from the 1990s onward, resulting in an average of about 6% over the 8 decades. Non-English articles might therefore impact our topical analyses about the first two decades (actually, the first and a half decade, as the real cut-off date is WWII), though their impact on the overall study will be minimal.
Lemmatization consists of replacing inflected forms of words by their lemma—or what may be called their “dictionary form”—on the basis of their intended meaning (for instance, replacing “explains” and “explained” by “explain”).
The LDA was performed through an API for Python (see: https://pythonhosted.org/lda/api.html).
Depending on the size of the textual data, tools may be used as heuristics to assess optimal K values, for example coherence measures, perplexity or even rate of perplexity change (Röder et al. 2015; Zhao et al. 2015). These heuristics are however limited and, in practice, the proper number K of topics is usually assessed by expert judgment and manual inspection of topics, as well as, most importantly, by the objectives of the study. In the present case, the textual data was too large to run such heuristic tools and we proceeded by expert judgment (comparing the resulting topics of several models at 10, 25, 50, 100, 180, 200, 250, notably in terms of interpretability and non-redundancy), based also on the types of analyses we then hoped to conduct. From experience, opting for one value of K instead of another only marginally affects the overall results. Usually, increasing K results in more details and more specific topics. Yet lower K values are helpful to zoom out of the details and provide larger-grained views. Hyperparameters were set at alpha = 0.4 and beta = 0.01.
More specifically, a word × article matrix W = [wij]M×N can be built from the textual data (where M = 22,958 is the size of the corpus lexicon, N = 15,897 is the number of articles, and wij is the frequency of word i in article j). LDA modeling estimates optimal values for two major probability matrices: Φ = [Pr(w|z)]MxK where Pr(w|z) is the probability of finding word w in topic z, and Θ = [Pr(z|s)]KxN where Pr(z|d) is the probability of finding (words that express) topic z in document d. Whereas matrix Φ indicates which word distributions best express a given topic, matrix Θ indicates which topics are the most significant in each article. Mathematically, it can be shown that Φ and Θ on the one hand (which are “latent” or initially unknown) and W on the other (which is known) are linked. The probability distributions being constrained by sparse Dirichlet priors, the iterative procedure followed by LDA modeling consists in solving an optimization problem and encodes the intuition that topics are usually strongly expressed by a few words and that documents only express just a few topics at a time.
There are multiple ways of clustering topics, especially depending on the expected end-result granularity. Here, we first calculated the Pearson correlation of topics on the basis of their probability distribution within articles (in other words, articles are more correlated when they tend to appear together in the same articles). We used this topic-to-topic correlation to construct a graph in which nodes are topics and edges correlations; we pruned the edges by setting a minimal threshold value, so as to only keep the most significant ones and we ran a modularity analysis (see Fig. 1 below). When running this analysis, modularity parameters can be adjusted so as to result in fewer or more clusters. Here, our clustering was constrained by the objective to have a manageable number of clusters (i.e., less than 10) while at the same time providing useful clusters based on topic interpretation. Using our best judgment, we settled on a model with 8 clusters.
This choice of 4-year periods was driven by the wish to average out year-to-year topic fluctuations (notably due to special issues) while keeping a fairly fine-grained temporal view.
More specifically, for every topic z and time-period p, we computed the average probability Pr(z|p) of finding topic z in all articles of time-period p. This resulted in populating a new matrix Ω = [Pr(z|p)]K×T where K = 25 is the number of topics and T = 21 is the number of time-periods. In addition, for every topic z and journal j, we computed the average probability Pr(z|j) of finding topic z in all articles of journal j. This resulted in matrix Δ = [Pr(z|j)]K×J where K = 25 is the number of topics and J = 8 is the number of journals.
Remember that the corpus only includes research articles in English language from the 8 major philosophy of science journals we focused on. When considering articles published in German, Dutch and French by these same 8 journals, the yearly publication volume increases by a factor of 6 from the 1930s till the 2010s, which is still significant. Figure 4 includes a specific data line for articles in languages other than English.
Note that some specialized journals were also founded earlier (e.g., Philosophy of the Social Sciences in 1971, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences in 1979) or later (e.g., Biological Theory in 2005, Philosophy and Theory in Biology—now Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology—in 2009), showing the need for a more thorough investigation of the reasons for the publication volume decrease we observed in the corpus in the 1990s.
Numerous other factors may influence choice of publication venues by authors, including journal impact factor, perceived reputation, personal acquaintances with editorial team members, publication frequency, publication cost and open access strategies, publication design and layout, perceived journal audience, submission-to-publication lead-time, distribution network or even availability of data repositories. However, the extent to which such additional factors may influence topic distribution across journals is less immediate.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to JSTOR, Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Springer, Taylor and Francis, and University of Chicago Press for providing access to journal articles for text-mining purposes. They thank Oliver Lean, Charles Pence and Luca Rivelli for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, as well as the audience of a 2019 TEC seminar at UQAM where this work was presented. They also thank the reviewers at Synthese for their valuable comments. Funding from Canada Foundation for Innovation (Grant 34555) and Canada Research Chairs (CRC-950-230795) is gratefully acknowledged. F.L. acknowledges funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC-276470).
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C.M. conceived the study, analyzed the results, wrote and revised the manuscript. F.L. prepared the corpus, ran the LDA analyses, contributed to the methodology section and revised the manuscript. D.P. and J.S–O. contributed to the corpus preparation and revised the manuscript.
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Appendices
Appendix A: Table of the publication profiles of the 8 selected general philosophy of science journals
Journal | Publication dates | Affiliation/editorship/publisher | Profile (as described on journal websites, in editorials or other sources) |
|---|---|---|---|
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS) | 1950—present | Owned by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science (BSPS, founded in 1948 as a Philosophy of Science Group for the British Society for the History of Science, and reconstituted with its present name in 1959). Past editors include J. O. Wisdom, A. Bird, P. Clark, M. Hesse, J. Ladyman, I. Lakatos, and D. Papineau. (“British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | Wikipedia” 2020) Current editors: S. French, W. Parker Current publisher: Oxford University Press | The journal “publishes work that uses philosophical methods in addressing issues raised in the natural and human sciences” (“British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | Wikipedia” 2020) BJPS publishes “international work in the philosophy of science” on a “variety of traditional and ‘cutting edge’ topics, from issues of explanation and realism to the applicability of mathematics, from the metaphysics of science to the nature of models and simulations, as well as foundational issues in the physical, life, and social sciences. Recent topics covered in the journal include the epistemology of measurement, mathematical non-causal explanations, signalling games, the nature of biochemical kinds, and approaches to human cognitive development, among many others.” (“British Journal for the Philosophy of Science: About | OUP” 2020) |
Erkenntnis | 1930—1940; 1975—present | Originally created by R. Carnap and H. Reichenbach when they took charge of Annales der Philosophie that they renamed Erkenntnis; interrupted by WWII; revived in 1975 by C. G. Hempel, W. Stegmüller, and W. K. Essler (“Erkenntnis | Wikipedia” 2019) Current editors: H. Leitgeb, H. Rott, and W. Spohn Published by Felix Meiner (Germany) from 1930 to 1936, then van Stockum (The Netherlands). Current publisher: Springer | “An International Journal of Scientific Philosophy”, Erkenntnis publishes “papers committed in one way or another to the philosophical attitude which is signified by the label ‘scientific philosophy’”, in fields inspired by this attitude: “Epistemology, philosophy of science […], philosophy of mathematics, logic […], philosophy of language, ontology, metaphysics […], philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, neurophilosophy, practical philosophy, i.e. ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of law.” (“Erkenntnis: Aims and Scope | Springer” 2020) The journal also was linked to the organisation of conferences (e.g. “Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences”, of which it published papers and discussions) (“Erkenntnis | Wikipedia” 2019) “As Reichenbach noted in his introduction to the first issue, the editors of Erkenntnis were concerned to carry on philosophical inquiry in close consideration of the procedures and results of the various scientific disciplines (Hempel 1975, p. 1). For Hempel, philosophy of science in the 1970s was influenced by thinkers who were themselves “committed to careful analytic investigation and to precise reasoning in support of their ideas, and who hold that sound philosophical inquiry must be informed by adequate knowledge of the scientific disciplines that may be relevant to the subject under investigation” (1975, p. 3). He further argued that the “proper characterization and understanding of the nature and change of scientific knowledge requires explicit reference to certain historical and sociological aspects of the scientific enterprise” (1975, p. 4) |
European Journal for Philosophy of Science | 2011—present | Founded in 2011 by the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA) Current editors: F. Russo and P. Illari Publisher: Springer | Publishes “works that can deepen understanding of the concepts and methods of the sciences, as they explore increasingly many facets of the world we live in. It is of direct interest to philosophers of science coming from different perspectives, as well as scientists, citizens and policymakers. The journal is interested in articles from all traditions and all backgrounds, as long as they engage with the sciences in a constructive, and critical, way. The journal represents the various longstanding European philosophical traditions engaging with the sciences, but welcomes articles from every part of the world.” (“European Journal for Philosophy of Science | Springer” 2020) Publishes selected papers from the biennial conferences of the EPSA. (“European Journal for Philosophy of Science | EPSA” 2020) |
International Studies in the Philosophy of Science | 1986—present | Founded in 1986 Current editor: V. Kindi Published by Routledge, then Taylor and Francis (which acquired Routledge in 1998) | Publishes work “in philosophy of science and in philosophically informed history and sociology of science. Its scope includes the foundations and methodology of the natural, social, and human sciences, philosophical implications of particular scientific theories, and broader philosophical reflection on science”. Invites contributions “not only from philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science, but also from researchers in the sciences. The journal publishes articles from a wide variety of countries and philosophical traditions” (“International Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Aims & Scope | Taylor and Francis” 2020) Initially founded to publish articles from the seminars held at the Inter-University Centre for Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik (former Yugoslavia, now Croatia) following an initiative of I. Supek to promote academic dialogue between philosophers of science from western and eastern Europe (Newton-Smith and Wilkes 1986). Started accepting other research articles in 1990. |
Journal for General Philosophy of Science | 1970—present | Founded by A. Diemer, G. König and L. Geldsetzer. Past editors include also: G. Schiemann, U. Krohs. Current editors: C. Beisbart, T. Reydon, H. Pulte Published by Steiner (1970–1990), Kluwer (1990–2005), and now Springer (which acquired Kluwer in 2005) | “Its subject matter encompasses both general philosophy of science and the specialized philosophies of particular areas of science, such as the philosophy of physics, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of the social sciences, and the philosophies of the humanities. Published articles cover the methodological, ontological, and epistemological aspects of these areas of science and science in general. JGPS considers also the social, historical and ethical dimensions of the sciences as the context for understanding current problems of philosophy of science.” (“Journal for General Philosophy of Science: Aims and Scope | Springer” 2020) Initially published under the title Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie—Journal for General Philosophy of Science; became Journal for General Philosophy of Science—Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie in 1990: “From the very beginning, the English subtitle (which is now the main title) indicated that the journal was meant to be international; in fact, manuscripts written in German, English and French were considered for publication. The journal was further intended to provide a forum for various intellectual traditions and sub-disciplines of the philosophy of science. It was of special importance to the founding editors to represent both the more analytical tradition of the philosophy of the natural sciences and the more hermeneutical tradition of the philosophy of the humanities” (Beisbart et al. 2019, p. 1). “We take the term “general” in the name of the journal to reflect […] the commitment to be open to all approaches in the philosophy that strive for a better philosophical understanding of the various disciplines of the sciences and the humanities, their practices and their findings. In particular, we wish to be open to voices that diverge from “mainstream” and that introduce new perspectives” (2019, p. 7) |
Philosophy of Science | 1934—present | Owned by the (American) Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) Past editors include: C. W. Churchman, R. Rudner, K. Schaffner (Howard 2003) Current editor: A. Woody Current publisher: University of Chicago Press | The journal “has been dedicated to the furthering of studies and free discussion from diverse standpoints in the philosophy of science.” (“Philosophy of Science: About | UCP” 2019) Its first editor, William Malisoff sought papers ranging from studies on “the analysis of meaning, definition, symbolism,” in scientific theories to those on “the nature and formulation of theoretical principles” and “in the function and significance of science within various contexts.” (Malisoff 1934, pp. 3–4). Publishes proceedings of the bi-annual PSA meetings (PSA: Proceedings ran in parallel to PS from 1970 to 1994, then jointly) (“Philosophy of Science: About | UCP” 2019) |
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science – Part A | 1970—present | Established in 1970 under the name SHPS. Split into Part A and Part B in 1995. Part C created in 1998 Current editor: D. P. Rowbottom Published by Elsevier | SHPSA “is devoted to the integrated study of the history, philosophy and sociology of the sciences. The editors encourage contributions both in the long-established areas of the history of the sciences and the philosophy of the sciences and in the topical areas of historiography of the sciences, the sciences in relation to gender, culture and society and the sciences in relation to arts.” (“Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A | Elsevier” 2020) SHPS was “established in 1970 as a single journal, and was split into two sections–Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics–in 1995. In 1998, a third section, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, was created.” (“Studies in History and Philosophy of Science | Wikipedia” 2020) |
Synthese | 1936—1939, 1946—1949, 1955—present | Founded in 1936 in The Netherlands Past editors include J. Hintikka from 1965 to 2002 Current editors: O. Bueno, C. D. Novaes, W. van der Hoek, K. Miller Current publisher: Springer | “An international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science”, Synthese focuses on “contemporary issues in epistemology, philosophy of science, and related fields. More specifically, we divide our areas of interest into four groups: (1) epistemology, methodology, and philosophy of science, all broadly understood. (2) The foundations of logic and mathematics, where ‘logic’, ‘mathematics’, and ‘foundations’ are all broadly understood. (3) Formal methods in philosophy, including methods connecting philosophy to other academic fields. (4) Issues in ethics and the history and sociology of logic, mathematics, and science that contribute to the contemporary studies Synthese focuses on, as described in (1)–(3) above.” (“Synthese | Springer” 2019) Published articles include specific treatment of methodological issues in science such as induction, probability, causation, statistics, symbolic logic, linguistics and ethics. The name Synthese (from the Dutch for synthesis) finds its origin in the intentions of its founding editors: making explicit the supposed internal coherence between the different, highly specialised scientific disciplines.” (“Synthese | Wikipedia” 2020) Hintikka complained about the “argumentative turn” in philosophy of science, and introduced a novel section “problems of philosophy” (Hintikka 1997) “Synthese is a journal for epistemology, logic and philosophy of science, thus not a general philosophy journal, let alone one meant only for an in-house audience of philosophers. Rather, Synthese is a journal devoted to interdisciplinary philosophical inquiry in which the use of methods from the sciences is found at center stage.” (van Benthem et al. 2008, p. 2) |
Appendix B: Table of the top-10 articles for each topic. This list includes, for each topic, the 10 articles in which that topic is the most expressed (in the sense of having of highest probability)
Topic | Top-10 articles |
|---|---|
A-Formal (23) | Normann, Dag. “On Abstract 1-Sections.” Synthese 27, no. 1/2 (1974): 259–263 Lenker, Terry D and Richard St. André. “Near Orderings of Topological Spaces.” Synthese 55, no. 3 (1983): 327–331 Friedman, Joel. “The Universal Class Has a Spinozistic Partitioning.” Synthese 32, no. 3/4 (1976): 403–418 Mikulás, Szabolcs. “The equational theories of representable residuated semigroups.” Synthese 192, no. 7 (2015): 2151–2158 Bell, J. L. “Categories, Toposes and Sets.” Synthese 51, no. 3 (1982): 293–337 Colonius, Hans. “On Weak Extensive Measurement.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (1978): 303–308 Narens, Louis. “Measurement without Archimedean Axioms.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1974): 374–393 Jensen, Ronald Björn. “On the Consistency of a Slight (?) Modification of Quine’s “New Foundations”.” Synthese 19, no. 1/2 (1968): 250–264 Mansfield, Richard and John Dawson. “Boolean-Valued Set Theory and Forcing.” Synthese 33, no. 1 (1976): 223–252 Hansson, Bengt. “Choice Structures and Preference Relations.” Synthese 18, no. 4 (1968): 443–458 |
A-Language (17) | Cartwright, Richard L. “Comments on Dr. Hochberg’s Paper.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1956): 260–265 Linsky, Leonard. “Some Notes on Carnap’s Concept of Intensional Isomorphism and the Paradox of Analysis.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1949): 343–347 Reach, K. “The Name Relation and the Logical Antinomies.” Erkenntnis 7, no. (1937): 236–240 Hochberg, Herbert. “The Ontological Operator.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1956): 250–259 Matheson, Gordon. “The Antinomy of Designation.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1959): 260–269 Moreno, Luis Fernández. “Tarskian Truth and the Correspondence Theory.” Synthese 126, no. 1/2 (2001): 123–147 Berge, William H. “Carnap and Translational Indeterminacy.” Synthese 105, no. 1 (1995): 115–121 Lavers, Gregory. “Carnap, Semantics and Ontology.” Erkenntnis 60, no. 3 (2004): 295–316 Keuth, Herbert. “Tarski’s Definition of Truth and the Correspondence Theory.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1978): 420–430 Bergmann, Gustav. “Descriptions in Nonextensional Contexts.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1948): 353–355 |
A-Mathematical (5) | Giovannini, Eduardo. “Bridging the gap between analytic and synthetic geometry: Hilbert’s axiomatic approach.” Synthese 193, no. 1 (2016): 31–70 Alvarez, Carlos. “Two Ways of Reasoning and Two Ways of Arguing in Geometry. Some Remarks concerning the Application of Figures in Euclidean Geometry.” Synthese 134, no. 1/2 (2003): 289–323 Hartimo, Mirja and Mitsuhiro Okada. “Syntactic reduction in Husserl’s early phenomenology of arithmetic.” Synthese 193, no. 3 (2016): 937–969 Lorenzen, Paul. “Constructive and Axiomatic Mathematics.” Synthese 12, no. 1 (1960): 114–119 Hartimo, Mirja Helena. “From Geometry to Phenomenology.” Synthese 162, no. 2 (2008): 225–233 Hartimo, Mirja Helena. “Towards Completeness: Husserl on Theories of Manifolds 1890-1901.” Synthese 156, no. 2 (2007): 281–310 Gauthier, Yvon. “Hilbert and the Internal Logic of Mathematics.” Synthese 101, no. 1 (1994): 1–14 Bråting, Kajsa and Johanna Pejlare. “Visualizations in Mathematics.” Erkenntnis 68, no. 3 (2008): 345–358 Webb, Judson C. “Hilbert’s Formalism and Arithmetization of Mathematics.” Synthese 110, no. 1 (1997): 1–14 Shabel, Lisa. “Kant on the ‘symbolic construction’ of mathematical concepts.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29, no. 4 (1998): 589–621 |
A-Sentence (6) | Corazza, Eros. “Complex Demonstratives Qua Singular Terms.” Erkenntnis 59, no. 2 (2003): 263–283 McKinsey, Michael. “Mental Anaphora.” Synthese 66, no. 1 (1986): 159–175 Bach, Kent. “Referential/Attributive.” Synthese 49, no. 2 (1981): 219–244 Corazza, Eros. “Temporal Indexicals and Temporal Terms.” Synthese 130, no. 3 (2002): 441–460 Voltolini, Alberto. “Can There Be a Uniform Application of Direct Reference?” Erkenntnis 61, no. 1 (2004): 75–98 Pelczar, M and J. Rainsbury. “The Indexical Character of Names.” Synthese 114, no. 2 (1998): 293–317 Corazza, Eros. “On the Alleged Ambiguity of ‘Now’ and ‘Here’.” Synthese 138, no. 2 (2004): 289–313 Stotts, Megan. “Understanding the Intentions Behind the Referential/Attributive Distinction.” Erkenntnis 82, no. 2 (2017): 351–362 Maier, Emar. “Reference, Binding, and Presupposition: Three Perspectives on the Semantics of Proper Names.” Erkenntnis 80, no. Supplement (2015): 313–333 Bach, Kent. “You Don’t Say?” Synthese 128, no. 1/2 (2001): 15–44 |
A-Truth (7) | Jacquette, Dale. “The Validity Paradox in Modal S5.” Synthese 109, no. 1 (1996): 47–62 Read, Stephen. “Self-Reference and Validity.” Synthese 42, no. 2 (1979): 265–274 Caton, Charles E. “A Stipulation of Logical Truth in a Modal Propositional Calculus.” Synthese 14, no. 2/3 (1962): 196–199 Milne, Peter. “Classical Harmony: Rules of Inference and the Meaning of the Logical Constants.” Synthese 100, no. 1 (1994): 49–94 Campos Sanz, Wagner and Hermógenes Oliveira. “On Dummett’s verificationist justification procedure.” Synthese 193, no. 8 (2016): 2539–2559 Hakli, Raul and Sara Negri. “Does the deduction theorem fail for modal logic?” Synthese 187, no. 3 (2012): 849–867 Ciardelli, Ivano, Jeroen Groenendijk, and Floris Roelofsen. “On the semantics and logic of declaratives and interrogatives.” Synthese 192, no. 6 (2015): 1689–1728 Stein, Jordan. “Tharp’s theorems of metaphysics and the notion of necessary truth.” Synthese 194, no. 4 (2017): 1219–1231 Cobreros, Pablo. “Paraconsistent vagueness: a positive argument.” Synthese 183, no. 2 (2011): 211–227 Stachow, E.-W. “On a Game-Theoretic Approach to a Scientific Language.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1978, no. (1978): 19–40 |
B-Arguments (20) | Keller, John. “On Knockdown Arguments.” Erkenntnis 80, no. 6 (2015): 1205–1215 Van Laar, Jan Albert. “One-Sided Arguments.” Synthese 154, no. 2 (2007): 307–327 Ballantyne, Nathan. “Knockdown Arguments.” Erkenntnis 79, no. Supplement 3 (2014): 525–543 Jenkins, C. “Merely Verbal Disputes.” Erkenntnis 79, no. Supplement (2014): 11–30 Machan, Tibor R and M. L. Zupan. “Back to Being Reasonable.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1975): 307–310 Stocker, Michael. “Some Problems with Counter-Examples in Ethics.” Synthese 72, no. 2 (1987): 277–289 Hazlett, Allan. “Epistemic Conceptions of Begging the Question.” Erkenntnis 65, no. 3 (2006): 343–363 Krabbe, Erik and Jan Laar. “That’s no argument! The dialectic of non-argumentation.” Synthese 192, no. 4 (2015): 1173–1197 Walton, Douglas N. “Begging the Question as a Pragmatic Fallacy.” Synthese 100, no. 1 (1994): 95–131 Dancy, Jonathan. “The thing to use.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37, no. 1 (2006): 58–61 |
B-Knowledge (2) | Alexander, David. “Unjustified Defeaters.” Erkenntnis 82, no. 4 (2017): 891–912 Lockard, Matthew. “Closure Provides No Relief from the Problem of Easy Knowledge.” Erkenntnis 79, no. 2 (2014): 461–469 Hiller, Avram and Ram Neta. “Safety and Epistemic Luck.” Synthese 158, no. 3 (2007): 303–313 Moretti, Luca and Tommaso Piazza. “Phenomenal Conservatism and Bergmann’s Dilemma.” Erkenntnis 80, no. 6 (2015): 1271–1290 Melchior, Guido. “Skepticism: The Hard Problem for Indirect Sensitivity Accounts.” Erkenntnis 79, no. 1 (2014): 45–54 Madison, B. “Internalism in the Epistemology of Testimony Redux.” Erkenntnis 81, no. 4 (2016): 741–755 McHugh, Conor. “Self-knowledge and the KK principle.” Synthese 173, no. 3 (2010): 231–257 Carter, J. Adam. “A Problem for Pritchard’s Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology.” Erkenntnis 78, no. 2 (2013): 253–275 Silva, Paul. “On Doxastic Justification and Properly Basing One’s Beliefs.” Erkenntnis 80, no. 5 (2015): 945–955 Cling, Andrew D. “The Trouble with Infinitism.” Synthese 138, no. 1 (2004): 101–123 |
B-Scientific-theory (12) | Doppelt, Gerald. “Empirical Success or Explanatory Success: What Does Current Scientific Realism Need to Explain?” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 4 (2005): 1076–1087 Doppelt, Gerald. “Relativism and the Reticulational Model of Scientific Rationality.” Synthese 69, no. 2 (1986): 225–252 Resnik, David. “Repairing the Reticulated Model of Scientific Rationality.” Erkenntnis 40, no. 3 (1994): 343–355 Šešelja, Dunja and Christian Straßer. “Kuhn and coherentist epistemology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40, no. 3 (2009): 322–327 Doppelt, Gerald D. “From Standard Scientific Realism and Structural Realism to Best Current Theory Realism.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 42, no. 2 (2011): 295–316 Freedman, Karyn. “Laudan’s Naturalistic Axiology.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 3 (1999): S526–S537 Siegel, Harvey. “Meiland on Scheffler, Kuhn, and Objectivity in Science.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1976): 441–448 Doppelt, Gerald. “The Philosophical Requirements for an Adequate Conception of Scientific Rationality.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (1988): 104–133 Doppelt, Gerald. “The Naturalist Conception of Methodological Standards in Science: A Critique.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (1990): 1–19 Ivanova, Milena. “Friedman’s Relativised A Priori and Structural Realism: In Search of Compatibility.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25, no. 1 (2011) |
C-Confirmation (3) | Machery, Edouard. “Power and Negative Results.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (2012): 808–820 Foster, Lawrence. “Feyerabend’s Solution to the Goodman Paradox.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 20, no. 3 (1969): 259–260 Boyce, Kenneth. “On the equivalence of Goodman’s and Hempel’s paradoxes.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 45, no. C (2014): 32–42 Mayo, Deborah G and Aris Spanos. “Severe Testing as a Basic Concept in a Neyman–Pearson Philosophy of Induction.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57, no. 2 (2006): 323–357 Rogers, Ben. “Material Conditions on Tests of Statistical Hypotheses.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1970, no. (1970): 403–412 Kahane, Howard. “Baumer on the Confirmation Paradoxes.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 18, no. 1 (1967): 52–56 Schwartz, Robert. “Paradox and Projection.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (1972): 245–248 Mayo, Deborah G. “How to Discount Double-Counting When It Counts: Some Clarifications.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59, no. 4 (2008): 857–879 Mackie, J. L. “The Paradox of Confirmation.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 13, no. 52 (1963): 265–277 Kahane, Howard. “Nelson Goodman’s Entrenchment Theory.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1965): 377–383 |
C-Probability (0) | Armendt, Brad. “Is There a Dutch Book Argument for Probability Kinematics?” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1980): 583–588 Draper, Kai and Joel Pust. “Diachronic Dutch Books and Sleeping Beauty.” Synthese 164, no. 2 (2008): 281–287 Singer, Daniel. “Sleeping beauty should be imprecise.” Synthese 191, no. 14 (2014): 3159–3172 Koscholke, Jakob. “Carnap’s Relevance Measure as a Probabilistic Measure of Coherence.” Erkenntnis 82, no. 2 (2017): 339–350 Harper, William L and Henry E. Kyburg. “The Jones Case.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 19, no. 3 (1968): 247–251 Park, Ilho. “Rescuing Reflection.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (2012): 473–489 Kyburg,, Henry E. “Levi, Petersen, and Direct Inference.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1983): 630–634 Lewis, Peter J. “Credence and self-location.” Synthese 175, no. 3 (2010): 369–382 Pruss, Alexander. “Infinitesimals are too small for countably infinite fair lotteries.” Synthese 191, no. 6 (2014): 1051–1057 Kim, Namjoong. “A dilemma for the imprecise bayesian.” Synthese 193, no. 6 (2016): 1681–1702 |
D-Agent-decision (8) | Tuomela, Raimo. “What Is Cooperation?” Erkenntnis 38, no. 1 (1993): 87–101 Weirich, Paul. “Collective acts.” Synthese 187, no. 1 (2012): 223–241 Baier, Kurt. “Rationality and Morality.” Erkenntnis 11, no. 2 (1977): 197–223 Gustafsson, Johan E. “A Note in Defence of Ratificationism.” Erkenntnis 75, no. 1 (2011): 147–150 Weirich, Paul. “Initiating Coordination.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (2007): 790–801 Ferguson, Benjamin. “The Paradox of Exploitation.” Erkenntnis 81, no. 5 (2016): 951–972 Tuomela, Raimo and Kaarlo Miller. “We-Intentions, Free-Riding, and Being in Reserve.” Erkenntnis 36, no. 1 (1992): 25–52 Harsanyi, John C. “Morality and the Prisoner’s Dilemma Problem: Comments on Baier’s Paper.” Erkenntnis 11, no. 3 (1977): 441–446 Rabinowicz, Wlodek. “Cooperating with Cooperators: Notes on Österberg’s Collective Egoism.” Erkenntnis 38, no. 1 (1993): 23–55 Sobel, Jordan Howard. “Money Pumps.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2001): 242–257 |
D-Game-theory (11) | Wagner, Elliott. “Communication and Structured Correlation.” Erkenntnis 71, no. 3 (2009): 377–393 Zollman, Kevin J. S. “Talking to Neighbors: The Evolution of Regional Meaning*.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2005): 69–85 Skyrms, Brian. “Signals, Evolution and the Explanatory Power of Transient Information*.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2002): 407–428 Vanderschraaf, Peter. “In a Weakly Dominated Strategy Is Strength: Evolution of Optimality in Stag Hunt Augmented with a Punishment Option.” Philosophy of Science 83, no. 1 (2016): 29–59 O’Connor, Cailin. “The Evolution of Vagueness.” Erkenntnis 79, no. Supplement 4 (2014): 707–727 Huttegger, Simon M, Brian Skyrms,, Rory Smead, and Kevin J. S. Zollman. “Evolutionary Dynamics of Lewis Signaling Games: Signaling Systems vs. Partial Pooling.” Synthese 172, no. 1 (2010): 177–191 Wagner, Elliott O. “Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63, no. 3 (2012): 547–575 Vanderschraaf, Peter and J. McKenzie Alexander. “Follow the Leader: Local Interactions with Influence Neighborhoods*.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2005): 86–113 Smead, Rory. “The Role of Social Interaction in the Evolution of Learning.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66, no. 1 (2015): 161–180 Wagner, Elliott. “The Explanatory Relevance of Nash Equilibrium: One-Dimensional Chaos in Boundedly Rational Learning.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (2013): 783–795 |
E-Evolution (22) | Mameli, Matteo. “Nongenetic Selection and Nongenetic Inheritance.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55, no. 1 (2004): 35–71 Booth, Austin. “Populations and Individuals in Heterokaryotic Fungi: A Multilevel Perspective.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (2014): 612–632 McConwell, Alison K. “Contingency and Individuality: A Plurality of Evolutionary Individuality Types.” Philosophy of Science 84, no. 5 (2017): 1104–1116 Earnshaw-Whyte, Eugene. “Increasingly Radical Claims about Heredity and Fitness.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2012): 396–412 Morgan, Gregory J and W. Brad Pitts. “Evolution without Species: The Case of Mosaic Bacteriophages.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59, no. 4 (2008): 745–765 Ereshefsky, Marc. “Species, Higher Taxa, and the Units of Evolution.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (1991): 84–101 Shanahan, Timothy. “Evolution, Phenotypic Selection, and the Units of Selection.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (1990): 210–225 Okasha, Samir. “Does the Concept of “Clade Selection” Make Sense?.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (2003): 739–751 Vorontsov, Nikolay N. “The problem of species and speciation.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3, no. 2 (1989) Waters, C. Kenneth. “Genes Made Molecular.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (1994): 163–185 |
E-Mind (21) | Almäng, Jan. “An Argument for Shape Internalism.” Erkenntnis 82, no. 4 (2017): 819–836 Deutsch, Max. “The Way Ripe Tomatoes Look: An Argument Against Externalist Representationalism.” Erkenntnis 77, no. 3 (2012): 297–316 Ren, Huiming. “Inverted Earth Revisited.” Erkenntnis 81, no. 5 (2016): 1093–1107 De Vignemont, Frédérique and Pierre Jacob. “Beyond Empathy for Pain.” Philosophy of Science 83, no. 3 (2016): 434–445 Raftopoulos, Athanasios. “Ambiguous figures and representationalism.” Synthese 181, no. 3 (2011): 489–514 De Vignemont, Frédérique and Pierre Jacob. “What Is It like to Feel Another’s Pain?.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2012): 295–316 Millar, Boyd. “Peacocke’s trees.” Synthese 174, no. 3 (2010): 445–461 Thompson, Evan. “Representationalism and the Phenomenology of Mental Imagery.” Synthese 160, no. 3 (2008): 397–415 Raftopoulos, Athanassios. “Cognitive Penetration Lite and Nonconceptual Content.” Erkenntnis 82, no. 5 (2017): 1097–1122 Reuter, Kevin. “The Developmental Challenge to the Paradox of Pain.” Erkenntnis 82, no. 2 (2017): 265–283 |
E-Neurosciences (1) | Bergeron, Vincent. “Functional Independence and Cognitive Architecture.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67, no. 3 (2016): 817–836 Bechtel, William. “Aligning Multiple Research Techniques in Cognitive Neuroscience: Why Is It Important?” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (2002): S48–S58 Johnson, Gregory. “The relationship between psychological capacities and neurobiological activities.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 2, no. 3 (2012): 453–480 Colombo, Matteo. “Moving Forward (and Beyond) the Modularity Debate: A Network Perspective.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2013): 356–377 Bechtel, William. “Investigating neural representations: the tale of place cells.” Synthese 193, no. 5 (2016): 1287–1321 Bechtel, William. “Mechanisms in Cognitive Psychology: What Are the Operations?” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 3 (2008): 983–994 McCaffrey, Joseph B. “The Brain’s Heterogeneous Functional Landscape.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 2 (2015): 1010–1022 Craver, Carl F. “Interlevel Experiments and Multilevel Mechanisms in the Neuroscience of Memory.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (2002): S83–S97 Piccinini, Gualtiero. “Computing Mechanisms.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2007): 501–526 Sullivan, Jacqueline Anne. “A Role for Representation in Cognitive Neurobiology.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 2 (2010): 875–887 |
F-Causation (14) | Ehring, Douglas. “Papineau on Causal Asymmetry.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38, no. 1 (1987): 81–87 Lee, Jig-Chuen. “Causal Condition, Causal Asymmetry, and the Counterfactual Analysis of Causation.” Synthese 67, no. 2 (1986): 213–223 Ehring, Douglas. “Causal Asymmetry and Causal Relata: Reply to Lee.” Synthese 76, no. 3 (1988): 371–375 Twardy, Charles R and Kevin B. Korb. “Actual Causation by Probabilistic Active Paths.” Philosophy of Science 3, no. 1 (2011): 900–913 Glynn, Luke. “A Probabilistic Analysis of Causation.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62, no. 2 (2011): 343–392 Otte, Richard. “Probabilistic Causality and Simpson’s Paradox.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (1985): 110-125. Otte, Richard. “A Critique of Suppes’ Theory of Probabilistic Causality.” Synthese 48, no. 2 (1981): 167–189 Hitchcock, Christopher. “Trumping and contrastive causation.” Synthese 181, no. 2 (2011): 227–240 Hesslow, Germund. “Two Notes on the Probabilistic Approach to Causality.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (1976): 290–292 Hausman, Daniel and James Woodward. “Manipulation and the Causal Markov Condition.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 2 (2004): 846–856 |
F-Explanation (9) | Goh, S. T. “Newman and Explanation-Sketches.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1967): 273–275 Barr, William F. “A Pragmatic Analysis of Idealizations in Physics.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (1974): 48–64 Jones, Todd. “Unification, Deduction, and History: A Reply to Steel.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1998): 672–681 Weslake, Brad. “Explanatory Depth*.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (2010): 273–294 Lange, Marc. “Natural Laws and the Problem of Provisos.” Erkenntnis 38, no. 2 (1993): 233–248 Andersen, Holly K. “Mechanisms, Laws, and Regularities.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2011): 325–331 Bird, Alexander. “Explanation and Laws.” Synthese 120, no. 1 (1999): 1–18 Hitchcock, Christopher. “…And Away from a Theory of Explanation Itself.” Synthese 143, no. 1/2 (2005): 109–124 Press, Joel K. “On the Virtues of CursoryScientific Reductions.” Philosophy of Science 3, no. 1 (2011): 1189–1199 Omer, I. A. “Better Deductive Explanation?” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 14, no. 2 (1983): 350–353 |
F-Property (24) | Keinänen, Markku and Jani Hakkarainen. “The Problem of Trope Individuation: A Reply to Lowe.” Erkenntnis 79, no. 1 (2014): 65–79 Smith, Deborah. “Quid Quidditism Est?” Erkenntnis 81, no. 2 (2016): 237–257 Roche, Michael. “Physicalism and Supervenience: A Case for a New Sense of Physical Duplication.” Erkenntnis 81, no. 4 (2016): 669–681 Von Wachter, Daniel. “On Doing without Relations.” Erkenntnis 48, no. 2/3 (1998): 355–358 Melnyk, Andrew. “Pereboom’s Robust Non-reductive Physicalism.” Erkenntnis 79, no. 5 (2014): 1191–1207 Cameron, Ross Paul. “Truthmakers and Necessary Connections.” Synthese 161, no. 1 (2008): 27–45 Morris, Kevin. “Supervenience Physicalism, Emergentism, and the Polluted Supervenience Base.” Erkenntnis 79, no. 2 (2014): 351–365 Cowling, Sam. “Haecceitism for Modal Realists.” Erkenntnis 77, no. 3 (2012): 399–417 De, Michael. “Intrinsicality and counterpart theory.” Synthese 193, no. 8 (2016): 2353–2365 Cohen, Jonathan. “On An Alleged Non-Equivalence between Dispositions and Disjunctive Properties.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53, no. 1 (2002): 77–81 |
G-Particles (15) | Hanson, Norwood Russell. “Discovering the Positron (II).” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 12, no. 48 (1962): 299–313 Needham, Paul. “Hydrogen bonding: Homing in on a tricky chemical concept.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44, no. 1 (2013): 51–65 Stern, Alexander W. “The Neutrino Concept.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (1941): 614–617 Ehrenhaft, Felix and Leo Banet. “Is There “True Magnetism” or Not?” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1941): 458–462 Gavroglu, Kostas and Yorgos Goudaroulis. “Heike Kamerlingh Onnes’ researches at Leiden and their methodological implications.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 19, no. 2 (1988): 243–274 Hon, Giora. “H. Hertz: ‘The electrostatic and electromagnetic properties of the cathode rays are either nil or very feeble.’ (1883) a case-study of an experimental error.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 18, no. 3 (1987): 367–382 Forrester, John. “Chemistry and the conservation of energy: The work of James Prescott Joule.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 6, no. 4 (1975): 273–313 Bradley, John. “On the Operational Interpretation of Classical Chemistry.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 6, no. 21 (1955): 32–42 Bridgman, P. W. “The Nature of Some of Our Physical Concepts. III.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2, no. 6 (1951): 142–160 Ehrenhaft, Felix. “The Microcoulomb Experiment. Charges Smaller than the Electronic Charge.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1941): 403–457 |
G-Quantum-mechanics (10) | Lombardi, Olimpia, Juan Sebastián Ardenghi,, Sebastian Fortin, and Mario Castagnino. “Compatibility between Environment-Induced Decoherence and the Modal-Hamiltonian Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (2011): 1024–1036 Bub, Jeffrey. “From Micro to Macro: A Solution to the Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988, no. (1988): 134–144 Hemmo, Meir and Orly Shenker. “Quantum Decoherence and the Approach to Equilibrium.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (2003): 330–358 Albert, David and Barry Loewer. “Wanted Dead or Alive: Two Attempts to Solve Schrödinger’s Paradox.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990, no. (1990): 277–285 Robinson, Don. “The Infinite Apparatus in the Quantum Theory of Measurement.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990, no. (1990): 251–261 Kastner, Ruth E. “Shutters, Boxes, but No Paradoxes: Time Symmetry Puzzles in Quantum Theory.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18, no. 1 (2004) Bächtold, Manuel. “Five Formulations of the Quantum Measurement Problem in the Frame of the Standard Interpretation.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 39, no. 1 (2008): 17–33 Elby, Andrew. “Why Local Realistic Theories Violate, Nontrivially, the Quantum Mechanical EPR Perfect Correlations.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44, no. 2 (1993): 213–230 Bedard, Katherine. “Bohm, Spin, and the Bell Inequalities.” Synthese 114, no. 3 (1998): 405–444 Albertson, James. “The Statistical Nature of Quantum Mechanics.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 13, no. 51 (1962): 229–233 |
G-Relativity (16) | Giannoni, Carlo B. “Special Relativity in Accelerated Systems.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1973): 382–392 Ungar, Abraham. “The Lorentz Transformation Group of the Special Theory of Relativity without Einstein’s Isotropy Convention.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 3 (1986): 395–402 Lam, Vincent. “Gravitational and Nongravitational Energy: The Need for Background Structures.” Philosophy of Science 2, no. 1 (2011): 1012–1023 Podlaha, M. F. “Light Signal Synchronisation and Clock Transport Synchronisation in the Theory of Relativity.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 30, no. 4 (1979): 376–380 Norton, John D. “The Force of Newtonian Cosmology: Acceleration Is Relative.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 4 (1995): 511–522 Norton, John. “What was Einstein’s principle of equivalence?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 16, no. 3 (1985): 203–246 Janis, Allen I. “Synchronism by Slow Transport of Clocks in Noninertial Frames of Reference.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 1 (1969): 74–81 Weatherall, James Owen. “Maxwell-Huygens, Newton-Cartan, and Saunders-Knox Space-Times.” Philosophy of Science 83, no. 1 (2016): 82–92 Giannoni, Carlo. “Einstein and the Lorentz-Poincaré Theory of Relativity.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1970, no. (1970): 575–589 Leeds, Stephen. “Discussion: Malament on Time Reversal*.” Philosophy of Science 1, no. 2 (2006): 448–458 |
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Malaterre, C., Lareau, F., Pulizzotto, D. et al. Eight journals over eight decades: a computational topic-modeling approach to contemporary philosophy of science. Synthese 199, 2883–2923 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02915-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02915-6