Darwin provided us with a powerful theoretical framework to explain the evolution of living
systems. Natural selection alone, however, has sometimes been seen as insufficient to …

Historical sciences like paleontology and archaeology have uncovered unimagined,
remarkable and mysterious worlds in the deep past. How should we understand the success …

The practice of paleontology has an aesthetic as well as an epistemic dimension.
Paleontology has distinctively aesthetic aims, such as cultivating sense of place and …

Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers
have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly …

Paleobiologists (and other historical scientists) often provide simple narratives to explain
complex, contingent episodes. These narratives are sometimes 'one-shot hypotheses' which …

I summarize the central ideas and arguments of Rock, Bone and Ruin: An Optimist's Guide
to the Historical Sciences, before responding to criticisms from Leonard Finkelman, Joyce …

Scaffolding and concept-metaphors have emerged as key terms within alternative
approaches to the epistemological analysis of archaeological practice. Each term contains …

Experimental archaeology is often understood both as testing hypotheses about processes
shaping the archaeological record and as generating tacit knowledge. Considering lithic …

The Académie des sciences in Paris started to work in December 1666. Its members put
their research to the temporal regime of knowledge by which ignorance was understood as …

Many Renaissance philosophers shared an anthropocentric conception of the human
position in the cosmos. This was especially true for the Renaissance Platonists, but also for …