Works by Gerald Holton
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- Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein.Gerald James Holton -1988 - Harvard University Press.
- The scientific imagination: case studies.Gerald James Holton -1978 - New York: Cambridge University Press.Using firsthand accounts gleaned from notebooks, interviews, and correspondence of such twentieth-century scientists as Einstein, Fermi, and Millikan, Holton shows how the idea of the scientific imagination has practical implications for the history and philosophy of science and the larger understanding of the place of science in our culture.
- The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America.Gerald Holton &Daniel J. Kevles -1978 -Hastings Center Report 8 (3):42.
- The scientific imagination: with a new introduction.Gerald James Holton -1978 - Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.In this book Gerald Holton takes an opposing view, illuminating the ways in which the imagination of the scientist functions early in the formation of a new ...
- Einstein, Michelson, and the "Crucial" Experiment.Gerald Holton -1969 -Isis 60 (2):133-197.
- Science and anti-science.Gerald James Holton -1993 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.This book examines these questions not in the abstract but shows their historic roots and the answers emerging from the scientific and political controversies ...
- The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies.Gerald Holton -1980 -British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 31 (2):193-195.
- Ernst Mach and the Fortunes of Positivism in America.Gerald Holton -1992 -Isis 83 (1):27-60.
- The advancement of science, and its burdens: the Jefferson lecture and other essays.Gerald James Holton -1986 - New York: Cambridge University.In this book Professor Holton continues his analysis of how modem science works and what its influences are on our world, with particular emphasis on the role of the thematic elements - those often unconscious presuppositions that guide scientific work to success or failure. The foundation of the book is provided by the author's research on the work of Albert Einstein, which is then contrasted with other styles of research in the advancement of science. The author deals directly with the (...) often unforeseen consequences of the progress of contemporary science, detailing its fruits as well as its burdens. The many questions examined in this work range over a broad spectrum of areas that command the attention of all readers with an interest in understanding the development of modem science. (shrink)
- From the Vienna Circle to Harvard Square: The Americanization of a European World Conception.Gerald Holton -1993 -Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 1:47-73.In the rise of modern scientific philosophy, one can distinguish four general periods. Its early phase is part of the intellectual history of 19th-century Austria-Hungary. Second, we find it reaching its self-confident form in the 1920s and early ‘30s, chiefly in the collaborative achievements of the Vienna Circle and its analogous groups in Prague, Berlin, Lwow and Warsaw. Third is the period of its further growth and accommodation during the period roughly from the late 1930s to about 1960, especially in (...) the U.S.A., as mediated largely by the European refugees from fascism. Lastly, the movement’s fate from the 1960s on may be understood as its integration with, or dissolution into, other related modern streams. (shrink)
- What historians of science and science educators can do for one another.Gerald Holton -2003 -Science & Education 12 (7):603-616.
- The role of themata in science.Gerald Holton -1996 -Foundations of Physics 26 (4):453-465.Since the 1960s. thematic analysis has been introduced as a new tool for understanding the success or the failure of individual scientific research projects, particularly in their early stages. Specific examples are given, as well as indications of the prevalence of themata in areas beyond the natural sciences.
- The project physics course, then and now.Gerald Holton -2003 -Science & Education 12 (8):779-786.
- Philipp Frank at Harvard University: His Work and His Influence.Gerald Holton -2006 -Synthese 153 (2):297-311.The physicist–philosopher Philipp Frank’s work and influence, especially during his last three decades, when he found a refuge and a position in America, deserve more discussion than has been the case so far. In what follows, I hope I may call him Philipp – having been first a graduate student in one of his courses at Harvard University, then his teaching assistant sharing his offices, then for many years his colleague and friend in the same Physics Department, and finally, doing (...) research on his archival holdings kept at Harvard. I also should not hide my large personal debt to him, for without his recommendation in the 1950s to the Albert Einstein Estate, I would not have received its warm welcome and its permission, as the first one to do historical research in the treasure trove of unpublished letters and manuscripts, thus starting me on a major part of my career in the history of science. (shrink)No categories
- The Neglected Mandate: Teaching Science as Part of Our Culture.Gerald Holton -2014 -Science & Education 23 (9):1875-1877.
- The Rise of Postmodernisms and the "End of Science".Gerald James Holton -2000 -Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (2):327-341.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 327-341 [Access article in PDF] The Rise of Postmodernisms and the "End of Science" Gerald Holton * [Errata]In a remarkable essay, "The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will," Isaiah Berlin leads up to a key question facing historians of ideas today. He begins with the observation that beliefs have entered our culture that "draw their plausibility" from a deep and radical revolt (...) against the central tradition of Western thought. That central tradition rested on the "pillars of the social optimism," which had found its fullest expression in the Enlightenment, "that the central problems of men are, in the end, the same throughout history; that they are in principle solvable; and that the solutions form a harmonious whole." 1But these pillars, Berlin notes, "came under attack toward the end of the eighteenth century by a movement first known in Germany as Sturm und Drang, and later in the many varieties of romanticism... and the many contemporary forms of irrationalism of both the right and the left, familiar to everyone today." In our time, in the alleged absence of "objective rules," the new rules are those made up by the rebels: "Ends are not... objective values," and "ends are not discovered at all but made, not found but created." And he concludes: "The prophets of the nineteenth-century predicted many things... but what none of them, so far as I know, predicted was that the last third of the twentieth century would be dominated by... the enthronement of the will of individuals or classes, and the rejection of reason and order as being prison houses of the spirit. How did this begin?" 2 As if to ensure that the question be considered central to the understanding of our age, Berlin adds that the explosion of irrationalism is one of the "outstanding characteristics of our century, the most demanding of explanation [End Page 327] and analysis." 3 Elsewhere he also appeals to seek the causes of "what appears to me to be the greatest transformation of Western consciousness, certainly in our time." 4Focusing my presentation chiefly on the aspects concerning science, one may well rephrase Berlin's question: how did it come about that we have passed again in many areas into what Susan Haack calls an "Age of Preposterism?" 5 -- that, for example, scientists, who are now in a period of spectacular advances of knowledge across the board, find a whole array of highly placed academics and journalists asserting that scientists' hopes to reach objective truths (two highly suspect words now) are in vain because there is no difference between the laws scientists find in nature and the arbitrary rules that govern baseball games; that science is "just one language game among others"; that we must "abolish the distinction between science and fiction"; that "The natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of scientific knowledge"; and in any case, as the title of a current bestseller has it, we are at The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age." 6These are only a few glimpses, indicators of a stream of derogations, issuing from academe and the media. But happily, my concern here is not with the details of the current manifestation of what has been called the war on science but rather with examples of its historic lineage, with earlier phases of what Isaiah Berlin called the "Romantic Revolt." 7 Here we must begin our analysis by recognizing that any such multifaceted movement is best understood as a reaction against what went before, against what became so unsatisfactory or even intolerable as to cause the revolt.Historically, the most obvious and early reaction of this sort was the response to the breakthroughs in the seventeenth century that formed science and simultaneously signaled the great rupture from the ancient worldview, in which the individual, in principle, had been able to be both intellectually and spiritually comfortable. As one of the direct ancestors of romanticism, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744... (shrink)
- George Sarton, His Isis, and the Aftermath.Gerald Holton -2009 -Isis 100 (1):79-88.
- Limits of Scientific Inquiry.Gerald Holton &Robert S. Morison -1984 -Philosophy of Science 51 (3):522-525.
- I.2 Comments on Professor Harold Garfinkel's Paper.Gerald Holton -1981 -Philosophy of the Social Sciences 11 (2):159-161.
- On the Vienna Circle in Exile: An Eyewitness Report.Gerald Holton -1995 -Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 3:269-292.During its most vigorous period, the Vienna Circle movement was, by and large, kept rather marginal by the political and academic forces in its European home; they tended to see it as a dangerous search, in the Enlightenment tradition, for a world conception that would be free from metaphysical illusions, free from the kind of clericalism that had a strangle-hold on state and university, and free from the romantic madness of the rising fascist ideology. The wonder, in fact, is that (...) in its day, against such opposition, the Vienna Circle commanded adherence by such an array of distinguished intellectuals, even if they were only a small fraction of the total intelligentsia. (shrink)
- 10. Metaphors in Science and Education.Gerald Holton -1995 - In Zdravko Radman,From a Metaphorical Point of View: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Cognitive Content of Metaphor. De Gruyter. pp. 259-288.No categories
- A heuristic model for the growth process of modern physical science.Gerald Holton -1956 -Synthese 10 (1):190 - 202.
- Michael Polanyi and the History of Science.Gerald Holton -1992 -Tradition and Discovery 19 (1):16-30.This essay is a study of Polanyi’s career as scientist and philosopher from the point of view of the history of science, starting with the first step in his academic career helped by an intervention of Albert Einstein. Polanyi’s ideas are better understood if placed against the background of then-fashionable philosophical movements, including logical positivism, and his disagreement with Bukharin in 1935. The essay studies the sources and ambitions of Polanyi’s notion of the tacit dimension, his attitude to evolution and (...) “emergence,” and his contribution to the search for the origins of Einstein’s Relativity Theory. His success in the last of these is shown to be an exemplar of Polanyi’s own philosophy. (shrink)
- Introduction.Gerald Holton -2006 -Social Research: An International Quarterly 73 (3):733-736.
- The Thematic Component in Scientific Thought: Origins of Relativity Theory and Other Essays.Gerald James Holton -1973 - University of Texas at Austin.
- Do life processes transcend physics and chemistry?Gerald Holton -1968 -Zygon 3 (4):442-472.
- IV. Sociobiology: the New Synthesis?Gerald Holton -1977 -Science, Technology and Human Values 2 (4):28-43.No categories
- Some Lessons from Living in the History of Science.Gerald Holton -1999 -Isis 90 (S2):S95-S116.
- Farm Hall Transcripts Reconsidered.Gerald Holton -2022 -Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 45 (1-2):261-264.Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 261-264, June 2022.No categories
- Science and the modern mind.P. W. Bridgman,Philipp Frank &Gerald James Holton (eds.) -1971 - Freeport, N.Y.,: Books for Libraries Press.Introduction, by G. Holton.--Three eighteenth-century social philosophers: scientific influences on their thought, by H. Guerlac.--Science and the human comedy: Voltaire, by H. Brown.--The seventeenth-century legacy: our mirror of being, by G. de Santillana.--Contemporary science and the contemporary world view, by P. Frank.--The growth of science and the structure of culture, by R. Oppenheimer.--The Freudian conception of man and the continuity of nature, by J. S. Bruner.--Quo vadis, by P. W. Bridgman.--Prospects for a new synthesis: science and the humanities as complementary (...) activities, by C. Morris.--A humanist looks at science, by H. M. Jones. (shrink)
- On Being an Intellectual.Jacob Bronowski,Gerald James Holton &Clark Science Center -1968 - Published by Smith College at the Barton-Gillet Co.
- Acceptance.Gerald Holton -1990 -Science, Technology and Human Values 15 (2):251-253.No categories
- B.F. Skinner and P.W. Bridgman: The Frustration of a Wahlverwandtschaft.Gerald Holton -2001 -Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 9:335-346.The psychologist-philosopher B.F. Skinner and the physicist-philosopher P.W. Bridgman, both dedicated empiricists, initially entered into an intellectual relationship that seemed destined to be warm and fruitful. Yet, it ended up unfulfilled. Since I am now perhaps one of the few who knew both men as colleagues for many years, I might be able to throw some unique light on their interaction, and on what I consider to be one of the missed opportunities in the history of ideas.
- Commentary.Gerald Holton -1986 -Science, Technology, and Human Values 11 (2):25-26.No categories
- (1 other version)Candor and Integrity in Science.Gerald Holton -2005 -Synthese 145 (2):277-294.In the pursuit of researches and in the reporting of their results, the individual scientist as well as the community of fellow professionals rely implicitly on the researcher embracing the habit of truthfulness, a main pillar of the ethos of science. Failure to adhere to the twin imperatives of candor and integrity will be adjudged intolerable and, by virtue of science’s self-policing mechanisms, rendered the exception to the rule. Yet both as philosophical concepts and in practice, candor and integrity are (...) complex, difficult to define clearly, and difficult to convey easily to those entering on scientific careers. Therefore it is useful to present operational examples of two major scientists who exemplified devotion to candor and integrity in scientific research. (shrink)
- Eloge: Bern Dibner, 1878-1988.Gerald Holton &S. Schweber -1988 -Isis 79 (3):475-477.
- Guest Editorial.Gerald Holton -1982 -Science, Technology and Human Values 7 (3):3-5.No categories
- In memory of Philipp Frank.Gerald Holton,Edwin C. Kemble,W. V. Quine,S. S. Stevens &Morton G. White -1968 -Philosophy of Science 35 (1):1-5.
- Johannes Kepler: A case study on the interaction of science, metaphysics, and theology.Gerald Holton -1956 -Philosophical Forum 14:21.
- On Unity and Disunity in the Sciences: Variations of Ancient Themata.Gerald Holton -2010 -Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 14:245-262.I feel honored to be asked to speak at this university where so many ground-breaking scientists and philosophers were students or teaching, spreading their message world wide and I am especially glad to have been asked to come by the Institut Wiener Kreis, of which I am proud to be a member, and whose splendid work for two decades and to this day is being carried out vigorously under Professor Stadler and his colleagues. Through that, a bright flame is being (...) kept shining. That has its own salience. But I firmly believe, as you will hear later, that at just this time such studies have additional purpose, force and inspiration, in academe and society, as well as in global policies that are now under our very eyes. All these contain an urge to bring about a new version of a unifying Weltauffassung. If that succeeds, historians of the future may well say that there was a certain pre-established harmony between the original Vienna Circle program, and what is now being done here, and a new, better world. Let me add two remarks about why being invited to speak here today is special for me. You have often seen the large, elegant building at the corner of Schottengasse 10 and Schottenring. One of its high balconies were part of a Kanzlei of an attorney, specializing in international law, who had got his degree in jurisprudence right at this university, nearly a century ago. When his older boy visited there and looked out from that balcony, he could see the university where he hoped to study one day. (shrink)
- Principles and Applications of Physics. Otto Blüh, Joseph Denison Elder.Gerald Holton -1956 -Isis 47 (4):431-433.
- Philipp Frank and the Wiener Kreis: from Vienna to Exile in the USA.Gerald Holton -2017 -Studies in East European Thought 69 (3):207-213.Based on texts and personal recollections, the paper discusses the origins and roots of Philipp Frank’s philosophy of science as it was developed in Eastern Europe and later institutionalized in the United States. It takes into account the influence of Abel Rey and V. I. Lenin, considering the idea of the “bankruptcy of science.”.
- Revisiting Mein Weltbild.Gerald Holton -2016 - In Susan Neiman, Peter Galison & Wendy Doniger,What Reason Promises: Essays on Reason, Nature and History. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 88-92.
- Science in Culture.Gerald James Holton -1998 - American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Export citation
Bookmark - Scientific optimism and societal concerns.Gerald Holton -1975 -Hastings Center Report 5 (6):39-47.
- Space, Time and Creation. Philosophical Aspects of Scientific CosmologyMilton K. Munitz.Gerald Holton -1959 -Isis 50 (2):159-160.
- The advancement of science, and its burdens: with a new introduction.Gerald James Holton -1986 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.These are just a few of the questions posed in The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens.
- The formation of the American physics Community in the 1920s and the coming of Albert Einstein.Gerald Holton -1981 -Minerva 19 (4):569-581.
- Theories of the Universe from Babylonian Myth to Modern Science. Milton K. Munitz.Gerald Holton -1959 -Isis 50 (2):160-161.
- Thematic presuppositions and the direction of scientific advance.Gerald Holton -1981 - In Anthony Francis Heath,Scientific explanation: papers based on Herbert Spencer lectures given in the University of Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
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