Saturday, July 21, 2007

Method and Revolt

Method takes possession of a science, then, precisely at the moment that this science comes under the sway of the mathematical mind. Insofar as the progress of a science depends on subtlety of mind alone, that science is in revolt against all method.


Pierre Duhem, German Science, John Lyon, tr. (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1991) p. 45. Duhem is using 'science' very broadly here; the point is general, but he is making it in the context of talking about the work of the historian. Duhem denies that there can be any historical method in the strict and proper sense (which doesn't, of course, commit him to saying that there are no methods that a historian might not use, only that these are not what constitutes it as history). Even in a field like physics, though, Duhem is very clear that physics requires for its long-term progress both the mathematical mind and the subtle mind, the mind of finesse or intuition; thus one might say that in Duhem's view even the hard sciences involve an interplay between method and revolt against it (which, is not necessarily a revolt against method's results but against its constraints).

Links, Vincula, Syndesmoi

* The Pope criticizes the Pope. The Pope of Alexandria criticizes the Pope of Rome, that is. Shenouda puts a great deal of emphasis on ecumenism, and, since he seems to have interpreted it more strongly than it actually requires, that explains the severe reaction -- most representatives of the great non-Catholic churches have been mildly approving of the CDF document, relieved, no doubt, to be dealing with a frank and straightforward Rome rather than something considerably more amorphous and foggy like, say, the Church of England.

* An essay on Abelard and Heloise. I've previously looked at the philosophical argument of Abelard's autobiographical Historia Calamitatum: Part I, Part II, Part III.

* Jack Perry has a handy introduction to the Traveling Salesman Problem.

* There's a post at SF Gospel on Dr. Who and Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Here's an essay on Arthur C. Clarke's "History Lesson" and the same; an excerpt from an article about the same theme in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

* On a similar note, this course syllabus, an English seminar on Science Fiction and Philosophy, would make an excellent reading project.

* I recently read Susan Palwick's novel The Necessary Beggar. It is excellent; I recommend it very highly. (This, incidentally, is one of the lovely things about the blogosphere. Palwick blogs at Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good. Were this not the case, there's a chance I might never have read the book, which would be unfortunate.) Do me a favor: go to the library and check it out, or buy it, and if you like it, pass the recommendation on.

* More science fiction, and a likable story too: an eleven-year-old fan of the animated television show, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, did a bit of basic sleuthing and helped the police catch a thief. It actually is a very decent little show; it's nice that it's inspiring some kids to use their eyes and brains.

* Tour the Vatican.

* The Logic Museum has begun building a page on passages relevant to the ontological argument.

* John Farrell reports on a talk by Ken Miller.

* This paper provides an easy introduction to Whitehead's mereotopology: The Whiteheadian context of some formal theories of space (PDF) by Gary Herstein. See also his Measurement, Mereotopology, and the Nature of Nature (PDF) by the same, and Whitehead's Theory of Extension in Process and Reality (PDF), by Claus Ringel.

* Rob Knop muses on science, religion, and compartmentalization of mind.

* Jonathan Prejean finds himself persuaded by Michael Liccione's Spirituque suggestion. It still seems to me a theological solecism that's a result of focusing too narrowly on only one set of things that an explication of the Trinity is supposed to do, and I am still mystified by how it is supposed to do any of the things claimed for it. I also still think there are several features required for proper progress that are not adequately developed yet. But the post is worth some reflection.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Three Poem Drafts

Birds Hunting Crickets

The sky is so blue you could dive right in and swim,
the sun so bright that it burns like hidden sin,
but the breeze so cool upon that sunburned skin;

I'd give a penny for your thoughts, but you're probably thinking of him,

so instead I'll just muse on truth and rule of law
and watch the birds hunt the crickets outside the coffee shop.

Politician

For all of my ills you've offered the lasting cure.
How, then, have you managed to sully everything pure
in a betrayal so great it can't be endured?
You say that you stand for those who yet need,
but you still break our hearts and leave them to bleed.

You shout that you'll save, that divisions you'll heal,
till I'm too tired to think and too numbed to feel,
but your vows are so reckless, your words can't be real.
You say that you stand for the land of the free,
but wherever you stand, you don't stand for me.

Waves

I am tired of these turns of tide.
They move first up, then down,
from pedestal, to crown,
to a dashing of my pride.

When life comes and goes in waves,
what's a lonely man to do
in an empty boat for two
with no hope of being saved?

I would be sick upon this sea,
but the waves move back and forth
between worthlessness and worth
and leave no moments free.

Too much churning in the foam
makes the yearning a dull, gray ache,
instead of a demon that takes
the heart and drives it home.

Am I going east or west?
I try for the harbor's mouth.
I go first north, then south,
and when in doubt, I guess.

But the sea's a wily maze
for unwary men unwise,
and those who the sea despise
will never find their ways.

But is there any chance
for those who fear the misty crest?
No, we must beware that fear lest
we be dizzied by the ocean's dance.

So I go, I come, I go,
and one answer alone I have found
that seems anchored to solid ground:
The god tells me I do not know.

But sometimes on moonlit nights
though the sea still will rise and fall,
the stars shine and sing their call,
standing still with unchanging light.

Virtue Ethics and the Conflict Problem

One of the objections often made against virtue ethics goes by the name 'The Conflict Problem'. Virtue ethics tells us of the importance of cultivating a set of virtues, like honesty, justice, compassion, and so forth. But in many situations that we face in common life, we are pulled in different directions by such virtues. You know, the sort of common-life situations in which you are hiding Jews, and the Nazis come, and they threaten to kill your mother if you don't tell them if you are hiding Jews or not.

Yes, I'm exaggerating (slightly) the extent to which the objector has to go to make this sound like a serious problem. But in fact, even if we take the objection at face value, the virtue ethicist should not be put out at all by the objection. Obviously there will be difficult moral situations -- perhaps even moral situations, in fact, that are so difficulty that we are at sea when it comes to knowing how to apply any sort of rule to them, or determine at all the consequences of our actions in those situations. It doesn't ultimately matter how common or rare they are. Virtue ethics is an ethics that thrives in situations of moral conflict, precisely because it doesn't make the mistake of trying immediately to determine how you should handle the conflict. Someone who accepts virtue ethics takes a step back from the scenario and says, "Ex hypothesi this is a difficult situation, so it's silly to think that it's obvious what we should conclude about it. Rather, the question we should be asking is this: What qualities do we have to have in order to determine well how this situation should be resolved at all?" It's no good talking about rules or consequences if you don't have the wisdom, or the integrity, or the fortitude, to use them properly in the proper circumstances. And, while the virtue ethicist is not without means for discussing the matter, his or her primary aim is not to give you the answer but to show you what is required for being the type of person who can see an answer when faced with a problem.

So of all the objections to virtue ethics, I think the conflict problem is the least dangerous; so much so, I think, that serious consideration of the conflict problem shows that the virtue ethicist must be on to something.

Dooyeweerd

Philip Blosser writes (ht):

Any intellectual wading more than ankle-deep into the work of these Reformational Philosophers soon realizes that he would be a fool to ignore the wealth of theoretical insights yielded by them over the last century. Dooyeweerd is probably among the two or three greatest Christian philosophers of the twentieth century from any tradition, period. I say this as a Catholic with more than a passing acquaintance with the work of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, John Courtney Murray, Bernard Lonergan, and Alasdair MacIntyre, not to mention Karol Wojtyla. This is a philosophical tradition, in my opinion, with which every serious thinker ought to be acquainted and conversant.


I think this is probably right. Indeed, I would go farther; if I were asked to name the twentieth-century philosophers (no restricting adjective) who are most likely to be remembered and read with interest several hundred years from now, Dooyeweerd would come in close behind Edith Stein on my list of candidates. Part of that, to be sure, is that it doesn't hurt one's longevity to have a stable and long-lasting niche group interested in you as part of their heritage (and neither Catholics nor Calvinists are likely to die out soon); and part of it is that there are not actually many competitors for such a distinction (Heidegger, Whitehead, and perhaps Wittgenstein are the only possibilities who seem even likely). But there's more to it than that; it includes quality and diversity of writings and ability to stand out from the (relatively) humdrum mass. Dooyeweerd's chief problem, I think, is that he has a wholly implausible view of the history of philosophy; it makes him say remarkably dubious things. But abstracting from that, there's much worth learning from him; his theory of aspects, for instance, is thorough and thought-provoking, and even the theory of ground-motives, which is too dependent on the dubious view of the history of philosophy, is worth careful consideration abstracted from that view. Certainly the New Critique is worth reading at least once.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Scientific Method

A young German doctor had come to Pasteur's laboratory in order, he said, to become familiar with French microbiology. He was a student of Koch's. At Koch's 'institute' microbes were cultivated on slices of potato. Such was not the custom on the Rue d'Ulm. In order, no doubt, to know better the procedures of the latter laboratory, our German maintained he would do only that which was done in the former laboratory. Someone said to him: "That's no problem. Cultivate your bacilli as you prefer. Here are some potatoes." "But where is the knife to pare them?" "Take the first knife you come across, and if you don't find any, buy a pocket knife you come across, and if you don't find any, buy a pocket knife in the market for thirteen sous." "In Berlin, we have a special knife for paring potatoes." And our doctor would not begin his researches until he had received from Koch's laboratory that sacred instrument for paring potatoes. In such a fashion this knife came to rank as part of the scientific method.

Pierre Duhem, German Science, John Lyon, tr. (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1991) p. 65.

Incidentally, that's one of the nice things about German Science, which collects together lectures originally given in Spring of 1915 to the Catholic Association of Students at the University of Bordeaux. Where else can you read a text in philosophy of science by one of the greatest philosophers of science in history that is both exceptionally readable (being intended as popular wartime lectures for students) and has jokes about Germans? Here's another:

When he no longer understands himself, the German is convinced he has finally attained the heights of metaphysics. (p. 67)

And a more bitter one:

For example: in times of war, the fancy enters his mind to massacre inoffensive beings? He sets forth this postulate: Everything that tends to shorten the duration of war is humane. Then, after having unrolled several quite conclusive syllogisms, he robs, violates, pillages, burns, executes, and torpedoes with the serene conscience of a benefactor of humanity. (p. 56)

Scandal, Derision, and Hell

Great and Injurious was the blindness of those who presided over the Indians as to the Conversion and Salvation of this People: for they denied in Effect what they in their flourishing Discourse pretended to, and declar'd with their Tongue what they contradicted in their Heart; for it came to this pass, that the Indians should be commanded on the penalty of a bloody War, Death, and perpetual Bondage, to embrace the Christian Faith, and submit to the Obedience of the Spanish King; as if the Son of God, who suffered Death for the Redemption of all Mankind, had enacted a Law, when he pronounced these words, Go and teach all Nations, that Infidels, living peaceably and quietly in their Hereditary Native Country, should be impos'd upon pain of Confiscation of all their Chattels, Lands, Liberty, Wives, Children, and Death itself, without any precedent instruction to Confess and Acknowledge the true God, and subject themselves to a King, whom they never saw, or heard mention'd before; and whose Messengers behav'd themselves toward them with such Inhumanity and Cruelty as they had done hitherto. Which is certainly a most foppish and absurd way of Proceeding, and merits nothing but Scandal, Derision, nay Hell itself.


Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevisima relacion de la destruccíon de las Indias (as found translated here).

Catholic and Roman Catholic

S.M. Hutchens at "Mere Comments":

As I interpret these documents, language used of the Orthodox churches indicates a communion that is, if we may use the term, quantitatively greater, for their apostolic episcopate and validity of their Eucharist is added to recognition of the baptism which is granted to Protestants—all as “impelling toward Catholic Unity.” But the communion is still "imperfect"--that is, qualitatively the same as that of Protestants in that it is “defective.”

If this is so, John Paul II's analogy of the Roman and Eastern Catholic churches as the two lungs of the body of Christ is untenable. It was a generous thing to say, and the sentiment behind it should be remembered and treasured, but it implies an equality between Rome and Orthodoxy that official Catholic dogma does not appear to support. Orthodoxy, like Protestantism, "derives its efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the [Roman] Catholic Church,” and so whatever about either of them is the Church, and—if being “Christian” implies membership in the Church, as I believe the Vatican documents do, whatever makes their members Christians—is derived from the Roman congregation in which the Catholic Church subsists.


I'm not sure I understand the argument here. The Eastern Orthodox are, in the Catholic view, imperfectly united to Rome (and thus, since Rome as fulfilling its Petrine Office contributes something essential to the fullness of communion, are imperfectly part of the body of Christ). But this tells us nothing about Eastern Catholics, who don't lack this element. And the Catholic view is that the fullness of grace and truth subsists not in the Roman Catholic Church but in the Catholic Church, which includes Roman Catholics and Eastern Catholics alike. Maronites, for instance, who are not Roman but have never been out of communion with Rome, don't have to look to Rome for the fullness of grace and truth. They have it in their own right. (To that extent we could just as easily call Roman Catholics 'non-Eastern Maronite Catholics' as we could call Maronite Catholics 'Roman Catholics'; Maronite Catholics are genuinely Catholic, but they are only Roman in that they are in communion with Rome, and one could just as easily say that Roman Catholics are Maronites in that they are in communion with Maronite Catholics. Roman Catholics don't usually think in that way, but this is one of the areas where Roman Catholics don't usually think. The fact that the patriarch of Rome has primacy among the patriarchs doesn't imply that those Catholics under his patriarchal care have primacy among Catholics.) Of course, there is an inequality between Rome and everyone else; it's called Roman primacy, and if Hutchens means that Rome considers acceptance of it a non-negotiable point, that's certainly right (although it's pretty clear from the case of the Melkites, who tend to be skeptical about anything beyond a very minimal claim to Roman primacy, that Rome will tolerate a certain amount of divergence of opinion on the matter as far as communion goes).

So when the Catholics say that the fullness of grace and truth subsists in the Catholic Church, they really do mean the Catholic Church, East as well as West; they only mean the Roman Catholic Church if we are using 'Roman Catholic' to mean anyone in communion with Rome regardless of whether they are actually in the Roman patriarchate or not.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Notables and Linkables

* The newest Philosophers' Carnival is up at "Philosophy Sucks!". The theme is Mind, Meaning, and Morals.

* Anthony Esolen has a fascinating post suggesting the characteristics of flourishing artistic periods; it gets some interesting discussion in the comments.

* Janet Stemwedel discusses whether philosophy of science does scientists any good. I think a lot of the phil. sci. Janet discusses does (or would); I'm less convinced that most of what is published in Philosophy of Science and similar journals, interesting though it be in its own right, does so (or could do so). It's clear enough that philosophy of science has done scientists much good; one thinks of Whewell.

* In response to Medawar's criticism of science papers, Chris Rowan offers a spirited defense, on the basis that they exist less to document scientific process than to persuade other scientists. This is certainly true. I also think it's a mistake to focus on the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion structure; that's merely presentation, like having an essay with an introductory paragraph that includes a thesis statement, a middle that builds an argument, and a conclusion that recapitulates. That's not the structure of the reasoning. Within a scientific paper, however, we get elements of reasoning that tend to fall in general groups. There was a good discussion of this in Philosophy of Science some time ago. See Fred Suppe, "The Structure of a Scientific Paper" ; Allen Franklin, "Comment on 'The Structure of a Scientific Paper'"; Peter Lipontt, "The Best Explanation of a Scientific Paper"; Valerie Gray Hardcastle, "Scientific Papers Have Various Structures". I don't have the exact bibliographical information for the first three on me, but Hardcastle's is: Philosophy of Science, Vol. 66, No. 3, 415-439. Sep., 1999. (The others are in either the immediately prior issue or the one before that.) I highly recommend it for those interested in scientific reasoning. Suppe argues for an encoding scheme that helps to lay out the rational structure of the scientific paper, and thus the reasoning it expresses; Hardcastle's is an important response, because it shows that there are other types of scientific paper than Suppe considers. At some point, when I dig up the relevant issues of Philosophy of Science from the boxes wherein they currently hide, I'll give a more thorough account of the discussion here.

* Johnny-Dee continues discussing Johnny Cash and philosophy by looking at virtue ethics.

* At "Weitermachen!" Matt Brown discusses the problem with 'thought experiments' or 'intuition pumps' in ethics. Good discussion in the comments and Michele has some good discussion of that discussion here.

* Barry Mazur, When is one thing equal to some other thing? (PDF)

* Well worth reading if you like anything in the way of Blish-like science fiction: A Case of Consilience by Ken MacLeod. (ht)

* Kenny Pearce has a good post on ecclesiology, distinguishing four elements of a complete ecclesiology: somatic, apostolic, evangelistic, and eucharistic.

* Rebecca discusses imputed righteousness and the active and passive obedience of Christ. I tend "reformedish" on this myself, although I'm pretty sure that I diverge from the typical Reformed line on many of the details (e.g., I tend to think imputation involves more than Reformed theologians tend to). I find this a lot with Reformed theology; I tend to agree with the gist but think it incomplete -- and that affects a lot of the details. Still, the gist is often very good, and this is one place where I think it is; the imputation of Christ's active obedience is utterly essential to the full living of Christian life.

* Macht lays out Calvin's distinction between the unknowable essence and the knowable nature of God.

Duhem and the German Mind II

Well, I got hold of a copy of German Science (in John Lyon's translation), so having re-read it, I can put a more precise characterization on my uneasiness at Ariew's characterization of the argument, and one that corrects a few details in my previous post. Essentially, Ariew identified the following characteristics of the argument of La science allemande:

1. The pursuit of truth requires both good sense, whereby we intuit principles, and logical reasoning, whereby we develop consequences.
2. Different minds are differently disposed to each; a mind more disposed to good sense (bon sens) is intuitive (un esprit de finesse), whereas a mind more disposed to logical reasoning is mathematical (un esprit de géométrie).
3. If good sense is allowed to dominate too much, we get the English mind, which is experimental to such an extent that logic suffers.
4. If logical reasoning is allowed to dominate too much, we get the German mind, which is logical to such an extent that good sense suffers.
5. The French mind is un esprit de géométrie corrected by good sense; it is therefore a balance between the two.

(1) and (2) are just Duhem's general Pascalian approach to science. Where I diverge from Ariew is in (3), (4), and (5). My reasons are the following:

(A) Duhem explicitly puts the French mind on the intuitive side. That is, the French mind is un esprit de finesse.
(B) The English mind is also on the intuitive side. It differs from the French mind in that the French mind shares with the German mind an interest in abstract logical structure. (This interest is expressed in different ways. The French, being intuitive, like to classify; the Germans, being geometrical, like to infer.) The English mind, on the other hand, is obsessed with models. This is because (as Ariew says) the English mind is far, far more imaginative than either the French mind or the German mind. This characteristic means that the English mind tends to be willing to accept reasoning that is in some sense broken and inconsistent, if it involves a vivid picture analogous to the thing being studied.
(C) Ariew is right that Duhem regards the English mind and the German mind as diametrical opposites. But his conclusion from this is not that they should both be eschewed, as one would expect if either were degenerate, but that they should get more exposure to each other in order to counter-balance each other. Maxwell discovers his equations by a series of inconsistent models and leaps of thought; Helmholtz starts working out a way to derive them rigorously. The French mind is in some sense between the two; but it is between the two in the sense that going too far in either direction is contrary to the French scientific genius.
(D) The French mind is not perfect scientific genius; even if it is in some sense between the English mind and the German mind, it is not a golden mean between them. Duhem is quite clear that the perfect scientific mind is the one that transcends national quirks, and exhibits the genius of all humanity. The minds of all the great scientists at their best approach this. The scientific mind only becomes national to the extent that scientific communities in those nations get off balance, deviating from the true. The English mind is too imagination-dependent and tolerant of contradictions; the German mind is too willing to sacrifice understanding to complicated reasoning; the French mind is too willing to flit from point to point and take things as obviously demonstrated that are merely plausible. On the other hand, the English mind is better than the others at taking everything into account; the German mind is better than the others at patiently following a line of reason through to the very end; and the French mind is better than the others at laying things out in such a way that the theory actually illuminates the phenomena and enlightens us as to their nature. They are each to be admired in their own ways, but they are each to be regarded with caution for reasons peculiar to them. Thus, all these different mentalities need to learn to live in harmony; the French mind is the indispensable complement of the German mind, and vice versa.

Duhem does hold that the intuitive mind is superior to the geometrical mind, and thus, to the extent that the German mind tends geometrical and the French mind intuitive, the French mind is superior to the German mind. But this is because science as conceived by Duhem must move from good sense to theory to good sense again, and the French mind is better equipped to determine what's good sense, just as the German mind is better able to work out the details of theories. The superiority is not one of the complete to the deficient, or the perfect to the degenerate, but of the end to the means. (How the English mind fits into this is never specified. But it, too, is intuitive. Its chief weakness is its dependence on models, which from the perspective of the French minds is an excessive use of a pedagogical crutch.)

How does Ariew get his interpretation? I suspect that Ariew is focusing chiefly on Lecture IV, where Duhem discusses all three minds, and treats the French mind as a sort of balance between the English and the German. But Lecture IV is chiefly concerned with giving young French scientists advice on how to work with their English and German counterparts. And the advice is roughly, that it's OK to be distinctively French in your manner of doing science (as long as you are striving for balance and recognize that the purest scientific work transcends nationality), that good English and German scientists are to be admired, but that this admiration should not lead French scientists to copy their vices. Thus by focusing too much on a few passages one could get the impression that Duhem thinks the French mind to be fully balanced, when he is actually advocating this as an ideal, not a characterization of the French mind. Likewise, Duhem is worried about the tendency of French scientists to get too mired in German obfuscation and thus leaving the virtue of clarity so assiduously cultivated by their predecessors; if you just focus on these passages the German mind doesn't come across too favorably. But there are other passages in which different purposes are pursued and you can begin to see more nuances to Duhem's position.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Duhem and the German Mind

From Ariew's entry on Duhem in the SEP:

In his last work, La science allemande, mostly a work of wartime propaganda, Duhem added a third kind of mind to his original two, namely, the German mind. If there are two basic types, the French mind and the English mind, then what could the German mind possibly be? Citing Pascal, Duhem tells us that truth requires both reason and argument—raison and raisonnement. Logic, or our ability to link propositions with one another, allows us to deduce one truth from another; but that ability, by itself, merely gets us back to first principles or axioms. We also need a faculty that allows us to intuit the truth of the first principles or axioms, that is, bon sens (good sense). Bon sens is to “esprit de finesse” what “pure logic” is to “esprit de géométrie.” Moreover, bon sens, our faculty of recognizing fundamental truth gets perfected by the practice of history, by our becoming more aware of the failures and successes of previous theories, by thinking about the trajectory of scientific theories, rather than by considering a single theory frozen in time. The dual scheme can now be expanded. We need logic, the ability to systematize, but we also need intuition, the recognition of truth. When one of these is allowed to dominate, we get a science which is all intuition, all “esprit de finesse,” but no logical coherence, namely, English science; or we get a science which is all logic, lacking bon sens, namely, German science. German science then is a degenerate kind of French science, the latter being predominantly “esprit de géométrie,” corrected by bon sens.

As a result, we can talk about a continuum of sciences; at one extreme on the theoretical side is German science, or logicism, and at the other extreme on the experimental side is English science, or crude modelism. In the middle is French science, which allegedly tempers the logical bent with historicism.


Can this be quite right? My text is in a box right now, so I can't double-check, but this sounds like a very different La science allemande than I remember. For one thing, I don't see that the English mind plays such an important role in La science allemande as Ariew is suggesting (even in the earlier works it seems to me to be more a way of looking at the role of models in science than anything else -- models, not experiments, which are something entirely different). For another, I saw no indication that the German mind is regarded as "a degenerate kind of French science". For another, Duhem seems to me to put the French mind on the side of esprit de finesse, not esprit de géométrie; it is the German mind that is a version of esprit de géométrie. In fact, the natural inference to draw from German Science (or, at least, the one that I drew) is that there are two basic mentalities necessary for scientific progress, found in their closest concrete forms in the German mind and the French mind, and the primary problem with the former is not that it is degenerate but that it has a tendency to refuse to recognize any other approach to science but its own, and to exalt rigor at the expense of understanding. (It is the English mind, I think, that Duhem regards as defectively scientific. The German mind would be entirely fine if it would only defer more to demands that its theories be intelligible. So it seems to me.)

My own interpretation of La science allemande is laid out in passing here.

In any case, this is not so much a criticism as a reminder to myself to look at this point again more closely when I have the chance. (Incidentally, I'm an Other Internet Resource; my post on Duhem's works online is linked at the bottom, as a convenient way of not having to link them all separately.)

UPDATE:

See my follow-up post.