[PHILOS-L] Fw: [CfP] Philosophical readings of "Leviathan and the Air-Pump" (Philosophia Scientiae 31-3, nov. 2017)
McKenna, Robert
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Subject: [CfP] Philosophical readings of "Leviathan and the Air-Pump" (Philosophia Scientiae 31-3, nov. 2017)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Philosophia Scientiæ invites contributions for the following special topic:
Philosophical readings of Leviathan and the Air-Pump
Thematic Issue of Philosophia Scientiæ 31/3, November 2027
Guest editors: Florence HULAK (Université Paris-8/Cresppa) et Valen-tin DENIS (EHESS/LIER-FYT)
Submission deadline: July 1st 2026
Acceptance notification: October 1st 2026
Final version due: April 1st 2026
Submission addresses: valenti...@ehess.fr; flor-en...@univ-paris8.fr
Description
This thematic issue aims to take stock of the philosophical readings and reception of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985). It will also aim to renew its interpretation by mobilizing philosophical frameworks and reading strategies that have so far been little used to illuminate this book. The issue builds on a half-day symposium organized in December 2025 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. It will include an unpublished French translation of the new preface that Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin added to the 2011 reissue of the work by Princeton University Press.
Leviathan and the Air-Pump constitutes one of the first major investigations published in the wake of “science studies”—an expression designating the set of new approaches that attempted to challenge the previously hegemonic division of labor between epistemology and the social sciences in the study of scientific knowledge (Pestre, 2006). In classical sociology of science, primarily embodied by Robert K. Merton (1938), there was indeed most often a division of labor between the study of the historical and social context of knowledge production and that of scientific contents, left to philosophers. Already weakened by authors such as Ludwik Fleck and Thomas Kuhn, this arrangement was radically called into question in the mid-1970s, both on a theoretical front through the formulation of David Bloor's “strong programme” for the sociology of knowledge (1976), and through the first empirical case studies published by Harry Collins (1975) – initial breakthroughs very quickly followed, in the second half of the decade, by multiple initiatives that would soon branch out into various schools of thought within science studies, but which all had in common the rejection of the division between context and content in order to study sociologically the very heart of science.
In several respects, Leviathan and the Air-Pump has constituted one of the most resounding successes of this renewal of the sociology of science. Its importance can be explained notably by the fact that Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer succeeded in mobilizing their methods in a historical case study. One of the unifying features among the highly diverse approaches of science studies was the principle of “symmetry” defined by Bloor, that is, the rule according to which one must study the winners and losers of scientific controversies with one and the same sociological grammar—which implies notably that the “sanctioned” sciences of which Bachelard speaks (1939) must be explained just as sociologically as “obsolete” sciences. Now, while such a method easily bears fruit when studying present-day knowledge, in that one can follow controversies in the making, the historical discipline very often deals with debates that are already closed, which seems to compromise the implementation of the strong programme. Thus the tour de force of Shapin and Schaffer is precisely to have succeeded in reopening the Hobbes-Boyle controversy that took place in the 1660s on experimentation and the possibility of proving the existence of the vacuum, by “playing the stranger” as they state in the introduction—that is, through an effort of historical charity that sees them treat symmetrically the claims of the two scholars to prevail, rejecting tautological explanations presupposing that Boyle was going in the direction of history, or that he was more rational.
Among the philosophical interpretations of this abundantly discussed book (Achbari, 2017), the most famous have undoubtedly been thus far those of Bruno Latour (1991) and Ian Hacking (1988, 1991). For these two prominent figures of epistemological thought in the last quarter of the 20th century, however, reading Shapin and Schaffer’s book was also an opportunity to develop their own lines of thought (Latour on the “great divide” between science and politics, Hacking on “styles of reasoning” and particularly the “laboratory style”). Thus, this issue intends to attempt to return to the letter of the original text, both to study it for itself and to better grasp the hermeneutic deviations introduced by the various interpretations of the book, in order to better analyze them as such.
Until the publication of Leviathan and the Air-Pump, the dominant interpretations had retained from this controversy that Boyle had both demonstrated the existence of the vacuum and imposed the necessity of an experimental practice open to a public composed of quality witnesses. In short, he would have been an important actor of scientific modernity as a promoter of experimentalism, while Hobbes, treated much less charitably by most historical studies, would embody an earlier stage in the history of rationality, or would simply not have properly understood Boyle’s positions. Against such reconstructions, we can distinguish at least the following major contributions of Shapin and Schaffer’s book, whose philosophical implications this thematic issue would like to probe:
- Having shown that the issue, for Boyle, is not so much to prove the existence of vacuum and take a position in the debate between plenists and vacuists, as to establish a new type of scientific practice: experimentation, insofar as it rests on the determination of the experience’s parameters, and thus makes it possible to produce a minimal consensus serving as a basis for scientific discussion, by delineating the proper domain of experimental facts.
- Having taken seriously again, and for the first time fully, the positions of Hobbes against Boyle. The book has indeed contributed to a rehabilitation of the author of Leviathan as a theorist of knowledge and philosopher of nature, whereas he had mostly been read for a very long time only as a political philosopher. Shapin and Schaffer show that his disagreement with Boyle does not concern the existence of the vacuum, but the very relevance of the experimental apparatus, where he defends a more rationalist and deductivist conception of knowledge, articulated with geometry as the foundational science.
- Having succeeded in articulating, in a non-reductionist manner, Boyle and Hobbes’ epistemological positions with their political ones, which probably constitutes Shapin and Schaffer’s greatest contribution from the point of view of a sociology (or social history) of knowledge. In the context of the monarchical restoration in England, Boyle and Hobbes indeed have a political agenda to work toward maintaining social consensus: for Boyle, the experimental community founded on deliberation provides a model for the political order to which society as a whole should aspire; regarding Hobbes, it is the criterion of the indivisibility of sovereign power that leads him to criticize the emergence of autonomous scientific communities evaluating themselves—this, in favor of a radically centralized conception of authority.
Starting from this minimal reading, submitted articles may therefore fall within the following thematic axes, which are not, however, exclusive.
Epistemology after Leviathan and the Air-Pump
This first axis will address the core domains of interest of Philosophia Scientiæ, by focusing on the lessons that epistemology in the broad sense can draw from Leviathan and the Air-Pump, through the major themes addressed in the book: the controversial birth of experimentation, the centrality of scientific instruments and particularly the “air-pump” in Boyle’s apparatus, the resulting question regarding the “artificial” character of phenomena highlighted according to Hacking by the “laboratory style”... Of course, it is also possible to present critical epistemological viewpoints on the work’s argumentation, which could of course draw on other historical works studying the same period, or even the same events. The book being still recent, this issue also intends to contribute to the formulation of more distanced interpretations.
Leviathan and the Air-Pump as a Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge
In this axis, approaches from the philosophy and history of the human and social sciences will be privileged, to revisit the place that Leviathan and the Air-Pump occupies in the first generation of science studies as an exemplary realization of a project of sociology of scientific knowledge, and as a dual contribution to the history and sociology of science. One may also ask to what extent the book can be resituated in a longer history of the sociology of knowledge that can be traced back to Karl Mannheim (1929) and, more generally, what type of articulation between theory of science and theory of society this book brings into play. Finally, one may study the work's influence on the social history of science.
The Reception of Leviathan and the Air-Pump in Philosophy
Here we will examine the influence the book has had outside science studies in the narrow sense, to question its reception in epistemology and philosophy more broadly. One may, for example, examine the most famous interpretations that have been proposed by authors already mentioned such as Bruno Latour or Ian Hacking, but also question how Leviathan and the Air-Pump has affected the history of political philosophy and the understanding of Hobbes's work, which appeared under Shapin and Schaffer's portrayal from a radically new angle.
New Philosophical Readings
Contributions may also propose original philosophical interpretations of Leviathan and the Air-Pump by drawing on various corpora or methodologies that seem capable of addressing the major problems the book echoes, such as the question of the relationship between science and politics, or more generally between theory and practice. One may mobilize traditions of thought that have largely renewed the treatment of these questions, such as for example pragmatism, the Frankfurt School, or of Michel Foucault (among many others). Shapin and Schaffer’s book may then notably serve as a point of support to highlight the fruitfulness of philosophical theories that have not yet been exploited to interpret it.
Manuscripts should
- be original, and cannot be under submission for another publication;
- be written in English or French;
- be prepared for double-blind anonymous review;
- contain an abstract in French and an abstract in English (200-300 words);
- not exceed 50,000 characters (spaces, abstracts, bibliography and notes included);
- be in Word, OpenOffice or LaTeX format (https://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/452);
- be sent to the following addresses: valenti...@ehess.fr; florenc...@univ-paris8.fr
- Guidelines for authors are to be found on the journal’s website: http://philosophiascientiae.revues.org/633
Bibliographie
Achbari Azadeh, « The Reviews of Leviathan and the Air-Pump: A Survey », Isis, Vol. 108, N°1, Mars 2017, p. 108-116.
Bachelard Gaston, La Formation de l’esprit scientifique [1938], Paris, Vrin, 1993.
Bloor David, Knowledge and Social Imagery, Londres, Routledge & Kegan Paul Books, 1976.
Collins Harry, « The Seven Sexes : A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the Replication of Experiments in Physics », Sociology, Volume 9, Issue 2, 1975, p. 205-224.
Hacking Ian, « Les philosophes de l’expérience » [1988], Tracés. Revue de sciences humaines, 9|2005, p. 67-82.
Hacking, Ian, « Artificial Phenomena », The British Journal for the History of Science, 24 (2), 1991, p. 235-241.
Latour Bruno, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d’anthropologie symétrique, Paris, La Découverte, coll. « Armillaire », 1991.
Latour Bruno, « L’anthropologie des sciences de Boyle et Hobbes », Critique, 11/1991, Tome XLVII, N°534, p. 882-904.
Mannheim Karl, Idéologie et utopie [1929], traduit de l’allemand par Jean-Luc Evard, Paris, Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, coll. « Bibliothèque allemande », 2006.
Merton Robert K., « Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England », Osiris, Vol. 4, 1938, p. 360-632.
Pestre Dominique, Introduction aux Science Studies, Paris, La Découverte, coll. « Repères », 2006.
Shapin Steven et Schaffer Simon, Léviathan et la pompe à air [1985], traduit de l’anglais par Thierry Piélat et Sylvie Barjansky, Paris, La Découverte, coll. « Textes à l’appui / Anthropologie sciences et des techniques », 1993.
General submissions within this range are welcome.
Philosophia Scientiae is a journal of peer-reviewed research in analytic philosophy, epistemology, and history and philosophy of science. It is particularly concerned with topics arising in mathematics, physics, and logic, but is open to contributions from all scientific fields. Philosophia Scientiæ has a tradition of publishing studies in the history of German and French philosophy of science.
It is published by Kimé Editions (Paris).
Potential authors and topical issue editors are invited to discuss their projects with our Managing Editors. Manuscripts should be submitted in French, English, or German, and prepared for anonymous peer review. Abstracts in French and English of 10-20 lines in length should be included. Submissions should be sent by e-mail to:
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