Lydia Patton
My research centers on the philosophy of science and on the history of philosophy of science, including work on mathematics, experiment, theory building and assessment, and the epistemology of science.
You can send a request for the published versions of any of these papers.
Philpeople profile with links to papers
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2751-1196
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=list_works
Philosophy of Physics
"Hybrid Enrichment of Theory and Observation in Next-Generation Stellar Population Synthesis." In Philosophy of Astrophysics - Stars, Simulations, and the Struggle to Determine What is Out There, ed. Nora Boyd, Siska de Baerdemaeker, and Vera Matarese. Springer, 2023. Open access link opens May 26, 2023.
"Reichenbach's Empirical Axiomatization of Relativity." Joshua Eisenthal and Lydia Patton. Synthese 200 (6). Link to paper.
"Expanding Theory Testing in General Relativity: LIGO and parametrized theories." Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 69, 2020. Open access link.
“Methodological Realism and Modal Resourcefulness.” Synthese 192 (11): 3443-3462. 2015. Official version. Download paper.
“Experiment and Theory Building.” Synthese 184 (3): 235-246. 2012. Official version. Download.
“Reconsidering Experiments.” HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (2): 209-226. 2011. Official version; arxiv.org. Download.
“Signs, Toy Models, and the A Priori.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 (3): 281-289. 2009. Official version. Download.
Mathematics and Mathematical Methods
Working toward Solutions in Fluid Dynamics and Astrophysics: What the Equations Don't Say, edited by Lydia Patton and Erik Curiel. Springer, 2023. Link to website.
"Fishbones, Wheels, Eyes, and Butterflies: Heuristic Structural Reasoning in the Search for Solutions to the Navier-Stokes Equations." In Working toward Solutions.
Joshua Eisenthal and L. Patton. "Epistemology of Geometry." Oxford Bibliographies. Link. Alternative link.
“Laws of Thought and Laws of Logic After Kant.” pp. 123-137 in Logic from Kant to Russell, ed. S. Lapointe. Routledge, 2018. PhilSciArchive. Download.
“Russell’s Method of Analysis and the Axioms of Mathematics.” Pp. 105-126 in Sandra Lapointe and Christopher Pincock (ed.), Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017. Official link. Download.
“Hilbert’s Objectivity.” Historia Mathematica 41 (2): 188-203. 2014. Philpapers; PhilSciArchive. Download.
Laws of Nature
Laws of Nature, co-edited with Walter Ott. Oxford University Press, 2018.
“Intuitions and Assumptions in the Debate over Laws of Nature.” With Walter Ott, in Laws of Nature ed. Ott and Patton. 2018. Download.
“Kantian Essentialism in the Metaphysical Foundations.” The Monist, issue on “Laws of Nature”, edited by Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach. 100 (3). 2017. Link to official version. Download.
History of Philosophy of Science
"Abstraction, Pragmatism, and History in Mach's Economy of Science." In Interpreting Mach, ed. John Preston. Cambridge. 2021. Download.
"Kuhn's Kantian Dimensions." In Interpreting Kuhn, ed. K. Brad Wray. Cambridge. Preprint. Download.
“Kuhn, Pedagogy, and Practice: A Local Reading of Structure.” In Moti Mizrahi (ed.), The Kuhnian Image of Science: Time for a Decisive Transformation? Rowman & Littlefield. 2017. Philpapers. Download.
“Incommensurability and the Bonfire of the Meta-Theories: Response to Mizrahi.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4 (7): 51-58. 2015. Open access online version.
“New Water in Old Buckets: Hypothetical and Counterfactual Reasoning in Mach’s Economy of Science.” Ernst Mach – Life, Work, and Influence / Ernst Mach – Leben, Werk und Wirkung, edited by Friedrich Stadler. Springer, 2019. Springer page for the book. Download chapter.
“Methodology of the Sciences.” Pp. 594-606 in Michael Forster and Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press. 2015. Philpapers. Download.
“Ontology and Methodology.” Synthese 192 (11): 3413-3423. 2015. Co-authored by Benjamin C. Jantzen, Deborah G. Mayo & Lydia Patton. Official version.
Philosophy, Science, and History: A Guide and Reader. Routledge. 2014.
Kant and Neo-Kantianism
"Anti-Metaphysical Arguments in the Anticipations of Perception." Revue roumaine de philosophie. Tome 66, Nr. 2
Juillet–Décembre 2022. Open access link.
"Finitism in the Metaphysical Foundations." In The Cambridge Critical Guide to Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, ed. M. Bennett McNulty. Cambridge. Link to paper.
"Symbolic Forms and the Logic of the Cultural Sciences." In Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, ed. Anne Pollok and Luigi Filieri. Edizioni ETS.
“Cassirer and Steinthal on Expression and the Science of Language.” Cassirer Studies, special issue edited by Fabien Capellières. 2015. Philpapers. Download.
“Anti-Psychologism About Necessity: Friedrich Albert Lange on Objective Inference.” History and Philosophy of Logic 32 (2): 139 – 152. 2011. Official version. Download.
“Friedrich Albert Lange.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012; updated 2016. Co-authored by Nadeem J. Z. Hussain & Lydia Patton. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-lange/.
“The Paradox of Infinite Given Magnitude: Why Kantian Epistemology Needs Metaphysical Space.” Kant-Studien 102 (3): 273-289. 2011. Official version. Download.
“The Critical Philosophy Renewed: The Bridge Between Hermann Cohen’s Early Work on Kant and Later Philosophy of Science.” Angelaki 10 (1): 109 – 118. 2005. Official version. Download.
Hermann Cohen’s History and Philosophy of Science. Dissertation, McGill University 2004. Link to download.
Hermann von Helmholtz
“Perspectivalism in the Development of Scientific Observer-Relativity.” Pp. 63-78 in Martin Kusch, Katherina Kinzel, Johannes Steizinger, and Niels Wildschut (eds.), The Emergence of Relativism. Routledge, 2019. Link to book. Download.
“Helmholtz’s Physiological Psychology.” Pp. 96-116 in Sandra Lapointe (ed.), Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Volume 5. Routledge, 2018. PhilSciArchive. Download.
“Hermann Von Helmholtz.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Latest update 2018. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermann-helmholtz/.
Reviews
“Helmholtz: A Life in Science, by David Cahan.” Journal of the Hist. of Behavioral Sciences 56.1: 56-7. | 2020.
“Metamathematics and the Philosophical Tradition by William Boos.” Philosophia. | 2020.
“Space, Number, and Geometry from Helmholtz to Cassirer, by Francesca Biagioli.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 50.2: 311-315. | 2019.
Frederick C. Beiser, The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2015.
Eric Watkins (Ed.), Immanuel Kant, Natural Science. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2013.
Mary Domski and Michael Dickson (Eds.), Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2011.
Rudolf Makkreel and Sebastian Luft (Eds.), Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy. Philosophy in Review 30 (4):280-282. 2010.
David Hyder, The Determinate World: Kant and Helmholtz on the Physical Meaning of Geometry. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (7).
Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli, and Kai Eigner (Eds). Scientific Understanding. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science 101 (4): 932-933. 2010. Official version.
Reinier Munk (Ed.), Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism and Poma, Yearning for Form and Other Essays on Hermann Cohen’s Thought. European Journal of Philosophy 16 (1): 142–148. 2008. Official version.
Translations
“On the Divisibility and Subtlety of Matter,” pp. 332-42 in L. Patton (ed.), Philosophy, Science, and History. Routledge. 2014. By Émilie du Châtelet, trans. Lydia Patton.
Introduction to The Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and Its History (1883). In Sebastian Luft (ed.), The Neo-Kantian Reader. Routledge 2015. By Hermann Cohen, trans. David Hyder and Lydia Patton.
“The Relationship of Logic to Physics,” from the Introduction to the Ninth Edition of Lange’s History of Materialism (1914). In Sebastian Luft (ed.), The Neo-Kantian Reader. Routledge 2015. By Hermann Cohen, trans. Lydia Patton.
“Hermann Cohen and the Renewal of Kantian Philosophy,” Angelaki 10 (1): 95-108. 2005. By Ernst Cassirer, translated Lydia Patton. Official version; Author’s self archived version.
My research centers on the philosophy of science and on the history of philosophy of science, including work on mathematics, experiment, theory building and assessment, and the epistemology of science.
You can send a request for the published versions of any of these papers.
Philpeople profile with links to papers
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2751-1196
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=list_works
Philosophy of Physics
"Hybrid Enrichment of Theory and Observation in Next-Generation Stellar Population Synthesis." In Philosophy of Astrophysics - Stars, Simulations, and the Struggle to Determine What is Out There, ed. Nora Boyd, Siska de Baerdemaeker, and Vera Matarese. Springer, 2023. Open access link opens May 26, 2023.
"Reichenbach's Empirical Axiomatization of Relativity." Joshua Eisenthal and Lydia Patton. Synthese 200 (6). Link to paper.
"Expanding Theory Testing in General Relativity: LIGO and parametrized theories." Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 69, 2020. Open access link.
“Methodological Realism and Modal Resourcefulness.” Synthese 192 (11): 3443-3462. 2015. Official version. Download paper.
“Experiment and Theory Building.” Synthese 184 (3): 235-246. 2012. Official version. Download.
“Reconsidering Experiments.” HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (2): 209-226. 2011. Official version; arxiv.org. Download.
“Signs, Toy Models, and the A Priori.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 (3): 281-289. 2009. Official version. Download.
Mathematics and Mathematical Methods
Working toward Solutions in Fluid Dynamics and Astrophysics: What the Equations Don't Say, edited by Lydia Patton and Erik Curiel. Springer, 2023. Link to website.
"Fishbones, Wheels, Eyes, and Butterflies: Heuristic Structural Reasoning in the Search for Solutions to the Navier-Stokes Equations." In Working toward Solutions.
Joshua Eisenthal and L. Patton. "Epistemology of Geometry." Oxford Bibliographies. Link. Alternative link.
“Laws of Thought and Laws of Logic After Kant.” pp. 123-137 in Logic from Kant to Russell, ed. S. Lapointe. Routledge, 2018. PhilSciArchive. Download.
“Russell’s Method of Analysis and the Axioms of Mathematics.” Pp. 105-126 in Sandra Lapointe and Christopher Pincock (ed.), Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017. Official link. Download.
“Hilbert’s Objectivity.” Historia Mathematica 41 (2): 188-203. 2014. Philpapers; PhilSciArchive. Download.
- “Notable Writing” in The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015 (Princeton).
Laws of Nature
Laws of Nature, co-edited with Walter Ott. Oxford University Press, 2018.
“Intuitions and Assumptions in the Debate over Laws of Nature.” With Walter Ott, in Laws of Nature ed. Ott and Patton. 2018. Download.
“Kantian Essentialism in the Metaphysical Foundations.” The Monist, issue on “Laws of Nature”, edited by Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach. 100 (3). 2017. Link to official version. Download.
History of Philosophy of Science
"Abstraction, Pragmatism, and History in Mach's Economy of Science." In Interpreting Mach, ed. John Preston. Cambridge. 2021. Download.
"Kuhn's Kantian Dimensions." In Interpreting Kuhn, ed. K. Brad Wray. Cambridge. Preprint. Download.
“Kuhn, Pedagogy, and Practice: A Local Reading of Structure.” In Moti Mizrahi (ed.), The Kuhnian Image of Science: Time for a Decisive Transformation? Rowman & Littlefield. 2017. Philpapers. Download.
“Incommensurability and the Bonfire of the Meta-Theories: Response to Mizrahi.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4 (7): 51-58. 2015. Open access online version.
“New Water in Old Buckets: Hypothetical and Counterfactual Reasoning in Mach’s Economy of Science.” Ernst Mach – Life, Work, and Influence / Ernst Mach – Leben, Werk und Wirkung, edited by Friedrich Stadler. Springer, 2019. Springer page for the book. Download chapter.
“Methodology of the Sciences.” Pp. 594-606 in Michael Forster and Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press. 2015. Philpapers. Download.
“Ontology and Methodology.” Synthese 192 (11): 3413-3423. 2015. Co-authored by Benjamin C. Jantzen, Deborah G. Mayo & Lydia Patton. Official version.
Philosophy, Science, and History: A Guide and Reader. Routledge. 2014.
Kant and Neo-Kantianism
"Anti-Metaphysical Arguments in the Anticipations of Perception." Revue roumaine de philosophie. Tome 66, Nr. 2
Juillet–Décembre 2022. Open access link.
"Finitism in the Metaphysical Foundations." In The Cambridge Critical Guide to Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, ed. M. Bennett McNulty. Cambridge. Link to paper.
"Symbolic Forms and the Logic of the Cultural Sciences." In Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, ed. Anne Pollok and Luigi Filieri. Edizioni ETS.
“Cassirer and Steinthal on Expression and the Science of Language.” Cassirer Studies, special issue edited by Fabien Capellières. 2015. Philpapers. Download.
“Anti-Psychologism About Necessity: Friedrich Albert Lange on Objective Inference.” History and Philosophy of Logic 32 (2): 139 – 152. 2011. Official version. Download.
- Review by Matthias Wille in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.
“Friedrich Albert Lange.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012; updated 2016. Co-authored by Nadeem J. Z. Hussain & Lydia Patton. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-lange/.
“The Paradox of Infinite Given Magnitude: Why Kantian Epistemology Needs Metaphysical Space.” Kant-Studien 102 (3): 273-289. 2011. Official version. Download.
“The Critical Philosophy Renewed: The Bridge Between Hermann Cohen’s Early Work on Kant and Later Philosophy of Science.” Angelaki 10 (1): 109 – 118. 2005. Official version. Download.
Hermann Cohen’s History and Philosophy of Science. Dissertation, McGill University 2004. Link to download.
Hermann von Helmholtz
“Perspectivalism in the Development of Scientific Observer-Relativity.” Pp. 63-78 in Martin Kusch, Katherina Kinzel, Johannes Steizinger, and Niels Wildschut (eds.), The Emergence of Relativism. Routledge, 2019. Link to book. Download.
“Helmholtz’s Physiological Psychology.” Pp. 96-116 in Sandra Lapointe (ed.), Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Volume 5. Routledge, 2018. PhilSciArchive. Download.
“Hermann Von Helmholtz.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Latest update 2018. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermann-helmholtz/.
- Listed in Michael Beaney’s Chronology of Analytic Philosophy and its Historiography, from the Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy.
- See also "Signs, Toy Models, and the A Priori" above.
Reviews
“Helmholtz: A Life in Science, by David Cahan.” Journal of the Hist. of Behavioral Sciences 56.1: 56-7. | 2020.
“Metamathematics and the Philosophical Tradition by William Boos.” Philosophia. | 2020.
“Space, Number, and Geometry from Helmholtz to Cassirer, by Francesca Biagioli.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 50.2: 311-315. | 2019.
Frederick C. Beiser, The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2015.
Eric Watkins (Ed.), Immanuel Kant, Natural Science. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2013.
Mary Domski and Michael Dickson (Eds.), Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2011.
Rudolf Makkreel and Sebastian Luft (Eds.), Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy. Philosophy in Review 30 (4):280-282. 2010.
David Hyder, The Determinate World: Kant and Helmholtz on the Physical Meaning of Geometry. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (7).
Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli, and Kai Eigner (Eds). Scientific Understanding. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science 101 (4): 932-933. 2010. Official version.
Reinier Munk (Ed.), Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism and Poma, Yearning for Form and Other Essays on Hermann Cohen’s Thought. European Journal of Philosophy 16 (1): 142–148. 2008. Official version.
Translations
“On the Divisibility and Subtlety of Matter,” pp. 332-42 in L. Patton (ed.), Philosophy, Science, and History. Routledge. 2014. By Émilie du Châtelet, trans. Lydia Patton.
Introduction to The Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and Its History (1883). In Sebastian Luft (ed.), The Neo-Kantian Reader. Routledge 2015. By Hermann Cohen, trans. David Hyder and Lydia Patton.
“The Relationship of Logic to Physics,” from the Introduction to the Ninth Edition of Lange’s History of Materialism (1914). In Sebastian Luft (ed.), The Neo-Kantian Reader. Routledge 2015. By Hermann Cohen, trans. Lydia Patton.
“Hermann Cohen and the Renewal of Kantian Philosophy,” Angelaki 10 (1): 95-108. 2005. By Ernst Cassirer, translated Lydia Patton. Official version; Author’s self archived version.