After nearly ten years, Leo Corry is leaving his post as co-editor of Science in Context and will remain as a consulting editor.

When he accepted the nomination as co-editor of Science in Context, the journal was facing a turning point of major importance. Like other academic journals, it was on the verge of going online. Today, the electronic and print versions are seamlessly integrated, and, in fact, the online version attracts more readers than the printed one.

This article focuses on a problematic character of communication in science. Two solutions are compared: paradigm-based science (the natural sciences model and its extension to the social sciences as represented by economics) and the semiotic solution developed in the arts and social sciences. There are several parallels between the latter approach and Marxist dialectics. A third, original, approach to solving communication problems is proposed; it can be labeled “transactional.” It represents a version of the semiotic solution with particular emphasis on interactions, both face-to-face and depersonalized, and the imperative of negotiating and finding compromises. Communication problems existing at two registers of interactions, face-to-face and depersonalized, are differentiated; freedom is interpreted as the capacity to change the registers at will. An in-depth case study of the Coase theorem in economic sciences and legal studies illustrates key points in the proposed analysis.

Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992) is mainly known for his defense of free-market economics and liberalism. His views on science – more specifically on the methodological differences between the physical sciences on the one hand, and evolutionary biology and the social sciences on the other – are less well known. Yet in order to understand, and properly evaluate Hayek's political position, we must look at the theory of scientific method that underpins it. Hayek believed that a basic misunderstanding of the discipline of economics and the complex phenomena with which it deals produced misconceptions concerning its method and goals, which led in turn to the adoption of dangerous policies. The objective of this article is to trace the development of Hayek's views on the nature of economics as a scientific discipline and to examine his conclusions concerning the scope of economic prediction. In doing so, I will first show that Hayek's interest in the natural sciences (especially biology), as well as his interest in epistemology, were central to his thought, dating back to his formative years. I will then emphasize the important place of historical analysis in Hayek's reflections on methodology and examine the reasons for his strong criticism of positivism and socialism. Finally, in the third and fourth sections that constitute the bulk of this article, I will show how Hayek's understanding of the data and goal of the social sciences (which he distinguished from those of the physical sciences), culminated in an analogy that sought to establish economics and evolutionary biology as exemplary complex sciences. I will challenge Hayek's interpretation of this analogy through a comparison with Darwin's views in The Origin of Species, and thus open a door to re-evaluating the theoretical foundations of Hayek's political claims.

This paper argues for the viability of a different philosophical point of view concerning classical Greek geometry. It reviews Reviel Netz's interpretation of classical Greek geometry and offers a Deleuzian, post-structural alternative. Deleuze's notion of haptic vision is imported from its art history context to propose an analysis of Greek geometric practices that serves as counterpoint to their linear modular cognitive narration by Netz. Our interpretation highlights the relation between embodied practices, noisy material constraints, and operational codes. Furthermore, it sheds some new light on the distinctness and clarity of Greek mathematical conceptual divisions.

Until the mid-nineteenth century the age-old idea of a cyclic or oscillating universe belonged to philosophical and religious discourse, with little connection to the physical and astronomical sciences. It was only with the emergence of thermodynamics, and even more so with the general theory of relativity, that it became possible to discuss the hypothesis within a scientific context. This paper follows the development of oscillating cosmological models in the twentieth century, when they were often discussed if rarely taken very seriously. How is it that this conception of the universe was seen as both fascinating and controversial? Can the persistence of such models be explained on a scientific basis alone? The idea of an oscillating universe has been in crisis several times, but recently it has experienced a spectacular revival in the form of models inspired by string theory and other theories of quantum gravity. This paper argues that the current revival of interest in cyclic models is not primarily rooted in their “aesthetic” qualities, as used to be the case. With the maturation of cosmology following the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965, the hypothesis has become part of the discourse of modern theoretical cosmology, and as such it is discussed within a normal scientific context. On the other hand, extrascientific considerations continue to play a role, and they probably always will. The heritage from the past is still visible.

In 1948, in response to the perceived threat of atomic war, the British government embarked on a new civil defence programme. By the mid-1950s, secret government reports were already warning that this programme would be completely inadequate to deal with a nuclear attack. The government responded to these warnings by cutting civil defence spending, while issuing apparently absurd pamphlets advising the public on how they could protect themselves from nuclear attack. Historians have thus far sought to explain this response with reference to high-level decisions taken by policymakers, and have tended to dismiss civil defence advice as mere propaganda. This paper challenges this interpretation by considering the little-known role of the Home Office Scientific Advisers' Branch, a group of experts whose scientific and technical knowledge informed both civil defence policy and advice to the public. It explores both their advisory and research work, demonstrating their role in shaping civil defence policy and showing that detailed research programmes lay behind the much-mocked government civil defence pamphlets of the 1950s and 1960s.

In January 1729 a paper written by James Bradley was read at two meetings of the Royal Society. On a newly discovered motion of the fixed stars, later described as the theory of the aberration of light, it was to transform the science of astrometry. The paper appeared as a narrative of a programme of observation first begun at Kew and finalized at Wanstead, but it was, in reality, a careful reconstruction devised to enhance his reputation in response to a recognition that the programme was initially conducted in terms that were inimical to what he conceived to be his interest. The planned attempt to repeat Robert Hooke's celebrated experiment by James Pound, Samuel Molyneux and George Graham was set up at Molyneux's residence in Kew with James Bradley replacing Pound after his untimely and sudden demise. The unexpected and counterintuitive behaviour of the object star γ Draconis and the eradication of any suspicion of instrumental or systemic error led to the abandonment of the attempt to measure annual parallax and the initiation of new conjectures. An annual nutation was proposed but after the observation of a control star, 35 Camelopardalis, this conjecture was abandoned. Unknown to Bradley and Graham a premature approach was made by Molyneux to Newton claiming that the ‘nutation’ negated the whole of Newton's system. In the abandonment of the nutation yet another conjecture opposed to Newtonian theory was proposed and abandoned. Bradley determined to use his own instrument designed on different principles by Graham to observe the phenomenon in Wanstead. At Wanstead Bradley observed many stars to determine the parameters of the phenomenon. With the law of the motion described, Bradley proposed a hypothesis to explain it. Drawn from his earlier work on the ephemerides of Jupiter's satellites his hypothesis of the ‘new-discovered motion’ was quickly presented to the Royal Society as Bradley was working on a later and more definitive version of his paper. It is this later, third, unpublished version that is commonly referred to throughout this essay. It issued a challenge to ‘anti-Copernicans’ to offer an explanation of the observed phenomenon in geostatic terms. One such astronomer, Eustachio Manfredi, had examined the phenomenon of ‘aberrations’ in detail, the term being his. It was Bradley who first applied the term to the ‘new-discovered motion’ and within a short time ‘aberration’ was being applied by astronomers in the reduction of their observations. Annual aberration was widely accepted as evidence of the motion of the Earth. The paper enhanced Bradley's reputation and projected him into the forefront of European astronomers.