The lady vanishes
Ann-Sophie Barwich,
Aeon,
Apr 20, 2022
This article asks the question of why Mary Hesse, author of the now-classic Models and Analogies in Science (and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy article of the same name) seems to have been omitted from the history of the philosophy of science. It's a good question, and as someone who studied precisely this subject at university, I would also ask why she was in no way mentioned in the curriculum. I looked to the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which I frequently cite here, and despite the importance of her work there's no article (though she is at least given due credit by Frigg and Hartman in an article on scientific models and by Bartha in an article on analogical reasoning). The Wikpedia article is a stub. "The use of historical figures and lineages can never be more than shortcuts to point at one's own understanding and field of vision," writes Barwich, "But when the shortcuts bypass all the women, they begin to look like deliberate detours."
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