Models of scientific community: Charles Sanders Peirce to Thomas Kuhn

Scientific community' is common currency in the study of science, largely due to Kuhn's use of the term in his highly influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. As this article explains, however, 'scientific community' was not of Kuhn's coining. It was hinted at by Peirce, and expressly designated by Royce. On a few occasions Fleck affirmed a scientific community, while Polanyi studied it in some detail. The article concludes by comparing these thinkers' 'communitarian' interpretations of science.

Colonial designs: Thomas Karsten and the planning of urban Indonesia

Thomas Karsten (1885 – 1945) is undoubtedly a major figure in the history of architecture and town planning in Indonesia. Between 1915 and 1941 he was involved in town planning in 12 of the 19 municipalities and towns in Java (the most prominent exception being Surabaya) 3 of the 9 towns in Sumatra, and the only town in Borneo This paper does not attempts to investigate or question his importance in this field but to place his architectural and town planning ideas in the context of his broader politico-cultural ideas and activities in the Dutch East Indies between 1914 and 1942, and these, in turn, in the context of an evolving colonialism and colonial discourse.

Using the Big Mac index for comparing construction costs internationally

This paper explores the use of purchasing power parity (PPP) in the comparison of construction costs between different countries, and whether the development of construction-specific indices will improve reliability.

The approach adopted is to compare the construction cost of a typical five star international hotel per square metre in each of ten major cities using a range of PPP methods and to comment on their variability. In particular, this paper looks at whether an index based on the price of a McDonalds Big Mac3 hamburger is a viable alternative when compared against the mainstream methods. The recent publication of construction-specific indices as part of the Eurostat-OECD joint PPP program is also compared against generic indices and the discrepancy is calculated.

The paper concludes with reflections about which approach is preferable when attempting to assess global construction relativities and what further research is needed.

Internal representation of movement in children with developmental coordination disorder : a mental rotation task

Recent studies show that children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have difficulties in generating an accurate visuospatial representation of an intended action, which are shown by deficits in motor imagery. This study sought to test this hypothesis further using a mental rotation paradigm. It was predicted that children with DCD would not conform to the typical pattern of responding when required to imagine movement of their limbs. Participants included 16 children with DCD and 18 control children; mean age for the DCD group was 10 years 4 months, and for controls 10 years. The task required children to judge the handedness of single-hand images that were presented at angles between 0° and 180° at 45° intervals in either direction. Results were broadly consistent with the hypothesis above. Responses of the control children conformed to the typical pattern of mental rotation: a moderate trade-off between response time and angle of rotation. The response pattern for the DCD group was less typical, with a small trade-off function. Response accuracy did not differ between groups. It was suggested that children with DCD, unlike controls, do not automatically enlist motor imagery when performing mental rotation, but rely on an alternative object-based strategy that preserves speed and accuracy. This occurs because these children manifest a reduced ability to make imagined transformations from an egocentric or first-person perspective.

Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn: priority and credit

The article argues that Polanyi was a likely source of influence on the theory of science that Kuhn developed in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The striking similarity between Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability and Polanyi’s rendering of scientific controversy in Personal Knowledge is featured here, and is used to expose a tension between Polanyi’s notions of scientific controversy and unfolding truth.