'A Speculative Idea': The Parallel Trajectories of Financial Speculation, Obstetrical Science, and Fiscal Management of Female Bodies in Henry James's Washington Square

This essay teases out the intimate connections between the scientific and fiscal realms in the context of American germ theory and obstetrics. By uncovering the economic and medical contexts of Henry James's Washington Square-set during the infancy of germ theory and the heyday of American obstetrics-this essay exposes a previously unexplored subtextual history of contagion in the text. Although this scientific history seems relegated to the novel's margins, understanding the changing scientific cosmologies and professional organizations in the context of the novel's setting and composition reveals that these tiny infectious particles and their vectors fundamentally shape the plot of the novel.

Was Feyerabend a Popperian? Methodological issues in the History of the Philosophy of Science

For more than three decades, there has been significant debate about the relation between Feyerabend and Popper. The discussion has been nurtured and complicated by the rift that opened up between the two and by the later Feyerabend's controversial portrayal of his earlier self. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the accounts of the relation that have been proposed over the years, disentangles the problems they deal with, and analyses the evidence supporting their conclusions as well as the methodological approaches used to process that evidence. Rather than advancing a further speculative account of the relation based on Feyerabend's philosophical work or autobiographical recollections, the second part of the paper strives to clarify the problems at issue by making use of a wider range of evidence. It outlines a historical reconstruction of the social context within which Feyerabend's intellectual trajectory developed, putting a special emphasis on the interplay between the perceived intellectual identity of Feyerabend, Feyerabend's own intellectual self-concept, and the peculiar features of the evolving Popperian research group.