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Philosophy 352: Philosophy of Science
Dr. Jackie Kegley
Historical Background: Issues & Positions
Logical Positivism to Logical Empiricism: 1918-1955
Forming the spirit of twentieth century philosophy of science were the
grand syntheses and breakthroughs (or revolutions) in physics.
1901- Max Planck- black body law
1902- Lorentz proves Maxwell’s equations invariant under
transformations.
1905- Albert Einstein- “Zur Eletrodynamik bewegter Koeper,”
1906- Albert Einstein –hv- indivisible unit of energy
1911- Einstein Theory of Light
1913- Niels Bohr- Model of the Atom
1916- Einstein Theory of Special Relativity
1918- Arthur Eddington- observes eclipse confirming general
relativity
1925- Ernest Schrödinger- develops wave mechanics
1927- Werner Heisenberg formulates indeterminacy principle
Project-epistemological one- If one takes physics as the paradigmatic
science, and if science is the paradigmatic method by which one comes
to obtain reliable knowledge of the world, then the project for
philosophy of science is to describe the structure of science such that its
epistemological underpinnings are clear.
Logical Positivism (Vienna Circle, Berlin School, Poland, Prague)
This school followed David Hume in affirming that all knowledge is
based on experience. They also, like Comte, distrusted all metaphysics
and affirmed scientific knowledge is paradigmatic.
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Verifiability Theory of Meaning. They wanted to avoid the lack of
clarity found in ordinary language. They changed the focus of meaning
from ideas to linguistic entities such as sentences and words.
The meaning of a sentence= the set of conditions that would show the
sentence true. Focus was on basic or protocol statements, i.e. those
describing what is directly observed through experience. “I am sensing a
blue color patch now” “The sun is shining.”
The attempt was to explicate the meaning of all scientific discourse in
terms of observation conditions.
1927- Percy Bridgman, in The Logic of Modern Physics, presented the
notion of operational definitions. In introducing scientific concepts, it is
necessary to specify the operations through which one can confirm or
disconfirm the statements using that term.
E.g. Carnap- “reduction sentence”- define “solubility”
“If x is placed in water, then x will dissolve if and only if
it is soluble.”
Criticisms
Karl Popper argued that Basic statements that describe immediate
experience are inherently more general than the experiences that call them
forth. Immediate experience is unique and occurs only once but statements
like “There is a big nucleus” or “Here is a glass of water” are associated with
an indefinite number and variety of immediate experiences. Further basic
statements are tested by other basic statements and the process can only
come to an end by a decision to stop the testing.
Norwood Hanson argued that it takes knowledge to “see” things. If
scientific observation is not shaped by the scientists’ knowledge, then
nothing observed would ever be relevant to what they know and what they
know would never have significance for what they observe. Further,
scientists have different training and “see” things differently. This claim
became known as “theory-laden observation.”
Role of advances in Logic
1899- David Hilbert, Die Grundlagen der Geometrie, introduced
the concept of axiomatization
1910-1913- Russell & Whitehead, Principia Mathematica
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1. Propositional and predicate logic became the models for clear
thinking and explicit statement. Logic helps clarify the foundations of
mathematics and it became the ideal language for modeling any
cognitive enterprise.
2. Axiomatization- This was to ensure that there were no hidden
assumptions and that everything in the system was made explicit.
Scientific laws were conceived in idealized form and took on the following
logical form: (x) (Fx Gx). Such a form could be used to clearly establish the
implications of the law.
Scientific explanation was conceived as deducing a particular statement
(usually an observation or basic statement) from a universal law (given some
particular initial conditions about the state of the world at a time). This
came to be known as the Deductive Nomological Model of Explanation.
Scientific theories were to be conceived as axiomatic systems, a structured
set of statements from which one could derive laws. The model for
scientific theory was Euclidian geometry.
Scientific theory proved too complex to achieve this.
There was a strong emphasis on confirmation. The more positive
evidence that can be found for a hypothesis or a theory the more likely
it is to be true.
Problem: Hume’s problem of induction- can never establish
definitely that a general statement is true.
Raven paradox: “For all x, if x is F, then x is G.
This is logically equivalent to “For all x, if x is not G, then x
is not F.”
“If X is a raven, the X is black.” = If x is not black, then x
is not a raven.” - confirmed by every black object.
Logical positivism evolved into Logical Empiricism which tried to deal
with the problems of logical positivism. This school was led by people
like Sir Karl Popper, Hans Reichenbach and American pragmatists,
Ernest Nagel and W.V.O. Quine.
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New Paradigms and Scientific Change: Late 1950’s
through the 1970’s
Modern academic discipline of history of science began to develop.
The goal of much of history of science was to examine historically
significant intellectual episodes in science and to articulate these
analytically in a way that exhibited the character of science at that
particular historical moment and also showed how that moment fit into
the development and progress of science. For example, a major
question was “Was Galileo the last of the medieval scientists or the first
of the moderns? Was his methodology, his use of experiment and of
mathematics really revolutionary?
Philosophers of science also began to pay more attention to actual
episodes in science and began to use actual historical and contemporary
case studies as date for their philosophizing. They often used these to
criticize the idealized, positivistic models which they argued did not
express the real nature of science in its ever changing complexity.
In 1960’s the big philosophical question became: “Were there
revolutions in science or was science a continuum of progress?
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Kuhn argued that science in one period is characterized by
a set of ideas and practices that constitute a “paradigm,” and when
problems or anomalies begin to accumulate in a given paradigm, a new
paradigm is often introduced which, in fact and in logic, repudiates the
old and supplants it. Kuhn argued that the paradigms were
incommensurate.
This concept of revolutionary paradigm shift implied that scientific
change was discontinuous, and that the meaning of terms, e.g. “mass,
changed from their use in one paradigm (Newtonian) to their use in the
new paradigm (Einsteinian). This was called “meaning variance.”
Others did not adopt such a radical notion of scientific change. Lakatos
talked about “research programmes,” and Laudan discussed changed in
terms of “research traditions.” Both stressed more continuity than did
Kuhn.
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In addition, more attention was paid to the social and political settings
of science. This was influenced by Wittgenstein and his “language
games.” Quine began to talk about naturalized epistemology and
Chomsky introduced new ways of looking at syntax, semantics and
meaning. Feyerabend took a radical approach and argued that science
has no identifiable structure. Anything should be allowed and theories
should proliferate. Foucault introduced the idea of power and of
evidence and proof as rhetoric. Philosophers of science began to work
within science as actually practiced and discoursed with practicing
scientists.
Contemporary Foci and Future Directions
Philosophers began to think about science in much more intricate detail
and Philosophies of space-time, quantum physics, chemistry, biology
and psychology developed. The science studies movement focused on
the social dimensions of science and science as a human social activity.
There developed a relativism of different or competing claims while at
the same time there is now a strong scientific realism movement. Values
and science and feminism and science are new topic areas.
Key Publications in History of Philosophy of Science
Ernst Mach- 1905- Erkenntnis and Irrtuum
Moritz Schlick-1922- to Vienna as professor of inductive sciences
Rudolf Carnap to Vienna- 1926- in philosophy
1928- Der logische Aufbau der Welt
1927- P.W. Bridgman- The Logic of Modern PhysicsOperationalism
1928-Ernst Mach Society founded
1934- Carnap to Chicago
o- The Logical Syntax of Speech
1934- Ernst Nagel and M.R. Cohen, Introduction to Logic
and Scientific Method
1936- Alfred Tarki, “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den Formalisiterten
Sprachen“
1938- B.F. Skinner, The Behavior of Organisms
Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction
1940- Carl G. Hempel, “Studies in the Logic of Confirmation.”
1948- Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, “Studies in the Logic of
Explanation,” Philosophy of Science
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Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics
1952- Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability
1953- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View
Stephen Toulmin, Philosophy of Science
R.B. Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation
1956- Ernest Nagel, Logic without Metaphysics
Hebert Feigl and Michael Scriven, Minnesota Studies in
The Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1
1958 Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery
1959 Morton Becker, The Biological Way of Thought
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
1960 W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object
1961 Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science
1962 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science
Israel Scheffler, The Anatomy of Scientific Inquiry
1963 Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations
1965 Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation
Michael Foucault, Les Mots et les Choses
1968 Imre Lakatos, Criticism and the Methodology of Scientific
Research Programmes
W.V.O. Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized.”
1969- Foucault, L’Archeologie du Savior
1975- Paul Feyerabend, Against Method
1980- Van Frassen, Bas C. The Scientific Image
1983- M. Friedman, Foundations of Space-Time Theories
1984 - Larry Laudan, Science and Values
1986- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism
1989 R. Healey, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics
1990- Helen Logino, Science as Social Knowledge
1990- Richard Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning
1991- Sandra Harding, Whose Science, Whose Knowledge?
1994- Cushing, J.T., Quantum Mechanics, Historical Contingency
and the Copenhagen Hegemony
1995- E.F. Keller, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth Century
Biology
Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
2003- Susan Haack, Defending Science within Reason
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