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Gary Vartanian
Phil 8 Midterm Study Guide
1) Logical positivism
What are its primary doctrines?
 Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and Verification Theory of Meaning
o Logical positivism is a way of thinking popular in the mid-20th century
which attempted to make philosophy more rigorous by creating criteria
for evaluating the truth or falsity of certain philosophical statements. Its
main criteria for any statement is verifiability, which comes from two
different sources: empirical statements, which come from science, and
analytic truth, statements which are true or false by definition. Logical
positivism is an absolutist way of looking at statements and labeling
them either true, false, or meaningless. A key component of logical
positivism is that it rejected statements about ethics and aesthetics as
being unverifiable, and therefore not a part of serious philosophical
thinking. To have meaning, a given statement had to be connected to
either empirical data or analytic truth.
2) Analytic versus synthetic statements:
 What is it for a statement to be analytic?
Analytic statements are true or false just in virtue of their meaning alone.
Ex) ‘Triangles have three sides’, ‘Bachelors are unmarried’,
‘Bachelors are married’, ‘Murder is wrong
 What is it for a statement to be synthetic?
o A synthetic claim is one that is not analytic. The truth of a synthetic claim does
depend upon how the world is. So, these claims are substantively about the
world.
Ex) The President of the United States is Barack Obama’, ‘The Los Angeles Dodgers
came from Brooklyn’, ‘Physics is a difficult subject.
Elaboration:
Some sentences are true or false simply in virtue of their meaning, regardless of how the world happens to
be; these are Analytic.
 Ex) “All bachelors are unmarried”  Analytic
 Analytic truths are, in a sense, empty truths, with no factual content.
 Logical positivists claimed that all of mathematics and logic is analytic.
For logical positivism, mathematical propositions do not describe the
world; they merely record our conventional decision to use symbols in
a particular way.
 But proofs and investigation within mathematics itself are analytic.
A Synthetic sentence is true or false in virtue of both the meaning of the sentence and how the
world actually is.
 “All bachelors are bald”  Synthetic
 Synthetic claims about the world can be expressed using mathematical
language, such as when it is claimed that there are nine planets in the
solar system.
Earlier philosophers in the rationalist tradition had claimed that some things can be known a priori; this
means known independently of experience. Logical positivism held that the only things that seem to be
knowable a priori are analytic and hence empty of factual content.
3) A priori versus a posteriori:
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a) What is it for a statement to be a priori?
A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience.
o A priori  with analytic.
o Facts.
b) What is it for a statement to be a posteriori?
A posteriori (Empirical evidence) is a source of knowledge acquired by means of
observation or experimentation.
o A posteriori  with synthetic.
o Observations.
Elaboration:
 Logical positivism held that the only things that seem to be knowable a priori are analytic and
hence empty of factual content.
 We can combine this distinction with the a priori / a posteriori distinction. It looks like
analytic claims are also a priori. I do not need to make observations to know that all
bachelors are unmarried. There do not seem to be statements that are analytic and a
posteriori. There are clearly synthetic, a posteriori claims. (For example, ‘Physics is a
difficult subject.’)
 In general, people who think that there are no synthetic a priori claims are empiricists: Any
substantive claim about the world can only be known to be true by observation; hence, the
emphasis is on the empirical.
 Mathematics and logic are analytic on this way of thinking of things, so they are known a
priori.
 Physical science is all a posteriori since synthetic.
 Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one in which "you can see that it is true
just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine
the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science."
 a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for
example "Some bachelors are very happy"). A posteriori justification makes reference to
experience; but the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question, or
better say, what evidences one has to verify the validity of proposition.
4) The analytic/synthetic distinction and the a priori / a posteriori knowledge?
a) How do analytic claims allow for non-mysterious a priori knowledge?
Analytic statements are true or false just in virtue of their meaning alone.
Ex) Bachelors are unmarried
OBVIOUSLY TRUE, by meaning alone.
Analytic statements are a priori.
I do not need to make observations to know that all bachelors are unmarried.
There do not seem to be statements that are analytic and a posteriori.
Synthetic claims is one that is not analytic.
Ex) The President of the United States is Barrack Obama.
The truth of a synthetic claim does depend upon how the world is.
There are synthetic, a posteriori claims.
Ex) Physics is a difficult subject.
People who think that there are no synthetic a priori claims are empiricists.
Empiricists claim that any substantive claim about the world can only be known
to be true by observation; hence the emphasis on the empirical.
People who think that there are synthetic a priori claims are rationalists, for they think
that reason can discover substantive truths.
b) What is the problem with synthetic, a priori knowledge?
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a priori proposition: a proposition whose justification does not rely upon experience. Moreover,
the proposition can be validated by experience, but is not grounded in experience. Therefore, it is
logically necessary.
a posteriori proposition: a proposition whose justification does rely upon experience. The proposition
is validated by, and grounded in, experience. Therefore, it is logically contingent.
Examples of a priori propositions include:
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"All bachelors are unmarried."
"7 + 5 = 12."
Examples of a posteriori propositions, on the other hand, include:
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"All bachelors are unhappy."
"Tables exist."
Both of these propositions are a posteriori: Any justification of them would require one to rely upon
one's experience.
5) Verification Theory of Meaning
a) What is it?
A (non-analytic) statement is only meaningful if it is verifiable1 by sense experience. So,
any meaningful sentence must have consequences that can be tested by observation. If it does not have
such consequences, it is not meaningful.
 The verification theory (of meaning) is a philosophical theory proposed by
the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. A simplified form of the theory
states that a proposition's meaning is determined by the method through which it
is empirically verified. In other words, if something cannot be empirically
verified, it is meaningless. For example, the statement "It is raining" is
meaningless unless there is a way whereby one could, in principle, verify
whether or not it is in fact raining. The theory has radical consequences for
traditional philosophy as it, if correct, would render much of past philosophical
work meaningless, for example metaphysics and ethics. The theory is meant to
be applied only to synthetic claims (i.e. claims about the world), rather than
analytical ones. The statement of the theory itself was taken by Ayer to be an
analytic claim.
 Verifiability theory of meaning:
o Here is how the theory was often put: the meaning of a sentence
consists in its method of verification. (knowing the meaning of a
sentence is knowing how to verify it).
 Key application of the principle: If a sentence has no possible
method of verification, it has no meaning.
 By “verification” here, the positivists meant verification by
means of observation. Observation in all these discussion is
construed broadly, to include all kinds of sensory experience.
 A better word would be “testability.” This is because testing is
an attempt to work out whether something is true or false, and
that is what the positivists had in mind.
o Verification is a strong empiricist principle; experience is the only
source of meaning, as well as the only source of knowledge.
b) What would be an example of a sentence that is meaningless according to its proponents? Why would it
be considered meaningless?
Scrodinger’s cat?
I am fat.
c) What attractions does the view have?
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What is thought to be attractive about this view of meaning?
1) Many empiricists have thought that a person who has been blind from birth could not know what ‘red’
means. So, they would not understand (at least) one of the words in a sentence like ‘The table in my
kitchen is red.’ We learn the meanings of some words via direct sensory impressions. So, it seems like our
ability to understand major portions of language involve having had appropriate sense experiences and that
the meanings of major portions of language have to do with those sense experiences.
2) This explains, perhaps, why philosophy is so hard to understand. When one reads various philosophers
(for example, Heidegger), one finds claims like ‘The nothing nothings’ that one does not understand. What
would help one to understand it? Intuitively, if Heidegger could tell us what observational difference it
makes whether the nothing nothings or whether it does not, then we would know something about what
claim is being made about the world.
3) Unlike much of philosophy, science seems to only make statements that are tied very closely to sense
experience. For example, Einstein showed how claims about simultaneity could be verified by sense
experience. This might be why physics is much clearer than philosophy. It is clear what the claims of
physics mean because they are linked to sense experience (experimental evidence). And, that link to sense
experience is required for a statement to have meaning. So the positivists thought, for example, that a
claim like “This particle is in absolute rest” does not mean anything because no experiment could
determine it to be true or false.
4) As an added bonus, we are able to dissolve various philosophical problems which otherwise defy
solution. For example, the traditional “Problem of the External World” becomes impossible to state in such
a way that it is problematic. One wants to know whether it is true that there is a real world that corresponds
with our sensations or whether our sensations are all just illusory and the real world does not really exist. If
this “real world” is something unobservable because all that we ever observe are our own mental
impressions, then this question has no meaning because we can never make an observation that would tell
us whether this real world is there.2 So, there is nothing to worry about here. If claims about the “real
world” are just claims about the stability of our sensations, then we can just directly observe that the real
world exists. For example, the claim “There is a real tree in the courtyard which is not just a hallucination”
just means that my mental impressions have a certain stability that hallucinations lack. But, if this is all
that it means, then I can check it by observation. So, there is no philosophical problem here either way.
d) What problems does it face?
What is unattractive about the view?
1) ‘Verifiable’ is imprecise, and the imprecision is (at least) two-fold:
a. It is not clear what the ‘able’ means. It might mean that we need to be able to verify the statement
in practice. That is, it must now be within our ability to verify it. But, if it meant that, then a sentence like
‘The average atmospheric temperature on the nearest extra-solar system planet is 150 degrees’ would not
be meaningful. (Let us assume that we do not currently have the means --- the technology --- to verify it.
Perhaps we actually do.) But, that does not seem plausible since I sure think I know what the sentence
means. So, the ‘able’ needs to mean that we are in principle able to verify it. But, unfortunately it is a bit
unclear what this means. Can we even in principle verify
(or falsify) the claim ‘There was a fly on Caesar’s nose when he crossed the Rubicon’?
It is not just a technological limitation on us that we cannot go back in time and check.3
But, in some sense, we know what observations would count as verifying it even if we
cannot put ourselves in the position to make those observations. Perhaps that is all that
it would take to be able to verify it in principle.
b. It is not clear what the ‘Verify’ means. It could mean:
i. To come to know with certainty that a claim is true. But, in that case, it might be argued
that the only thing I know with certainty is the content of my own
sensations (or sense impressions or sense-data). Even claims like ‘I see a tree in
front of me’ are not things about which I can be certain because I only actually
see a tree in front of me if there is, in fact, a tree in front of me.4 And, I could be
wrong about that since it might be a fake tree. So, the only things I can verify --in this strong sense --- are claims about my own private sense impressions. Other
claims about material objects, say, must just mean something having to do with
my sense impressions. So, claims like “There is a tree in front of me” --- if it is to
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be taken to be meaningful as it ought to be --- must mean something like “I am
having a stable impression of a green-ish, leafy-like thing with a long brownish
stem.” (The view that claims about physical objects just mean claims about
sensory impressions is known as “phenomenalism.”) One problem with this view
is that the only things that are verifiable have to do with my sense impressions
and these seem to be too private for the business of science.
ii. To come to have some evidence in favor of. If this is what ‘verify’ means, then I can
verify “There is a tree in front of me” even if that claim doesn’t just mean
something having to do with sensation. For, having an impression of a tree is
some evidence --- even if not conclusive evidence --- that there is a tree in front of
me. But, we need to hear more to know what it is to have acquired some evidence
for a claim.
2) The verificationist theory of meaning seems to be self-refuting in that it is not easy to see how one could
verify by sense experience that it is the correct view of meaning.
e) Is there any vagueness in what the view really amounts to? If so what is it?
See above, am not typing again. Dr.Who??
f) What is “in practice verifiability” versus “in principle verifiability” What motivates drawing this
distinction?
o Difference between “observational” language and “theoretical” language.” “Red” is in
the observational part of language, and “electron” is in the theoretical part.
An important question was where to draw the line.

Schlick stayed closed to traditional empiricism.
 Neurath, argued that terms referring to many ordinary physical objects are in the
observational part of language. Only the observation statements about physical
objects can be the basis of public or ”intersubjective” testing.
6) Quine’s Challenge to Logical Positivism
a) What is holism about confirmation?
A holist argues that you cannot understand a particular thing without looking at its place in a
larger whole. Holism about testing says that we can only test complex networks of claims and assumptions.
This is because only a complex network of claims and assumptions make definite predictions about what
we should observe.
Quine's extension of underdetermination to all knowledge claims, since no theory of any type can
be tested in isolation, but only embedded on a background of innumerable and often undetermined factors.
(See Quine-Duhem thesis.) Confirmation holism thus involves the problem of credit assignment,
determining which aspect of the overall network to attribute a theory's failure to. And by ontological
relativity, explicated by Quine, one can always protect one's explanation of phenomena by attributing
failure to some aspect outside the explanation.
Elaboration:
 W.V. Quine’s criticism in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”
o Quine argued for a holistic theory of testing.
o A holist argues that you cannot understand a particular thing without looking at its place
in a larger whole. Holism about testing says that we can only test complex networks of
claims and assumptions. This is because only a complex network of claims and
assumptions make definite predictions about what we should observe.
o So whenever you think of yourself as testing a single idea, what you are really testing is a
long, complicated conjunction of statements; it is the whole conjunction that gives you a
definite prediction.
 If a test has an unexpected result, then something in that conjunction is false, but
the failure of the test itself does not tell you where the error is.
 The unexpected observations within your experiments are telling you that
something is wrong, but the problem might lie with one of your background
assumptions, not with the hypothesis you were trying to test.
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o
o
o
Although the logical positivists officially accepted a holistic view about testing, they did
not appreciate the significance of the point.
 The verifiability principle seems to suggest that you can test sentences one at a
time.
Strictly, the positivists generally held that these observations are only associated with a
specific hypothesis against a background of other assumptions.
Quine said that the idea of analyticity was intended to treat some claims as immune to
revision, and he argued that in fact no statement is immune to revision.
 Quine argued that there is no way to make scientific sense of a sharp analyticsynthetic distinction.
b) How is holism about confirmation a threat to the verification theory of meaning?
From book: “The Verifiability principle seems to suggest you can test sentences one at a time.”
From notes: “The Verificationist theory of meaning assumes that (synthetic sentences are
individually testable… But Quince pointed out, we test only groups of sentences. (Holistic theory of
testing). A single sentence does not generally have observational consequences.”
From notes: “The Verificationist theory seemed to depend upon the idea that sentences can be tested
individually in the sense that each sentence has observable consequences of its own. BUT, THIS ISN’T
TRUE (claim known as Quine-Duhem thesis). Quine: Our claims “face the tribunal of experience… as a
corporate body.””
c) Why do considerations in the vicinity bring into doubt the relevance of the analytic/synthetic distinction?
From notes: “Say that our set of sentences made a false prediction. Then, logic does not tell where
the problem was (which sentence was false)… Claim eyesight is bad, therefore know that there is tree in
front of me, but can’t prove because vision is bad. (Can’t prove wrong).”
“ All claims can be held immune to revision from sense experience. BUT,
LIKEWISE, I can – Quine thinks – place the blame for the false prediction anywhere…
Thus, no claims are such that they cannot be given up on the basis of sense experience. SO in
that sense, all claims appear to have the hallmark of the synthetic.
From book: “Quine argued that analytic-synthetic distinction does not exist;”
“Quine said that the idea of analyticity was intened to treat some claims as immune to
revision, and he argued that in fact no statement is immune to revision.”
“Quine argued that there is no way to make scientific sense of a sharp analytic-snythetic
distinction. He connected this point to his holism about testing. For Quine, all our ideas and hypotheses
form a single “web of belief”, which has contact with experience only as a whole. An unexpected
observation can prompt us to make a great variety of possible changes to the web. Even sentences that
might look analytic can be revised in response to experience in some circumstance.”
7) Induction versus Deduction
a) What is the difference between induction and deduction?
Induction  Generalize
Deduction  Specify.
From notes:
“We might get an incorrect conclusion since a deductive argument can be valid – if the premises are all
true, then the conclusion has to be true as well – even thought he conclusion is not, in fact, true.”
“The steps that gets you from the premises to the conclusion would not be at fault since it transmits truth.
So, our only real worry with valid deductive arguments is whether our premises are true.
From book:
“Deductive logic is the well-understood and less controversial kind of logic. It is a theory of patters of
argument that transmit truth with certainty. These arguments have the feature that if the premises of the
argument are true, the conclusion is guaranteed to be true. An argument of this kind is deductively valid.
Ex) Premises:
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Conclusion: Socrates is a mortal.
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A deductively valid argument might have false premises. In that case the conclusion might be false as well.
BUT, the logical empiricists thought that the great aim of science is to discover and establish generalization
(describing “laws of nature”) The key idea was that science aims at formulating and testing generalization,
and these generalization were seen as having an infinite range of applications.
Induction  inferences from particular observations in support of generalizations.
Ex) “All the many swans observed so far have been white.” This conclusion will be the claim that all swans
are white – a conclusion that cold well be false but which is supported, to some extent by the evidence.
A form of inference closely related to induction is projection. In a projection, we infer from a
number of observed cases to arrive at a prediction about the next case, not to generalization about all cases.
7b) Be prepared to give an example of a deductive argument and an inductive argument.
Deductive reasoning happens when a researcher works from the more general information to the more
specific. Sometimes this is called the “top-down” approach because the researcher starts at the top with a
very broad spectrum of information and they work their way down to a specific conclusion.
Deductive:
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Conclusion: Socrates is a mortal.
Premises:
Inductive:
All swans encountered so far at the lake are white. All the swans at the lake are white.
7c) What are some of the types of inductive argument? In particular, what is an “enumerative induction”
and what is an “abductive inference”?
From notes:
“Enumerative induction:”  The premises are just an enumeration of various entities all of which have
certain combination of properties (e.x. an enumeration of a bunch of swan that are white). And the
conclusion claims that everything that has the first property also has the second.
Ex) Enumerative induction or, as the basic form of inductive inference, simply induction, is an
inference from particular instances to all instances, thus an unrestricted generalization or universal
generalization. For instance, if one observes 100 swans, and all 100 were white, one might infer All swans
are white. As the truth of this reasoning form's premises—100 observed swans and 100 white swans—does
not entail the truth of its conclusion, this is an inductive inference, which is logically invalid.
“Abductive Inference:” (or inference to the best explanation) we infer that the best explanation of a certain
phenomenon is true. Our evidence that there was a larger meteor that hit the Earth 65 million years ago is
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the presence of rare elements in layers of the Earth’s crust that are that old. And, the reason we think the
presence of those elements is evidence that a meteor hit is that --- as far as we know --- that is the best
explanation of the presence of those elements.
Ex) For example, the lawn is wet. But if it rained last night, then it would be unsurprising that the lawn is
wet. Therefore, by abductive reasoning, the possibility that it rained last night is reasonable.
Peirce argues that good abductive reasoning from P to Q involves not simply a determination that, e.g., Q is
sufficient for P, but also that Q is among the most economical explanations for P.
7d) What is the “problem of induction”?
How induction works? And what justifies it – Nelson goodman’s grue problem.
8) Hypothetico-Deductivism
8a) How does one confirm a hypothesis according to the H-D view?
From Notes: We confirm a generalization when one of its consequences turns out to be true. After many
repeated correct prediction, it will confirm it more and more.
8b) What reasons are there for thinking that the H-D view cannot correctly represent what it takes
to confirm a hypothesis.
See GRUE problem and Curve fitting problem
9) Nelson Goodman’s “Grue” Problem
9a) How is grue defined?
An object is grue if and only if it was first observed before 2020 and is green, or if it was
not first observed before 2020 and is blue.
9b) How does Goodman’s definition of ‘grue’ generate a problem for the justification of
induction? What challenge does it raise?
Goodman point is that 2 inductive arguments have the exact same form, but one argument can be
good while the other is bad. SO what makes an inductive argument good or bad one cannot be just its form.
Consequently, there can be no purely formal theory of induction and confirmation.
SO Goodman claimed that whether or not a term ‘contains a reference to time’ or ‘is defined in terms of
time’ is a language relative matter. Terms that look OK from the standpoint of one language will odd from
another.
10) Karl Popper
a) How does his project differ from the point of the logical positivists?
From notes: 1) Popper is not trying to give an account of what sentences count as meaningful.
Rather, he is trying to delineate the difference between genuine science and pseudo- science (i.e. he wants
to solve The Demarcation Problem). Pseudo-scientific claims are meaningful (and, thus, possibly even
true), they just aren’t science. Popper would like to see what the difference between pseudo-science and
science is.
2) Popper believes that induction is irrational since unjustified. The problem of
induction has not been solved because it cannot be.2 No matter how many instances
of green emeralds one sees, that does not justify believing that all emeralds are green.
So, the sentence ‘All emeralds are green’ is not verifiable by induction even in the
weak sense that we have good --- though not conclusive --- evidence for it. However,
a single non-green emerald shows deductively that the sentence ‘All emeralds are
green’ is false. So, it is falsification (rather than verification) that is important in
science since it does not require irrational induction but only requires deduction.
Sumation: A hypothesis is scientific if and only if it has the possibility of
being refuted (falsified) by some possible observation.
10b) What is the Demarcation Problem?
Popper called the problem of distinguishing science from pseudoscience the Demarcation Problem.
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It is Falsification rather than verification that is important in science since it does not require irrational
induction but only requires deduction. Falsification claims that a hypothesis is scientific if and only if it has
the potential to be reftured by some possible observation. To be scientific, a hypothesis has to take a risk.
He claimed that all testing in science has the form of attempting to refute theories by means of observation.
Confirmation is myth. The only thing an observational test can do is show that a theory is false.
Popper placed great emphasis on the idea that we can never be completely sure that a theory is true.
However, almost all phiosophers of science accept that we can never be 100 percent certain about factual
matters. This position, that we can never be completely certain about factual issues, is often known as
fallibilism.
We then check to see if the prediction comes out as the theory says it will. If the prediction fails, then we
have refuted, or falsified the theory. If the prediction does come out as predicted, then all we should say is
that we have not yet falsified the theory.
10) c) What is Popper’s view of induction?
d) How does Popper think that the scientific method works if it does not use induction?
e) What is a bold conjecture according to Popper?
Notes:
The method of science according to Popper is one of conjecture and refutation:
1) Scientists like Newton do not use induction to arrive at hypotheses. Rather, they
make bold conjectures. One formulates a hypothesis that “takes a risk” in the sense
that it makes predictions such that if they are false the theory is refuted. The more
risks that a scientific theory takes the better. At the limit where a theory takes no risk
of being refuted at all, it is not scientific.
2) The second stage is one of attempted refutations. Scientists attempt to refute their
own theories by experiments. If the theory is refuted by the experiment, then they
have to make a new bold conjecture.4 If the theory is not refuted by the experiment
that does not justify us in believing that the theory is true or even probably true.
(That would be to use induction.) The most we can say is that it has not yet been
refuted.
Book:
Popper also used the idea of falsification to propose a theory of scientific change.
Stage 1 in the cycle is conjecture—a scientist will offer a hypothesis that might describe and explain some
part of the world. A good conjecture is a boldone, one that takes a lot of risks by making novel predictions.
Stage 2 in the cycle is attempted refutation—the hypothesis is subjected to critical testing, in an attempt to
show that it is false. Once the hypothesis is refuted, we go back to stage 1 again—a new conjecture is
offered. That is followed by stage 2, and so on.
Instead, a scientist should constantly strive to increase the breadth of application of a theory and increase
the precision of its predictions. That means constantly trying to increase the “boldness” of conjectures.
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
Very important distinction: between descriptive and normative theories.
o A descriptive theory is an attempt to describe what actually goes on, or what something is
like, without making value judgments.
o A normative theory does make value judgment; it talks about what should go on, or what
things should be like.

There are three answers to our question about how science works:
o Empiricism: The only source of real knowledge about the world is experience.
 Empiricism and Science: Scientific thinking and investigation have the same
basic pattern as everyday thinking and investigation. In each case, the only
source of real knowledge about the world is EXPERIENCE. But science is
especially successful because it is organized, systematic, and especially
responsive to experience.
 Ex1) Ognaz Semmelweiss: Showed that by washing hands before delivery, baby
has higher chance for living.
 Ex2) John Snow: maped out sewers and showed correlation between cholera
outbreak and infection in water supply.
o Language of Mathematics:
 Mathematics and Science: What makes science different from other kinds of
investigation, and especially successful, is its attempt to understand the natural
world using mathematical tools.
 We might argue that mathematics, used as a tool within an empiricist
outlook is what makes science special.
 Reason, why math is badass:
o Used in physics, chem, …
 Reason, why math is not badass:
o No math in biology. Ex) Darwin Origin of Species
o Scientific Communities:
 Social Structure and Science: What makes science different from other kinds of
investigation, and especially successful, is its unique social structure.
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

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SO TRUST AND COOPERATION ARE ESSENTIAL TO SCIENCE!
(GAME THEORY)
Shapin argues that when we look closely, a great deal of what went on
in the Scientific Revolution had to do with working out new ways of
policing, controlling, and coordinating the actions of groups of people
in the activity of research.
These accounts of science stress the special balance of cooperation and
competition found in the scientific communities.
A key part of the scientific societies role was to handle the allocation of
credit in an efficient way – making sure the right people were
rewarded, without hindering the free spread of ideas. These societies
also functioned to create a community of people who could trust each
other as reliable co-workers and sources of data. The empiricist can
argue that this social organization made scientific communities
uniquely responsive to experience.