In this paper I examine the epistemic function of agent-based models of scientific inquiry, proposed in the recent philosophical literature. In view of Boero and Squazzoni’s classification of ABMs into case-based models, typifications and theoretical abstractions, I argue that proposed ABMs of scientific inquiry largely belong to the last category. While this means that their function is primarily exploratory, I suggest that they are epistemically valuable not only as a temporary stage in the development of ABMs (...) of science, but by providing insights into theoretical aspects of scientific rationality. I illustrate my point with two examples of highly idealized ABMs of science, which perform two exploratory functions: Zollman’s ABM which provides a proof-of-possibility in the realm of theoretical discussions on scientific rationality, and an argumentation-based ABM, which provides insights into potential mechanisms underlying the efficiency of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Scientific Inquiry: Readings in the Philosophy of Science features an impressive collection of classical and contemporary readings on a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science. The volume is organized into six sections, each with its own introduction, and includes a general introduction that situates the philosophy of science in relation to other areas of intellectual inquiry. The selections focus on the main issues in the field, including the structure of scientific theories, models of (...) scientific explanation, reductionism, historicist challenges to the objectivity of science, and the dispute over the ontological interpretation of mature scientific theories. Both the positivist model of science and its competitors, including contemporary social constructivist models, are included. Ideal for introductory philosophy of science courses, Scientific Inquiry strives to provide students and other readers with a thorough knowledge of the philosophical complexity of modern science and an appreciation of its authoritative intellectual standing in contemporary life. (shrink)

Peirce claims that the methods of abduction, deduction and induction are jointly sufficient for the attainment of truth, regardless of the state of belief from which inquiry begins. This article summarizes Peirce’s defence of the thesis that the scientific method is self-corrective and addresses common mistakes in its interpretation.

The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the role of abstraction and idealization in Galileo’s scientific inquiries into the law of free falling motion, and their importance in the history of science. Because there is no consensus on the use of the terms “abstraction” and “idealization” in the literature, it is necessary to distinguish between them at the outset. This paper will argue for the importance of abstraction and idealization in physics and the theories (...) and laws of physics constructed with abduction from observations and that these theoretical laws of physics should be tested with deduction and induction thorough quasi-idealized entities rather than empirical results in the everyday world. Galileo’s work is linked to thought experiments in natural science. Galileo, using thought experiments based on idealization, persuaded others that what had been proven true for a ball on an inclined plane would be equally true for a ball falling through a vacuum. (shrink)

Eric Martin and Daniel N. Osherson present a theory of inductive logic built on model theory. Their aim is to extend the mathematics of Formal Learning Theory to a more general setting and to provide a more accurate image of empirical inquiry. The formal results of their study illuminate aspects of scientific inquiry that are not covered by the commonly applied Bayesian approach.

In philosophy of science, abstraction tends to be subsumed under representation, often being described as the omission of a target’s features when it is represented. This approach to abstraction sidesteps cognitive aspects of abstraction processes. However, cognitive aspects of abstraction are important in understanding the role of historically grounded epistemic criteria supporting modeling in science. Drawing on recent work on the relation between metaphor and abstraction, we introduce the concept of paths of abstraction, and use historical and contemporary examples to (...) point to their role in guiding the development of relevance criteria which support modeling strategies in science. (shrink)

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A Sceptical Theory of Scientific Inquiry: Problems and Their Progress presents a distinctive re-interpretation of Popper's 'critical rationalism', displaying the kind of spirit found at the L.S.E. before Popper's retirement. It offers an alternative to interpretations of critical rationalism which have emphasised the significance of research programmes or metaphysics (Lakatos; Nicholas Maxwell), and is closer to the approach of Jagdish Hattiangadi. Briskman gives priority to methodological argument rather than logical formalisms, and takes further his own work on creativity. (...) In addition to offering an important contribution to the understanding of critical rationalism, the book contains interesting engagements with Michael Polanyi and the Meno Paradox. This volume also contains an introduction by the editor, which situates Briskman's work in the history of the interpretation of 'critical rationalism'. (shrink)

Is methodological theory a priori or a posteriori knowledge? It is perhaps a posteriori improvable, somehow. For example, Duhem discovered that since scientists disagree on methods, they do not always know what they are doing. How is methodological innovation possible? If it is inapplicable in retrospect, then it is not universal and so seems defective; if it is, then there is a miracle here. Even so, the new explicit awareness of rules previously implicitly known is in itself beneficial. And so, (...) improved methodology may make for improved methods. Hence, methodology is in part descriptive, in part prescriptive. Knowing this, a methodologist might improve his own studies. For example, Popper would then not hasten to conclude from the fact that past scientists depended on positive evidence that they had better do so in future as well; perhaps a lesser concern with confirmation may increase the productivity of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Empirical inquiry involves the coevolution of predictive theory and descriptive language. Here we consider how one might model this coevolution using the tools of evolutionary game theory. We will see how subsequently evolved languages might exhibit semantic drift, invention, and discard. These evolutionary models also illustrate how subsequently evolved languages might be incommensurable yet nevertheless provide faithful descriptions of nature. Finally, we will consider how a model for the coevolution of predictive theory and descriptive language accounts for endogenous epistemic (...) norms. (shrink)

Science is a process of inquiry: a process of asking and answering questions. However, a good question is more than an interrogatory, and a good answer is more than information: there are logical constraints that dictate when a question is answerable and what qualifies as an answer. This paper will provide an understanding of when a question is answerable, when a question is not ready to be asked, when a question is trivial, what is required for a response to (...) be an answer, and what sequence of inquiry is required to identify an answer. Equipped with this understanding, a scientist can better determine an appropriate sequence of study for a research program as well as identify the necessary arguments to warrant claims of understanding, funding, and the publication of research findings. (shrink)

Formal models of scientific inquiry, aimed at capturing socio-epistemic aspects underlying the process of scientific research, have become an important method in formal social epistemology and philosophy of science. In this introduction to the special issue we provide a historical overview of the development of formal models of this kind and analyze their methodological contributions to discussions in philosophy of science. In particular, we show that their significance consists in different forms of ‘methodological iteration’ whereby the models (...) initiate new lines of inquiry, isolate and clarify problems with existing knowledge claims, and stimulate further research. (shrink)

_A Sceptical Theory of Scientific Inquiry: Problems and Their Progress_ presents a striking re-interpretation of Popper’s ‘critical rationalism’. Briskman stresses methodological argument rather than metaphysics, develops a ‘Popperian’ response to the Meno Paradox, and takes further Briskman’s approach to problems concerning creativity.

In Science, Truth and Democracy, Philip Kitcher has argued that science ought to meet both the epistemic goals of significant truth and the nonepistemic goals of serving the interests of a democratic society. He opposes this science as servant model to both the theology of science as source of salvific truth and the theology of science as anti-Christ. In a recent critical comment, Paul A. Roth argues that Kitcher remains entangled in the theology of salvific truth, not realizing that its (...) goal is either vacuous or unattainable. Instead of theologies, Roth proposes demythologization. In the end, science attains neither truth nor value, for these goals are incomprehensible and unattainable. Consequently, science’s goals are entirely pedestrian and without special interest. Adopting Kitcher’s own scientific naturalistic epistemology, the author argues for a naturalized theology of science, using a science as mediator model, in which both nature and scientist have a role in the acquisition of significant truth. (shrink)

How should emotions figure in scientific practice? I begin by distinguishing three broad answers to this question, ranging from pessimistic to optimistic. Confirmation bias and motivated numeracy lead us to cast a jaundiced eye on the role of emotions in scientific inquiry. However, reflection on the essential motivating role of emotions in geniuses makes it less clear that science should be evacuated of emotion. I then draw on Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism to articulate a twenty-first century epistemology of (...) science that recognizes the necessity of emotion to inquiry but aims to manage the biases that emotions can introduce. Twenty-first century perspectivism is both social and (temporally) distal, helping it to overcome a paradox of self-critical inquiry. (shrink)

Those who speak of the philosophy of science do not all have the same sort of study in mind. For some it is speculation about the overall nature of the world. Others take it to be basic theory of knowledge and perception. And for still others, it is a branch of philosophical analysis focused speci is meant to be a study falling under fically on science. The present book this last category. Generally, such a study has two aspects: one, methodological, (...) dealing with the logical structure of science, the other, substantive, dealing with scientific concepts. Our concern here is primarily methodological; and, where discussion veers at times towards substantive matters, this will be largely for the purpose of illustrating underlying methodological points. It should also be added that our considerations will be of a general sort, intended to apply to all of science with no special concern for any particular divisions. Except in an incidental manner, therefore, we shall give no primary attention to special problems in the methodology of the social sciences or in the philosophy of physics or of biology. And if we draw the larger portion of our examples from the physical rather than from the behavioral sciences, this is done merely for simplicity, succinctness, and similar conveniences of exposition rather than out of specialized concern for any particular area. (shrink)

Aristotle's word for science is epistêmê, which has at least a dual use in the Greek of his day and is standardly used, in one way, as a count noun, to mean “a science.” Thus, in this usage, one can say that geometry, or phusikê, or metaphysics is epistêmê, a science. Here the term epistêmê designates a special sort of systematic body of truth or fact that may or may not have yet been discovered, or fully discovered. In Plato's Protagoras, (...) Socrates uses the term epistêmê for knowledge of the particular right moral action to perform on some specific occasion and he is followed in this use of the term by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics VII.2. Aristotle claims that scientific principles are reached by induction. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way to integrate historical accounts of social interaction in scientific practice with philosophical examination of scientific knowledge. The relation between descriptive accounts of scientific practice, on the one hand, and normative accounts of scientific knowledge, on the other, is a vexed one. This vexatiousness is one instance of the gap between normative and descriptive domains. The general problem of the normative/descriptive divide takes striking and problematic form in the case (...) of social aspects of scientific knowledge. With respect to this issue, history and philosophy of science appear starkly incompatible. I show how this dualism can be overcome, drawing on social action theory and the recent history of cellular immunology. (shrink)

This book is the second of two volumes devoted to the work of Theo Kuipers, a leading Dutch philosopher of science. Philosophers and scientists from all over the world, thirty seven in all, comment on Kuipers’ philosophy, and each of their commentaries is followed by a reply from Kuipers. The present volume is devoted to Kuipers’ neo-classical philosophy of science, as laid down in his Structures in Science . Kuipers defends a dialectical interaction between science and philosophy in that he (...) views philosophy of science as a meta-science which formulates cognitive structures that provide heuristic patterns for actual scientific research, including design research. In addition, Kuipers pays considerable attention to the computational approaches to philosophy of science as well as to the ethics of doing research. Thomas Nickles, David Atkinson, Jean-Paul van Bendegem, Maarten Franssen, Anne Ruth Mackor, Arno Wouters, Erik Weber & Helena de Preester, Eric Scerri, Adam Grobler & Andrzej Wisniewski, Alexander van den Bosch, Gerard Vreeswijk, Jaap Kamps, Paul Thagard, Emma Ruttkamp, Robert Causey, Henk Zandvoort comment on these ideas of Kuipers, and many present their own account. The present book also contains a synopsis of Structures in Science. It can be read independently of the first volume of Essays in Debate with Theo Kuipers, which is devoted to Kuipers’ From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism. (shrink)

Deduction is important to scientific inquiry because it can extend knowledge efficiently, bypassing the need to investigate everything directly. The existence of closure failure—where one knows the premises and that the premises imply the conclusion but nevertheless does not know the conclusion—is a problem because it threatens this usage. It means that we cannot trust deduction for gaining new knowledge unless we can identify such cases ahead of time so as to avoid them. For philosophically engineered examples we (...) have “inner alarm bells” to detect closure failure, but in scientific investigation we would want to use deduction for extension of our knowledge to matters we don’t already know that we couldn’t know. Through a quantitative treatment of how fast probabilistic sensitivity is lost over steps of deduction, I identify a condition that guarantees that the growth of potential error will be gradual; thus, dramatic closure failure is avoided. Whether the condition is fulfilled is often obvious, but sometimes it requires substantive investigation. I illustrate that not only safe deduction but the discovery of dramatic closure failures can lead to scientific advances. (shrink)

This study recapitulates basic developments in the tradition of hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of science. It focuses on the ways in which scientific research is committed to the universe of interpretative phenomena. It treats scientific research by addressing its characteristic hermeneutic situations, and uses the following basic argument in this treatment: By demonstrating that science's epistemological identity is not to be spelled out in terms of objectivism, mathematical essentialism, representationalism, and foundationalism, one undermines scientism without succumbing scientific (...) research to "procedures of normative-democratic control" that threaten science's cognitive autonomy. The study shows that in contrast to social constructivism, hermeneutic phenomenology of scientific research makes the case that overcoming scientism does not imply restrictive policies regarding the constitution of scientific objects. (shrink)

The inductive reliability of Bayesian methods is explored. The first result presented shows that for any solvable inductive problem of a general type, there exists a subjective prior which yields a Bayesian inductive method that solves the problem, although not all subjective priors give rise to a successful inductive method for the problem. The second result shows that the same does not hold for computationally bounded agents, so that Bayesianism is "inductively incomplete" for such agents. Finally a consistency proof shows (...) that inductive agents do not need to disregard inductive failure on sets of subjective probability 0 in order to be ideally rational. Together the results reveal the inadequacy of the subjective Bayesian norms for scientific methodology. (shrink)

In this paper I examine various ways in whichphilosophers have made connections between truth andnatural selection. I introduce several versions ofthe view that mechanisms of true belief generationarise as a result of natural selection and argue thatthey fail to establish a connection between truth andnatural selection. I then turn to scientific truthsand argue that evolutionary accounts of the origin ofscientific truth generation mechanisms also fail. Iintroduce David Hull's selectionist model ofscientific development and argue that his account ofscientific success does (...) not rely on connecting truthand natural selection. I argue that Hull's model,which severs the connection between truth andselection, can account for some aspects of scientificchange, but it still leaves us plenty of questionsabout what aspects of our individual cognitive make-upcontribute to scientific change and how they do so. I introduce an evolutionary approach to scientificcognition that shows how some of these questions canbe answered without making an explanatory appeal toselection for true belief generating mechanisms. (shrink)

Images are objects of work in the laboratory. On its face, this work is achieved through talk Yet the talk attached to these images makes reference to other images, which are drawn from varcous environments. In this article, four such environments are identified: the domain of laboratory practice; the context of invisible physical reactions; the future image as it will appear in publication; and the domain of case precedents and reference scenarios from the field. The work of image analysis brings (...) the outside of the image into it and takes the inside out. Thus it can be seen that images are not just taken, they are designed and made. (shrink)

What role should the expertise of the autistic communities play in shaping the category of autism compared to the role played by science? This question led to a debate about the quantitative importance of science compared to first-person perspectives for the understanding of autism. I see this debate as lying on a false dichotomy between science and activism, according to which only scientific inquiry would reveal the empirical nature of autism, while the discourse of autistic communities would construct (...) a socio-cultural conception of autism. I consider the problems associated with such a dichotomy and show that first-person perspectives should be considered a necessary step in the scientific investigation of autism. (shrink)

, Philip Kitcher has argued that science ought to meet both the epistemic goals of significant truth and the nonepistemic goals of serving the interests of a democratic society. He opposes this science as servant model to both the theology of science as source of salvific truth and the theology of science as anti-Christ. In a recent critical comment, Paul A. Roth argues that Kitcher remains entangled in the theology of salvific truth, not realizing that its goal is either vacuous (...) or unattainable. Instead of theologies, Roth proposes demythologization. In the end, science attains neither truth nor value, for these goals are incomprehensible and unattainable. Consequently, science’s goals are entirely pedestrian and without special interest. Adopting Kitcher’s own scientific naturalistic epistemology, the author argues for a naturalized theology of science, using a science as mediator model, in which both nature and scientist have a role in the acquisition of significant truth. Key Words: epistemic values • Kitcher • nonepistemic values • Roth • science and values • scientific realism • scientific truth. (shrink)

This is an important book precisely because there is none other quite like it.

Intrinsic to rigorous knowledge of God is the recognition that positive theological concepts and statements about God arising under the compelling claims of God's reality upon the human mind must have an open revisable structure. A similar combination of critical realism and ontological openness is apparent in the profound change that has taken place in the rational structure of rigorous science from the radical dualism and closed causal system of classical mechanics to the unifying world view and open dynamic field‐theories (...) of modern physics. It is argued that the intersection of theological and natural science in their epis‐temological foundations can enhance their ontological commitment and heuristic thrust. (shrink)

How nature of scientific knowledge or nature of science and scientific inquiry are contextualized, or related to each other, significantly impacts both curriculum and classroom practice, specifically with respect to the teaching and learning of NOSK. NOS and NOSK are considered synonymous here, with NOSK more accurately conveying the meaning of the construct. Three US-based science education reform documents are used to illustrate the aforementioned impact. The USA has had three major reform documents released over a period (...) of 20 years. The Benchmarks for Science Literacy was the first in 1993, followed by the National Science Education Standards in 1996, and the newest, the Next Generation Science Standards, was released in 2013. NOS or NOSK was strongly emphasized and given a prominent position in the first two, while the NGSS has marginalized the construct. It is categorized as a set of connections that can be made to some of the Science Practices or Crosscutting Ideas. However, a careful conceptual analysis of how the NGSS positions NOSK/nos relative to the previous reform documents reveals a complex situation related to how NOSK/nos is contextualized and apparent assumptions about how NOSK/nos is best taught and learned. A historical review of how NOSK/nos is contextualized reveals a longstanding confusion concerning the relationship between NOSK/nos and SI as well as about how the reform documents seem to assume how it can be best taught to students. The assumptions often run contrary to the empirical research on the teaching and learning of NOSK as well as call into question the ability of the NGSS to promote the perennial science education goal of scientific literacy. (shrink)

Current fears of a “reproducibility crisis” have led researchers, sources of scientific funding, and the public to question both the efficacy and trustworthiness of science. Suggested policy changes have been focused on statistical problems, such as p-hacking, and issues of experimental design and execution. However, “reproducibility” is a broad concept that includes a number of issues. Furthermore, reproducibility failures occur even in fields such as mathematics or computer science that do not have statistical problems or issues with experimental design. (...) Most importantly, these proposed policy changes ignore a core feature of the process of scientific inquiry that occurs after reproducibility failures: the integration of conflicting observations and ideas into a coherent theory. (shrink)