A great mathematician and teacher, and a physicist and philosopher in his own right, bridges the gap between science and the humanities in this exposition of the philosophy of science. He traces the history of science from Aristotle to Einstein to illustrate philosophy's ongoing role in the scientific process. In this volume he explains modern technology's gradual erosion of the rapport between physical theories and philosophical systems, and offers suggestions for restoring the link between these related areas. This book is (...) suitable for undergraduate students and other readers. 1962 ed. Index. 36 figures. (shrink)

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

Paul Stevens; On the Nuffield Philosophy of Science, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 99–111, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

It is thirty years since the last major reforms of science education. many believe that it is time for reappraisal of these earlier curricula, and for the renewal of science education-its content, aims, methods. also, and importantly, there is a renewed interest in the preparation of science teachers. this essay is a contribution to that task.

J C Forge; A Role for Philosophy of Science in the Teaching of Science, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 109–117, http.

SummaryIn this essay I offer a set of characteristic scientific activities, accompanied by principles to be used as guides in performing these activities, and dispositions that are desirable for the person performing these activities to have. This set is intended to provide a rough and ready elaboration of scientific thinking as a goal for our schools and colleges.Although they are here labeled scientific, they are intended to apply to other activities than doing what is standardly called science. This wider application (...) is part of the justification for offering science in our schools and colleges. We want people to think scientifically about many other aspects of their lives, as well as about science content.There is no suggestion that science content is not important, nor that scientific thinking should be taught apart from science content. In fact I think that a very good way to teach scientific thinking is by infusing such instruction in the instruction of science content. See Swartz for a discussion of infusion, and Ennis, for treatments of the subject‐specificity issue that is generally raised when thinking and content are discussed.This essay contains one brief case study that exemplifies most of the activities, principles, and dispositions suggested as goals for the schools. I realize that the validity and comprehensiveness of these goals has not been here demonstrated. The scientists, science educators, philosophers of science, and critical thinking specialists to whom1 have shown them are in general agreement about them, but the ultimate test will be in whether the goals are widely adopted and successfully serve as guidance in the promotion of scientific thinking.I hope that this elaboration of scientific thinking and its formulation in terms of a suggested set of goals are “dear and precise as is needed in the situation”. (shrink)

This paper is the fourth in the annual 'Golden Oldies'. It is Dewey's address to the 1909 American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference. It appeared originally in Science 31(787), 1910, pp. 121-127. It is reproduced with the generous permission of the AAAS.

Drawing on work of the past decade, this volume brings together articles from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, and many other branches of the biological sciences. The volume delves into the latest theoretical controversies as well as burning questions of contemporary social importance. The issues considered include the nature of evolutionary theory, biology and ethics, the challenge from religion, and the social implications of biology today (in particular the Human Genome Project).

The anthropological approach is the central focus of this study. Laboratories are looked upon with the innocent eye of the traveller in exotic lands, and the societies found in these places are observed with the objective yet compassionate eye of the visitor from a quite other cultural milieu. There are many surprises that await us if we enter a laboratory in this frame of mind... This study is a realistic enterprise, an attempt to truly represent the social order of life (...) in laboratories and institutes of research, just as they are. By bringing the philosophical issues to the surface as matters not of prejudgement but as matters of concern, Karin Knorr-Cetina has developed the first really positive challenge to the philosophy of science since the days of paradigms and internal definitions of meanings. (shrink)

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent (...) explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)

Thought-provoking essays on science as an integral part of the culture of our age from a leader in the scientific humanism movement. "A profoundly moving, brilliantly perceptive essay by a truly civilized man."--Scientific American.

While acknowledging its theory-ladeness, Chalmers (history and philosophy, U. of Sydney) defends the objectivity of scientific knowledge against those critics for whom such knowledge is both subjective and ideological.

Chapter 1 FROM ORDER TO DISORDER 5 mins. John enters and goes into his office. He says something very quickly about having made a bad mistake. He had sent the review of a paper. . . . The rest of the sentence is inaudible. 5 mins.

In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context..

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching argues that science teaching and science teacher education can be improved if teachers know something of the history and philosophy of science and if these topics are included in the science curriculum. The history and philosophy of science have important roles in many of the theoretical issues that science educators need to address: the goals of science education; what constitutes an appropriate science curriculum for all students; how science should be taught in traditional cultures; what (...) integrated science is; how scientific literacy can be promoted; and the conflict which can occur between science curriculum and deep-seated religious or cultural values and knowledge. In part, answers to these questions hinge on views about the nature of science, views that are best informed by historical and philosophical study. Outlining the history of liberal, or contextual, approaches to the teaching of science, Michael Matthews elaborates contemporary curriculum developments that explicitly address questions about the nature and the history of science. He provides examples of classroom teaching and develops useful arguments on constructivism, multicultural science education and teacher education. The book will appeal to school and university science teachers, educators of science teachers, and historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)