A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...) is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". (shrink)

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

2 Popper's Logical Definition of Verisimilitude. 3 Popper's Probabilistic Definition of Verisimilitude. 4 Conclusion.

Science's priority rule rewards those who are first to make a discovery, at the expense of all other scientists working towards the same goal, no matter how close they may be to making the same discovery. I propose an explanation of the priority rule that, better than previous explanations, accounts for the distinctive features of the rule. My explanation treats the priority system, and more generally, any scheme of rewards for scientific endeavor, as a device for achieving an allocation of (...) resources among different research programs that provides as much benefit as possible to society. I show that the priority system is especially well suited to finding an efficient allocation of resources in those situations, characteristic of scientific inquiry, in which any success in an endeavor subsequent to the first success brings little additional benefit to society. (shrink)

During the last three decades, reflections on the growth of scientific knowledge have inspired historians, sociologists, and some philosophers to contend that scientific objectivity is a myth. In this book, Kitcher attempts to resurrect the notions of objectivity and progress in science by identifying both the limitations of idealized treatments of growth of knowledge and the overreactions to philosophical idealizations. Recognizing that science is done not by logically omniscient subjects working in isolation, but by people with a variety of personal (...) and social interests, who cooperate and compete with one another, he argues that, nonetheless, we may conceive the growth of science as a process in which both our vision of nature and our ways of learning more about nature improve. Offering a detailed picture of the advancement of science, he sets a new agenda for the philosophy of science and for other "science studies" disciplines. (shrink)

Scientific Realism is the optimistic view that modern science is on the right track: that the world really is the way our best scientific theories describe it to be. In his book, Stathis Psillos gives us a detailed and comprehensive study, which restores the intuitive plausibility of scientific realism. We see that throughout the twentieth century, scientific realism has been challenged by philosophical positions from all angles: from reductive empiricism, to instrumentalism and modern skeptical empiricism. Scientific Realism explains that the (...) history of science does not undermine the notion of scientific realism, and instead makes it reasonable to accept scientific as the best philosophical account of science, its empirical success, its progress and its practice. Anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the state of modern science and why scientific realism is plausible, should read this book. (shrink)

How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality , Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of one hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory and (...) Reality covers logical positivism the problems of induction and confirmation Karl Popper's theory of science Thomas Kuhn and "scientific revolutions" the views of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Paul Feyerabend and challenges to the field from sociology of science, feminism, and science studies. The book then looks in more detail at some specific problems and theories, including scientific realism, the theory-ladeness of observation, scientific explanation, and Bayesianism. Finally, Godfrey-Smith defends a form of philosophical naturalism as the best way to solve the main problems in the field. Throughout the text he points out connections between philosophical debates and wider discussions about science in recent decades, such as the infamous "science wars." Examples and asides engage the beginning student a glossary of terms explains key concepts and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. However, this is a textbook that doesn't feel like a textbook because it captures the historical drama of changes in how science has been conceived over the last one hundred years. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates in language that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow. (shrink)

Is Popper's philosophy alive or dead? If we make a judgment based on recent discussion in academic philosophy of science, he definitely seems to be fading. Popper is still seen as an important historical figure, a key part of the grand drama of 20th century thinking about science. He is associated with an outlook, a mindset, and a general picture of scientific work. His name has bequeathed us an adjective, "Popperian," that is well established. But the adjective is used for (...) very general ideas that, according to most current philosophers, Popper did not develop convincingly. His detailed account is often seen as attractive on first impression, but full of holes that become bigger rather than smaller as discussion continues. The picture and the name remain, which is more than 1 most philosophers can hope for. But the name attaches more and more to a set of instincts and intuitions, less and less to views that are seeing ongoing philosophical development. Inside science itself, Popper's standing is quite different. He continues to be just about the only philosopher who can seize the imagination and command the loyalty of successful professional scientists. And he is popular within science not only for purposes of general commentary and public relations. Popper's philosophy is a resource drawn on by scientists in their internal debates about scientific matters. This has been especially marked in some parts of biology (Hull 1999). From the point of view of philosophers, this affection on the part of scientists may have an unflattering explanation. Popper offers a rather heroic view of the scientific character, featuring an appealing combination of creativity and hard-headedness. It is no surprise that scientists like to be described this way. It is no surprise that they prefer this picture to the one often (though inaccurately) associated with Hempel and Carnap – the scientist as a sort of logic-driven pattern-recognition machine. The same applies to the picture associated with Kuhn, who presents the normal scientist as a narrow-minded, indoctrinated member of a peculiar collective enterprise, an enterprise devoted to solving tiny puzzles most of the time but prone to occasional fits of crisis and chaos.. (shrink)

Truth is the aim of inquiry. Nevertheless, some falsehoods seem to realize this aim better than others. Some truths better realize the aim than other truths. And perhaps even some falsehoods realize the aim better than some truths do. The dichotomy of the class of propositions into truths and falsehoods should thus be supplemented with a more fine-grained ordering — one which classifies propositions according to their closeness to the truth, their degree of truthlikeness or verisimilitude. The logical problem of (...) truthlikeness is to give an adequate account of the concept and to explore its logical properties. Of course, the logical problem intersects with problems in both epistemology and value theory. (shrink)