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- Peter Achinstein (2004). Science Rules: A Historical Introduction to Scientific Methods. Johns Hopkins University Press.Is there a universal set of rules for discovering and testing scientific hypotheses? Since the birth of modern science, philosophers, scientists, and other thinkers have wrestled with this fundamental question of scientific practice. Efforts to devise rigorous methods for obtaining scientific knowledge include the twenty-one rules Descartes proposed in his Rules for the Direction of the Mind and the four rules of reasoning that begin the third book of Newton's Principia , and continue today in debates over the very possibility of such rules. Bringing together key primary sources spanning almost four centuries, Science Rules introduces readers to scientific methods that have played a prominent role in the history of scientific practice. Editor Peter Achinstein includes works by scientists and philosophers of science to offer a new perspective on the nature of scientific reasoning. For each of the methods discussed, he presents the original formulation of the method selections written by a proponent of the method together with an application to a particular scientific example and a critical analysis of the method that draws on historical and contemporary sources. The methods included in this volume are Cartesian rationalism with an application to Descartes' laws of motion Newton's inductivism and the law of gravity two versions of hypothetico-deductivism -- those of William Whewell and Karl Popper -- and the nineteenth-century wave theory of light Paul Feyerabend's principle of proliferation and Thomas Kuhn's views on scientific values, both of which deny that there are universal rules of method, with an application to Galileo's tower argument. Included also is a famous nineteenth-century debate about scientific reasoning between the hypothetico-deductivist William Whewell and the inductivist John Stuart Mill and an account of the realism-antirealism dispute about unobservables in science, with a consideration of Perrin's argument for the existence of molecules in the early twentieth century.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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It is helpful for any enterprise to stop occasionally and examine itself. Science has done this rather infrequently in its long and eventful history, and there has not been, in general, any continuity in these self-examinations. As a result the history of the philosophy of science has been a rather spotty affair. My belief is that the philosophy of science should also, at times, become self-critical. When a study is concerned primarily with methods of other disciplines it tends to underemphasize the role played by the methods which it itself uses. What is the method of the philosophy of science, and is it justifiable? Can there be a satisfactory study of science and can this be scientific?
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The traditional role which correspondence rules, coordinating definitions, or semantical rules, have in a logical analysis of a scientific theory is questioned by providing an alternative analysis. The alternative account suggests that scientific theories are "meaningful" prior to the establishment of correspondence rules, and that correspondence rules are introduced to permit explanation and testing in the "observational" sector. The role of models is briefly assessed in connection with this prior or "antecedent theoretical meaning," and a causal sequence analysis of a class of correspondence rules is presented which makes explicit the interdependence of scientific theories.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper considers objections to Popper's views on scientific method. It is argued that criticism of Popper's views, developed by Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos, are not too damaging, although they do require that Popper's views be modified somewhat. It is argued that a much more serious criticism is that Popper has failed to provide us with any reason for holding that the methodological rules he advocates give us a better hope of realizing the aims of science than any other set of rules. Consequently, Popper cannot adequately explain why we should value scientific theories more than other sorts of theories ; which in turn means that Popper fails to solve adequately his fundamental problem, namely the problem of demarcation. It is suggested that in order to get around this difficulty we need to take the search for explanations as a fundamental aim of science.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In this paper, (1) I argue that Sherlock Holmes was a good logician according to the standard of his day, and (2) I try to show what his method of reasoning was. Now, (2) is a harder task than (1), because we have to identify the essential features of his method of reasoning. In order to show this, I have not only to examine what Holmes says he is doing, but also to look at the methods of scientific reasoning recommended by several distinguished philosophers of science in the 19th century. I want to examine Holmes's method of reasoning in a historical setting; and this has something to do with the philosophy of science in the 19th century, and hopefully with the philosophy of science today. I will examine whether such methods are similar or dissimilar to Holmes's method. Logicians and philosophers I wish to examine are, John Herschel, John Stuart Mill, William Whewell, Augustus de Morgan, and William Stanley Jevons; however, since the space is limited, I cannot do justice to all of them. My conclusion is this: Sherlock Holmes was distinctly different from Herschel or Mill or Whewell who may be called a classical methodologist; but he was very close to de Morgan or Jevons who were an advocate of the new symbolic logic and the probabilistic theory of induction. But what is the point of showing all this? The rise and development of statistical method in the19th century had a great impact on the theories of scientific reasoning, and de Morgan's or Jevons's theory is a newer theory of induction in this century. And such a change of methodology is clearly reflected in the popular stories of Sherlock Holmes, which were written in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
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| | Scholar | More options ... In this essay, I criticize Laudan's view that methodological rules in science are best understood as hypothetical imperatives, for example, to realize cognitive aim A, follow method B. I criticize his idea that such rules are best evaluated by a naturalized philosophy of science which collects the empirical evidence bearing on the soundness of these rules. My claim is that this view yields a poor explanation of (1) the role of methodological rules in establishing the rationality of scientific practices, (2) the debates scientists have over rival methodological rules, and (3) the reasons on the basis of which scientists actually embrace, challenge, or transform methodological rules. A better explanation is provided by treating at least some methodological rules as foundational standards of theory-appraisal which define the criteria of scientific truth, knowledge, evidence, proof, explanations, etc., for a certain tradition or community of scientific practice. Such standards are in turn grounded or challenged on the basis of their coherence or incoherence with a wider body of scientific judgments. This view leads away from a naturalized philosophy of science back to its more classical epistemological conception.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... According to a popular view of scientific methodology, scientific methods are prescriptive rules (methodological rules) which are justified in so far as they realize or promote the aims of science. This paper considers several different interpretations of the phrase aims of science, arguing that none of these interpretations allow aims to provide a satisfactory justification of methodological rules.
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| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This historical compendium investigates scientific methods conceived between the Renaissance and the nineteenth century. Beginning with attacks on Scholasticism and the rist of the New Science, the authors explain the roles of both major andminor figures in describing scientific methods. Although the chapters are interrelated and contain explicit comparisons, each chapter is a complete study in itself. The authors' emphasis on writing for the non-specialist and their liberal use of primary sources make this an outstanding textbook.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The most exciting and important new philosophical idea of the past decade, in my view, is the discovery that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academic inquiry more generally, so that the basic intellectual aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom. We urgently need to transform our schools and universities so that they become rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to tackle our grave global problems, and thus make progress towards as good a world as possible.
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| | Other links: pdcnet.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This volume brings together eleven essays by the distinguished philosopher of science, Peter Achinstein. The unifying theme is the nature of the philosophical problems surrounding the postulation of unobservable entities such as light waves, molecules, and electrons. How, if at all, is it possible to confirm scientific hypotheses about "unobservables"? Achinstein examines this question as it arose in actual scientific practice in three nineteenth-century episodes: the debate between particle and wave theorists of light, Maxwell's kinetic theory of gases, and J.J. Thomson's discovery of the electron. The book contains three parts, each devoted to one of these topics, beginning with an essay presenting the historical background of the episode and an introduction to the philosophical issues. There is an illuminating evaluation of various scientific methodologies, including hypothetico-deductivism, inductivism, and the method of independent warrant which combines features of the first two. Achinstein assesses the philosophical validity of both nineteenth-century and modern answers to questions about unobservables, and presents and defends his own solutions.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... What is it to be scientific? Is there such a thing as scientific method? And if so, how might such methods be justified?
Robert Nola and Howard Sankey seek to provide answers to these fundamental questions in their exploration of the major recent theories of scientific method. Although for many scientists their understanding of method is something they just “pick up” in the course of being trained, Nola and Sankey argue that it is possible to be explicit about what this tacit understanding of method is, rather than leave it as some unfathomable mystery. They robustly defend the idea that there is such a thing as scientific method and show how this might be legitimated.
The book begins with the question of what methodology might mean and explores the notions of values, rules and principles, before investigating how methodologists have sought to show that our scientific methods are rational. Part 2 of the book sets out some principles of inductive method and examines its alternatives including abduction, IBE, and hypothetico-deductivism. Part 3 introduces probabilistic modes of reasoning, particularly Bayesianism in its various guises, and shows how it is able to give an account of many of the values and rules of method. Part 4 considers the ideas of philosophers who have proposed distinctive theories of method such as Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend and Part 5 continues this theme by considering philosophers who have proposed “naturalised” theories of method such as Quine, Laudan and Rescher.
The book offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the idea of scientific method and a wide-ranging discussion of how historians of science, philosophers of science and scientists have grappled with the question over the last fifty years.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Peter Achinstein, Science Rules: A Historical Introduction to Scientific Methods
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