Online research in philosophy

Jean Piaget was one of the most salient and inspirational figures in psychological and educational research this century. He was prolific, authoring or editing over eighty books and numerous journal papers which have spawned a huge and fertile continuation of his research over the decades. A major component of any course on children's psychological development and a research tradition that is expanding, scholars need access to the original texts rather than relying on secondhand accounts. Jean Piaget: Selected Works is a chance to acquire key original texts, most of which have been previously unavailable for several years.

What is the nature of scientific progress, and what makes it possible? When we look back at the scientific theories of the past and compare them to the state of science today, there seems little doubt that we have made progress. But how have we made this progress? Is it a continuous process, which gradually incorporates past successes into present theories, or are entrenched theories overthrown by superior competitors in a revolutionary manner? Theories of Scientific Progress presents the arguments for and against both these extremes, and the positions in between. It covers the interpretations of scientific progress from William Whewell through Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos to Thomas Kuhn and beyond, to the latest contemporary debates. Along the way John Losee introduces and discusses questions about evidential support and the comparison of theories; whether scientific progress aims at truth or merely problem-solving effectiveness; what mechanisms underlie either process; and whether there are necessary or sufficient conditions for scientific progress. He ends with a look at the analogy between the growth of science and the operation of natural selection in the organic world, and the current ideas of evolutionary theorists such as Stephen Toulmin and Michael Ruse.

Genetic epistemology analyzes the growth of knowledge both in the individual person (genetic psychology) and in the socio-historical realm (the history of science). But what the relationship is between the history of science and genetic psychology remains unclear. The biogenetic law that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is inadequate as a characterization of the relation. A critical examination of Piaget's Introduction à l'Épistémologie Généntique indicates these are several examples of what I call stage laws common to both areas. Furthermore, there is at least one example of a paradoxical inverse relation between the two — geometry. Both similarities and differences between the two domains require an explanation, a developmental explanation. Although such an explanation seems to be psychological in nature, it is not merely empirical but also normative (since psychology is both factual and normative according to Piaget). Hence genetic epistemology need not be reduced to psychology (narrowly conceived), but rather should be seen as being both empirical and normative and thus similar to certain types of contemporary philosophy of science.

It is argued that two aspects of the progress of mature science characterize, at least in combination, no other fields; hence, that these aspects can usefully serve as a demarcation criterion. Scientific progress is: (1) cumulative, regardless of crisis or revolution, from the viewpoint of concrete applications; (2) capable of unrestricted growth towards universal coerciveness of argument and evidence. Before these aspects of progress are discussed, some clarifications are made and corrections offered to Kuhn's view of the nature of scientific progress across revolutions; afterwards, the suggested criterion is used to distinguish, concretely, various fields from science. Finally, it is shown that the "style" of scientific progress is not a useful demarcation criterion.

The viewpoint of Evolutionary Epistemology (EE) and of Genetic Epistemology (GE) on classical epistemological questions is strikingly different: EE starts with Evolutionary Biology, the subject of which is population's dynamics. GE, however, starts with Developmental Psychology and thus focusses the development of individuals. By EE knowledge is seen as portraying or copying process, and truth is interpreted as a product of adaptation, whereas for GE knowledge is due to a construction process in which the production of true insights is only one possibility among others: Like falsity, error and deception, true knowledge goes back to a free relationship to reality. The difference between scientific and common knowledge is hard to be checked by EE, since both result ultimately from human hereditary structures. The study of how scientific knowledge emerges from everyday cognition is rather the task of GE.

v. 1. Piaget's genetic epistemology, 1965-1980.--v. 2. Critique of Piaget's genetic epistemology, 1965-1980.

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; Part I. Revolutions, Paradigms, and Incommensurability: 2. Scientific revolutions as lexical changes; 3. The Copernican revolution revisited; 4. Kuhn and the discovery of paradigms; 5. The epistemic significance of incommensurability; Part II. The Evolutionary Perspective: 6. Kuhn's historical perspective; 7. Truth and the end of scientific inquiry; 8. Scientific specialization: taking stock of the evolutionary dimensions of Kuhn's epistemology; Part III. Kuhn's Social Epistemology: 9. Kuhn's constructionism; 10. What makes Kuhn's epistemology a social epistemology?; 11. How does a new theory come to be accepted?; 12. Where the road has taken us - a synthesis.

It is argued that fundamental to Piaget''s life works is a biologically based naturalism in which the living world is a nested complex of self-regulating, self-organising (constructing) adaptive systems. A structuralist-rationalist overlay on this core position is distinguished and it is shown how it may be excised without significant loss of content or insight. A new and richer conception of the nature of Piaget''s genetic epistemology emerges, one which enjoys rich interrelationships with evolutionary epistemology. These are explored and it is shown how a regulatory systems evolutionary epistemology may be embedded within genetic epistemology.

Although the theory of Jean Piaget is correctly characterized as genetic epistemology, its nature and scope remain unclear and controversial. An examination of Piaget's Introduction a l'epistemologie genetique indicates that Piaget relies heavily upon a model of comparative anatomy and, consequently, that genetic epistemology is about both the history of science and individual development. This biological model seems to be the basis for Piaget's view that the history of science can be seen as a (Kantian) history of scientific concepts whereas psychogenetic development is a history of these very same concepts on the individual level. Finally, although there are passages indicating a different interpretation of the scope of genetic epistemology, I give several reasons for preferring the more liberal interpretation.